Talk about Human Depravity … for Goodness Sake!

[Quid est Veritas?]

Shouldn't a conscientious parent do whatever he could to prevent a child he knows is anti-social from harming others in any way?

No, a conscientious parent would not be limiting the opportunities of their child, and would not be simply writing him off as anti-social. The cornerstone would be CBT and exposure therapy under their surveillance. So they probably would get him a bike. Regardless, the analogy only goes so far, as no human can know what actions another would take, nor the legitimacy of such diagnoses or presumed behavioural models. As I said, the reductio argument is weak and falls rather flat, here.

You don't think that being in effect imprisoned, and used as a sex slave, is a negation of one's ability to make free will choices? I'm sure that anyone, even a child, would choose to escape from such a tormentor.

Everyone is imprisoned within the circumstances of their birth and upbringing. Free will is in actions thereafter. Or does a Jew born in 1938 Germany have no free will either? The opportunities are limited perhaps, but not the freedom to choose - even more so on a noumenal level, as you can always choose to remain unbowed by circumstance. The character of Man is far more than merely the circumstances they find themselves in. Think of Kipling's If perhaps.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Well, the church ranks pretty high up there on the list in terms of torturing children. Raping them over the course of years, trading them around like baseball cards, telling them that they will go to hell if they tell anyone. Just to name a couple things that have been going on the last two millennia.

This is something I'll agree with you on: it is an awful scandal and the Roman Church should do more about routing out the problem and replacing priests who have acted upon their own criminal proclivity. At the same time, you might want to tone down your rhetoric and refrain from using citations that seem to refer to "the Church" as being thoroughly permeated by scoundrels and change it to something more like the following: there are selectively cited perpetrators within various Christian churches who need to be removed and dealt with.

Otherwise, it almost sounds like you're including odds and ends folks and the general masses of the faithful, such as myself, in your prosecution. And that I won't abide.

Which makes me wonder something: Were the three teenage boys who molested my mother when she was only age 5 ... Christian? Or were they, let's say, "Irreligious." Oh, if only I could find an answer to that question since it has always kind of nagged at me all these years! And those psychology classes I took in high school and at the university couldn't answer this particular question for me as I tried in my own way to cope with my mom's ongoing bouts with schizophrenia and various child-hood traumas.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'll go by what the Bible says.

I hate to bust your bubble here, but while I appreciate your attempt to list out some seemingly relevant bible verses in fundamentalistic proof-text fashion, I think you meant to say, "I'll go by what I think the Bible says by way of a cursory, somewhat superficial reading," right?

Yes, I think...that would be more accurate for you to admit.

Moreover, I'm just going to jump ahead and assume that your actual answer to the OP is "no, 2PhiloVoid, talking about human depravity won't help the case for those attempting to do Christian Apologetics." Does that sound about right?

I mean, I don't want to speak 'for' you, just like I don't claim to speak 'for' God, but I do want to leave this interpretation of mine about your words open for my further correction in case I've somehow misunderstood you. I don't want to throw you under the bus, even if I might be tempted to kick you off of it since you don't seem to want to pay the fare.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

No, a conscientious parent would not be limiting the opportunities of their child, and would not be simply writing him off as anti-social. The cornerstone would be CBT and exposure therapy under their surveillance. So they probably would get him a bike. Regardless, the analogy only goes so far, as no human can know what actions another would take, nor the legitimacy of such diagnoses or presumed behavioural models. As I said, the reductio argument is weak and falls rather flat, here.


Everyone is imprisoned within the circumstances of their birth and upbringing. Free will is in actions thereafter. Or does a Jew born in 1938 Germany have no free will either? The opportunities are limited perhaps, but not the freedom to choose - even more so on a noumenal level, as you can always choose to remain unbowed by circumstance. The character of Man is far more than merely the circumstances they find themselves in. Think of Kipling's If perhaps.

I got a bike for Christmas when I was a kid. And I'll admit, it did me a lot good.

 

[jayem]

In all this discussion, I still haven't heard a logical and straightforward answer to my question. Why does God allow evil like this to occur?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

In all this discussion, I still haven't heard a logical and straightforward answer to my question. Why does God allow evil like this to occur?

You have a bible. You apparently are aware of its contents. Does it offer an answer within its archaic pages? If so, why the question. If not, your guess is as good as mine.

And why am I sounding like a lunk-head in saying this to you in this fashion? Well, it's because there are epistemological indices in the Bible that, upon careful hermeneutical reading, indicate to us that .... we're not going to get all of the answers we'd like.

Besides, you've already skirted both my Humpty-Dumpty vignette as well as my question I posed above, so with that in mind, BACK TO MY QUESTIONS in the OP!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I think this more illustrates the utter depravity of man without God. I agree that such abhorrence should lead to someone realising the magnitude of their sins and repent, but that is the scary thing of relativistic thinking, that they don't. This shows the depths humans can plumb, and personally, I don't think an eternity of suffering unjustified as punishment.

The Church should act - as Churches were the primary driving force behind Abolition of slavery, ending workhouses, or Temperance. They are unfortunately weak structures today, with much of their teeth pulled. So it rests upon Christians as individuals, since our collective institution can't do much anymore. Here though, we are somewhat complicit, in that the factors that allow this to proceed - the lack of political will, a lax attitude to pornography, etc. are unlikely to change. Most will read of these acts, be shocked, then go about their day. I fail to see how that is acceptable. This needs action, as you say. We should all be bowing in shame, in dust and sackcloth, that our inaction allows such evil to take place. It is our Sin as well, which Dostoeyevsky catches so nicely when he speaks of how all are responsible for Sin, in the persons of Fathers Zosima or Tikhon.

It is my contention that the existence of depravity illustrates the existence of Good - as a shadow has to be cast by something - which does support the Gospel's veridicality. Further, it demonstrates that man cannot exist on his own, that shorn thereof, this is how far and fast we fall. It shows the inherit need for Repentance, not only of individuals, but society in general. Without realising how black we are, we fail to realise the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice. We keep thinking we are good chaps, excusing our moral inaction; it is only once the innocent are beaten and tortured, that we realise our own deep failure - Yes, I am partial to Scapegoat Atonement. When innocent children, that belong to the Kingdom of God and must not be hindered, are so destroyed - functionally, we as Christians might as well be in the crowd baying for our Redeemer's blood. This shows why the world needs Christ.

Anyway, the plastic straws and polar bear sneer was my own view. The world goes on about climate change, while ignoring these far more egregious abuses. As if Churchill debated the economic prospects of Rhodesia instead of facing the Nazis; or ancient Rome the change in weights and measures while Hannibal was at the gates. People can worry about climate change if they wish, but it pails into insignificance before the systematic rape and torture of babies and toddlers while we twiddle our thumbs. That I even have to make this point, shows how far we've fallen.

Now that I understand you actually wrote that first post of yours above, I'll engage it just a little more.

First off, I'd just say that I emphatically agree with most of what you've shared, and as you've seen, I've already given my assessment of it above.

However, there is just one little point that slightly nags at me in what you've stated, and that is that caring for our earth is less of a concern than protecting our children. The problem with this view is that it isn't just Global Warming we should all be concerned about but also the poisoning of our environment in which we live, breath and love.

The WHOLE act of addressing the damage we do to the environment of our shared, God given world should be just as important as any other, because in a sense, while preventing crimes against children is a form of protecting them, so is taking care of our world so we can then continue to bequeth its blessing ... to our children who are yet to come. For us to be negligent in this regard, especially IF we casually think Jesus will do a Grand Quick Clean Up in the very, very near future, and it turns out He doesn't, is another form of 'Child abuse.'

Again, I applaud you on all that you said in regard to heinous crimes involving children as one example of human depravity; I'd just add that not taking care of our environment and being careless on the whole is also very near another form of human depravity. We shouldn't destroy our Blessed Earth, I think, when we all, and our children, have so much dependence upon it.

So the next time I see someone throw a pop bottle into the garbage without recycling, I'm going to cry out something that only John the Baptist could have outdone.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

This is something I'll agree with you on: it is an awful scandal and the Roman Church should do more about routing out the problem and replacing priests who have acted upon their own criminal proclivity. At the same time, you might want to tone down your rhetoric and refrain from using citations that seem to refer to "the Church" as being thoroughly permeated by scoundrels and change it to something more like the following: there are selectively cited perpetrators within various Christian churches who need to be removed and dealt with.

That's silly. Pedophiles are not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the worldwide coverup and the fact that the church simply will not accept accountability.

Otherwise, it almost sounds like you're including odds and ends folks and the general masses of the faithful, such as myself, in your prosecution. And that I won't abide.

I'm referring to the hierarchy, and it goes all the way up to the Pope. This is common knowledge. If you are a layman and have no way of influencing decisions of the church, then you are not part of the organization. You're just a fan saying "go Packers," having no impact on whether they actually "go."

Which makes me wonder something: Were the three teenage boys who molested my mother when she was only age 5 ... Christian? Or were they, let's say, "Irreligious." Oh, if only I could find an answer to that question since it has always kind of nagged at me all these years! And those psychology classes I took in high school and at the university couldn't answer this particular question for me as I tried in my own way to cope with my mom's ongoing bouts with schizophrenia and various child-hood traumas.

How would I know?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

That's silly. Pedophiles are not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the worldwide coverup and the fact that the church simply will not accept accountability.

I'm kind'a thinking both the pedophiles and the Church leaders allowing it are synergistically at the root of the problem.

I'm referring to the hierarchy, and it goes all the way up to the Pope. This is common knowledge. If you are a layman and have no way of influencing decisions of the church, then you are not part of the organization. You're just a fan saying "go Packers," having no impact on whether they actually "go."

Actually, I'm not a big football fan, although I do like the occasional football game. If I were a big football fan I'd probably side with Pittsburgh, like I often did in my teenage years.

How would I know?

You wouldn't.

 

[jayem]

You have a bible. You apparently are aware of its contents. Does it offer an answer within its archaic pages? If so, why the question. If not, your guess is as good as mine.

There is an answer to the problem of evil. It's simple and logical, but not Biblical or doctrinal. God allows evil because God is not totally good. If there is a God, who has a moral nature, there are 2 possibilities:

1) God is evil and deceptive.
2) God is dualistic--sometimes good, sometimes evil. Sort of what the Gnostics, Zoroastrians, and other world religions believed.

There's also a Deistic view. God is only a creative entity, who made the world as it is, and allows it to operate without further involvement. Any of these provide a more coherent theistic explanation for why terrible things happen.

Besides, you've already skirted both my Humpty-Dumpty vignette as well as my question I posed above, so with that in mind, BACK TO MY QUESTIONS in the OP!

I may not have been clear. What I wanted to demonstrate in answer to your OP question, is that the existence of such evil results far more in doubting God than accepting him.

And I didn't know you expected a response to your Humpty-Dumpty analogy. It's not convincing to me that a benevolent God would permit a sadist to torture a child sexually so that at some unknown time in the future, the child can be put right. What's the point? And what about the victims who never do recover? Wouldn't it be better if God prevented such atrocities rather than allowing a victim to suffer years of anguish in hopes of a cure?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

There is an answer to the problem of evil. It's simple and logical, but not Biblical or doctrinal. God allows evil because God is not totally good. If there is a God, who has a moral nature, there are 2 possibilities:

1) God is evil and deceptive.
2) God is dualistic--sometimes good, sometimes evil. Sort of what the Gnostics, Zoroastrians, and other world religions believed.

There's also a Deistic view. God is only a creative entity, who made the world as it is, and allows it to operate without further involvement. Any of these provide a more coherent theistic explanation for why terrible things happen.

Oh, I hear you, philosophically speaking, but since this is a Christian Apologetics forum, we'll need to stick Pascal on this and just go with the God of the Bible, in two Testaments, and completely dispense with the God of the philosophers since the notions that inhere within that particular 'lesser god' aren't worth the ink (or electrons) that people use to write it. As Pascal wrote (writing #449):

449. All those who seek God apart from Christ, and who go no further than nature, either find no light to satisfy them or come to devise a means of knowing and serving God without a mediator, thus falling into either atheism or deism, two things almost equally abhorrent to Christianity… They imagine that it simply consists in worshiping [a] God considered to be great and mighty and eternal, which is properly speaking deism, almost as remote from the Christian religion as atheism, its complete opposite… But let them conclude what they like against deism, their conclusions will not apply to Christianity, which properly consists in the mystery of the Redeemer, who, uniting in himself the two natures, human and divine, saved men from the corruption of sin in order to reconcile them with God in his divine person. It teaches men then these two truths alike: that there is a God, of whom men are capable, and that there is a corruption in nature which makes them unworthy. It is of equal importance to men to know each of these points: and it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can cure him. Knowing only one of these points leads either to the arrogance of the philosophers, who have known God but not their own wretchedness, or to the despair of the atheists, who know their own wretchedness without knowing their Redeemer.​

I may not have been clear. What I wanted to demonstrate in answer to your OP question, is that the existence of such evil results far more in doubting God than accepting him.

Ok. I'll take that as a legitimate, Subjective answer. It's an honest one, so I can appreciate it. Life in this world does hurt, and it should pain us to see children (and anyone, really) go through various torments.

And I didn't know you expected a response to your Humpty-Dumpty analogy. It's not convincing to me that a benevolent God would permit a sadist to torture a child sexually so that at some unknown time in the future, the child can be put right. What's the point? And what about the victims who never do recover? Wouldn't it be better if God prevented such atrocities rather than allowing a victim to suffer years of anguish in hopes of a cure?

I don't know for sure. Our evaluations of all of this “Christian Stuff” will depend on the information we are each privy to and on the personal responses to pain we each may have.

My primary thrust here in this discussion, such as you've framed it, is that unless we're willing to look at the entire corpus of biblical concepts pertaining to God, from beginning to end in the bible, then we're not actually evaluation wholistically the ethical complications we find with “God's Plan” in and through the pains of Christ, even including the place of our own lives and deaths in the equation of this. This is what I think you should be focusing on if you're “really” going to evaluate God.

So, we are left with a distinct difference between:

A) the options you've laid out above involving a "lesser" notion of god, both philosophical and deistic

B) the proposition that God is defined as the Alpha AND Omega who will fix what was shattered; and, too, Satan is thereby prosecuted as a murderer and has been from the beginning.​

So sure, we can say that it seems odd of God to allow such pain and suffering, but then part of the defintion of this God is that He has raised Jesus again AND He will also eventually repair what seems unrepairable for those whom His Providence includes in His final acts involving this Earth and its population.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I'm kind'a thinking both the pedophiles and the Church leaders allowing it are synergistically at the root of the problem.

Actually, I'm not a big football fan, although I do like the occasional football game. If I were a big football fan I'd probably side with Pittsburgh, like I often did in my teenage years.

You wouldn't.

And do you think there are many members of the church hierarchy who are either completely unaware of any child rape that has occurred, or are aware and have reported every instance they've seen to the proper authorities?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

And do you think there are many members of the church hierarchy who are either completely unaware of any child rape that has occurred, or are aware and have reported every instance they've seen to the proper authorities?

NV, a very wise man once asked: "How would I know?"

 

[Nihilist Virus]

NV, a very wise man once asked: "How would I know?"

Well if you're calling me wise, then listen to me! And to answer your question, you can look at the Pennsylvania situation and project that sample onto the whole church.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Well if you're calling me wise, then listen to me!

... well, I knew some people would ignore my 666 OP thread I just put out recently, along with its intensive insinuations, but I really didn't figure that all of that such thing would have been just completely lost on you, NV.

With that said, I don't think you're wise, really, but I definitely DO think you're smart. Very smart, and since you are, you'll know that being wise has its strong points......and its bad points. It's not always all good, as the bible "makes clear." Sometimes, it also depends on who exactly is wielding the wisdom.

And to answer your question, you can look at the Pennsylvania situation and project that sample onto the whole church.

What's going on in Pennsylvania? That they're wanting to maybe legalize pot, or something? Oh, the human depravity never stops, does it?!

 

[Rodan6]

There is an answer to the problem of evil. It's simple and logical, but not Biblical or doctrinal. God allows evil because God is not totally good. If there is a God, who has a moral nature, there are 2 possibilities:

1) God is evil and deceptive.
2) God is dualistic--sometimes good, sometimes evil. Sort of what the Gnostics, Zoroastrians, and other world religions believed.

There's also a Deistic view. God is only a creative entity, who made the world as it is, and allows it to operate without further involvement. Any of these provide a more coherent theistic explanation for why terrible things happen.



I may not have been clear. What I wanted to demonstrate in answer to your OP question, is that the existence of such evil results far more in doubting God than accepting him.

And I didn't know you expected a response to your Humpty-Dumpty analogy. It's not convincing to me that a benevolent God would permit a sadist to torture a child sexually so that at some unknown time in the future, the child can be put right. What's the point? And what about the victims who never do recover? Wouldn't it be better if God prevented such atrocities rather than allowing a victim to suffer years of anguish in hopes of a cure?

In general, God does not interfere. From our human viewpoint, this might sometimes be judged "evil" since there are obvious, tragic results from evil conduct. Some would place an obligation on God to prevent something terrible from happening. But consider that there are also consequences for the very divine interference you seek. Let's suppose that God permitted the spiritual "over-riding" of human willful choice--stopping cold and blocking out a human willful choice to perform an evil act...
I suggest that spiritual interference of human willful choice is "evil" in itself. It is one of God's greatest laws that human will choice NOT be interfered with. We MUST be allowed to choose. Without choice, true spiritual progress is impossible.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

... well, I knew some people would ignore my 666 OP thread I just put out recently, along with its intensive insinuations, but I really didn't figure that all of that such thing would have been just completely lost on you, NV.

With that said, I don't think you're wise, really, but I definitely DO think you're smart. Very smart, and since you are, you'll know that being wise has its strong points......and its bad points. It's not always all good, as the bible "makes clear." Sometimes, it also depends on who exactly is wielding the wisdom.



What's going on in Pennsylvania? That they're wanting to maybe legalize pot, or something? Oh, the human depravity never stops, does it?!

The grand jury indictment of the churches in Pennsylvania. You haven't heard of that?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The grand jury indictment of the churches in Pennsylvania. You haven't heard of that?

Nope. I'll have to check it out that "news" in the near future, somewhere between work and the whatnots of life, along with my Criminal Minds binge watching I've been doing lately with my wife ...

I'm sure that your having brought it to my attention means that it'll be worth my while.

 

[HitchSlap]

The sky isn’t falling. We’re less safe now, only if you ignore the whole of history. And most atrocities committed worldwide are, by and large, under the guise of religion.

On the contrary, we’re safer than we’ve ever been, thanks to education and the rise of secularism.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

The OT God, aside from being a single entity-- has distinctly human traits.

The Father and The Son have always been Echad. In the TORAH, Prophets, Psalms, New Testament, and eternally before time, without beginning, without being created,
and eternally after time is or may be eternally forgotten already - The Father and The Son are echad. (likewise Jesus Prayer in John 17 for the disciples to be echad with the Son the same as the Father and the Son are) ....

Humans might have the traits of the Creator, Yahuweh Willing,

but Yahuweh is not a man that He could lie.