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I wouldn't call that a response, but it does explain a lot. Cannoli Send a noteboard - 13/06/2014 06:23:07 PM

How could a God make a universe where there is so much suffering? Mice as well as other animals do suffer, but yet have no comprehension of the why behind the suffering.

On what basis would you assume God does not want suffering?


Man is different though, Man can rise above suffering and using suffering to his advantage, Man can find God and goodness in suffering.
Oh, duh.
Good and evil cannot exist without the other,

Bullshit. There is good. What is not good is evil. Good does not require evil to define or limit it. Evil is the absence of good, as cold is the absence of heat. It is not an opposing force, or a necessary touchstone for perception.
it is through suffering (and via empathy) we find grace (at least according to many religions including many theologians of Catholicism the religion I was raised as a child and thus the religion I know the most about)
And did not pay enough attention to, obviously. Cite, if you please, the relevant Church doctrine or teaching that says we find grace through suffering. Your statement implies suffering is necessary to obtain grace, but it is not. Grace comes entirely from God. We can obtain grace by enduring suffering in God's name and offering it up to Him, but it is not a source of grace.
So how can God be so cruel to make helpless beings who can not choose their own destiny suffer so much?
Where were you when God laid the foundations of the world? According to Scripture He DOES notice these things and is aware of them. You don't know what part they play in that design, so you have no call to criticize it.
Does that make sense to you?
It actually does, and is moderately refreshing to see an atheist concede that their position is every bit as much a religious one as a belief in God.

On the other hand, most of you run around shrieking that it is perfectly possible to be moral without God or religion, and you still fail to answer Sselal's Girl's point about the different between the behavior of animals and humans. Spontaneous abortion, like crib death, is a tragedy. Induced abortion, like infanticide, is a deliberate assault on the most innocent and helpless of human beings. If some god is an asshole for allowing the former, it does not excuse us of our moral responsibility to be better than that. Animals kill their own kind in the wild. It does not justify offing your spouse to save on the costs of divorce, or a romantic rival to attain the sexual partner of your choice, or a professional rival to secure a promotion.

My position on abortion has nothing to do with my religious beliefs, or no more than my support for the basic human rights to life, liberty and property. Religion is so associated with the cause of opposition to abortion, because it is convenient to demonize causes with association with religion in our society (hence the reluctance of atheists to concede their belief in an absence of a deity is as faith-based as my own belief), and as in the case of slavery, it falls on religion to defend the rights of people against materially-motivated abuse. I don't oppose abortion because unborn babies are god's little cherubs, I oppose it because it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a human fetus is NOT a human being. You can legislate its status away, and you can count a slave as 3/5 of a person, but that does not make it so, nor justify the murder of such a person by one who purports to have the right, through the misapplication of the three great natural rights.

I will not pretend religion plays NO part in my position, because it is also religion that informs me that ANYONE's life, liberty or property are sacrosanct. There is no objective material evidence that a black person is the intellectual equal of a white person, or vice versa. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to significant differences between the races. My belief in their moral & spiritual, and by extension necessity of legal, equality is founded entirely on my belief that they are created by God in His image, with an immortal soul. Just as my obvious and inherent material and objective superiority over my siblings does not diminish our equal standing in the eyes of our parents, neither do such superficial criteria as SAT scores or skin tones alter the reality of our equality in the eyes of God. If the materialists can come up with a better argument that does not rest on the irrational acceptance of a value system or non-disprovable beliefs, I have yet to hear it. The inevitable end of taking materialist attitudes to their logical extreme is a prison camp in Dachau or Kolyma, because in the end, in strictly material terms, it eventually comes down to "them or us." And we've succeeded in elevating ourselves to the level of those beasts who abort their species in utero.

Note the common denominator in the example you cite - the natural abortions are the result of males who want to get laid. That's also the human motivation, with NARAL doing its level best to conceal polls which reveal that supporters of abortion in the general public are predominantly men.

The difference between man and beast is not very significant to an honest materialist, because without religion and the spiritual, there is no way to elevate man above that level. That's how we do it - we recognize that there is something more, something better about a fellow human that precludes our terminating his life out of personal convenience, whether because he and thousands like him are obstructing our agenda, or because he and millions like him have unappealing characteristics that we don't want in our gene pool, or because he personally is an obstacle to our accumulation of material resources or reproductive opportunity. In the latter case that person one might wish to kill could be dating the woman of your choice, or occupying her womb, or tying you to her material well-being by an atavistic need (and socially enforced) to support your offspring. The mice and lions can have all the abortions they want. They are never going to spare each other's lives to remove thorns from paws or chew through nets. That's something only humans can make the choice to do, and that's why we don't kill each other, in the womb or out.

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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Abortions happen in nature, what does this say about natural law? - 12/06/2014 04:40:06 PM 697 Views
People who oppose abortion tend to do so because they consider it murder, not "unnatural." - 12/06/2014 06:11:49 PM 454 Views
I'm not sure the original post warranted that level of attention, but you're right. *NM* - 12/06/2014 07:01:56 PM 192 Views
Oh grow up - 12/06/2014 10:03:59 PM 410 Views
Response to that (and an explanation on why I made this post) - 12/06/2014 10:00:25 PM 438 Views
Why not just ask that question then? - 12/06/2014 11:51:11 PM 433 Views
I wouldn't call that a response, but it does explain a lot. - 13/06/2014 06:23:07 PM 431 Views
I actually agree with most of what you wrote - 13/06/2014 10:20:57 PM 383 Views
I'm not really sure where you're going with this - 13/06/2014 05:38:18 AM 571 Views
what a silly argument *NM* - 14/06/2014 09:41:01 PM 285 Views
It seems as though you're picking a fight. *NM* - 15/06/2014 05:48:26 AM 190 Views

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