Topic: Health and Religion - page 13. (Read 211012 times)

Birth defects are caused by many things they can be a result of genetics, lifestyle choices and behaviors, exposure to certain medications and chemicals, infections during pregnancy, a combination of these factors, ect.

Many of these drug use, alcohol consumption, smoking during pregnancy, inadequate prenatal care,
untreated bacterial infections can be traced to deliberate human action or inaction. Others like family history of birth defects or other genetic disorders are currently outside the realm of human choice. These are hopefully problems of ignorance and will be resolvable in the near future with our increasing knowledge.

You are correct that you can trace the ultimate cause of all events good and bad to God.  
So why did God create a universe where evil, horror, and suffering exist? The problem of evil is a deep question. Here is a short video on the subject I agree with.

Why Does God Allow Evil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAexl_loCfg

If you follow that regression of fault, you will end up at God, he who is responsible for everything.

According to your twisted logic, parents suffer having a baby with birth defects, not only by the choices they make or don't make, but by the choices of their parents (as did the baby), and so on, all the way to God.

All your "blame the victim's parents" logic leads you to your main character.

Remind me who created and then punished Adam and Eve?

Newborns clearly have not sinned. They may suffer however do to the choices made outside of their control. Children born with HIV are suffering because of the choices of the elder generation usually their father or mother. Human choices do harm the innocent.

Children with cancer are dying because a part of them has broken away and defected. It no longer acts in its assigned role for the greater good but instead strengths itself over the short run via unrestrained growth. Left unchecked that growth will eventually disrupt the delicate balance necessary for life and will end in death.

Children born with birth defects or HIV did not have much choice, didn't they?  What sin did the newborns commit?

You make as much sense as a hippopotamus explaining Shakespeare.

''God’s anger is rationally retributive. His anger is His direct, calculated response to sin.''

Actually, his 'anger' is nothing but rational. Consider this example, you know everything, you can do anything. A rock falls on your friend and kills him, do you get mad? Of course not because you could have prevented it, you allowed it to happen and you already knew thousands of years ago that it would happen so there is simply no logical reason to get mad. I understand humans have free will, so what? God created them that way and knew what would happen so again, no reason to be mad.

Also big logical inconsistencies, god wanted us to have free will but he himself killed millions.

God can’t fail we can. We can fail because we have been given freedom. Our choices are not compelled.

This article had a nice summary on this topic.

God’s Anger
by Caleb Colley Ph.D.
http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=1462

It's fairly easy, if you think god is all powerful and knows everything, the bible can be logically disproved. An all powerful, all knowing god would not get mad and kill everyone because he 'failed', he can't fail, he can't be mad, he can't have our feelings.

Good going, taking advise from a guy who thinks the evolution is a hoax and Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

You know that you just assigned an attribute (infinite) to something that you yourself said cannot be defined (God). I guess reason is not your friend.

Like I said, you make shit up as you go.  Making excuses for your delusion.

Let me use your logic to say, God is undefined and non-existent.  See, I just assigned a new property just as valid as any of yours, badecker’s or notbatman’s.

I just realized that I might be talking to a real schizophrenic.  So please excuse me, I have to leave this ward.

Please elaborate.

Let me guess, God is not part of everything and you know this because someone like CoinCube told you. Lol.

You guys are comedians. You make shit up as you go.

An article in a recent issue of U.S. News and World Report begins with what would seem at first to be a rather odd question for one of our nation's major news weeklies. How, the article asks, did the universe begin and it proceeds to provide the following by way of an answer:

"In the beginning, there was no time, no matter, not even space. Then in some unfathomable way, a universe emerged from a dimensionless point of pure energy (U.S. News and World Report, March 26, 1990)."

This, the article assures us, is as close to a description of 'the beginning' as science can currently provide, and it is to probe deeper into the questions of cosmic origins that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans, on April 12, 1990, to place the 1.5 billion dollar Hubble Space Telescope into earth orbit on the most sophisticated scientific satellite ever constructed.

As I pondered the news weekly's description of creation, I was struck by what appears to be at least a superficial similarity to the account of creation provided in the Kabbalah. Indeed, the description reads almost as if it were a translation from a passage in the opening pages of Chayim Vital's Sefer Etz Chayyim, the classic exposition of the Kabbalah of the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria. Rabbi Luria, starting from completely different assumptions and operating in a universe of discourse which is, to use an unusually precise metaphor, light years away from the Hubble telescope, arrived at the very same conclusion: that the universe emerged from a dimensionless point which gave rise to a world of matter, space, and time. Only, for the kabbalists, that dimensionless point is not so much an impenetrable beginning, but is rather the end result of a process occurring within God Himself. This process, known as tzimtzum (divine contraction or concealment) is, according to the Lurianic scheme, the very essence of creation; it is the means by which an infinite unified God "makes room," so to speak, for a finite, pluralistic world. Through an understanding of the doctrine of tzimtzum we may, without ever turning our gaze upon the astronomical heavens, gain some genuine insight into how a universe of matter, space and time could emerge from a single point in a metaphysical void.

The kabbalistic account of creation is, to the uninitiated, a very strange, difficult and perhaps even disturbing notion. However, it is a notion which gives expression to a series of paradoxical, but deeply profound ideas. Amongst them is the notion that the universe as we know it is the result of a cosmic negation. The world, according to Lurianic kabbalah, is not so much a something which has been created from nothing, but rather a genre of nothingness resulting from a contraction or concealment of the only true reality, which is God. A closely related notion is the idea that it is the very unfathomability and unknowability of God and His ways which is the sine qua non of creation itself. Creation, the doctrine of tzimtzum implies, is, in its very essence, "that which does not know."

One cannot be expected to understand or accept such notions without some significant and serious explanation. In this essay I offer a philosophical exposition, commentary, and in some respects, elaboration of the concept of tzimtzum as it appears in the kabbalistic system of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534‑1572) and his disciples such as Rabbi Chayim Vital and later, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyadi. In addition, I offer an idealist and rationalist philosophical context in which these ideas can, I believe, be best understood.

Do you think god is all powerful and knows everything? Because if you do, your logic is seriously fucked, like really fucked.

You have been indoctrinated into your religious cult and are unable to free yourself from it.

You desperately cling onto this Bronze Age myth despite all the evidence that it is a man-made fiction.

If you truly believe in it, you might be a borderline schizophrenic.  No amount of evidence will change your mind because you live in a carefully constructed bubble and will protect it at all costs.

Talking to you feels like talking to notbatman.  At times you seem lucid, but then you revert into this comatose pseudoscientific state and you keep babbling about nonsense, proving nonsense with other nonsense.

1) If laughter is the best medicine, your face must be curing the world.

2) You're so ugly, you scared the crap out of the toilet.

3) Your family tree must be a cactus because everybody on it is a prick.

4) No I'm not insulting you, I'm describing you.

5) It's better to let someone think you are an Idiot than to open your mouth and prove it.

6) If I had a face like yours, I'd sue my parents.

7) Your birth certificate is an apology letter from the condom factory.

8 )I guess you prove that even god makes mistakes sometimes.

9) The only way you'll ever get laid is if you crawl up a chicken's ass and wait.

10) You're so fake, Barbie is jealous.

11) I’m jealous of people that don’t know you!

12) My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too.

13) You're so ugly, when your mom dropped you off at school she got a fine for littering.

14) If I wanted to kill myself I'd climb your ego and jump to your IQ.

15) You must have been born on a highway because that's where most accidents happen.

16) Brains aren't everything. In your case they're nothing.

17) I don't know what makes you so stupid, but it really works.

18) I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

Do you think god is all powerful and knows everything? Because if you do, your logic is seriously fucked, like really fucked.

God created life from dirt.

Was the Bible RIGHT about the origins of life? Scientists believe that we may have had our beginnings in CLAY
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2488467/Scientists-believe-beginnings-CLAY.html

God created man from life over time. So yes God created Adam from dirt. It probably took a long time for that dirt to go through various shapes and forms until it became Adam.

You should read up on how new species are thought to form. They probably initially exists as subsets within a larger population before branching off so yes the very first of what we would call human beings would presumably have existed among a larger planet wide population of prehumans they could breed with. Read the article on speciation I linked upthread.

At some point prehumans who did not have knowledge of good and evil obtained it and became the fallen creatures we refer to today as humans. The first two prehumans to "eat from the tree of knowledge" and the beginnings of our species are referred to as Adam and Eve.

Anyways that's my opinion on the matter. Other interpretations are out there and people should think about the issue for themselves.

There cannot be evidence against God. That is impossible as I highlighted above. One can make the case that there is evidence against the Bible. Its a very weak case. The more one dives into that text the more depth and complexity one finds. Like layers of an onion,

And we are back to more outlandish conjectures...You are seriously deluded.

Using your logic you will always be wrong about everything in your life.  You will make shit up as you go and explain to yourself that you are correct, lol.

Up until now (several pages of) answers and replies to you have been simple logic and deduction essentially IF -> THEN statements. However, I am not wise enough to answer these last questions in the same definitive manner. The best I can do is share my opinions on these issues. Perhaps that will be helpful.

On the question of Adam and Eve...

Where these prehumans came from?  If they were not humans, breeding with Adam’s sons would not work.lol

Didn’t your God create Adam to be the first man, wait for it, from fucking dirt?

You are a hapless chap. You cling to your Christian cult no matter the obvious holes in its dogma.

Just admit that you will believe in your God no matter the evidence to the contrary.  Don’t pretend you are a rational person when you are clearly way in the Christian la-la land.

Why don’t you get off your high horse and tell me who did the sons of Adam and Eve marry?

Up until now (several pages of) answers and replies to you have been simple logic and deduction essentially IF -> THEN statements. However, I am not wise enough to answer these last questions in the same definitive manner. The best I can do is share my opinions on these issues. Perhaps that will be helpful.

On the question of Adam and Eve I believe the Bible/Torah is best understood as a functional document. It's intent and purpose is to redeem and rectify humanity.

For this to occur biblical wisdom must be conveyed in a manner that is both simplified enough to be understandable by primitive man while simultaneously accurately reflecting a truth which can be better understood as our wisdom grows. The best way to meet these two needs is via parable and metaphor.

(The reasoning below represents my opinions and speculations on these issues. I make no claims beyond that)

Adam and Eve in the garden can be looked at literally as a man and a woman walking through a garden and considering the fruit of various trees.

Or Adam and Eve can be looked at as a metaphor for our biological species progenitors. All choices were potentially open to our remotest ancestors but a singular choice namely the development of an intellect capable of understanding good and evil was "forbidden" as that choice is probably incompatible with long term sustained biological existence.

Many "punishments" outlined in the Bible are not necessarily outside intervention at all but simple cause and effect the inevitable consequences we bring upon ourselves from sin.

Let's look at the "punishment" women received as a result of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Genesis 3:16
"Unto the woman He said: 'I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail; in pain thou shalt bring forth children"

Why is childbearing in humans so painful? A religious man would have told you 1000 years ago that it was because Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. It has taken science a very long time to catch up to this very simplified but according to our current theories essentially accurate description.

Current science theory states that the reason human birth and labor is so painful and dangerous is due to the physiological consequences of our large brains specifically some combination of the physical limitations of pelvic size when walking upright and the extreme metabolic demands a large infant brain places on a mother.

See:
Why Is Human Childbirth So Painful?
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/why-is-human-childbirth-so-painful

For the most part God doesn't punish us we punish ourselves with our choices. Sometimes these "choices" were made long before our time but the consequences nevertheless impact us.

Now unlike my prior posts which were simple logical deduction the arguments in this reply are opinion. They are one possible interpretation. I have not proven this opinion is fact and am not in a position to do so currently. I share them as a potential answer to your questions but the question is a spiritual ones and must ultimately be answered on a personal and individual level.