[m1n1]

That's not the only feasible way to go. The other way is

- God offers a choice

- Offenses against God (however few in number and short in duration) yet have an infinite dimension of being against Him

- God mercifully offers infinite forgiveness for a limited time, and consequences to get our attention and signify something is wrong.

- God executes perfect justice on the finally-unrepentant, which will take forever being in exact proportion to the offenses.

The disagreements here all boil down to one thing: not holding God in high enough esteem (even merely in supposition just for the duration of this conversation -- unlike podcaster Joe Rogan who did maintain the supposition for one of his podcasts)

It is like trying to discuss black holes with someone who refuses to suppose that space can curve, and who immediately tries to poke the first hole he sees based on the assumption that space cannot curve.

The thing to suppose for this conversation -- the reason why offenses against God are infinite -- is that God is infinitely worthy, that He currently holds all things in existence including our next moments, and there is no end to our obligation to Him and no end to what can be enjoyed of Him.

If a stranger insults you with complete sincerity, it's easy to brush it off. If the love of your life gives you the same insult with the exact same sincerity, that is a different matter. It is obvious that there is a difference and no one would deny it.

But then considering an offense against God, suddenly we demote Him and deny we owe Him infinitely more. We don't want to owe Him anything becase we believe we know better about how to spend our lives than He does.

As long as one refuses to suppose these things, one will of course disagree.

But once one maintains the supposition, one can see how it makes sense instead of saying the only feasible way is malthesim.

We do not naturally want to suppose these things nor reckon with their consequences. So we try to object immediately instead of taking the time to suppose it all and see.

[scotty79]

Why do babies die of cancer? Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God. Be thorough, try to preemptively address possible counterarguments to your answer.

[m1n1]

I can make an effort to. Meanwhile, you can explain the empty tomb of Jesus similarly.

[scotty79]

Pleas do. I never seen anyone make serious attempt that didn't make him seen like amoral monster.

Correct explanation for empty tomb is that people either were lying or misremembering. People are known to do that all the time.

[m1n1]

Ok, I'll put the amoral monster response as a direct reply and keep this branch about the tomb.

The location of the tomb was well known to three different groups.

One -- Jesus' followers: It was Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared his body for burial. In addition to moving the body, they had forty pounds of spices. (The amount of physical effort involved probably made their destination more memorable) And some women saw him placed in the tomb (Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee). That women are listed as witnesses is notable because in that culture, the testimony of women was not acceptable. This was messy reality, not a clean fiction.

Two -- The Jewish religious leaders did not want Jesus' followers to stage his resurrection. So they asked the Romans to guard the tomb. "The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, [63] and said, “Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I am to rise again.’ [64] Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” [65] Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how.” [66] And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone."

Three -- The Romans knew where the tomb was because they guarded it. Roman guards knew any security failure could be penalized by death ordered by their superior officer. The Romans were also the ones approached by Joseph of Arimathea so there's a second reason they'd know where Jesus' body was. They set a seal on the stone as well, and the penalty for violating the seal was death.

The Jews and the Romans were motivated to keep the status quo. But Christianity and copies of his followers' writings sprang up like wildfire within the lifetime of eyewitness. The Romans could not squash the new movement. One thing would have helped: if they could just produce the rotting corpse from the correct tomb. But they couldn't. Neither could the Jews ask the Romans to do so (it being forbidden in Jewish custom to touch a corpse). Because the tomb's location and emptiness was well-known.

Besides, his eleven remaining disciples and other close followers said they interacted with the risen Jesus for a period of 40 days (including being served fish by his hands, touching him, his appearing to over 500 people, and many other convincing proofs). And these eyewitness refused to recant on pain of torture and horrible death (or exile in the case of John).

This is very unlike their former manner, which was cowardly. (Another hallmark of a reliable record -- it didn't protect the disciples from appearing as stupid as they were, fighting over who'd be the greatest or misunderstanding Jesus at times)

Such a change in courage is consistent with seeing that their leader really was God the Son come back to life, in the flesh.

It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.

[scotty79]

> It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.

It's perfectly consistent with misremembering or lying or making stuff up for dramatic purpose or creating hoaxes. And we even have many modern examples of this. Thousands of people "independently" provide at least as accurate and at least as consistent descriptions of UFO encounters. You can only imagine how bad it was in a world where stuff got written down only after decades or centuries after it supposedly happened. And written down by very limited number of people because almost no one could read or write. You could have made up pretty much anything in that environments if you had an advantage of being able to write. And people did.

[m1n1]

There are two kinds of conversations we could be having.

(A) Where one person tries to change the other person's mind

(B) Where one person explains how a rational person can hold a position ... This is different from showing how the position is the only one a rational person can hold

Let's agree not to attempt (A)

Are you willing to try (B)?

The root of this thread was someone else saying "I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design"

I explained how: It's one Consequence imposed by the Governor. He would have been completely justified if he imposed the Punishment immediately instead. The root question didn't ask about goodness or mercy, only intelligent design.

The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer.

And on this particular branch of the discussion we're comparing explanations for Jesus' empty tomb.

It's entirely rational to consult Simon Greenleaf who was one of the foremost experts in judicial evaluation of evidence (he wrote a classic textbook on it used in many law schools).

There are rules about judging documents as evidence in the court of law: where were the documents found, in what manner, in what condition, how do they compare with other known examples.

There are guidelines for comparing copies, tracing and evaluating differences, and dating documents.

And there is Jewish and Roman history.

It is rational to accept the evidence as indicating that things were as I described in GP. Which is that Jesus' disciples maintained they interacted with the risen Christ _to their deaths_ and this happened _during_ the eyewitness generation. And the written documents are very numerous (thousands) and many are legitimately dated within the same generation.

It is rational to think this explanation is more credible than a hoax or deliberate deception. We're free to weigh things differently, but I'm just showing it is quite a rational option. The hoax approach is opposed by the evidence.

I'm sure some will object that it's irrational to believe in miracles. But:

One-- that is not in the spirit of the supposition "Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God." (I chatted with a co-worker once who simply could not suppose for the sake of conversation even though he was a software engineer and should have easily been able to pretend Jesus had what we computer folks call write permissions or root privileges. Actually I don't think his difficulty was intellectual so much as emotional.)

Two-- I have personal experience: a complete stranger performed a miracle on my leg. Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else. Then, without knowing this, the stranger told me about the defect, and then he fixed me. I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place. Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).

[m1n1]

The purpose of this post is to describe how a reasonable person can reconcile these two:

  - a good, compassionate, merciful, omnipotent, and omniscient God

  - the reality that innocent babies suffer and die 

  The purpose is not to convince anyone to become a believer.

  I maintain that anyone who remains an objector to the actual thesis (that these two realities can be reconciled) is really merely refusing to suppose for the sake of conversation and to hold the all thoughts described below _simultaneously_ and with enough weight for each

  If you find any tenet irrelevant or begs for your immediate objection, you are misreading this post, and on the verge of discounting a piece, and objecting to some other worldview, not the one I'm espousing

  I didn't spend any time making this palatable so don't foist this on a grieving parent as-is

  Also one might read this post and feel that God is severe or unappealing. But there are plenty of positives to delight about God, and some of them are described in the links below

The Excellency of Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.excellency.html

The Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xiii.html

Safety, Fulness, and Sweet Refreshment in Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons/files/safety.html

God has always existed, eternally in three persons

Nothing and no one existed before God nor is above God. He is the sole true sovereign

The rest of existence came into being from nothing because he created it and holds it in existence. He "upholds all things by the word of His power." Heb. 1:3 as if the strong and weak nuclear forces came from him continually and intentionally

Let the rest of existence be howsoever vast, it is as the light dust of the balance and as perfectly nothing in comparison to the Creator

It is correct to value God over all else. The godly person prefers God over everything he has had, over everything he currently has, over anything he has the prospect of having in this world and in the next, real or imagined https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.v.html

God was free to create whatever kind of universe he wanted, and also was completely free to have decided instead not to create at all, ever

He knows all things, including all things to come. It's like how you can know everything that happens in a novel that you've _already_ finished

Not only is he complete in knowledge, he is also perfect and unsurpassed in wisdom, moral beauty, love, and every virtue

Some virtues like love only make sense in the context of a relationship. God has existed from all eternity past in relationship within the trinity

Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever

But he decided to create the kind of universe where sentient beings such as angels and humans can decide to prefer God's wisdom or their own. Humans can, ... in our limited knowledge, .... moving only forward in time from one line of the novel to the next, ... only seeing what's next to us in the tall grass like a mouse, ... without knowing all that has taken place or all that will take place, ... with our few meager mortal brain cells that need regular sleep, ... continuing in our existence only by his say-so, yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God. It is the height of hubris, yet we all without exception do so naturally. We prefer the light dust of the balance, pegged at the top of the scale's range of motion, over the stupendous gold brick that is God Only Wise, Ancient of Days.

We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.

A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.

The exact same insult levied against two different individuals can carry different weight, if there is an aggravating factor such as the identity, worth, majesty of one of the offended

God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite

But this means our sin ("we know better than God") is infinite (however finite in number and duration yet having an infinite aggravation) and therefore justly deserves an infinite penalty. Since we have nothing to pay with that doesn't already belong to God such a penalty would never be paid in full by us https://ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/justice.html

God was completely free to set the rules of his creation however he wanted.

Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals.

With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety. Either to represent all of us negatively as Adam did, or represent some of us (door open to all) positively as Jesus did.

Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter. Such penalty already explained as consistent with justice, so also the fallen world being a lesser consequence is thus also consistent with justice.

Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court

If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering. This might have been a way for us to end up in a universe where babies never suffered nor died. But Adam and Eve succumbed to FOMO vs trust in the love and wisdom of God.

But if God had picked any other mere human to be the surety, that person would fail as well. We each prove this is true when we prefer our own wisdom or anything over God

We each earn an infinite penalty without help from Adam. And Adam's consequences are also present everywhere and unavoidable

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8) as our second surety. Fully human, and simultaneously fully and eternally the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus lived the righteous life for us and paid the infinite penalty in finite time

You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.

The alternative is to acknowledge this guilt and accept Jesus to pay for us

One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand

How was Jesus able to pay for more than one person in finite time? Because he has the full infinite worth of God the Son.

Jesus' death does more to repair God's honor than if all humanity were to burn in hell for eternity.

God did not have to provide this surety. He was completely free and justified to judge Adam and Eve immediately in hell. That would have been another way to have a universe void of suffering and dying infants.

So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died. And to imagine how much harder it would be to continue worshiping some other god who never tasted death personally.

And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter 2 Samuel 12:23

Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry. We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.

And if he shows the mercy of healing an infant and protecting his life to adulthood, that healed person still eventually and surely earns an infinite penalty like everyone else and still needs God's mercy.

Can the wrath of God be reconciled with the mercy of God? See https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xii.html

The existence of the dying baby, the continued existence of the questioner, and the existence of the question itself contain within them the very answer to the charge. If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world. This alone is sufficient to defeat the charge. But God goes beyond that by experiencing the death penalty we deserved. He didn't have to, but he did, and is thus the only deity you could come to who would understand your pain from firsthand experience. And not only that, he did this to make a way (to pay) for a reunion between a grieving parent and a lost infant. Adam was involved but we can't blame him because we too would have (and already have) failed, because men naturally are God's enemies: https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.vi.i.html

In this worldview, any continued objection really boils down to the same original error (Adam's) of thinking one knows better than God, and so one does not want to answer to a sovereign God, and so one suppresses the truth with objections and excuses even though it is plainly evident from what has been made that God is to be thanked and honored. Romans 1:18-23

[scotty79]

> If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world.

That's your whole point? That a malevolent entity wouldn't conjure a sentient being to torture them because creating them is too good and would offset any evil he might commit against them?

Man has a female dog, he ensures it has puppies because he wants to torture and kill the puppies.

Oh, what marvelously moral man! Godlike! He gifted the puppies with existance! That's surely infinite good and by comparison any torture and killing he does is only finite and means nothing compared to his infinite goodness.

Malevolence almost requires creation. There's only so much evil you can do before needing to create something new. And if nothing exists, just yourself, literally the first step is to create something you can be evil towards.

I don't even need to mention clearly amoral assumption that good and evil are somehow additive and you may offset evil with good. It represents a stage of development of morality that humanity surpassed on average few hundred years ago at least. Average person in the West today knows that a TV host creating magical childhood for thousands of kids doesn't offset him sexually assaulting even one kid.

The bulk of your writing is trying to argue that God is special, so setting up the world in which babies die of cancer, while having perfectly free choice to set it up so they don't, is good actually, not evil. Would be evil only if someone other than God did it. This is a line of reasoning straight from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger

Sorry, but that argumentation makes you seem like amoral monster so I clasify this attempt as failed.

Out of sheer curiosity about your person ... What are the domains of your MIT degrees?

[scotty79]

Sorry about two answers. This is the second one. My eyes initially glazed over because of wall of text. So at later time I decided to give it a second read and I'm glad that I did because you provide so many good examples of God's malevolence. Nothing that I haven't heard before but it's nice to see so many in one place and misinterpreted so confidently.

> Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever

Damn... That's next level evil. It's like getting a dog and keeping it inside so you can express your mercy by occasionally not beating it up when it pisses on the floors. Even though you could skip that. You could skip having a dog, or give it access to the garden, or even just not beat it to show your mercy every time. And all that just because ... you want to.

> yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God.

I'm very glad we did over last two millennia so now we don't need to sit and wait for his mercy in more and more cases.

> We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.

> A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.

What are you getting at? What crimes an infant with a brain that barely starts to develop (and will never develop further) already committed against God so that death is a fitting punishment? What ideas, plans and standards of living did the baby already have so that it deserves to die?

> God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite

Wait, so God created sentient beings in a way that thay are worth nothing compared to him so that he can torture them freely for any offence and it makes every act of torture an act of mercy because they deserve infinite punishment for any infraction? And he did this because he wanted to? That's peak evil.

> Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals. > With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety.

Oh. There it is. So the babies themselves didn't offend God in any exceptional way, however God decided they still deserve fo die for the offences of others.

Punishing individuals for something someone else did is universally recognized as evil. Humanity outgrew group punishment. Why perfect God haven't?

> Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter.

And you don't see any problem with the fact that he was created by God to behave exactly like that? If I intentionally design a system that can fail then when the system fails is the failure my fault or system's fault? Setting up someone to fail in a way that deserves infinite punishment is another peak evil.

> If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering.

But that couldn't happen because the God made them specifically in this way that they were capable of making this offence and given their infinite lifespan they were sure to make this offence eventually. God designed it in the exact way so that it happens. Again it's like getting a dog and keeping it in a house so that it eventually pisses on the floor so you can then beat it senseless as a punishment. How can you be so blind to plain evilness of everything you describe?

> You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.

How convenient that Jesus spared himself the experience of rotting in hell forever. Was he really fully human as you postulate if he was spared this experience because he could, unlike us, pay infinite price in finite time? Instead of true human experience he spent a blink of an eye here and went back to status quo of his infinite blissful existence. Doesn't sound very ... benevolent. It reminds me of rich people doing kind of hobo-tourism for some time, when they don't use their wealth for a week or two and live like a poor person then come back to their mansion happy about themselves fondly thinking about their experience and lives of others they touch through their excursion.

> One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand

A child never earns a spanking. It's evil to beat a child. And doing it through your hand is just mental. It shows disturbed, conflicted mind in which evil and good fight constantly and I'd say evil is winning.

> So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died.

Yeah but he didn't stay dead. And permanence of death is kinda big thing about it. So did he really taste death if he can come again whenever he pleases?

> Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court

But it was a bit more nuanced wasn't it? They were explicitly mislead about the consequences by the lawgiver. Adam and Eve were told they are going to die not that they are going to be expelled to toil and spawn billions of people like them who are all gonna suffer and die and the potentially rot in hell for all eternity. How is setting up a law and lying about consequences of violating it not evil?

> And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter

That's no help at all. Their baby was robbed the experience of life on Earth. How exactly that reunion should look like? Is it still infant with undeveloped mind? Is it adult that somehow grew without experiencing life? Without having a childhood or any interaction with its parents? It doesn't make any sense. What's the best case scenario for heavenly reunion with dead infant?

> Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry.

Isn't God everywhere all the time? How is life on Earth worth less than any life in heaven if life on Earth is spent with God as well? Arent both infinitely valuable?

And if life on Earth is so much less valuable why don't we just murder all infants so they can spend more time with God? Wouldn't it be a superbly moral act according to this logic? Selfless even because the murderer would destin themselves to eternity in hell so that the infants could spend more time with God.

> We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.

Yeah. It could have been tortured by the world that God intentionally created so maybe it's mercy that it dies. Why then once we finally manage to treat previously mortal illness and extend lives we often see that those saved lives arent particularly bad? No worse than others really. It would be quite a coincidence if all children dying before invention of for example insulin would have terrible lives if they were spared, but somehow the children after invention of insulin that were saved by it seem to be leading perfectly average lives. Coincidence or truly wicked design.

> because men naturally are God's enemies

If I were to believe in God I would tend to agree. I just have the complete opposite opinion on who's more evil in this conflict for the reasons you so clearly displayed in your comment and many more.

Your response to a problem I posed looks like throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. None did of course and I can't blame you because no one (supposedly) can know true mind of God. Thanks for giving it your best shot.

[m1n1]

Pretend to be a believer for just a second and think about these two questions:

What makes idolatry wrong?

How is God not an idolater?

[scotty79]

Sure thing. I had to look up the definitiy of the word.

"Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic God as if it were God."

If I was a believer in Abrahamic God, I'd believe idolatry is wrong because, I'd believe there's only one God and no other thing is God, so people worshipping anything else but the God I believe in would be wrong and possibly dangerous because they might mislead others from worshipping the only correct God.

God is not an idolater because he doesn't worship anything (I assume) just demands worshipping himself from his every sentient creation.

I'm curious why are you interested in answers to those questions. What do my answers tell you?

[m1n1]

I asked because I realized there's something we probably already agree on, as long as one twist is accounted for.

But to get to the twist we should unpack this word Worship because it's a little nebulous. It could mean lots of things but I want to reduce it to its basic essence.

Let's imagine a dirty barefoot ignorant heathen Bob who carves an idol out of wood. It's a small figurine that he names as his brand new god Steve. Bob _claims_ to worship Steve, Bob bows down to Steve at regular intervals and burns incense to Steve, etc etc.

But over time Bob gets into a hobby like golf. And Bob spends all his free time playing golf, practicing golf, reading about golf, visualizing his next golf skill improvements, dreaming about golf.

Dust gathers on Steve's head and shoulders. If Steve were to suddenly animate, would Steve agree that Bob is a true Steve worshiper? No. I think if we simmer this nebulous word worship, we might get a more revealing word like "prioritize".

And maybe if we were to use more words, we might expand that to "hold (in thoughts, feelings, and resulting behavior) as most valuable"

And from Bob's behavior, we can see Bob cares more about golf than he cares about Steve.

Similarly, there are some people who claim to be Christians, but we see from their behavior that some of these people care more about, say, having a reputation as a miracle working faith healer -- or maybe they care more about the money they can rake in while faking miracles, than they care about God.

Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?

Then suppose for a second that God does exist, wouldn't you agree that a God who is supposedly perfect in justice should signify for anyone watching that these people are indeed criminals? Like, something has to be _SAID_ at least.

So in this supposed existence which has a supreme being, I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.

If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.