Posing an interesting question

While teh Almighty God of Creation is Love, Good, Orderly, Omnipotent and Omniscient, He is however a gentleman: God will allow whatsoever we permit, regardless of His will. If God wants you to go from point A to point B, where the road is muddy and stony, but you decided to take a short-cut smooth but filled with poison ivy, God will let you please yourself and enjoy the consequences of your choice!

God is much Bigger than you believe. He is so Big and so Omnipotent that he allows us Free Will. "Good and evil," like "up and down, in and out, black and white," etc exists only in our minds. The astronauts, traveling in outer space quickly learned that "up and down" is just a figment of imagination. To some, Good might be evil, and to others evil might be good. There is no cut and dried rational to differentiate between the two because they are two sides of the same apple. All this has nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible is a Book of Myth,recorded by men with less than a modern elementary education, 2000 years ago or more, and passed down by word of mouth for centuries. How relevant can such a record be? What thinking man would give credence to such a chronicle?

Thanks for starting a wonderful discussion phildozer, the fact is for long we have not had a good discussion like this. I am a hindu, and these are the questions, I have asked myself many times. I do not know who Epicurus is, but yes I am not able to give a proper answer for myself. You can ask, then why are you staying in your religion. The only reason I can give is, maybe psychological, that whenever you are in trouble, you need some bodys shoulder to cry on, and whenever there is trouble and problem, I just pray, thinking that then things will be alright.

That is one of my favorite quotes to consider when discussing/debating religion. I have a list of reasons as to why I left Christianity, and this quote is one reason (due to the thoughts it provoked in my mind). What is so great about that quote is that it does not necessarily deny the existance of a deity (like an atheist would most certainly do), but it does deny that deity worship because he shows that he is unworthy of worship. There is no way around it. If you are all powerful, you should not need the love and comfort of human beings to make you feel good. Even more, if you desire love you should show it as most of us would expect it from a friend or a neighbor. Being omnipotent and still allowing horrid things to occur shows carelessness for one's friends, worshipers, and lovers. Carelessness is not a sign of love. Even if we have "free will" (which is non-existent in religion when there is only one acceptable road to travel) this being should be doing more with what he has. I like to just think there is no god.

I don't think it is proper to question God... But I think it is more proper to question your faith to God. Why? It was said in the bible that God created man with the absence of concupiscence and sin. But our first parents did what God prohibited them, that is they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This is the very reason why sin entered to the human race... So first of all, it is us who paved the way of sin and evil to enter our human race. Now, you are saying that God does not care for us because he allows such evil to the world... Well, God do cares for us, but it is us who does not care with what God told us in order to live harmoniously (the commandments, beatitudes and the golden rule)... Evil things happen not because God allows this but because we don't allow God to enter within us, but we allow evil to corrupt our minds and heart... Another one, if God would answer all of our prayers and erase all our problems, how would we grow as a person? how can we gain experience? Imagine this, what if all people open their hearts to God, wouldn't there be peace? Would mother nature impose her wrath of revenge if people at first took care of her since God left her to our care? Think of it before blaming God with our sins...

Its good to believe in atleast something. As there IS evil in this world there is also good and if all there was was evil then I would question this answer more and more, but there is good all around us its just that we don't notice it as much as we notice evil. As in terms of a god being there that question is for you to answer, it is up to you to figure that out for your self and no one elses.

Perhaps God could prevent evil and would wish so to do if only it were not the case that by doing so, he would not destroy the logical nature of the universe that enables us to have an intellect and grasp the nature of things! all the best urban

I totally understand where you are coming from. I questions things like this all the time. I have so many questions that people kinda get sick of me .. LOL! I have had people tell me that God knows all and will be making a new world because of all the bad in the world. One question always pops up for me, If God knows all then why did he bother with us. If he knew that we were going to screw up so bad, why did he bother making us???

God can prevent evil. He did it many times, and He is still doing it right now. He prevents evil by His own means and at His own expense NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF HIS CREATURES. I mean, He prevents evil without breaking the freewill of His creatures. He'd rather die than killing His enemies so to prevent their evil ways.

God has shown all of us what is acceptable behavior and what isn't and what will happen if we choose to do evil. He doesn't force us to be either good or evil. That's our choice. We can follow God or follow Satan. God gets blamed for a lot of the evil things that are done in the world when in reality we're the ones who should get the blame. But even though God gets a bad rap, He's still willing to forgive us thanks to His Son, Jesus, who was willing to die in our place for the sins we'd committed. Satan tempts us to sin, but God has given us the ability to resist him and do the right thing. It's all a matter of choice.