Re: clinton surgery question

From: Happy Dog (happydog_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 09/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 05:49:58 -0400

"John" <john9212112@aol.com> wrote in message news:
> sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote:
>

>>> You seem to be complaining about one of the problems of life: i.e.,
>>> everything living will die -- some sooner, some later, but all will
>>> die. Some easily, some painfully, but all will die. You too, buster.
>>> (Oh yeah, me too.) Would you be willing to give up the blessings of
>>> life to avoid the pain of death? Not me.
>>
>>Excuse me? There's a lot of agony in the world, and I want to know if
>>you think all of it is necessary.
>
> A good portion of the agony in the world is caused by people's free
> will choices. Would you be willing to give up free will to avoid rape
> and murder? Unfortunately, free will allows people to make bad,
> really bad choices that harm themselves and others. But free will
> without the ability to make a bad choice isn't free will, is it?

The point is that the god-besotted make the hypocritcal argument that god is
great either because he created this behaviour or allows it. To what end?

> Why do we have free will anyway? Recall that the Bible teaches that
> we were made in God's image. I believe that this free will aspect is
> one attribute in which we are most like God. Certainly, we are not
> omnipotent, immortal beings, but we do have this free will thing. The
> other way we are in God's image is the ability to love.

Love killing thine enemies. Where do you guys draw the line? God has this
free will conundrum happening in his own mind? (His own mind? - Lordy.)
What the *** is free will to an omnipotent being? Have you thought this
through? An omnipotent being has no use for free will. Any will at all.
To deny this leads directly to the question of heavy rocks. Is this new to
you?
>
>>Or if was the doctor you'd gone to about your leukemic kid and I told
>>you, "well, that's life. What do you want, for the kid to be immortal
>>maybe. Would you be willing to give up the blessings of life to avoid
>>the pain of death? Not me, bub." I think you might need restraining
>>at that point as well.
>
> I think this would be easier to face because there is no perpetrator
> involved. Still extremely difficult, but having faced the one I think
> I'd have preferred the other. There are also no forgiveness issues
> with a disease as there are with murderers. Figuring out how to
> follow Jesus' teaching to forgive our enemies was very difficult to
> do. It took me 14 years to work it out.

Or aquiesce to a comfortable fairy tale. To believe that god is omnipotent
is to forgive horrible things that he might have prevented. (Hey, you said
that he's human-like.) But, you believe in an eternal after-life. So why
be so quick to forgive?
>
>>you're being murdered or you're sentencing somebody to be executed,
>>you view it as the worst thing that can happen, and you'd go to great
>>heroics to stop the one, and perhaps to insure the other. But when
>>your god does those things to you, or allows them to happen to
>>somebody you love, then you get all warm and fuzzy and philosophical
>>about it. Hey, it's no big deal. Cycle of life, you know.
>
> There's a country song with the words, "Lord, I want to go to Heaven,
> but I don't want to go tonight." Death is not to be feared but it is
> not to be embraced either. I intend to do everything I can to
> maximize my time here on Earth without messing up my eternal life.
> I'm wondering where you get these strange misconceptions of what the
> Christian life is like.

You have no eternal life that you can bet on. So forgive now only if it
makes you feel better. Do you think that the loved ones hurt must feel the
same way? If they cried "kill" would you act? If other Christians told you
to forgive but had conflicting worldly interests would you defer to their
pious stance? I'm wondering where you get anything resembling a conception
of what any life ruled by religion is like. What makes yours any different
from ass-waving Muslims?

le m

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