A Cruel God?

What a powerless god.

Story here.

What should God have done?

Stopped it from happening. She was a defenseless baby, after all. He could have even stopped it in a "mysterious way" if he wanted to stay hidden.

Wouldn't God as super-nanny or God as super-big brother or God as super-cop be a source of oppression to you, no matter that it may prevent innocent suffering? Could it be that a more liberterian and a less totaliterian God is the more preferable God in that it would let us figure out ethics, write laws, and punish and protect as needed?

Since when is reality a matter of preference?The Argument from Evil obviously does not apply to the god you posit here, but that's not the god that most Christians I know seem to posit.

"The Argument from Evil obviously does not apply to the god you posit here, but that's not the god that most Christians I know seem to posit."

I'm not sure I'm sure of your reference to the "argument from evil". I'm also not sure what you mean by the god most Christians posit, but it is surely not a god that eternally promises us still waters and green pastures.

If he doesn't interfere, then of what consequence is he; how can we distinguish his existence from lack thereof? What purpose is there in praying to such a god?

The question you are raising relates to God's transcendence-- that God is forever beyond man-- in distinction to his immanence-- that God in some way interacts with man. Assuming God's existence, the evidence is emperically on the former but subjectively on the latter. As to the purpose of prayer, it has the same purpose Jesus had when (if I may be permitted another assumption) he prayed to his father before his cruifixion when he way really talking to himself, since Jesus was God. It is self-communion, not unlike wwhat some people do when they meditiate or journal. If God is sovereign over all, including our choices, then prayer has no value. But if god is sovereign over all except for our choices, then prayer has value but only in terms of how it shapes our choices.

What about it are you unsure of about the arrgument from evil?

I suspect you are referring to theodicy and that it is a claim against the existence of god. What makes it a compelling argument to you? My view is that it doesn't advance the claim either way. On one hand, one can argue that pain cannot exist if there is a moral and potent God. One can also argue that morality cannot exist unless there is a capacity to be evil evil or god. When a lion kills a wilderbeast, he is not acting with evil. He is simply being a lion. The same surely cannot be said for a human. Whatever scientific or philosophical proofs exist for the non-existence of human intentionality, that nonexistence of what some call the freedom of the will is certainly not recognized in jurisprudence. In Speilberg's thought-provoking movie AI, the robot boy David almost drown his human brother, but he had no capacity to act with malice, and thus had no capacity to act morally, although he developed in the movie a supersition that drove his motivation. If we were also robots programmed by God the puppet-master, we would also be devoid of morality. I think the exisence of morality is contigent on both evil and free will. However, I'm not sure that free will and morality prove the existence of God.

Surely not, as such a god obviously either doesn't exist or is a bad joker. But, in my experience, it almost always is one who frequently intervenes on behalf of individual human beings, often at the behest of individual human beings...unless, for whatever reason the believer cares to invent, it doesn't.

There is a theory of god that you see on television a lot, called the gospel of health and wealth. This is the theory that God agressively intervenes in an individuals life to their betterment as proof of grace, in exchange for $$$ to His appointed ones-- conduiots to God's grace. However, this theory is out of the mainstream of most Christian denominations, so far as I can tell.

Assuming God exists, what empirical evidence do we have that he is "forever beyond man", whatever that means?

"Beyond man" is that God plays no role in the unfolding of events, especially events that are the result of human interactions. This was the view famously of the Deists. The evidence is experiential and existential rather than emperical. It is an assumption that people accept and buld on once they believe such an assumption in some way makes them a better person.

And I know that there is tons of subjective evidence that God in some way interacts with man, but being subjective, not to mention unverifiable, it is not very convincing.

Of course. That is why it is so compelling to them. It's the paradox of faith.

Then what is the difference between prayer and introspection?

None if the end result will make you a calmer and a more centered person.

I have to cut this short to celebrate my boy's 11th birthday at the Melting Pot and then a movie date to watch the Simpsons. Woo-hoo.

Deification

Deification is an intensely subjective concept. Only the individual can determine if he/she deifies something. If that individual determines that he/she indeed deifies something, then no one can can logically disagree.

Theists almost never try to prove the existence of their god or even bother to describe the attributes of their god, and react with puzzlement when someone asks them to prove God's existence. What they try to prove (at least to themselves) is that their deification is real, a subjective process that makes the existence of the object of their deification irrelevant to those who do not share in their deification.

The supernatural is that is above nature; belonging to a higher realm or system than that of nature; transcending the powers or the ordinary course of nature.

This definition is still not helpful.

Take it up with the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED is scarcely the last word on anything.

Consider for example the superpowers of spiderman. He is unique but still within nature. It is just that his nature is uniquely superior. And it makes no sense to say that anything that violates a natural law is supernatural, as laws of nature are made through induction. Thus, if I could flap my arms and fly, the law of gravity would then adjust to accomodate that exception. If something is "above nature", it is only because we peceive it is above nature, not unlike a caveman viewing a cell phone.

Anything that is proven to be above what we consider natural is supernatural.

What the heck is "above" what we consider natural? I cannot even begin to make sense out of that phrase.

We have therefore two choices: to believe that gravity is actually supernatural because we cannot fully explain it, or assume that it is natural and that some day we will fully understand it.

That's a false choice since "supernatural" has no meaning whatever. Your curious phrase "materialist naturalism" is also probably meaningless. I fail to see how that paradigm as you call it contradicts, say, ESP or reincarnation, as those, if they existed, must be natural phenomena based on some kind of materialism. It seems to me you are trying to set up an unproven dichotomy between what you call "material" and "natural" and what others call "spiritual" and "supernatural".

No, the dichotomy is there, a lot of us operate every single day in the modern world with that in mind, and most people will accept the dichotomy as a matter of fact, although they cannot express it. Pictures are not taken by small imps inside cameras, and cars are not moved by tireless magical hamsters. If your TV breaks, you do not take it to the priest to pray over it, and you don't buy DVDs from the local shaman. If you get sick, most people in the world nowadays will blame germs and not demons. Those who still blame spirits for illness are considered at best quaint, at worse mad. They belong to another paradigm where anything unexplained was attributed to supernatural forces. Within our paradigm, we will attribute anything unexplained to natural forces that we yet do not comprehend.

Not understanding does not equal supernatural abilities.

True, but the term still is <*}}}-{ (fishy). Seems that your definition of supernatural is a construct in which you draw an imaginery circle around all that is natural. Anything beyond that imaginery circle is supernatural. The correct Latin prefix is "ultra", meaning beyond. Even, to invoke another Latin, phrase, if something including God was ne plus ultra (not more beyond-- the absolute), it would still be within the confines of that circle, thus rendering the invention of "supernatural" unnecessary or impossible.

Always

Interview With God