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i dont know much about my own religion (catholic)... but i do believe in god... but i have many doubts... like why does god let good people die and many horrible destructions happen?? does he let katrina and the two towers attack happen?? can he stop it?? is there anywhere in the bible that explains this?,if there is can you please cite it??
if you are not religious or want to post hate comments... please dont.. im not looking forward to start a religious debate, ibelieve what i believe and u believe what ever u want to... im just looking for answers
The Bible assures us that "God is love." (1 John 4:8) Why, then, has a loving God allowed all this suffering to continue for so many centuries? When will he remedy the situation? To answer such questions, we need to examine God's purpose with regard to humans. This will help us to understand why God has allowed suffering and what he will do about it.
When God created the first human, he produced more than just a body with a brain. Further, God did not create Adam and Eve to be mindless robots. He implanted in them the faculty of free will. And that was a fine gift, for "God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Yes, "perfect is his activity." (Deuteronomy 32:4) All of us appreciate this gift of free will because we do not want all our thoughts and actions dictated to us without ever having a choice in anything.
However, was the fine gift of free will to be used without limits? In directions given to early Christians, God's Word answers: "Be as free people, and yet holding your freedom, not as a blind for badness, but as slaves of God." (1 Peter 2:16) For the common good, there must be boundaries. Hence, free will was to be regulated by the rule of law. Otherwise, anarchy would result
Whose law was to determine the proper limits of freedom? The answer to this question has to do with the fundamental reason why God has permitted suffering. Since God created humans, he knows best what laws they need to obey for their own good and for the good of others. The Bible puts it this way: "I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk."—Isaiah 48:17.
Clearly, a vital point is this: Humans were not created to be independent of God. He made them in such a way that their success and happiness depend on obedience to his righteous laws. God's prophet Jeremiah said: "I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step."—Jeremiah 10:23.
God made mankind subject to his physical laws, such as the law of gravity. Similarly, he made humans to be subject to his moral laws, which are designed to result in a harmonious society. For good reason, then, God's Word urges: "Trust in Jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding."—Proverbs 3:5.
Thus, the human family could never be successful in regulating itself without God's rulership. Trying to be independent from him, people would devise social, economic, political, and religious systems that would conflict with one another, and 'man would dominate man to his injury.'—Ecclesiastes 8:9
When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they challenged his sovereignty, that is, his right to rule. Jehovah could have destroyed them and started over with another couple, but that would not have settled the issue of whose rulership is right and best for people. Granted time to develop their societies according to their own ideas, humans would demonstrate beyond any doubt whether rulership independent from God could ever be successful.
What do thousands of years of human history tell us? For all those centuries, people have tried many kinds of social, economic, political, and religious systems. However, wickedness and suffering have continued. In fact, 'wicked men have advanced from bad to worse,' especially in our time.—2 Timothy 3:13
Once and for all time, this tragic experiment in independence from God has demonstrated that rulership by humans apart from him can never succeed. Only God's rulership can bring happiness, unity, health, and life. Moreover, Jehovah God's infallible Word, the Holy Bible, shows that we are living in "the last days" of human rule independent from God. (2 Timothy 3:1-5) Jehovah's toleration of this and of wickedness and suffering is nearing its end.
When God's rulership replaces man's rule, who will survive and who will not? At Proverbs 2:21, 22, we are assured: "The upright [who uphold God's rule] are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it. As regards the wicked [who do not uphold God's rule], they will be cut off from the very earth." The divinely inspired psalmist sang: "Just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more . . . But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it."—Psalm 37:10, 11, 29.
I know it's a lot but I hope you have an understanding.
XoXO Heidi
While I do not believe in god, it is a personal choice but the way I see it is that bad things happen to good and bad people. Part of life is what not all the time things are going to go your way, sometimes you get let down and pushed around but in the end it's what makes us stronger. As humans we make mistakes , we are no were near perfect , but from those mistakes we learn lessons and become better prepared for what happens in the future. The reason I don't choose to believe in god is because I do not want to believe that there is a person who is sitting above us watching all these bad things happen and choosing not to save us. Though if you think about it, if we never died then what would be the reason of living? Eventually you would get bored of doing the same things over again, the reason people die is so that they actually live there lives to the fullest, even though some don't get the chance. It's a sad thought, but it's also the truth about life.
Although I'm not in any sense religious, I feel equipped to respond in accordance to your needs. You mentioned the Twin Towers: God gave us free will, and everyone has it. It was their free will, even if they were forced by others of their group, to hijack that plane. There was nothing God could have done about it. As for Katrina, that's a whole different story. As religionisgood said, people have been trying to answer that kind of question for years, plenty of people lose their faith as a result of not being able to find the answer. The answer, usually, is to just have faith. The answer that I've been given from childhood, both from the Christian and Jewish sides of my family, is that nature takes its course, it's not God doing it, but the results of it are in God's hands: the people lost are with Him, which is, of course, the best place to be. That's not to say you should shove yourself into His hands.
People who believe in a just, loving god have been trying to answer questions like this for thousands of years, coming up with just as many answers. If it's the Bible you're looking to for answers from, the book of Job, thought to be one of the oldest in the Bible, is all about trying to answer why good people suffer with no divine intervention to stop it. In the end of that story, God's response to Job is basically to admonish Job for asking the question in the first place, saying that Job is a mere mortal and doesn't have any experience running the universe, and that being God, he doesn't have to answer to humans. This isn't a "hate comment", it's right out of the Bible. I have, however, heard religious people give similar explanations for human suffering, i.e. God knows what he's doing and it's not up to us to worry about it.
I can't tell you why God allowed Katrina to happen, But I can tell you where he was. He was there in the homes of the people who stayed behind in the hands of the people who left their own homes and families to help complete strangers, and in the hearts of milions of believers who prayed without stopping for healing of anothers pain. Horrible things happen it a fact of life like the black of night or the rain you can't stop it, but when the sun comes up and the clouds finaly cry themselves out your left with a much greater appreciation of the warmth of the sun. It was like that in missisippi .... after the storm. The coast was destroyed, Pas Christian was like a war zone but everyone was so happy to be alive, to just be breathing, we had kinda forgotten that being alive was something to even be happy about.
That's not true, I believe in doing something good before dieing and I don't believe in god. As for never dieing if we didn't then there would never be new generations, no one else would be able to experiance the joy of living. Actually to be honest you would have never been born for the world would be to full and there would not be enough food or water to supply everyone. I think everyones point of view on death is different but the way I see it is, just because someone chooses not to believe in god it doesn't make them a bad person and they can still choose to do good things before they die. The reason people die is so that they don't waste their lives away, so they have a reason to "just go for it" and not regret the choices they made.
I took philosophy of God at sixth form and some people think that because God gave us free will he must test us - evil becomes the test. How do we behave when disasters strike? And in the case of manmade evils - it is our free will. Another arument is original sin - when the fall of man happend in the bible the world then became flawed as punishment for our sin. One more I remember is that there is no evil, it is merely the absense of good. Humans compare things to one another which always results in one thing being bad/worse. And in the case of Katrina it was the absense of good. If i have confused you please look at this page it's rather interesting and has some quotes from philosophers : [link removed]
Have you ever thought about what it would be like if we never died though? I mean, if we didn't overpopulate as a result of it. There would be so much more we could do with our lives, so many things that we don't get to experience because, eventually, we're just not capable anymore. Death is just death. There's no reason for it. Our cells disintegrate, our minds become muddled, and we die. The effect it has on us is just an extra plus, the fact that it makes us feel that we have to do something amazing and something good before it is just an extra plus. That's the reason I agree with "religionisgood." Without religion, no one would care about doing something good before dying, just in case there is a God.
He was there in the midst of it all, holding each victim in his arms and taking them to Heaven. Why did He let this happen? There's no easy answer, but from what i know of tragety, its that it either tears people apart or brings them together. I'd like to think that it would bring people together, but that's up to the individual and how they respond to the tragety.
***"All of us must die eventually. Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweet life away; instead he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him." ( 2 Samuel 14:14)
I believe in doing good as well, but not before death, just in general. Think of the majority of people. Most do good out of fear and anticipation of reward. There would be new generations, but the world would become overpopulated. This topic has been written about and discussed time and time again: eventually, a system of choosing who to kill would evolve, since no one wants to live forever anyway. People would be killed to make space for the new ones. People don't die so that they don't waste their lives away. You have it backwards. They don't waste their lives away so that they can die satisfied with themselves.
Happy are the mild-tempered ones, since they will inherit the earth.”—Matthew 5:5.
Although Jesus promised his disciples that he would “prepare a place” for them in heaven, he indicated that the righteous do not automatically go there. (John 3:13; 14:2, 3) Did he not pray that God’s will take place “as in heaven, also upon earth”? (Matthew 6:9, 10) In reality, one of two destinies awaits the righteous. A minority will rule in heaven with Christ, but the majority will live forever on earth.—Revelation 5:10.
Okaii...God let katrina happen because ppl in tht town do devil's work same with hati n things happen for a reason inisant ppl die bcuz God wants them closer to him n other ppl die bcuz there work was done they completed their mission!!! hope tht helps or jus ask me a question if u dnt understand!!!
P.S. There are further arguments that evil exists for two more reasons: God is not omnibenevolent (all-loving) which leads to evil because he will not save us and we are made in god's image. OR/AND God is not omnipotent (all-powerful) which means he cannot intervene even if he wishes too.
I believe I don't know where he was, all I knoe is katrina was the devil at work
lol, i meant sweep...oops
