@Bill Sorensen: I don’t think anyone who takes the bible …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Bill Sorensen:

I don’t think anyone who takes the bible seriously could agree with your conclusion, Sean.

What? that something like childhood leukemia is not an “act of God”? contrary to your claim that, “It is God who creates human beings in this broken condition”?

I don’t think anyone who reads about the how God is grieved when He sees the suffering of even a little sparrow would be able to conclude that something like childhood leukemia is really an “act of God”. Such a conclusion is opposed to the Biblical view of God – and Mrs. White also speaks strongly against this view (as noted above).

As I said earlier, God sustains evil men and women and to deny it would be difficult to do in light of the biblical information on this subject.

You mean God makes it possible for evil, and therefore freedom of choice, to exist? Of course He does. It does not follow, however, that God is therefore responsible for evil in any way. He does not cause people to rebel against His will nor does He cause the natural consequences that result when people separate themselves from His own will and desire for their lives.

God also does not “sustain” evil over and above the natural laws that He originally set up to govern the basic features of the universe. Evil people suffer random mutations and degenerative changes over time just like everyone else. They get old and die. They get cancer and suffer with disease and sickness – as do the righteous on this planet… all according to natural law consequences.

As a general rule of thumb, God does not interfere with the natural law consequences of cause and effect in this world. On special occasions He can and does step in an intervene above and beyond that which natural law would otherwise allow. However, by in large, we are all subject to the degenerative consequences of natural law – both the righteous and wicked. This will be the case until, “The old order of things is done away with.” – Revelation 21:4

God is not responsible for the choice of humanity to step away from Him and His will into the hands of cold, hard, mindless, natural law without a Divine mechanic on hand to fix all of the degenerative changes that hurt us on a daily basis. Just because He allows those who have made this choice to exist doesn’t mean He directly causes the degenerative effects that naturally follow…

Let me ask you one more time. Is something like childhood leukemia an “act of God”? Did God cause such a child to get leukemia? Did God, in your words, “create this broken condition”? Or, did He simply allow natural law to produce such degenerative changes against His will? – because of the evil choices of free moral agents?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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