@Ron: Sean, I don’t think Bill is saying that God …

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

@Ron:

Sean, I don’t think Bill is saying that God causes evil, and I certainly am not saying that.

Why then do you seem to argue that God is the one who is responsible for all forms of evolution? – to include genetic mutations that cause childhood leukemia? That’s evil Ron. Yet, God is the one who came up with it? Hmmmm?

You see, we’re back to square one. You claim that Darwinian evolution is simply a tool that God created that allows for change over time so that animals could adapt to new environments. While Mendelian variation is certainly based on a pre-programmed ability to change over time (without the underlying gene pool changing), Darwinian evolution is based on novel genetic mutations to the genome – the vast majority of which are harmful to the gene pool. Yet, God is responsible for it all?

Again, it is a matter of perspective. Take the perspective you have just expressed up one notch. You have to ask, “Why did God choose to uphold the final will of the wicked?” Presumably God had a choice, He didn’t have to do that. My contention is that He did it for a very good reason. That, that outcome, the result of the decisions of the wicked, was one, only one of the many contingencies included in God’s overall plan to deal with sin.

Again, as I’ve explained many many times now, just because God has a plan does not mean that He caused or is in any other way responsible for the existence of sin. Foreknowledge of sin is not the same thing as causing or willing sin to exist… like leukemia in children.

Also, Eve was not some brave heroin stepping out to explore the unknown according to the will of God. Her act was an act of selfishness; an attack on God. Sure, God had a plan to save both Adam and Eve all ready to go. However, this does not mean that God wanted to have to use His plan. He did not want to have to use His plan.

When I say that Adam’s sin was within the bounds of God’s will, I am not trying to excuse Adam, or blame God.

Again, you should not say that the rebellion of Adam and Eve was “within the bounds of God’s will”. This gives the impression that God wanted it to happen. While it is true that God does in fact will freedom to exist, it is not true that God wills or desires anyone to rebel against His will. That’s not true at all.

Also, if you’re not trying to blame God for the existence of evil, why do you claim that God is responsible for the evolution of life over billions of years on this planet via a very painful mechanism of “survival of the fittest”? – that God deliberately and directly creates all genetic mutations and uses natural selection to produce untold suffering and death for countless sentient creatures? How is this not blaming God for the evil that exists on this planet?

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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