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Originally Posted by florida0214
Having seen both sides of this arguemtn I am really amused at the stubborness of both sides. I mean there I have never heard of people's cancer just disappearing. I have done a little bit of research in medical journals and simply cannot find it. Maybe I am not looking hard enough. I don't know. I don't see why people cannot blame good things on God. Can you blame bad things on god? Maybe. This is a excert from a book. Some of you may recognize it. I think it may illustrate this point a little. Other maye argue that this only illustrates that God is kind of like a kid with a magnifying glass and we are the Ants. The latter are the people I spoke of earlier. Open your minds hear and opinion and ponder. Don't jump to conclussions. Something that is said might make sense in some strange UNEXPLAINABLE way.
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Anyway Simply thought I would throw this in there. I am not the smartest guy, but I know what I think. If you don't like what I think, I am okay with that. I hope you have a good day and a great life.
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I'm sorry, but the analogy from that book is awful. There is a world of difference between a father's power to prevent a child from ever hurting himself and G-d's omnipotence. The father has a limited choice in letting him skateboard and possibly be hurt and restricting him from skateboarding. With omnipotent power he could have him skateboard and never get hurt. However, he simply doesn't have that power. Second, the analogy of skateboard accident to all of human tragedy. Let's just take the car accident in this thread for one example. Typical skateboarding accident results in minor injuries with a slim chance of broken bones and a negligible risk of death, while with a typical car accident you have an almost certainty of minor injuries, a high liklitude of major injuries, and a real possibility of death. So yeah, we can say that there is a silver lining to some human tragedy that an omnipotent and benevolent being would allow because we learn and get better from it, but what about those human tragedies that cause or end in death? You fall and skin your knee, you learn to be more careful. You fall and break your neck,you just die. Finally, that analogy has an ends to means problem. The assumption in the story is that you learn some things from bad experiences and that justifies (possibly encourages) letting people you care about do risky stuff. The embedded assumption there is that thats the only way they can get those experiences (i.e. you can't tell them about it or have them experience it without risk). However, that inherently assumes the actor is not omnipotent because if he was he could simply give them that knowledge.
All in all this doesn't relate all that much to the DI discussion, but the clergyman's answer clearly reflects a poor understanding of the problem the question presents.