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Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
God is not responsible or accountable for the ills of the world.
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Any proof this is true or are you taking this on faith as well? My point is not that God causes evils to occur: it's that God does not exist (or if he does, he's quite evil) because God would not permit evil to happen.
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Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
Unfortunatly bad things happen to good people all the time, they just happen.
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And some of this is due to bad decisions made by people with free will. But why do innocent people get killed by natural disasters? God created earthquakes and mudslides and tornadoes and other fun stuff to test us, perhaps? Perhaps you believe this to be true, but I am repulsed by any sort of "test" that involves the killing of completely innocent human beings.
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Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
God has given us all free will, and the ability to help each other in times of need. Its up to us all the use that ability, we can choose to to good, or choose to do evil.
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Are you able to prove the existence of free will? What about the fact that God intentionally "gave" free will to humans? Certainly, this is not self-evident.
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Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
The dogma isnt important, the rituals arent important, its whats truley in Your Heart that makes the difference. So if you love your family, help others in need, give of yourself, and basically try to do the right thing, you may believe in God and just not know it.
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To the contrary, belief in God and being a nice person and two entirely seperate things. There are nice and mean believers and nice and mean unbelievers. To equate niceness with belief strikes me as peculiar. Why can't I firmly reject any belief in God whilst simultaneously being a nice person?
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Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
I think that Penn has had some tragedy in his life and now wants to dismiss God, because God didnt help.
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I think you're trying to insult the rationality of atheism by fabricating a story about how atheism is some kind of mental illness that people use to cope with tragedy. I'll gladly start quoting Nietzsche's views on the psychology behind theistic belief if you want to start this type of mudslinging match.
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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Why is it so hard to accept that God permits evil in this world because a physical existence is merely a test of faith, will, and capacity to do good?
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It's hard to accept because you have offered no proof that there is any world beyond the physical. Your justification for evil is based on a number of wildly speculative claims, any one of which might be false. Among them: the existence of God, the existence of an afterlife, the existence of a God who uses performance in the physical world to determine one's place in the afterlife, the existence of free will...
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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
God doesn't want to prevent evil. He gave that up centuries ago.
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HOW, if you would be so kind as to explain, do you know the will of God? And just how long did it take an omniscient God to realize that he couldn't prevent evil? I have to tell you that, on a general basis, I get very nervous when people start sentences with "God wants" and "God doesn't want". When a human being is permitted to speak for God, their power to justify virtually any imaginable action becomes as limitless as the faith of their underlings.