There is definitely no loving God. Fact.

Quite! Rose

Joan, I agree, your post was very good and thought-provoking.

God = good
Devil = evil

I believe good and evil are in us all, perhaps balanced differently, and we have to strive to overcome the evil that is in all of us.

Eloethan I believe strongly that the government should be responsible for maintaining public services and provision through the levying of taxes, but they're not doing enough (in my opinion) for great swathes of people. I believe the notion of 'Big Society' is simply a pretext for the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable people in society and whilst voluntary groups are lauded in the rhetoric of 'Big Society', in practice they are deprived of funding and rely ever more heavily on individuals for their ability to deliver services.

So, whilst I agitate for change through political and social means I also believe that there is a clear need for people to step into the gap that is left by the withdrawal of governmental support, even though I believe that your assessment is quite correct and this does in fact lead to social provision being dealt with in an individual and haphazard way.

I am guilty of only reading the first and last page of this thread, so apologise if someone has asked this before.
Why is man always testing god? Whether god is good or god is evil, man can be good and stop wars, hunger, homelessness, killing.

Collectively we should be expecting our governments to be putting together a proper combined plan to help the refugees. They are in a position to do so.Whatever we do as individuals is just tinkering round the edges.

Eleothan - I agree with your whole post.

If there is a god. Then it seems that he/she/ it has had a lot of excuses made on his / her behalf .

It seems to me that if there was a god, he/she/it would be a pretty unpleasant character. To create a world in which there are terrible diseases and catastrophic natural disasters, together with human beings who appear to be fatally flawed would, I think, indicate a very sadistic being.

I personally don't think there is a god (and certainly not a "loving" god) although I acknowledge that our very existence is a huge, unexplained mystery and it would be very unwise to make definitive statements. I do, though, agree with Joan that the whole idea of an afterlife may well prevent people from concentrating on the here and now and doing their best to make something of their own lives and other people's.

grannyactivist You seem to be using the argument that it is each individual person's responsibility to house the homeless, feed the hungry, etc. etc. - a bit like David Cameron's "Big Society" idea. In a complex country such as our own, made up of around 70 million people, it would in my view be quite impractical for social provision to be dealt with in an individual and haphazard way, rather than in a collective way through taxation. That doesn't mean that people can't help out when they feel able to do so.

roses it's a bad thing when it happens to a child.

How have you experienced it?

There is definitely a loving God. Fact.

The Collins English Dictionary's definition of 'fact' includes "a truth verifiable from experience and observation". I have experienced God's love in my own life and observed His love in the lives of others so there is definitely a loving God. Fact.

Leticia makes a very good point, in that we are only able to think in a human way, our brains can only make so many connections.
Who is to say that death is even a bad thing?

There is a scientific explanation for the universe and all the natural phenomena that happen on earth.

People believed in a God because they were unable to grasp the concept of all this and had to believe that the universe must have been made by a Being greater than them.
If there is a God he is sitting up there, pulling strings and watching man destroy the earth that he made - if he is omnipotent he could stop it - he doesn't. If he is so powerful, he didn't do such a great job with humankind.

That does not mean that I do not believe that Jesus did not exist, that beings visited the earth and were thought of as gods.

I may have missed someone else saying this, but if God does exist than surely Satan does too? Isn't the Devil mentioned on the odd occasion in the bible? Black and white. Good and evil. Yin and yang. God and the Devil.

I hope, if the outside chance should turn out to be right, and there is some sort of a God, I hope he is really angry today. At those evils beings in those countries. And I hope the little lad's spirit is in a better place.

You never know.

We know that natural disasters are the result of e.g tectonic plates - but it begs the question as to why have tectonic plates in the first place.

It is necessary to "think out of the box" with these things. We are so used to the world as it is, that we cannot imagine that a creator could have decided to create it totally differently.

If you believe in an omnipotent creator then it is necessary to assume that this creator could have made very different decisions about the nature of the world, and of physics, and chemistry, and biology etc.

There is no need for a "padded cell" life, but just for a loving creator to have made something more charitable than what we are faced with.

Hence my agnosticism on the existence of god and my absolute certainty about the absence of "loving."

On the earth quake and other disasters. Was earth a mistake? Otherwise he would( god that is)have a made perfect world with out any 'cracks' in or on it!

Quite so Elegran, a sensible answer to natural disasters, not the hand of a mighty being. Tectonic plates moving cause earthquakes.

I agree with OP. Why did he do miracles in the Bible and not now. Why no miracles to help the poor refugees including small children who are going to try and somehow survive thorough the winter a Miracle PLEASE!. Religion is man made so agree man must take responsibility!

Since we don't know what comes after possibly those who die young like my first DH ( who should have been saved according to OP) are the lucky ones and those who have to struggle on to extreme old age, like my mother, are the unlucky ones. Since we don't know the purpose/plan, if there is one, who can say? We are thinking in very human terms- the only way we can.

It is all very difficult- it cuts out extremes of weather, no strong winds, hurricanes , heavy rain etc.
I really can't see how it works unless we all kept safe in a padded cell- which is no life.
If you are just going to save children where is the cut off point? Why are some children born with deformities, in poverty etc?

Well if he didn't want human beings to suffer he shouldn't have given them free will, should he? You can't have it both ways...

No indeed not; but that same god had the choice to order the world in a way that would not result in these disasters. If you were planning a world, I bet that's what you would do.. You would want people not to have to suffer. This is the being who is defined by many as loving.

Nit picking has nothing to do with it, Riverwalk, I gave you my understanding of the position in my post of 17.39 but you chose not to acknowledge it.

It was in fact remarkable similar to Elegran's, but she puts it a lot better, I'll admit!

The way I see it, God gave man the power to intervene and help suffering people. We have the choice.
There's also the concept of life after death, that this world is only "a sleep and a forgetting" (Wordsworth.)

Earthquakes and tsunamis are a natural result of the way the earth is constructed. The continents on the earth's crust are not completely fixed in position over the molten centre, they move very slightly and plates slide over each other and buckle like putting folded linen into the middle of a pile in the airing cupboard. eventually the pressure of bending and folded plates is too much for the top layers, and they break open.

Volcanoes form where cracks let the molten core rise up until it is trapped by the rocks above it, then it continues to press until it breaks through.

Tsunamis are caused by an earthquake or landslide under deep water, pushing a big wave that runs faster as it reaches shallower water.

None of these are God suddenly deciding that it is time to teach those pesky humans a lesson, but if you believe that he created it all in one go, you might wonder why he didn't choose a design that was a bit more stable and doesn't crack up from time to time.