Is God immoral for not helping people, when he can? (see details)?

Question

My last question read:

"Would it be immoral if we knew people were suffering needlessly, and we did nothing to help even if we could?
Examples: children with diseases, earthquake victims, War in Darfur, etc."

Almost everyone answered that it would be immoral.


But it is certainly within God's power to help earthquake victims, children with diseases, children getting raped, tsunami victims, etc. Yet he does not.

So is God not immoral?




Please spare me all the "we have a lesson to learn" stuff. We can all learn those lessons just fine with out suffering children, earthquakes and disease.

And please spare me the "free will" stuff. I'm talking about natural disasters here. (Don't forget Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.)

see my last question for reference:


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmVjwHVKEYiTiUcjKey_livsy6IX?qid=20070818184304AAw9E9q

Meister: Don't just side-step the question.

But I spent 2 and a half years as a Peace Corps Volunteer working with some of the poorest people in Asia. I intend to go in again for a 2nd service.

I'm an EMT and always help when ever I can. I work as a restoration ecologist restoring the ecosystems that keep us and the earth healthy. I give 1% of my income to charity (more than the vast majority of people).

Martin S: I'm talking about innocent children - have you no heart?

♥Gnostic♥ you did not answer the question or address the natural disasters aspect.

faithcmbs9 - again, read what I wrote. Lewis was wrong here. We can still learn all these lessons and have free will without children suffering so. What good does it do them?

Michael B - if you answer is "we can't understand God" then how are you so sure you are understanding his "word" so well through one book. How are you so sure he even guided it?

OPTIMIST: you guessed right... I do not think children need to die of diseases, nor do people need to be killed in tsunamis to teach me to be compassionate.

So what do I want people to say/realize? That their God is either not omni-benevolent, or not omnipotent.

kickinupfunf: Before you assume I do not want an answer, I suggest you try answering the question (we both know you did not). My true goals are to either bring as many people to atheism as I can (because I think believers will destroy us all in WWIII, or at least I believe religion is a net negative), or I will myself be converted by (a) well reasoned argument(s).

If I did not point out flaws or weaknesses in answers, or counter-arguments, I would not be doing myself justice, nor would I be being intellectually honest with anyone. Think of is this way… If I point out flaws in someone’s argument, they can either abandon a false argument (and only be the better for it) or they can improve their argument (and be the better for it). Likewise, I appreciate it when someone does the same for me.

I’m not really angry at God (I think it’s silly or weird to be angry at fictional characters). I am merely trying to point out that the god most people believe in is false. I believe relieving people from worshiping myths, and embracing discovery and humanity would bring much more happiness than religion could ever come close to.

Furthermore, I think you are right… that leaving God out of it is the best way to achieving the highest good. Sonorandesertgirl had something to say for you and I think she was right.

Sonorandesertgirl: I think we could summarize your response as the “we just can’t understand God” response. OK, I admit this is the best counter-point to my question. But then I must point out that we then have no way of knowing what any of the Bible means, nor can we know if God had a hand in writing it in the absence of other forms of evidence. Also, we know that the nature of God must be (by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic perspective) hypocritical and unintelligible. Any of these religions could never be a source of morals for these reasons (e.g. God says “Do not murder” yet murders, himself). Do we follow his words or his actions?

Answer 1

First of all, I commend you on your charity and compassion. You sound like a very moral person.

You have to keep in mind that none of us are God, nor can we understand everything about God. I'm not going to presume that I can tell you the why's or how's of everything God does, because I cannot. If I could do all that, I'd be God. So, yes, some of it does not appear to make "sense" to us sometimes. And I also have questions about some things in the Bible. I chalk some of it up to man's inability to transcribe everything correctly, but that does not make my faith in God any less.

God makes the rules and God can do what He wants whether we comprehend it, agree with it, or approve of it. But this is how I understand it. The basic principle is free will, although you don't want to hear that. God does not interfere in our lives. He asks us to believe in Him and tells us the consequences for not doing so. He sent His Son to make His love more understandable to us and to make it easier for us to obtain salvation. We have until the moment we die to do so.

Now, God has it all planned out for every one of us. But what is hard to understand is that He transcends time. That means He did not make the plans on His own, but He made the plans in conjunction with all the choices He knew we would make in each of our own lives. So, when it is your time to die, you're going to die. God does not step in and interfere in disasters and things unless those things were already not meant to happen.

Look at it this way. My mother died of cancer. I prayed and prayed, but she still died. Why did God not save her? Because that was her time to die. Had it not been her time to die, then she would have been kept alive. But the result was already known to God, because he sees past, present and future all at once. Now I can "blame" God, or I can realize that it was her time to die. My prayer did not fail, it's just that the answer to my prayer was no, because it was her time to go.

Thrown into this mix is the fact that satan does things to destroy our faith. I believe satan is the one who sends many disasters not God. He does it to cause people to question God and it works. But even satan's meddling is all taken into account ahead of time by God and if that is the cause of our death, then that is the cause of our death. As believers, we have to recognize that and maintain our faith so if satan does snatch our lives, we are ready with God. It's not that God "allows" the evil, it's that it's all part of the plan. Perhaps we can not comprehend goodness unless we have something to compare it to? I don't know.

God does not promise us an easy life with no disasters or problems. He promises us salvation after death and He promises to be with us and make our bad experiences more bearable by having Him to lean on.

Answer 2

I almost hesitate to attempt to respond, notice I didn't say answer, because I probably won't be able to.

I am one of those fools that responds not from reams of documents (at least seldom I do), not from what people want me to say, not from fear or being politically correct, so take me for who I am.

I am no one and yet I am the child of a King; I do not question God's motive for leaving us to our own devices and reaping what we've sown (that would pretty arrogant), but a thought would be another question, what would be in the purpose of our existence if He orchestrated us like hand puppets? Probably too close to "we have a lesson to learn or free will", but why would that not be the answer or the truth or why would that trouble you?

By the way you ask this, what is it you want people to say? What is it that you are blaming God for doing, not hearing, ignoring? Here is a thought for the over-philosophized, maybe God is just as He is presented, maybe the answers are all those things we cannot see or touch, maybe we have no power excepting to bring the best we have and give it away with an unselfish spirit......

Answer 3

"Would it be immoral if we knew people were suffering needlessly, and we did nothing to help even if we could?
Examples: children with diseases, earthquake victims, War in Darfur, etc."

No, it would not be immoral unless you put it into the box of circumstances that you have limited your question to. Your question doesn't take a specific case of a person and give a full outline of what their life circumstances were and are and what specific type of "help" you think someone should provide.

As an example "Would it be immoral not to help someone who had been convicted of brutal rape and murder who was being sentenced to death for their crime?".

Here's how Jesus put it when asked about other people who seemed to have died through no fault of their own.

Luke 13:1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Answer 4

I take from your reference to free will and natural disasters that you do not want to hear answers which state something like "humans have free will, so all the bad stuff in the world is a result of our sin."

Fair enough. However, free will does tie in, just not in this manner. C. S. Lewis writes that for free will to have any meaning, we must live in an ordered and predictable world. This is so, because we must have a reasonable expectation about what will happen as a result of our decisions, in order for those decisions to be possible in the first place. Thus, Lewis writes that natural disasters are an inherent result of the fact that the world acts according to natural (ordered) laws established by God, and that He does not as a rule, violate those laws (via miracles). If He did miraculously intervene on a regular basis, say to cause Hurricane Dean to dissipate before it hits land, then the conditions required for us to exercise free will would be undermined. Because God wants us to have free will, undermining our ability to exercise it would be contrary to His purposes. Thus, God allows natural disasters (as well as all the good things that nature brings us, like predictable rains and seasons, etc.) to play out in accordance with natural laws, and we are expected to use our free will and capabilities of reason to 1) provide physical and spiritual support to each other when natural disasters do strike, 2) make good decisions about how to protect ourselves in the event that we can anticipate a natural disaster, and 3) work to better understand the natural world (i.e. figure out how to predict earthquakes) so that we can do better at #1 & #2.

Hope this provides good food for thought.
In Christ,
Christine

Answer 5

You sound like a professor I had in college, getting my third degree, a masters, he always asked a question, subjective, and when you answered, he then changed the permeters of the question and declaring each point you made was wrong, in other words he DID NOT WANT to hear your answer, he WANTED to hear his answer coming out of your mouth. (he was the prof. after all).

Once this was all figured out, you just wrote what the "BOSS" wanted. and my dear man you are "he" incarnate.

How about this for an answer: You draw unto you what you want and what you want to believe, your mind is so fixed upon the inhumanity of man to man that you must find an answer as to why this is so, but you are not willing to accept the fact that there are actually evil people who do damnable things to others.

You must find an answer to why the convulsions of the world (nature) cause such suffering as in earthquakes and such, you can not blame man for these so, now you must place this blame on a creator to whom it appears you don't even believe in, or doent want to believe-- but must kick around others beliefs so as they will feel the pain you feel in seeing natural disaster's deaths and the helplessness you experience in viewing them.

One would better serve his fellow man in the recognition that his OWN THOUGHTS can manifest his destiny and be the very immoral influcence upon the thoughts of others albeit unknowningly, and actually become part of the problem making the suffering worse, instead of actually being a part of the solutions.

When administering to those as you say you have, I would hope you find it in your heart, YOUR HEART to do the good that you are capable of and forget about those that don't. You know enough about the Bible it appears, but I would guess you are mad at that Almighty of the Bible and thus a fallacsious reasoning in your cause which you feel is worthy of your belittling others and their belief in God. Certainly belittling God has no effect on him by you!

You will find your way, as others have like you that have done so much good for those who have NO ONE. Stop looking for an answer, it is not there. There will always be suffering in and of this world. Live your life as not to add to that suffering of others not just in the material but in your consciousness. Hold to your highest sense of good of ALL mankind. And leave God out of it.

Answer 6

The Kingdom of God is within the human heart.
Why wait for a miracle from a Cecil B. Demille movie?
It never fails to amaze me how people can sit and watch one another suffer and say among themselves,"Isn't it a pity? Lets pray for them!" Then find exasperation that God does nothing. The love of God is in your heart, the love IS the miracle. To ignore your convictions is to take the victory from God. It is a shame that one third of the people on Earth starve as another third struggles with obesity.

Those who do nothing for others that suffer will have nothing done for them when they suffer. It is the order of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh-1JVctSOY
♥Blessed Be♥
♥=∞

Answer 7

How do we know what God does behind the scenes. We only see what we think He doesn't do. Maybe the world would have been destroyed by whatever, long ago. We can't know everything, we just think we do. There is a big picture. God will make everything right someday.

Answer 8

I can't say God is immoral because I don't think he's real.

It's like the people who ask "How could God allow this to happen?" It's a question for people who believe in his existence, not for me.

Although if God won't help us, we can still help each other of course.

Answer 9

You asked "Is God immoral for not helping people when he can.
My answer is very easy. No.

Like it or lump it God doesn't owe you or any of us an explanation for anything. When we get to Heaven if we still care I'm sure we'll get the answers we need.

Answer 10

It all makes perfect sense if you accept the idea that no God exists. Stuff just happens.