@Happily_Married_Guy - 

If god causes that which we do not understand, then why not blame him for cancers we do not know the cause of?

Cancer and other diseases function by definite mechanisms. When I said god has nothing to with it, it wasn’t a commentary on whether there is a god or not. It was a commentary on the idea of claiming that diseases which go into remission for logical reasons have magical causes.

This claim is no more rational than claiming lightning and thunder are supernatural when we understand their mechanisms.

@Happily_Married_Guy - 

I replied to this thread on the heels of reading about three different people in the news letting their children die because they thought prayer would cure them, so they didn’t take them to the hospital.

This is not always a purely academic issue. I apologize if my commentary seems “tacky”, but it matters to me that people have a down-to-earth view of medicine.

So far as all that about disease is caused by sin and the time of miracles is past and god isn’t responsible, that doesn’t make a bit of sense.

If I knew for a fact someone was going to murder you, and I could easily stop them, and I didn’t do anything and you got killed, would you say I was not responsible? So how could an all-knowing, all-powerful god not be responsible for adam and eve’s transgression or the apple being there in the first place, or anything anyone does?

And how does it make any sense that carcinogens came from a magic apple? The sun gives us cancer, didn’t the sun exist before there was “sin”? So how exactly is cancer caused by sin if cancer causing agents pre-existed it?

This is nonsense mythology that doesn’t stand any kind of scrutiny.

Believe it if you must but it’s silliness.

@Happily_Married_Guy - 

“I usually dislike the “quote and repond” method but I’ll use it here just because it will make things much easier. If this is why you responded to barry’s post, then you don’t understand that just because people pray for loved ones does not mean that they are like the people that do not believe in medical intervention. Those people have a different ideology than the type of Christians we are. (people with those views are usually not Christians but belong often to different extremist cults)”

Actually the bible, written before modern medicine existed, claims that prayer and anointing with oil will cure the sick, period. You go to the hospital because you don’t believe this any more than I do, because it doesn’t actually do anything. You can pray for everyone with lung cancer to be cured all you want, it won’t become less lethal at all. Or if it does it will be by the effort of doctors and scientists coming up with better treatments, not people invoking voodoo magic spells.

“Nobody here claimed that there are not natural occurances of cancer, natural treatments for disease, etc. Mind you also Barry’s mom went to a DOCTOR.”

Yes, and it’s good that she did.

["If I knew for a fact someone was going to murder you, and I could easily stop them, and I didn't do anything and you got killed, would you say I was not responsible? So how could an all-knowing, all-powerful god not be responsible for adam and eve's transgression or the apple being there in the first place, or anything anyone does?"]

“This is not about murdering someone…”

No, it is about god supposedly knowing adam and eve were going to “sin”, putting them in a position to “sin”, creating a talking serpent to talk them into “sinning”, and then punishing them when all goes to plan and pretending to be more holy than them.

This is not morality, nor do you use this kind of moral logic in your day to day life. You only use it when you want to rationalize your theological views.

“God put the first man and woman he created in a garden, and gave them one rule: ONE. Don’t eat from that tree. Gee, now that’s hard. Don’t eat from a tree.”

And he knew they would do it, and sat back and watched the serpent talk them into it. He also PUT THE TREE THERE TO BEGIN WITH, and didn’t give them all the facts so they could see the wisdom in not eating from it.

If I fill my backyard with landmines and tell my kids “don’t go into the backyard”, and then sit there and watch through the window as they happily trapse into the backyard to get themselves blown up, who is the evildoer here?

The point of the story is that you need to understand the difference between good and evil in order to do evil. They did not have that understanding in the story until it was too late, god supposedly did.

“An infinitely Holy, pure God that cannot dwell in the presence of sin asks me to not eat from ONE TREE.”

Why not? That’s like me saying I’m so awesome I can’t be in the same room with you. Why the hell not?

Are you telling me that there are things I can do that god can’t? And that I can decide where god can and can’t “dwell” by my actions? Who’s the god here?

“What do I do? Hmmmm looks mighty tasty there. Think I’ll have a bite. When that happened, mankind sinned. Sin separates from God. Mankind was now under the wrath of God. If you can’t understand how bad it is to sin against a being that is utterly holy and pure, then of course all you are going to be able to do is just blame God for everything that goes wrong in life.”

I don’t blame god for anything. I’m merely trying to show the huge missteps in your logic.

“The worst thing that happened when Adam sinned was that all mankind, as represented by Adam, became sinful and under God’s wrath. In this world, people get sick, and they die.”

Sorry, but viruses, diseases, bacteria, genetic disorders etc work based on definite mechanisms and have existed as long as people have. Your silly mythology not withstanding.

“God is not obliged to go fix everyone’s problems and sicknesses, as we brought this on ourselves.”

Um, he promises to in the scriptures. I guess making a promise doesn’t obligate one in any way.

“God can save anyone from anything, but everything bad that happens is a result of mankind’s sin in one way or another. So now that we messed everything up, God has to be our little cosmic bellboy that goes around trying to fix everything that happens? I don’t think so. “

As gene roddenberry once said, “we must question the story logic of a perfect god who creates imperfect humans, and blames them for his own mistakes.”

“I never said this was a magic apple. You are letting your own unbelief and preconcieved notions get in the way.”

Oh I’m sorry, you’re right – fruit from a magic tree. It only doesn’t make sense because I said apple, yeah that’s the problem with it.

“You are also betraying a lack of knowledge that it was not the apple, but the principle of disobeying God that brought this whole mess on us.”

It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, once man ate from the tree they became capable of evil which is not simply doing harm, but doing harm with eyes open. That is the nature of sin, it requires forknowledge. The story is a commentary on the nature of morality. A wolf can rip out your throat, it cannot “sin”, it cannot be evil. Because evil isn’t doing an evil thing, evil is knowing something is wrong and choosing to do it anyway.

But no, it’s a story about how magic trees cause cancer…

“This whole mess includes not only death by disease, but something far worse, that which is called “the second death” which is eternal seperation from God where man is punished for his sin. Now I don’t use language like this to be critisizing or putting down, but I do believe if you properly understood these things you wouldn’t be asking the question like that. You may disagree with other things or the fairness of the verdict, etc. but you wouldn’t put it that way.”

“If you understood this issue you wouldn’t be saying what you do” means nothing. So far as the “second death” the concept of biblical punishment has changed dramatically over the centuries and been deliberately changed by politicians and tyrants to control people, and then rationalized by more modern evangelists.

“You also said “The sun gives us cancer, didn’t the sun exist before there was “sin”?” In the beginning, everything was created good and perfect. So yes, the sun was here and it didn’t cause cancer.”

That is a fantastic claim for which you have not one speck of evidence. Because “faith” gives you a license to depart at will what you can know and rationally conclude, and believe any fantastic thing you want. This is a privilege generally reserved for mental patients.

The sun causes cancer because the atmosphere of the earth is too thin to shield the earth from the harmful spectrums of radiation. Exactly how did eating from a tree without permission make the atmosphere of the earth thinner? You might as well be claiming that masturbation causes kittens to become diabetic, for all the two have to do with one another.

It is a laughable, ridiculous, stupid, baseless claim, and only in religion is nonsense made up off the top of one’s head not only not ridiculed as what it is, but met with respect and considered valid and true and reasonable, often for centuries at a time.

@Happily_Married_Guy - 

Way to not acknowledge or deal with anything I said.

@Happily_Married_Guy - 

I know the feeling.

It comes most often when I respond to everything someone says and then they blow me off and condescend instead of replying.