Huck wrote:Gadianton, speaking for myself I do not think God has orchestrated events for our needs purpose a clever story or a joke. The mud came down the hill due to fire eliminating soil stability, steep slope and lots of water. No miracle, no message, no punishment for a sin (except natural events pointing out planning errors)
Perhaps you don't believe in God then? You are a liberal believer if I recall. Let's review what it means to be God.
Suppose there exists a brilliant and benevolent engineer who loves his family and wishes to build them a home that meets all of their needs. So he builds a beautiful home that is perfectly climate regulated and with automation and robots that see to every need. When a child wakes in the morning and heads to the television, the cartoon the child wishes to see in that instance appears on the TV. But there have been a few problems. Some of the glasses that the robot removed from the dishwasher had spots. A bird flew into a spacious window of the home and fell to the ground in pain and the family watched it die. One of the children would have preferred their cartoon to begin immediately upon the television screen as the screen came into view rather than be subjected to previews. So our brilliant engineer though very good and brilliant, can't be God. Why?
Because the ontological argument informs us that if we can conceive of a greater and more benevolent engineer, then this engineer I've initially described can't be God. We can conceive of an engineer who foresaw all of these problems, even one who had calculated the local biosphere exactly, and put a soft cushioning right at that spot the bird flew into the window and gently sent it on its way. But is this far superior benevolent engineer God? Well, he only built a home for one family. And while he chopped the trees down with efficiency, he didn't "create" the tree. A greater and more powerful engineer would have created homes for many more families, and in fact, created the trees themselves. This thought exercise continues until it can't be imagined that there is a greater and more powerful "engineer"; then we can say we've found God.
Now, MG, in his child-like enthusiasm for everything that's good for himself personally, will quickly point out that I've created a God who created a world that is too perfect. His family needs challenges, not every whim attended to. He ultimately hasn't done his family any favors. I don't disagree, but, it's an easy way to introduce the point of 1) purpose and goal orientated design 2) flawless execution. Perhaps instead of home automation, there are lists of chores, or perhaps there is no list, and the children must learn to fend for themselves. Perhaps there is a balance between all three. It doesn't matter to me, what matters is that whatever the optimal scenario is, and whatever implies more greatness on the part of the creator of the scenario, then the creator is aligned with every last optimization if the creator is God.
Alvin Plantinga's solution to the Problem of Evil says that it's possible for evil to co-exist with a world created by God. He says the world as it is must therefore be maximally good. All things considered, a better world than what we have, considering all the big goals behind it with many we might not be able to comprehend, is not possible. This moves the Problem of Evil to a practical evaluation of what we see. Is it really believable that sparing one animal from dying in a forest fire couldn't make things just a little better? For the sake of my argument in this thread, I will take Plantinga at his word and agree that everything as it has happened, including the mudslide and the lawnmower accident, somehow works together to bring about a world that is maximally good, that cannot be improved upon.
However, if this is the case, then everything has happened for a reason down to the last movement of every pebble. Change one thing, no matter how small, and that change could result in a world slightly less good than it could otherwise have been. For instance, if that animal I mentioned dying in a fire was somehow a necessity to bring about the overall maximal good, then it can't be allowed to be saved. It must die. Perhaps that bird flying into the window in my original scenario was necessary for the maximal good also. The reasons for this could be varied. A fly landing in the eye of a warlord could change the history of the planet; as one kind of example. The family needing to learn about the pain animals feel could be another kind of example.
At this point, a sneaky believer might say that there are a great number of scenarios that hold the same level of maximal good such as to allow some flexibility for free agency or stylistic freedom for the creator. That doesn't change much, because every event must still be part of the
explanation for world A or world B becoming co-equal maximally good worlds rather than falling into possibilities where things could have been better.
A final problem I will mention is true randomness. God and randomness are not compatible, sorry. Saying God created a purely random universe is like saying he created a rock so big he can't move it. If a person believes we need a random natural world in order to make for the ultimate gaming experience, well, in that case, the ultimate world is one without God (this person is what we call an existentialist). Perhaps
simulated randomness for the sake of the test is necessary for the maximal good, I don't dispute this possibility, but ultimately God understands the details, and every detail in disguise is carefully crafted by God, and every detail matters.
MG appears to be an atheist of sorts. A person who believes in a thoroughgoing natural world but with a sky buddy who is there to make things better for himself personally as needed. A personal supernatural helper, but such a being is not God.
