Do you think that torturing a baby is ever justified?
Have you seen this rather well done movie?
youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI
They end asking about a God who tortures babies as God did to King David’s baby.
God also killed many innocent babies in his great flood as well as the innocent first born of Egypt.
dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.ca/ … -baby.html
Do you think that torturing a baby is ever justified?
Regards
DL
I don’t think it’s ever justified to kill a baby.
But then, you can conjure up all kinds of thought experiments that test this sentiment: what if you have one baby tied to a track and five other babies tied to a different track? A train barrels down the track which splits in two directions–one heading towards the one baby, the other heading towards the other five babies. You have the choice of switching the track. What do you choose?
Or: it is never justified to kill a baby, but what if a tiger kills a baby for food?
Or: What if God is just the universe (as many, including myself, believe). If a tornado sweeps through a town and kills a dozen babies, that would be the universe (i.e. God) killing a dozen babies. But does it make sense to hold a tornado morally culpable? Does it need a justification?
In China, way before, a very long time ago, but quite recently, really, in terms of eternal time, times were very tough.
Boys were god sent because they hoped thet would be strong, big, able to do a good dahs work on the farm. But girls? They were useless really, and were drowned in the river, if they had enough of them.
In the upper casres, their tiny feet were bound so as to retard their growth. Why? So that theyn would not grow. So they could not walk. So that they could not work. In this way, marriage to a rich man would oblige them to carrie them, while they caried on a life of luxury, no need to worry about being used for demeaning purposes.
If killing babies with evil intent. then someone who generated the evil intent is culpable.
The universe or nature cannot be found culpable because there is no evil intent.
If God is the universe, why bother calling the universe, universe?
People recognize the universe as one thing and God another. One is sentient while the other is not. Why muddy the language and rename a universe that is already well named with the name or title of God?
Regards
DL
Was that it?
Your rendition of history does not answer the question of the O.P.
Regards
DL
The problem of evil, yet again.
A lot of people make claims about god / God.
I think so far, history prooves that mankind does not know god / God.
That is because we are not looking at the right place.
Jesus said, “If those who attract you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you.
If they say to you, ‘It is under the earth,’ then the fish of the sea will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
The only God you can ever know is yourself.
Regards
DL
This was not about the problem of evil. It was a moral question.
I have no problem with evil and I will give you an O.P. I have coming up for your opinion.
Why do people think evil to be a problem when it is good?
Evil here I define as a premeditated action against another.
IOW. People to people evil. Not natural or inadvertent evil from non-conscious sources.
As evolving creatures, all people do constantly is either compete or cooperate with each other.
People to people evil only occurs when people are competing for resources or the goods of others.
If we were to somehow eliminate the miniscule amount of evil in the world, man’s evolution would stall and we would likely go extinct as we collectively would no longer be striving to produce the fittest of our species. It seems that competition makes us strong and not competing would make us weak.
That makes the minute amount of evil we see in people to people competition, — a good thing, — because if we ever eliminated it, the greater evil of our extinction would come to pass.
In this sense, humanity is best served by embracing the minute amount of evils we produce by our competing.
Do you agree?
If not, please show how we can take competition out of our evolution and how we would not weaken our species to the point of extinction.
Regards
DL
God never tortured a baby. The character God in the Bible did…big difference.
i think the answer to the OP’s question is actually pretty straightforward. Obviously it would be wrong to torture a baby without reasonable cause. BUT:
This touches on what i think is the caveat to the rule. If for instance the options are either 1) torture a baby, or 2) a homicidal dictator will launch a nuclear attack, then i believe it would be justified for a third party to torture a baby in order to prevent nuclear holocaust. The ethical culpability for the torture would rest not on the third party, but on the dictator.
Actually, culpability would still lie with the third party. Justified is very different from ethical, and it is never ethical to torture a baby, no matter what the cause. That baby, like all people, has the right to dictate harm done to it…particularly torture or murder. So, it would be unethical for that third party to torture the babe, even if he was prompted to do so under duress.
If you ask me, it’s more of a simplification than muddying up the language. Instead of two entities, we have one. You can call it God or the universe or whatever you want. The only thing you get with my rendition is that the universe is conscious.
But I still don’t think this makes the universe morally culpable as assigning culpability requires more than just the ascription of consciousness, but anthropomorphization as well.
Who are you calling God?
Who is your God?
Regards
DL
I agree.
Regards
DL
God created the Universe. Thus god invented cancer, typhus, typhoid, malaria, polio, ebola and all other diseases that inflict suffering on babies. QED God tortures babies.
Take the scenario to the extreme where the harm prevented would be the destruction of the world.
Do you still think the child should live and the world should die?
Was Spock wrong.
youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6c3OTr6yA
Regards
DL
I do not agree and think we should call things what they are commonly called by those one speaks to. One wants to know what you speak of and not have to ask for clarification when you misuse common terms.
Regards
DL
Good point. Indirect torture. =D>
Regards
DL
Using that logic, God indirectly had sex with your (or anybody else’s mother) to have you. And you (or anybody else) are never having sex with your wife, God is, since he completely caused you. God then would also be responsible for all of your thoughts, since he created everything that is in your brain. Do you want to go there? And if we’re going to take your Heraclitean notion of the complete flux/flow of cause and effect, there is no baby or torture at all…just a miniscule temporal and spatial gathering of matter that is only a baby because of the matter and causes preceding it, as it eventually dissipates into other matter.
So, no, God does not torture babies. If he does, there never really is any baby or act of torture at all.
Well, following your train of logic, Hell might as well be called a paradise, since its just a flux of a photons and Heaven is photons too.
No, emotions are real, tangible. Pleasure is a real thing.
As for your sex thing, you are spot on actually.
God is Love.
The spirit of the Lord enters through intercourse. Do you think true orgasm is made possible with the pathetic minds of mere mortals?
No, orgasm is a taste of heaven. The only thing this miserable god ever gives you…if he even gives you that.