Does God Play A Role in Sports?

Near death experiences are total bull****. Every description is vastly different.

 

Cell deaths in the neurons.

Because it becomes a philosophy rather than an absolute, and some people need absolutes whether consciously or not.

Living through a setback with God on your side means that you can and did make it and it wasn't all because of yourself. I like that better than the Objectivist sense that it was because of yourself...in spite of others and that bearded b*stard in the sky.

Regardless of the supernatural aspects, many of his teachings and doings are profound and lasting

All doable.

Ned Flanders from the early seasons of the Simpsons can either be a parody or social commentary in the form of satire. His family is definitely a parody though.

 

Yeah, I always laugh at people bringing that argument up. It's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. As long is there is no proof or at least an indication that something like a "God" exists, we can only assume that it doesn't.

 

God doesn't, but it has been widely observed that the Devil possesses referees on occasion.

 

The issue I have with this philosophy is that it is being used subjectively. God only takes credit for positive events but never gets any blame/responsibility/liability for the unsuccessful ones.

 

As a Christian, I think you're right on, and that you've got it down better than many believers. Jesus said he would have no place to lay his head, saying that he will live a poor life and that people should count the cost before following him. And 2 Tim 3:12 says that anyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted. Those definitely support your second paragraph.

I think God uses the outcomes of games for his purposes (butterfly effect as someone mentioned), but it's too hard to begin to fathom what those are so I just enjoy them.

I do think that it's fine for athletes to thank God when they win (and if someone wanted to thank Allah, themselves, or evolution I would not agree with that, but they have their right to do so), not necessarily because God intervened to help them win (I suppose he could, but generally would not) and made someone else lose, but because we are to be thankful to God in everything (1 Thess 5:18), whether it's for wins or losses, because of the chance to play with teammates, the health to even play, life, or salvation.

As for the problem of God and suffering, I would say three things from my perspective:
1) This life is short compared to eternity, and God's justice will only be fully revealed in the end. So what happens during 30 seconds (or 10 years) of suffering now is not the end of the story.
2) As Caltex2 is saying, God does not give everyone the same talents, gifts, parents, circumstances, opportunities, health, knowledge, etc. He does expect us to use what we've got for His purposes though. To whom much is given, much is required. I think most of us here have been given a LOT.
3) The problem of suffering is the problem of sin, people thinking they can define what is right and wrong, that they can justify their selfishness, and oppress the powerless. I believe human selfishness, greed, and corruption play a huge factor in poverty. Sin is God's pet peeve. But for him to remove the possibility of sin is to remove humans (or their free will) from the planet. Instead his plan is to allow the sin, and hence suffering, for a certain period of time but offer a solution through the good news of Jesus (which I can tell you about if you want to PM me). One big way God works in the now to address suffering is through his people being his hands and feet to help the oppressed.

Of course, we all need to do our part regardless of religion! So now that we are aware of the starvation in Africa (or many of the other extremely worthy causes around the world), and we have enough time to spend posting on bulletin boards and enough money to pay for the internet, what are we going to do about it? One organization I participate in is Compassion International. Feel free to post more.

 

Yeah hurricanes aren't free will. Neither is an earthquake. Also to this argument about eternity, it still is ****ed up. If I opened the greatest homeless shelter in the world, and decide to provide for people for the rest of their lived but stood at the door and punched people in the face as they entered, people would probably tell me to stop. In the same vein, the problem of evil doesn't disprove a god, but it does disprove a benevolent (or an omnipotent god, if you hold onto benevolence). If such a god exists, it is not worthy of praise.

 

The Bible talks about sin causing all of creation to be corrupted (Rom 8:18-25) which I believe includes natural disasters, but even so, I do think God causes/allows hurricanes though the specific reasons in each case are again unfathomable-- though I have heard enough stories of heroism and such to know that good can arise from them in spite of the suffering (which again ought to be viewed from an eternal perspective even while we seek to do everything we can to alleviate it now).

I'm not totally sure I understand your analogy, but are you referring to heaven and saying God keeps people from entering? I guess your assumption is that all people ought to be able to enter heaven. It may seem that if God is good, your assumption is reasonable, but it overlooks the fact that God is good but that he is also just. For example, say person A punches person B in the face. Should God say, "hey now, don't do that" but give him candy? Or as a more extreme example, say your village gets attacked by an armed gang every month and your family gets killed off. What should God do? It's easier to talk about goodness and forget about justice in a privileged society, but those who have suffered oppression would see goodness without justice as anti-justice. Good ought to be rewarded and bad punished, yes?

But to get back to God's goodness, if you consider that God's standard is way higher than just not committing murder or punching people in the face, but that even wishing evil on someone or doing good with a selfish attitude is considered a failure to comply, and that this failure requires punishment to satisfy his justice, then you can understand how far away every person is from being allowed into "the eternal homeless shelter". It's not that God sets the bar artificially high in order to punish folks, it's just his nature to be perfect and not allow evil.

BUT, given that he knew no one could ever reach that bar and that justice had to be served, he chose instead of bringing it on us and sending us to hell, to bring it on Jesus, the only person who was not guilty of the same sin that deserved punishment. He was punished for the sins of the world in order that those who trust in what he did for them are considered innocent before God in a legal sense. God provided a way to satisfy his justice and display his goodness.

It's like if you committed a crime and were sentenced to a fine of $100 billion dollars or else death, and only one person in the world was rich enough to pay that for you. It will cost him $100 billion dollars, and there's no reason in the world he needs to do it, but he can pay that on your behalf (without you being able to contribute a cent to put him in your debt) and set you free from the debt you owe. That's pretty good.

 

First, a big shout out to the big bang! All glory to you. In your name we play a kid's sport for millions and millions of dollars.

 

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
WHO IS I?

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
WHO ARE WE?

 

Apparantly my analogy is clear, so now that I'm off my iPhone I'll give a more in-depth answer to why the problem of evil is so problematic. I feel like I should start a new thread since we're away from sports, but here goes.

The Judeo-Christian god is thought to commonly exhibit 3 traits: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence (referred to as the 3Os from here on out).

Let's start with the logical defeat of those three characteristics existing:
An omniscient god would know evil wherever it happens
An omnipotent god would be able to stop evil no matter how powerful it is
An omnibenevolent god would desire to stop evil to reduce suffering.

One of these characteristics must be false. Now let's refute some of the arguments commonly made in defense of the problem of evil.

1. Free will to do moral choices
First of all, there are some things that are beyond free will. Hurricanes, earthquakes, painful genetic illnesses, etc., are all beyond human control (and no, to the above poster I don't see how "corruption" plays into that. If god was omnipotent he could prevent such "corruption"). These are all extremely horrible for humans and cause immense suffering, but there's nothing that could possibly be done to control them. Why do some infants life for 10 days and die? What moral choices could they make?

Second of all, free will isn't absolute. I don't have the free will to jump 30 feet in the air. Why did god give me the free will to harm others? Presumably, free will is limited based on god's choice of creation. Why should others have to suffer for my bad actions (think of child slaves, victims of gruesome murders etc.)?

Third of all, why is free will necessary at all to exhibit our moral choices? Even if god wants to allow me to make moral choices so that he can judge me when I die, why should my moral choices harm other people? Presumably, an omnipotent god could have constructed a world where I could still make moral choices where I FEEL the same weight of those choices (like you do when you harm someone) but not have that action ACTUALLY harm the person. An omnipotent god would be able to create rules of logic for that to be possible, even if we can't conceive of that type of world now.

Fourth, why does god need to do this in the first place? Presumably, the day of judgement should not be a surprise to him, as his/her omniscience would allow him/her to know my actions and what my "heart" or "soul" (I despise these terms) truly says. He shouldn't need to put me in this playground we call earth to make other people miserable (or to help other people in misery) before being able to judge me.

2. We are not in an epistemic position to judge god
This relies on circular logic. God is good, therefore god is good. This type of thinking doesn't make sense. Logic is important because it is a tool that was given to us, if you so believe, to make sense of our surroundings and to categorize things in the world. If you truly believe that we are not in an epistemic position to judge the actions of god, then is it ever rational to change your beliefs from an opening premise? If I start with the premise that there is an invisible pirate ship floating around my head, am I unable to change that premise because I'm not in a position to see this? Presumably an all-powerful, all-knowing god who knows my actions before hand wouldn't put me in a position to think like this, and wouldn't have me rely on logic for EVERY other instance in life when it comes to survival. Rather than starting with the premise that god is all-knowing, and all good, we have to use the evidence we have to judge.

3. The earth is but a small portion of what you will experience, and therefore all the bad things are worth it.
I have never understood why people are convinced by this argument. My argument is simple: even if we are on our way to some great heaven and earth is but ten seconds long, it doesn't justify ten seconds of misery. So my analogy this: let's say that I decide to open a homeless shelter for thousands of people who need food and shelter. This homeless shelter is guaranteed to provide for them for the rest of their lives. Am I morally right in standing at the front door and punching each person in the face as they come in? Sure, they are better off once they get inside, but my actions of socking them in the face because I feel like it is certainly unjustified. It would be preferable for me not to do so, obviously.

It is also weird to me then, that our moral intuitions differ so greatly from the Judeo-Christian god's (this answers the point about justice). If I see an individual drowning in a puddle, and it costs me nothing to turn him over, most humans would feel a strong moral intuition in my position to do just that to save his life. Why isn't god the same way? Especially when an omnipotent god would literally be taxed nothing?

It can't be because the system requires that god let us have our moral actions and consequences so we can be judged, and so we can learn. A 3O god doesn't need to abide by any system. He/She could create a world where we could simultaneously learn from our actions without harming anybody, even if that world is difficult for us to conceive.

So yeah, that's why the problem of evil plays a big part in my religious beliefs.

Oh and also the concept of eternal hell is pretty much incompatible with benevolence. If god believes in justice, presumably the principle of proportionality (which we all find intuitive) would apply. Is it right for us to string up a jaywalker by his toes until death? That's basically what hell is.

Whew.

 

Yeah, it wasn't phrased very well, but I would say that if you asked Muslims and Christians what they think God/Allah is like, you would get different answers. As far as thanking evolution, I was being a little facetious.

That's a good question. It's not something that I fully understand, but somehow (that is, not in a naturalistic way) human sin causes corruption in nature (Gen 3:16-19, Lev 18:24-28).

You raise another good point in the second paragraph. What I really wanted to say is that God is sovereign over all things good and bad and that he works both out for his own purposes and for his children. It will not be apparent at the time, so I was merely speculating on what good could come of them, not saying what they are specifically.

Also, this is a different topic, but suffering is not always just bad. Surely death is hard to understand, but you cannot say that good cannot come out of suffering even for the sufferer. Consider the times you something happened to you and you came out stronger. That being said, we should alleviate suffering wherever it can be found. You may want to check out Samaritan's Purse as they are quick responders to all kinds of natural disasters around the world.

As for death, it is not possible to comfort someone who lost a loved one by offering specifics, saying, "This is why God did this", but I think after a time of grief and mourning, it is possible to comfort them with the knowledge that God himself understands grief and suffering by living and dying among us as a man, and that he will do what is good and just.

 

Jimes, you should really read up on Islamic theology.

 

Yes, sorry, you were probably clear enough though I was slightly worried about going off on something and not have it be what you were talking about.

These are 3 among his many characteristics but I guess you if you can prove a logical contradiction among 3 you could prove it for more than 3.

I do believe God could prevent natural disasters but does not always do so. The assumption that human suffering only lends itself to bad from God's perspective cannot be proved. I tried to answer this somewhat in my response to rocketjudoka. Admittedly, it does require faith since we cannot understand all the reasons why at the present time.

I believe based on 2 Samuel 12:21-23 that infants and children who are too young to have a sense of morality will be saved, though it is not crystal clear.

Just my opinion since the Bible doesn't speak to this question directly, but I think this is because God created us for relationships with him and other people. Intrinsic in relationships is an ability to love or harm someone. You could hypothesize relationships that don't perhaps, but I would say it wouldn't be much of a relationship.

I think this is related to my answer for #2.

In my opinion, if he just judged us all based on our heart or soul, then we'd all be screwed (Jeremiah 17:9). It's good that we have the opportunity to choose truth (Deuteronomy 30:19).

But in general, I don't know why God did it this way, though the answer could be related to the answer to #3 below.

I do think God could very well allow us to understand his creation (which we should try to do - Psalm 111:2) without letting us understand him fully (Isaiah 55:8-9). He has revealed enough of himself for our needs in the Bible. It does help keep us from getting big heads and keeps us dependent on him.

I guess one thing is that life in general doesn't have to be considered a sock in the face though it can feel that way a lot of times.

But your question of why God even did it this way is a good one. One potential, though difficult to understand, explanation is in Romans 9:22-24. I do think the bad things are a part of life, but that the good outweighs it (Romans 8:18). Sorry, I'm in a hurry to catch my bus so speeding a little bit.

I think our sense of morality (conscience) is often similar to God's until we bend it all out of whack. As far as why God doesn't save every person who's drowning, I can only speculate (which usually gets me in trouble). I think the above answers are somewhat related, and again, I admit some things will never be fully explainable and must be taken by faith, but I think the Bible contains a lot of answers that help me make more sense of the world than anything else.

Haha, another good one. Just letting you know, many Christians have different interpretations about hell so I do not presume to speak for all of them (nor, I guess, in my previous answers either).

I personally am on the conservative side so I would subscribe to the view you are questioning. This explanation is not in the Bible and is my own understanding: consider if you punched a rock or a kid at school, then clearly punching the person deserves a worse punishment. But say, instead of punching some kid at school, you punched Barack Obama. Clearly that would deserve a worse punishment. Now, let's say you punched God, who is infinitely more worthy or respect than any human leader (they call him the King of Kings, or I guess President of Presidents, and by gosh, he created us and loved us enough to come down here to suffer with us) then that is clearly worse, and by that same infinite amount. And, although we've never punched God, by our actions, we show that we think we are our own god who can define right and wrong, who is our own boss and whom our life is generally centered around. This is idolatry, which is probably even worse than punching him in the face (breaks the first commandment in Exodus 20:3).

I will just add that since we all do the idolatry bit in some form, we all deserve hell, but that's where God's goodness comes to the rescue. It's not that we are good enough to deserve heaven and not hell, but that through Jesus' death on our behalf, God saves us in spite of ourselves. It's a very humbling idea.

Anyway, I honestly appreciate the questions, and I hope I don't sound rude or condescending. I am open to learning more both in order to better defend my faith or potentially change my views. I don't think I can respond nearly as quickly in the future as I'm supposed to be working... We can always continue via PM if you're interested.

 

Sounds good, where should I begin?

 

Not really, most follow the same pattern, although some are deceptions imo (my reasoning is so long and out there I won't even share it).

The ones found on the site I linked generally show a "God" of mercy and understanding who tries to make you understand your wrongs (like in the life review) instead of the ill-tempered YAHWEH of the OT.

And that's what I think life is all about, so learning how to live out of pure love is the best way we can go about things.

I also want to say, I found this site very interesting ALTHOUGH, I warn that it is through the flawed consciousness of a medium (i.e. supposedly from Jesus but filtered through the mind of a man). Not that many will put any stock into it but take it FWIW.

http://www.askrealjesus.com/real-jesus

Fact is that WE create our problems by not living by pure love toward one another and ourselves.

For example, why are babies in Iraq being born mutated? Because us humans decided to spread radiation around the country and now the parents want to know if the child is normal when first born.

Why are there so many poor people? Because some of us choose to live in luxury and gluttony and then focus our time energy and money into trivial pursuits instead of making sure every person is properly taken care of. You can't put it on God when you spend so much money on your cable bill, house much larger than you need, booze and other drinks, the latest cell phone every year and Rockets tickets (plus parking, concessions, gas to get to the game), etc...


So don't try to pin that stuff on God when you (no necesarily you Invisible Fan) could actively be doing more to change the world. Even then, it wouldn't be all equal and life isn't fair, heck, I want everyone to see my point of view but in general, no one gives a poop. Who cares?

That's what people lose sight of when bashing Christianity, it's not as if you still don't get value from the Bible's teachings. On the flip side, many Christians (to fall the accurate Wizard of Oz analogy) have a heart to go down the path of enlightenment (i.e. yellow brick road) but lack a brain so to speak. They just buy whatever indoctrination is given to them at an early age instead of thinking about it.

For example, Revelation is chalk full of dream symbolism (ex. horses=messangers from God) but they try to hard to focus on the prophecy and literal events that they think are being referred to in it.

 

Well the flip side is that plenty of athiests seem to imply that all that we know spawned by random chance. Just because the explanation in the major faiths like Christianity sucks doesn't mean there isn't one. That's why I try to refer to "God" as a universal force or higher power.

 

The problem I've always had with that is that it gives no incentive for people to want to perfect themselves. Sure people say they strive to be like Jesus but if all the doctrine says is you must repent from your sins and "confess with your mouth" that Jesus was Lord and savior and died for people's sins (I truly dislike that verse by Paul, worse verse in the bible imo) then people have no incentive to improves themselves.

There are other issues I won't get into such as Biblioidolotry and health and diet but that one sticks out to me.

 

Natural disasters are not evil and have nothing to do with free will, unless someone starts a forest fire.

God doesn't intervene in the affairs of men as much as He influences their heart. The last time God made a major intervention in the world was the life of Christ and Jesus performed many miracles and intervened in many earthly circumstances.

God's influence in the world is spiritual and He certainly influences spiritually with the intent to limit or cease man's evil. However, according to the Bible God's next major intervention will be to do away with all evil.

Jesus prayed that God's will be done, because honestly it rarely is done. That is why the world is so messed up and unloving.

Could God intervene? Sure and He will at some point, but first He has placed His influence in the world to offer forgiveness to all who do evil.

In other words, rather than judge and condemn evil people, God seeks to forgive. He has always shown patience toward the worst offenders and most evil people and many have been turned around (true followers of Jesus). This patience makes it appear He is unloving to some because He doesn't stop evil people in judgment but seeks a means to forgive them.

God is perfectly consistent and if He were to intervene and stop evil at one level or one place He would do it for all (He knows no partiality). Instead God who has self described His character as a loving Father, with a heavy heart watches the suffering man's evil produces and patiently and continually influences men to receive the spirit of Jesus (the opposite of evil). This influence is what Christians are supposed to do around the world.

God sees every child that is starving (Christians should feed them), every slaughter, every rape, and all the worst men do, I think His wrath against such things must burn, all this He endures to try to turn men back to Himself: Back to love, goodness and peace.

I have no idea when God's patience with men will end, but it must be close.

Meanwhile, if anyone is to act on God's behalf to ease suffering and love others it is Christians. Whenever God's love is questioned it is because Christian's have failed to show it.

When Christians start to obey God, alot of love and healing will be given to the world.

I know a Christian that doesn't obey God is an oxymoron.