If a supreme and perfect being exists-watches and has control over everything happening on the planet, and if humankind is the pinnacle of His/Her creation, why are there plagues, drought, famine, disease, death, homelessness and tsunamies,etc?
by 
buttman
ANSWERS: 10
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I do not know and have asked that question often ~ of may people including Christians ~ yet not one can offer any response other than to quote scriptures from the bible or to say It's God's Way ~ which of course is not a *reason* at all.
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Well The Great Buddhist (Siddhartha Gautama) was also troubled by this thought, he left his great wealth at the age of 29, he was a prince. He went into the wilderness and meditated for years..at one time almost starving himself to death, just to be enlightened with the answer. Buddha would call this duhkha or "suffering or "sorrow". Pretty much saying that there are times when every-changing life brings misery..examples death of a parent, divorce, sickness, fire, flood war, loss of a job..etc. the Buddha claimed that to live means to inescapabley to experience sorrow and dissatisfaction. Or you can say a body means that we can be tired and sick. Having a mind means we can be troubled and discouraged. I know it is a dark message..but as the great Buddhist says, "this truth urges us to be realistic, not melancholy; it is also hopeful that if we recognize why suffering comes about, then we can lesson it:) That is from Buddhism..I can also qoute Christian or Hinduism:)
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1) Because He said there would be. 2) Because we do not pursue His truth. 3) In sufferance, that we might reach out to Him. 4) To cleanse the earth who refuse Him. 5) To help provide a means for one to become more like Him through helping others.
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the answer is so simple and all the theologests make it sound so complicated. That's how the churches maintain control over their flocks. God gives all their free agency in this mortal life. He will not and does not control us for good or bad, we choose by our own conscience. God does not control the nature of things or it would violate that basic law. Gods will does not change, man changes the laws for their own vanity and gain. This was Satans plan. He would have taken that law away and made sure all would be perfect and his world would be therefor perfect. All would return untested and untried. I'm sure many will try to complicate the heck out of this by quoting confusing scripture and the philosophy of Man. But that is the simple explination of a confusing question!
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Hiya, buttman Excellent question. It illustrates the absurdity and futility of humans first inventing and then trying to explain God. :) No matter how God is described, the God-makers run into logical contradictions, which they explain away with the limp "God's ways are mysterious and incomprehensible to mere man."
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Many people have asked the questions like: Why does God allow wars? Why was this person born blind? Why is this person crippled? Why can't this couple have children? These are some of the mysteries about which humans have been asking God for answers since the beginning of time. Even Job, a just man, asked God why were so many bad things happening to him. I am not wise enough to answer this question but Pope John Paul II wrote a beautiful letter called Salvifici Doloris, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris_en.html With love in Christ.
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In response to Buttman; Sure. I'm going to assume in your childhood that there was a parent or parents, or guardian that sought after your needs. (Work with me here), When you went to go for the cookie jar and you were told "no", you didn't like it, but that the one who said "No" to you knew what was better for you than you did, even though you wanted that darned cookie. It was then you began conspiring to steal that cookie when no one was looking with a raised fist in the air "I'll show you!"... And so it so with spiritual things toward God. We may grow up to be very adult physically, but the reality is that (the unsaved) hasn't even been born yet to what the Father expects from us. Otherwise, by our very nature, we will stay in the "I want my cookie and I will conspire to get it" mentality. True freedom comes from God and not of ourselves. When we try for ourselves it fails, as it is self-serving, not the truth.
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Free will: We only have ourselves to blame for those things, and blaming someone else ( the supreme being )won't change that.
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Original sin which brought about the curse. We live in a cursed world. We must bare the fruit of our original parents' wrong decision.
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Here's an unpopular response: A perfect being is an incoherent notion.
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