A Question for the Religious Folks Here
A close-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was plunged into a new round of mourning Monday by the death of a baby who was delivered by cesarean section after his parents were killed in a grisly hit-and-run crash a day earlier.
Police hunted for the suspected driver, identified as Julio Acevedo, saying he was barreling down a residential street in a BMW at 60 mph, or twice the speed limit, on Sunday morning when he collided with a car hired to take the couple to the hospital.
The death of the newborn on Monday piled tragedy upon tragedy and compounded the community's grief. The infant was expected to be buried near the fresh graves of his parents, Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21. About a thousand community members turned out for the young couple's funeral a day earlier.
"The mood in the neighborhood is very heavy," said Oscar Sabel, a retired printer who lives near the scene of the accident. "We all hoped the baby would survive."
Brooklyn is home to the largest community of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside Israel, more than 250,000. The couple married last year and were living in the Williamsburg neighborhood.
They were members of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose men dress in dark coats and hats, wear long beards like their Eastern European ancestors and have limited dealings with the outside world. Raizy Glauber grew up in a prominent rabbinical family. Her husband was studying at a rabbinical college; his family founded a line of clothing for Orthodox Jews. (source)
Question for the religious people here: If it was God's will that these parents and their unborn baby die in a hit and run, how can we hold the driver responsible based on his free will?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Belle Rose on -
It's all in the presentation my friend...it never sat right with me when I was a theist. But I just put my head down and prayed and made it make sense in my brain. No more of that. lol...
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Permalink Reply by Gregg R Thomas on -
If I were a religious person I wouldn't touch this question with a 10 foot holy staff.
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Permalink Reply by Val Wuthrich on
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Right.
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As I understand the doctrine of Christianity, everything has been predestined. We can not change anything that is going to happen. Whatever that is to happen, will happen by the will of God. In that case, human free will would be an illusion. Hope that makes sense.
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Permalink Reply by Belle Rose on
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As I understand the doctrine of Christianity, everything has been predestined
Not true. This is a HUGE point of contention among believers and people leave churches over it...Not all christians believe in predestination.
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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on -
Not all christians believe in predestination.
If God doesn't know the outcome, then God is not omniscient.
If God is not omniscient, then this is a limitation on his power, so God is not omnipotent.
If God is not omniscient and not omnipotent, is he still God?
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
None of that has stopped Christians from believing what they want to believe.
Anyway, perhaps (a theist might argue) God is omniscient in the sense he is all knowing in terms or known what he wants to know. Viewed that way, his power is intact.
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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on
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So the argument is that God knows what he wants and ignores what he wants. He's not ignorant because he's wilfully ignorant. That is, where human destiny is concerned, he shuts his eyes, sticks his fingers in his ears and utters a cosmic, "La la la la..."
It makes no sense, since as a result he is still neither omniscient nor omnipotent. But as you said, nonsense has never stopped a Christian.
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Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on -
But you have thereby proved it IS nonsense. The concept is self-contradictory, and contradictions cannot actually exist. (In general, tf you think you see a contradiction existing, you haven't looked at it closely enough; there's something you don't know that would resolve the contradiction. But if you are faced with something self-contradictory the only possible resolution is that it doesn't, in fact, exist.)
Although people are careful to claim that we don't positively believe that there is no god, arguments like this convince me that this particular god cannot possibly exist. So when it comes to the Xian/Jewish/Muslim gods, put me all the way over at #7 (positive there isn't one) on Dawkins' scale.
As such, doG is less believable than Thor and Zeus who still are possible but highly, highly, highly unlikely.
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Permalink Reply by James Cox on -
Maybe 'God' is more like 'Maxwell's Demon'. God tosses the coin, but never looks to see where it lands, or at its state..
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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If predestination is true than there's no free will. Now, I don't believe in free will anyway, but I don't believe in predestination because of the surging world of randomness as you go below the atomic level, which may from time to time affect events on the atomic and above level.
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