Why isn't God held to the same standards as man?

If a person witnessed some atrocity and it was well within their power to stop it but they did nothing, then how could we say that this person is moral?

Yet everyday millions of people suffer from the unimaginable and a supposedly loving God does nothing. Yet he is worshipped, often by those who are suffering the most.

Why is the person who failed to act once, held in such contempt while the later fails millions and is still adored?

 

Never mind.

 

To be honest....I literally have no idea how people do this.
When something nice happens god has blessed them and is great and yet when something nasty happens god is now mysterious and has a plan.
god wins no matter what happens.

 

i think part of it is gullibility. i think a bigger part has been the very real threat of violence on heretics and blasphemers.

 

It really depends on what faith you are looking at, if we take a look at the three Abrahamic religions, isn't it the Devil who is the cause of pain and suffering? Isn't our time on Earth supposed to be temporary, and a test? Isn't the reward of Heaven supposed to be the "real afterlife?"

I also thought another big thing about God in the Abrahamic religions was free will and choice. Humans are given free will and choice.

God is supposed to be beyond our level of understanding. If we are but a speck of dust in the infinite Universe, the Universe is a speck of Dust to God?

You could look at it many different ways, Earth is neutral, with the Devil and God battling each other out, free will, life is a test etc. But their are different explanations depending on which specific God you refer to.

 

What about a child having its optic nerves destroyed by a parasite?
How does/did the devil cause that?

 

Judaism and Christianity have never promised an easy life, and indeed explicitly state that earthly existence is transient. Anyone who claims to espouse Christianity and promises you an easy ride is probably after your money.

 

I don't know. I'm not saying this is what I believe, I was just stating what I thought was the general Abrahamic perspective on things and God's reasoning.

I could play Devils Advocate and ask how did God cause this? Someone once joked to me that God and the Devil are basically two kids and the Earth is their playground (no offence intended to anyone). Like I said, depending on one's views on God and faith, it plays out differently. Some believe God is there, and has no real control over Earth, and just watches and is busy in Heaven.

God could be seen as an inventor, someone just messing around, cause Big Bang, life as we know it, watch what happens, and the Devil his annoyed friend/brother is trying to mess around with his experiment.

Things like human suffering, and what we perceive in this world are beyond God. God is after all supposed to be omnipotent and beyond what humans can even fathom to understand.

I must state, this is not what I believe, I'm throwing out ideas that I have heard many times over.

 

read the book of job.

 

Yea but that's just semantics. If God truly created everything, then he created the Devil and also evil.

 

I have, again I did state it depends on what faith you adhere to.

I know how the old testament plays out and the "official" story behind Lucifer.

 

Yes, he did. This is where the whole, life is a test, not meant to be easy thing comes from.

 

Well..to quote Bill Hicks...what could oppose god's will?
Nothing right? So he's able do whatever he wants.
god created everything. Therefore he created the parasite.
We could live in a universe where eye eating parasites didn't exist.
god could do that if he wanted.

This is a variation of "The problem of evil" isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

 

Yea that's the part I don't understand. People think God will intervene if they pray to get a better job but that he stands idly by while the Holocaust happens, or the Killing Fields, etc. If life's a test what are we supposed to be learning?

 

It goes back to the Apple and Original Sin, Earth was supposed to be heaven. It was Original Sin that led to "hell one earth". We are being punished for our "sins". Not listening, being tempted by the snake in the garden of Eden. That's the story behind why there is suffering, until Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins. It can be seen many different ways.

 

From what I understand, it's how we deal with the suffering and pain. Whether it leads us to sin, to prove our worth, and that we are worthy of heaven.

Life is an entry exam to prove our worth into heaven. If we pass the test we go to heaven, were we get everything we want forever, if we fail we go to Hell, or maybe purgatory depending on what it is we did. Or depending on what you believe we all end up on purgatory until Judgement day.

 

I'm not religious, but come off it. If you accept that God is real, then you accept that "his" role is slightly different from that of the average person. Any given president has sanctioned the killing of countless people in war. But if Joe Normal sanctioned a killing, we'd deem that immoral. The President does it because there's a bigger picture to be considered. God's picture is considerably bigger again. And if you accept that our mortal existence is just Act 1, Scene 1 in his picture, it seems pretty obvious that he's not playing by the same set of rules as we are.

If you DON'T accept that, then you were never inclined to see the logic in any of this anyway, which is fine as well.

 

That would only be true if you accept the Christian version of God with a capital G. Then its easy to just accept whatever God throws at you and no matter how screwed up things get you can just say it was God's will.

 

I like the ending in Men in Black, where you see our Universe, in a little marble, in a locker, where there is another bigger universe, and yet again it is the size of a marble, with some giant alien beings kicking it around. Well x that infinity = God, well infinity might not even come close to "God". It's out of our human minds to comprehend, why he does what he does, hence where all the "trust in Gods plan" etc comes from.

 

He certainly holds a grudge a long time. I don't recall ever being given a choice of eating an apple or not... so I'm not sure why I'm suffering (along with everyone else).