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You shouldn't have to use this line of argument, where you mysteriously can't provide any actual proof and defy the whole idea of proving your own case. Your God should never need clerics writing cope about how he mustn't be put to the test. What kind of deity shrinks from a test? In the Old Testament he was razing cities left and right.
It's wonderful how Christians think that sneering at these 'unworthy' wishes like wishing for steak is some incisive cutting response. Why not grant such wishes? Is your God not as powerful as industrial agriculture which puts so much meat on the table the poor struggle with obesity? Why not have the devout be capable of wishing for manna, isn't that something Christians are supposed to be capable of? Or were those relegated to metaphors since you can't actually accomplish such miracles, only intangible wishes and copes?
God's ways are doing nothing when his followers get massacred, repressed or blown up on their Feast Days. But that's totally fine, fantastic even because they'll get enormous rewards in the afterlife (but nobody can see this, only the dead know). Come on, this is cope from a deity who lacks the power to act physically in the world.
The sole power of your God is the organized religious devotion that has driven history for millennia. The Crusades, the Reconquista, The Thirty Years War... The discipline and will of soldiers can be tested, that's actually real. But he's just one force amongst many and a waning force at that.
The God I'm talking about actually created the universe, created the stars, mathematics, worldly thinking, hunger, cancer, death, cope, social constructs and everything else. If he didn't want us to think in a certain way, it would never happen.
Okay let's go back to first principles. What is your purpose? Why do you exist?
Christianity teaches that your purpose is not physical well-being, it is not hedonistic pleasure, it is not propagating your genetic material. It's not any of these worldly goals.
You are arguing strenuously that the Christian God doesn't make sense because He doesn't provide the very things He has clearly said are not important. The contradiction you are describing is between reality and this made-up version of God in your head. Again, "If I were God this is how I would see things..." It's quite literally the most basic error you can make in theology.
Christians do pray for many such things, and those prayers are often answered. I've personally witnessed God's provision, even to the point of the miraculous, and I know plenty of others who have seen similar things. Plus, there is a massive body of literature on miracles and the evidence for them. I recommend Dr Craig Keener if you're interested to learn more, he has a book "Miracles Today" that covers a lot of this. There's also a lot on Youtube you can check out. However, honestly I doubt you'll do any such thing, it sounds like you've already made up your mind without bothering to look at the evidence.
Christian theology is forced to take up this incredible burden of justifying how the structure of the universe necessitates all these problems from cancer to bad equilibriums, so they bring in original sin or free will or other constructs. But there is no need for them in the first place.
Vs
The simpler solution is better. It doesn't need to invent dogmatic justifications for what's going on. How are we to know that God's plans require his followers to be immolated in Lisbon? Blind faith. And the good things that happen? These miracles are actually good? They aren't some counterintuitive damnation to bring about more evil in the long run (since we're taking on this twisty reasoning process)? Again blind faith. It's not even consistent.
Theology is cope, it's a way to find some justification for the unjustifiable, baffling people with jargon when the case is very simple. Take Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds' - that's real theology done by real theologians. It's obviously wrong. Any idiot could easily make a better world just by subtracting mosquitoes or cluster migraines, or some similar unpleasant aspect of the world.
But theologians erect these huge bulwarks of defence against thinking clearly, they maintain that you can't judge God's action or inaction since you don't know what he's planning. Yet they seem to be very sure about omnibenevolence and love... How do they know what he's like? Because they appeal to the legitimacy of one holy book amongst many about events that happened in the distant past, when supernatural events happened constantly.
It's galactic-scale motivated reasoning, like anthropology or social sciences but without even pretending to be falsifiable, since they deny the very idea of testing their work.
This is simply false. A Christian should obviously test their beliefs. Scripture says, for instance: "Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil." [1 Thes 5:21-22] More importantly, the Christian faith is not a random philosophy untethered to the world, it is specifically tied to the resurrection: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." [1 Cor 15:14]
You seem to by relying on this idea of 'blind faith' which, though a common refrain in pop atheism, is contrary to what Christians believe. The Christian faith is confirmed not just by the resurrection, which, being historically distant, you can certainly have skepticism about - but it is also confirmed by the miraculous work of God in the lives of believers, which you can still see today (I think I predicted correctly that you didn't even bother to Google the case for miracles).
I will repeat this as many times as I need to: you are tilting at windmills. You are arguing against your own made-up idea of God and of Christianity.
I did go have a look at the man you linked, I find it unsurprising that a Christian scholar believes in miracles. I could find a bunch of imams who believe and write about djinn. Let's see them use djinn in warfare. Let's see them act like they're truly real.
You should never even need to claim miracles. If God doesn't want something to happen, it would not be possible. Why introduce fornication to the world and then forbit it? Why have sodomy be a thing at all? Why have greed at all? There is no grand cosmic reason for men to derive sexual pleasure from buggery, nor for the human back to be weak compared to the weight of our heads and so get back pain.
By the way, you can use the Bible to argue for anything, there's so much contradictory or unclear writing in there that it can be interpreted in any direction:
The purpose of miracles isn't to occasionally fix God's mistake of creating diseases and disasters in the first place. The purpose of miracles is to point humans to God.
Here's a thought experiment, I'm curious to hear your reaction. Let's assume that God wants to instill virtue in people. Should he: a) create a world with challenges and suffering or b) create a world with no challenge and no suffering?
An omnipotent God can directly create virtuous people and/or seed virtue into the universe at a base level. The universe could literally work on vibes-based storybook logic where the virtuous always prevail regardless of whatever challenges or suffering they may face. That is no more or less reasonable than having the universe run on atoms or gravity. Virtue is independent of challenge or suffering.
If he wanted no virtue, he could make the physics and incentives revolve around pure self-interest, maybe one has to eat the souls of others to survive. We don't live in that world.
If he wanted maximum virtue, he could have virtue directly translate into success and power and prestige, directly performing miracles in public. The medievals thought that could happen, they thought that kings could cure scrofula with the royal touch. We don't live in that world either.
God would certainly not resort to such indirect and ineffectual methods as getting people to write and constantly reinterpret holy books if he wanted virtue. There are much more direct levers to push.
Hard disagree. That is nonsensical to me.
How can you have courage without adversity? What would that even mean?
How can you have charity if there's nobody in distress to help?
How can you have industry if everything is already perfect and needs no improving?
How can you have temperance if there are no negative consequences to excess?
How can you care about another's wellbeing (i.e. love) if everyone's wellbeing is already met?
I can go on.
Yeah, my point. The question is 'why is there suffering in the world', and look at that, you've given an answer! "There are much more direct levers to push" - like, say, challenge or suffering that need to be overcome? Quod erat demonstrandum. By trying to pivot to some point about holy books, you've essentially argued that a world without challenge or suffering, but with holy books, is insufficient.
I'm confident that you'll dismiss this and try some other avenue of attack, because your objection to faith in God doesn't originate from argument. You have clearly set your heart against the idea of God. I would guess it's because you want to persist in some kind of sin that God condemns, that's typically the reason. The good news, though, is that God can and will forgive you for your sins if you just turn to him. I recommend it!
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'll repeat this more simply.
Merely removing hernias or dementia would not make it impossible to be virtuous. You could still be virtuous if dementia didn't/couldn't exist. Virtue is not reliant upon external difficulties (many of which are beyond our ability to manage as yet).
The outlook you're expressing is bizarre and anti-human too, as if the good part about virtue is not that it's helping people but that it's good in and of itself. You'd prefer a world that needs charity to one that doesn't? It's only a short step from there to chopping off baby's limbs so they make for better beggars (and allow the opportunity for alms-giving). That's what your God does de facto and it's incredible to see this principle defended albeit indirectly. He establishes a system where birth defects leave people crippled for a short and painful life... so we can be charitable to them? This is a mockery of ethics. Just have birth defects not happen!
Yeah, like having a non-deranged system of ethics. If Christians actually literally believed the ethos you're laying out and took it to its conclusions seriously, it would be a cult of unimaginable cruelty. Fortunately they don't.
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