Isn't that one of the major themes of the Bible?
Uh... so you don't think Satan fell?
If you could have stopped the tragedy of 9/11, would you? Would that make you a "babysitter"? If you could have stopped the Byrd murder, would you have? If you could have stopped Hitler and McVeigh, would you have? Is that being a babysitter?
Again I say: Indeed.
Fixed it!
I am not God. I do not have authority or power over the wills of men.
What could have God done to prevent these things without altering mans freewill?
:wave2:
That's not required to stop a terrorist. If you could have stopped them, wouldn't you have done it? Use your imagination. Let's say you overheard them talking at Taco Bell and you called the authorities. Let's say one of them defected at the last minute and he told you about it. Would you have done everything you could to stop them?
He could have withdrawn His hand from holding the atoms in the landing gear together on one of the planes and stopped the flight from ever leaving the ground. He could have withdrawn His hand from holding the brain cells together in the hijackers cranium and caused the plane to crash into the ocean, killing only a fraction of the number of people who died on 9/11. He could have brought a microburst along at the right moment and caused the plane to plunge into the bay, saving thousands of lives. None of these override anyone's freewill.
Indeed.
In the context of our discussion it is.
Answer = Yes.
Yea... I suppose that is true. He could have done something supernatural to stop these evil actions. But that has not been God's MO. God has occasionally intervened to thwart evil but only in certain circumstances.
As I have stated before... God isn't our cosmic babysitter. God allows us to freely follow His will or reject His will.
As I have answered you dozens of times on this question OF COURSE! Of course I have chose an option I didn't want to choose. Who hasn't?
Knight, what would you think of someone who had a chance to do something very simple to thwart the attacks, and knowing fully was about to transpire, nonetheless did not do what he could to stop it?
This is different. This is not intervention. God holds everything together; every atom in the universe is supernaturally sustained by His omnipresent power. I'm merely suggesting that He relax His grip on the atomic structure of some part of the plane. Surely God could do this without a full-blown supernatural intervention. It would just be a very natural increase of entropy in one small part of the universe. E.g. the landing gear could simply fracture, set off a sensor in the cockpit, and bam -- no flight. One less missile to hit the WTC and hundreds of lives are saved.
If God truly wants everyone to have ample opportunity to get saved, why would He sit by and watch thousands of people die, many of whom were probably unsaved, and would have had a chance to believe in Christ?
OK, He's not a babysitter. You're not answering the question. I'm not suggesting that God should act like a babysitter. How about just being aware of what's going on and caring enough for those human beings to stop a terrible tragedy, just as you yourself would have done if you had a chance. God had a chance and myriad simple options at His disposal by which to thwart the attacks. Why didn't He do it? You would have. Are you nicer than God?
Is He helpless to mitigate it? Or is He just unwilling?
I haven't. I've never chosen an option I did not want to choose. I can't think of a single one. Do you have an example of one? Anyone? It doesn't have to be Knight. Anyone can answer.
I strongly suspect that your assertion that one cannot choose an option that one does not want to choose is unfalsifiable, because you would define "what one truly wants to choose" as "what one ultimately chooses."
No, actually, Jim wrote ...
It's falsifiable if you can show me an occasion where you chose an option that you did not want to choose.
No, I know because the Bible says so:
Again comparing man to God in this instance is not a fair analogy.
Bee... eye... en... gee... oh.
I totally concede that point. I just want to know what you would think of a person who could have stopped the tragedy but didn't.
Of course. I'm not talking about every mundane instance, just the heinous ones where evil men take the lives of innocent others. Why doesn't God just stop those? He could do it, right? Why doesn't He, especially the murders of unsaved people who will now have no chance at salvation?
I'm not asking for miraculous (see below), so this point is moot.
That's why I suggested surreptitious action. Something undetectable by humans. Surely God is creative enough to come up with ways to save children from being brutally raped, tortured and murdered without making it an obvious miraculous intervention. Like this: Say the homicidal pedophile has done this before, and now God has learned what this guy is capable of. So let's say a mother has prayed that God would protect her child (so we have the prayer request made). Now the the man sets his sights to abduct that woman's child. In answer to prayer, God relaxes His hold on the atomic structure of gastrointenstinal organs of the pedophile, causing severe abdominal pain, requiring him to find a restroom. The child is safe, the pedophile is sufficiently distracted. That just one quick example. This would be so easy for God to do, and no one would be the wiser.
