PLAYER57832 wrote:Iliad wrote:Suppose you see lawnmower is slowly coming towards an incapacitated person: can't walk yet, lost ability to walk, doesn't really matter. The details don't really matter but the situation is that a person is about to die. You could stop it easily, turn it off, slightly turn it away and the life is saved. If you just walk past and let the person die you will rightly be seen as a monster. So I can safely assume we both agree on this.
So why is it if a person does this and so causes a death, a death he or she could've saved without any risk to himself, without any real interruption to his life, one clearly within his power to save, we can both agree and condemn him but if it's your god you have to try and make excuses for him?
Let's say the lawnmower in question is being driven by let's say an infant so there's no risk to the person walking past if he tries to stop him. Would him not stopping the lawnmower now be morally excusable as there's the free will of the driver to consider? no he still lets a murder happen and one that he could've stopped. However because he's your god you have to try and make excuses about 'mysterious ways' and so on.
Your example is far, far too narrow. Add in that perhaps there is a raging fire, about to consume all and if the bystander stops to rescue the other, both will surely die and you might get closer. OR, perhaps add in that this person just ran out of a daycare center behind where he just finished torturing and murdering 12 children and 2 adults. Add in that this person is just sane enough to know they did something horrible and will repeat it if allowed. Add in that they actually prayed "God, take me now".
THEN you begin to get closer (but only a tiny bit closer) to the kind of decisions God must make. We can understand but shadows of God's understanding and choices.
Firstly I made the saving a life completely risk free in the scenario because that's how it is for God. He's omnipotent and omniscient. For God the scenario can be a nuke, a shootout, or a rolling boulder and he can easily stop it because of the omnipotence. The raging fire is completely out of the question because there's nothing that can harm him.
About the murderous about to die baby. That's the point, God could've stopped all those murders, he can save this person's life a lot easier than the bystander can, but if he exists he chooses not to. For him preventing those original deaths would be as easy as preventing this one. Secondly isn't he also omniscient and your moral compass? How can a decision be hard for him if he knows what is morally right and what is morally wrong?
The scenario is completely risk free for him, hell the bystander actually has to walk up to the lawnmower, god can just think to prevent crimes, God knows when all sins are going to committed and he has the power to stop them at no danger to himself, but he chooses not to. But because he's your god you feel compelled to try and make excuses for him.
Also the current argument about free will makes this a lot worse, since God created all of us knowing full well every single sin we would commit. So not only does he know this aeons before it would happen, not only can he stop it with a mere thought he has set the lawnmower so to speak on the incapacitated person.
