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chiam
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 9/7/2004 5:39 AM (GMT -6) |   | Do you think that:
(1) God knows when a hurricane is going to hit?
(2) God knows the damage that it will cause?
(3) God does not have anything to with hurricanes? | | Back to Top | | |
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Sisters of Cain
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2004
Total Posts : 431
| Posted 9/7/2004 5:47 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by chiam
Do you think that:
(1) God knows when a hurricane is going to hit?
Can God track a hurricane at least as good as our super computer simulations?
Probably magnitudes of scale better than our super computer simulations.
Do NASA scientists know a Mars lunar rover will connect with Mars because:
1. they've figured out the trajectory and timing for it to connect to Mars?
2. they have exhaustive knowlege of the future?
quote:
(2) God knows the damage that it will cause?
(3) God does not have anything to with hurricanes?
Who sent the storm on Job's children?
Who's the "god of this world"? (2 Cor 4:4)
Does all creation groan for redemption?
We wage war against whom? (Ephesians 6)
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/7/2004 6:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Part of the "problem of evil" might be building structures where no structure belongs.
quote:
http://www.crcna.org/whoweare/beliefs/ourworldbelongs.asp
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Sisters of Cain
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2004
Total Posts : 431
| Posted 9/7/2004 6:24 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel
Part of the "problem of evil" might be building structures where no structure belongs.
quote:
http://www.crcna.org/whoweare/beliefs/ourworldbelongs.asp
LOL, exactly.
Here's a cool sandbar
Let's build a house on it.
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/7/2004 6:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Chiam: Do you think that:
(1) God knows when a hurricane is going to hit?
(2) God knows the damage that it will cause?
(3) God does not have anything to with hurricanes?
Tom: On (1), yes, provided you don't mean "know eternally."
On (2), yes, far more specifically than perhaps some open theists think, but not as specifically as you might think.
On (3), I think God has a lot to do with hurricanes, like trying to stop them on occasion, or steering them on occasion, and using them to judge unrepentant people on occasion. Maybe other types and levels of involvement. Can we know what the specs are on each occasion? I don't think so.
Guess we'll just have to trust God in the midst of it all on the basis or his character revealed in the Cross.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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chiam
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 9/7/2004 7:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom you said, quote:
I think God has a lot to do with hurricanes, like trying to stop them on occasion, or steering them on occasion
Do you mean to say that God tries to stop them but can't? | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/7/2004 9:09 AM (GMT -6) | | | God "causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust." But he also "chastens those he loves." He gives grace to those who need it, who are willing. And can use any sort of problem to bring us down the road in matters that matter most!!! | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/7/2004 9:11 AM (GMT -6) | | | 135 mile per hour winds are scary. (Gloria: L.I., N.Y.) I remember too well. No electricity for a week; and classes went on anyways. had to teach outside. | | Back to Top | | |
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1Heart
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2004
Total Posts : 1128
| Posted 9/7/2004 10:08 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by chiam
Tom you said, quote:
I think God has a lot to do with hurricanes, like trying to stop them on occasion, or steering them on occasion
Do you mean to say that God tries to stop them but can't?
Chiam,
The replies Tom gave are what I would expect, and consistent with open view theology, and I agree with them. But you bring up an interesting question; expected as well.
God COULD stop all of the evil in the world if He wanted to - even natural evil (such as a hurricane). He calmed waves on several occasions...etc. How much he intervenes is a mystery. We know that we have free will, and that we impact creation as well as humanity. I do believe he can intervene miraculously, but no one has an answer for why He does not always - except that would change the dynamics of free will and creation - and the reason we have natural evil is because of free will (chapter called "Red in Tooth and Claw" from Dr Boyd...can't at the moment recall which book it's in - but it deals with natural evil).
The things that we can be absolutely sure of are his characteristics, which we see revealed in Jesus Christ. He is all powerful, but not all controlling...
Some thoughts...He can stop the hurricane (if he desired to stop it). Why he doesn't...that's probably far too complicated (I think) to give a definitive answer to.
God Bless,
Jo-Anne (I feel like I just did a lot of "ducking" with that question) 
"Sometimes all we can do is go back to the character of God, and drop anchor there."
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/7/2004 1:57 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey folks, let's stay on NATURAL (so-called) evil for this thread OK? If ya's wanna talk about the terrorists in Russia, go start your own thread and have it out. But this thread is Chiam's and he/she is interested in hurricanes, so please, let's only discuss so-called NATURAL evil, OK?
Chiam: Do you mean to say that God tries to stop them but can't?
Tom: This is an area I'm really open to learning more about, Chiam. In priciple, I don't have any problems with God (as Sahid said) choosing to limit the exercise of his power where such limits are necessary to God's purposes (like God's choice to grant us libertarian freedom entailing his not unconditionally determining all things). I'm not entirely sure how this comes across when it comes to natural disasters. On the one hand you have Doc's view of natural evil (i.e., there is no such thing as "natural" evil; it's all moral evil since fallen demonic powers originally granted supervision of the physical universe have infected the natural order to a certain degree and seek to use it as an opportunity to increase human suffering). I'm still not sure I'm ready to swallow this all. But I don't want to argue that fallen spiritual agents (which I do believe in) have nothing whatsoever to do with influencing the natural world. I'm just not sure the Venus fly-trap is of the Devil. (Are you here Mephi?)
On the other hand, I've been wondering for some time now whether or not we wouldn't have some such natural disasters even without the fallen demonic element figured into the equation. I mean, God wants a physical universe and commits to creating an appropriate habitat for us. I'm wondering whether or not we can't account for natural evil on the simple grounds that any natural habitat God fashioned, if it was to be one that could sustain life, had to be naturally violent (not morally "violent"). I mean, tectonic plates shifting and all and the consequent earthquakes and volcanos and weather patterns. The movement of such plates and the weather patterns of our present earth seem to be the natural consequence of an earth able to sustain us at all. Take all the demons out of the picture for the moment, OK? Take human sin out of the picture too. I still think we'd have killer storms, volcanos, and earthquakes for the simple reason that we have a living planet. I think God knew this and was cool with it. For those who want to argue some version of a "soul making" theodicy, this provides the minimal amount of suffering needed. It's not moral evil, and the suffering that would occur as a result would certainly give us more than enough opporunity to grow and respond. And it would be for the most part chance (i.e., quantum) driven. You build a home of the San Andreas fault, you live with the consequences of living on a living breathing, moving, belching planet. Maybe God creates a world which is necessarily violent (and I don't mean "violent" in the moral sense) because such a world is the only sort of habitat possible given that God's purpose was to create beings who were physically and morally finite and responsible.
If this is every close to be true, then if you figure in Doc's demonic stuff on top of that then there's plenty of room to account for hurricanes that destroy people. God sometimes does intervene (say, in response to prayer). So at least some times WE have a part to play, in which cases it would seem that God's involvment in natural events is conditioned upon human involvment. So (to answer your question), yes, I think sometimes the amount of influence God otherwise wishes to exercise in some such events is liimited because we don't pray. (But famines, for example, are not a "natural" event at all. They seem to be entirely the result of human mishandling of the inviroment.) It's not so much that God tries to stop hurricanes but "can't" where "can't" means, properly speaking, that God simply doesn't have the "muscle" to quiet a storm. God's got the muscle to do it. It would rather be that God has chosen to limit or condition the exercise of that muscle to factors that are outside his unconditional control. He commited to this when he committed to create THIS kind of a habitat for us. Some of the conditions God predicates his involvment upon are the presence or absense of prayer, the presence or absense of responsible human stewardship of the inviroment (something God must generally leave us to inherit the consequences of our behavior if he really did charge us with subduing and filling the earth--he can't universally negate the bad consequences of our actions if his making us responsible stewards of the earth is to have any meaning), and whatever other options God had to work with when he decided to create a physical habitat that could sustain our kind of life (that would be to grant, against Doc, that there really IS at some SOME amoral, i.e., "natural" evil, and that it's not really evil at all), and whatever other influences the spiritual world might also have to play (given Doc's views). It might be a mix of both.
It's a big issue, Chiam, with lots of in's and out's.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 9/7/2004 2:25 PM (GMT -6) | | Of course, the Calvinist affirms that everything that happens is God's will; therefore, they can unequivocally say that natural disasters are ALL acts of God.
While it is true that in Scripture we find that God causes well-being and creates calamity:
Is 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these. NASB
In light of the fact that in context, the LORD is pronouncing judgment upon Israel for Israel's sin, it seems to go beyond the context to infer from this that ALL such calamities and natural disasters are direct acts of God.
To me, it makes the most sense to view such things as manifestations of the natural processes that occur in a creation that, while said to be "good" by God originally, is not "subject to vanity" and is cursed due to the entrance of sin into the world.
One thing that must be said in favor of calamities like hurricanes is that they certainly MIGHT help some see their need of God and repent, though this does not always happen:
Rev 9:20 ¶ The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk;
Rev 9:21 and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.
Rev 16:9 Men were scorched with fierce heat; and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory.
Rev 16:11 and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they did not repent of their deeds.
In some cases, it would appear that the good book doth verily teach that God imposes natural disasters on mankind at times. However, it does not seem necessary to assume that this is true in all cases.
http://revivaltheology.net | | Back to Top | | |
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Sisters of Cain
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2004
Total Posts : 431
| Posted 9/7/2004 5:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Before Frances hit Florida, the National Hurricane Center predicted she would hit Florida on Saturday.
Obviously, the National Hurricane Center also possesses exhaustive knowlege of the future. 
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/8/2004 10:04 AM (GMT -6) | | Lock: Tom, That is not what I said. Of course the terroists are responsible for their actions. Would a person who is lead by the spirit of God make those choices or someone who is lead by the flesh?
Tom: I think you meant JEE.
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chiam
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 9/15/2004 3:42 AM (GMT -6) | | For those who accept the authority of Scripture, how do you understand the following verses in light of this hurricane topic?
- Gn 2:5 God had not sent rain upon the earth,
- Gn 7:4 With the flood the LORD said, "I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights
- Gn 8:1-2 After the flood God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided and the rain from the sky was restrained;
- Gen 41:25-31 God caused the famine of drought
- Ex. 9:18 v. 23 God said to Moses, "I will send a very heavy hail, such as has not been seen in Egypt from the day it was founded until now." - Ex. 9:23 The LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt.
- Deut. 1:14 One of the blessings for Israel was that if they were obedient to the LORD; then he would give the rain for their land in due season. If the people turn away from the LORD then there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit. Deut 11:10-17 see 28:12,24
1 Sam. 12:16-18"Take your stand and see this great thing which the LORD will do before your eyes. "Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call to the LORD, that He may send thunder and rain. Then you will know and see that your wickedness is great which you have done in the sight of the LORD by asking for yourselves a king." So Samuel called to the LORD, and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel."
- See 1 Kings 8:35-43 ; 17:1-18:1-ff; 2 Kings 3:17; 2 Chron. 6:26-ff
Job 38 God is speaking to Job Job 38:26-29 To bring rain on a land without people, On a desert without a man in it, 27 To satisfy the waste and desolate land And to make the seeds of grass to sprout? 28 “Has the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of dew? 29 “From whose womb has come the ice? And the frost of heaven, who has given it birth?
- Job 38:33-38 33 “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, Or fix their rule over the earth? 34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, So that an abundance of water will cover you? 35 “Can you send forth lightnings that they may go And say to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 “Who has put wisdom in the innermost being Or given understanding to the mind? 37 “Who can count the clouds by wisdom, Or tip the water jars of the
heavens, 38 When the dust hardens into a mass And the clods stick together?
- Psalm 135:5-7 5 For I know that the Lord is great And that our Lord is above all gods 6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps. 7 He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; Who makes lightnings for the rain, Who brings forth the wind from His treasuries.
- Ps 135:7 Who makes lightnings for the rain, who brings forth the wind from His treasuries
- Psalm 147:8 8 Who covers the heavens with clouds, Who provides rain for the earth, Who makes grass to grow on the mountains. 15-18 15 He sends forth His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly.16 He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes.17 He casts forth His ice as fragments; Who can stand before His cold? 18 He sends forth His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow.
- Jeremiah 5:22-24 (This is in contrast with false idols) ‘Do you not fear Me?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do you not tremble in My presence? For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, An eternal decree, so it cannot cross over it. Though the waves toss, yet they cannot prevail; Though they roar, yet they cannot cross over it. 23 ‘But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; They have turned aside and departed. 24 ‘They do not say in their heart, “Let us now fear the Lord our God, Who gives rain in its season, Both the autumn rain and the spring rain, Who keeps for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.”
- Jeremiah 10:11-12 Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” 12 It is He who made the earth by His power, Who established the world by His wisdom; And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. 13 When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses. - Jeremiah 14:22 Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain? Or can the heavens grant showers? Is it not You, O Lord our God? Therefore we hope in You, For You are the one who has done all these things. | | Back to Top | | |
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