re: Indiana Republican: When life begins from rape, "God intended" it [W:266]
I wouldn't use words such as "disgusting" about it, but I do find it a deeply troubling philosophical position to take, hence my problems with the Calvinistic strand of Christian theology. I can't reconcile the concept that man has no free will with the concept of a perfectly good and benevolent god.
And see, I can understand the overall disagreement or issue with the over arching philosophy, though I don't particularly have it so much. I have always viewed it as one of those things that is a "Chicken and the egg" type of situation. One of those things that is inherent within the notion of "faith" and my views in regards to the super natural. The notion of Free Will and a Divine Plan is foreign to our generalized notion and seems incompatible becuase of the laws of nature as we generally know them. However, I view it in a more theoritical fashion outside of your general laws of nature and it makes some sense to me....
Man has free will to act in situations. When given situation X they could choose answers A - B - C. What they choose is not pre-ordained. At the same time though, if the framework of all things is laid out by god, then all things coming from that framework are part of the master plan....and that would include free will. "God's" Will, if you would, was that you'd have Free Will. And because god is timeless and all knowing, he exists outside of time and thus knows which answer you choose far in advance while at the same time allows you to choose it.
It's actually one of those fun little things regarding faith / theology / etc that I can understand why it frustrates people but at the same time I think can be fun as it presents interesting philisophical and mental exercises and requires that one potentially change the standard viewing scope our mind thinks.
Let me put it in a different explanation (and then I should probably stop becaues it's slowly diverging from topic, but still somewhat related). And I will say, the explanation is a bit silly but what the hell....
Think of God a viewer of a Reality Show (Why do I feel I'm opening myself up to hate mail for that
).
The reality show is a carefully planned house with multiple people in it. The people, items in the house, and external events that happen are all carefully planned to make certain situations, events, or choices more likely to occur. However, ultimately, within the house itself each person on the show has free will to make their choices of what to do in the house.
God's watched all of season 1 a few years ago, and they're now running a replay marathon of that season...but they're doing it out of order. All the individuals in the house are still, on screen, displaying the free will in their choices of what to do within the "plan" of the shows creators, but "God" the viewer already knows what their answers to those choices are going to be because he's existing outside of the time that the show is functioning within and has already seen what they choose.
At some point, "God" manages to then steal a Delorean, ramps it up to 88 MPH, goes back in time and actually is the producer of said show that he ends up watching and knowing the results to.
Also maybe there's a man in a Rabbit costume creeping out a gay cowboy, **** is I know...time travel screws with my head.
But anyways..that's kind of veering off, but it's somewhat how I view that whole "God's Will" notion. If you believe in the line of thought, "God" created the universe in a planned fashion, causing the laws of nature to be what they are and bringing forth man into existance inevitably, along with their free will, which in and of itself is part of his plan and thus the actions we humans take is also part of that plan. And, that based on the general Christian reasonings, God never sends more struggles than we are physically/emotionally CAPABLE of taking which really pretty much means that there's nothing that happens where we can't make a choice to get past beyond the point when our time is simply over.
As such...if you subscribe to such a thought, it's actually more disturbing to me if you believe that a woman meeting a man, falling in love, and having a child is "gods plan" but somehow something bad happening is not...to me, that actually is inconsistently applying your view point which is somewhat troubling to me.