Re: [asa] The Fall (humanity source of suffering)

David,

You asked why God didn't reveal to humanity the technology needed to give
aid earlier. You also speculate about whether God would have revealed
advanced technology to people if they had not been tainted by sin.

Two things: We should ask not only why God didn't reveal technology
earlier, but why he didn't put more warning signs into nature. He could
have devised a system where a loud whistle emits out of an about-to-explode
volcano three days early, infallibly, to warn people to clear out. He could
have done many things to reduce the "evil" effects of nature, but he didn't.

Second, speculating about whether a sinless humanity would have been shown
how to build technology that saves lives is certainly beyond the scope of
the Bible. Also, the one sinless human being to walk this earth did nothing
of the sort. You don't see Jesus pulling penicillin out of moldy bread, or
developing defibrillators, nor even teaching basic anatomy to help with
surgeries, or any of the things you could expect. Certainly one who was not
only human, but God himself, would have done those things if that was the
way that he worked in the world. But it seems it isn't.

Bethany

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 9:52 AM, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
wrote:

> True -- but this begs the question of *why* aid after natural disasters,
> and preparation before natural disasters, and lots of other aspects of
> technology, are relatively modern inventions. Why is it that God didn't
> reveal / allow humanity to discover the technology and methods we now employ
> in this regard until after 10,000 years or so of human civilization and many
> tens of thousands of years more of human pre-history? Why is it that God
> doesn't right now reveal / allow humanity to discovery a vaccine / cure for
> AIDS, and so on?
>
> To turn it around -- what would human society and technology be like if the
> relationships of humans to each other and to God were uninhibited by sin?
> What if the worldwide community of scientists and technologists existed in
> perfect fellowship, if the driver for science and technology policy were
> love rather than profit and prestige, and if the community had open
> communication with God?
>
> I think there's no doubt that under such conditions we'd live in a vastly
> different world because human beings would have been completely free to
> fulfill the creational mandate to build society, including society's
> technology, without the limitations of sin. God's hiddenness includes
> limitations on social and technological progress. I think it's possible to
> acknowledge this without taking a particular view of the genre of the
> Biblical narrative.
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Bethany Sollereder <
> bsollereder@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That doesn't seem very convincing to me, if only because aid after natural
>> disasters is a relatively modern invention, as is medicine that could
>> actually help those people.
>>
>> Mike, if you have #2, natural evil, you run into all sorts of other
>> problems. The entire ecological system (food chains and such) would have
>> had to pop up over night. The same would be true of plate tectonics, air
>> and water circulation and countless other things. Can you really blame all
>> those on the moral choice of two humans? And, could the world exist without
>> those things? The world is dependent on those cycles in order to be able to
>> sustain life. Is that evil?
>>
>> Bethany
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> You might have a point there, because even in great natural disasters,
>>> many more are killed when aid can't reach them. Sometimes (many/most
>>> times?) the aid is blocked because of politics and crime.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> …Bernie
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> David W. Opderbeck
> Associate Professor of Law
> Seton Hall University Law School
> Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

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Received on Wed Jun 18 13:18:59 2008