former president jimmy carter was recently on the daily show to promote his non-profit organization which is attempting to eradicate the guinea worm.

never heard of the guinea worm? neither had i.

guinea worm larvae live inside water fleas. when mammals, such as humans, drink water that is contaminated with these fleas, they become a host to the guinea worm.

the larvae live inside your body for three months until they mate. the male dies after mating, but the female lives on, and can grow up to 2-3 feet long and as thick as spaghetti.

the female burrows into your tissue until it eventually erupts through your skin. this causes a very painful burning sensation in the host. the host can relieve the burning by submerging the affected area in water. when that happens, the guinea worm releases hundreds of thousands of larvae into the water and the cycle begins again. the host will suffer until the worm can be slowly and gradually extracted from the body.

the guinea worm can not survive a month without a host. the aim of the guinea worm is to infect mammals like us. that is the only way it can propagate itself.

i don't think that a loving god could have created the guinea worm. do you?

God works in mysterious ways.....All part of gods plan, and who are you to question it?.....etc

David Attenborough on God

“It is something I get frequent letters about,” he says. “They always start with sweet reasonableness, you know, ‘We love your programs, isn’t nature marvellous’, and so on. But they always go on to say, ‘We do wonder why it is that you don’t give credit to the almighty God who created each one of these species individually.’

“My response,” he says, “is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that’s going to make him blind. And [I ask them], ‘Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of mercy’.”

Having just had to teach a Sunday school class on Romans 9, I suggest reading that chapter. God has mercy on whom he has mercy, end of story. I don't think the Bible depicts a perfectly-merciful God. Feel free to show otherwise though.

David Attenborough's words, not mine.

I do agree with them though

You are, to be fair, the only Christian I've ever met who take the view that God is not all-loving and perfectly-merciful. Interested if you think that Christians who don't share your view should be more concerned about the problem of evil?

You should be careful not to confuse "perfectly-merciful" with "universally-merciful." The term "all-loving" comes with nuances of understanding as well. For example, universalists would disagree with non-universalists as to what it means.

Meh, I'm careful enough. I've previously had quite a detailed discussion with montecarlo on this subject and I'm pretty sure his view is fairly unique, particularly compared to mainstream theology a la WLC & Plantinga.

Maybe God just likes guinea worms better than humans.

Will post more later this wkd, busy night tonight ($10 home game, woooo!)

Oh, zumby, you should watch King of Kong Fistful of Quarters or Touching the Void IMO.

I second that. I saw it on G4 a while back when it first came out.

Touching the Void confirmed awesome.

You can't avoid suffering in this life. It doesn't matter what you believe in or stand for. Citing death or suffering brought on by a parasite is a fail because the guinea worm, African killer bees, box jellyfish, etc. are all here to stay. Not so we can use their existence to debate the presence of a merciful god, but because this is their earth too. If there is a God, he darn sure doesn't want us drifting through life wasting time and brainpower complaining about something as silly as the existence of suffering. If you don't want to suffer anymore, then you'd be better off using your time and effort praising God.

This doesn't even attempt to answer the OP

So the OP seems to be arguing:

P1) God is loving
P2) A loving god wouldn't create an species that causes so much misery amongst mammals, including humans.
---
C) Therefore there is no god.

So am I right that the argument is Valid? Actually I agree with Aaron that before the argument can be had, the term 'loving', which is a dependent clause (?) needs clarification because neither of those premises are necessarily true.

That's Ok. Ops question is pretty dumb. None of us will have the answers we seek by the time this life is over. So Imo you can't even hold an intelligent conversation about something like this. I did away with the idea of needing to be 'right' years ago. Especially when it comes to our interpretation of what is good or fair or loving or merciful. Because we'll never know the truth about our value in God's eyes or our place in this world, questions like the one posed are at best irrelevant and at worst an example of wasted potential.

I have no idea why you're 'wasting' your time by posting in this forum then.

Agreed, these militant agnostics are really intolerant of our right to have opinions.

Aaaand we resort to cynicism.

Such a small sample as this isn't enough for any of us to come to any conclusion as to whether or not the Christian God is merciful and benevolent. So why pose the question? I'm all for free expression of opinions BTW, but OP isn't looking for an opinion, he's looking for an answer, which I attempted to provide. If the question was meant to be rhetorical OP should have said so.

We all suffer, everything living, even guinea worms. Hell, even Gods suffer. Especially Gods.

Given that you explicitly rule out "intelligent conversation" on some a priori principle... what were you hoping for?

Well, how about addressing the OPs question for starters?



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Good point.

Irony is.....

the argument is:

P1: if loving god, then no guinea worm
P2: guinea worm
C: therefore, no loving god

Then you wait for the inevitable offering of a theodicy

Maybe the purpose wasn't to immediately arrive at a definitive answer, but to start gathering evidence to answer the question one way or another. OP started with the guinea worm, perhaps looking for someone to supply more evidence.


Thanks for your contributions. I'll add to your supporting evidence by listing ebola.