Okay Christians, I'm stumped on this one. I got into a long winded religious debate with a friend of mine and it eventually distilled down to this.

According to Christian belief, God cannot sin.

James 4:17 (NIV): "If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them."

Okay, cool. But way back in Exodus chapter 16, we see that God is both willing and able to send ample food to hungry Israealites (manna and quail).

7.6 million people a year die from starvation.

It would seem I must draw one of the following conclusions based on this information:

1) God is not aware that people are starving, or he is not aware that feeding the starving is not a good thing (God's ignorance prevents him from being labeled a sinner by James).

or

2) God is a sinner.

or

3) Helping people who are starving is not a good and moral thing to do, therefore, we should not do it (if it's not a good thing to help the hungry, God can be aware of people starving and not do anything about it without being condemned by James).


I'm just not sure which of those I'm supposed to believe is true.

Why is it good to help the starving? and who is it good to?

I will treat the OP as serious. Perhaps your list of possibilities is not exhaustive.

For example, do you have children?

If you do, do you solve every problem for them because you can and the problem should be solved. Or do you leave some that are within their capability because you know that it is important for them to solve them for themselves, in order to grow?

I was serious as well by the way. I want the OP to show why it is good.

I think that this is a slippery slope, where God first feeds the hungry, then gives homes to the homeless, heals the sick, etc., until there is no more pain and suffering. This question is really a narrow examination of the bigger question, "how can suffering exist if God is good?"

Ehrman and Michael Brown had a good debate on this, if anyone is interested.

I'm pretty sure most parents would step in if they could to solve a problem that would result in the death of the child. Also, in the case of starvation, although the problem may be able to be solved by all 'children' collectively, what about the many individual 'children' who will die because they are unable to do so without this collective effort?

What about them Husker?

It seems clear that there is very little to no outside intervention from God despite what many people want to believe or hope for. So what is your point? Is this you simply complaining about this fact or more likely, are you trying to make the point that because of this God doesn't exist?

If it's the latter, the more important area of focus should be about what control we have over the ability to deal with the suffering that exists. If God doesn't intervene and we are collectively helpless to suffering, then that would be pretty damning. But God not intervening doesn't say much about the question of existence except for specific understandings of God in which outside intervention is a characteristic.

It was a reply to RLK's question which followed on from Starvingwriter's question. To summarise though as follows:

Starvingwriter gives quotes that claim god cannot sin, however other quotes claim that it is a sin if you know the good you ought to do and don't do it. He then questions this in terms of god not intervening in the case of people who are starving (maybe especially authors...) and offers up several possibilities for it.

RLK then uses the analogy of our children and asks if we solve every problem for them

I then question this analogy by pointing out that most parents would solve such a serious problem for their children if they could.

I haven't discussed anything in terms of whether god exists or not or whether he should intervene or not etc etc. I have merely discussed the analogy that has been used.

You also said

and I asked what about them?

maybe god can only teleport food, which is why he could help out before the earth became over-populated

I'll be honest here Robin, I've no interest in replying to your posts. This probably sounds harsher than I intend but I know you've got a really depressing world view and I'm pretty certain I know the route the discussion will go.

awww man, that's not nice! Well I guess I won't ask you anymore questions then. You can put me on ignore.

You're right the analogy RLK used is not perfect if that's what you were trying to convey, but I think it's good enough to make his point.

I prefer to engage things from the atheist perspective because there is more responsibility for belief there. In doing so, I realize I was going off on a tangent. For the OP, I agree with RLK's post.

I'm still waiting on the OP to establish why he has determined it good to help feed the starving. I'm interested in his answer.

Why is anything good? Why even have a word "good" to which we apply to certain actions? If we can't agree that helping to feed millions of starving children is "good" then there really is no further point to having the word.

Anyways, as naked_rectitude says, this thread is basically a restatement of the problem of suffering, so there is no real point to addressing the specifics of the OP, one should just address the problem of suffering more broadly.

The problem of suffering is what it's all about. The way I see it in the near future, we are going to be getting more insight into how to solve this problem. Every belief system that doesn't address this problem (in this lifetime, not the afterlife) will gradually become obsolete.

What is moral in secular terms vs what is moral in Christian terms. If I hear a fundamentalist Christian explain why is stealing wrong, they might state "Because God is not a thief". Basically, what is good is God, what is God is good.

Contrast this to a secular view on morality, to cause the least overall harm (a simplified def'n). Why is stealing wrong under this model? Because it causes harm to the person stolen from. (btw, perhaps the fundamentalist will then ask why is it wrong to cause harm to another person? Ok, fair question - but it's a new, different question to the first one, where I defined moral / "good" as avoiding causing harm. Why we generally act that way can be looked at from all sorts of different angles).

At least when it comes to talking to fundamentalists, a key reason for disagreement is because of this equivocation of "moral/good". This is why the Problem of Evil has never resonated with me as a good argument against the Biblical God, because Yahweh is not a source of good according to my definition, but he is the only source of good according to theirs. Where things get interesting (and confusing, imo) are for non-fundamentalist Christians, and how they define morality / good - e.g. is it an amalgam of the secular and fundamentalist def'ns? - and where they get their definition.

The Bible says it is, so it's fair to assume that it is in the context of analyzing Bible verses.

http://www.openbible.info/topics/feeding_the_hungry

If one dismisses the validity of the Bible the whole point of the discussion is meaningless, since it then the fact that it contradicts itself is irrelevant.

I don't think God owes us anything, personally. He gave us the greatest gift- which is existence.

If children are starving, it's on us.

James 16 says that if someone sees a good thing to do and doesn't do it, that's sin.

I mean, I guess if you don't believe the Bible is true, fine. But if you do, then either God feeds the hungry, he's ignorant the hungry exist, or he's a sinner.

It has nothing to do with whether or not he "owes" us help or not.

It's not God's good thing to do.

If you choose to kill your girlfriend tonight, do you expect God to intervene?

If that answer doesn't satisfy you, consider the fact that every sinner deserves death- every sin deserves death. That is the whole point of The Law. Nobody is righteous. Not a one.

If I chose to kill my girlfriend tonight, and a person was watching, who had both the knowledge that I was going to do it and the power to stop me, would it be moral for them to do so?

To answer your question: Yes, I would expect that any moral being with the ability to prevent the murder would do so.

Fine. No need for living then. No choices. No repercussions.

Just nonexistence, then.

All is well.

Also, the last time I checked, the 7.6 million people that supposedly die of hunger a year are not of the tribe of Abraham.