Where was God in Colorado?

We must be careful that our thanks/praise to God is not linked to our own selfishness. Of course, it’s easier said than done.

There has been a comparison made between the man under arrest and the man the shooter is supposed to be…

Contact me at my e-mail and I will send you a comparison picture; it is very interesting.

Why does this sort of thing happen?

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To the lady or gentleman posting under the name “salvage”:
In recognition of your appreciation for a good question, I would like to offer some questions concerning atheism. I do not propose these are “gotcha” questions – they may all have some very good answers – but they do seem to have intrigued a number of former atheists out there; my thanks to the writings of Dinesh D’Souza and Patrick Madrid for providing the substance of many of them:

1) Is there even a 0.0000001% chance God exists? Is there even a 0.0000001% chance that multiple universes exist? If “no” on the first and “yes” on the second, is there more evidence or testimony on multiple universes than God?
2) Since the vast majority of people have not personally proven that light travels at 3 X 10^8 m/s, or that the neutron exists, or that various species emerged from evolution, is it fair to say we average folks accept those scientific concepts on faith?
3) Did space and time emerge from nothing? If so, how? If your response is similar to Stephen Hawking’s, that the universe was inevitable due to the law of gravity, please elaborate on the origin of the law of gravity. If your response is that the universe is infinite either in extent or there are an infinite number of universes, does this not represent an empirically untestable (i.e. faith-based) assertion?
4) Entertain the idea of an intelligence creating the universe for a moment. Since parents allow, even inflict, suffering on a four year-old child that is inscrutable to that child (forcing him/her to eat disgusting vegetables, making him/her go to bed at a certain time, allowing people in white coats to stick him/her with needles, etc.), is it possible the gap between humanity and an intelligence capable of creating existence might mean that intelligence allows suffering for valid, if inscrutable, reasons?
5) Tradition holds that 11 of the 12 original Apostles were martyred. Even if the number is half that, why did they persist to their own deaths, even though the founder of their “cult” was long gone and they could have easily simply disappeared in the foreign lands to which they relocated?
6) Why have people, throughout history, wondered if they and their actions have meaning? Does this represent a mistake by nature, a useless diversion of precious brain resources away from survival and pleasure fulfillment?
7) Imagine meeting the parents of a child that had just died of leukemia, and they ask “Why do we have to suffer like this?” What words does the atheist counselor offer?
8) Religion is often accused of being psychological “comfort food” – is it possible that humanity made up atheism because of the comfort offered by living by any rules you can rationalize and suffering no lasting consequences for anything?
9) If religion is made up, why did man make it so demanding, insisting that we forgo all manner of physical and material pleasures? Wouldn’t man-made religion be more likely to endorse such pleasures?
10) If morality is man-made, let’s say that A has a moral system based on majority opinion, B has a moral system based on maximizing personal happiness, and C has a moral system based on doing the most good (however that is defined) for the most people. If B’s moral system accepts killing someone who offends you, and it does not care about majority opinion or doing good for anyone else, on what basis do A and C declare B’s moral system to be more “wrong” than their man-made moral systems?
11) Atheists suggest we should “do good for goodness’ sake” rather than for reward, but do they practice that in its truest sense? If making a donation to Haitian earthquake victims who are not special creations of God and who do nothing to advance one’s own gene pool, is the atheist doing it for the satisfaction of doing good (emotional reward), the idea of making a difference (emotional reward), or to support a giving culture that might provide for him/her in an hour of need (self-interest)? Or can something be defined as “good” apart from its rewards to humanity?
12) If the atheist ceases to exist at death, does that render his/her achievements in life meaningless? After all, if the non-existent being has no way of sensing, knowing, or remembering, does that not mean, for all practical purposes, that the rest of existence effectively ceases along with him/her? Is “legacy” a manufactured concept that people use to give life meaning?
13) Did the atheistic principle that humans are not a special creation facilitate the bloodlettings of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? Have these episodes (and other, lesser secular pogroms) exceeded the casualty count of religious violence? (Please exercise care in labeling something “religious violence” – a great deal of such violence is actually over resources and power with religion as a veneer, rather than caused by actual theological differences.)
14) God is accused of allowing terrible suffering, but why does the unplanned universe of atheism have pain, violence, and destruction? Why did the physical laws not optimize toward a system of neutral and positive stimuli to encourage correct behaviors, rather than neutral, positive, and negative?
15) Has the secular embrace of sexual license killed more people than the Book of Leviticus?
16) If secularism promotes human flourishing, why are so many secular cultures demographically dying?

Bonus Questions

A) A Polish scientist proposed heliocentricity decades before Galileo. A Slavic researcher produced the study of genetics. A Belgian developed a mathematical model for the Big Bang. What did they all have in common (besides being European)?
B) Why do some atheists believe condescension and heckling are the best means to produce “converts”? Frame your reply in light of the fact that many former atheists – the Pew chart noting that only 30% of cradle atheists maintain that faith into adulthood comes to mind – cite the “bitterness” of their atheist associates as something that drove their inquiry into religion.

I wonder if the question itself is wrong. We all die, so the issue is not so much why some people died and some did not, rather why some people died NOW and some will die at a later time.

When considered in this light, the role of God becomes clearer, first in that the decision is not one of favoritism, but of timing, second because it is linked to all kinds of other aspects of our life, most of whom we have too little information to understand.

The big spiritual issue in all this is whether we TRULY believe in life after death, in which case death is just a rite of passage, not to be feared, but to be ready for, or the end of everything, in which case it is the ultimate tragedy.

As Christians, we are supposed to believe in the first. Atheists rely on the second (not sure to what psychological effect), doubters conflate the issue and end up confused.