A Divine Miracle For Skeptics Who Do Not Believe In Miracles
Next to the Pope my authority on all things Catholic is my devout 89-year-old father-in-law, a long retired “government worker” from an agency that shall go unnamed. He possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of physics, history, politics and religion with a special interest in “supernatural” miracles of the Bible and Divine miracles in general.
So recently, after my husband and I had watched an interesting documentary on the making of the atomic bomb known as “The Manhattan Project,” we both agreed that Dad would also enjoy the program and the next time he came over we would replay it for him.
Today was that day.
So after he watched it, I asked my father-in-law if he had enjoyed the documentary. He said he did, but already knew much of the story. (Of course!)
However, he expressed disappointment that the documentary did not mention a group of Jesuit priests who survived the Hiroshima bomb blast without any major injuries at ground zero.
I told him this oversight was not surprising since it was, after all, a History Channel documentary but I still doubted the truth of this miraculous Hiroshima tale.
As Dad began to describe what he said was surely a Divine miracle, I hopped on Google and entered “Jesuit priests survived Hiroshima”. To my surprise, instantly there appeared numerous links to this amazing, true story now almost lost in the sands of time.
Here are the basic facts of this historical occurrence.
Photo shows the church and up the road the house where the priests lived and survived.
In Hiroshima, a group of eight Jesuit priests lived in a presbytery near the parish church less than a mile away from where the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city exploded well within the total death and devastation radius. Keep in mind this was a blast that killed 80,000 people almost instantly and up to a total of 140,000 eventually.
At Hiroshima “Little Boy” destroyed over two-thirds of the buildings.
All eight priests in their home building sat in the direct kill zone while for miles around nothing but ashes remained. They were not only “virtually unscathed from the effects of the bomb” but none of the group suffered either the ill-effects of radiation or major injuries from the bomb blast. Furthermore, while their building received some damaged, unlike others it still stood.
While it is true that small numbers of other civilians in the blast area survived, all presumably suffered, and most if not all eventually died from radiation sickness.
What is truly miraculous is that radiation sickness did not affect ANY of the Jesuits at that time or decades later.
Why were these eight priests spared in an area of total death and destruction?
It’s not miraculous at all to anyone who understands nuclear weapon physics. Nuclear weapons are not all-destroying super bombs. They are basically very powerful explosives. Their major effects are caused by concussive blast and the heat pulse. These are both primarily line of sight.
As near as I can figure from the description given by Fr. Seimes and Google Maps, the Novitiate was on the other side of a mountain spur from the hypocenter. That rock would have protected them from the direct blast effects and the radiation (both heat pulse and gamma radiation). At that time of year the prevailing winds tend to blow down the valley and out to sea, protecting them from the worst of the fallout.
Sorry, Jeff, but you evidently are thinking of the eerily similar incident that occurred in Nagasaki when it was bombed. The Catholic seminary built at the behest of St. Maximilian Kolbe was protected by a mountain from that blast. Kolbe had been advised to build the facility in what turned out to be an area that ultimately was not protected from the Nagasaki bomb, and he thankfully chose to ignore that advice.
As regards the Hiroshima miracle, you can clearly see that the area around the Jesuit facility was not protected by a mountain.
No, I had simply gotten my groups of Jesuits confused. Father Seimes was at the Novitiate, which was protected by the mountains, when the bomb went off. The “miracle” happened to a group of Jesuits who were in town. Assuming they were at approximately the same location as the Memorial Cathedral for World Peace there was a hill between them and the hypocenter (near as I can tell the picture above is taken approximately from the direction of the hypocenter). However, I doubt that hill was high enough to block the ~2,000′ airburst. If you read Fr. Seimes account it is clear that a large number of people, basically anyone indoors who wasn’t killed by structure collapse, survived the blast. The bulk of the fatalities came from being trapped when the firestorm swept through.
The priests were protected by the stout construction of their buildings (Fr. Seimes twice praised Brother Gropper for his reinforcement of their buildings) which allowed them to escape the firestorm, and their comrades who took them upwind away from the worst of the fallout and protected them from excessive radiation dose. If you wish to call that a miracle, more power to you. Just recognize that it isn’t terribly convincing to a reasonably-educated sceptic.
Jeff,
I have an BS and MS in engineering and have read Prof. Jones analysis, in which I find flaws. While the stout structure may have allowed them to survice the intensity of the blast shock, it did not shield them for the oxygen depravation coincident to the firestorm. In addition, they were subjected to prolonged radiation exposure with no after effects.
If you choose not to believe, and need to hide behind a wall of “science” do so. But do not presume that all people that are versed and studied in science will buy your explanations.
John
Something about “no proof is necessary” versus “no proof is possible” springs to mind. Nothing new under the sun.
Jeff, why would you want to dismiss what really happened? What kind of spirit ia telling you all that? I don’t think they could have survived the radiation if they survived the blast.
Jeff, Your clearly an idiot posing as someone who knows something about nothing. Some of these survivors had their clothes burnt off their bodies, yet were untouched…not only that, they survived the RADIATION that would have killed them within days, weeks, and a months.
I know miracles are something non-believers wouldn’t believe if God showed you them Himself, but, I do not even need this miracle to believe that God can do not only this but Far greater things such as heal a doubting, ignorant mind like yours!
I keep seeing the same misconception show up over and over. I’m choosing your post to reply to “Bob” because your arrogance offends me. It’s obvious you have no idea how radiation or health physics works, yet you presume to call me an idiot.
First, my credentials. I was a nuclear Machinist Mate in the US Navy for 8 years. I am currently a radiological controls technician at a naval shipyard. I am well trained in the biological effects of radiation.
Now, to the matter at hand. I’m assuming the current site of the World Peace Memorial Cathedral is approximately where the priests were. That site is just shy of 1.5 km from the hypocenter (for drooling simpletons like Bob, the hypocenter is the point on the ground underneath the detonation. It is also known as ground zero). At that range the gamma dose would be somewhere around 40-50 rem. Now, that’s a lot of dose, 8-10 times the legal limit for a radiation worker in the US, and about 300 times the normal yearly background dose. Guess what observable effects would be caused by that dose. None. That’s right, you could absorb 40 rem and the only outcome would be changes in your blood makeup, maybe some nausea (which would be unremarkable in someone who had experienced that kind of concussion). You would have to absorb 10 times the dose these priests picked up before you started seeing deaths from radiation poisoning, and 20 times before your odds of survival dropped below 20%. The fact that these priests survived the radiation is unremarkable, not miraculous.
“But Jeff,” you say, “what about cancer?” Yes, radiation exposure increases the risk of cancer, but it’s not as bad as you think. The thing about cancer is that it is random, George Burns smoked cigars for decades and died of a heart attack while people who have never even looked at a cigarette get lung cancer. Based on their received dose these priests would see their odds of dying from cancer go up by about 2%. It’s not miraculous that they died of something else.
Dear Bob:
I don’t know if you are a catholic or not, but I am a practicing catholic and, while I do not share Jeff’s beliefs, I find your answer offensive and not helpful at all. Please Jeff, do not think all christian believers are like this Bob, he gives us a bad name. Respect for a person’s beliefs is a must,and trying to understand their perspective and where they stand. There are many ways to refute his scientific arguments, which has been done here, if he still does not believe, remember it is the work of the Holy Spirit to knock down the barriers of the mundane mind and reach the heart of a person, and it is our job to pray for the conversion of Jeff.
Is it miraculous that the History Channel and other similar media (including all American ‘history’ textbooks) choose to ignore this fact?
Well, it’s not really needed to tell the story. I find it more puzzling for history books to still say Christopher Columbus discovered America, but that’s just me.
But in reply to this “Miracle” Jeff makes pretty good points for his argument against. I think it’s amusing, and a little disappointing, for people to jump to religious conclusions just because of the fact that they can’t understand something. Here is Jeff, a man who has high credentials and provides answers to your questions, and you refute them. True, it’s also not wise to assume every man is true, regardless of his position, but he still provides a better explanation than, “God did it.”
I’m 55 years old, & this is the first I’ve seen of this story.
Anson, I am 54 and first learned of the story at the age of 25 when reading the book “Fatima the Great Sign” by Francis Johnston. It was on the back cover of the book. By the way, Fatima is the only miracle in history to be announced 3 months in advance to happen on a specific day (October 13th), at a specific time (noon), and a specific place (over 70,000 eye witnesses). 3 day’s of drenching rain instantly dried up at the miracle of the sun.
#1
Your explanation is unclear. Would you be so kind as to personally demonstrate your theory?
No need. Prof. Henry Jones, Jr. successfully performed a theory-to-practice test years ago.
Thank you very much for posting this.
Jesuits.
That’s the answer right there.
Of course, there’s always Yamaguchi Tsutomu, who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
German Jesuits? That house must have been built of stone by a German engineer or perhaps the same aliens who did Stonehenge. Eight blocks from ground zero seems pretty close, even for that primitive weapon.
Wasn’t it the case that most Japanese housing was paper or something, one of the reasons the incendiary raids on Tokyo were so effective? If that were true here, it might explain why that stone structure survived at such proximity but everything else nearby disappeared.
However, I still consider it miraculous that those Jesuits survived. Same for Yamaguchi Tsutomu and the other people who survived that momentary opining in the furnaces of H E L L.
You notice that they were NOT islam Jesuits that surivived the blast.
I do not doubt that it was a miracle – that’s pretty obvious. God does miraculous things more than we know, for people of many different nationalities, ages, theologies, stations in life. As humans we want to pick everything apart and apply our very limited knowledge to explain God’s choices of who and where and when. Perhaps our focus should be more on God and what he is trying to tell us about himself. We might be surprised.
@#1 I don’t think it’s meant to be convincing to skeptics of any variety but rather encouragement to the faithful. The intriguing part of this story for me is the question that arose as I read it, “Why am I hearing about this for the first time?” Has Hollywood made a movie about this amazing story? Is it always mentioned when the saga of Hiroshima is relayed? Why not? It is the “Why not?” aspect of this that I find most intriguing.
We Bombed Japan to end a horrible war and save many lives. I am glad we did. Myra Adams you must be one of the most morally abyssal people on the face of the earth. If saving lives in the midst of a holocaust is a divine miracle why these and not many others in many other circumstance? Well I guess the stupidity of Christianity and religious people in general must be promoted by someone.
Ozzy,
Your vile attack on Ms. Adams and Christianity is what is morally abysmal. God in His wisdom has provided a skeptical mankind with much rich evidence of His existence. There have been an extraordinary number of miracles that have occurred after the Resurrection of Christ. Among these are the uncorrupted bodies of deceased saints about which even many Christians are not aware. Perhaps the best known of these are St. Bernadette of Lourdes and Padre Pio. Google “The Incorruptibles” and educate yourself, Ozzy, before it is too late for you. May God have mercy on your soul.
True story. Apparently those not spared from terrible diseases do not pray hard enough.
Ozzy, I think it is ‘morally abysmal’ for any human society to kill noncombatants. War is, as they say, hell, but ending it by purposely targeting innocents is wrong. It is not a Christian, ‘just war’ act.
There is evil and tragedy all around us, everyday. We freely cause it. It is indeed a miracle when God interrupts our freely willed crimes. If He interrupted all our sinful choices, all the time, we would everyone loose our free will to choose good or evil. But He did not create automatons.
“It is better that everyone would have a horrible death than if some small group of people would be saved from it.”
Presenting this story as something that has to convince skeptics is a bit, um, optomistic. There are plenty of Earthly explanations for the lucky escape of these men.
And frankly I think that if it IS a miracle it’s proof not of God’s love but of God’s being a completely malign egomaniac. Saving eight men as a reward for repeating a prayer over and over again while turning a blind eye to the murder of 12 million+ innocents… well, that’s not a God I’d line up to worship.
James Felix, the God you would not line up to worship is the God who inspires many to not turn a blind eye to the 50 million and more abortions in the USA alone since 1973. He is the God who inspires the ‘just war’ concept you imply in your condemnation of the death of 12 million noncombatants, who inspires opposition to sometimes even death against genocide, racism, euthanasia, sex abuse, sex trafficing, murder, slavery,and a host of other evils. He is not turning a blind eye. He created us with freedom to choose good or evil. He empowers us to fight evil. And if you will, He suffers all this evil Himself. “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to Me.” But He warns of a final accounting. When the time for choice is over.
I don’t normally resort to fisking but…
“…God who inspires many to not turn a blind eye to the 50 million and more abortions in the USA alone since 1973″
But who fails to inspire just as many more and does nothing concrete to stop the practice, here or abroad.
“He is the God who inspires the ‘just war’ concept…”
But who fails to do anything at all to enforce it (reckon he was too busy looking out for half a dozen true believers).
“…who inspires opposition to sometimes even death against genocide, racism, euthanasia, sex abuse, sex trafficing, murder, slavery,and a host of other evils.”
But again doesn’t actually, you know, do anything about it.
“He is not turning a blind eye. He created us with freedom to choose good or evil. He empowers us to fight evil.”
Ok, snark aside that one sentence is really the crux of the believer’s position. God doesn’t stop atrocities because he gave us free will, including the will to be savages. And that would be perfectly fine and even kind of logically defensible if you left it at that.
The thing is, though, you DON’T leave it at that. In an attempt to prove God exists some people point at things like this story and say “see, God protected them”. But as soon as you open that door you then have to explain why God decides to be an active player in something relatively insignificant while doing nothing to stop large-scale slaughter of innocents. It puts you in the position of having to explain why God appears as vague patterns in a grilled cheese sandwich when he could convert even the most die hard atheist by simply appearing in Times Square. And you can’t explain that, because it lacks any internal logical consistency. God can’t be both passive and active, subtle and dramatic.
I know that some people will say “yes he can be both!” and that’s fine. I learned long ago that quarreling with faith is a profitless enterprise. But as long as I’m willing to let you have your faith you have to be willing to let me have my logic, and don’t go around claiming that there’s any empirical proof of your beliefs.
James,
I think that you are missing the point. Yes, while God broadly-speaking does allow us to exercise our free will, occasionally HE steps in to give us empirical evidence of HIS existence. Miracles, if you will. Many small ones in the lives of individuals and a number of truly extraordinary “major” miracles meant to be observed by large numbers of people. What usually happens though is that miracles like those that occurred at Hiroshima, Fatima, Lourdes, Guadelupe and elsewhere shore up the faith of believers and also help to get lukewarm believers off the fence. Sadly, it is rare that the Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and even less well known skeptics have “come to Jesus” moments due to miracles. They just march loudly or quietly to their unfortunate fates in the afterlife. There is room for many more Anthony Flews to find their way though….
James,
A couple of things. First, your argument about God’s reluctance to act reflects a position of naivete toward Christianity, so your argument really doesn’t work. We have a fundamental belief in “free will.” As a result, God wants us to love him and follow him out of our free will. He gives us hints, nods and prods, but are to chose to follow leave, believe or deny.
Secondly, according to some conservative calculations, the plasma fireball was probably in the magnitude of 20,000 DegF with an intensity of 600 PSI. It would have totally deprived the atmosphere of oxygen. At the extreme limit of the range of 1.5 kilometers from epicenter, the blast temperature would have exceeded 2000 DegF with an intensity of 100 PSI. As a frame of reference, unreinforced masonry construction collapses at 3 PSA and heavily reinforced concrete and steel construction can withstand a blast up to 80 PSI. Even if the building survived the blast, the inhabitants would have died from literally burning their lungs up trying to breath in the 2000 degree oxygen deprived atmosphere.
Third, 100% of the population that survived the explosion with a
I was baptized, confirmed, went to mass and confession every week between the ages of 7 and 12 and have 12 years of Jesuit education. I’ve actually read the Bible front to back. I most certainly am not “naive” about Christianity.
“We have a fundamental belief in “free will.” As a result, God wants us to love him and follow him out of our free will. He gives us hints, nods and prods, but are to chose to follow leave, believe or deny.”
All you’ve done there is re-stated the position I’ve already taken issue with. To wit: you’re claiming that God is simultaniously active and passive. And as I’ve said if you want to believe that it’s your business and I’ve no quarrel with it. Just don’t try to claim that it’s logical, because it’s not.
“Even if the building survived the blast, the inhabitants would have died from literally burning their lungs up trying to breath in the 2000 degree oxygen deprived atmosphere.”
Um… apparently not.
Jesuit educations are not what they used to be, or maybe you just aren’t as clever as you think you are? You don’t appear to have grasped the concept of God’s permissive will vs. His ordained will. Fr Mitch Pacwa is probably a better Jesuit than the one who failed to teach you; you might learn more by reading what he wrote about it. Try http://www.newadvent.org/library/almanac_rumble.htm, scroll down a bit.
What do you want God to do to stop evil? Your wrong move, He stops you… how? Electric jolts? Paralysis? Instant death? How? He does stop evil, at times unilaterally. But usually he stops it by inspiring and enabling people to act against evil and to also proactively choose good.
God did appear in Times Square, so to speak… He appeared in Israel, incarnate, offering His own body to atone for the sins and evil of the human race he created and loves. He did appear, and reappeared after his death, empowering and sending his disciples to the “Times Square” of the ancient world, Rome, and beyond to all corners of the earth. Some believe and follow Him, others choose not to, and as He said, are condemned because “light came into the world, and they chose it not.”
My faith is logical — in a creator who is goodness and life. The proof is all around you, in yourself and in all His creation. Look around, and think logically.
“What do you want God to do to stop evil? Your wrong move, He stops you… how? Electric jolts? Paralysis? Instant death?”
Well, since you ask, I’d like to point out that He purportedly did just that kind of stuff to the Egyptians, and He did to stop an evil that was nowhere near the scale of the Holocaust. Funny how the scale of his miracles seems to diminish in direct proportion to our ability to observe them.
But hey, like I keep saying, if you want to believe he spared these guys for saying the Rosary that’s your concern, not mine. But I stand by my belief that sparing people for repeating a prayer while allowing millions of innocents to perish makes him a malign egomaniac.
“My faith is logical — in a creator who is goodness and life. The proof is all around you, in yourself and in all His creation. Look around, and think logically.”
You clearly don’t know what the words “logic” and “logical” mean. In fact the only way one can have religious faith is to commit several logical fallacies. Which really is the whole point of faith, by the way. In claiming empirical proof of your faith you actually miss the whole point of it.
The god you & Ozzy are choosing too align and spend eternity with, in hell, where it is too late for repeating prayers, will be your proof of a Just God Jesus, who understands all things and from a greater vantage point, who you will have the benefit of meeting for a moment at your Judgement right before He cast you down to the one you’ve chosen. Repent and be saved, before it’s to late. Read Luke 19:27
A quote from “Signs”: “There are two types of people, those who believe nothing is a miracle, and those who believe everything is.”
I’m a scientist, and I fall into the second category.
There were Spanish as well as German Jesuits in the same presbytery and it was not the stone building that saved them, the heat was so intense that people just evaporated away. It was, as this post states: the Rosary and Fatima that saved them.
The second miracle is that none of the priests were left with any form of radiation whereas, many thousands of Japanese were to die in the aftermath of the bomb.
This miracle is not mentioned in Japan as they have some fear that it would be seen as an indictment of their aggression and the Japanese people regard the dropping of the bomb as a genocidal experiment by the West.
“There were Spanish as well as German Jesuits in the same presbytery and it was not the stone building that saved them, the heat was so intense that people just evaporated away. It was, as this post states: the Rosary and Fatima that saved them.”
Are you saying that these people were all in the same room and some of them “evaporated” while the rosary saying ones didn’t? If that’s what you’re saying I’d love to see some actual, documentary proof. And even if that was the case (which I sincerely doubt) you have as much evidence that the rosary protected them that I have of the intervention of UFOs (that is, none whatsoever).
You’re also attaching altogether too much significance to the lack of radiation poisoning. The Jesuits were “less than a mile away”. This is an inexact measurement but it’s fair to assume that it translates into at least 1.5 kilometers. At that distance 45% of the population subsequently developed some kind of radiation poisoning, which means that 55% DIDN’T. When something happens 55% of the time the proper word to describe it is “commonplace”, not “miraculous”.
Like I said before, I have no quarrel with anyone’s faith, but stop trying to prove that it’s true. You can’t do it and only sound silly in the attempt.
Mr. Felix: Here are some facts:
In 1976, when all the eight Jesuit priests still lived, one of the survivors, a German named Father Hubert Schiffer, represented the group with this answer:
“We survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”
YOU WROTE:
“Are you saying that these people were all in the same room and some of them “evaporated” while the rosary saying ones didn’t? If that’s what you’re saying I’d love to see some actual, documentary proof. And even if that was the case (which I sincerely doubt) you have as much evidence that the rosary protected them that I have of the intervention of UFOs (that is, none whatsoever).”
As the author of this piece I was just presenting the recorded words of Father Schiffer when he spoke for the group. I am sorry that words from the primary source are so inconvenient.
Such “miracles” are inevitably of the form that only 99% of people died in a disaster when we would expect 100% to die, so the 1% were saved by a miracle. A rather wasteful way to show God’s love and mercy, wouldn’t you think? Perhaps more likely is that they were saved by a freak chance, as the lone survivor of the plane crash or the mass execution are.
Otherwise, we are supposed to assume that God, who could have prevented the bomb being dropped in the first place (say, by making the Japanese surrender before) or saved in his infinite power all of the thousands of children incinerated in the blast, decided instead to let tens of thousands die horribly so as to show his mercy to a tiny group.
You think God should just “make” people do what they should. To make the consequences of all our immoral actions just go away. You think we should be robots, or unwilling slaves forced to act in certain ways? Should God “make” you faithfully obey the 10 commandments and never choose wrongly? Or do you want the freedom to choose?
Maybe you think God should act only if a certain number of people are hurt by evil choices? If you choose a relatively “small” evil, say getting drunk, and then you, without sober consideration being possible, choose to drive and end up killing a family while driving, are those family members any less dead because your original choice was only a “small” evil? Or are they of less worth to us and God, because they are only three or four people?
Jesus says the number of hairs on our heads are known to God. And, He suffered horrifically and died to gain our redemption from our evil choices. He is bringing us through this awful place called “fallen creation” in His own good way.
I have always found the “free will” argument pretty trite. For one thing, even if it had explained evil, it would not explain suffering in general: it hardly explains things like, say, earthquakes swallowing up cities. Is God concerned with the free will of the the earth’s plates, whose movement causes earthquakes?
Second, does it explain evil? Did millions, indeed billions, of people really have to die unnecessarily and horribly throughout history just so as to have God allow their murderers to excercise their freedom of choice to be evil? And for what purpose — so that, in due time, the same murderers will suffer eternally in hell for their crimes? It seems as if God deliberately wants to maximize the amount of suffering here, doesn’t it?
Something else. I am a Jewish atheist. I do not believe in God, and in any case I do not believe Jesus was His son. But while I accept that I might be wrong, and even that I might be somewhat punished for it, I utterly refuse to believe that any God would condemn me to eternal suffering simply for not believing in him. If anything, by the way, the sort of hell described in the Talmud is something I consider possible (morally speaking): where “regular” sinners pass through a period of eleven months in hell to have their sins cleansed (hell itself is not described in that section), and then go to heaven, while great sinners are at the end of that time simply annihilated. Or perhaps Origen’s similar Christian version, which notes that nobody had infinitely sinned and therefore nobody deserves eternal punishment; so the devil himself, after a very long time, will be saved.
The Christian/Judaic faith teaches: God created the physicial world ‘good’ which means no evil wills and no death/suffering/physical tragedies, including by the way the death theorized as necessary in some theories of evolution. (God is goodness, justice, and life, and does not need to utilize death to design or create. Just an aside.) But the physical world was created after He created spirits, the angels, the highest and most powerful of whom decided to rebel against God’s rule. This the angel freely chose. There is no mitigating circumstance for them — they were fully aware, and ‘beheld the very face of God’, and so are fully culpable, so eternal damnation is just for him and all the angels who joined in rebellion. These demons also introduced death into God’s physical creation, through the weak, although good, nature of Adam and Eve who freely chose to go against God. Creation at this point suffered the consequences, as God had given humankind reponsibility for taking care of the physical creation. The creation is fallen, the consequences are with us.
Everyone of us sins, ie chooses what we know is wrong. But God is not sin. Nor is He a liar, nor is He naieve. The inherent, ever present possibility of any rational being, who is not God Himself, choosing at any time to do evil goes with God’s act of creation. But God knew this, and provided a way out from the beginning. His redemption through His Messiah, foretold by the prophets and evidenced by God’s historical intervention in national and personal lifes of ancient Israel and of the Christian Church. Not that He doesnt reveal Himself to others, but most fully first in Israel and now in the Church.
Life on earth is a tradegy, but God redeems those who want His redemption. Tell me, how else could the created world have turned out, unless no one had free will? If we do wrong, there are tragic consequences. And we inevitably choose wrongly. Do you know how God should have done differently? Though remember, to think about that you must use the mind and body He gave you, the knowledge you obtained from the generations created by God who came before you, and the technology God enabled humankind, through His gifts of intelligence and raw materials, to invent.
Consider for a moment that there are those who will want nothing to do with God (and we only get this life to make a choice — there is urgency about it, make no mistake). To them, Heaven would be a sort of Hell. “Non serviam…” There must be a place for them, no?
The free will argument says, in a nutshell, that God cannot be held responsible for evils committed by free creatures. But I’m sure He will hold free creatures responsible for their acts, and only if we posit God we can be sure of justice in this world.
With regard to the problem of hell: it’s for those who don’t want to be with God. So if you say no to God trough out your life, He won’t condemn you to spend eternity in His presence, and will grant your wish.
The terrible thing is that all men have sinned in some way, so the Christian should not make himself as some beacon of Good. His part is simply to live from grace and reflect what that means.
I’m sorry if your problems with God are mostly emotional in nature, because they need something else than arguments. If you want to find out more, see a local pastor and ask him the hard questions.
Did anyone else notice that the second aircraft as the video starts was not a B-29, but a B-17?
God is three persons in One God. Love. We were made to know, to love and to serve God. To spend our lives ignoring God by choice would correlate to spending eternity without God – our choice. Just like darkness is the absence of light. Hell is the absence of God.
We have a limited view of the world. We see suffering as all evil and as unnecessary. In fact, suffering isn’t always evil. Suffering can be good. For example, someone trying to lose weight will deny themselves food. Our weakness turns our hearts towards God. Our lack of something. Unfortunately, our arrogance and pride can prevent us from turning to God, so he allows bad things to happen to us. Why? It is always for greater good. People in darkness want to be in the light. They will seek it out. Our goal is to be in relationship with God.
We think that death is bad. It is not. Life is not about this world. Death is only a birth into eternal life. So, God does not see death of innocent people as bad but only a stepping into eternity with Him. We see death as always bad. It is not. The death of thousands of innocents is not seen the same way to God as it is to us. We see it as bad. God, I am sure, welcomed many into his presence that day.
For him to save 8 God fearing men in the midst of total destruction is a sign of God’s power. He can save anyone from anything if he chooses.
We see things in a very very very limited way. God is in control of each persons life. He knows what each person needs and uses events differently for each person. Yet, it is our free response that will dictate our outcome. He gives us the chance to respond. Some choose hate. Some choose love. My dad laid his life down for our country by serving in WWII. The war changed him. It made him a better man. A serving man. A man of love. Some came back with hate. It is our choice.
True story. Mother lived to be 98 years plus a few months. Prayed the Rosary of Our Blessed Mother daily. Had stage four cancer twenty/twenty-five years before her death. No medical treatments but herbs grown in our area. Cancer left her body. She had osteo of the spine, few complaints, and less meds from doctors, and gave up her soul to Mother Mary peacefully. Pray the Rosary for salvation. True story.