If you were God...

[_asbestosman]

Use the Justice Zone idea from Red Dwarf (start at 5:20 warning--language, and unkind references to the mentally challenged). It's kind of like the hot stove, only with British comedy.

[_zeezrom]

How do you know there aren't fairies living in Central Park?

We know there are because we see them on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbT9XsJWXIw

[_Quasimodo]

If you were God, (just imagine for a second), and wanted to protect children from abuse, what would you do?

Enlightenment. If I were God (and who's to say that I'm not :) ) I would bestow enlightenment on all beings. I've had some experience observing child abuse in my past. It always seemed to come down to ignorance on the part of the abusers.

Making people aware of the damage that had been done to them and the damage that they do to children might help solve some of the problems.

Enlightenment would solve a plethora of other problems, as well.

[_Inconceivable]

Great question, TD.

As I have mentioned before, we have it within ourselves to be the God we want to be. I do realize our power is limited.

There is a passage in the fictitious Book of Mormon where there is peace during the visit of Jesus and for the next hundred or so years. I believe whoever actually wrote the book was inspired (and no, I don't think it was a Nephite or Smith). I think they were on to something.

If I were a God, I would be approachable. I would impart my peace in a way that there would be no question as to my intent. There are so many on this planet that just need to be taught to understand the principle of charity. Perhaps we shouldn't lose it so quickly as we grow to adulthood. I get the pain and sorrow thing. But to compensate, I would give my children on earth greater powers of healing, forgiveness, love and prophecy. I would occasionally be around to demonstrate how it worked too. I wouldn't forsake the hundreds of millions just because they have no clue about how to call upon me for sustenance.

I wouldn't have a favored people either that were taught they had divine entitlement over others.

Oh yeah, I would also give each of my children a beeper for their car keys so I could spend less time helping to find them when they're lost.

Boink. That was fun. Now it's time to be back to reality.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Going off Truth Dancer’s criteria and I was God and I wanted to eliminate child abuse in a way that does so while maintaining the Moral Agency that Mormons often crave in their theology…

Of all possible worlds, I would actualize the world in which all agents freely choose to not abuse children. For a moral choice to be free (something impossible, in my opinion), there would be no prior forces that would influence someone in any way to choose to abuse children and not to abuse children, so the chance of someone abusing or not abusing is equiprobable, all God would have to do is pick the possible world in which no agent decided to abuse a child.

Of course, we don’t live in a world where a person as the moral agency Mormons speak of in their beliefs, but it is a metaphysical possibility that such worlds that I’ve described could exist.

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. God is the creator of everything that exists.

My thinking here, Jen, is that if a God truly had those attributes, his creations would have the same. Since we, as humans, are capable of unspeakable cruelties as well as wonderful goodness, then God is not omnibenevolent. [If--big if] we were created spiritually from some raw intelligent matter of some sort. This raw material was apparently flawed, the creations had themselves a war right there in heaven under God's nose, the worst of them were weeded out and cast from his presence. God couldn't tell what was what with the rest of us, so he put us on this planet in mortal bodies to let us murder each other (sometimes at His own command) sort ourselves out according to His idea of what is acceptable to bring back to himself. In this view, God allows cruelties in order to let the flawed spirits sink into condemnation and the good ones to rise to the top like cream on the milk bucket (although what's really good and what's really bad gets so confused that we can't distinguish what is cream and what are flies floating around, so the apologists come along and make things worse with their efforts ... okay, I'm going off on a tangent).

Or, this god of agency, the god who participates in the universe, simply doesn't exist. That seems quite obvious and preferable to me.

What I'm trying to get to here, is that a god who participates in the universe, who has set up a system of reward/punishments, is incapable of protecting children or any other part of his creation. Furthermore, he doesn't even want to. By the fact that he put us here, whether it's the Mormon scheme or the EV's scheme, he has created mortals whose nature includes cruelty and those creations are set up to fail.

I'm in a hurry but wanted to put something down on this idea, and say hi, and I'm so glad that your foster child has found his way to you.

[_truth dancer]

Hi Lulu,

Or, this god of agency, the god who participates in the universe, simply doesn't exist. That seems quite obvious and preferable to me.

Me too!

I'm happy to "see" you... we've gotta chat!

~td~

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

God?

Uh. Do no harm unto others.

Thanks.

V/R
Dr. Cam

[_mentalgymnast]

OK, let's just say that if you were a God and wanted to create a world where children were not the victims of cruelty and suffering and abuse, (however you want to define this), and had the power to do so, what would you do?

The idea that requiring the abuse of children to make this plan work just doesn't work for me! :-) In other words, the "plan of happiness," seriously is not about happiness for many children.

~td~

OK, I'll play. One option would be to have an angel or other heavenly sentinel of some kind intervene every time a human baby is born and take it away forcefully from the parents and put the baby in an institution overseen by heavenly overseers on assignment to earth. The babies in this institution would get 24/7 loving care and attention to all of their needs. Any moral, spiritual, physical, or mental challenge would be expertly maneuvered by these perfectly trained overseers so that there would be absolutely no risk of harmful traits developing within the minds and hearts of the residents that could lead them to future acts or thoughts that could lead to harm and/or abuse to their fellow beings.

The birth parents would necessarily be out of the picture totally. If they were to be given visiting rights or any other contact with their children there is always the possibility/risk that some sort of psychological or even physical impairment or harm could come to the child through unforeseen circumstances. Unless, and I suppose this is a possibility, the parents were only able to visit their children and communicate through a glass barrier and have all of their communications pre-screened by those in charge.

When children grow to adulthood within this facility/institution they would then be put into a parent and/or adult protection program by which they would be taken and located someplace in the world where there is no possible way that the parents or other adults with moral agency could interact with them and do some type of irreparable or unforeseen harm. After all, this could result in the effects of abuse.

Unfortunately, since they would be on their own at this point with no angel by their side to protect/help them there's the possibility that through unwise choices these grown children might bring harm to themselves or others through this pesky thing we refer to as moral agency. Abusive relationships could occur. Physical harm, even murder is a possibility. Psychological or spiritual abuse/harm shouldn't be overlooked.

On second thought, if I was God I would just keep them all chlldren in a sanitized, strictly supervised institutional facility with lots of love and hugging. Some of that love and hugging would need to be directed towards procreation as the children reach child bearing years in order to keep the species alive of course.

But I'm thinking it would be less risky to not let them out.

That's what I'd do if I were God with all power. No one could go astray.

Regards,
MG

[_thews]

The problem with the premise is the quantifiable definition of pain. Pain can encompass many forms... what about these/this person:



When you define pain, pain must exist. If pain exists in hell, then we're already exposed to hell. Since I don't believe in hell in teh afterlife, what I equate pain to encompass must be felt by someone. Is life fair... no. Do the scales balance? ...no. My point is that when you awake from a nightmare and realize it was a dream, the pain isn't so real.