Dear Steve (and anyone else still following this thread)

Firstly have we met - I am not sure? Apologies and hello if we have. I would be interested to know whether your comment is from experience of seemingly random, and very painful suffering or trauma that comes from the natural world? If it is then I have respect for what you are saying as I know that if one of my relatives had been caught up in the Tsuami for instance I would be unable to say what you have. I have friends who have suffered terribly in life and found the easy answers of blame Adam and Eve do not work.

I agree that many things that happen to us are just chance - things which happen that we cannot explain. These can often not be laid at Gods door, indeed sometimes we even grow and develop through these experiences and discover God. This is often part of the painful fabric of life. My question has been - if you follow my comments through the thread, is when things are caused by what is weaved into the fabric of the created order - see my comments on how that leaves us only with God unloving or not all powerful. The Bible was written at a time when people attributed things to the displeasure of the gods - now we know that they are caused by tectonic plates moving etc. I have not willingly bought anything on the world - I have come to live in a world through no choosing of my own when, you seem to be implying, that I am somehow responsible for instance that a friend of mine's daughter was born with, and died of, cystic fybrosis in unbelievable pain. She did not willing do anything! I am afraid that well we thank God when things go well but when our lives turn out shitty and our observation of a suffering world is shitty then God is out the picture does not work for me. I agree that the world often reminds us of our smallness, our inability to control the natural world and that we are but one part of the cycle of life - from the earth and given back to it - but that does not lead me to a God who somehow is ultimately in control of it all and who created with a faulty design. It might lead me to a God who is with us in the world.

Yours

Tim