Birth Deformities

[Ouroboros]

I think that is what the whole thing boils down to, mental torment.  If you are told that God is refining you for your own good, you dread and fear what kind of thing God will do next in the name of love.  It's like being a battered spouse, except the abuser is invisible, unpredictable and capable of anything.  You can't escape or hide, not even in your thoughts.  At its core, it's really just a form of paranoia inflicted on people through a socially acceptable form of group delusion.

 

Agree, we had a big car accident and four of my five kids got injured and my wife as well. My three oldest all had broken spine, but the youngest of them had the spine broken in three places, injured kidneys, pancreas, lung, shoulder nerves and many other things. He went under 24 critical surgeries over 2 months.

 

You could say that it was the beginning on the road away from faith.

 

With all the prayer that was involved in this he should be walking today, with complete intestants, but that's not the case. Many other things happened after this, and I realized that my love for my family was greater than Gods. So I lost all respect for Gods actions in my family's life. I asked him to lay it on me and not my family, but that was not how "he" wanted it. So with everything summed up, God is either a vile maniac, or is not involved in our life, or he just plainly doesn't exist.

[Onyx]

Have anybody heard of Harlequin fetuses? Or cleft palate babies? Or teotcama (a baby parasite in a baby in the womb.)?

 

All of these can be extremely scary, particularly,teotcama. When I first saw them, I screamed in horror. The teotcama mentioned, was a ball of hair and skin and underdeveloped arms and legs.

It was scarier than any horror movie I've seen.

 

So there you go.

[Guest JP1283]

Tomorrow on Oprah they will have the baby who was born with two heads. Just a head's up! (No pun intended)

[Reach]

 

Warning: This is not for the faint of heart but this pediatric pathology site has photographs and brief descriptions of some of the deformities we have been discussing. Don't click on the link if you don't want to see the photos. This is the real thing.

 

Pediatric-Perinatal Pathology Index

[Amethyst]

If you are told that God is refining you for your own good, you dread and fear what kind of thing God will do next in the name of love.

 

Exactly. This is what I was told after the fire by many family members -- that it was "for a reason," etc. That kind of thing drives me up that wall. What kind of god tortures his people like that? To torture a friend by making him commit suicide by fire to die that way, to make me a better person? WTF? I can't possibly see how that kind of thinking could be any more selfish than that.

[Abiyoyo]

Reach,May 10 2005, 07:39 AM]

The Christian Answers:

 

1.) God created them like that. Who are we to question the Almighty?

 

This is a rather tough subject for any Christian to "give the way", so to speak. Not getting off of the subject, but, What about in Chronicles when David took the census and angered the Lord againist them and he sent an angel of the Lord to slay many? David even cryed out to the Lord to stop, for these people meditate upon You and are none the harm. This is a tough thing to swallow as well, in similarity of happenings or natural occurences and Gods "responsiblity to His proclaimed creations".

 

I do believe that God does things at certain times and tough situations are put upon us for many reasons. I really cant say that God is God, and thats the way it is. I wouldnt perceive any of my Christian peers saying this either. I do know that we all are held accountable for what we know, and our works as believers or nonbelievers, accordingly.

 

I know that Jesus mentioned in the Gospels of how we must become like little children, for theirs is the Kingdom. This tells me that children are seemingly, guareenteed to go to the Kingdom. If a lot of the birth deformities are of beggining youth, then that could possibly apply.

 

It also mentions that every "man" has their appointed time of His ways, and living for them. As far as the pain, suffering, grief, death, and all other traumatic occurances that are involved with deformities, I could not begin to relate. It would probualy make me think about "why" God let this be. I tend to (some would say fundify) put my logic toward Isaiah, "his thoughts, paths, ways are not our ways". Again though, I could not begin to imagine the bearing of this anguish. I would lose hope trying to keep hope if I did lose it.

[pandora]

I didn't realize it at the time...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fascinating....

 

But a Christian would say he's demon possessed. And I think most Christians who don't believe in demon possession would conform their beliefs to either reject Christianity or believe in demon possession.

 

In my ab psych course a few years back, they told us that MPD doesn't exist in any form... I am not doubting his condition, I just wonder what the medical community thinks of it/calls it.

[Amethyst]

In other words, that is blind faith.

 

You can have hope without religion. I realize it's tough to think about, but you can. Even if you take an atheistic PoV and say that there is nothing after death except our molecules being turned into stardust, at least we would still become part of the universe around us in a way. That, to me, would be more beautiful and poetic than any exclusive religious paradise. I personally think we can't possible know, but I don't think that it is nothing, even though it seems like it.

 

I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that god wanted my former housemate to kill himself by fire and nearly kill me in the process. Especially since traditional Christianity says those who commit suicide go to hell. It was by sheer luck that I got out -- I was sleeping at the time and my window broke due to the change in air pressure. If the window hadn't broken, I might have died from carbon monoxide poisoning or when the ceiling fell down shortly after I left (I had a basement bedroom).

 

That is a very sadistic version of god, IMHO. I can't believe in the existence of a deity who would do something like that, much less worship that deity. I can believe in a life force, but not an intelligent being who would torture people in that manner simply to get them to believe, to be a better person, fulfill some kind of destiny -- probably nothing more than getting married, having kids, and growing old like any other person, or whatever.

[Lokmer]

In my ab psych course a few years back, they told us that MPD doesn't exist in any form... I am not doubting his condition, I just wonder what the medical community thinks of it/calls it.

 

MPD/DID is a very hotly debated issue in psychological medicine, not in the least because a great number of the better-documented cases appear to be therapist-induced. In addition, it's been an area of extremely sloppy diagnosis, with everything from people with active imaginations to other organic disorders (such as schizophrenia) being diagnosed as MPD when it has been the pop-psych flavor-of-the-month (as it was for several years during the 70s and again in the early 90s).

 

There are a lot of psychiatrists who believe that the condition as described does not exist, others that believe it's an umbrella category where a bunch of different disorders are shoved because they aren't well understood and bear a passing resemblence to each other, and still others who are working to prove a neurological basis for the condition and to define it far more carefully than is done in the DSM IV.

 

My friend is an active student of neurology and is working on a project to compile a variety of neurolgical experiments done on himself at various medical schools in order to provide the field with a concrete basis for describing the condition and the active diagnosis. His working hypothesis is that the brain learns to deposit memories in different areas of the brain as a defensive reaction to threats to a forming identity, and that it thus only happens in children who endure identity-oriented abuse when they are three or four years old (exorcisms, for example, or being beaten for believing they are a different gender than they manifestly are, or similar types of severe identity-oriented abuse).

 

My own opinion on the nature of his illness is reserved. His hypothesis bears out as plausible with what I've been able to learn about neurology (a new interest, sparked particularly by meeting him), but I'm very interested to see the results of a series of MRIs and PET scans done under contolled conditions over the course of several months (something that I'm attempting to help him secure, which at this point basically amounts to trying to find a Ph.D. student in neurology who needs a project). I do know that, regardless of the cause, the functional reality is that he is nineteen distinct people, with different names, different eyeglass persrciptions, different gaits, and different skin conditions (some of them have acne, some of them do not). I'm very interested in learning more about neurology and about the possible natures of the condition.

 

Is it possible that it's a strange form of delusional hysteria that is habituated to the point where he can't tell the difference between the delusional identities and the reality of being a single entity? Certainly. But the extent of his lucidity in every other area, and the differing areas of expertise posessed by the different personalities, lead me to be skeptical (though not outright-dismissive) of this as an explaination. Moreover, unlike the MPD cases that routinely come under fire in the medical literature, he does not generate new personalities ad nauseum (either under theraputic care or not).

 

So, it's an interesting puzzle to say the least. And, he's a delight to work with and know, and a goodly number of good friends all in one convinient package

 

I hope that I've been helpful!

Thanks for asking

-Lokmer

[thomas]

I suspect in heaven, God's omnipotence is immediately obvious at all times. I think there is a difference between heaven and earth however - (or else why would Jesus speak of the two as he did in relationship to the will of God?)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

To put it in black/white there are to main lines of Christian theology.

 

1.

Calvinists basically say, that everything is under God's control, but since the love and grace of God is limited to those predestined for salvation, God is free to treat the rest of humanity as garbage. So therefore, a lot of bad things can happen to those not elected, including birth deformities and eternal suffering in hell. All this happens according to Calvinism to bring glory to God.

 

2.

"Free will" theology (Wesleyan Arminianism, Open Theism etc.) basically say, that God as made a creation, that He cannot control. The creation has been given its own autonomy (free will, natural laws etc.), and although God is in the process of winning the creation back to do His will, the process is not yet complete. So God cannot be blamed, when bad things happens. But in the end everything will be just wonderfull, except that some people will be lost in ths process and end up in eternal hell.

 

As it can be seen, these two lines of theology have very different ideas about the doings of God, but they both try to explain why evil happens and why God in the end will send some people to hell. (The doctrine of hell seems to be the common denominator in most versions of Christianity)

 

But non og these two lines make sense. "Free will" theology is just as corrupt as Calvinism. Autonomy of the creation does not take the ultimate responsibilty away from God. It seems much more likely that the Christian God does not exist.

[Ouroboros]

This is a rather tough subject for any Christian to "give the way", so to speak. Not getting off of the subject, but, What about in Chronicles when David took the census and angered the Lord againist them and he sent an angel of the Lord to slay many? David even cryed out to the Lord to stop, for these people meditate upon You and are none the harm.  This is a tough thing to swallow as well, in similarity of happenings or natural occurences and Gods "responsiblity to His proclaimed creations".

 

Well, that's the reason to some of us don't believe anymore. If God was angry with David, and then he killed other men? The same thing as my son is paraplegic, because God was angered with me? It makes me strongly believe I'm a better and more loving father to my kids, because I wouldn't hurt them, than God that hurts someone innocent because he's angry with someone else.

 

Then maybe 9/11 happened because God was so angry at Bush! That's how the OT would've explained it. Probably Bush have some unknown, secret sin that cause God to do this. Maybe he's masturbating when Laura is not around. Why didn't God punish us when Clinton had some "none"-sex with Monica?

 

Things happens because they happens. It's the interaction between entities of greater or less intelligence, a chaos system that is too complex for us to comprehend, but nevertheless just a clock-work system.