<p>So I'm taking Catholic Morality this year at my Roman Catholic school. My theology teacher told us that all bad things are the result of free will, including cancer and other diseases. When I argued it, he told me that any illness IS caused by your choices, for example, if you get cancer, it is either because you chose to live in an unsafe environment or your relatives did. I then argued it by telling him I have idiopathic epilespy where there is no known culprit, I went to a geneticist, had 3 MRIs, and 2 EEGs. He still says it's because of free will. This irks me.</p>
<p>You’re blaming the church because you’re taught by a loon?</p>
<p>That would irk me too. </p>
<p>I went to a Catholic school up until 2nd grade and I was one of those people who always asked the annoying questions that the theology teacher dismissed.</p>
<p>Some teachers…</p>
<p>Did he respond to that argument? Maybe he thinks it’s not a bad thing if it’s not caused by free will (the contrapositive). There’s a difference between bad things and suffering.</p>
<p>I was actually thinking about free will, in the religious sense today. I came up with the same idea as your teacher. The thing that got me thinking about it was the Sims. I was reading some Sims forum posts and someone had written “Why do Sims get to have such great lives? I wish our lives were like that LOL.” My immediate thought was that there’s no one in charge who cares. Then I was like, duh, silly, God cares.</p>
<p>But then, I wondered, why does He let bad things happen to us. My final thought goes along with my belief that God “cannot” know the future because it does not exist. (Him knowing the future would obviate our free will, and He must, being omniscient, know all that exists, so it must not exist. There are also some general metaphysical problems with the existence of the future, but I haven’t looked into those much.) He chose to give us free will rather than a perfect existence. So, we contract diseases, die tragically, become addicted, suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, fardels bear, grunt and sweat under a weary life (LOL!), etc., etc., because we have free will rather than perfect lives. </p>
<p>My explanation, unlike your teacher’s, does not put the onus on you or any one else who lives (or dies) under unfortunate circumstances. It’s my assertion that these situations are brought about by the fact of our free will and the merciful lack of God’s overbearing guidance, not by the choices we make with that will.</p>
<p>It’s possible that he wants you to accept the genetic illness as a fact of life rather than to treat it as a bad thing, because it’s not caused by free will.</p>
<p>I like your explanation, Millan, but how does the fact of our free will bring us diseases? Is it from the imperfection that comes with the free will?</p>
<p>Oh, that sucks… My Morality class was actually pretty far from dogmatic teachings as far as a religion class can go (although I doubt what your teacher is telling you is part of Catholic dogma). When we got to free will, we discussed the moral and ethical philosophy behind it (Kant, Kierkegaard, Kohlberg, Mill, etc.), as well as a few postulations based on physics. </p>
<p>It’s possible that he just doesn’t want to attribute bad things to God’s will.</p>
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<p>The obvious answer is that the Sims is a simplified world where mistakes tend not to have drastic repercussions and there are no intrinsic limitations on what you can accomplish. For instance, if you have two girlfriends, invite them both over to your house and start making out with one of them, the negative effects in the Sims would likely be only temporary. Also, any Sim can be an athlete if they just spend enough time working out and making friends; not so in real life.</p>
<p>I also can’t just type rosebud and !;!;!;!;!;!;!;! if I want to go shopping.</p>
<p>Yes, XRCatD. As we have free will and our lives are not dictated to the letter by a perfect being, there must be imperfection in our lives.</p>
<p>If I were more into suffering for connection with God, I might say that all this suffering is a struggle to lose our free will, reach theosis (Christian nirvana/moksha, essentially), and be one with God, and that we need to suffer to reach theosis because of Original Sin, but I’m not really into that.</p>
<p>TCBH: As a step further into your answer, I think it was because the creators designed life in The Sims to be fair.
Generally, games where certain players have intrinsic unchangeable unfair disadvantages tend to quickly lose popularity and die out.</p>
<p>TCBH: Well, I guess what I was really thinking about was the fact that the lives of my Sims, the ones I play, are so much better than the lives of others in the game. There do seem to be limits on what other Sims accomplish, and their lives suck in comparison to the lives of my Sims. I guess I was really wondering, why are the lives of my Sims so awesome? Obviously, because some being who is, in comparison to them, omnipotent and omniscient, basically godlike (if I do say so myself [rolleyes]), is meticulously controlling ever detail of their lives. If someone godlike, ie God, were meticulously controlling every detail of our lives, I think we’d be as happy as Sims are. Not that I’m basing this idea on the Sims; it follows logically. A perfect being runs your life —> you have a perfect life; a perfect being chooses to let you run your life —> your life inherently has problems. It was just the Sims that got me thinking about it.</p>
<p>Also, from the cheat codes you listed, I can tell you play Sims 1. Sims 3, which is what I was talking about above, is very different. /nerd</p>
<p>I’m sure God puts the people he messed up on in swimming pools and takes the ladders away</p>
<p>Some of them will learn to swim…</p>
<p>Obviously, this being would have to choose to give you a good life, but I see your point.</p>
<p>Lol, this reminds me of a pretty funny article I found somewhere about a guy who was running unethical tests on his Sims to see how they’d react in different situations. </p>
<p>Found the link: [Exploring</a> the Mysteries of the Mind with the Sims 3 | Cracked.com](<a href=“http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3]Exploring”>Exploring the Mysteries of the Mind with the Sims 3 | Cracked.com)</p>
<p>But they can never escape. They just swim whilst he hits the fastforward button until their energy meter runs out and they drown</p>
<p>Maple, that’s really pessimistic.</p>
<p>Yeah it’s definitely the teacher who has the problem, not the church or Catholicism. At least in this case.</p>
<p>I’ve played a bit of Sims 2 but never Sims 3. The original was really awesome. Anyway, in the first two, other people never actually did anything, so I guess I can’t really understand what you’re saying.</p>
<p>My brother used to murder people in Roller Coaster tycoon. He would draw the entire crowd into a cave then change the water level. </p>
<p>I just murdered a couple of my Sims. I drowned one in a pool after making him obese and having him fail HS. I burned the other one to death in the back yard. For the lulz.</p>
<p>Other people do stuff in Sims 3, like some of my children randomly have half siblings whom their fathers adopted (all of my Sims sleep around). And people die. But it’s not all that much.</p>
<p>I guess Sims have “gods” who are omnipotent and omniscient, but they’re missing the whole beneficent/merciful part.</p>
<p>I used to make the bathroom prices ridiculously high in Roller Coaster tycoon. And in retaliation, fat people would sit on my expensive benches and break them.</p>