No, god did not give Madoff cancer. To even ask that question marks the speaker as an addlebrained, delusional simpleton living in a fantasy world. Everyone knows that it was the tooth fairy that gave him cancer.

Mark says "God will cure us if we deserve it.." and "We are free to pursue our wills on this earth with a guarantee that he will not interfere with our lives."

Speaking for god is easy. Whatever you feel like saying at the moment. No matter if it's contradictory.

HumanSimpleton

For your "open space":

..and if he interfered with all of that, he would be interfering with our free will that he promised us.

We are free to pursue our wills on this earth with a guarantee that he will not interfere with our lives. He will, however, judge us upon what we do while we are here.

What has happened to Jaycee is terrible, and I pray for her recovery.

As for her abductor, he should pay attention to this scripture: “…Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matt 25:40.

He will receive his just punishment. In the mean time, we should protect our children from him by confining him to prison for the rest of his life.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

No, God was too busy watching Jaycee Lee Duggard raped for 18 years. He had no time to give Madoff cancer, when he was given Jaycee's living nightmares his fullest attention.

But it was God's will that she would be saved. Probably figured out how to pray sincerely.

Just as it was God's will that she be kidnapped, and raped repeatedly till she squeezed out her rapist's children, and then made to live in tents in the backyard.

God watched this.

But Christians can sleep in peace tonight thanking their God for the miraculous return of Jaycee, and his divine patience and attention-span as he watched a eleven year old brutalized by a convicted sex-offender for eighteen years, and his will be done by the birth of two children, one after four years of sexual assaults on a eleven year-old.

Damn, that God sure can watch horror movies with rapt attention. Probably enjoyed it too.

Hallelujah!

[space left below for the apologists to comment on how the rapist will get his due in God's court, how Jaycee will be unraped and things set right in heaven, and how God works in mysterious ways...]

Concerning the Rabbi's assertion of the possibility that God might have given Madoff cancer, notwithstanding his concession in the last paragraph of the post, in his zeal to attack any presumption of God, Spencer1 wrote:

"...is an excellent example of the immediate and inevitable consequences of the ridiculous assumption that some supreme supernatural being exists."

I'll just say this: Spencer1...ah...never mind.

Colinnicholas

Heavenly Father (God) is NOT the kind of father that child services were developed for.

He loves us, he does not abuse us.

We are here to prove our worthiness to return to his house, not to be voodoo pincushions to his every whim.

God will cure us if we deserve it, but he will not cause us problems any more than you would your own children. That would be interfering with our free will and making us just rats in a maze to be toyed with.

Heavenly father loves his children (us), he does not cause us harm.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

The only way folks get cancer is if the good lord thinks it's necessary. He's that kinda god. He can give anyone anything...cancer, syphilis, smallpox, aids, heart attacks and strokes. That's why we have to pray to him all the time to stay on god's good side and live a wonderful life, and put lots of money in the collection box. Praise be.

Hmmm, James210 and Carstonio, the probability waves have returned. Are they crashing these blog beaches in the singularity or are they undulating separately? Ahh, the strangeness of blogging and bloggers!!!!

It is poetic justice that Madoff now has cancer, however that is not an act of god.

If god were to give someone cancer for the crimes he committed, then there would be no point in the final judgment for he would have already paid for his sins. He would also be interfering with our free will.

However he is watching how we deal with him.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

If God gave Bernie Madoff cancer, why does He also give little kids cancer? They've done nothing to deserve it. I'm a firm believer in karma, but sometimes this really pushes it.

Hirschfield's impossibly tortured and twisted logic re the possibility that god gave Madoff cancer, is an excellent example of the immediate and inevitable consequences of the ridiculous assumption that some supreme supernatural being exists.

Msh41, one can interpret the Eden story any number of ways. To me, it seems like an allegory for the development of human sentience, including the awareness of mortality and the capacity for moral choice, although the allegory puts very negative spins on both of those developments.

The question is what did the ancient Hebrews intend with the story. Were they telling a make-believe parable to illustrate some aspect of the human experience? Were they telling a history account as they understood or believed it? Or did they have some other meaning in mind?

James10, I like your point, except for the apple part. The idea that the fruit in question was an apple is a modern one. The ancient Hebrews did not have apples, and the word is not in Genesis. It's the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which may still be a poor reason to punish all mankind for all eternity, but at least it has some mythical heft.

"Take for example Adam and Eve and the apple. Prior to the apple episode Adam and Eve were naked and apparently allowed to do whatever came into their minds. God gave them one rule, don't eat the apple. Seems like a rather arbitrary rule. But they eat the apple and for that, all of humanity for all time is stained with original sin. Doesn't seem like justice to me, but then I'm not God either.

Aside: Ironically, we have the expression "An apple a day keeps the doctor away". Wouldn't it be logical to have a dietary law that prohibited apples? Instead they [The Chosen People] came up with a dietary law that you couldn't eat fish without scales. Seems like a slap in the face to God doesn't .... "You told Adam and Eve not to eat apples so we're going to eat one every day."

Maybe that's why the world is so screwed up. God is punishing us for eating apples. Which makes more sense than punishing all of humanity for all time for eating one stinking apple.
"

So basically, instead of paying for his own end of life medical treatment, the US taxpayers are going to be footing the bill....I do believe Madoff has gotten the last laugh.

God gave him SEC. They are the cancer and we all have it.

"God didn't give Bernie Madoff cancer: Bernie Madoff's evil gave Bernie Madoff cancer."

Even that kind of conclusion is immoral, because it implies that anyone who gets cancer must be a bad person or must have deserved it.

God didn't give Bernie Madoff cancer: Bernie Madoff's evil gave Bernie Madoff cancer.

What does Hirschfield mean by "God's presence in our lives"? Is he talking about a sensory perception or an extrasensory perception? Hypothetically, if one had zero knowledge of any religion, how would one determine if one or more gods exist?

God does work in mysterious ways.

Take for example Adam and Eve and the apple. Prior to the apple episode Adam and Eve were naked and apparently allowed to do whatever came into their minds. God gave them one rule, don't eat the apple. Seems like a rather arbitrary rule. But they eat the apple and for that, all of humanity for all time is stained with original sin. Doesn't seem like justice to me, but then I'm not God either.

Aside: Ironically, we have the expression "An apple a day keeps the doctor away". Wouldn't it be logical to have a dietary law that prohibited apples? Instead they [The Chosen People] came up with a dietary law that you couldn't eat fish without scales. Seems like a slap in the face to God doesn't .... "You told Adam and Eve not to eat apples so we're going to eat one every day."

Maybe that's why the world is so screwed up. God is punishing us for eating apples. Which makes more sense than punishing all of humanity for all time for eating one stinking apple.

I would go much further than Hirschfield and say that it's morally wrong to believe in divine punishment and reward. If a person believes that Madoff's cancer is justice, the person implicitly believes that if he had the power to give Madoff cancer, he would do so and be justified in doing so.

The gospel song "Farther Along" asks why the "good" suffer and the "wicked" prosper. That song and Hirschfield both make the mistake of assuming that there is some purpose for these unknown to us. We have no evidence for such a purpose, and it's pointless to waste time longing for it. The universe is not a just place. All the evidence and observations we have suggest that the universe is indifferent to human existence and human emotion. We must we must simply accept that and work toward justice toward the limits of our abilities.

I tend to see it the opposite way, Madoff played the game beautifully. All Ponzi schemes are doomed to fail, at some point you won't find another sucker and the recession probably provided that scenario.

But if he was already ill, why not take chances? why not just push things knowing you'll get exposed sooner? (Thinking that it was the thrill of the chase that spurred him on also.)

All I know is he is always gaming the situation, true or not, he's doing it again.

"...understanding of God as nothing more than a projection of our own desire for control."

During my lifetime, only Gandhi, and now you, made that observation.

Humans are not so difficult to figure out, are we?

Religion gives believers mental cancer. Atheists are largely immune.

Sure, God gives everyone cancer - what a guy.

I wouldn't waste a CyberKnife on him.
http://www.cyberknife.com/
He could get knifed you know.

Silly rabbit. God doesn't give people cancer. Madoff gave himself cancer. Bad things happen to good people, too. Do you Huckabees really think God punishes people in this way?

If so, I look forward to God destroying your megachurches in the Bible Belt with tornados and giving Limbaugh kidney disease as a punishment for your collective Abrahamic intolerance.

Gee, is he going to escape punishment the way Ken Lay did?