[Bond]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Well like I said before - if I thank God that I am able to do well at sports, I'm relatively diminishing my own role in practicing, and devoting __ days a week to practice, and __ day a week to a game. I wasn't born good at Soccer and Hockey. I practiced. I made myself better at the games, I trained by playing and studied by reading and watching. And if you break that down to "Well God gave you the abilities in the first place", that just completely diminishes the human aspect from it entirely.

I think you're confusing two different concepts. Your analogy is basically a derivative of the intelligent and / or accomplished issue that I'll address below. Having the ability to do something and practicing, studying, etc. at it are two different things. The first is inherent, the second takes practice and repetition. I don't see how thanking God for the first detracts at all from human endeavors at the second.

That's the one part of religion I have a really hard time trying to justify.
because like I said, if I say "Thank God he made me really intelligent", that's like insinuating I never had to study my whole life, like I never had to read or attempt to constantly learn. It removes my role of working hard for being what I am.

Again, being inherently intelligent and being accomplished at something are two different things. The first does not necessitate the second.

Well now I guess it comes down to what extactly did God create?

Did God create the Universe, and everything in it, or did God create the Universe, and simply humans and only humans?

Insinuating God didn't create viruses seems to go against the belief of creationism itself. if God didn't create viruses, and viruses are technically living things, that means there was life before god, or life aside from God. So then if not God, what created those viruses? They must have evolved from something. They couldn't have just popped up out of nothingness, unless of course, God willed it.

That's not what I'm trying to get at. What I said previously:

Are you supposing that God has interjected Himself into history to create diseases, or are you saying that God created the universe, and hence created the environment in which diseases have the ability to form? These are two completely different things.

In the first option, God has purposefully interjected Himself into human history to create diseases (a parallel of creationism in which God interjects himself into world history to create humans). In the second option, God merely created a universe that has the potential to breed diseases such as cancer, polio, etc. The first is an active form of creation, and the second is a passive form of creation. I think they entail very different scenarios, very different morals, and very different ways in which to judge God.

So, depending upon which scenario you're talking about, we can evaluate further.