[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Jeffe wrote:
The difference is that our parents are not the ones creating an eternity of punishment, then creating us to throw us into it.
That is the major problem with saying God loves us all and so on and so on. If God made a way for us to not suffer, where is this mysterious place, exactly? Heaven? Not likely.
What would be the point of a mortal life if an eternal plane of existence is a reality, and God knows how everything is going to happen anyway? If God knows the future, then free-will becomes a moot point, as God will already know who’s going to end up in Heaven or Hell for all eternity, making the entire process a method of torture.
If God knows who’s taking harp lessons and who’s being fried for eternity, why bother with the guarantee of pain and such during a mortal life?
God knows the outcome already, he has known since before time began that that guy on the bus you saw yesterday is going to rape and murder his way to a sad, lonely death in his prison cell, hanging from his bedsheets. So why let it happen? To delay the poor souls time in Hell, to give a stay of execution? A noble idea I suppose, but the 80 or so years we spend on Earth is not going to be a tick of the clock in relation to…well…forever. So what is the reason?
A place and process exists for nobody to ever have to suffer. Great. And God is all powerful, and all knowing. Great. Yet God let’s people suffer all the time, needlessly.
The end must then be predetermined (if you allow that God knows the future, then the future must be unchanging) putting a serious, serious dent in the concept of free will, as what will happen has already been seen. But that’s not the argument I want to even touch on.
If we assume that God knows all and the future and all that noise, and we accept that God does not want any of us to suffer, and the biggest cause of human suffering is other humans, what separates the good people, the ones destined for an eternity of cocktails and beach volleyball with some hot angel lifeguards from the people destined to be roasted in some demons “special sauce” every 3 hours for the rest of time? There must be something fundamentally different about their essence, their soul.
So if we say that God does not want any of us to suffer, and God created a place and way for nobody to have to suffer, and God loves us all before we’re even created, why make two kinds of people? Why does one soul practically have a halo before it’s even created, and another have nothing but hatred inside?
If God created us in his own image, and we’ve established that God is the creator of all and knows the future, then we must accept that those people with the tarnished souls, the murderers, serial killers, serial rapists and any other terrible monsters we have walking with us were also created in Gods image.
They look just like him, just like I or you do. They must, because God created us all in his image. Nobody else was doing it for him on the seventh day, there is no other image. But how can someone so savage, so murderous be a type of copy, if you will, of a benevolent, caring, loving father figure?
Maybe God has a nasty side to him that causes earthquakes and SIDS? Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe those people were in fact not created in the image of God. But if not, then why create them at all? God knows they’re going to causes untold damage and heartache on Earth, he knows their going to Hell, no chance for parole. So why create them? So they can suffer for eternity, that would seem pretty cruel, even for a God that could very well have a very human “darker side” to him.
Could he have created them to make the good souls suffer? What good would that do? Presumably they’d only even interact for the blink that is the mortal life on Earth, making it a pretty pointless gesture, much the same as keeping the “bad” people on Earth to delay a trip to hell seems ridiculous.
So if God did create those people in his image, we must assume that God has the same vicious murderer in him that some of us do, and if we allow that, then we must assume that God very much does want us to suffer, sometimes. After all, how pissed would you be if you gave someone an entire Universe to play with, and the most common thing they did with it is blow it up, burn it and kill each other? The feeling of revenge, not punishment, is a very human feeling, but if God created us in his own image, then he must be a vengeful God.
But if God did not create those people in his image? We’ve established that they have no real purpose other than to cause and receive terrible pain and agony. And God knows this from the start, so we have to say that a God who generally doesn’t want needless suffering would never have created something for that specific purpose.
So why do they exist on Earth? Maybe they were never intended to exist in the first place. Could it be that they are “defective” people? Their mind and body work just fine, but the general programming seems to be all jumbled up. So if it’s not intentional, and we’ve established that it can’t be intentional without conceding that God knowingly causes unnecessary pain and suffering for all of his creations, then we must say it is unintentional.
And if it is unintentional, then we must admit that God is not the perfect and all knowing being that we assume, but something far less. Something more human, more cruel, capable of making terrible mistakes that cause anguish the world over.
And if a God can make such mistakes and never reveal them to his children, but rather punish those that are acting under the programming he gave them, then can anything that this God demand of us really carry much more weight than that of any other man?
After all, God knows, what will be will be.
Statement #1 - if God knows the future, free will is a moot point.
Answer #1 - Knowledge is not action - knowing all things does not change the responsibility for a decision or the need for the action to actually occur. That is why there must be free will - but you made a statement later on where I can illustrate this better
Question #1 - If God knows how it turns out - why bother with the process (paraphrased)
Answer #2 - basically you turned statement #1 into a question - The answer is that knowledge is not the action - someone still has to make choices in order for any of it to have significance. I knew the Steelers were going to win the Super Bowl, but they still had to play the game for it to exist and to count. My knowing did not affect the choice or the outcome
Question #2 - why does God let bad things happen
Answer #3 - because he gave man the same moral authority he possesses - You have the same moral authority as God. He is entirely just and never foes wrong, we screw things up - but we do so because we have chosen to and there was nothing that forced us to do wrong - ie free will
Addendum to Question #2 - why does God let evil people live
Addendum to Answer #3 - we are all evil people . . .
Statement #2 - God let’s people suffer needlessly all the time
Answer #4 - Ok sure if that’s how you choose to see it, but the reality is that He is letting the natural consequences of our choices play out here. He is not intervening in the evil deeds of man - because man alone must stand alone and account for his choices and actions alone - if God were to intervene and FORCE man to do right, he would be negating the moral authority he granted to all men.
Statement #3 - the end must be predetermined
Answer #5 - NO, knowing how something is going to turn out does not transfer responsibility for that action from the one who chose to commit the deed to the one who knows that the deed was done. We determine our end - not God.
Question #3 - what separates/distinguishes the good people from the bad people? - what is fundamentally different about their soul?
Answer #6 - No - there is nothing different about them. They each possess the same moral authority, the same ability to exercise free will. Some choose to sin and never repent, some choose to sin and to repent - there is no cause, there is just their decision. If there where a cause there would be no free will - this is called pre-determinism. Basically, some would have been created to be unrepentant and some would have been created to be repentant - then all moral responsibility would rest on God, not the individual. THIS IS NOT THE CASE - we each possess the ability to choose for ourselves what our choices will be - we bear the responsibility then for all of the choices we make.
Statement #4 - even evil people are created in the image of God
Answer #7 - yes, all people are created in his image and all people are evil because they have all chosen to be evil and then some choose to repent, some don’t . . .
Statement #5 - If people are evil and people are created in the image of God - we got our evil from him (paraphrased)
Answer #8 - ahhh interesting line of reasoning you have embarked upon - unfortunately you made some crucial errors - again it goes back to moral authority and it is why Christ’s life was such a condemnation of our lives. God does not sin, and does not cause man to sin. We have the same moral authority/free will that Christ had and he showed that you could live a life free of sin. However, in our free will- we have chosen to sin,therefore we are the source of evil in our own lives. Evil does not cause us to chose the wrong path. We choose the wrong path and create evil in our own lives.
Let’s us an example for clarity - Would Hitler’s evil cause you to murder 100 Jews? NO, you would have to choose to murder 100 Jews and you would have chosen to make yourself evil.
It is because you have chosen to make yourself evil that you must be punished - BUT GOD LOVES YOU and therefore he paid the price for your own free choice to become evil so that you would not have to pay that price yourself and could become good once again.
Recap - we are all born moral neutral (neither evil/good). We are able to make moral culpable choices to determine whether we want to be good or evil. When we choose our first evil deed (morally culpable choice to sin), we are then responsible for having chosen to become an evil person. Some go farther down the road to greater depths of depravity and evil, some stay fairly decent - but all are evil by their own hand. Hell will have levels of suffering commiserate with the level of evil you chose for yourself.
God made us morally neutral in his image (free will, creativity, ability to love, etc) and left it up to us to choose what we would make of ourselves. We thus bear the responsibility for what we do make of ourselves.
But he loves us and does not want us to suffer, but just as he allowed us to choose what we would become, he also must allow us to choose to take his freely offered solution to our evil problem. He cannot force us to take his free gift - because he gave us the power to make that decision for ourselves . . .
OK - there you have it[/quote]
My replies are numbered according to your answers to my statements, 1 for 1, 2 for 2 etc.
Disclaimer: If anyone is particularly sensitive with regards to the Holocaust, stop reading after number 7.
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God knows the outcome because if he can see the future (assuming omniscience) then the future is predetermined through the eyes of God. Free will has nothing to do with this statement, it simply means God knows what our choices will be before they are actually made, therefore the process still remains unnecessary, even if we allow completely and utter free will for all of his creations.
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Nowhere did I say that Gods knowledge ahead of time would determine the outcome. I’m simply saying that if God knows the outcomes before it happens, then he would ultimately know the end result of all things before they’ve even become a choice.
A good analogy for this point: assume you live right around the corner from your boss. He knows when you’re home or not, and sees you every day. Now assume that if you’re late for one more day of work, he’s forced to fire you, even though he would rather not, as he’s a friend. He drives past your house on his way in and sees your car still in the driveway, and all the lights still off inside. He knows there’s no way you’ll be on time, and he’ll have to fire you before you’ve actually been late.
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Your own statement condemns you here. If I have been given the same moral authority as God, by God, then I have authority to determine for myself what right and wrong actually is, to determine what, for myself is, and is not a sin. Therefore, I am just and can do no wrong in the eyes of man or God. Free will never comes into question here, either, as this concept does not challenge nor support it.
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Unless you or anyone can illustrate a single meaningful and truly positive outcome of true anguish and suffering, then some, if not all true suffering must be deemed needless. A 10 year old girl dying of a brain tumor can hardly be said to have deserved that torture as punishment for being “immoral” in the eyes of God.
Moreover, why must man stand alone? If God is to push his specific moral agenda on mankind, a code which we are specifically designed to be capable of breaking, and an agenda which he must be forcing on us for we are not allowed, according to your argument, to decide for ourselves what right and wrong is, then God himself must share the moral burden, and therefore, part of the blame for those who do wrong according to his law.
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I did not say that it transferred responsibility, but if the future is known by God (or any being for that matter) then the future will be what it will be, and insofar as that being is concerned, the future is predetermined. It must be, for if the future was a changing thing, no being may claim to know with any certainty even a single moment of it, and if they do not know the future, then they are not truly omniscient.
If God, however, is truly omniscient and knows the future, which we have established can not change, then from the vantage point of God, our paths are set and our choices, whether truly our own or not (free will is still not being challenged here, nor confirmed) are known to God before it actually happens. The wicked are know to be wicked, and the righteous, righteous before the Earth comes into existence. This reinforces my claim that the mortal life process is no more than a torturous blip in our existence, and could be done away with entirely and to the same end.
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If we allow that all souls are created equally, and all possess the same moral authority as God, then by what right is he the judge of our decisions?
By that argument, I have the right to determine right and wrong for myself, and whatever I feel is right, is right for me, but may not be for someone else, as they are the deciders for themselves. If God did not give us the same authority which he possesses, then he did not truly create us in his own image, nor are we the masters of our own destiny, which means no free will.
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I never made the claim that all people are evil, but if we allow that all people are, or at least have the capacity for evil, and all men are created in God’s image, then God must be, or have the capacity for evil.
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If you have not read the disclaimer at the top of this post, don’t complain after reading this reply.
I don’t believe you’ve stated anything that refutes my claim here. As above, God gives us our capacity for evil, thereby allowing it to happen. It is a logical chain that can not be broken, and is further enforced by the notion of free will.
If all men are evil,
and all men are created in Gods image,
God is evil.
Your Hitler example does not really fit here, as Hitler is not the accepted creator of human nature. Hitler did not give people the capacity for evil. But perhaps Hitler did in fact serve a “divine” purpose.
This is just an interesting thought that came to me while I was writing my response. I don’t believe this is the case at all, but the thought would not leave me alone and the logical chain sort of slapped me in the face. Don’t read too much into this one, and I’d rather not see anyone reply to it, but it is interesting food for thought.
DISCLAIMER: If you’re sensitive, don’t read any further…at all.
If you were an all powerful and all knowing God, that we’ve established as being, or at least having the capacity for, vengeance and evil and your only true son which you placed on Earth to be the salvation of mankind was killed by Jews, you may just be pissed off enough to create a Hell on Earth for those people. If that were the case then Hitler could be considered another Messiah, as he may have been carrying out the will of God on Earth.