God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

[BigBallinStalin]

.

[dalliance]

Free will, what a weak argument. What of natural disasters?

[dwilhelmi]

AW, SHUCKS, I'LL BITE:

A confession is absolutely NOT all you need to get into heaven. Jesus is what you need to get into heaven. Period. As for the convenient clause, take Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast". Faith in Jesus, not the works of confession, get you into heaven.

Nobody is good enough to get into heaven on their own. No list of good deeds, no sheer number of confessions or praying or kneeling or conversions, nothing that anyone does, myself included, earn them a spot in heaven.

Oh, man, are you for real? I like how your quote doesn't at all support your claim that one requires Jesus to get past the bouncers in heaven.

What you're doing is the "You need Jesus because I, my leaders, and/or this interpretation of such and such book said so" routine. Got anything else to support your claim other than circular logic?

I apologize if I did not adequately explain the relationship between my quote and Jesus. Belief in Jesus is the grace portion of that quote. "by grace you have been saved" - the grace of God, Jesus. Also, I did not intend this quote to convince anyone of the validity of my beliefs, merely as an example of what my beliefs are. I absolutely agree that attempting to prove faith in Jesus via The Bible is circular, and invalid, logic.

I am always willing to get into an open discussion about my faith with anyone who is curious. I have many things to back up my belief, including my own story of how I came to believe, among other things. However, I am attempting to not get this thread more off course than it already is. If others show interest, then I can and will post more information here. If not, feel free to PM me to continue the conversation.

[Calidus]

I agree that a mere confession is not going to get you into heaven. Actually, I believe you need to have both the confession as well as faith and love, and in fact if you died and God confronted you, and all you said was that you had faith in Jesus and believed in him all along, but that you don't confess your sins if he gave you the option. I would say God wouldn't let you into heaven. He might not send you to hell either, he might let you rethink for a bit, he is quite the forgiving God. But yes, I would say faith is more important, but there is not just one thing that gives you the ticket.

Why would faith in him even matter to God? If someone didn't care about this god business, but was on average a much better person to others and to himself than the believers, then why would God want him punished? Wouldn't such a God be above such petty things as jealously or outrage for one choosing not to believe in him? Why should he even care about such trivial matters when that non-believer is a better person than most believers?

_____________________________________________________________

BigBallinStalin: Again, it comes down to belief. If you believe in God then yes, he gives you the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to tell you what's good or evil and furthur more the Bible does have statements about situations like you mentioned. If you die without being able to confess...no matter how silly you think it sounds it does include these situations.

Correction, sir: That's belief in Jesus, and you've just lumped yourself into the circular logic crowd.

Good and evil isn't clearly defined in the Bible either. If it was, there wouldn't be any question about such matters, would there?

As for your second part, please tell me what happens when one forgets to confess of some sin and then dies. Is it the process of purgatory, where you apply for a visa to heaven and wait 8 years? (I heard it helps if you already got family in heaven who are citizens).

To answer you about why faith would even matter to God, I can simply say that he obviously wanted people to see his work so that people would believe him, the Bible itself is important to millions of people even if it isn't important to you. Also many people believe in the mericles of God. Both the Bible (existing for thousands of years) and the mericles that many believe in wouldn't have occured just for fun. This isn't just some magic trick. Billions of people at least recognize who Jesus was even if they don't think he's god. This type of advertisement doesn't even come close today. Even simple things like NIKE have not been around for over 2 thousand years.

As far as why all this faith matters to him is clear for all Christians. As I posted earlier, as a Christian one of the main purposes is to build a relationship with God (you can read that post in order to find out how) so that alone shows why it matters.

Now to answer your last 3 points.

Yes, I have taken a college intro to logic course and know what the logical fallacy Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc means. When it comes to beliefs you can't even begin to use logic to prove somone wrong of there belief you can only use it to try to convince them. If you read the Bible God himself uses circular reasoning, because he asks people to obey him, and uses Jesus to help, yet as it goes Jesus is God himself. Think about if you were god, you want people to believe you, you say to them who you are and the only proof is you...that's also circular reasoning. This method of logic that your attempting to use isn't working out so well.

Point 2: I bet that if you asked 9 out of 10 people what the 10 Commandments are they would at least know what they refer to. They might not know them all and unless you have read the Bible into detail for that section describing them you wouldn't know exactly what they are. If you did though you can see exactly that they are God's laws that show what good and evil are. If you read the whole Bible you can find many examples as well. Not only that, but the Bible also explains why, so I will leave that up to you to find it out. If you do believe in the Bible then there are no questions, but if you don't then I guess there could be some, but theres no way to show that what the Bible says is true unless you believe in it. If there was a way, believe me would tell you!
(By the way there is other ways that God shows the truth- like the shroud of turin...but that is a seperate issue).

Last point: If you go to confession, but forget a sin, at least in the Catholic church you are still forgiven, because God understands that you can't possibly go through every single sin and be sorry for it. You can say something along the line of "please forgive me for sins I can't remember" - it might help. So the other posssible thing coould be that you have a sin before going to confession and you tragically die in a car crash. This is why I believe you might be right and that purgatory is an option that could happen. I personally believe that everyone goes through it even for a brief amount of time. This is part of the mystery of the faith. If you found out that God really does in fact exist when you die, wouldn't you want a second chance to rethink what you did so that you can ask for forgivness and get into heaven OR at least have the option to continue to not believe and just cease to exist rather then go to hell. In my opinion you do not go to hell for all eternity unless you do what is wrong knowing that it is wrong continue to do that wrong in the face of God.

This goes back to free will. If you are the nicest person in the world but don't believe in God, because God gave you free will, he will not punish you for not believing in him. He would probably ask if you want to be forgiven for not knowing and if yes then he would probably allow you into heaven. He is very forgiing afterall. If No, that is part of your free will that he gave you, so he will simply not allow you in his house (heaven). This isn't really of your concern, because you don't believe in heaven anyways.

So you can be happy to know that after you die, you can just cease to exist without worring about hell, because yoo don't believe.

So many people think God judges the sins you do on earth, not true. He judges the way you act after committing the sins you do. In that way you still have your free will and will not be punished for doing the wrong things.

[Army of GOD]

See, the thing I could and probably will never get out of my head, was the fact that Gandhi is in Hell, according to Catholicism/Christianity/Whatever.

One of the most peaceful, loving people ever. Just because he never accepted God? What about the people who were never even INTRODUCED to God?

[MeDeFe]

Quite apart from the fact that there still is no workable definition of "free will" in this thread ...

If you want one, I can give you a simple definition (to get a complex one it is necessary to argue with Einstein on why it really is necessary for God to play dice with the universe): Given a series of sensual inputs, as well as a vast array of stored information and memory, the intellect with free will can choose from a variety of options. This choice is not simply a straight function that can only yield one result. Only one result is yielded because it is only done once, as there is only one universe, but the result is a consequence of the intellect, not a consequence of all the previous inputs to that intellect to that point.

How is the choice made?

I assume that is a rhetorical question. Use your brain; that analog computational device.

It seems you're really not getting it, so let me elaborate:

You said "but the result is a consequence of the intellect, not a consequence of all the previous inputs to that intellect to that point", well, that's all fine and dandy, but introducing "intellect" does not give you free will. So please do tell us what the intellect is and why it is non-deterministic as well as non-random.

[BigBallinStalin]

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[BigBallinStalin]

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[PLAYER57832]

The problem is not god not minding if we do what god likes with of our own free will. The problem is god not liking certain things we might do of our own free will. If a god gives us free will this god must, in order to remain just, refrain from making any judgement about how we use this free will.

[/quote]
I could not find the original post, so if this is taken out of context, I apologize MeDeFe.

Your logic here is incredibly flawed. Being just does not mean removing consequences for actions. If God removed the chance of negative consequence, then we would not have free will.

Per Christian doctrine, God's ultimate act of justice, however, was to give us his son. If we but believe in him, our sins are forgiven. We still experience many earthly consequences. And, forgiveness does not remove the responsibility we have to try to correct ills we cause.

[MeDeFe]

The problem is not god not minding if we do what god likes of our own free will. The problem is god not liking certain things we might do of our own free will. If a god gives us free will this god must, in order to remain just, refrain from making any judgement about how we use this free will.

I could not find the original post, so if this is taken out of context, I apologize MeDeFe.

Your logic here is incredibly flawed. Being just does not mean removing consequences for actions. If God removed the chance of negative consequence, then we would not have free will.

Per Christian doctrine, God's ultimate act of justice, however, was to give us his son. If we but believe in him, our sins are forgiven. We still experience many earthly consequences. And, forgiveness does not remove the responsibility we have to try to correct ills we cause.

I am omnipotent.

I create something. What my creation looks like, behaves like, thinks, is entirely up to me at this point.

I give my creation the possibility of thinking and acting on its own, not controlled by me.

My creation behaves in ways I disapprove of. Being omnipotent and perfect and all that jazz, I have foreseen this, though.


Now: Who's to blame for the misbehaviour?


To use the parent-child analogy you and others are so fond of, this is like a parent giving their 4 year old child a hammer and an unlimited number of buckets of paint of all conceivable colours, putting them in the middle of the Victorian sitting room, and then leaving.
You know what's going to happen, you know what the room will look like and you know what the child will look like and that it will want to know what the paint tastes like, and then try it again to see if it's gotten any better.
But who's to blame?

To me the answer is clear: the parent.
That is why god cannot remain just and at the same time in any way judge people for their thoughts and their behaviour after granting us free will. Consequences our actions have for ourself are not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about how our behaviour supposedly can influence how god treats people's souls after they've died. If I waste my life away, steal and do drugs it has consequences for me in life, that's fine. But the ultimate being who enabled me to behave like that in the first place and knew that I would behave like that cannot judge me because it has no right to judge me. God knew what would happen, that I would be a morally reprehensible person and not give a wet fart about religion, much less accept him as my saviour, and yet god let me waste my life away. I'm no more to blame than the previously mentioned child with the hammer and the paint, it would be meaningless to punish me in any way for what I have done.
The reverse is equally true, I may be helpful, friendly, organize programs to help the poor get out of their poverty, save birds that have fallen out of their nests, respect my elders, devoutly believe in god and never rickroll anyone on the internet. But I'm really just a 4 year old who happened to paint a picture of a house and a happy family on the Persian carpet. I may not have left as large a mess as the other 4 year olds, but praising me for that is just as meaningless as blaming the others. Any reward for obeying god's commands in life is as unjust as punishment for not obeying them.

You keep telling us that we cannot understand god. If that's true, god has no business punishing or rewarding us because of what we make of the free will he gave us. Even if we were to understand completely after we have died it is true, punishing or rewarding us then is like punishing or rewarding the 4 year old 70 years after the event. It is meaningless.

[PLAYER57832]

No, its more like raising up your child, giving them the guidance you can, but knowing, ultimately, that at some point they are going to go out on their own and make their own choices.

In many cases, parents have an idea, after 18 years, of things that might or even will happen. Yet, the choices to prevent "bad" things are limited.

Granted, humans are all flawed. At least, we are "flawed" in the context of not always doing that which is best for ourselves or humanity as a whole. Why did God create us thus? Again, it gets back to the alternatives. You who call God "evil" (and so forth) wish to look at only 2 alternatives. Either God dictates that we do good or he allows us to do bad and therefore is bad, because he created us and in that creation is reasponsible for our bad choices.

The problem is you skip the "other". You refuse to consider how humanity would be if we did not have those choices or did not need to suffer the consequences of "bad" choices. Well.. if there were no "bad" consequences, then there could be no "bad" choice, not really. AND, we would be puppets. That is the bottom line. Evil is necessary for there to be true free will. BUT, real goodness and growth are also not possible without free will. God created us to be creatures "like him". Now, to step outside of what the Bible says and purely into what I think and believe, I believe that a big part of being "like him" was the ability to make choices. So, God gave us the ability to make choices because he wanted us to be, in measure, like him..

That might be the "only" reason.

[Snorri1234]

No, its more like raising up your child, giving them the guidance you can, but knowing, ultimately, that at some point they are going to go out on their own and make their own choices.

In many cases, parents have an idea, after 18 years, of things that might or even will happen. Yet, the choices to prevent "bad" things are limited.

Granted, humans are all flawed. At least, we are "flawed" in the context of not always doing that which is best for ourselves or humanity as a whole. Why did God create us thus? Again, it gets back to the alternatives. You who call God "evil" (and so forth) wish to look at only 2 alternatives. Either God dictates that we do good or he allows us to do bad and therefore is bad, because he created us and in that creation is reasponsible for our bad choices.

The problem is you skip the "other". You refuse to consider how humanity would be if we did not have those choices or did not need to suffer the consequences of "bad" choices. Well.. if there were no "bad" consequences, then there could be no "bad" choice, not really. AND, we would be puppets. That is the bottom line. Evil is necessary for there to be true free will. BUT, real goodness and growth are also not possible without free will. God created us to be creatures "like him". Now, to step outside of what the Bible says and purely into what I think and believe, I believe that a big part of being "like him" was the ability to make choices. So, God gave us the ability to make choices because he wanted us to be, in measure, like him..

That might be the "only" reason.

This is such utter bullshit because it does not in any way adress what MeDeFe is talking about.

[Snorri1234]

Snorri,

Maybe I'm not sure if you meant to suggest there would be no sense in Him creating beings with free will earlier, but who wants to exist alone without love?

No I mean to suggest that it would be absolutely pointless for God to create anything. Like it's the definition of pointless for a omnipotent, omniscient being to create things.

I think it's funny that someone would try to speak for what would be pointless to an omnipotent, omniscient being.

Stop the "oh we can't understand God" shit. It is not a good response to every situation, and it isn't in this case.

"Omnipotent" and "Omniscient" are words that have implications.

[Woodruff]

Snorri,

Maybe I'm not sure if you meant to suggest there would be no sense in Him creating beings with free will earlier, but who wants to exist alone without love?

No I mean to suggest that it would be absolutely pointless for God to create anything. Like it's the definition of pointless for a omnipotent, omniscient being to create things.

I think it's funny that someone would try to speak for what would be pointless to an omnipotent, omniscient being.

Stop the "oh we can't understand God" shit. It is not a good response to every situation, and it isn't in this case.
"Omnipotent" and "Omniscient" are words that have implications.

Yes, they absolutely do have implications. One of which is that being may take actions that you're not going to understand.

[PLAYER57832]

Let me explain, again.

Everything that happens is not "judgement". In fact, most bad things are not because God judged it to be so. They are consequences.
God set up the world to follow certain "rules" that we don't understand. We cannot breath methane. We cannot live on the surface of the sun or the moon (without assistance). Why? I don't know, but it is a limit of our biology.

God also set up the possibility that we could hurt each other. Why? It has to do with free will. Free will means just that ..we are free to decide, including free to decide bad things. Did God know that Eve would eat the fruit? Yes! Did he still create humans with the ability to choose? Yes! Why? because, ultimately, it made us better.

The result of that act, eating the fruit, is that humans gained knowledge. It was God's judgement to toss Adam and eve out. It was a judgement based on their decision. You wish to label God "evil" because he allowed that to happen, he created humans with the ability to choose and knew it would happen thusly.

However, the alternative is not "we have free will, but decide good". The alternative is no free will. The alternative is that we are puppets. Puppets cannot choose evil, but they also cannot choose good. They cannot turn their backs from God,but they cannot embrace him, either.

I would take that to far more profound depths, but the ultimate truth is that making choices is what makes us human. So, the choice is not "god creats humans who can do evil or creats humans who won't do evil", the choice is "God creats humans or he does not create humans". God created us. I am glad he did.

[Snorri1234]

Snorri,

Maybe I'm not sure if you meant to suggest there would be no sense in Him creating beings with free will earlier, but who wants to exist alone without love?

No I mean to suggest that it would be absolutely pointless for God to create anything. Like it's the definition of pointless for a omnipotent, omniscient being to create things.

I think it's funny that someone would try to speak for what would be pointless to an omnipotent, omniscient being.

Stop the "oh we can't understand God" shit. It is not a good response to every situation, and it isn't in this case.
"Omnipotent" and "Omniscient" are words that have implications.

Yes, they absolutely do have implications. One of which is that being may take actions that you're not going to understand.

You don't seem to get it, any action taken by an omnipotent and omniscient deity is essentially pointless. It's not that I can't understand his actions because of my limited human mind, it's that God logically can have no reason to do anything. Creating the universe is an exercise in futility since he already thought everything through to the most minute details and those thoughts are perfect.

That's the whole problem with this God bussiness, religious people kept giving him attributes and he ended up because of that as pointless.

[tzor]

Stop the "oh we can't understand God" shit. It is not a good response to every situation, and it isn't in this case.

"Omnipotent" and "Omniscient" are words that have implications.

First and foremost, it is impossible to understand God. This is due to two important factors; one we know very little about Him (it’s not like we can observe God and make measurements) and the second is that from what we know of Him he exists outside the space time universe, a location that is not particularly accessible to scientific observations.

Second, and most importantly, “all powerful” and “all knowing” are descriptions that people (to whom we just stated find it impossible to understand God) have given God. Attempting to make them more than what they are and then spotting errors in doing so is nothing more than making a straw man argument.

[tzor]

You don't seem to get it, any action taken by an omnipotent and omniscient deity is essentially pointless. It's not that I can't understand his actions because of my limited human mind, it's that God logically can have no reason to do anything. Creating the universe is an exercise in futility since he already thought everything through to the most minute details and those thoughts are perfect.

You raise a number of interesting points in your argument. In the first point, you are right; at one level it is essentially pointless. It is only at an abstract statistical level over the course of time after such a pointless interaction that one can see the results of God’s handiwork. This all boils down to the fact, that at a fundamental level God literally does have to play dice with the universe. There has to be a level of interaction where to go into a deeper level, results in perfect determinism and at a lesser level results in quantum uncertainties.

This is why the universe is not an exercise in futility; it is the grand throwing of a very large number of dice, whose very patterns are aware.

[Snorri1234]

You don't seem to get it, any action taken by an omnipotent and omniscient deity is essentially pointless. It's not that I can't understand his actions because of my limited human mind, it's that God logically can have no reason to do anything. Creating the universe is an exercise in futility since he already thought everything through to the most minute details and those thoughts are perfect.

You raise a number of interesting points in your argument. In the first point, you are right; at one level it is essentially pointless. It is only at an abstract statistical level over the course of time after such a pointless interaction that one can see the results of God’s handiwork. This all boils down to the fact, that at a fundamental level God literally does have to play dice with the universe. There has to be a level of interaction where to go into a deeper level, results in perfect determinism and at a lesser level results in quantum uncertainties.

This is why the universe is not an exercise in futility; it is the grand throwing of a very large number of dice, whose very patterns are aware.

It's throwing loaded dice, God already knows how they come up. That's the problem with being both omnipotent and omniscient (and all-loving and infinite and stuff).

The absurdity is that a merely very powerful God possesing a lot (but not all) of knowledge makes more sense. A sort of Galactic Gardener if you will.

[Snorri1234]

Second, and most importantly, “all powerful” and “all knowing” are descriptions that people (to whom we just stated find it impossible to understand God) have given God. Attempting to make them more than what they are and then spotting errors in doing so is nothing more than making a straw man argument.

No it's an argument against the description of God that people give.

[tzor]

No it's an argument against the description of God that people give.

And since no person is perfect, no description by a person is perfect either. To assume that the description is perfect is to create a strawman.

[Snorri1234]

No it's an argument against the description of God that people give.

And since no person is perfect, no description by a person is perfect either. To assume that the description is perfect is to create a strawman.

"You can't criticize or argue about our god because we didn't give you a good description"?

[MeDeFe]

Let me explain, again.

Everything that happens is not "judgement". In fact, most bad things are not because God judged it to be so. They are consequences.
God set up the world to follow certain "rules" that we don't understand. We cannot breath methane. We cannot live on the surface of the sun or the moon (without assistance). Why? I don't know, but it is a limit of our biology.

God also set up the possibility that we could hurt each other. Why? It has to do with free will. Free will means just that ..we are free to decide, including free to decide bad things. Did God know that Eve would eat the fruit? Yes! Did he still create humans with the ability to choose? Yes! Why? because, ultimately, it made us better.

The result of that act, eating the fruit, is that humans gained knowledge. It was God's judgement to toss Adam and eve out. It was a judgement based on their decision. You wish to label God "evil" because he allowed that to happen, he created humans with the ability to choose and knew it would happen thusly.

However, the alternative is not "we have free will, but decide good". The alternative is no free will. The alternative is that we are puppets. Puppets cannot choose evil, but they also cannot choose good. They cannot turn their backs from God,but they cannot embrace him, either.

I would take that to far more profound depths, but the ultimate truth is that making choices is what makes us human. So, the choice is not "god creats humans who can do evil or creats humans who won't do evil", the choice is "God creats humans or he does not create humans". God created us. I am glad he did.

Thank you for again demonstrating that Snorri was right. You don't get what I'm saying. You also don't pay attention.

Here, let me quote myself: "Consequences our actions have for ourself are not what I'm talking about..." and "If I waste my life away, steal and do drugs it has consequences for me in life, that's fine."

Now, do you want to read my post again and try to understand it, maybe ask questions about any parts you didn't understand and then formulate a response, or do you want to continue arguing against something I never said? While you're at it, would you also tell me where I called god "evil".

[tzor]

"You can't criticize or argue about our god because we didn't give you a good description"?

You can always criticize or argue about anyone and anthing. You can also do the same thing to the description. The problem is when you apply the criticism about the description as a criticism against the thing that is being described.

[Snorri1234]

"You can't criticize or argue about our god because we didn't give you a good description"?

You can always criticize or argue about anyone and anthing. You can also do the same thing to the description. The problem is when you apply the criticism about the description as a criticism against the thing that is being described.

Except that my criticism is against the thing that is being described based on how you describe it.

Are you saying that God is not omnipotent or omniscient?