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

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Re: Re:

Postby Woodruff on Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:20 pm

Snorri1234 wrote:
Woodruff wrote:
Snorri1234 wrote:
Woodruff wrote:
Snorri1234 wrote: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.


Snorri1234 wrote: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.


In your human view of things. Again, you are applying human logic/necessity/desire to an omnipotent, omniscient being.

Truly, I'm seeing your efforts here as the opposite side of the coin to Jay. You're trying just as hard to force God into a certain box as he does.

Snorri1234 wrote:That's the whole problem with this God bussiness, religious people kept giving him attributes and he ended up because of that as pointless.


So the religious humans shouldn't give him attributes, but it's ok for the non-religious humans to determine his lack of motivations?
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby PLAYER57832 on Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:22 pm

MeDeFe wrote: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".

Perhaps I should not have answered this right after dealing with that "other" thread. I will go back, reread your answer and think about it some more.
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Re: Re:

Postby Snorri1234 on Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:43 pm

Woodruff wrote:In your human view of things. Again, you are applying human logic/necessity/desire to an omnipotent, omniscient being.

Truly, I'm seeing your efforts here as the opposite side of the coin to Jay. You're trying just as hard to force God into a certain box as he does.

No, God is in that box already. You seem to be working under the strange presumption that the entirety of human history hasn't happened. God has these attributes. He loves, he judges, he can do anything and knows anything, he kicked around some desert-people for a few years and afterwards sent his son to earth to be killed for us so that well....i guess he just loves violence seeing as sending his son (who is also himself) wasn't neccesary.

Stop acting like it's strange that I take into account what other people say about their god. They have applied necessity and desire to him, I merely work of that.

And I'm not using human logic, I'm using logic.

Snorri1234 wrote:That's the whole problem with this God bussiness, religious people kept giving him attributes and he ended up because of that as pointless.


So the religious humans shouldn't give him attributes, but it's ok for the non-religious humans to determine his lack of motivations?[/quote]

A few attributes are okay, but eventually you end up with a deity whose attributes make his actions and motivations (which are alluded to by the religious people) seem silly.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby THORNHEART on Wed Apr 28, 2010 7:04 pm

Its astounds me the simple logic surpases most.

God = All Powerful. Therefore he created all.

Man = free Will and can chose to do what he wants.

Evil = Choice

Man = Chose Evil therefore we now endure the consequences.

Man = Blames God for MANS mistakes

I am reminded somewhat of the tom cruise movie minority report....

Anyways another line of thought it this...when someone disobeys the law they recieve consequences....man broke Gods law therefore we live with the consequnces...God is god so he must judge evil...and man was evil to chose evil therefore we must endure suffering or else god is evil in not giving man the justice we deserve.

Simple enough?
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexis

Postby BigBallinStalin on Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:30 pm

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

Postby Phatscotty on Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:35 pm

wow 6 billion ways to interpret something. You have better odds winning back to back lottery jackpots than you do of being right about what you believe as far as god is concerned
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby PLAYER57832 on Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:08 am

MeDeFe wrote:
PLAYER57832 wrote:
MeDeFe wrote: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.


I do understand your point, but I disagree. See you haves set up a definition that basically says there is no real and true free will, because God can predict everything and therefore is really controlling the situation.

The 4 year old example might seem, superficially to apply, but it really doesn't. It doesn't for several reasons. The most important is that of consequence versus growth. See, that child has way too much potential to cause harm and only a very slight chance of doing good OR of learning from that harm.

In the case of Adam and Eve, we Christians believe there was a learning process. I am going to go a bit outside of church doctrine and into my own beliefs here. I believe the entire aspect of evil and so forth is, in a sense, learning. Not individual learning, though, but humanities' learning. You can say, because the harm seems so very, very, very great to us. (no dispute there!) that the good cannot possibly outweigh all that harm. However, if you believe in God and believe in God's justice, this is not the case.

Further, I believe you misunderstand this whole thing of justice. See, human justice says "you murdered this person and unless it was self defense or some such, you get punished". God sees much more. He sees our true hearts. This man who committed murder, maybe he had no parents to love him, had a bunch of other bad breaks. Maybe the fact that he only killed one person, instead of many is actually a sign of good character and choice, given his whole circumstances. Humans cannot afford to make those judgements, because the risk is just too great. We need to lock up violent people to protect ourselves. However, that has very, very little of true judgement within it.

God, to contrast, sees all. He might say that that guy who attends church every week, donates money and so forth, all the superficial "good things", has forgotten to really and truly help people. Maybe he is good about putting out public checks, but behind closed doors is a jerk. Or, maybe he has tons of money and while he gives some to "good causes", is not really putting it where God asks him to. Maybe he passes out checks, but hires people for wages too low for them to survive well. Even those are but my, human ideas of examples. God's justice is not so limited, not at all.

Furthermore, God's justice is not directly tied to consequences here on earth. Bad things happen to the best of people and good things happen to people who are absolute evil. However, God's real justice takes all of that into account.
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Postby Lionz on Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:25 pm

BBS,

Maybe sections called John 3:16 and Isaiah 53 can help you understand what Yahushua (sp?) has done for us.

http://yahushua.net/scriptures/john3.htm
http://yahushua.net/scriptures/isa53.htm

Snorri,

What if you all of a sudden got to a point where you could do anything and you knew everything? What suggests to you that it would be pointless for for an omipotent and omniscient being to create things whether He is one or not?

Maybe you bring up one or more interesting point having to do with Yahushua (sp?) dying for trangressions of others. Would that being done not suggest that He created rules that He Himself can't break and thus also suggest that He did things at one or more point in the past without knowing what they would result in for sure?

Rocket,

I would guess that Yah can create a boulder too heavy for Himself to lift if I had to guess one way or the other perhaps.

Naxus,

Where did I contradict myself? Could you not theoretically know everything in an hour and yet not know everything now?

Frigidus,

You might bring up one or more interesting point. What would be the difference between an omniscient being thinking about creating something and actually creating something, if there would be a difference? What if we basically are beings who simply exist in a Mind of Him?

MeDeFe,

Would being omnipotent mean that you could not create someone without knowing what they would do?

Frigidus and MeDeFe,

I'm not sure if He's omniscient or not perhaps, but maybe it would make sense if He has wanted to plant seeds and watch them grow without knowing exactly what would happen whether or not He knows everything about everything now.

I am in a He is outside of time camp perhaps, but even if He is that does not necessarily mean that there was not a beginning in which He laid out dominos to fall with variables in mind while not knowing exactly how things would end up maybe.

Perhaps He can go back in time and stop certain individuals from being created, but what if He is against going back to prevent individuals from coming into existance? What if everyone has effected everyone else in time?

Maybe there are issues having to do with time and power and knowledge that are simply out of reach for us whether that can come across as a cop out or not. If you come across a man who has always been blind or a woman who has always been deaf, what can you really do to explain sight to the former or sound to the later?

Calidus,

Do I believe in the whole trinity if I believe Yah Himself was actually born as the Son and I believe that Ruach ha'Qodesh (aka the Holy Spirit?) is His Spirit?

AD,

What if some natural disasters have been used to bring judgement by Him and some natural disasters have been orchestrated by enemies of Him and some natural disasters have ironically been both?

Army,

Who knows what has happened or what will happen when it comes to judgement? What if reincarnation even occurs? Maybe there is not even an unborn baby on earth who has not heard about Yahushua (sp?) at this point for all we know.

Phatscotty,

There might be over 6 billion individuals on earth with individual interpretations, but what if He looks at hearts and knows if we love Him?
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby Juan_Bottom on Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:43 pm

Didn't we Atheists already win the argument about the inherit contradiction between freewill and creation? Why do we even see this argument here anymore.
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Re:

Postby Snorri1234 on Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:45 pm

Lionz wrote:
Snorri,

What if you all of a sudden got to a point where you could do anything and you knew everything? What suggests to you that it would be pointless for for an omipotent and omniscient being to create things whether He is one or not?

If I knew everything and could do everything I wouldn't do anything because I knew everything.

Maybe you bring up one or more interesting point having to do with Yahushua (sp?) dying for trangressions of others. Would that being done not suggest that He created rules that He Himself can't break and thus also suggest that He did things at one or more point in the past without knowing what they would result in for sure?


So....God's not omniscient?
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby PLAYER57832 on Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:28 pm

Juan_Bottom wrote:Didn't we Atheists already win the argument about the inherit contradiction between freewill and creation? Why do we even see this argument here anymore.

No.
A point of "we have to agree to disagree here" is hardly a "win" for one side. It is a "win" for both.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby BigBallinStalin on Sun May 02, 2010 1:13 am

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

Postby Woodruff on Sun May 02, 2010 1:24 am

BigBallinStalin wrote:
PLAYER57832 wrote:
Juan_Bottom wrote:Didn't we Atheists already win the argument about the inherit contradiction between freewill and creation? Why do we even see this argument here anymore.

No.
A point of "we have to agree to disagree here" is hardly a "win" for one side. It is a "win" for both.


If God created everything (including he paths we take, which he already knows, being all-knowing, right?) then doesn't that actually contradict the idea of free will? Everything's already predetermined, God's knows where we're going to wind up, there is no choice.


No, it does not. As I've explained ad nauseum in this thread, God's knowledge does not necessarily equate to predetermination/lack of free will if you believe that God exists outside of linear time (which makes sense).
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Re:

Postby Army of GOD on Sun May 02, 2010 1:34 am

It's probably been said a bunch of times already in this thread, but how can we even attempt to argue the intention of God to give us free will? Free will is still just an arguable definition (and, even if someone was to get a right 'answer', that in no way means that it's the same as God's). Religious people will attempt to shape it around what they think and still encompass God while non-religious people will define it in a way that makes it contradictory.

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Lionz wrote:Army,

Who knows what has happened or what will happen when it comes to judgement? What if reincarnation even occurs? Maybe there is not even an unborn baby on earth who has not heard about Yahushua (sp?) at this point for all we know.


I don't, that'd be cool and maybe.

But anyone (religious or not) better not claim they do know.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby MrPanzerGeneral on Sun May 02, 2010 1:51 am

Verilly, I say unto you, God is Evil incarnate. Amen.

Proof - The Old Testament.

Those kiiled by the angel Lucifer (Satan,Beelzebub yahdah yahdah yahdah, whatever you want to call him) = 1
Those killed by their "omnipotent" "all loving" god = just about every-frigging-body that ever crossed him :)

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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexis

Postby BigBallinStalin on Sun May 02, 2010 2:34 am

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Postby Lionz on Sun May 02, 2010 4:05 am

Snorri,

Could you not theoretically know everything and be miserable?

Snorri and Juan and BBS,

I'm not sure if Yah is knows every single thing there is to know or not perhaps. What if He never created a being while intending for the being to rebel against Him regardless? Even if He is outside time and knows thoughts of everyone now, what if there was an original creation week in which He designed created beings with free will and He designed them without intending to know exactly what would be said and done by them right then and there? What if you were about to be creator and supreme ruler of a three dimensional realm and you had to choose a or b?

a) You create individuals and choose every single word and action of them in an original creation and design period?

b) You create individuals and choose to create them without knowing exactly what would be said or done by them right away in an original creation and design period?

Even if you and many others would choose a, are there not individuals who would choose b?

MPG,

Who can righteously blame Him if He has gotten angry and jealous and vengeful? Maybe learning about fallen angels and nephilim can help us understand the Flood and stuff that happened after Exodus.

Also, you might actually refer to more than simply the devil in a parenthesis section, but does scripture say the devil has killed even one individual? If so, who?
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby daddy1gringo on Sun May 02, 2010 7:40 am

BigBallinStalin wrote:How does his existing outside of linear time excuse this contradiction?

He has the power to create someone and also know their outcome. If he knows their outcome, then that person's life has already been arranged, hasn't it? Isn't that consider to be predetermination?
BBS, it's obvious from many of your posts that you are indeed extremely intelligent. I can't see how you're not getting this. It's been explained painfully well repeatedly, including by Woodruff, who, not being a believer,is reliably not just "hiding behind 'It's a mystery!'", just being admirably fair with the fact that there is not necessarily a contradiction. Let me try to put it another way.

As you say, He has the power to create someone and know their outcome. He also has the power to create someone and NOT know their outcome. If he is choosing to make it so, it is not a lack of power on His part. Making it so is necessary for these beings to be persons, like Himself, rather than automatons, and therefore people with whom He can have relationship. Relationship is what this is all about.

Now in that explanation, God would not be technically, semantically, "omniscient". Two things about that.

1. As I've said before, the term "Omniscient" or even "know everything" is not used in the Bible. So knowing everything except what he chooses not to know because he gives people a choice, is good enough for me. Also remember that he can "know the outcome" if you choose this and know the other outcome if you choose that. He can choose to intervene or have built-in correctors in the plan to keep certain things on track, or He could go ahead and let your choices change certain things eternally. If I choose not to help someone, He could let my choice have a detrimental effect on them, or he could bring the help from somewhere else, but either way I lose out on co-laboring with him.

2. As has been pointed out, it isn't even necessarily like this at all. Maybe a being who could create everything, including all of our brains, could somehow have different levels and be able to 'know' and 'not know' at the same time. However, lest you think I'm "running to hide behind 'It's a mystery'", this is an earthly understandable way to see that there is not necessarily a contradiction.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby PLAYER57832 on Sun May 02, 2010 8:16 am

BigBallinStalin wrote:
Woodruff wrote:
BigBallinStalin wrote:
PLAYER57832 wrote:
Juan_Bottom wrote:Didn't we Atheists already win the argument about the inherit contradiction between freewill and creation? Why do we even see this argument here anymore.

No.
A point of "we have to agree to disagree here" is hardly a "win" for one side. It is a "win" for both.


If God created everything (including he paths we take, which he already knows, being all-knowing, right?) then doesn't that actually contradict the idea of free will? Everything's already predetermined, God's knows where we're going to wind up, there is no choice.


No, it does not. As I've explained ad nauseum in this thread, God's knowledge does not necessarily equate to predetermination/lack of free will if you believe that God exists outside of linear time (which makes sense).


How does his existing outside of linear time excuse this contradiction?

He has the power to create someone and also know their outcome. If he knows their outcome, then that person's life has already been arranged, hasn't it? Isn't that consider to be predetermination?


Woodruff already explained. I explained. You just don't want to accept the explanation.

Your declaring yourself a "winner" doesn't make it so.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby Frigidus on Sun May 02, 2010 8:24 am

PLAYER57832 wrote:Your declaring yourself a "winner" doesn't make it so.


I would certainly agree.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexis

Postby BigBallinStalin on Sun May 02, 2010 8:55 am

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

Postby Woodruff on Sun May 02, 2010 2:24 pm

BigBallinStalin wrote:
Woodruff wrote:
BigBallinStalin wrote:
PLAYER57832 wrote:
Juan_Bottom wrote:Didn't we Atheists already win the argument about the inherit contradiction between freewill and creation? Why do we even see this argument here anymore.

No.
A point of "we have to agree to disagree here" is hardly a "win" for one side. It is a "win" for both.


If God created everything (including he paths we take, which he already knows, being all-knowing, right?) then doesn't that actually contradict the idea of free will? Everything's already predetermined, God's knows where we're going to wind up, there is no choice.


No, it does not. As I've explained ad nauseum in this thread, God's knowledge does not necessarily equate to predetermination/lack of free will if you believe that God exists outside of linear time (which makes sense).


How does his existing outside of linear time excuse this contradiction?
He has the power to create someone and also know their outcome. If he knows their outcome, then that person's life has already been arranged, hasn't it? Isn't that consider to be predetermination?


Again, if God exists outside of linear time, then our actions WITHIN linear time don't impact his knowledge.

For instance...I make the decision to respond (yet again) with this description. God knew I was going to do this NOT because he controlled what was going to happen or that it was pre-destined, but rather because his existence outside of linear time meant that he saw me make that decision WHEN IT WAS BEING MADE. In other words, God is present at all times, so he knows what is happening as it happens. He has always known what is happening before it happens because, once again, the concept of linear time does not apply to him (since he basically created everything that gives us what we know as the concept of time).
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby MrPanzerGeneral on Wed May 05, 2010 3:18 am

Being & Nothingness. JP Sartre.
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Re: God is either evil, not god, not the creator, or nonexistent

Postby MeDeFe on Mon May 10, 2010 9:13 am

MeDeFe wrote: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.

Sorry for taking so long, finally I'm getting around to producing a reply. Sadly, the confusion appears to persist, either on my end or on your end.

PLAYER57832 wrote:I do understand your point, but I disagree. See you haves set up a definition that basically says there is no real and true free will, because God can predict everything and therefore is really controlling the situation.

It is indeed my opinion that an omniscient god is incompatible with any meaningful definition of free will, however, that has no bearing on this argument.

The 4 year old example might seem, superficially to apply, but it really doesn't. It doesn't for several reasons. The most important is that of consequence versus growth. See, that child has way too much potential to cause harm and only a very slight chance of doing good OR of learning from that harm.

If it doesn't apply, I would request you and everyone else to please stop using it. If it doesn't apply in my case it doesn't apply in any of your cases either. Period.

In the case of Adam and Eve, we Christians believe there was a learning process. I am going to go a bit outside of church doctrine and into my own beliefs here. I believe the entire aspect of evil and so forth is, in a sense, learning. Not individual learning, though, but humanities' learning. You can say, because the harm seems so very, very, very great to us. (no dispute there!) that the good cannot possibly outweigh all that harm. However, if you believe in God and believe in God's justice, this is not the case.

I have no idea what you're talking about, nor what part of my post you're referring to here.

Further, I believe you misunderstand this whole thing of justice. See, human justice says "you murdered this person and unless it was self defense or some such, you get punished". God sees much more. He sees our true hearts. This man who committed murder, maybe he had no parents to love him, had a bunch of other bad breaks. Maybe the fact that he only killed one person, instead of many is actually a sign of good character and choice, given his whole circumstances. Humans cannot afford to make those judgements, because the risk is just too great. We need to lock up violent people to protect ourselves. However, that has very, very little of true judgement within it.

God, to contrast, sees all. He might say that that guy who attends church every week, donates money and so forth, all the superficial "good things", has forgotten to really and truly help people. Maybe he is good about putting out public checks, but behind closed doors is a jerk. Or, maybe he has tons of money and while he gives some to "good causes", is not really putting it where God asks him to. Maybe he passes out checks, but hires people for wages too low for them to survive well. Even those are but my, human ideas of examples. God's justice is not so limited, not at all.

Furthermore, God's justice is not directly tied to consequences here on earth. Bad things happen to the best of people and good things happen to people who are absolute evil. However, God's real justice takes all of that into account.

What? Introducing further hypotheticals about my examples and telling me... well, what exactly are you trying to tell me? That god's justice is different from human justice? Whatever it is you're trying to tell me, I don't see how it affects my point in the least. In my post I stated that even if god has complete information he still has no business doing any judging whatsoever, not during a person's life, and not after they die either. I even took the unlimited amount of information available to god into account. All you're saying here is "No, you're wrong!"


Maybe it'll be easier if I restate my point:


God gives us free will knowing what we'll do with it. (And screw the contradictions in that.)

With our limited information (when compared to god) we do all kinds of stuff god disapproves of.

God knew we would do all that if he gave us free will, therefore he has no business doing any sort of judging. Not while we're alive, and not after we die.
saxitoxin wrote:Your position is more complex than the federal tax code. As soon as I think I understand it, I find another index of cross-references, exceptions and amendments I have to apply.
Timminz wrote:Yo mama is so classless, she could be a Marxist utopia.
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