Dylan said Rimbaud said This is so revealing about the meaning of our lives. What Dylan said is exactly what Lucifer's/Satan's argument is to God. Basically, "What makes you worthy to be worshipped?, What makes anything you do or want automatically 'good'? Who gave you authority over us all?" God created us to prove to all creation that He is everything that He says He is. We are not needed as His definition to Himself, but to define Himself to everyone and everything else. And who better to lead the opposing view than the most perfect created being ever, which is Satan. Because of the contrast that Satan provides, God's characteristics are more identifiable. We are created to give glory to God through our obedience to Him, and our fellowship with Him.
That's fallacious. If God is sufficient in himself, then it's impossible for him to "prove" anything. The very idea of "proof" admits the existence of the other. You can't get around that, metaphysically. How boring. You know, if innate justification is impossible, then accountability cannot exist... for anything.
I still don't see where the right to expect comes from. to me, your frame of reference is trying to put man on some level equal with God. only beings who are in some way equal can have a right to expect [or demand] something from one another. it's not like a deal or a compromise. "okay, God, if you do x, then I'll do x." only people with leverage or bargaining position can make deals. if you are man, and you are in every way inferior to God, your only real option is to take what you can get. you can't make it rain. you take it when it comes. you can't make people in the cemetery get up and do the boogie. you enjoy the life you're given, or you try to. where, for me, the idea that God is good and just and worthy of worship comes in is that it's all a matter of perspective. if you think, from the outset, that God owes you a life full of chocolate ice cream and hot women, then The One we've got might seem lacking. however, if you think that God might actually owe you exile for being so constantly rebellious against Him, but then also believe that He offers not exile but intimacy, then that God starts to look a lot more good and a lot more just and a lot more worthy of worship. that's my perspective. if it's not yours, I don't think a few bulletin board back-and-forths will change your mind. take it for whatever it's worth. either way, I appreciate your civil tone, and I hope you'll find mine likewise.
The Bible cleary states as DaDa said , The Carnal Mind cannot comprehend the things of The Spirit . You try to figure out the theory of no time , The Whole world revolves around time , Imagine a place without time where life is eternal. You just can't It baffles you .
I don't think I explained myself very well earlier (party because I have a final in about 40 minutes and just checked in for a study break ). I don't think I am owed a life of chocolate and goodness. I just don't think it's fair for God to be considered a loving and just God and yet be able to get off scot free when bad things. For example, say I were an ancient Greek. I wouldn't object to the worship of gods there because the gods were viewed as unfair and capricious by their very nature. They weren't viewed as loving parents, and when bad things happened the people thought that the gods caused them. My only trouble is the elevation of God to a level to where it's impossible to be consistent. If he's all powerful, then he has the power to prevent bad things from happening. Even if you take out man-made bad things like rape, murder, etc. you still have earthquakes, hurricanes, and the like. To me giving God credit for good things without looking at the bad things is trying to have your cake and eat it to. Does that make it a little more clear? either way, I appreciate your civil tone, and I hope you'll find mine likewise. Same here. Religion and politics are the easist things to get upset and emotional about in debates and it's nice to be able to talk about them level headed. I'm certainly not trying to change anyone's opinion, just explain mine...
I think September 11th raised alot of questions about why does God let these things happen . I dont know all the answers , I can't tell you everything , I do know It was of my own choice to believe in something without question . God is perhaps the ultimate paradox . On Septemeber 11th there where two kinds of people , The people who realized they needed God and the people who thought God could not be for them if he causes suffering .
if God is perfect, why wouldn't he create earth, man, animals, etc.? and what does your signature say in English?
Chievous, The idea behind such a question follows these lines of reasoning: 1. Creating something implies a lack of something before - perfection cannot be lacking. 2. Creating something to "prove" as gootan proposed suggests a human feeling of self worth based upon outside forces (and what are the outside forces, etc). 3. If everything was created to show God's glory, then that implies another human emotion - vanity and it also disrupts perfection. 4. It could even go into the idea of perfection creating imperfection. In other words how could a perfect being create flaws, as everything on earth is flawed, fragile, etc.? Anyway, it is all only a fun mental game, but people still get offended by it. That also implies imperfection, lol. The sig basically translates to: "I am (a) Gandhi soft dandy such sugar candy." It is from a song and is only understood through context.
yes. and I agree with you to a certain extent. for me, saying that God is good and just does not mean that God is not responsible for things that do "harm" to humans. in a nutshell, I think the "bad" things that happen to us which could possibly be attributed to God are far outweighed [in an ultimate, final, scoreboard kind of way] by the "good". if you're ever interested in hearing a much, much better argument than anything I could ever lay out, I recommend reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. or his Problem of Pain. Lewis was a don at Oxford. his mom died when he was 8 or so. he was an atheist from that time until he was in his 20s. Mere Christianity is his book detailing how he went from atheist to Christian, all prompted by his dealing with the question we're talking about: how can a "good" God allow and possibly even cause "bad" things to happen to people? you might find it interesting. I still maintain that God is perfect and absolutely good, but I do kind of agree with you that God is responsible [sort of] for some bad things that happen to humans. some of this comes down to the free will/predestination thing, and that's a question I can't fully answer for myself. but I do allow that God could and can be responsible for bad things. for me, though, that doesn't make him less than perfect. by the way, who would ever want cake without being able to eat it, too? good luck on your finals.
I'd like to take a stab at this one. I'd also like to preface by saying, "in the end, this is only my perception... and what the hell do I know?". I use to be in DEANBCURTIS' camp (and I really respect you, bud) for a long time because I so believed in evolution and couldn't find a God acknowledging it. Somehow this thought entered my head: "What if 'Free Will' is not just a human thing?" What if it's a physical thing...meaning, everything has free will. True, a tree doesn't experience free will the way we do, but it does strive to grow as big as it can. Much like us choosing one or the other on the basis that it's good for us, for our growth, our experience. Any effort to change could be looked at as free will. Hence, growth=change=evolution=free will. Just my thoughts. RR
Well either God is not all powerful or not all good if he chooses to allow it, hence no God(as they are the two defining characteristics of God). the children don't choose to be abused.
There are two situations that can exist right now. One being "of God" and the other "separate from God". The premise put forward is that "separate" is equal to or better than "of God". Why is separate possible? Because God says He is love and that He alone is worthy of praise and because free will is necessary in both love and praise for God, He placed free will into His creations. Free will means having more than one choice. Can things exist without having physical proof? I think many concepts in science can only be imagined by mathematical formulas. (I guess one example I can think of is not having a picture of a black hole, but knowing it's there.) How can created beings that are not omniscient truly know all the attributes of God without knowing anything that contrasts with God? God is perfect and created all things with perfection. So how could these once perfect creatures become imperfect? Again we go back to the concept of free will and the premise of separation from God. (Perfect meaning having qualities of God, imperfect meaning having qualities not of God.) Why couldn't He just say to Satan "Because of your vanity, I sentence you to the lake of fire and that's final," and let all creation continue to be perfect? Because He also embodies justice. So the other side gets to make its case, just as we are doing now.
How can there truly be free will? Free will denotes choice, no? Are we saying that the created had a choice? That would be preposterous!
Hey dylan, do you actually believe this? What I mean is do you think whenever something good happens God gets all the credit but when something bad happens it's blamed on the free will of men and that this is wrong? If you do then you have my praise because it's very hard to find people that think this way, I myself being one of them. I think it is absurd that God gets all the credit for good stuff that man does but has no accountability for at least some of the tremendous amount of evil also done on Earth. Sure we have free will but it's God given and he is all knowing so he should have known that this had the possibility of being used in evil ways so he should still have some accountability.
This is actually answerable if viewed from a non-Christian perspective. From an Eastern perspective we have lived on this Earth thousands of times in thousands of forms in order to learn about life from every conceivable vantage point. So, thoretically, the child itself chose to come into that situation for whatever reason -- whether to learn compassion, work off karma from a previous life, etc... Understand, I am in no way condoning child abuse. I personally came from a troubled family and I go well out of my way to treat all creatures (human or otherwise) with compassion. I do believe, however, that there is a valuable lesson to be learned from all situations even the difficult ones. And until we do learn those lessons, we are doomed to repeat the same behavior.
This is a very interesting dialogue. I'd like to chime in on the "How could a good God allow bad things," issue. More specifically, allowing that there is good and evil in the world, (I think that most will agree that this is true. Why or even if this is actually the case is an interesting question, but I'm treating it as a separate question), why does God allow bad things to happen, particularly to clearly innocent people? I begin to address this question by noting that is can be very difficult to know what, in the bigger picture, "good" and "bad" are. There is a proverb I like that relates to this topic and goes something like this: There was a man who lived in a small feudal town who owned a horse that he kept in a coral. One day the horse jumped the fence and ran away. "How very unlucky you are," said his neighbours. "Maybe," the man said. The next day his horse came back, leading several fine wild horses behind him, which the man captured and put in his coral. "How very lucky you are," his neighbours said. "Maybe," the man said. A week later, while breaking-in one of the wild horses, the man's son was thrown and severely broke his arm. "How very unlucky you are," his neighbours said. "Maybe," the man said. Days later the king came to the community and conscripted the young men of the community to fight in a far off war. The man's son was not taken because of his broken arm, and therefore was spared almost certain death. "How incredibly lucky you are," the man's neighbours said. "Maybe," he said. I'm sure we've all had "bad" things happen to us that we learned great lessons from. I have had my share, and almost invariably I have come to view those trials as gifts because of what I've learned from the experience and how much stronger they made me as a person. I fully acknowledge, however, that when this analogy is extended to things like child sexual abuse or the events of 09/11/01, it seems completely inadequate. These fall into the realm of the unknown for me. I do not know why they happen. Perhaps, however, If you'll allow me to very prematurely reflect on some of the possible consequences of 09/11/01, I think there is potential for some significant positive outcomes from that horrifically tragic event. Prior to that infamous date, the US was experiencing increasing tensions with China. The incident between the American spy plane and the Chinese fighter had ominous overtones to it. The US was also in conflict with Russia over the SDI(?). Internally, it seems that your fringe fanatical paramilitary groups were becoming an increasing problem. Since 09/11/01, how has this changed? Relations with Russia are reported to have never been better. China seems to be fully supportive of this new war against terrorism. Internally, you seem to be pulling together more than ever before. There seem to be American flags flying on every street corner (they are a common site up here now too, btw). So might this tragedy, this great sacrifice paid by thousands of innocent citizens, be turned into a realisation, a movement, a new world consciousness, that helps prevent the needless deaths of many times that number? It's far too soon to tell, and we may never know, but …maybe. So where does this leave us, with respect to good and bad? How do we really know? I believe that we don't really know how things on the grand scale fit together. All we can do is follow and live by the spirit of goodness that lives in all of us.
This is interesting. I don't really believe in tangible "evil" as it were. To me, good and bad are simply matters of perspective. 9/11, while awful, was celebrated by some. For them, this was success. By the same token, the death of the man who supposedly masterminded it would be considered success by many in America. Ultimately, it is just death and destruction. It is in how we view it that the good or bad becomes an issue. Like my wife, I look at it from an Eastern perspective. The belief is that everything just IS. Good and evil are just subjective definitions we place on what simply IS. While there is nothing wrong with those definitions, it is an important part of this philosophy that opposites are dependant upon one another for their very existence. For example, if you believe something to be evil, you require good to even give yourself a definition of evil. Just as you need light to define darkness, you need evil to define good. They cannot exist independently of one another. This sure is an interesting topic, though.
re: free will I think that free will was not given to us to allow for us to chose evil/reject God/whatever, but to choose good and embrace God. Don't you find it more meaningful if someone does something because they choose to instead of being forced?
maybe if God had a wheelbarrel, that he could lift, and the rock was lighter on different planets &/or realms...and oh yeah, some angels....made of lasers....with...uh,.... i truly am sorry
