All right, I’ll have to think about it for some time to get the abstraction of your idea, but I think I understand your point of view.
I am making assumptions, but, as far as I’m aware of, the only assumptions I made are assumptions that are made by Christians in general, the main ones being: omniscience means knowing the future and free will meaning being capable of determining the future. But indeed some assumptions about time are needed, I’ll have to understand those assumptions before arguing my case again.
If you are missing something? Well, that depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you just want to explain what you believe, then you are ok. The problem is: I read your posts and feel like you did not really answer the question. You are basically saying “Things are like this because the bible or God says so” which, to me, sounds like saying “Things are like this because things are like this”. Yet, the problem that the question imposes still remains.
I have not only read Romans 9, but I’ve read the entire Bible, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation. And did you know that the Bible states that God created evil and sin?
Those are really easy for a determinist to account for, but still accountable for one that believes we have Free Will, like myself. What they’re getting at is that God is the Creator of everything, without exception.
Our capacity to choose to not do good–evil–is directly given to us by God Himself. God created Satan, as the Creator of everything, who is the personification of evil. Satan also apparently had enough Free Will to choose to not do good, and thereby fall from Heaven. So, anyway, all “evil” actions are permitted through the actions God has taken. He has both created the light and darkness, and the options to do good and evil. If you make a robot that is designed to kill certain people, are you not responsible for the deaths that it causes? Have you not, effectively, done them yourself?
A determinist could simply say that since God determines our actions and some of us do evil, then that means God has determined and caused our evil actions.
Obviously, both cases lead to the “problem of evil”. However, there are several valid arguments, though you might not agree with them, which hold that God’s perfect goodness and our capacity to do evil are completely consistent.
Perfect goodness could not allow evil to exist. A perfect being could create a creature with free will that would never even think about doing something bad. After all, if God is omniscient like the Bible states He is, then God could simply refuse the “bad” people from coming into existence (as one possibility).
In 1535, God knew that Hitler would be born and then grow up to preside over the slaughter millions of innocent lives. If, in 1535, God decided to simply not allow Hitler to be born, then those millions of innocents would be alive today or have led a full life since those days.
When I ask other Christians about this, they, in a roundabout way, tell me that the ends justify the means; that the slaughter of innocents by Hitler was actually a good thing because it taught future generations to never allow something like that to happen again.
Sounds awfully Machiavellian (and, if I may say so, “not All Good”) to me, don’t you think?
Not at all. I just plucked a year long before the birth of Hitler out of thin air to represent that God knew what Hitler would do before he was born. I could’ve said a couple billion years ago, God decided to…but I chose 1535 as purely an arbitrary year.
Let me put the problem of free will aside and go back to other points presented that were not discussed.
The problem is, if he knew you were going to be a fuck up and created you, he is responsible for you being a fuck-up. It is like throwing a substance in a river that you know it will kill the fishes, then you are responsible for the fishes’ death.
Dumb? Isn’t this the big question, the purpose of our life?
Are you an atheist by any chance?
There is a big problem with this idea.
God created the world and the world has a lot of pain and suffering. According to Christianity (but not according to me), there are also a lot of evil people. Those evil people will go to hell. The standard response for that is that God created humans with free will, that is, God cannot create a world where people have free will and at the same time there aren’t any of those problems.
If you pay attention to it, you are using logic to say that “God cannot do X”. It is the same as saying that “God cannot logically do X”. That is implicitly assuming that God is only omnipotent under the rules of logic.
Therefore, either the above excuse is wrong or God is bound by the rules of logic.
By the way, if he cannot do anything else than sending bad people to hell, then God is really very far away from being omnipotent.
I disagree. Just because we can’t imagine infinite, it does not mean that we can’t know its properties and consequences. Imaginating something is useful to understand something, but not required. We also understand the concept of ‘certain’, but, in practice, it is not required.
By the way, the sole that we can’t be ‘certain’ goes against the concept of faith. If you think we can’t be certain, then there is no faith.
Faith is not admitting that you don’t know the answer to those question. On the contrary, instead of just saying “I don’t really know the answer”, your definition of faith is using a standard answer (i.e. “God did it”) to all big questions that you don’t like to admit not to know the answer to.
Agnosticism (be it agnostic theism or agnostic atheism) is about admitting not to know the answer.
That is one more proof that your definition of faith is about fear of the truth. If you grab so firmly to your belief that you won’t leave it regardless of any evidence contrary to it, it means you don’t want to know the truth. Instead, you want your theory to become the truth.
There are zillions of possibilities for how the universe was created. Saying that your god is obviously the simpler explanation to it is, IMO, a tremendous lack of imagination, not to mention the lack of ability of recognizing that there are way too many assumptions in your theory about God. Christianity says a lot about what God thinks, how he thinks, what he wants, why he created the world, why he came, what he did when he was here… If all you wanted was a theory about the creation of the universe, the simpler hypothesis would be “something that always existed caused it to exist by some unknown method for an unknown reason”. It is not needed that this something have a will.
Do you not see the contradiction there? How can God create a creature unlimited in its freedom of will when one of its features limits its free will (it’s freedom to think about doing bad)?
Again, by refusing the “bad people” (we all do some bad things, so He’d refuse us all), then he’d eliminate the choice of bad. This, again, contradicts the notion of a completely free will.
Gugalimare, I’m at a computer lab and should be finishing a paper, so I’ll get to you later. :pirate:
The bible is full of contraditcions and should not be taken literally at all, those who do can’t understand that stories like noah’s ark are impossible
Hawkeye, the problem is you’re thinking from experience, that is how our universe works. You live in a universe inhabited by evil. But god being god, he could have created a universe without evil. Just because you can’t think of a universe without it, doesn’t mean god couldn’t have created it. So why didn’t he? I think it’s because he’s an asshole who’s mad that intelligent people know he doesn’t exist.
NOOOOOOOO you stole my verses. But, very importantly, I dont know what kind of crazy translation you are using but it definitely does not say he creates evil. What would that even mean? But Im going to use these verses in a sec.
Fast answer: God has a morally sufficient reason for evil to exist. We dont always know what the answer is. But this is such a short answer you prolly wont appreciate it.
But anyway.
The free will post. Duh duh duuuhhhn!
[COLOR=‘YellowGreen’]Daniel, Gug, this is especially for you two. TL;DR version: God controls absolutely everything, from tsunamis to the shoes I wear in the morning to whatever. BUT. God does NOT cause everything directly.
What I mean by that is that if God caused everything, then what are but an extension of God and not really seperate entities ourselves. God isnt you know, a part of everything like in Pantheism. Rather God is in complete sovereign control everything.
Does the Bible say this anywhere? It does. And, Gug, the point of bringing up the Bible is that Im trying to show that this is what the Bible says. Thats all.
Anyway, Proverbs 21:1 - “The kings heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever he wishes.” So does a king have free will? YES. Yes he does. Another verse to clarify. Proverbs 16:9 - A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Look at this! The Lord is in control of what happens without violating the will of the creature. If a man decides to sin, God is not the author of it like I showed in my last post, but He is in control over it. Gods not like, “Oh no! He rebelled against me! What am I going to do!” The crucifixion of Christ, a rebellion against God in a horrific way, was completely under God’s control.
As I quoted last time from Acts: “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done.” See it was God’s will that Christ died, and it was also the will of the Jews and Gentiles, Pilate and so forth, and they were fully blameworthy for our actions.
God is in control of everything. BUT. He does NOT violate the free will of man, clearly man still wants to act this way, and man is still responsible!
Here are like 10 verses on this. Again the point of this is confirming that this is what the Bible teaches.
Some of these verses are daniel’s, but again I have no idea what translation daniel used.
Note in these it is calamity, which is much different than evil.
God created everything, including the allowance for evil. If evil is to good as dark is to light (that is, “dark” is the “absence of light” and “evil” is the “absence of good”), then something completely white would have no dark. Something completely good would have no evil.
Correct?
God created everything. God is completely good. God, therefore, cannot create something that has the capacity for evil.
Like I said, completely antithetical to goodness. Allowing evil to exist to further one’s goals, even if those goals are noble, is evil. It’s like having sex to promote abstinence, going on a mass-murdering spree to promote sanctity of life, playing Rebecca Black to promote good music, and so on.
Ah, but I never said that He caused things to happen; I’m saying that it is an irrevocable fact that what will happen, even if we view it as “free will” is already predetermined. We may believe we are choosing one option freely over another but we aren’t.
Some translations (that some Christians hold sacred) use the word “evil”, not “calamity”. But calamity is defined as “an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress; a disaster”. Calamities oftentimes have the added bonus of loss of life. Such as 9/11 being a calamity and ~3,000 people were killed.
I believe 9/11 was an act of evil, creating calamity. Therefore, God created calamity by allowing evil to even exist. Evil wouldn’t exist if God hadn’t created calamity.
Unless you’re asserting that 9/11 was ultimately a good thing. :fffuuu:
Then why doesn’t He just not create bad people? Good people would choose, via their own free will, to do good. So, that doesn’t eliminate free will; it just removes those that would do bad from the game (as it were).
If God hadn’t created calamity, there could be no way to do evil.
Ephesians 2: 8-10
8[/SIZE] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9[/SIZE] Not of works, lest any man should boast.
10[/SIZE] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
Romans 8:28-30
28[/SIZE] And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29[/SIZE] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30[/SIZE] Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
St. Augustine (354-430) Taught that We Have No Free Will
Thomas Aquinas ((1225-1274), in Summa Theologiae, taught that we have no free Will
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Luther frankly stated that free will is a fiction, a name which covers no reality, for it is not in man’s power to think well or ill, since all events occur by necessity. He published his own work, “De Servo Arbitrio”, glorying in emphasizing man’s helplessness and slavery.
Church of England
Those who know the Church of England only in its present secular decline will perhaps be surprised to learn once upon a time its Commission on Doctrine unhesitatingly affirmed “that the whole course of events is under the control of God” and appreciated that “logically this involves the affirmation that there is no event, and no aspect of any event, even those due to sin and so contrary to the Divine will, which falls outside the scope of His purposive activity.” (from Doctrine in the Church of England, Church House Publishing, 1922 p.27.)
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