Answer this riddle, and tr not to use the term "free will": THE RIDDLE OF EPICURUS Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? I had the misfortune of going to go see the movie "Bruce Almighty" last year and wasteing a couple of hours and bucks, and upon exiting the theater I heard a couple of old hags behind me croaking about "how true it was to the real god" and "that is what it is really like" and "people can't wait on god to solve all their problams" and barf, blag, blarg ad nauseam. So me question wa one I came out of that flcik was "why can't people understand what the word 'omnipotence' means?" If Jim Carrey had all of God's power then he would have known everything at once and he wouldn't have trouble answering all the prayers in the world. It infallible means that nothing can go wrong...tons of shit went wrong in that movie, number one was making it... Well, I can gripe all day, let me know what you guys think. -ZERO MASS
He is able, but not willing...yet. Logic flaw...this does not mean that He is malevolent. To teach a child right from wrong is not malevolent. To shelter a child from any knowledge of wrong is to avoid teaching them altogether. Even a parent can not force love or respect or a relationship with a child...the child is given knowledge and a choice, and the parent must earn it. God wants communion with His children...voluntary and with shared knowledge...in honesty and truth. He does not want us to be blind puppets...slaves of ignorance. For as much trouble as I have been through in my life...all of the disappointment, the heartbreak, the loneliness, sickness, pain, fear, confusion, times of absolute hopelessness, and when the pain of this life was all I could see and feel...I would go back and do it all over again...and again, and again....I would go through so much worse than I've ever had it before...if that's what it took to get me here where I am today...in the comfort, peace, and joy of His love and His blessing...to know Him has made it all so very worth while...every last excruciating minute of it. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat...just so I could know what I know now. I'm very grateful for having been through it, and for learning what I've learned. He kept me through it all, and He has taught me so much...and He has healed my broken heart, redeemed me, and restored my life. I am eternally grateful to Him. Love, Lori
Take this for an example, I know there are five men outside that are going to beat you to death. You say goodbye and get your car keys. I say nothing. My inaction is malevolent as it results in pain. god refueses to do something about the evil of the world, hence he is malevoent or non-existant. Yes, the idea of free-will. It is wonderful isn't it? Well, your explanation is a good attempt to answer this very large riddle, but it falls short in my opinion. What about things that are out of a person's control? What about a bomb dropping on your head? What about cancer? What does your god have to say abbout that? Hey, I am sorry to break it to you, but people have had it a lot worse in the course of human events, nomatter what rocky path you had to walk down. You wouldn't be talking like that if you country were invaded, your father shot dead, if you have ever faced starvation, or mass murder, or pestilence, all things that one cannot account for other than cruelty from god if one does exist. Understand that while the rough knocks you have taken in your life seem significant, it is because you haven't had anything bad enough happen to in order to really make you think about "sickness, pain, and fear" as a serious threat. It depresses me that you can't think outside of the experiences of your own life. Read a serious article about what is going on in Darfur right now, and tell me there is a god. -ZERO MASS
I've always loved this conundrum from Bertrand Russell's An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: There are logical difficulties in the notion of sin. We are told that sin consists in disobedience to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen. St. Augustine boldly accepts this view, and asserts that men are led to sin by a blindness with which God afflicts them. But most theologians, in modern times, have felt that, if God causes men to sin, it is not fair to send them to hell for what they cannot help. We are told that sin consists in acting contrary to God's will. This, however, does not get rid of the difficulty. Those who, like Spinoza, take God's omnipotence seriously, deduce that there can be no such thing as sin. This leads to frightful results. What! said Spinoza's contemporaries, was it not wicked of Nero to murder his mother? Was it not wicked of Adam to eat the apple? Is one action just as good as another? Spinoza wriggles, but does not find any satisfactory answer. If everything happens in accordance with God's will, God must have wanted Nero to murder his mother; therefore, since God is good, the murder must have been a good thing. From this argument there is no escape. http://www.luminary.us/russell/intellectual_rubbish.html
Who says that He says nothing? He says "don't go outside." God has protected me over and over again. There is no way that I should be alive and typing this right now, and yet I am. God's Word is there...He is there. You choose not to believe it...you choose not to have a relationship with Him. He is there screaming at you not to go outside, and you get your keys and turn and walk out the door anyway saying "I can't hear you...you don't exist...I don't believe you." He says that the wages of sin is death and all of the suffering that goes along with it. If there were no sin in the world, there would be no cancer and no bombs. It depresses me that you are so cold and judgemental. You know absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing about my life...nothing. Who said that I don't think about the experiences outside my own life you condescending pos? I hate this world...it's brutal and horrifying. So much so that for the majority of my life, I've wished that I didn't have to live in it. I would have considered death a relief, but could not kill myself..only because of Him. The consequences of sin in this world are horrifying...sickness, suffering, violence, and death. And that is why I seek an eternal life without it, and have found it in Christ. And as I said, my relationship with Him makes this life worth while...even joyful and peaceful in the midst of insanity and calamity. I pity you because this is all that you can see...this is the end of the road for you...all that there is. I see so much more...that the road goes on forever...and that all of this will pass. So let it burn...and the sooner the better. And I'll gladly leave this tainted body to death...because I know that I am an eternal spirit, and that this world and this body is only a step along the way. You think it's all that there is...you poor, blind man. If this is all you want, this is all you will get...that is free will. Love, Lori
Then why can I walk outside happy, without a care in the world and not suspecting anything, and then have something horrible happen to me to my great detriment. No warning; not even a twinge of anxiety. Would it be that god just chooses not to talk? On the other side of the coin, I can get that twinge of anxiety, but nothing happens should I obey it or not. Sometimes you just get these sorts of thing for no reason. Sometimes bad things happen to me because I follow it. Is god just pulling my chain for his own amusement? Heh. Why should our short and petty lives matter enough to a being who sees worlds flash into existence and then die in a relative instant. A human living 100 years or 10 would make little difference to a being who measures time by the rotation of the galaxy. And that is if he even exists. On that scale, good and evil cease to have any personal meaning. A planet may have some meaning. A species may have some meaning. Even a culture may have some meaning. But an individual only matters as far as it affects the greater universe.
lori you are the very cold and judgemental one, you dismiss without any thought all the countless deaths from all sorts of reason as if they were nothing. if you so keen to shed yhis mortal coil then, goodbye. then we would need to listen to your callous words.
There is merely reality; 'good' or 'evil' are imposed perspectives. It is in the first place a distinction made by God, whom we follow in making that distinction. So we are indebted to God for being able to see that there is indeed evil in the world, for empowering us to do something about it and separate ourselves from it before it is destroyed. We have ourselves as guideline (the golden rule) and we have God as a guideline (the moral imperative). This is where it intersects: God is able and willing - but we are unable and unwilling. Do we accept God's judgment of evil? No: we tend to think the total abolishment and punishment of evil is also evil. We don't want hell. Do we accept God's willingness to do something about it? No, we are unwilling to let our freedom be ruled by any but ourselves. We rejected his warnings, laws, and even his method of salvation. People are content with making the distinction and setting ourselves up above God. We are content with evil. We wield this knowledge like a sword, as if we made it ourselves. Romans 9:22-23 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory...God's patience with evil means salvation (2 Pet. 3) - it is not an endorsement of it. Remember what we're asking for: final judgment. Are we so sure we are untainted by evil - not only in your own eyes, but also in the eyes of God who judges it? Everytime God has shown that He does something about it, we complained. It's just too uncomfortable to feel His anger burning our own hides. That's why we're unwilling to be judged - even while we wait for judgment.
There are two things I wish to post: 1) Lies only exist to hide the truth. 2) Evil exists only because we allow it to. The world could be free of evil in very little time if we all genuinely wanted it to be so. To take the religious perspective: The second book of the bible was all about the love and justice of that which is God. It suggests even if just in poetry that to love one another is the key to the erradication of evil. Now this book was written 2000 years ago.....yep...2000 year ago. To take a humanistic perspective: The Charter of human rights were created and endorsed over 50 years ago....yep that's 50 years ago....... Take a older religious perspective: How long ago was the ten comandments handed down.....hmmmmm...5000 years ago maybe....yep....5000 years ago. The legal perspective: Laws are in place have been for ages...yep have been for ages... So tell me ...why does evil exist? The answer is ...simply because that is what we have chosen and continue to choose to allow to exist. The answer is not in "Gods'" hands but our own..... Evil is not Gods responsibility it is ours and ours alone....every one of us.... Every time you ignore someones plight, every time you get a buzz out of seeing someone bleed, everytime you profit from someone elses misery you are choosing to allow evil to exist.... end of story and end of rant
God is able, willing and doing. The problem (or key) is balance. Evil exists only in the human mind, because he has fallen from the divine oneness to the world of separation. Now he must combine every two opposite to create balance. Man's nature is to search the good and avoid the bad, but God's nature is to make no difference between them. The evil is as important as the good, because without it we are not able to know what good is, since the only good is balance. Things depend on what we think of them and how we use them, that decides if they are evil or good. The created world is like a tree: To left it bears evil (negative) fruits and to right it bears good (positive) fruits. But both of them come from the same stem, from the same one-ness. Only by separating, good and evil is born from the one-ness, which is not good or evil, but divine. Only by separating, information is possible. From this comes the consequence that the world consists of good and evil, but without this separation, creation is not possible. Nothing can push aside God, he must always exist. This makes him omnipresent. God is the unity, he can't be separated. Even so, he created the world of separation, he sent two images of himself to reflect him, and these opposites keep searching the unification forever and ever. God knows everything, and suffering is the best way to lead man to the truth. God doesn't think like we do, he doesn't favor the good people more than the evil. God respects our free will. We wouldn't be free if he once again took us to the paradise. But we will come there, by our free will and by the guidance of God.
Yorda, maybe this should read: The evil WAS as important as the good, because without it we WERE not able to know what good is,
God must have wanted evil to be; therefore, since God is good, the evil must have been a good thing. From this argument there is no escape. what free will and suffering is never the best of anything.
If God exists, and he created mankind to have free will, then his interfering in our day to day affairs would take away our free will. If he prevents us from doing evil, he is defeating the purpose for creating us, which I guess would be to see if we can be good of our own free will and prove worthy to one day enter his kingdom. OR... Maybe it's like his own personal soap opera.. I mean, being God must get boring don't ya think? If you are omnipotent then you know everything that is, was and will be.. Kinda make for a dull day.. Maybe this would help to explain why he would give mankind free will. So that he WON'T know exactly what is going to happen. He's just entertaining himself by monitoring us. Let's take my dog for instance. I don't follow him around and wait for him to make a stinky on the floor.... I hide and then beat the hell out of him with kitchen utensils and latex devices! err... RELAX! I'M JOKING! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Out of curiosity, what is your position on the meaning of these verses? I'm fairly certain you're aware of their possible "Calvinistic" interpretation. Do you believe God has predestined some for damnation and others for salvation? If I had to guess, I'd say you don't believe this, but I'm curious. Just wondering how you interpret these verses. Also, I don't quite understand how tolerating "objects of his wrath" made the "riches of his glory" known to the objects of his mercy. Because he is very patient with evil (done by those prepared for destruction, which to me could imply a Calvinistic slant to this verse), that makes the riches of God's glory known to the saved? How would it be glorious to be patient with evil if you've prepared those vessels for wrath in the first place? And how would God being very patient with "objects of his wrath" be a glorious thing, if there's an eternal hell? Being patient with those "objects of his wrath" would be pretty much meaningless to me, if they were truly the objects of his wrath. I see two distinct groups being talked about here. If that is what the author is saying, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Sure, you can say I'm doing a "Why, why, why, Why is there air?" But, this IS a general discussion forum for religion, isn't it? So, I think I'm allowed to ask questions. If people ask me questions, I can choose to try to answer them or not. And others may do the same. This burning sensation could also be caused from too much sitting by those with a problem with their Pudendal Nerve. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sin is a transgression of law which causes a negative consequence. It is more than just an act though...it is a condition. The condition of man since the fall. An inherent affliction of the flesh that perpetuates...guarantees actually, that sin occurs. And yea, man is born with this condition and dies with it as well, no matter what. All men sin, and it is true that they can not remedy this state that they are in, and their works, as hard as they may try to remain righteous, will surely be tainted with it. That is not to say that you do not have choices in this life, or that you have no cognition or responsibility in regards to your actions. In this life, you try your best, and there is value in that. And there is value in learning from mistakes. And there is value in learning from what we know to be the horrible consequence of sin. We can realize too that we can not remedy our "condition" ourselves, no matter how hard we try...that being the most valuable lesson of all. Yes, God knew that we would fall into this state, and allowed for it. For the purpose of experience...to gain knowledge...so that we may know the difference...and decide for ourselves. God does not send men to hell for what they can not help. Hell is not a place of punishment for sins committed. It is a place that is void of God and His Spirit for those who chose to deny Him or reject Him. Some people unfortunately choose not to learn from this life. You could say that there is a hell on earth...to a degree. On earth, you experience good and evil. You live through it, see it, hear it, taste it, feel it, live it. And if you choose to learn the truth, you may understand it, and make a choice as to what you want for all of eternity. For in the spiritual realm, good and evil are not together and intermingled as they are here, but are separate. The Kingdom of God is without sin...hell is without God. So you live, and you choose. Sin and it's effect is horrible...violent...bloody...deadly. That is what God wants us to know, so that we may choose to turn from it, and to live with Him and without it eternally. You can not have both sin and eternal life, because the consequence of sin is death. Jesus Christ is the answer...only God can remedy us...redeem us...restore us...for it is He who created us..and all that there is...and nothing is impossible with Him. And in the meantime, He can be there with us, as He is with me...if you want Him to be. He is a provider, protector, comforter, counselor, a best friend, and a loving father. And He can be there for you and see you through til it's time for you to go...no matter what your circumstance may be. He was there with me when I was frightened and in jail...He was there for me while I was emotionally devastated by a divorce...He was there with Daniel in the lion's den...and He was there with Jesus on the cross. He can be there for you too, but you have to want Him to be. You can deny Him...you can not get to know Him and yet hate Him and reject Him...or you can get to know Him and then decide. I personally would suggest the latter. Love, Lori
Direct quote, "the consequences of sin in this world are horrifying." Do you know what the word horrifying means? If I were not compassionate, I would not find it horrifying now would I? Everyone dies misty. You will shed this mortal coil as well...the question is, then what? You call me callous? You welcome my death so that you don't have to read my words? Not because I'm moving on to a better place, but for your own selfish reasons. That's real nice...you're a regular Mother Theresa. My point which you entirely missed is that yes indeed, death and the suffering that goes with it is horrible. This is the consequence of sin...the fallen nature of this flesh. But I offer that this flesh is not all there is...this life is a step along the way. Our flesh is mortal in this life, but our spirits are not....they are eternal. For flesh to be eternal as well, it must exist without sin. It is God's will that this is learned, and not forced behaviour...it is a choice. Love, Lori
sin is not a transgression of law, it's a trangression of your gods law, but what of the non-religious who have not sinned, they die for no reason, this is not the consequences of sin, none of these people will have flesh eternal, but they exist without sin.
as an extreme example of how we allow evil to exist:: A Stargate episode shown last night depicts a race by aliens with the winner being awarded lucrative contracts. The SG7 team want to have access to advanced technologies so they make a deal with one of the race participants that allows them access to the technologies without the consent of the owner of that technology. To the Star Gate team this is fair an reasonable to acheive the technology with out paying for it. To go and in an underhanded way steal the technology and yet consider it to be a fair thing to do. OK so ask the question again, why does evil exist? Because a lot of it is what we actually want....when it is to our advantage, thus profiting from evil yet when the profits of evil go to someone else we bitch and whine about how God allows evil in the world......ha......maybe one day humanity will grow up and learn that evil or wrong in any form comes back and bites them on the bum. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Make any pact with the 'devil' and you pay a price, and it is usually a heavy price....but don't whinge when it come your turn to pay because that is what you wanted.....afterall. WE all know for example that to educate the worlds children and provide basic life supports we would achieve a healthier world. But no....cost too much....hey? But I would suggest that the cost of not educating and nuturing our children properly is a real stinkfest. So when you drive around in your fancy car to your fancy house you have to keep looking over your shoulder as the guys from Ethiopia are coming to take them away from you. Or the schizophrenic kills 10 people in a supermarket simply because we haven't provided appropriate care....not enough hospital beds etc.... The thing is we have the ability to solve nearly all our problems but choose not to, thus pay the price.....so do you want God to come along and make that choice for you? I bet your answer would be no......If God asked you whether you wanted it all made right and take away your choice to do wrong if you so wish. You would say "No way are you telling me what to do!!" "if I want to do the wrong thing then it is my choice" you would say... So the only solution is for all of us to get our heads out of the sand and realise the cost of having that freedom to choose. Freewill comes with a responsibility...does it not?
