bfniii

hmm. clearly i feel that i have answered this question more than once. i realize however that it has not been answered to your satisfaction. looking back through my posts in all threads, i have never just given up so i don't feel that the accusation is warranted. i do feel that there have been some people who have gotten frustrated with me because they didn't like the answer(s) i gave.

perhaps you could state why you feel my previous responses have been insufficient instead of just accusing me of not answering the question and then restating the question. in other words, tell me why you feel my response didn't pass muster.

i will try to rephrase my previous responses:
1. in order for us to have freewill, we must have choices (i.e. to accept or reject God). we continually reject God. concordantly, evil is perpetuated. the reason God continues to allow evil is because He continues to allow us to have freewill and we continue to exercise it. our choices not only affect us, but others as well (including the innocent which, btw, we have been warned about). consequences to our choices must exist otherwise freewill would be innocuous and God would be unjust.
2. what is suffering? what is evil?

why do you continue to assert that God enjoys suffering? you accused me of not answering questions but quote my response thus vilifying the claim. what's worse is that i now ask the same question twice.

i am not relating to your "worse ill effects" variable . if God changed our universe (the intrinsic and inherent values), this discussion wouldn't make sense. the only reason this discussion makes sense is because the universe is how it is. we know some of the particulars but not all of the general teleological principles of our existence. consequently, we will be unable to answer the question "why didn't God make our universe different". what we do know is that God can make things differently. can God makes this universe different? that returns us to asking if God can do something He didn't do.

John A. Broussard

Over and over again I have said that free will has nothing to do with the issue UNLESS you are insisting that the unborn and toddlers have free will.

Some how you keep bringing up free will over and over again. Just keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of conceptions never go to term and that babies don't have free will--or do they?

Let's settle that first and then get back to the discussion.

OK?

Johnny Skeptic

That doesn't make any sense. God told Adam and Eve "not" to sin. His desire was that they never know about good and evil. What you are actually saying it that is was necessary for Adam and Eve to sin.

Now what would have happened if Eve had sinned and Adam not sinned? Would sin have entered the world?

Sven

:huh: How is this relevant in any way? My point was that as soon as you include allegorical elements in Genesis ("spiritual death"), you can as well take anything in it as allegorical - for instance the "kind concept".

Apart from this, biology so far has not shown such a barrier to exist, but on the other hand has shown striking relatedness between such diverse groups as fish and mammals, reptiles and birds, even bacteria and humans. I have no idea why do you think such a barrier exists if the only "evidence" you have against it is a text about which you can not be sure which parts are allegorical and which parts are not.

Jack the Bodiless

...Where?

Name one.

I see why you would prefer another interpretation, but I haven't yet seen actual evidence that your interpretation is correct.
Tyre STILL EXISTS. It isn't a "nation" anymore: but neither is Rome, or Athens. Yet these, too, still exist. Tyre is supposed to be DESTROYED, and the language refers to physical destruction: breaking down walls, scraping the rock clean, and so forth.

Of course, Israel no longer exists either, according to your own criteria: the kingdom of David is no more.
Indeed. God is not just. This is obvious.
They are mistaken. It's a tenet of some Christians: of those "scholars" themselves. That's why they're getting it from "scholars before them" rather than from the Bible.

Much of the Bible directly contradicts this notion.
According to SOME verses, yes. But not according to others.
You are again ignoring the Bible. Caanan had not done anything that required "seeking redemption with God", and he wasn't suffering from his father's "bad influence": he was CURSED, because of what his FATHER did, not anything that HE did.
No, they don't "make a big difference". If you're nice to God, he'll be nice to you: if not, he'll punish you AND YOUR DESCENDANTS, who have done NOTHING to deserve such punishment. There is absolutely nothing in the text which implies that the DESCENDANTS won't be punished until THEY have "continually rejected God after they had already been warned of the consequences".
...For no reason.
No, the Bible is clear: there is NO indication that the CHILDREN (the "fruit of thy body") have been "disobedient". You seem to be seeing verses that aren't there.
Wrong (again). God murders an innocent baby for the sin of its parent, directly contradicting the "no" verses.

...And so it goes. Over and over again, the Bible confirms that God punishes innocents for the crimes of others (even though the Bible says that this is wrong), you cannot argue otherwise without ignoring the text, and the surrounding verses do NOT change the context.
No, this is not the case.
No, it wasn't, as others have pointed out.
You're treating "the Bible" as if it was a single book. It isn't, and the older books belong to another religion that was hijacked by Christianity (and some of the stories come from sources older than Judaism too).
I have made it quite clear that you are mistaken. God lied to Adam and Eve by saying that the fruit would kill them (it did not, and the actual effect was the opposite of "spiritual death", which is nowhere in the text: their eyes were OPENED, they received ENLIGHTENMENT).

Furthermore, they were thrown out of Eden to stop them becoming gods themselves. They had gained godlike knowledge, and were about to become immortal too: God stopped them. Why do you continue to pretend otherwise, when Genesis says this so clearly?
The NIV makes this even clearer: "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever".
You choose to believe otherwise because later Christians concocted an entirely different "meaning" for this story.
No, REAL scholars don't just study "first century" history and archaeology. Have you forgotten that we're discussing the Old Testament?

The Hebrews were polytheistic, worshipping the Caananite pantheon. YHWH was one of the 70 sons of EL, and had a consort (Asherah). This is what REAL scholars, who study the history and aracheology of the region, know. There are passing references to this in the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy 32:8-9, where El (the Most High) splits up humanity into tribes and gives the Israelites to YHWH (the Lord) as his inheritance. And, of course, other gods are mentioned as beings with real power (the Egyptian deities reproduced several of the Plagues of Egypt).

On human sacrifice: the Hebrews originally sacrificed their firstborn children, as was the Caanaite custom (ref. Exodus 22:29, Leviticus 27:28-29). Later they abandoned this habit (and Ezekiel refers back to this period in Ezekiel 20:25-26), but continued to honor YHWH with the sacrifice of captives taken in battle, such as the Midianite virgins sacrificed in Numbers 31. Nowadays, Jews and Christians prefer to believe that their deity would never have accepted human sacrifice of any sort, even though the Bible doesn't say this.

And, of course, fundamentalists reject the scholarly claim that the Book of Daniel was written in the 2nd century BC rather than the 6th, and that Isaiah was written by three different authors over a period of about 250 years IIRC.

I suspect there is material for several new threads there...

Jack the Bodiless

OK, I've checked the whole thread again. And, sure enough, you have presented no evidence that your interpretation is correct.

The closest you came is citing your apparently poor map-reading skills as evidence for Tyre's non-existence, and your statement that Tyre was "never the same again" after Alexander. The Tyre thread contains numerous maps and aerial photographs, and Tyre remained a prosperous town long after Alexander.

...And I almost missed this:
So, punishing the actual perpetrator of a crime is "not as appealing" as punishing someone else for it?

How consistently do you hold this view? Would YOU like to be thrown in jail if your neighbor commits armed robbery, or is it only "appealing" if (for instance) some guy from another town gets thrown in jail instead?

Voice of reason

An alien is has discovered how to create life. It will be intelligent life capable of reason and making choices. This alien then gets from the local wizard a crystal ball that allows him to see into the future.

Before he creates this life form he peers into the future (which has not happened and is paradoxial but lets pretend.) and he sees suffering and death and the creature doing evil acts by his own admission from his own diary and moral book.

The world he is about to create is not anything like he imagined it to be yet he creates it anyways.

Omniscience is quite paradoxial and therefore does not exist and even if it did exist the position would then be fatalism with no free will what so ever.

When the alien peers into the crystal ball and sees the future then it has happened already. An omniscient being does not see the future per se because the future is unknowable and a being with omniscience knows all. Therefore everything to the omniscient being is present tense.

If an omniscient being that is also omnipotent creates he creates in the present tense everything is the present tense which means there is no choice at all.

If at 5 o'clock I am supposed to take a shower there is no way I can change it it has already been seen and known by the omniscient being. For there to be a possiblility for change that means something is then not knowable which means the being is not omniscient.

If there is a god and it is omniscient then the world is fatalistic which mean that god has done all this including evil which it allegedly denouncing in many holy books allegedly written from its own mouth transfered to humans.

If there is a god that is omniscienct it loves human suffering or it is inconsistent with its own creation and dislikes what it creates itself.

bfniii

freewill is an integral part of the logical form of the argument from evil. i think the first problem you and i are having is that you are crossing the boundaries of two different arguments of evil; logical and evidential. you respond to my logical form of the argument(point #1) with an element of the evidential argument (inscrutible evil, gratuitous evil, etc) to which i correctly responded with the evidential question "what is evil" so that we can at least satisfy the law of identity.

i believe you are trying to argue from the evidential aspect. i will do my best to respond to what i think you are asking. i assume you are thinking that babies dying prematurely is evil. i will also assume you would say yes. there are several reponses to this.

the issue is not so much that there are different kinds or amounts of evil, but that people experience it (suffering in your example). if God is omnipotent, He can certainly prevent the innocent (babies in your example) from suffering a permanent, soulful suffering. wouldn't you agree? in other words, the physical suffering we experience as well as the evil in the world are temporary. therefore, it is not so much that the "innocent" suffer physically, but that God can redeem them and prevent permanent suffering.

additionally, in order to assume that suffering of the innocent is somehow evil, one must presuppose that there is an expectation that it should not be that way. where does such an expectation come from?

furthermore, certain good can come from such suffering. therefore, what human system is to be employed to discern which evil/good paradigms are acceptable and which ones aren't? to do so would be smuggled-in authority.

bfniii

it was not necessary for them to sin, but the potential existed.

good question. what i personally believe is that eventually, they both would have sinned. they were both created imperfect and eventually that nature would have caused an evil action.

bfniii

if one part is figurative, does that make all of it figurative? well, no. the point is, you asked my opinion and i gave it.

curious. are you saying that there has never been a time when any species was genetically incompatible with another species?

similarities are to be expected from organisms living on and developed from the same set of circumstances (i.e. planet, atmosphere, sunlight, etc). that doesn't mean that we came from a common ancestor, right?

addressed above.

i realize evolution is really getting off the subject, but i was asked so i responded.