HelenM

What do the Christians you used to worship with say? Are you still in contact with them?

love
Helen

free12thinker

So what you're saying is that someone has a chance to redeem themselves after death? Is that it? And how does this work to your knowledge?

Koyaanisqatsi

This has been the most interesting exercise in tortured, forced "spin" control I've yet seen here.

Congratulations to all.

A quick question. For those here who are still believers, in the light of all of this irreconcileable apologetics as a result of what is written in the Bible, why do you not see the apologetics as evidence of obvious fraud?

Carefull...you're about to make an even more serious logical fallacy...

Did God cause it to rise?

I believe the answer to that question is, "D'oh!"

And strangely enough very few have taken a simple step back and said, "Of course! It's all evidence of obvious fraud. What the hell have we been wasting our lives for?"

But not for logic, unfortunately.

And if you pick a point on a circle and then trace that circle, you'll return to your initial point.

thus proving through demonstration that God is a sadist, who, apparently, delights in creating such pointless suffering since, being omniscient and knowing that she was not on the list that he created and "programmed" into her prior to her birth is ultimately responsible for orchestrating the events as they unfolded, for, in order to have a "list" and foreknowledge you would ipso facto also have to have programmed the scenario to unfold in precisely that manner, or be subject youself to an even higher order of magnitude than yourself, i.e., chance.

There simply is no way around this. Either God programmed the entire "universe" scenario to go exactly according to his plan (every mote, every photon, every quark) and we have no free will, or it's a crapshoot that God is also subordinate too and there can be no list, only a "wish" list and a hopeful outcome on his behalf based on our free will.

A logical impossibility unless he wrote the script.

All of which is proof of poorly thought out fraud.

eowynn

What about babies who die soon after birth? Are their lives long enough to "see the light"? Or are you simply using that as a catch-phrase, as you also said that no one can choose whether or not they believe? Are babies who are born and die hours later, having done nothing in their lives except breathe destined to heaven or hell by God's arbitrary choice? This makes no sense to me.

Wayne Delia

If God, in His perfect omniscience, knows that an event will occur tomorrow, can it be said that He caused the event to happen?

Surprisingly, the answer is "yes." God Himself may or may not cause the event, but God's assumed perfect foreknowledge does - simply by removing all other alternatives to the event from logical possibility.

It's actually a pretty easy concept to demonstrate:

Definition: "Perfect omniscience" implies 100% accurate knowledge of everything knowable.

Premise: God is perfectly omniscient concerning future events.

Assumption: God knows that event X will happen tomorrow.

Conclusion: Event X will happen tomorrow (otherwise the premise that God is perfectly omniscient will be contradicted).

Corollary: Any alternative action resulting in X not happening tomorrow is logically removed from possibly taking place (since X must happen tomorrow).

Observation: Absent the condition of God's (or anyone's) perfect omniscience, the outcome of whether or not X happens tomorrow is indeterminate, and the case of X not happening remains logically possible.

Conclusion 2: The presence of presumed perfect omniscience, a subset of which indicates X will happen tomorrow, causes X to happen tomorrow.

WMD

HelenM

WMD

No, you're confusing God's knowing it will happen with it having happened already. If it hasn't happened then the person hasn't made the choice to do it. That's in the future; it's gonna happen; but it's still a choice they have yet to make.

I don't think you could convincingly argue that we don't perceive ourselves as having choices experientially, anyway.

love
Helen

doc58

GB Mayes,
Believe it or not, I used to be you in belief, just as adamant and convinced as you are.

You said, "The ones that are not part of the elect seldom ponder or seriously consider the issue of Christ."
I know for a fact that it is an unture statement.
I did believe, I lived it, I knew that I was elect and lived a life of gratitude to God, depending on His grace. I taught it, was an elder in a Bible church, the whole deal.

For me, inerrancy was the first pillar that fell.
It was a very disappointing thing to realize that the Bible is not the perfect revelation from God.

GB- DO you agree that the omnipotent God, creator of all, all wise and good arbitrarily(randomly) picked a small number of all humans who would ever live and decided to draw them irresistably to himself, awaken them spiritually(giving them faith), and be with them eternally, while at the same time willingly consigned the rest to eternal torture knowing that only He could cause the damned to have faith and that without His direct and undesired(Romans 3- None seek God)intervention that they would be incapable of knowing Him and or even having the desire to know Him.
If you are a Calvinist, this is exactly what you believe but I would like to see you agree with it in writing. How do you feel about such a random and arbitrary God?

Helen, My Calvinist friends do not know of my change. I have avoided such conversations so far.
By its very nature, Calvinism requires one to believe that you have been given special revelation, unavailable to all but the elect. So if you deny Calvinism or Jesus as Savior, you are immediately categorized as someone who lacks understanding and in fact are someone who doesn't even desire to have true understanding because only God, in the proces of saving you, can give you the desire to know Him.

Calvinism or salvation by grace is a very clever human invention because it shuts off reason and logic. Thank God I have been delivered from it.

Pomp

G B Mayes,

If there is a God, the one who called everything into existence by his word, the one that can hold the oceans in his hands, He gets to make the rules.

In other words, "might makes right," writ large. At least the Calvinists are honest about it.

rainbow walking

I'm utterly amazed that none of the brilliant minds brought to bear on Automaton's scenario have seen the obvious solution to this dilemma.

Everyone has been so preoccupied with Lucy's salvation and why she didn't make it to the camp meeting that I guess they all overlooked the obvious...

What about the poor sap driving the truck? What Automaton has choreographed is a clear case of spiritual warfare. You see, the truck driver was an Islamic fundamentalist returning from a terrorist training camp being held just beyond the christian retreat. His mind was so preoccupied with what he was going to do to those 72 virgins that he never saw Lucy's car.

So it was a clear case of spiritual warfare between two Gods and the Islamic God won by killing two birds with one crash. He brought one of his converts into the harem and kept one of the christian God's potential converts from reaching her place of conversion.

Case closed.

Pomp

rw,

Hahahahahahahahaah!!!