LP675

(5) Drowning isn't a nice death. Why didn't the omnibenevolent God chose a fast, painless death for all those people? After all, all those have to suffer eternal pain in hell anyway; why couldn't an omnipotent God not just "zip them away" painlessly? It just doesn't make sense, it's not logical.

You seem to be confusing your opinion on what an omni benevolent God would or wouldn’t do with what is and isn’t logical. You said your premise was an omni benevolent God was believed by most Christians, Hell is also. Omni benevolent gods can apparently cast people into hell to be tormented for eternity, so why cant they kill people in unpleasant ways? It actually was probably a good way to do it when you think about it, the flood killed absolutely everything, and totally changed the face of the earth. God wanted to start over, this was as good a way as any to do it.

Sven

Yes, you tried to explain away my points, but I think you failed totally. BTW, why did you use separate posts? It's very unpractical to answer this way!

OK, let's start with (1).

Thanks for this info.


Thanks, I know it's not illogical. But I used the statement of Jim Larmore, who also said things aren't logical when there was no problem at all with logic, but only with his incredulity.

It's not illogical, but very, very implausible. Think about it - how should a society be able to exist at all if 99.99% of the people on earth are "wicked"? At every location far from Noah and his family even 100%! This is indeed against common sense.

(2)


It's illogical because of his omnibenevolence. Easy to understand, I think. And I also think your whole paragraph above shows nicely that your God isn't benevolent at all. Thus instead of refuting my point, you refuted your God. Nice Job!

(3)


You haven't understood the argument at all. You're right: Dead people don't have free will. Thus God has taken away free will from them by killing them. Thus there should no problem at all to take a little bit free will away to influence people to get better.
And you ignored my second point, that these people certainly had a will to live.

(4)


Then please explain why God killed all newborn babies with the flood - in particular why he used this horrible way for small children.


This wasn't an assertion, this was an implicit argument. And your answer simply doesn't make sense. If God knows our choices in the future, this means they are fixed, and nothing we do would change anything. Thus we have no free will at all, it's an illusion. For some reason, Christians never get this simple point.

(5)

What simply refutes his omnibenevolence again. (about my use of "logical" see above).


Because it's unneccessary. If God did more harm to those people than necessary, this is in logical conflict to his omnibenevolence. Perhaps Hell is necessary for some weird reason, but this pain was clearly unnecessary.


Do you really think this? Please explain, what means "omnipotent" for you? For me, this means God simply could have wished that the Earth changed totally and that all people who are wicked are dead and disappeared. A Flood is something primitive men would invent as a sign of the anger of God - but clearly not the simplest and best solution for an omnipotent deity. If God indeed used a flood, I would call him swank and unthrift - which certainly conflicts with his "perfect" nature (this wasn't in my premise, but most Christians anyway accept this attribute for God).

I see that you haven't answered (6). Is this because of time or do you concede that this indeed a problem?

Sensei Meela

From a Christian standpoint -- the aforementioned omnimax attributes of God -- the Flood is illogical (by which I mean, it does not logically coincide with these attributes).

If one accepts that all humans are wicked and sinful, to profess that even one is righteous does not logically follow. And to suppose that the only 'righteous-enough' were Noah and his sons and daughters-in-law (but not his grandchildren ) is, if nothing else, far-fetched..."it just doesn't make sense."

In any case, the number of righteous is irrelevant, as God, who is said to love everyone and wish for them to live eternally, did not live-up to His omni-benevolence with the Flood...

And this is supposed to help you defend omnibenevolence??

It also says He is long-suffering of sin and infinitaley forgiving and merciful...

Ah, so the potter hath power over the clay...who are we to question?! Vindictive tyranny is hardly becoming of 'maximal goodness'...

...tick, tock, goes the doomsday clock, and the faithful wait the nigh...

Prove it. Bear omniscience in mind.

But they still have free will in ways that don't matter? Unregardless, it is terribly unjust (and not 'omnibenevolent') to 'repay' a person for finite sins with an infinite punishment.

At least we agree that God killed them; I don't see how they can have 'free will' (their ability to follow God or not)' intact when they're dead, though...

In any world in which God creates them, God has forced them into their decision. [see wyrdsmyth's criticism of Platinga]

That depends on which Christian you are talking to...you guys really have to come to some consensus. [To elaborate, the position usually emerges in discussions of 'omnipotence'-- wherein God is limited to only logically possible actions, or so it's claimed. In this vein, most would argue that the future is as yet undetermined, and an undetermined thing cannot be known, by definition.]

Inconsistency. [please refer to the all-too-numerous Free Will debates, hereabouts]

'Omnibenevolence' is defined as 'maximal goodness' (according to some). As such, logic requires that one must be 'maximally good' and abstain from being NOT 'maximally good', if the coherence of language and the assertion of omnibenevolence are to be maintained. You can try and say that we have no way of knowing what 'Maximal Good' is, but you'd better have a stretcher ready...it's hard to walk with a shot foot.

Which is the Christian's problem, not Sven's (or the atheist's). An eternal punishment (the likes of Hell, as Dante populaized it, for most) is at odds with 'maximal goodness,' for reasons already mentioned.

If you are omniscient and omnipotent, flooding the whole earth to kill everything on it is an intolerable cruelty the likes of which no villian in all of history could boast an equivalent of.

It would be far more merciful to withhold the creation of pots 'bound to destruction' in the first place...and far less cruel to simply 'zap' them out of existence, failing that.

[BTW, welcome to the forums. Please ring for the medic]

Stew

And thank God for that...

Stew

I have to wonder just how an omnimax type god as psited in the OP gets tired.





Seems to take a bit off that omnibenevolent sparkle though.

Jim Larmore

If you accept the existence of an omnipotent , omnipresent, omniscient God described in the judeo-christian Holy Bible and you believe in the global flood the Bible says actually happened then you accept it as real and thats that. If your an agnostic or atheistic macro-evolutionist then you will turn to science to proove its all a big lie and invalidate it in your own mind. So you can sleep well at night.

Now scientists will advance a voluminous quantity of so called evidence against this flood being a reality. I see this evidence and I understand to a great degree why many of my fellows conclude the flood is not likely. My problem is many say its impossible for it too have happened period. Then on top of that the established status quo refuses to consider evidence showing man and cretacous animals lived contemporaneously. Human tracks in cretacous sediment along side dinosaur tracks.

I can't accept this as logical. I see evidence of a flood everywhere I go. I've been all over this planet and I see fossilized invertabrates everywhere I go. Heck, I'd bet anyone on this forum no matter where they live if you gave me a few hours I could go find some fossils in your area where ever you are. All the crust of the earth shows evidence of being under water at one time or another. Ruling out the flood as this source of inundation is being illogical.

Stratas and layers of sediements??????
I know some of the claims of extremely slow stratification is bogus , because its been demonstrated time and again that calcium carbonate and many other substrates can and do stratify rapidly. So to say it took millions or billions of years to form some of these sediments is probably not factual. Also the erosional signs of being as ancient as they are supposed to be is not there. Then theres the polystrate fossils with laminating sedements intersecting at a 90 degree angle or better etc. showing rapid sedimentation. All of these things are just explained away by mainstream science as not consequencial to the established theory.

To put it like one of my elders put it in conversation not too long ago. He said "if you really want to find evidence to make you doubt the flood then its not too hard to find, on the other hand if you want to find evidence which supports it you can find that too". The job of a true seeker of truth is to honestly examine all of the evidence objectively and then come to a conclusion on your own. I see dismissal of good evidence on both sides of this arguement. I don't know how to answer all of the questions being presented to me but I don't dismiss them as being invalid. I just don't know. Heck theres a lot of things I don't know.

I can't accept the fact that inanimate chemicals in a primordial soup produced life fortuitously like the OOL people want us to believe. Life and living systems are too complex to have evolved the way main stream science says they did. Again, this is leaving logic behind. So what are we left with? Either this universe of ours is a product of creation or it wasn't , we either had a flood or we didn't. I believe in God so until I'm convinced He doesn't exist, I'm going to believe the flood happened.

gregor

OK Jim.

You're right and all the scientists are wrong.

The geologists are wrong.

The geophysicists are wrong.

The vulcanologists are wrong.

The atmospheric scientists are wrong.

The biologists are wrong.

The oceanographers are wrong.

The marine biologists are wrong.

The physicists are wrong.

The astrophysicists are wrong.

The paleontologists are wrong.

The archeologists are wrong.

The botanists are wrong.

The doctors (who see vestigial structures) are wrong.

But you are right.

Happy? Trust me, I read it in a book somewhere written by a nomadic shepard in 580 BC.


And on topic - somebody ought to check God's QA/QC manual. He kept making people, century after century, but he could only make 8 ought of 80,000 not be evil?

Man, someone ought to fire that guy.

And if he knows that he cannot make honest people, what gall does he have to get mad about it. He's got a terrible self image, beating himself up all the time for his own inadequacies.

Poor guy.

Mathetes

This is a very silly false dicotomy.

Of course you know by now that this is a lie. The majority of people that believe in that God of the Bible, the majority of Christians actually (I would say 99 % of Christians that do not live in the US and are not subjected to creationist brainwashing) accept macro-evolution. Of course you know it. But who cares about the facts?

So add to Gregor's list:

The majority of Christians are wrong.

Postcard73

So God wipes out a human civilization that coexisted with dinosaurs, and that culture - so evil that it needed to be completely destroyed by the flood - left behind... footprints.

Where are the indications of real human existence? The remains of a culture so evil God was justified in killing all of them? These remains should be scattered around the globe; otherwise, a regional flood would have been all God needed to fix His mistake. Yet to my knowledge, human and dinosaur remains do not coexist. If I am wrong, then please site sources for your evidence.

For numerous articles refuting the Paluxy River controversy, visit this page...

Jim Larmore

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that many specialist in different areas were indeed wrong about some very strong conclusions at the time.

I don't have much of problem with the science behind much of what they say , I have a problem with their conclusions when it comes to some things. Like I've said on another board there are some areas I wonder at myself . The fact we are not finding many many thousands of fossilized antidelluvian skeletons concerns me a lot. The fact that so far we haven't found hardly any large mammals with the dinosaurs fossils is problematic.