Johnny Skeptic

Nevertheless, if the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, you would reject the same quality of evidence that you accept now.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to ible: Do you have any evidence that there is a necessary correlation between power and good character?

What criteria did the Bible writers use to determine whether or not God is good?

ible

if there was no Christ, it would make perfect sense to me. each of us has some bad streak within (whether we hurt people with vicious sarcasm, anger, or whatever else), and we have very little ability to get ourselves out of our habits/addictions. if there was a God who was purely righteous and there was no Christ, i could foresee no one going to heaven, and all going to hell.

i have no evidence that there is a necessary correlation between power and good character, since there simply is none in this human realm. but i think we hunger for something good out there, which is why we have superhero movies and wild west flicks where the good guys have to do good no matter what, and sometimes no one respects them for it. but us audience members, we know that we are to respect and honor people who use their power for good.

you really do have to wonder, what criteria the bible writers used to determine whether God is good or not. because God would, among other things, kill off Israelites for disobeying him. i think the bible writers used this as their criteria: God punished people for when they sinned, and God defined sin in such a way that it really resonated with the Israelites. they came to believe that what God called sin really was evil, and those who practiced sin should be punished. (a lot of people believe in karma, or "what's coming to so-and-so".) but since Israelites themselves were sinning, they knew that they were unclean, and God gave a way of mitigating that guilt through sacrifice. it was a good system, but it lacked the ability to make people righteous. they only had the law, and they became arrogant and self righteous.

since Christ came, God gives people a way to be clothed in his true righteousness, which is by faith in Christ's perfect sacrifice.

Johnny Skeptic

You missed the entire point of my argument, which was if the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, you would reject the same quality of evidence that you now accept.

I would like to recommend that we continue our discussions in a similar thread that I recently started at http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthr...20#post5130120 at the GRD Forum. You can transfer your reply to what I said in this post to that thread. You still have a lot of explaininig to do why God's ways are strange as yet so predictable, and why God discriminates against men, elderly skeptics, and younger Christians in frequently predictable ways, and why God only wants people to hear the Gospel message if another person tells them about it, and why God only wants people to obtain food through human effort, and why God frequently mimics that ways that things would be if he did not exist, thereby undermining his attempts to try to convince people to believe that he exists.

juergen

How about God in his omniscience and omnipotence satisfactorily convincing everyone to each person's ability of being persuaded? It'll feel like they chose, and they don't get to burn forever. Problem solved, and the whole of creation gets saved. As far as Christian explanations regarding free wil and heaven are concerned, this is what life should be like for those that make it to heaven, that they'll stay in heaven.

This would sound much more loving than casting people into neverending torture, and it would be MUCH closer to what a real parent in the real world who really loves his or her kids would do for them.

ible

I still think free will goes down the hole when you think like that. When people accept God and get into heaven, they won't want anything different. But to say that everyone will accept God, or that God will convince everyone to live with him, is to deny that there really are bad people that die thinking they owned the world, that hurt people without remorse. God is good, so he is both loving and just. God rejoices over a sinner that turns from his ways, but will not tolerate evil in his presence. Either we must let God clothe us in Christ's righteousness, or we will perish.


Every parent says that they are willing to die for their children, and while we were sinners Christ died for us. --God sacrificed himself to himself, experienced suffering and death so that we might have life. But if a child is doing drugs and hanging out with the wrong crowd, no matter how a parent might want to rescue their child from ruining their life, there is only so much that a parent can do. Likewise, God wills that everyone comes to him, and rejoices whenever anyone returns to him; but God will not turn his wrath away from those who do their neighbor harm and reject him.

Johnny Skeptic

What scientific evidence do you have that free will exists?

juergen

Why is it, that people who once were able to want something different, will not be able to once they're in heaven? Will you be able to choose sin in heaven? Will you have free will?

According to the Bible, who let this happen in the first place? We're not talking a human parent, we're talking about omniscience and omnipotence. According to the story of the Bible, God stood back, seeing what's happening, knowing it all along, and not intervening. There are plenty of things a normal person would do. For example, not let the snake in, or show up when the snake is talking to Eve, and give a counter argument. Theoretically, the choice would still be up to Eve, but hey, God would be showing up and helping out.

If God is Omniscient, he obviously knew every bad things that happens all along, because he set up the plan.

Is there only 1 possible plan for what God wants to accomplish? Is God a slave to his plan? How about averting danger? Would a totally free choice (if there even is such a thing) be worth the price of being punished for eternity with no chance for parole?

What's better, being manipulated into something that is truly better and affords great quality of life for all eternity, or being left alone in ignorance and being punished for not seeing the big picture for all eternity?

What role do you think the Spirit plays when you say someone understands the Gospel and gives his life to God?

God being omniscient and omnipotent would mean he can do whatever he wants. If he wanted to not let the Fall happen, he could have done so. Humans can be convinced of stuff. Imagine how easy it would have been, being God, to convince Adam and Eve in that moment, assuming that they weren't fallen yet. It's not exactly rocket science, and even if it were...

What about those that don't do their neighbor harm but reject God?

ible

Science won't prove or disprove free will. It generally assumes that free will doesn't exist, at least not in the objects that it studies (planets, plant growth, etc.), but I think if we disregard free will in people, terrible things will happen. Reeducation centers for those who go against the grain of society. --People will be forced to act a certain way, and will be "reeducated" until they do so. It would be the Spanish Inquisition... times a thousand.

God gave everything that was necessary to ward off temptation. He told Adam that if he ate of the fruit, he would die. (Adam presumably told Eve not to eat or touch the fruit, giving the same reason.) It was a seemingly random test, yes, but in that pure state, neither Adam nor Eve could sin by neglecting what later was called the ten commandments. They desired no excess or deficiency of any hunger or appetite. The random test tested their submission to God, which in all other things (following God's way) was already exquisite, but automatic.

Satan had fallen from heaven, he tempted humans on earth and brought evil and suffering into the world. Now he reigns as a tyrannical dictator, people bow to him whenever they submit to the sin which enslaves them. Satan's reign is through manipulation; God's power is through truth, and God will dethrone Satan, thus bringing peace.

God knew that Adam and Eve would fail, yet he had a plan to redeem them. Apparently he thought that giving people free will would be more glorious in the end, even though there is suffering now. In Christian theology, God did show up and help; he became incarnate in Christ and suffered the same fate as we humans (death), in order to give us life.

What's your explanation for evil and suffering in the world? How can you be outraged about oppression? How can you possibly give hope to those in pain?

i think we'll have free will in heaven, but nevertheless we won't be able to sin. the process in this life of dying to our sinful nature will be made complete in heaven. "if we cannot choose sin, then we have no free will"--but there will be a choice among many goods, as opposed to a choice between good and evil. (--this is the same free will that Adam and Eve had in the garden, except there won't be a tree of good and evil. we will have already chosen good.)

i think that on the last day, Jesus will reject them because though they practiced his ways, they rejected him.

I don't think I have yet made a claim about what happens to the (truly) ignorant. But to me it would be more important to live by truth than by a lie. God is not one who needs to manipulate people into seeing that he is lord; Satan is the one who manipulates, trying to get us to cast off God as lord.

Neither God nor God's plan changes. Like himself, his plan was perfect from eternity. To claim that he should change his plan is to say that he is imperfect, which is to say that he is not God.

I'm not exactly sure, but I can guess. I think the Spirit's role has to do with painstakingly aligning our motives to fit God's, bringing us into the right relationship with God and with others, as our own will bows to God's.

Johnny Skeptic

That is false. Even if free will exists, if everyone in the world believed that it does not exist, criminals would still be sent to jail, and efforts would still be made to rehabilitate them, and there would be a lot less hatred in the world.