Arrogancy

The Bible states that perfect creation has no "natural inclination"
to go against God, or sin in other words, but imperfect man does.

If imperfect man can go against his natural inclination and avoid sin to a degree, than logic only dictates that perfect man can go against HIS natural inclination and choose to sin.

The degree to which God decided to look into the future when creating, etc. is not stated in the Bible. However, if the end result of mankind as a whole mirrors the original purpose, than man did not "fail," by default. The fact that people do decide to live under God ruins the whole "failure" logic. The individual person is rather irrelevant to the purpose at whole.

philechat

Careful, Arrogency. Once you factor in the idea of "perfection" or "perfect man" you opened up a can of worms, and I am going to debate with you the philosophical God--which would be what you do not believe in anyways.

Again, if the creation of his goes against his original purpose, is he responsible for failing to create ones that follow the dictates of his original purpose (the analogy of an artist creating an artwork that "failed" to meet his original purpose may work here, as well as an artist who created artworks of uneven quality--i.e. successful artwork "followed" his original plan, unsuccessful ones did not).

Arrogancy

I'm talking about Biblical perfection, a person without sin that is not subject to sickness and death. Sorry for not specifying.

The artwork analogy doesn't work, because the artwork that is humanity does not fail to meet the original purpose in the long run. That's the point of Jesus' sacrifice. And paint does not choose the direction in which it will go on the canvas. It would be like working with paint that decides for itself where it will go on the canvas.

Shadownought

There is no scientifically or mathematically verifiable answer. The only answers are opinions, and most people on this board probably have an opinion about this particular topic.

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In my opinion, I believe that the God of the Bible is "just." I'm not a very sentimental person and I don't believe in altruism, so "what about the children" has no effect on my logic, especially given the product of the environment/ability to use wisdom to see ahead factors.

Huh? Would you mind clarifying that?

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For instance, The Flood was issued because there was a situation in which no more repentant humans would come into existance - the environment was overly negative and would only produce negative humans - the "babies" would turn out like their parents due to humans being largely a product of their environment. In this circumstance, the issue as stated earlier could not resolve, so God just wiped the slate clean and started over with a small group of humans so that life could continue as it has up until this day.

So you're saying that every human being on the face of the Earth was evil and wicked except one single family? I'm afraid that sounds rather far-fetched to me (that and the idea that this one family managed to repopulate the Earth). Still, that's beside the point- so, why was killing everything on Earth the best way to go? Why not just convince the evil humans to repent, for example? And why slaughter all the animals on the planet along with them? You can't tell me that the animals were sinners too, and no more righteous animals would come into existence. Also, don't say "Well, he saved some of them." He saved a few of each animal, supposedly, but he still drowned the rest. Even if it WAS necessary for God, of all people, to KILL all the sinners, there are FAR better (and more efficient) ways to go about it.

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A person's experiences are entirely introspective, so whatever "suffering" that those that died went through in death is irrelevant since their experiences cease to exist with them.

This skewed view of life-without-afterlife always bothers me. When someone is dead, they're dead, and no longer feel pain- sure. But while they were alive, their suffering WAS relevent, to them.

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Similarly, a person resurrected to eternal life, would not care much about 70 - 80 years where some "bad stuff" happened - if anything, it would be a valued learning experience.

That depends on what happened to them. Suffering does not automatically lead to personal growth.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say with that last part, about suffering and dying and afterlife, though.

Jack the Bodiless

No, the Biblical God is not just. The Bible itself is clear on this point.

The concept of "justice", by definition, involves matching up "punishments" and "crimes": ensuring that the punishments are correctly allocated to the perpetrators is an inherent part of "justice".

For instance, if sneezing in public is a crime punishable by death and Joe sneezes, it cannot possibly be just to kill Bob for it, because there is a mismatch between the crime and the perpetrator. This principle applies even if you choose to believe that sneezing in public is justly a capital offense: this punishment cannot be just because Bob didn't do it.

Similarly, the Bible contains many examples of God punishing innocents for the crimes of others. It cannot be argued that they were actually punished for other crimes not mentioned, because the Bible states why they were punished.

The punishment of innocents for the crimes of others is a central theme throughout Christianity: it forms the very core of the religion, from the punishment of all humanity for the sin of Adam and Eve, right through to the punishment of Jesus for the crimes of everyone else.

This is all unjust.

Arrogancy

That was just to address the inevitable "what about the children" responses that the topic always gets. Sadly, I forgot to preaddress the animals

How is it farfetched? There were a lot less humans, more centralized then. That's pretty easy to see, given the environmental effects on humans in general.

Animals die anyway and are here Biblically to balance the earth/for man to take care of. Irrelevant. He saved some to keep this balance going.

What do you mean the idea that one family could repopulate the earth? Starting with Noah and his family given the dates and the initial expansion as stated in the Bible, the math works out correctly to the 6 billion humans on earth today. It works out the same for the variety and numbers of animals on earth taking microevolution into the equation. And yes, it has been proven that 2 of the necessary animals to create what we know today and their food could fit onto the Ark.

How is it skewed? Why does it bother you? Death negates life. because experiences are completely introverted, non existance nullifies experience. Pain, which is entirely internal is automatically negated by death. The only pain that exists is that which you remember - it ceases to exist once you forget it.

It's like pain you experienced as a baby. Maybe you kicked your crib too hard and hurt your foot. Does it matter now? No, because you don't remember it. Once you die, you have no awareness and remember nothing, so all of that disappears along with you.

It was just a comparison. In other words, I very much doubt someone who has lived 100,000 years without sickness would have any complaint about a cold he had for a week 99,990 years ago.

Arrogancy

Um, no it's not.

The theme of Christianity is that sin = death, and the only way to be pardoned from this is to recognize and believe in Jesus' ransom sacrifice and what it entails, which involves living in accordance with it.

That's the whole point - that those who sin die, but that God has allowed a way to redeem yourself from this/a way for forgiveness from sin so that you can be raised from death into perfect conditions. There are no "innocents" according to the Bible.

Jack the Bodiless

What do you mean by "the math works out correctly"?

It is true that, mathematically, Noah and his family could repopulate the Earth in the time available. However, it is NOT true that the Biblical date can be derived mathematically. Given favorable conditions, it's perfectly feasible for each generation to have ten or more kids: the current population can be reached in nine generations. Allowing 25 years per generation, Noah's Flood occurred in 1778 AD.

However, it is not GENETICALLY possible. The size of the human gene pool (the sheer number of genes in circulation) is too great. Unless some sort of hyper-evolution is being proposed: but then why has it slowed to a crawl in the modern era?
There are MANY cases where God punishes innocents for the crimes of others. Even allowing for this "original sin" nonsense, it is quite clear that they are innocent of the crimes for which they are being punished.

Therefore God is unjust, because of the lack of correlation between crime and punishment.

philechat

"Original purpose"? The one he destroyed and re-created, and then destroyed and re-created again? I see no moral "value judgments" in these action as to what constitutes just or not.

Note if he created the laws in this universe, it does not follow that it's "morally correct" to follow the law. Rather, we could only follow those laws without our "willing", and any laws that requires "free will" does not entitle whether a human action is "just" or not in itself, only "just" or not according to God's "subjective" (note since he's not omniscient, we cannot call his ideas to be objective) will. Here I see is that objectively, there is no such thing as "just" or not.

Again, we would need other criteria to decide God's amount of knowledge and power over the universe. I do not think humans are to be "blamed" for their choice, only that (perhaps) a tyrant God decided a certain action in disobedience to him as evil (I.e. Even if I am a theist, I would be a fatalist)

Arrogancy

It means that by taking the current growth rate of mankind, and dividing backwards to Noah, you would get a steady, resonable, growth and spread rate that needs no sudden bursts or gigantic cataclysms.

The gene pool works out as well. Starting with 6 seperate humans (Noah's children that survived with him and their wives) with the continuation of Shem, Ham and Japheth's families as described in the Bible could easily provide the number of genes in circulation. That's a seperate argument in it's entirety, so I'll save the quotes and arguments for that when I can delve into it.

Is it possible for you to argue an issue without trying to belittle other's arguments/beliefs as "nonsense" with no solid ground? It's respectful, and it keeps discussions from turning emotional/heated.

Name one in which they were innocent of the crimes, and there is no indication that they did not condone the crime commited.