Waning Moon Conrad

My gratitude to Tdekeyser for provoking this.

Accepting the premise - read in various places and heard from various Christians - that God cannot be in the presence of sin, some issues and questions bug me.

Seeing as it is God who defines sin, it should be possible for God to exclude the non-belief in Christ-as-saviour from the definition of sin, thereby making it possible for multitudes more to enjoy heaven.

If it is not possible for God to exclude the
non-belief in Christ-as-saviour from the definition of sin, then God is not omnipotent because something other than God has imposed restrictions upon his capacity to define sin.

If it is possible for God to exclude the non-belief in Christ-as-saviour from the definition of sin and he chooses not to then he's an arsehole because he gratuitously chooses to define sin in such a way as to maximise the payload of suffering on judgment day.

If God arbitrarily chooses to expand the definition of sin to include the non-belief in Christ-as-saviour then what is it that prevents him from being in the presence of non-Christians other than his own tendency to react hysterically to his own utterly arbitrary decision?

He would certainly get attention (some say he is getting attention). But an omnipotent deity as creative as this one obviously is, who suffers from Histrionic Personality Disorder, just doesn't ring true with me.

Furthermore, if he can't be in the presence of sin, then is he omnipresent?

[ December 23, 2002: Message edited by: Waning Moon Conrad ]</p>

Rousseau_CHN

Nice...except that we heard this Epicurean Logic a thousand times before.

Amos

</strong>

God does not define sin but only our second nature in which only sin is possible. If God defined sin he would have to be present in our sin nature to define sin. </strong>

Because God is not present in our sin nature he does not care about the different kinds of sin that lead to the redemption of our God nature. Be reminded here that the laws were given to Moses not to stop sin but for the conviction of sin. </strong>

If sin is a man made concept needed for the redemption of our benevolent God nature,sin is good and many different forms of sin should be identified by religion. This makes sin like fishing bait and is needed to catch the second sin nature of man. </strong>

Heaven and hell are religion specific and exist only inside our mythology. Christians cannot sin (1Jn.3:9) and the concept sin exists only to transform believers into Christians. Non believers cannot sin because the law is needed for the conviction of sin. The problem atheists have is that the laws are also written upon their hearts as if in stone and they will have a problem dealing with the persistence of these convictions. </strong>

God is onmnipresent because our second sin nature is illusion and therefore the concept sin that is built upon this illusory identity must itself also be an illusion. The convicion from within our soul must be dealth with while in exile from our second nature which means that salvation must be a non rational event and can never be based on scripture (sola scriptura).

Waning Moon Conrad

Maybe, but it helped me to articulate this for myself and it didn't hurt to offer it to others.

I'm not sure that there's anything Epicurean about this but then I don't know much about Epicurus except that he was atheistic, materialistic (not as in accumulation of goods but as in denial of the so called supernatural) and his theory of how eyesight occurs was totally erroneous.

Waning Moon Conrad

Thank you Amos! I like your take on things.