Sabine Grant

DR. RICK .. spelling is impeccable and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Radorth

Try to keep up.

Fine. That opinion by itself hardly means a good God doesn't exist. Write your own canon without the OT then. I had a tremendous mystical experience although I didn't exactly worship Yahweh in a synagogue. I had it before I believed in Jesus' resurrection, come to think of it. I have never doubted God was good- way beyond good actually- since then. I couldn't because I know what God did, that I am nothing special, and he will do the same for anyone. The only thing I did different than you was that I did not set out to prove his nonexistence with "rational" opinions already formed, and all sorts of instructions for God to follow. You will never find God if you are going to fault him up front. Why should he bother?

I know what the point of it is, and it ignores many possibilities and options, along with being presumptious. For example, if God created the world and fell asleep for 50 centuries, then woke up, raised you from the dead and made eveything nice, would you complain? I really don't think so.

Well at least reasonable people wouldn't.

That would explain all issues as well as, or even better than your either-or assertions, which only shows how simplistic they are. Now if you want to claim you are more righteous than such a God, and refuse to worship him, go ahead. Your argument asks us to make certain assumptions I feel no compulsion to make- such as "a good, powerful god would never contenance evil." I am willing to wait for him to stop countenancing it in the future, if there is a higher good to be achieved. The fact that you can't see any higher good being achieved doesn't prove it is impossible.

I've already shown that it only matters that he has certain powers and that he is good. Nobody, not even you, will give a rat's ass how powerful he is as long as he is powerful in at least the four or five ways I listed, and it turns out he is as good as I say. The only thing you will care about is all these rigid, tendentious arguments you made here.

Well no. He could be more powerful and less worthy of worship. You didn't think much about that statement, did you?

I'm afraid your own gymnastics will be more and more evident, as you are forced to see how rigid and tendentious your own "logic" really is. I don't think you would fully address the questions I raised no matter what thread you found them on, because you deal pretty much in black and white logic, as I call it. In fact I doubt the questions ever even crossed your mind.

Rad

Llyricist

Your personal experience means nothing against the many people just as open as you that NEVER got it. And I have had some "experiences" of my own, but they were more along the lines of being "connected" like the force in Starwars (without the light and dark sides), definitely not something of a personal or "good" nature though, though it felt good. If you look at my profile, you might see that the one sort of god definition I would accept is that all is god. But yes I do reject the very idea of a personal god. So I have a very hard time with your question about obeying, though I DO obey the pantheist god, I have no choice!

Though I also know most Christians regard pantheism as a copout or a may as well be atheist, so I label myself accordingly.

Frankly your idea of a non-omnimax god is no better than an advanced alien conducting an experiment, and any such being has to both demonstrate it's existance and worthiness of my respect before I would even consider obedience. On top of that, would have to give me something to obey! (the Bible ain't it) BUT I am NOT gonna create a "god" that I would worship and obey, so that aspect of your question is meaningless to me.

I wasn't kidding about just not wanting to derail the thread radorth. I have NO fear of you "showing me up" I have no problem being able to answer questions as long as they are coherent. And I ain't all that rigid.

Radorth

Well, how would you know that? Because they say so and you know just how I approached God? I don't know whether that makes you more presumptious or naive.

Well no, I postulated a totally omnimax God who took a nap, in order to make a point. Of course I don't think he's napping. I know he appears so to some, but I believe they are simply spiritually deaf for the moment and certain circumstances, a true revival, a painful experience or other event will awaken them. I suspect there is nothing he could do at this point to demonstrate his power or goodness to you, or he would. He would hear something like "Sorry, too late." There are just times and seasons for these things, and it depends more on our state of mind than on God, as shown by virtually every testimony I ever heard.

IMO, it "shakes out" to this: He's very much alive, powerful and good to some, and dead, impotent and uncaring to others. There are good reasons why, I think, if we care to contemplate them.

Rad

Llyricist

My point was that personal experience that isn't transferrable is useless to anyone but yourself. Are you going to believe in the Force because of MY experiences?

I was responding to the only valid argument you made against the PoE earlier in the thread... the omnimax god that took a nap is NOT immune from it, so I ignored it.

An omnimax God can do anything, including know whatever it would take to convince me, he could start by being logically consistent ... oops too late.

Really your arguments "to make a point" and then shifting right back to what we already refuted is really really tiresome Rad. And ANOTHER reason I did not want to engage you.

Stephen T-B

f this doesn’t belong here then I’ll start a new thread, but I thought it might help things along if we can establish on what authority the Christian God is ascribed with the possession of all knowledge, all power and all goodness.
Radorth; LWF; Sabine Grant - any useful quotes you can throw into the bowl?

Radorth

Yes it is transferable, just not through some formula. Revival and the testimony of it is infectious, and has a history of sweeping up everyone in its path when it occurs. I challenge you to read about it and explain it fully to us. The fact that it is rare is beside the point. I have spent a lifetime trying to understand revival and I admit I don't have the formula you think I should be able to "transfer" to you. All I know for sure is that Christians are, ironically, the most resistant to it, which means our God is not to be limited by Christian doctine. Ironically, even Christians seek some doctrine that you can grasp with your mind, write down and hand to another. God has more or less shunned everyone who tries that I'm afraid. That's the problem here. God will not be limited by your mind, your notions of what is "good," or your logic and will not honor it because he would be misrepresenting himself if he did. He won't even do it for the nicest, most intelligent, logical Christian in the world I'm afraid.

Why not? I've always said if someone can show me a more gracious, just, interested and powerful God than Jesus did, I'm all ears. My faith rests on the Gospels as well as having an experience which they facilitate and describe. I was quite interested in your experience actually. I'm hardly threatened by it after those I have had, which this chief of sinners would hold up to Charles Finney's if it could glorify God.

Oops, I ran off your track into the stands. It's kind fun though, don't you think?

Rad

Llyricist

Read some writings of Hitler, he called this phenomenon "Crowd Poison" and used it to great effect to drum up support for HIS illogical and emotional ideas.

Other than that I see nothing much worth responding to.

long winded fool

You are correct. I'm assuming that the God of the Bible exists in the way He is described in the Bible, which is logically necessary for the purposes of speculating on His nature. Doing evil is failing to be what God wants us to be. We must have the option to do evil if we are to have free will. (We don't have to choose evil to have free choice. We must be able to choose it. ) God is Good. Any not-good is evil and against God's desires. How can I demonstrate this? Read the Bible. Can I demonstrate this in reality? Unnecessary. My conclusion is: "The God of the Bible is not self-contradictory because of the existence of evil." I need not prove the God of the Bible exists in reality. I only need to prove that He is not self-contradictory as described by the Bible to defend against the claim of contradiction.

NO, NO, a thousand times NO. They are following what they sincerely believe to be GOD'S desires. It is NOT their fault there is no reliable way of DETERMINING God's desires.

There is a reliable way of determining God's desires by using the advice He's given just as there is a reliable way of determining my father's desires by using the advice he's given. The fact that people fail to take His advice means nothing. If my adult daughter dates a jerk in spite of my advice, the fault is hers, not mine because she has free will. She is clearly not taking my advice even if she claims she is. She is doing what she wants instead of what I tell her she ought to do, whether she realizes it or not. If people think that God wants them to murder their neighbors, then it is clearly not the God of the Bible that they worship. Calling yourself a Christian doesn't make you a Christian. Saying you believe in God doesn't mean that you believe in the God described in the Bible. How do I know if something is right or wrong? I apply reason. If something is wrong, it will become clear through critical analysis. Making a mistake is sinning. All sins are forgivable. If I fail to follow God's word I sin and I still go to heaven. If I knowingly reject God's word and follow my own desires, I reject forgiveness and go to hell. Where does the PoE have any ground to stand on?

This is an awful lot of words for a bald assertion, you are certainly living up to your nick name .

Go ahead and DEMONSTRATE that we can learn anything from this.

We can learn that the God of the Bible can be omnibenevolent and human beings can be imperfect and evil must exist simultaneously. Be careful that you don't become guilty of your own accusations. The argument is: IF the God of the bible exists, then His qualities would not be self-contradictory. Stating that God has the qualities described in the Bible is not a bald assertion. This is the premise that you agree upon when you claim that He has contradicting qualities. I've shown that you cannot accept the existence of God and point out contradictions in this case, because the contradictions you (and others) have pointed out are not present in the nature of the God of the Bible. The Bible does a neat job of addressing these popular contradictions which are usually obvious to children. It is clear by the text that the writers of the Bible understood a God that wasn't self-contradictory. I recommend a contemporary language translation. If you don't believe me, read it yourself.

Assertions assertions assertions, the fact is under your paradigm, ALL we CAN reliably do is MAKE MISTAKES, if we get it right it is purely by accident and little to do with will OR knowledge, which rather kills any notion of actually learning ANYTHING. Because by the time we actually KNOW we got it right or wrong.....we are already in heaven or hell and cannot pass along the knowledge. The best YOU can do is hope like hell YOU got all the interpretations right, and (a least) 95% of the rest of the people in the world are wrong.

Where do you get this? "All we can reliably do is make mistakes?" Where does this come from? Because we could be wrong we ought to assume that we can never be right? Not to mention that being wrong doesn't land you in Hell if we are talking about the Christian God. You sit there and call my argument blind assertion, but here you are adding ridiculous non-biblical premises and assuming they prove that the PoE contradicts the God of the Bible. I'm afraid you're the one who is retreating from the argument at hand. How quickly you project your own mistakes onto others.

Dr Rick

That's the best argument against the PoE, imo; there is possibly a good or goal that an omnimax god has in mind that requires evil to be realized. That good or goal, whatever it is, might not be logically possible without suffering, and we may not be able to know what it is because we are not omnipotent.