Stephen T-B

Just had a thought: perhaps LWF doesn't have to prove that god promoted genocide for the greater good.
If one assumes that the Bible doesn't fib, then one must assume that the loving god described by Jesus is consistent with the ferocious god described in the OT, and the only way I can see how the two might merge is to imagine them in terms of a huge iceberg with two peaks poking above the water which look quite separate. But under the water they are joined together, and are indeed, parts of one and the same structure.
All you now have to do is to believe the Bible. and accept that the humane streak Jesus exhibits from time to time in no way undermines the fundamental message of both books that the Here-and-Now is of no (or very little) consequence compared with the What�s-to-Come.
The fact is, however, that from the Enlightenment onwards, Christians have been moving away from this doctrine and towards an acceptance that the Here-and-Now is of immense importance.
Perhaps it is they that create the contradiction which troubles Emur - not the Bible?

scombrid

The here and now is of utmost importance as it has direct impact on the "what's to come". Unless of course we believe in pre-destination.

long winded fool

The greater good is the good of free will. If someone desires to murder someone, God cannot stop him without taking away his free will. Therefore, God cannot "intervene" without taking away someone's free will, and a person who has no free will to disobey God has no free will to love God, therefore God becomes a "cosmic rapist." He would be forcing His love on His children. Indeed, even Jesus' miracles were not examples of God directly choosing to heal someone. God didn't heal them in the sense that everyone here seems to take it. They were people choosing to be healed by God. "Your faith has made you whole." As soon as the people believed, their sickness was cured. The words of Jesus were simply a connection to Him. He didn't work any divine magic in the sense that we take it in this culture. He even said that He didn't talk to God for God's sake. He did it for the people's sake. He got them to believe in God's love, and this healed them. While it is the love of God that healed these people, it heals them because of their faith, their own love, not because of an arbitrary decision on God's part. Jesus could not heal people who didn't love God. That's why he could work so few miracles in his own home town. (That's right. He was omnipotent and He couldn't do this. If you understand how this is not a contradiction, then you understand the God of the Bible.) This is why it's not arbitrary. It's not God that commands genocide in the way you understand it. As a king decreeing ecxecution. It's the rejection of God that allows people to commit genocide and allows them to suffer under the heel of man and nature. In this way, the genocide results from God as the creator and he allows it. He allows it, commands it even, for the good of giving his children free will. It is not wrong to say that God commands genocide. It is wrong to assume that God is evil because of it. The genocide is the result of free will. By granting free will, God created Evil. It is the price we pay for the option of loving God. If we had no free will there would be no Evil and we could not love God, and I personally don't see how He could love us. The evil that is in man causes genocide. Without the existence of this evil, we'd be slaves. With the existence of this evil, we can recognize it and resist it, freely choosing eternal life over perpetual death. The problem of Evil boils down to the problem of free will. If God is loving, why did He give us free will? This is the crux of the argument, and it is solved simply by pointing out that God wants us to love Him. He doesn't require it.

Stephen T-B

(I'd just thought I was beginning to grasp what LWF is all about , then WHOOMPH!, I'm right back in the fog.
Got to go now, but if I've time tomorrow I hope to join the fray once again.
Good luck Infidels!)

scombrid

First earthly suffering was analogous to a parent punishing a child to coerce that child toward better behavior, ultimately for the good of the child. Now the suffering is just a by-product of freewill with no guided purpose? Interesting.

This really differs from the micro-management that my friend at the gym preaches to me. According to him the cartilage in my knees gave out because god didn't want me bodybuilding but had something else in mind (last I checked it was my own damn fault for overtraining) I have since I've become successful at kayak racing (wasn't much sense in bodybuilding if I couldn't have monstrous legs). He now insists that was obviously god's plan for me (Post hoc reasoning is great. What would've happened if my missed bodybuilding dreams had crushed my spirit?). But the problem with his model according to you is that god is toying directly with my life without consent and I'm just along for the ride. God is "raping" me by forcing his love on me.

Now he would argue that your model of god's love is flawed because god loves us and has a special purpose (Now why did I just think of Steve Martin?) for each of us. Everything that happens in your life is guided by the loving god from the painful constapation that makes you late for work thus getting you fired and changing your carreer path to the knee injury that alters your athletic career. Which is it? Did you eat too much cheese and are just suffering for it or did god bung up your colon to get you into a new line of work?

long winded fool

No. It was analogous to allowing a child to experience the consequences of a wrong act. You assumed an easily refutable (and often refuted) position and falsely applied it to my argument. I am not punishing my daughter by allowing her to date the jerk against my wishes. She is rejecting the good I offer freely and embracing the bad out of willful ignorance and stubbornness and because she has the ability to do so. You misunderstood my analogy. As you can see, the two analogies are mutually inclusive. The argument has not changed.

This boils down to the free-will/predestination paradox. We have the free choice to do pretty much what we want when we want and are responsible for the consequences... but God planned for us to do exactly what we will choose to do exactly when we will choose to do it from the beginning of time. I don't know how free will can coexist with omniscience. I don't pretend to be able to resolve the free will vs. predestination paradox. My argument hinges on, "If the God of the Bible were omniscient and we had free will, then..." The arguments provided above detail a switch in POV from belief in free will to belief in predestination. Both are properties of the universe according to the Bible. There are many threads about free will and predestination. This one is about the God of the Bible being unloving and arbitrary with healing and suffering. If we are talking about the God of the Bible, we must remember that the God of the Bible created and has power over everything in the universe, but we also have the free will to do what we please. (According to the Bible.) We share in the power of creation in a sense. This is what it means when it says "God created man in His own image." We have the power to be our own gods and create our own miracles. We can give love to whatever we want, just like God can. We are better off recognizing our souls and choosing to love the one true God of life above all else, but we can recognize our instincts and worship our material selves if we want to.

So why choose God over ourselves? If the soul is eternal and our material selves are temporal, this is a no-brainer.

scombrid

I did not assume an easily refuted anology and apply it to your argument. You introduced suffering as a means of behavior correction on page one. It makes sense too if you accept the potential of eternity. After all, if your choice in this infinitesimally short period of eternity that is human life determines where you'll spend the much longer infinity of eternity, then god would only be just if he provided clear guidance.

That reads an awful lot like you were drawing a parallel between a parent's consious allocation of punishment with a specific goal to God's doing the same.


This assumes that your daughter has reached a point where she "knows better" having been through childhood where you micromanaged her life in order to teach her the "right way". We as feeble humans may never really reach a point of "knowing better". We are always as children to god, presumably spending this entire life having our hands slapped out of the cookie jar. The problem is that his punishment (our suffering) does not have a detectable pattern to direct us to correct behavior. Since his various interventions appear arbitrary we can not adjust ourselves to his wishes because we can't discern his wishes through experience. We must rely on the fallacious word of fellow man. Because we can not discern gods wishes experientially we can not make an informed decision regarding our eternity.

On page one you also said that god offered miracles just to show proof and then allow us to choose the way. That agrees more with what you've said here regarding a stubborn grown child. However, accepting such an assertion requires that the reality of such signs and wonders be established. Things offered up as miracles in the modern world are always indistinguishible from humdrum reality. The miracles of the bible rank in believability with the Illiad. I'd believe cyclops existed as readily as I'd believe that the waters literally turned to blood. If the signs are woefully inadequate we can't make a rational, informed decision regarding where to spend eternity (or whether eternity exists or how to get there). How is our will free if the choices offered are not clear?




Might it be just if god would simply do so much as let us know that the soul exists and is eternal? Freewill hinges on this huge IF.

long winded fool

But we do know better. We aren't children incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong. Adam and Eve were until they ate from the tree of knowledge. Then they became adults with responsibility for their own actions. We can know the difference between good and evil and we can choose accordingly. The idea of arbitrary "divine hand slapping" is no different than simple cause and effect projected away from those who don't understand the nature of cause and effect and who don't want to take responsibility for their actions. If I put myself in a dangerous situation, I (or someone else) might get hurt because of my own actions. God isn't going to come down and hurt me. If my daughter chooses to date the jerk, she might get hurt. I have the power to stop it as her father but I don't. God has the power to stop it, He even has the power to take away her free will so that she won't even want to date him, but He doesn't. It isn't arbitrary punishment. It is inevitable consequences. It is the freedom to choose under the care of a loving Father. God gives us all the advice anybody could need in the form of a conscience, not to mention the Bible, to make the right choices. If we choose evil, we reap what we ourselves sow. God isn't sending His divine retribution in the popular sense. He's allowing us to choose evil. God is the author of evil, of course, in the sense that he's the author of free will. He has complete control over evil, so from a certain point of view one can say we're punished by wrong actions in the sense that the girl is punished with unhappiness for dating a jerk against her father's wishes. The fact remains that her father still loves her and still wants her to do the right thing. He doesn't want her to be unhappy, but he isn't going to physically stop her from choosing unhappiness. If he truly loves her, he'll provide her with all the advice and warnings she needs short of putting physical pressure on her and then let her make her own decision. The existence of human free will is far more important than the suffering of the human body. Human pain and suffering is a small price to pay for the freedom to choose. What are we supposed to choose? We ought to choose the things that don't result in unhappiness. Our own mistakes are not a sign of an arbitrary God. They're a sign of a loving God. A loving God would not make robots to do his bidding. Therefore, the existence of evil and of physical harm to the innocent serve to show that if there is a God, he is probably a loving God because a loving God provides His creation with freedom, not slavery.

Keep in mind here that I'm only proving that natural cause and effect can exist with the loving nature of the biblical God. I'm not proving that there is a God, as people often seem to assume for some reason, (perhaps because they can feel threatened by an argument.) I'm proving that the biblical idea of a loving God is not a logical dilemma in this situation, and that merely by reading the bible in context it is possible to come to this conclusion. In order to present a logical dilemma, some part of God's nature as described in the bible must be abandoned. This would be begging the question. You are essentially assuming the nonexistence of the biblical God, then go on to show how it contradicts the existence of God. While the reverse of this is a common argument with theists, this thread shows that atheists often do the exact same thing. Some atheists apparently have as much emotional investment in their beliefs as many theists do. The relevant question becomes: "Why is it so important to me that there isn't a God?" Give yourself an honest answer to this, and you'll recognize your subjective emotional desires and be on your way to objective reason.

Dr Rick

An omnipotent god could do so; even non-omnipotent human beings have come to the defense of victims and stopped a murder, but I doubt that anyone would seriously suggest that the hero is "taking away someone's free will." The murderer still has the will even if his desired outcome was not obtained.

Quote:

He would be forcing His love on His children.

That's pretty much what he does when he threatens to burn everyone in Hell that doesn't.

"A bachelor is married...that right, he's single and has wife. If you understand how this is not a contradiction, then you understand LWF."

Substitute the word Hitler everywhere you see the word God.

That completely misses the point.

We could have free-will and not have to suffer; that we do suffer needlessly suggests that the loving, powerful, all-knowing god of the Bible does not exist. Furthermore, choice and free-will have little to do with much of the suffering on this planet. From earthquakes to leukemia, much suffering has little to do with our choices.

How does one go about choosing not to have a hurricane or a drought?

Reality check time: you aren't proving anything except that you really don't understand the Problem of Evil (PoE) argument...

...or logic, either.

It has something to do with wanting to live in reality, and that whole genocide/oppression thing that god-belief seems to have inspired through-out history.

"Why is it so important to me that there is a sky-daddy whose putative existence violates reason and rules of evidence?" Give yourself an honest answer to this, and you'll recognize your subjective emotional desires and be on your way to objective reason.

scombrid

All this does is direct my actions in this life. I can observe cause and effect without injecting god into the equation. If I can attribute all of the suffering that I experience to my own actions or the actions of other mortals, where does god enter the picture? All of these things are part of the physical reality in which we and every other animal exists and have no bearing on an afterlife. If my dog gets after a hedgehog and gets a nose full of quills, did he choose some evil to cause that suffering? Nope, he�s just a dog. But he learned a lesson, a lesson based in this reality. If all these lessons do is teach us how to live this life (just as a dog learned to avoid hedgehogs), what is their value for our souls?

Freewill Doctrine says that I have one shot at heaven, I either accept Christ or not. The whole purpose of our freewill as mortals is this ONE choice. Suffering then should direct me toward a correct decision regarding the ultimate matter. If all suffering does is direct my inconsequential choices in human life, then suffering has no ultimate purpose. If suffering has no ultimate purpose then god must allow it just for grins.

Of course in the bible god doesn�t just �let things happen�. We have strayed from the god of the bible. Bible god actively destroyed people at times and wrought various natural and unnatural disasters to make his points. At least then people knew where he stood and had the freewill to make an informed decision about whether or not to follow him. Of course nothing you�ve said shows why a benevolent omniscient god couldn�t allow us a free choice regarding whether or not to follow him without suffering and torture as coersion.


Nowhere in this thread am I assuming the nonexistence of the biblical god and using that to show a contradiction in his nature. I have implied that if suffering doesn�t convince the unbeliever that god and salvation exist that suffering is in vain and therefore cruel. Convincing the unbeliever of His existence and the existence of salvation would not interfere with precious freewill. It would actually make it more valid since only an informed decision is truly free.

Suffering is bad. You say that the reward for this suffering is better. That is only true is the suffering helps us obtain that reward. Suffering that only directs mortal decisions doesn�t guide my decision regarding the afterlife and, therefore, has no purpose for me other than to pleasure god. Or maybe he�s indifferent but either way he�s not benevolent in this situation. Now, if believers who had accepted Christ didn�t suffer while us heathens did suffer, then we�d be able draw correct conclusions and make a choice on whether or not to continue suffering. As it stands, earthly suffering doesn�t help us to in the decision to reject/follow god. So what does it do then?