luvluv

Yeah, but a) I assume it was an analogy, being that Jesus didn't walk around hacking body parts off people and b)even if I was to hack off one of my body parts, I would be the one to decide to do that. It would be my free willed decision.

lptreich, I am fine with my computer doing everything I tell it, but if my wife or friends or children did, it would be difficult to have a fulfilling relationship with them.

Jerry Smith

luvluv...

I think we are getting somewhere...

Defining love to be kinds of positive action (as opposed to a state of mind), then yes, God must allow the exercise of free will in some areas in order for love to exist. You hit the nail on the head when you said that the existence of love is dependent upon choice existing for certain kinds of actions. Now, if you can defend the position that the option to rape, torture, murder, etc... is necessary in order for love to exist, then you may have a sensible argument.
You cannot, however, say that God must allow rape, because if he constrains a person's choices on that matter he must also constrain their choices on some unrelated matter upon which the ability to love depends. That would be similar to me saying that my wife cannot grab our son to pull him out of the way of oncoming traffic because if she did she would also "have to" grab him and pull him away from the cookie jar.
We observe that we would expect a God who is Good to do what is morally necessary. When we observe that any God who exists fails to do what is morally necessary, we conclude that any God who exists is not Good. It is a fallacy to say that a God who is Good cannot do the morally necessary because it places the burden on him to also do the morally unnecessary.

Again, it has nothing to do with the "world I want." It has only to do with the discrepancy between the world we observe and the conception of a Good and All-Powerful God. There is no reason we know of that a Good and All-Powerful God should necessarily create any world, much less the one that I would personally prefer. We can only say that if He is a Good and All-Powerful God, then we expect to see his goodness born out in his actions. We see the opposite.

But your argument must go further in order to address the issue: you must also argue that Love can only be exhibited in a world where you have the freedom to rape, murder, or torture. If this is your position, just say so. If, further, it is your position that an accomplice to rape is actually doing the good thing, because his failure to constrain the acts of the rapist allows that rapist the necessary free-agency for acts of love, then we can finish our discussion.

If God does consider it morally unjustifiable to allow someone to watch pornography then it is incumbent on him to prevent those who would otherwise watch it. Apparently, God does NOT consider it morally unjustifiable to allow someone to watch pornography (or else he just doesn't care whether he is morally justified or not).

God's morality may be different than ours, and it may be the absolute standard. So, what are the consequences if this should turn out to be the case? See below:

If God's (different) morality is the absolute standard, then we are wrong to use the term "good" to describe actions like interference to prevent a rape, murder, torture, etc... We are wrong to use the term "bad" to describe the negligent accomplice to these acts. Under God's correct morality, the accomplice to rape and murder is at least as "good" as someone who intervenes to prevent the rape and torture.

If God's morality is merely different, then our word "good" can still be used to describe actions like interference to prevent a rape, murder, torture, etc... Our term "bad" still describes the negligent accomplice to these acts. God, being the negligent accomplice rather than the interfering hero, falls under our description of "bad."

luvluv

I don't think we're getting anywhere, we are replaying the same argument from several pages ago.

"you must also argue that Love can only be exhibited in a world where you have the freedom to rape, murder, or torture"

Love can only be truly exhibited in a world where people can choose their own actions. The more actions that are proscribed from them, the less whatever actions that remain mean. It might sound crazy, but if we cannot harm each other it lessens our decision to treat them right. Any constraint imposed upon us lessens the meaning of whatever we do with whatever actions which are left which we are free to do. Our inability to do certain acts would not make a world that is more full of goodness than the world we inhabit. And it would entail a loss of freedom in the individuals who were thus constrained, thus interferring with the free will of that individual.

Therefore, it seems to me that there would be LESS LOVE POSSIBLE the more actions that were, in effect, roped off by God's intervention. If we were not allowed to hit each other, there would be no such thing as non-violence. Non-violence in the face of violence is a greater expression of love than a world in which violence is impossible. So perhaps it would be possible for their to be love but there would be less love possible in such a world. And who is to say that it is better to live in a world where there is little love and little pain than in a world in which there is much love and much pain. Again, 100 times out of 100 I would choose to live in the world in which the stakes were high (to quote De La Soul).

So my answer to you is that for every evil action that is made impossible by God, some of our ability to give love will go out of the world. So that it is possible for their to be a world with some love and no possibility for us to hurt each other, but not as much. I don't know if God is bad for making a world in which all love is possible, and all pain is possible, and then leaves it up to us.

More tommorow, I'm tired.

jdawg2

first of all, props for the De La Soul quote, lol.

second of all, I'm curious how heaven fits into all of this. Since you would rather choose a place with much love and much pain, I assume that you don't want to go to heaven, which apparently is a place with a whole bunch of love, and not much, or no pain at all.

correct? Does that mean you want to keep being reincarnated on Earth forever?

Jerry Smith

I disagree. Read on to see why...

Yes, I would tend to agree that some degree and manner of choice is necessary for people to truly exhibit love.

It does seem crazy. There is probably a good reason for that. I would value the love of my family no less if I knew that they could never, under any circumstances, kill me or each other.

A world without rape (and without the free choice to commit it) would not be better than a world with rape? OK... so from my previous post...
It looks like this is your position. We can finish now. I hope that your morality will change before you find yourself in a position to choose between preventing or allowing an act of rape.

luvluv

I'll wrap this up by saying, as I've said before, this is not an issue of me, a finite free will agent, interrupting a single act of rape. It is an issue of whether or not an omnipotent being can remove the possibility of all rape and not infringe upon the free will of his creation. Apples and oranges, as I've said before.

jdawg, I don't like pain. I'd be willing to give it all up if I could without giving away much of what is precious to me here. I don't think that's possible. But in heaven, many of the free will problems are solved. Up there, people don't cause each other pain because they choose not to. Since so many people here choose to inflict pain, the only way to stop them would be to restrain them in some way which would constitute a deletion of their free will. I'm cool with heaven, because nobody's free will has to be yanked around up there to get us to treat each other right.

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Jerry Smith

You have already wrapped it up very nicely.

You have made your position clear: a person's free will choice to commit rape is more important, morally, than the victim's right not to be raped. That is a sad position.

It seems you are also saying that you would not apply this moral principle to your own situation if you had the opportunity to impinge on someone's free will and prevent rape. I guess being a hypocrite is a good thing when you are committed to morally abhorrent principles.

luvluv

Talk to the hand, girlfriend.

ex-preacher

"And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." (Mt 5:30)

Tinker

luvluv
--------------------
First, I guess the short way to answer your questions is that I am not a
Biblical literalist: I don't take the Adam and Eve story to be literally
true.
--------------------

Sorry for taking long time to reply, I was away for couple of weeks.

I was just basically trying to establish what you use as a base for your
beliefs. Many christians would disagree with your interpretation. And I would assume that the Bible and christian tradition would have to be the source for morality and thought for a christian. If the thought deviates from these, can it then still be called christian thought?
I have noticed that the nicest and most thoughtful christians I've met have
been very liberal in their thought and morality, or they have been nominal christians only who either have never even read the Bible and don't hang around the church a lot, or who have thought a lot about the issues and end up with views and morality which is incompatible with the Bible and christian tradition to a large extent. On the other hand, some of the most mean, rigid, hard and judgemental people I have met were christians who have most closely followed their Bible and their christian tradition. Had christianity been true with its claims, one would expect the situtation to be the other way around. And if the Bible truly was the word of god, christians would not need to deviate from it to such a large extent in order to be moral, thinking and kind people.

Tinker