jkb

reading this triggered some questions.
1. Did god create heaven?
2. Do or will people have free will in Heaven?
3. Is there evil in heaven?

if the answer to 1 and 2 are yes
and the answer to 3 is no, then obviously
god can create a place with free will and no evil.
So what the hell happened with this universe?

xeren

jkb,

To answer your question, there's no such thing as free will. Haha, I'm serious, but that's a whole different posting that doesn't need to be brought up here.

Actually, that's one of the reasons i'm a strong atheist when it comes to the Christian god. Either the people don't have free will in heaven or god could have created a perfect world on earth where people still have free will. Either way, Christianity can't reconcile it.

Theists, if i am missing another option in this dilemna, please tell me, because i would HONESTLY love to hear it, but no statements that can't be backed up or proven!

Thank you

VirusInTheSystem

Disclaimer: Everything i'm about to say is purely my own speculation, and opinion. My opinions change rapidly, and I don't claim that whatever current opinions i have are the all-holy-truth or anything similar to it.


quote:
reading this triggered some questions.
1. Did god create heaven?
2. Do or will people have free will in Heaven?
3. Is there evil in heaven?
if the answer to 1 and 2 are yes
and the answer to 3 is no, then obviously
god can create a place with free will and no evil.
So what the hell happened with this universe


jkb,
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No

How, I believe heaven is a place where everyone is free from evil *by will*. They have free will, and have made a concious choice to refuse any form of evil. So yes, i think there is free will in heaven... and if someone in heaven chose evil, that person/angel would *fall* from heaven. (As the myth of Lucifer becoming proud and *falling* from heaven... to become "Satan".) While in heaven, Lucifer always had "free will", and he always chose good. But then he chose evil, and could no longer exist in heaven, because evil cannot exist in heaven.
So the only reason that heaven is a place where free will exists without evil: anyone who would choose evil can not be in heaven. An evil person can not go there, and a good person who becomes evil can not *stay* there.
--------------------------------

So why might God create a place where evil is "allowed" to exist?

Here is a theory I have.

quote: Heaven is a place/state of being that is really really good (possibly infinitely good).

curby,
i think that heaven is very possibly the state of complete and abolute bliss, the complete and total lack of suffering, and the complete and ultimate state of pleasure. Heaven, I think, is to *experience* God. And since, hypothetically, there is nothing "above" or greater then God, there can be no experience greater then the experience of God. After all, would God create something greater than himself? This would then make him no longer "God".

So if one were to experience the greatest of all experience, for all eternity-- this would be, as Uni-universe said, "static". Let me try to expound on that concept though.
Fabulously rich people, who have everything they want and more (physically speaking), are often very dis-satisfied with the great things that they have. They realize that *it gets no better than this*. They live in "heaven" on earth every day, and it becomes common to them. Like sex: great sex is great sex only if you don't try having it continuously, non-stop, for literaly 1000 days straight. Then it would probably become hell.

So we see that experience is relative. If you become saturated with the best of experiences, you become immune to them, and may even begin to hate them (because you percieve that there can't be anything better).

So this ultimate state of experiencing God could be imperfect in its very perfection. It *can't* be any better... and you would be experiencing it on a constant, day to day basis, for... well, forever. So in my mind, heaven has then turned into "hell". Its static, meaningless.

So what is the solution to that? First, what if God wanted us to experience something *better* than heaven, the ultimate experience. Would this be possible?

In a sense, yes.

Experience is relative. If you were to take the poorest, hungriest begger in a slum, and put him in a King's palace... that begger would be experiencing a *ton* more joy and excitement than anyone who has lived in the palace all their lives. He's leapt from one extreme (a negative extreme), to the exact opposite extreme (a positive extreme). So his experience will be, relatively speaking, far more incredible than anyone's experience of the palace (although it is all the same literal experience, it is far deifferent depending on who is experiencing it... and what that person is *accustom* to experiencing.

So why might there be a world like ours, where imperfection and suffering are allowed not only to exist, but to thrive?

What if the King of the palace, seeing that all his royal subjects had become *bored* with their luxurious existence-- what if he found a way to put them all to sleep, give them all complete amnesia, and let them wake up on the streets in begger's rags. Then, he left it up to them to discover who they really were. Some of them would go through the rest of their lives thinking they were slum-dwellers-- thinking that's the way it was, the way it alsways had been (since they all were given amnesia, and couldn't *remember* their true orgins)

Many of them would probably live out the rest of their lives and then die, never having known who they really had been. But others would find strange thoughts in their minds. Thoughts that this slum is just not *right* for them, that there needs to be something more, something better. So they begin to strive and pursue these feelings, until it leads them to *clues* (the king left some clues of their true identities. but only clues that they could find if they really *wanted* to find them). Eventually, some of these poor slum-dwellers, who have no memory of anything better than their lives of poverty... reach the palace, that thing which they did not *remember*, but had *hope* for. By this time, these few know without any shadow of a doubt, that they are actually royal subjects. They also understand why they became slum-dwellers, and why they had no memory of their royal lives. they know exactly what the king wanted to achieve from this project. The king wanted *them*, the most determined and faithful of his subjects, to find their own way *back* to the palace. Because the king new that they would not be bored with palace life after going through that long, crazy ordeal... after being slum-dwellers. After solving the kings mystery, and making it back home with their own hope and determination.

So the king would have given his subjects something far greater than they would have experienced if they had just lived complacenty in the palace their whole lives. He gave them *suffering*. Then the palace was so much better. That which couldn't *possibly* have been better, has miraculously become... better.

Because experience is relative.

So how could a "loving" God allow suffering? Perhaps it is the only way to experience true joy. Perhaps perfection would be a bore if didn't first get to know suffering.

Just some ideas

peace,
-justin

K

Virus:

Is it possible for a person with free will to live an entirelly sinless life? If I remember my catechism correctly, Jesus was the only sinless person. If that's the case, the population of Heaven is going to plummet to one really quickly. With your proposal, it sounds like all of humankind is going to Hell. Some are just get to go to the front of the line.

xeren

So millions of Jew had to be murdered, suicide bombing have to take place in Israel, and AIDS had to spread from Africa so that some christians could enjoy heaven by being able to compare it to earth?

You can not rationalize all the suffering that goes on here on earth by saying that it's there to make heaven better. A benevolent god would not do that.

Answerer

Actually, the answer should be three yes, zero nos. There is certainly evil in the heaven that come in the guise of a God. The most obvious record of his evil deeds is the stupid 'test' set by him that causes 90% or more of the total human population(past and present) to end up in the burning inferno for all eternity.
So much for a compassionate God.

atrahasis

God knows everything right! If God already knows how it feels to praised, then why does he demand our praise..

I don't beleive in any God or Gods,, whose fault is it? to me it his fault that i don't..because i think it should be him who should make the effort to prove his existence to me...

Thats another proof that christianity is false..

VirusInTheSystem

quote:Is it possible for a person with free will to live an entirelly sinless life? If I remember my catechism correctly, Jesus was the only sinless person. If that's the case, the population of Heaven is going to plummet to one really quickly. With your proposal, it sounds like all of humankind is going to Hell. Some are just get to go to the front of the line.
---------------------------------------------

Do I think it is possiblf for someone to live an entirely sinless life on earth... no. But that is the whole point of the Jedeo/Christian religion... their must be a *sacrifice* of something which *is* perfect and sinless. Someone who is completely innocent must *suffer* for our shortcomings. Before Christ, this was represented by animal sacrifices. But if Jesus was, as some people believe, actually the Son of God-- then his sacrifice should be more than sufficient for any number of humans. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to live as free from sin as we cn in this life. If we don't make the effort ourselves, if we don't *desire* to be free from sin and make personal sacrifice for that cause, than Jesus' sacrifice would mean nothing for us. I believe that after death, yes, some people will be completely free from sin.

quote: A benevolent god would not do that.

xeren, maybe you should re-think your definition of "benevolent". If God is "benevolent", that doesn't mean he fits *our* standards for benevolence... if God is God as I think of Him, he *is* the standard, the last word on *anything*. This is based on the assumtion that God is the cause of *all* things, and there is nothing above Him or which in turn created Him.

So in a sense, everything that exists is God's to do with whatever he wants...

In my own opinion, everything that exists could be thought of as "part of God", as in part of His very body.

So if someone wanted to hurt their own body in some way for whatever reason, how would that not be "benevolant"? Their body is theirs to do with whatever they want. No one would accuse a person of being "cruel" for amputating their own leg. I believe that that's the same level of power that God has over everything that exists.
I don't think we are seperate, individual entities with our own God given "human rights", anymore than our own hands are seperate entities from ourselves. Our hands do whatever we want them to do, no questions asked. Is this a violation of their personal "rights"? Is this inhumane, slavery?
Just my opinion anyways.

quote:
90% or more of the total human population(past and present) to end up in the burning inferno for all eternity.
So much for a compassionate God.

answerer, I don't believe that interpretation of "hell", is any more a fundamental doctrine of Christianity than the literal account of genesis. Do you think all Christians are actually convinced that hell is a dungeon of the underworld, filled with literal fire that burns and tortures people for all eternity?

quote: I don't beleive in any God or Gods, whose fault is it? to me it his fault that i don't..because i think it should be him who should make the effort to prove his existence to me...

black moses, why do you think that God owes you anything? So if God exists, you think it is your right for Him to come *prove* Himself to you?


quote: Thats another proof that christianity is false.

You're right, it is! I hereby renounce my beliefs in light of this undeniable new evidence. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

xeren

Well, for one, a hand doesn't have its own consciousness. Amputating one of your own limbs is not very benevolent at all, and most people would say that you are being cruel to yourself.

The analogy is lacking in many areas.

Whether you believe the Bible was divinely inspired or not(and i'm guessing you do) you can't deny that it was WRITTEN by humans. And when humans wrote that god is all loving/all good in the bible, they were using human standards of goodness.

It seems that you admit that god is doing bad things, by human standards. Those are the only standards we can actually know, so why should we just make up this "god standard" and believe it exists? Because it helps reconcile the horrible acts that god allows, and for no other reason.

Bloop

What kind of can of worms does the "The lord moves in mysterious ways" defense open up ? If we cannot judge God then we cannot do so anywhere and just not only when it is needed to make a certain body of apologetics work. Saying that "smiting the Amelekites" is good in Gods eyes means that he could just as well destroy us all tomorrow through some extravagant and very painful way just for the fun of it.

What's to stop him ? If we complain about the unfairness of the situation he could always pull out the "Mysterious ways" defense. But the Bible tells you differently ? Well God may have found it best to fool us for some reason. A reason unknown to us that is.

I fail to see the comforting part in the "Mysterious ways" defense. It seems that it pulls the rug on all moral judgement on God

Any thought or ideas ?

Bloop