christ-on-a-stick

Heh.... well that's an excellent question Badfish. Have you thought much about it and how it squares with the concept of an "all-wise" and "all-powerful" (not to mention omniscient) God?

Calzaer

Wouldn't it be nice if the Christians got together and actually discussed what they really believe before they went out and tried to convert us to their individual, made-up versions of the religion?

"I'm a Magus55 Christian!"
"I'm a Badfish Christian!"
"You're wrong!"
"No, you're wong!"
"Hey, heathen, come be a Magus55 Christian with me!"
"No, come be a Badfish Christian! Magus55 Christians are wrong!"

Magus55

Haven't you learned yet that making factual statements is a bad idea? You can't prove Heaven doesn't exist, so stop saying it doesn't.

Calzaer

Only to a Christian would making statements of fact seem like a bad idea.

(hint: Pay attention to your adjective clauses and the words they modify... and pay attention in English class tomorrow, too)

(1) Mind if I throw that back at you later? "You can't prove heaven exists, so stop saying it does?"

(2) The existance of heaven is a positive claim that has yet to be substantiated. Until such time as the positive claim can be tested, the null hypothesis (in this case "There is no heaven") is the stance that MUST be adopted for the sake of intellectual honesty.

Bree

Where in the Bible is this situation described? I can't seem to find it.

Tenek

Gee, I thought the path to salvation was believething in Jesus. :P

It just struck me as odd that a last-minute conversion could save you, but a last-minute deconversion? Hell? If God is really trying to get people to Heaven, He shouldn't let anybody deconvert. As soon as the thought pops up, massive coronary and they're in.

See, you might go with the whole hate-motivated thought thing, but I highly suspect that any God who cares about me sufficiently to grant an afterlife of any sort (chalk one up for Deism if that's not the case) wouldn't *need* it. Besides, if He's perfect, He should be able to formulate an argument sufficient to allay whatever hatred I bear towards Him for anything. Like, oh, not getting the picture of what He's all about, just like everybody else on this rock. It's hard to keep hating God for letting Aunt Mary die when He didn't really have anything to do with it one way or another.

As a side note, I think that God isn't really "perfect order" - non-determinism and all - so it would make sense that there wouldn't be absolute, unbreakable laws of the spirit either.

If there can be no sin in Heaven, those in Heaven cannot have free will. The only other option would be kicking people out to remove said sin, off to Hell and such, which would result in a probability of any one person, dead, being in Heaven are somewhere around 1/(TC) where T is the length of time the person has spent in Heaven and C is a measure of a person's innate chaos.

If you have free will after death, then either everybody ends up in Hell eventually, or you can flip back between Heaven and Hell as your godliness waxes and wanes. A bit odd.

If you don't, then we have annihilationism in conjunction with some other thing. Hopefully. You would then live a life which determines the placement of an automaton at best, or you would either go to Hell yourself or be destroyed and send someone else who cannot think for himself to Heaven.

Is there really a point to Heaven without free will? Hell, is there a point to *existence* without free will?

After seven hundred quintillion years, sin might be the only thing left that doesn't bore you to tears. See above formula for end result. Being so strongly compelled to resist sin that it is impossible removes free will again.

I don't look foward to telling God off. Your God, yes, I would very much like to have a few choice words with that particular deity. Most notably on his hypocrisy, dictatorial nature, and complete miscarriage of justice.

Evidently because God considers the free choice of a few to accept Him worth a few billion damned souls.

Just playing the odds, I would imagine. It doesn't seem to be detectable, plus there's very little evidence of the supernatural that I can see, namely none. Unbelief is default, isn't it?

Stephen T-B

Two points for you, Badfish:

1) There are passages in the Bible which refer to God hardening people’s hearts so he can do something really nasty to them, which is consistent with his pre-selecting a chosen few for eternal life while “punishing” all the rest with death.
I wonder, is this the God you go to church to worship, or do you worship another sort?

2) If Free Will is allowed in Heaven, how can it be expressed by an immaterial soul for which Heaven offers no temptations? What choices exist in your Heaven? Does a soul have to decide whether to sit on this cloud over here or that cloud over there? Whether to Praise God now and for the rest of eternity, or swan around a bit first and see who, from history, is also there. Which of the popes, for instance? Can a soul ask to have another stint on Earth? Does Time exist in Heaven?
I ask these questions because you seem to have thought about this subject. But I wonder, have you thought about it deeply enough?

Darth Dane

Why not just create instant utopia, and avoid all the pain and heartache, both for humans and for God.

God did that, but it wasn't any fun either for him or for us, ala Matrix idea, people didn't have fun.

Apparently all in all it was more fun for God and humans to have the garden of eden as it is right now, we can change back as we see fit, if we could co-ordinate our efforts in one NOW.

But we don't.

It is fun trying to re-discover our true nature, and only by mirroring it do we see it




DD - Love Spliff

GrandDesigner

The way I once saw it is that Satan, the devil thing sometimes referenced in the Bible or other places, was below humans. Meaning we are closer to God than Satan. But Satan tried to drag us down enough to actually look up to Him. To a position where He could judge someone and they'd believe it.

One way to drag people down, for instance, is to distract them into thinking they're worshipping or praising something else but really they're praising another..possibly jealous, maybe, God.

What happens when the 'shroud of the dark side' is lifted, however, is truth shines clear. But not only to us, but to Satan, the dark lord, himself. Can you imagine Satan getting butterflies in His stomach? Thats funny.

If there is such a being as Satan, I believe He has His own things to worry about now and is not concerned with misleading anyone anymore.

Grand Ol Designer

AJ113

Can you imagine Satan existing at all?
Now THAT's funny!