Infidelettante

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Magus55
He didn't screw up - We did.

] I am so tired of people who can blame every horror on thier fellow humans but not raise not so much as an eyebrow at the horrors of their God.

God created the world without evil. But since he also gave humans free will and ability to decide whether or not they wanted to remain good - there was the opportunity for evil to enter the world.

This is a lie. If there was no evil in the world how did the knowledge of it end up in the garden? Prior to the garden evil existed in the person of Satan. Unless and untill you can show that Satan fell after the "Fall of Man" it is true that God brought us into a creation in which evil already existed. Your God set us up to fail. There was never a chance that it could have gone any other way. And you know what really stinks? I don't think he even knew what he was doing.

God doesn't want robots who can't make their own decisions love him - he wants people who are sincere - he doesn't force you to love him.
( [/QUOTE

Robots was just what your God had hoped for. Do you think God created Adam for some grand cosmic purpose? No, Adam was created to tend the garden. And Eve was made because God realized that a man who gets a little now and then is a happy worker. The last thing God wanted was a thinker. He wanted a drone. A robot. And how can you think that the threat of hell is not force.

JT

ex-xian

Magus55:
Have you been recieving the messages that I've sent you regarding the thread on christian experience? If you are ignoring them and decline to discuss your posts regarding this issue, let me know. Otherwise, there is a thread in General religious discussion about the validity of the christian experience.

Regarding this thread:
I've always thought that the problem of evil and pain is the best argument against theism, and that the subject of hell was the best argument against christianity.

How can it be just to be punished infinitely for finite crimes. Magus55 posted before that since the crimes are against an infinite being, it's just to be punished infinitely. If everyone went by this standard, we would punish our bratty toddlers who hit adults by putting them in prison.

It isn't logical to punish someone according to the being that is sinned against.

MrDarwin

I have already raised the possibility to Magus--ignored so far--that God, being infinite, eternal, and merciful, is surely also infinitely able to forgive, and eternally willing to. I'm not sure why Magus limits his God to some time limit for forgiveness, or why such a merciful deity would ever withdraw his/her/its willingness to save his/her/its own creations, and abandon them to suffering.

ex-xian

sorry for being redudant. i guess that's what i get for not reading the entire thread.

Lobstrosity

I'm not sure if this specific question has been mentioned earlier in the thread (I just don't have time to finish reading it all at this moment) so forgive me if I'm repeating something. I know some people were asking why it's not alright to accept Jesus as your savior immediately after death. What I want to know is what happens if prior to your death you accept Jesus as your savior and then, after getting into Heaven, you subsequently decide to reject Jesus as your savior. Supposedly you still have free will in Heaven, right? You can change your mind about things there, can't you? I know a lot of theists believe that atheists "deny" the existence of god when they know full well he really exists, so clearly for them it would be feasible for someone to deny the existence of God right to his face, right? Or even less dramatic than claiming God doesn't exist, you could simply change your mind about how important Jesus really was. Maybe you'll come to the conclusion after several aeons that what Jesus did for us wasn't actually so great--he didn't really "save" us from anything, after all because this whole salvation scheme of God's is pretty convoluded and dumb, when you really have a few billion years to think about it. At this point does God cast you out of Heaven? If your fate is "set in stone" as Magus says, does God even have the power to cast you out? Would you become Satan Jr? If you aren't cast out, then you can spend an eternity living in paradise, rejecting God the whole time, while others spend an eternity suffering for rejecting God for but a mere instant. That certainly wouldn't be just. And on the flip side, if you are cast out for changing your mind in Heaven, then why can't people who change their mind in Hell be brought up to Heaven?

Radorth

I can't wait to see what skeptics would dare answer in the affirmative- thus proving my point that even seeing God himself in heaven might make no difference. Denying him to his face? My my my.

It also gives much credence to the theory that eternal punishment is justified where there is eternal rebellion and resultant eternal sin.

Not that it would happen, since God well knows who will and will not backslide.

Rad

ex-xian

Well, perhaps you can explain the question in my above post.

Lobstrosity

Well no, it doesn't give much credence to anything. It's a hypothetical situation that some theists would find plausible given their gross misinterpretation of the atheist stance. Don't mistake my words as an atheist's admission that he would deny God even when given proof of God's existence.

So your answer to my question is that it would never happen because God would never let such a person into Heaven? I thought the only criterion for getting into Heaven was accepting Christ as your savior. If a person honestly does this in their life time, is this not enough to get into Heaven? What you're saying is that some people who accept Christ into their hearts will in fact go to Hell because God forsees that, once they are in Heaven, they will utilize the free will he gave them to change their minds? They are being punished for crimes they have yet to commit?

This then all leads to one final, giant question: what is the point of our being here in the first place? If, as you claim, God's decision on our eternal resting place is made using his knowledge of how we will act in the future (or even more generally, how any hypothetical individual would act were he to exist), why do we even bother going through the motions? Why aren't each of us just created into Heaven or Hell directly? Our actions can't determine our fate because God has had our fate mapped out since the beginning of time, according to you. Things don't happen as a result of what we do, they happen as a result of what God knows we will do, which makes our very existence pointless beyond belief.

oriecat

Magus, since you fully admit this, I am curious about your response to what JenniferD posted. You used mathematical odds in another thread to support your position about Jesus, so what do you think about this math?

Daggah

Magus, hypothetical scenario:

We know that children who are abused often grow up to be abusers themselves.

So let's say I know a young child whose parents are abusive. Let's also assume that Christianity is true and that this child does believe in God and Jesus, and as such, if he died, he would go to heaven.

Would it be morally right for me to kill this child? By killing him, I:

#1, give him an instant one-way ticket to heaven.
#2, end his suffering at the hands of his abusive parents.
#3, prevent him from growing up to be an evil, abusive person himself.

I want to hear your answer.