Jamie_L

Alright, the free will defense says God values free will more than eliminating evil from the world. Specifically, God values the freedom to do evil. He values that freedom of choice more than the elimination of suffering among his beloved creations.

If God values the freedom to choose evil so much, shouldn't he be pleased when we exercise that free will. If it's so important to have it, shouldn't he value it when we use it? If he is so displeased when we choose evil, then why does he value our ability to choose evil?

Related, but second question: Why does God value the freedom to choose evil when he himself never chooses to do evil. If always making the right choice is good enough for God, why not just make us so we would always make the right choice? What is the value in screwing up?

Jamie

-RRH-

Well, one idea I've heard is as follows. Though, this idea of God is somewhat pantheistic.

God created people by breaking off small pieces of Himself and implanting them as souls in all of the people, (and animals and plants and so on) so that He could experience what it is like. Then sometime in the future, after we reincarnate enough times and are capable of returning to God, we become one, and He adds our experiences to his own.

Of course, with this view, our obligation to God is to be as un-Godly as possible, so that we rack up more experiences He otherwise wouldn't have.

I ate Pascal's Wafer

Hehe...I like it! A supernatural deity forms these entities and actually wants them to go out and do ungodly things. That's my kind of deity!

-Nick

Stephen T-B

God creates Adam and gives him human nature; then he puts two trees in the Garden of Eden and tells Adam and Eve they can eat the fruit of every tree, except of these two.
So what were they there for?
And what did he expect?
He’d created human nature so knew perfectly well that if you tell someone “DON’T DO THAT” there is a 99.9 per cent he’ll go right ahead and do it.
Genesis, of course, places the initial blame on the Serpent. But how did that get into the Garden, if not by god’s say so?
Prosecutor addressing the Accused (God): “God Almighty, will You please tell the court if the Fall of Adam was not, in fact, your intention right from the start? Is it not the case, God, that you effectively dug a pit in your Garden of Eden and then led the benighted Adam and his lady Eve by the hand so that they should fall right into it?”
(An aside: one thing that hardly ever gets mentioned by the Fundamentalists is what the Serpent looked like before God took its legs away.)

JusticeMachine

Romans 6

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[1] that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

I guess I could have parafraised it, but it stands so well on its own

Jamie_L

JusticeMachine:

I think your verses miss the point. Christ supposedly was sent to cleanse the world of sin. But why was the sin there in the first place?

Setting that aside for the moment - why could not all sin been literally wiped from the earth upon Christ's death. Why could not his death have taken from the minds of men and women all desire to sin? Why should we be left with the choice to choose to join Christ and cast sin off. Why wasn't it just cast off for us?

What is the value of allowing us the option to fail and be lost forever?

Jamie

JusticeMachine

Romans 3

5But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7Someone might argue, "If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?" 8Why not say--as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say--"Let us do evil that good may result"? Their condemnation is deserved.

I know that doesn't answer your question but it brings more clarity.

I guess GOD could have created mindless robots to serve him as his slaves, but there is no value in that. It brought GOD joy to create us, and commune with us, compared often times that of a farther to his son or a husband to his bride.

It is much more valuable for my wife to choose to love me of her own free will than to have a mindless robot programmed to love me. If people have the free will to choose, then there are those who will choose their own way vs GODs. Which is Sin.

Sin is an inherent pitfall of freewill, but a controlable one, and it can be controlled by choice, and there in lies the value.

Mageth

I guess GOD could have created mindless robots to serve him as his slaves, but there is no value in that. It brought GOD joy to create us, and commune with us, compared often times that of a farther to his son or a husband to his bride.

Couldn't god have created us with "free will", allowing us to choose to serve him or go our own way, and yet not condemn us for exercising that free will? Should a man condemn and "bring his wrath" on a woman who, out of her free will, chooses to reject him as a husband?

JusticeMachine

No a man shouldn't for he has no authority to do so. GOD however does have the authority to pass final judgement on what he has created.

Mageth

No a man shouldn't for he has no authority to do so.

IMO, a man shouldn't because it would be wrong to do so. With your logic, if a man had the authority, then by golly he should release his wrath on the woman!

GOD however does have the authority to pass final judgement on what he has created.

Might makes righ, eh? God, apparently, must create us with free will to assure we serve him by choice but, if we choose not to serve him, apparently must judge (and condemn) us for exercising that "god-given" free choice in a way that he doesn't approve?

It sounds like a shotgun wedding to me.

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>