spin

-----------------
Anyway, the bible passages are not consistent with the essence of god being a siamese type individual.
-----------------

Nor are they consistent with this theory of trinity, for it does not come from the NT.

Misinterpretations of texts like Jn 10:30 do not help the cause. Remember though "I and the father are one", so 17:22, "The glory thou hast given me I have given them; that they may be one, just as we are one." Perfect accord.

A3

spin,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A3:
1) We would not be able to exercise free choice in political, moral or natural things if we did not have free will in spiritual things.
-----------------------
Where is the free will when the media can manipulate people to buy this or vote that?
People have the freedom to let themselves be manipulated or not.
================
2) If our freedom were taken away, we would lose our humanity.
-----------------------
Freedom has nothing to do with humanity, as benevolent acts in prisons show.
We have the freedom to will evil or good things, animals don’t. We would become as the animals.
If you mean free will, much of a human's life has been predestined by its training from the womb onwards.
It only seems that way. Our heredity, upbringing etc. is something we have the freedom to want to brake away from if we regard it as bad. (Brake the cycle)
-----------------------
4) If our freedom were taken away, we could not be regenerated [reborn].
-----------------------
This is unsupportable even from a biblical point of view.
To become reborn means stop wanting to do evil. Making it impossible for us to steal, lie etc. doesn’t take away our will to do evil. We will as soon as the opportunity is there.
-----------------------
5 If our freedom were taken away, we could not become spiritual.
-----------------------
You cannot assume "spiritual".
Why not, just because you can’t see it?
-----------------------
6) If our freedom were taken away, we could not be conjoined to the Lord.
-----------------------
In what way conjoined? so one loses one's individuality?
To eternity we will be individuals, good or bad. This conjunction is one of love. As any marriage counselor can tell you, there only exists a proper conjuction of love if it is reciprocal.
-----------------------
7) If our freedom were taken away, we would have no immortality.
-----------------------
If God had simply created us without the test drive on earth, what difference do you imagine there would be?
Test drive, that’s a good one. In many places it is said that people who don’t believe in God will die or be in eternal death. This means spiritual death. God is Life so to decide against God is to choose death. We believe we are now in a spiritual womb. Just as our physical body was in our mother’s womb to be formed for this physical world, so we are now to be shaped spiritually for the next or spiritual life. And this is what all the previous points are about: our spiritual side needs to develop in a physical environment which serves as its foundation. If someone chooses to be evil, it means he wants to go to hell and heaven would be hell to him. Another word for hell is death.

You, A3, have a view of the human species that doesn't seem to relate to the world..... Your views on freedom make it impossible for those who are not allowed freedom to "conjoin" with your god, just think of the starving people around the world who have little to no choice....

Wait a minute, there seems to be a misconception as to what this thread is about. My understanding is that we are discussing what would happen if God took our spiritual freedom away, so people would stop flying into buildings, or steal or whatever. This is not about people that are locked up or starving.
Actually the situation of the great women of Afghanistan proves my point. While their physical freedom was taken away, it certainly did not take away or change their spiritual freedom. They went back to doing what they wanted to do before their depravation. Probably with more vigor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Stevens
I didn’t say it was good. What I meant is that my opinion left him in freedom to change or not (because my opinion is not very important to him), but God’s perspective left him in no freedom, he had to change his pants because God is always right.
So what I mean is that the higher you value someones opinion the less freedom you have to ignore it.
A3

Kent Stevens

If we value gods opinion the most then his views would result in us having the least freedom of all. God would then oppresses us by revealation of himself and his opinions.

This is getting confusing. We may agree in free will which says that people are not gods puppets. God perhaps could make us his puppets but he choses not to.

Freedom in its normal sense is applied to the absence of being restrained. So freeing someone would be taking their physical restraints away.

Telling something to someone is not oppression. A scientist saying something about his area of expertise is not being oppressive.

Fascists could have taken peoples freedom away if someone had disagreed with them. In Hitler Germany one is not free to voice a contrary opinion without getting punished for it.

If god reveals himself to certain individuals details about himself this is not taking away people's freedom. If he makes his existence crystal clear to everyone through appearance on the six o'clock news this would not be taking away people's freedom. What would be taking away people's freedom would be if someone is physically forced to do what god wants us to do when this is arbitrary on god's part. Something arbitrary like women being forced to keep themselves completely covered in cloth or they get beaten.

What would be taking away freedom would be if certain individuals were arbitrarily persecuted for their beliefs.

A3

Hi Kent
Please keep these two things separate, our spiritual and our physical freedom. I'll paste here a short section from Swedenborg's most popular book Heaven and Hell about freedom. You'll see some of the points made above about what would happen if this were taken away.

So as soon as this balance is upset, we are not in spiritual freedom. We can talk a lot about 'what if' cases, like the one about the six o'clock news, but that doesn't help much. Basically if "he makes his existence crystal clear to everyone" we are no longer in freedom to think differently. But if this were done through Television we would have the freedom to wonder about the special effects the Networks used to pull this one off. Before 2000 years ago hell had become so powerful that people could be spiritually possessed. Since then only a lesser form happens and only through invitation (ours).
A3

daemon

Okay. To break down the second sentence into symbolic logic as I have interpreted it:
(Ex, Ey, Ez)~S(x,y,z) & S(x,y,z).
How can you, in any fashion, deal separately with inseparable "things"?
Height, width and depth are arbitrary vectors used to describe space; this is not analogous to the Trinitarian concept. Furthermore, it is possible to speak of two dimensional planes or even one dimensional lines (constituting a violation of the inseparability of space), and conceptualize more spacial dimensions than three (some theories suggest the universe is curved in a further dimension that we are unable to apprehend), so the description of space is flawed.

Kent Stevens

To A3

Are prophets denying us spiritual freedom through revealing their knowledge of God? Then moses should not have told us about the ten commandments and his meeting with God as this would reduce our spiritual freedom.

Is Zeus giving us spiritual freedom by not revealing his presence? Is the invisible pink unicorn giving us spiritual freedom through not revealing his presence? Is the Easter bunny giving us spiritual freedom by not revealing his presence? All these things do not exist so no wonder there is no evidence for their evidence.

The truth does not reduce peoples spiritual freedom. People could still choose not to follow God even if their was clear evidence of his existence. People could still choose to have lives that result in themselves going to hell. They are less likel to if God makes his existence clear so God seems to condone unnecessary evil.

A3

Hi Kent,
I don’t believe so because anything that comes by human means leaves us in spiritual freedom. I personally believe I’m telling you the truth but as you have noticed, it leaves you in complete freedom to accept or reject whatever I say. If you were at the bottom of the mountain that Moses went up and you felt the ground shake and the lighting show and saw Moses’ face shine as he came down, what would you think? Would you think: I wonder how he did that??? I doubt it, I think you would be very impressed and feel that you had no other option than to believe that this is God’s message and had little choice but to act accordingly.
One last thing. Imagine yourself driving a car, all of a sudden you notice a police car in your rearview mirror. Do you feel you still have the freedom to put the pedal to the metal, or don’t you? I doubt it you do. Well, the police is the law, but so is God. You can see the police and if you, as you say, have “clear evidence of his [God’s] existence” it the same as seeing Him in your rearview mirror. This would leave you with very little freedom to do evil. You had proof that the police was right behind you and it effected your freedom to be bad, proof of God would have the same effect (and He is not just in your rearview mirror either).
This I think says it all. It is from “The Human Mind” by one of our ministers.
“But man is born....to add to the perfection of heaven by contributing a mind formed in freedom and used according to reason.”
A3

Sojourner553

Posted by Amos:
____________________________________________
Originally posted by Sojourner553:
Porson shot back, "No, you
must show me one man in THREE buggies, if you can".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One man in three buggies is much like the Russian troika and is easy to explain.

___________________________________

Cute. (Really!) But in a Russian troika the dolls do not occupy the same space and there is a hierarchy where one of the dolls is larger and engulfs the space surrounding the smaller ones.

Would you have Jesus or the Holy Ghost in the smallest shell, surrounded and hidden by the other member?


_________________________________________
Per Amos:
When three horses are in charge of our destiny we really can't go wrong if they properly harnassed and are galloping in the same direction. The left lead horse is the conscious mind and the right off-hand horse is our subconscious mind. The middle horse is the communicator between the two.
_________________________________

So silly...
If our subconscious mind communicated with our conscious mind -- it wouldn't be subconscious anymore.

Sojourner

theophilus

<strong>You have an questioning mind and there is nothing wrong with that. After
all, we did not get our intelligence just to be smart shoppers or fly to
the moon.</strong>

An interesting statement. Just a couple of questiomns.

1. If there is "nothing wrong" with that, i.e., having a questioning mind, is there something "right" about it? If so, why?

2. What did we "get our intelligence" for? Are we accountable for how we use/misues it? To whom are we accountable?

theophilus

Aside from your mischaracterization of the doctrine of the Trinity, which Tercel corrected, your statement is only relevant in a materialistic existence.

Unless you know what limitations apply in a non-material domain, you have no way of knowing what is or isn't possible.

Here is the root of the unbeliever's problem. Assuming that his knowledge and experience which are known to be limited and fallible, are the standard by which all things are to be judged.