Ronin

lwf ~

The significant problem with your empathy/love analogy is that the Christian 'God' is supposed to be omnipotent...and, therefore, allegedly not limited in any way to heal those suffering.

The God that is portrayed in the book of the bible appears to be limited in options, just as you and the heart people are...or He intentionally refuses to use His wizardry to fix it all...as, according to myth, His heaven exists where there is no such suffering.

Either way, the Christian God is not all-loving nor all-good.

Darth Dane

The significant problem with your empathy/love analogy is that the Christian 'God' is supposed to be omnipotent...and, therefore, allegedly not limited in any way to heal those suffering.

What if we are angels, and we asked God to be born here.

Angels(Us) : God we want to go to earth to see how Life is like

God: But you will be born in almost complete ignorance!

Angels(us): It's ok, as long as we come back to you

God: Well you will, but there is suffering there, you will curse me and whatnot because you can't remember Me, You'll say you don't believe in me, and will go your own way.

Angels(us): We are ready to accept suffering for the joy of Life, we know you didn't put us there, we ourselves asked you too.

God: Ok, I'll put down some hints then, so you can choose also there to follow me or not.

Angels(us): Thanks, you are God and gave us as we asked

God mutters: Be careful what you wish/ask for

Angels(us): What was that?

God: Oh nothing

Either way, the Christian God is not all-loving nor all-good.



What if we chose to be here?





DD - Love Spliff

Ronin

Angels were dead?

Angels have cravings...with the divine beauty of God walking about?!

Why is that?

What is it about this all-powerful God that can't make Life perfect and without suffering and death...um, like in Eden?

So God is not omnipresent?

Who is responsible for such idiotic caveats regarding life?

How would the angels still know this after the 'mindscramble' caveat proposed?

Didn't any of these knobs remember to ask for an exit clause?

So this God can manipulate the rules of this game?

Why do the angels, in order to experiencie life, have to submit to these baseless, immature propositions?

No deal God...I know you can let us experience life without all these dumb rules...we've seen you do it once with clayman Adam.

<Don Corleone>Muwahahahahahahaaa...</Don Corleone>

Angels:...our superhearing failed briefly...did you do that?!

God: No...really...Nothing.

...and, therefore, not at all.

Sounds like a fairly nonsensical game considering what we know about the vast universe.

Then again, this has just been another silly and weak hypothesis, after all.

Cojana

And again, a sure way to kill a fairly interesting subject matter,

Darth Dane

Sorry Cojana. I slip so easily :|

Love is indeed the ruler




DD - Love Spliff

long winded fool

The limit imposed on God's power stems from human choice or free will. God can do anything except make us do something we don't want to do. He isn't a "cosmic rapist" to coin one of my favorite terms. His love is not forced on anyone. They can accept it or reject it. I don't know for sure why we have free will, (though I think it's a prerequisite for love.) I don't know how we could have free will if God were omniscient. If we do, then the analogy stands. "Death" didn't enter the world until Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. Therefore it is possible to disobey God; therefore God is limited in his power to affect human choice. There's no reason to assume this is not a self-imposed limitation of course, since love is allowing someone to do what they desire, even if you have the power to make them do what you desire. "If God loved us, he could eliminate pain." This makes no more sense than the child saying to her Father, "If you loved me, you'd prevent any kind of harm from coming to me." The father can allow his daughter to be harmed by something he has the power to stop without violating his love for her. He has the power to physically stop her from dating the jerk, but he freely allows her to ignore his advice and experience the pain of being rejected. He's imposed a limitation on his own desires to allow his daughter to experience what she desires to experience. He provides her with all the counsel she logically needs, (the Bible) and then allows her to reject His counsel and act on her own terms. She can say, "You didn't do a good enough job convincing me!" but the truth is she couldn't have been convinced with any advice. The only way to convince her would have been to take away her free will to do the thing. She also might say that He ought to have done this. Physically stopped her. But the Father loves her too much for that. If she's too self-absorbed to learn from objective reason, she has to learn from mistake and pain. This isn't unloving. This is natural. There are certain things you ought not to do. Wishing that there weren't is no reason to assume that God is not all-loving. He's a Father, not an entertainer. Wishing away pain and therefore free will and then saying anything with the power to eliminate free will that doesn't is not loving is not logical. His job isn't to make us feel good, it is to love us. If you don't understand this last sentence, reread the love/empathy analogy.

It is good that the Father allows his daughter to make up her own mind and choose her own path, even if He has the power to force her down His path. Forcing her to do what he desires would be self-love. Giving her advice (a conscience and the ability to reason) and letting her do what she desires regardless of His advice is true love. Therefore, God can logically be all-good and all-loving and pain, suffering, and death can still exist. (Indeed, must exist, because without them there could be no free will. If every action had the exact same consequence, the concept of free will would be irrelevant. We'd be free to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, just so long as whatever we want is A and whenever we want to do it is also equivalent to A. We can fantasize how nice this would be if A were "freedom from pain" all we want, but this is not free will. This is imposing limitations on our choices as opposed to imposing limitations on His own choices. Free will = limiting God. Tyranny = limiting humans.)

Darth Dane

long winded fool

That was so beautiful, I really liked it.

Yes, that sounds like Love to me alright, but I still don't buy the story about us being sinners and being punished by God, God couldn't cause us pain, Godself Loves us, in Love there is no sin.

Excerpt from a poem of mine:

Love is like the touch of the wind
Softly on your skin like a lovers kiss
Noone in Love has ever sinned
For all in the name of Love is Bliss



Rest your Mind on Love and Move in your Heart





DD - Love Spliff

Ronin

lwf (...and Darth Dane, indirectly) ~

You again forget that 'omnipotence' is all-powerful.

A human father is instructive and limited in love lessons and his ability to protect.

However, why couldn't an all-powerful being create love and freewill without suffering?

As I have pointed out, wasn't it allegedly done in Eden...and isn't is purported to be the prime attribute of Heaven?

Why the tortuous game?

Why the suffering punishment for the innocent children?

Human love does rule over evil...and the concepts that flourish from it...imagery of Hell and the minions of tyrants included.

btw ~ I am a poet as well, Darth Dane, my atheism does not prevent me from enjoying your offering...in case you had any misconceptions.

Magus55

God did create love and free will without suffering, but with free will comes responsibility, and we chose to abuse it. Yes, God could have taken away our free will so we couldn't disobey Him, and would only do what He wanted us to do, but then we couldn't choose to love Him, we would have to because there is no option to not love Him.

God doesn't want that. He wants us to love Him because we want to, not because we have no other choice.

Spaz

If god really wanted people to want to love him freely, then there would be no hell. That way only those who wanted to love god would, not those that wanted to as well as those afraid of hell.