luvluv

ex-preacher, it is not a dodge. I can give you my opinions, but I simply am incapable of explaining to you how heaven is going to work. I've never been there and I didn't build the place.

Again, I don't know how much more I can say than what I have already said, but please don't base your belief or disbelief in the fact of heaven or it's attributes based on your discussion with me. I just don't know if there is a human being who can answer your question to your satisfaction. The Bible doesn't say exactly how heaven is going to work, God hasn't told me personally, so anything you get out of me is going to be a guess.

My guess is that some mistakes in heaven might be made, if we are still operating on free will. However, I think it is a stretch to assume that because some people will occasionally make mistakes, that there will therefore be rape in heaven. I think the mistakes that will be made in heaven will be good faith mistakes. Meaning, no harm was intended by the offender, but his action is nonetheless harmful.

I also believe that, as part of the Christian belief that we will be given new and glorified bodies, that humans will have a greater degree of self control over themselves than they currently have. We may be more able to control ourselves in those new bodies and in those new circumstances than we are now. As to why God did not make us like that to begin with, perhaps because such power, if unsubmitted to Him, would be dangerous. Again, I don't know, I'm just guessing. But one of the possible answers to your question is that the people who populate heaven might not be like the people who populate earth, they may have more ability to do what they will do to than do human beings. They may operate with an amount of emotional feeling for their fellow man that it almost compels them to treat them well. Again, on earth, such a compulsion might have eliminated the free will of the average person. However, perhaps that objection can be done away with by the fact that only people who have submitted their wills to God will be allowed into Heaven. And also, perhaps the new man will be able to handle this love in a way that we currently cannot.

In the end, I believe that men in heaven will be free, and I am more sure of that then I am of the fact that there will be no sin in heaven. I think there may be some mistakes in heaven, somebody may say something they believe to be true but is not true, or somebody may slip up and give away a suprise party, but I don't think there will be willful intent to harm someone such as implied by the crime of rape.

That's the best I can do. I am not God, and I cannot answer all your questions. Please don't assume I am a grounds on which you can disprove or prove any facts about God or the afterlife. I'll be happy to share my beliefs with you, but I cannot be responsible for proving things to you that no human being can prove. I hope you appreciate that, and if so we can have some fruitful discussions.

luvluv

Where've you been hiding, Micheal?

You say:

"We don't have any option other than to love him. The other choice is eternal death, Luv. A really loving god would give us the option to reject it without punishment."

Again, you are assuming tht hell is a punishment that God imposes on you.

Consider, there are certain negative actions that carry their negative consequences within themselves. If you constantly lie, eventually no one will believe you. God did not impose incredulity on the Liars immediate neighbors as a punishment, the Liar's neighbors distrusted the Liar based on natural consequence of the Liar's decision to lie.

Hell may be nothing more or less than the natural result of rejecting the love of God and his ways. If you refuse the Christian doctrines of forgiveness and selfless love, and continue to pursue your own self-interest as the premium goal regardless of it's consequence to others, you may eventually reach a state in which you are indistinguishable to a demon, or to a natural force. You will basically become your will, and your Will will be totally committed to your own interests. Your Will will essentially implode upon itself, you will become a record with a scratch in it, an eternal "Me. Me. Me. Me." going on and on into forever. Ironically, there may be no "Me" left in you, no Micheal, but only a bottomless selfishness and self-will.

Again, I don't think anyone has given this possibility enough consideration. Hell may simply be the natural result of your choices. It may not be an imposed state.

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by luvluv:
Where've you been hiding, Micheal?

A succession of 14 hour days.......with no sleep. I have about 400 papers piled up I need to be grading.....<sigh> spring "vacation" is here this week, fortunately.

Again, you are assuming tht hell is a punishment that God imposes on you.

It is a punishment, imposed on us for rejecting it.

Consider, there are certain negative actions that carry their negative consequences within themselves.

That is irrelevant. It is clear that we are damned and saved only by belief in god. It is not a question of actions. If we behave impeccably but are atheists, we are going to hell.

We can also go to hell for morally trivial actions, such as masturbating, swearing, having sex with a member of the same sex, ....

If you constantly lie, eventually no one will believe you. God did not impose incredulity on the Liars immediate neighbors as a punishment, the Liar's neighbors distrusted the Liar based on natural consequence of the Liar's decision to lie.

Thanks. Remember what I was telling you about iterated prisoner's dilemmas? This is a splendid example.

However, in the example above, my neighbors just stop believing me. They don't condemn me to eternal death.

Hell may be nothing more or less than the natural result of rejecting the love of God and his ways.

More or less, it is still eternal death. I do reject your god and its ways. Therefore, regardless of what kind of person I am, I am doomed to eternal death, along with Gandhi, Mark Twain, Edison, Wang Chung, Shakyamuni Buddha....the list is long.

Most Christians are so uncomfortable with this that in many sects beliefs have arisen that ameliorate or dispense with hell. If you go to <a href="http://www.barna.org," target="_blank">www.barna.org,</a> the Christian research organization, they have data on beliefs. More than 50% of the public believes that good people go to heaven regardless of their beliefs. Unfortunately I cannot post the search page here, but if you search the term "hell" (scroll down on the home page to find the quicksearch function), you'll get lots of info:

• There is a growing tendency to believe that all good people, whether or not they consider Jesus Christ to be their savior, will live in heaven after they die on earth. In 1999 the public is almost divided on the matter: 53% agree, 40% disagree. This represents a significant change since 1992, when 40% agreed with this notion and 1994 when 46% agree, 47% disagree.
  Half of all adults (51%) believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven. (2001)

• Only four out of ten Americans (39%) believe that "people who do not consciously accept Jesus Christ as their savior will be condemned to hell." (1994)

If you refuse the Christian doctrines of forgiveness and selfless love, and continue to pursue your own self-interest as the premium goal regardless of it's consequence to others, you may eventually reach a state in which you are indistinguishable to a demon, or to a natural force.

Yes, but I'm not talking about this. We all condemn this kind of behavior. The issue is that there are no other options: either you believe, or die. The choice is false; it's the same as holding a gun to my head.

Again, I don't think anyone has given this possibility enough consideration. Hell may simply be the natural result of your choices. It may not be an imposed state.

Luv, it's YOU who haven't thought this through. Beliefs have consequences, according to you, because that's how the system that your god set up works. Such actions are "moral" only within the framework it has set up. But suppose your god set up a system with other options, like rejecting it having no consequences.

The issue isn't behavior, it is belief. The way I understand it, everyone who doesn't believe is going to hell regardless of their behavior.

Michael

luvluv

Micheal I think that's the way you understand it but I don't know if that is necessarily the way it is.

I think there may come a time when we all have to stand before God. I think it is entirely possible, at that point, that the issue might not yet be settled. It may not, at that point, be too late. If this is the case then belief or disbelief will not enter into the equation. You will not be accepting or rejecting belief, you will be accepting or rejecting reality.

I can't actually argue with you on this point because I don't believe in the argument you are refuting. I don't believe that Ghandi and those other folks you mentioned are automatically going to hell because they did not confess a belief in Christ or Christ alone, nor, by the way, do I believe that about you. I do believe there will be some questions answered, and those who have honestly disbelieved (some folks actually do refuse to believe) and those who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel, they will be given time to decide. The bible speaks of such a period in revelation, and of a time when the devil will be released to tempt the people who have just been informed of the reality of God. All in all, I think your argument is proceeding from a proposition I don't believe in, namely that you can only be saved before death, and so I can't really argue it.

Jerry Smith

I agree that God must be held accountable to ANY failure to act which makes him accessory to ANY crime against the innocent.

You make a good case that harm can come to the innocent in subtle ways.

It remains clear and obvious, however, that there are times when it is morally necessary to intervene to prevent harm to the innocent, and times when it is not morally necessary to intervene to prevent an "evil" act.

If God is perfect and holds the perfect moral standard, then, if we are to have any hope of acting with real morality ourselves, we must mimic him.

If God exists, he allows the innocent to be killed, to be raped, to be tortured, while he has ample power and knowledge to stop it. If this is Good, we must do the same. If it is Evil we must avoid it.

Does the All-Powerful and Good God allow these things? If so, allowing them is good, and we, ourselves, should allow these things without intervening.

My contention is that we should not, and doing so is not good. If I am right, then God fails either to be Good, to be Powerful, or to exist.

Thank you, by the way. You see how much more challenging your posts became when you quit arguing against the straw-man and took up arguing against my own arguments?

I hope this will be the beginning of a good discussion.

Jerry

luvluv

I flatter myself that I have been doing this the entire time. This is not the first time in my posts I have asked you about the effects that self-inflicted harm has on the loved ones of the person who inflicts harm on himself.

In fact, this is what I said on page 3:

"And why would God let you hurt yourself, when if you have loved ones, you hurting yourself is hurting other people? I'm sure your loved ones would care if you became a raving alcholic, in fact they might be hurting from it more than you. So then should God stop you from drinking? Or make it impossible for you to get drunk?"

Maybe you missed it. Oh, the badwith we could have saved...

I also don't think you realize the different moral position omnipotence places on God. It is our obligation to stop the evil we can stop, but we are finite beings. God on the other hand can stop every evil action. If He intervened whenever He could, there could conceivably be no reason for us to have any choices. By definition He can intervene constantly with everyone. Therefore, if we are to have any freedom or any choices at all, there must be cases in which God will not intervene. His power puts Him in a seperate moral position to us, thus the analogy comparing us to Him fails on several levels. If we intervene whenever we can, we can do some good. If God intervenes whenever He can, which would be always, He could crowd out our freedom. So He has obviosly chosen some basis on which to limit His intervention. You may disagree with it, but that does not make Him bad.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

jdawg2

hmm...

of course, as limited human beings, it would be *practically* impossible for us to stop all evil without intruding on people's privacy, thoughts, etc...

except for the fact that god is OMNIpotent and OMNIbenevolent. Every "problem" that you bring up is BY DEFINITION not a problem if you're dealing with an OMNImax god...if the OMNI qualities are correct. If one of these OMNI's is dropped, then the dilemma is resolved. It's the constant attachment to OMNI that theists seem to trip themselves up on.

God may be a really great being...but he isn't all powerful, so he can't stop every little thing that happens. (omnibenevolent but not omnipotent)

God could be a really powerful guy...but not OMNIbenevolent, hence the existance of evil in the world. (omnipotent but not omnibenevolent)

The problem with OMNI's is that you only have to cite the tiniest example to disprove it. You keep saying "I don't see how that would be possible"...

...but as we all know, with god, all things ARE possible

The funny thing is, is that I believed you mentioned how god wants people to choose to love him freely, so that's why he "needs" evil in the world. So how the hell is someone who needs evil considered OMNIbenevolent?

I hope that provides some clarity...

luvluv

He doesn't need evil he needs freedom, and evil can come from freedom if people use their freedom unwisely.

And I, as C.S. Lewis discussed in the book that spawned this post, do not believe that omnipotence includes the ability to do the self-contradictory. God cannot give people free will and ensure that they never use that free will to do evil. The two things you are asking God to to cancel each other out. That is a central argument of the apologetic we are supposed to be discussing.

Jerry Smith

This was my reply, also on page 3:
Now when you came back to me asking if I would be hurt by my child's decision to model for pornography, you struck a nerve, and I have to admit that my feelings would be hurt. It took me a while to sort it out, but it comes down to this:

There is a moral difference between the hurt a person my do to my feelings, and harm they might bring to me. Yes, they both can be described by the same word, "harm," but that does not mean they are morally the same thing. If they were, then we would be morally obliged to prevent an act of pornography if we had the knowledge and power to do it, the same way we would be morally obliged to prevent an act of murder.

You seem to believe that God should not be held to as strict a definition of "good" as people for the simple reason that he has an unlimited potential for doing whatever is "good" to him. The reasoning is that if he should do (and therefore did) all of the things we should do, then too much good would get done and we would become robots. The fallacy is a double one:

A) The conflation of three different ideas, namely protection, interference, and restricton of free will:
You and I cannot protect Ms X from being raped by Mr Y without interfering with the course of action Mr Y has chosen. To humans, protection requires interference. However, we can interfere with Mr Y's course of action without restricting his free will: he is still free to choose. On the other hand, God is not limited the same way humans are.
God has the power to protect Ms Y from being harmed by Mr X's action any number of ways. I will list a few:

1) He could give everyone greater power to defend themselves than the power he gave any individual to cause harm.
2) He could actually shield the body and mind of the would-be innocent victim of some given act from the harm that it would have otherwise caused.
3) He could simply restrict the actions (when appropriate) of any given person, while still leaving that person free to choose to attempt vile deeds.

B) Unnecessary assumption that if God chose means # 3) from above to protect the innocent from harm, that He would be compelled to make choices different from the ones we are obliged to make.

It might represent a kind of "harm to me" if my daughter chose to pose nude. But it would not be incumbent on any witness to prevent her from doing so, or to prevent the photographer from taking the picture, provided she is not a minor child.

From what I assume is our shared definition of good:
We are morally obliged to prevent rape, murder, child abuse, etc... if we are witnesses to it and have the power to stop it...

We do not necessarily draw this conclusion:
We are morally obliged to prevent any act that we know to cause any kind of harm to any innocent person if we are witnesses to it and have the power to stop it.

Therefore, we can expect that if God is truly Good, All-Knowing, and All-Powerful, then He will fulfill His moral obligation to prevent any given rape or child abuse, and not have to worry that he would have to go so far as to limit our free-will about what kind of thoughts we think or what kind of pictures we pose for.

What it comes down to is values:
You say it is more Good for God to give us free-will to love or not love than for God to prevent horrible acts that harm the innocent. The only thing is, you haven't done a good job in showing that these two actions on God's part are mutually exclusive.
These are the reasons, the best I can give them:
1) God can interfere with almost every one of our actions without taking away our free-will choice to love Him or each other.
2) Our free-will choice (to pose in pornography for instance) may be more important than protecting our loved ones from certain kinds of harm (the kind they might be exposed to by our posing in pornography), BUT
3) A rapist's free-will choice to rape is DEFINITELY NOT more important than the protection of his victim.

Unless you can prove that God is powerless to leave free-will operating while protecting those innocent who would experience harm of the kinds caused by murder, rape, child abuse, etc., then we are left with our dilemma, and we have to decide which property of God we wish to throw out the window... our choices are still Goodness, Omnipotence, and Existence.

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

jdawg2

that's another thing, that I believe jerry brought up...when in a situation like that, who's free will is more important, the victim or the perpetrator? That's why someone asked if you were an anarchist...because the whole point of government is to "violate" free will to some extent. If free will is such a great god given thing, then every government is seriously in error.

People say there's evil and that God doesn't reveal himself because everyone would be forced to worship him, and that would violate free will...and then in the next sentence say that heaven is a place where nothing bad happens and everyone sits around and praises Jesus all day long.

I really have a hard time getting the story straight. If he's capable of making a place with "all good" (heaven), and doesn't (the earth), then he's not OMNIbenevolent...if heaven actually isn't "all good", but just "really really" good, like I've heard some say, then he's still not OMNIbenevolent.

The omni has got to go.