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Regular Member
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: primordial stew
Posts: 495
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Quote:
Rollin, that was the whole point of my opening statements. God is God and He is omnipotent (a belief that requires faith), however, this omnipotent God for some reason, created FREE moral agents and matters became complicated. Even discussing it is complicated.
Like I stated, all of these things, good and bad, happens under His watch, but remember that He DID create a 'perfect' world with the possibility of an 'out' from that perfect world. He made it VERY clear what that 'out' would do and the FREE moral creatures CHOSE to take that out, complete with ALL of its consequences. I took note, however, of a point you made a few weeks back, stating something to the effect that God, could have easily made us robots, but c'mon Rollin, would you have wanted that? When God tried to mold Israel into His image WITHOUT any 'outs', they got pissed at Him and basically kicked Him out of their affairs. (Ezekiel 16) tells the sad story.
The way I look at it Rollin is like this. We are living life in reverse. In the begining God created perfection. He created perfect beings who had no idea what wrong was. We all know the story and now those beings are living in imprefection trying to reach BACK to perfection. It does not make full sense to me at this point in my existence, but I take it that God wanted beings who could love him and serve Him AGAINST the odds and not those who love Him because they are programmed to.
There is a satisfaction in knowing someone loves you for you and not loving you or staying with you because you have a threat over their heads. How many men have women who stay home because the woman knows full well the man will kill them or hurt them. That man does not have a woman who truly loves him? He has a woman who is afraid of him. But if she is there with him through it all, in the end he can look back and really realize that her love was real.
What happens often is that some people emphasize the judgment of God. The Bible never states that God IS anger nor judgment, but that He IS love with the side product of endless mercy. It is summed up this way (I think Jedi state part of this already):
"The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love ad faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.... (Exodus 34:6-7)
This is God's profound INTRODUCTION to Moses. Note the pattern. Note the progression. LOVE and mercy first, which if continued to be scorned leads to the consequence of those actions. God is not sitting around with a big club waiting to slam anyone. You mention the great Flood. What if you lived in those days and not sitting here thousands of years later summing up the story in a few verses? You, a good man, walks around seeing all manner or evil and vileness. It hurts you, and you wonder if there is a God out there looking down on all the madness. The wickedness is so perverse, you begin to even doubt if a great God even exists. Then one day, you hear word from a man that an end to it all is coming. Then that end comes years later AFTER much time to change things. What would you say about that? Isn't it the SAME identical thing we are experiencing now? A world gone mad. Concerned people, be they religious or not wondering about it all. Evil seems rampant. It seems unabated and is actually escalating. There are people out there warning that it will all come to an end but this time, it will lead to a world where ONLY those who are there are those who PROVED they wanted to be there. No desires to flirt with evil because they know where it can lead. History is repeating itself, but if the above scripture is true, God is showing and extending mercy WITHIN this mad world. In the meantime, He's not stopping it from going about its normal routines. He's not eliminating the choices we can make and even allowing them to come to fruition. Some of those choices are to the hurt and pain of others. It's all a part of the whole package. BUT as it was in the days of Noah.....
The problem you might be looking at is that God wiped out the old world because of evil. What if he did not? What if he lets this one continue on forever with evil escalting by the minute? What would we prefer? That He leaves it the way it is so we can say there is no God because evil is prevelant or destroy it so we can say He is evil for wiping out the human race?
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all you've written is sophistry:
If god is omniscient, then everything that will happen -- every human act in particular, is known before it happens. That being so, to permit evils (the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Holocaust, and so on)is, clearly, to condone them. Your god, then, is responsible for the evils of this world.
Furthermore, divine omniscience makes free will a delusion: Since what will happen is known beforehand, it cannot really be chosen (i.e, there can be no alternative).
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someone let me know if they want me stop updating this OK 
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05-01-2002, 10:29 AM
