Angrillori

Heh. This reminds me of a talk I had with a Christian buddy of mine. (Thankfully he's now seen the light and learned to think a bit.)

We were discussing god's peculiar brand of justice. It centered around why god's brand of justice seemed so....unjust.

I'm still, in fact, looking for a definition of justice that includes:

1) Punishments that clearly don't fit the (Clearly god knows the concept of punishment fitting the crime--an eye for an eye--and such, but why then is simply being born to the wrong ancestor, Adam, deserving of an infininte torturous punishment?)

2) Inequal protection under law. (Does everyone get an equal shot at Jesus? You cannot with a straight face tell me yes. Geez, even in our pathetic human justice attempts we try to provide equal protection under the law--if you cannot afford a lawyer one will be...)

3) Ability to punish one for another's sins. (This one's partially for Jesus' sake in fact. How can it be just for him to suffer for what we did? Can god's 'perfectly' just nature change when he wants it to? If so, why not change it all the time and not need that whole Jesus thing to start with? Also, I haven't been able to twist my mind around the justice of us being punished for the sin of Adam via that whole death thing. I guess everyone gets hit with the injustice stick.)

4) Bribery and arbitrary exemption from punishment. ('Jesus is Lord' gets me out of punishments? Sheesh, If I stroke your ego and be your servant, you'll let me skip out of the punishment I deserve?)

5) Laws which do not apply to the lawmaker. (Murder, human sacrifice, fits of rage, all doom us, but don't seem to send the big guy to hell--unless that's where he's been these last coupla thousand years eh?)

No, god is not just. Unless you can show me a definition of justice that includes these five at least, he cannot be.

P.S.
And don't try to tell me that God somehow has his own standard of justice, because then it's entirely arbitrary to him. Rather than being injust then, he is just a jerk. He defined justice for himself in a manner which sends people to hell when he could have as easily defined justice to send everyone to heaven in every case no matter what!

If you're going to arbitrarily pick a definition of justice, why pick a crappy one eh god?

winstonjen

To the OP:

God IS a logical fallacy. At least the biblical description of him.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Gosh I forgot! I didn't even tie in my original thought!

I meant to say something about the bifurcation fallacy and God only giving two choices when as an omnipotent being he could do many other choices.

I have yet to read the responses, I'll do so now. Had to make sure I remembered to mention that. Boy I feel dumb about the topic title.

-B

Bumble Bee Tuna

Magus:

winstonjen

What's wrong, theists? Magus55 in particular? Remember, failure to respond is an admission of defeat.

Appius

I think Rom. 6:23 sums this up nicely. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Death is punishment for sin, but the soul being immortal makes it forever. Furthermore, Ezekial 18 1-9 explains this too, here it talks about the death of the soul. Also the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus comes to mind.

No he is still omnipotent. The thing here is that he said it was eternal. Now if he were to go back on his word, he would not be God; therefore, the soul must remain immortal. This is similar to the angels. He made them immortal, and to destroy them would be saying they were not immortal. Simply, when God promises, it is a true promise.

Actually not seeking faith would be considered rejection too. Furthermore, "Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God" Rom. 10:17

The immortal soul would answer this.

However, they did know that God told them not to eat from the tree. Being created in the image of God means that they were perfect like him. Being perfect they would have joy in doing that which God commanded.

I think he has given chances to anyone. The word of God is avaible to read, and there is church.

Edit: took out a chunk of quote that was from Maggus

winstonjen

Except that they had no knowledge of good and evil, so any choices they made would be arbitrary.

And about 'chances' and church, the bible, etc., what about all the contradictory verses? It is impossible to uphold all of them at once. The whole thing is ludicrous.

Godot

So in your opinion, that ever-elusive quality that makes god so gosh-darn god-ly is that he doesn't go back on his word? Take this statement a step forward to its logical conclusion: god is god because he doesn't change his mind nor is he capable of doing so.
That's a funny kind of omnipotence methinks.


But then again, isn't the forgiveness obtained through confession result from god changing his mind about your sins?

You can't have it both ways boys.

Bumble Bee Tuna

3 things:

Where did God promise humans that their souls were to be eternal?

What makes you think God can't change his mind or lie? See Does God Lie? in Biblical Criticism and Archaeology. It appears that God does lie, so according to your logic, he's not God...guess we've just disproved God's existence, that was quick.

Lastly, we're talking about what God could have done. Obviously he's in the eternal damnation business, but the question at hand is, does he have to be? Was there a better alternative? In this case, yes- Don't promise eternal souls, so that you don't have to eternally torture sinners. Problem solved. The point here, then, is that God chose a system in which he would be forced to damn billions upon billions of souls to eternal torment. When an obvious alternative exists, you wonder how this God can still be described as "Loving".

-B

HRG

Atheists cannot reject any god. In order to reject an entity, you must first believe that it exists.
Quite contrary. Punishing sins makes him unrighteous and unjust.

If sin is an offense against God, he may not judge nor punish it. It is an elementary principle of justice that a judge may not be a party to the case.

Regards,
HRG.