well said gg, free will is both our greatest gift and most dangerous curse but i wouldn’t have it any other way
@Guerrilla:
Evil is only a preversion of Good, it didn’t exsist in the beginning… And if God wasn’t merciful we would all be robots, unable to choose our own destinys… What you are referring to wouldn’t be the mercy of God, cause it isn’t his choice if you choose him it would be yours… So in fact it is the opposite of Eastern Religions if, and only if, your definition of them is “God-and-the-lightning-bolt”… He cannot condemn you to hell you choose that yourself… In fact it his desire that no one perish, but that decision in the end is not his…
GG
Also Orcs are a perversion of Elves - they were created by the dark forces . . . .
I think many Christians are falling away from the believe in an actual fiery-furnace-type-of-hell. I think many of us believe that one either accepts God’s friendship, or refutes it. We make the choice in the here-and-now that follows us in the afterworld. My practice - while it was open - was free for someone to join. If they did not join before my practiced closed, then they were unable to. I did not condemn these people to find another physician - they simply did. God does not condemn people to hell, we simply find our way there. We really don’t need God to find hell - i think we can generate/find it on our own.
@cystic:
We really don’t need God to find hell - i think we can generate/find it on our own.
Yup. War, which is human kinds doing, is one of the ways of finding hell.
No. Do not even begin to equate hell to war. Hell cannot be compared to anything we expierience.
Who was it that said “War is hell?”
Oh yes, General Sherman, and I think he knew what he was talking about :-D
@ncscswitch:
Who was it that said "War is hell?"Â
Oh yes, General Sherman, and I think he knew what he was talking about :-D
naaa - no one knows more than M36 - especially not some army-guy.
So the point is that war is worse than hell? There is an interesting philosophical discussion.
@Guerrilla:
Hell was created by God, but it was never intended as a place for humans, instead it was created purely for satan and his demon cohorts… When man fell he came under the dominion of satan and therefore his curse, condemning him to spiritually be apart from God… God never wanted man to fall, but he did… A loving God wouldn’t have created a way out… I want to see the “whacky” responses to that… :wink:
I still don’t think that refutes the omnipotence that frood was indicating. I’d call what you are describing at the least negligence. For instance, let’s say Bush was completely altruistic in his invasion of Iraq to free Iraqi people. Yet, he didn’t think of the consequences of the invasion and whether he’d keep it together. Subsequently, life is worse for Iraqis, where many are dying each day. Therefore, something can be said of Bush’s negligence.
The very definition of omnipotence is all-knowing. Knowledge not limited by obscurity, time, etc. If we are God’s children, then he knowingly permitting his kids to suffering is pretty sadistic.
froodster, may God forgive you for he is a merciful one without evil there is no good. that is why God created hell. for one has no apprecation of good if they do not experince the bad times as wel(yin and yang). Have you ever noticeed the ssimilarity between Abrahamic and far eastern relgions(toaism).
Yet you acknowledge that God has deliberately made evil exist. What would that make him? I agree that you can’t know good w/o evil, but you are even saying that God wants you to experience hell to know how good heaven is. And Eastern religions and Abrahamic faiths are not that similar. Especially Taoism.
@Guerrilla:
Evil is only a preversion of Good, it didn’t exsist in the beginning… And if God wasn’t merciful we would all be robots, unable to choose our own destinys… What you are referring to wouldn’t be the mercy of God, cause it isn’t his choice if you choose him it would be yours… So in fact it is the opposite of Eastern Religions if, and only if, your definition of them is “God-and-the-lightning-bolt”… He cannot condemn you to hell you choose that yourself… In fact it his desire that no one perish, but that decision in the end is not his…
There’s not much of a choice. Everyone dies. No exceptions. So the choice is really an ultimatum: “God, or no God (and suffer).” Pretty limited choice there.
@M36:
No. Do not even begin to equate hell to war. Hell cannot be compared to anything we expierience.
And how would you know this?
I tried to work with that “free will” argument for about 10 years before giving up on it.
Like Jermo says, it’s not much of a choice if it is God or eternal suffering.
“Here little Johnny, I’ll give you a choice,” says mommy. “You can say that you love me, or I will tie you up and throw you in the oven after you fall asleep.” If Little Johnny is smart, he’ll profess his love, but it won’t be sincere or even of his own free will. The threat of hell doesn’t create free will, it creates coercion and faith by duress.
Theos / Zeus is simply the old Sky-father god from an ancient world-view, and is no more real than Hermes or Aphrodite (sorry Switch).
Well, hell, as defined in my Bible (NIV) and I presume the other major prints is defined as being permanently severed from teh love of God. It’s not described as Dante’s Inferno. There is a lake of fire located IN hell where the great Satan, aka The Beast, will be chained for all eternity.
Is there a beach on this lake? Sounds nice for day-trips. You know, pack a nice little picnic, take the kids, throw rocks at the Great Beast - a little fun for everyone!
@M36:
No. Do not even begin to equate hell to war. Hell cannot be compared to anything we expierience.
Religious are we? :-P
Here’s my take.
If one believes in God and that God is omnipotent, then the question I would ask is why would he allow all this terrible stuff to happen? I mean, if he has the power to prevent it, why not do so? If he truly loves us, and is as compassionate as Christians would have us believe, then he would. If he has the power and doesn’t then he is not worthy of worship and is pretty dam malevolent.
The “your free will” argument doesn’t hold water for me at all. So a man chooses to hatch the limbs off small children and rape babies. Its all good is Gods eyes. He allowing this person the right to chose. Nice.
man created god not the other way anound. merry christmas :-D
He allows both good and bad to happen to sift the wheat from the chaff. Why would you want to bring the chaff home with you when it is so readily seperated from the wheat which is what you truely want?
As for a beach, I don’t know. But I know the Bible tells of one instance that a soul was brough to witness those who burned in the lake of fire and begged for water.
Blah blah blah. All made up stuff.
I have a theory that questions that no one has conclusively answered in several thousand years (eg. why does God allow suffering) are unanswerable because they are based on false premises.
Suffering is not a false premise, which leaves…
And Re: wheat and chaff - God supposedly made us all and loves us all - why would he want to separate us?
we separate ourselves from God (free will) He has provided a means to reunite
You didn’t get what I said in the first place… Because we fell if he tried to reunite us to himself (live in Heaven, be with God, etc.) the very fact that he is a good God and that no evil can stand before him would destroy us… He is a good God but, in essence, his hands are tied because man fell in the Garden… A cruel, merciless God would try to reunite us with himself now, but that in the end would condemn us to hell anyways…
Jermo, the best example I can think of to answer what you are describing is that God basically can watch the big picture movie… He can go anywhere forward and backward in time, stop and any part and replay it… But no matter how much he tells that person “Don’t pull that trigger, you have a wife and kids at home!” He alas is watching a movie he in the end cannot control… Most view God as having the ability to take over our lives and get us on the right track 100% of the time but if he did we would be no more then robots on his stage… We in the end control our own destiny’s he can only try and encourage us to go after him… He handed the earth’s domain over to man (Gen. 1:26 I believe is the scripture that states that and Psalms 13?:??) man handed it to satan and God cannot get it back unless someone can accept his plan of redemption… Not because he wouldn’t do it with a snap of his finger but because if he snapped his finger he would destroy all of us… I consider what he has done mercy…
GG
All lovely speculation. My question is, how do you know ANY of this?
Hehe, you don’t know the meaning of speculation:
Speculative reason or pure reason is theoretical (or logical, deductive) thought (sometimes called theoretical reason), as opposed to practical (active, willing) thought
I don’t theorize about what I am talking about… That would require someone to not believe in what he is hypothesizing. How do I know this is true? Faith, mentioned that before in previous threads, used it here in this thread as disclaimer… I understand that this in the end of proving it by any educated method “Christianity” still requires at best a thread of faith to hold… If you want it to be in a completely acceptable system that can be proven, I respect your decision… The difference is I have read the word of God (Bible) and know what it says about the subject you brought up (I would have to search to find every scripture to support them, I only know them by paraphrase) so when you assumed something about this “flawed” system I post only to show what the “system” says about itself… That is where I reserve the right to “speculate” as only to show a reasonable and logical solution to what we call humanity…
GG
Heh. Yeah, I know what the Bible says on the subject too - I went to Bible College for three years and got a Theology degree. For me, it just doesn’t wash.
