Is it moral for God to punish us?

[Lyndon]

Sorry but people that think they are God, like you say you do, are not worthy of worship IMHO.

 

[Demonslayer]

+1

Sweet! That brings my total score up to...1.

 

[Augustus]

I don't need to. The stats are doing it for me.

Your statistical illiteracy is doing it for you. You read far too much into short term trends.

It's like saying the high stock market from 2004-2007 'proved' we had a strong economy (as many people did say).

We are 15 years out of the most murderous century ever, yet we have magically changed into more enlightened beings?

The gnostic view that man can be saved through knowledge is as fanciful as any fundamentalist religious position.

 

[Demonslayer]

We are 15 years out of the most murderous century ever, yet we have magically changed into more enlightened beings?

Again with this idea that the world is falling apart. It's the safest time to live, right now, with the most advanced human rights. You seriously think the 1900s was the "most murderous century ever" when compared with, say, Medieval times?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...nd_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html

 

[Demonslayer]

Sorry but people that think they are God, like you say you do, are not worthy of worship IMHO.

I'm not God, I just play one on message boards.

 

[Lyndon]

You look like the devil, at least your avatar does!!

 

[Demonslayer]

You look like the devil, at least your avatar does!!

He's just a baby demon, he won't hurt anyone.

 

[Augustus]

We are 15 years out of the most murderous century ever, yet we have magically changed into more enlightened beings?

Again with this idea that the world is falling apart. It's the safest time to live, right now, with the most advanced human rights. You seriously think the 1900s was the "most murderous century ever" when compared with, say, Medieval times?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...nd_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html

Yes it was.

You can't magic away WW1, WW2, Naziism and Communism just cos they 'buck the trend'.

I don't think the world is falling apart on the societal level, as in 'crime is rampant' etc. I just don't think this 'long good peace' idea holds any water.

Imagine a totalitarian regime with modern technology for example. The same things that make us 'safer' could cause a whole lot of harm somewhere down the line.

 

[Greatest I am]

Sorry but people that think they are God, like you say you do, are not worthy of worship IMHO.

I agree completely and never indicated that it was required. In fact, I speak against worship of anything or anyone.

I consider worship the most demeaning thing a person can do.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Your statistical illiteracy is doing it for you. You read far too much into short term trends.

It's like saying the high stock market from 2004-2007 'proved' we had a strong economy (as many people did say).

We are 15 years out of the most murderous century ever, yet we have magically changed into more enlightened beings?

The gnostic view that man can be saved through knowledge is as fanciful as any fundamentalist religious position.

To think like you do, that the opposite would be true and that man can be saved by ignorance and lack of knowledge is quite a novel idea that you seem to want to live by.

Regards
DL

 

[Demonslayer]

Yes it was.
You can't magic away WW1, WW2, Naziism and Communism just cos they 'buck the trend'.

The mongolian wars under Genghis Khan were a lot worse. It is estimated that 10-11% of the entire world's population were killed in these wars, as opposed to about 2-3% in the WW1 and WW2.

 

[Robert.Evans]

Is it moral for God to punish us?

Is it moral for an all-knowing and all-powerful God to set in motion a history that he designs and then condemns others for?

We live in a history that God has set up and is fully responsible for. God, punishing man, who can do nothing but follow God’s plan and the nature God has put in us, is having innocent people suffer for the wrongs God himself has pre-destined and which cannot be altered.

For example.

God chose to have Jesus sacrificed. God, in his planning book would also have decided who would kill Jesus. There would be no way for that man to not kill Jesus or God’s plan would fall off the rails and in this case, we would not have a messiah or scapegoat to ride into heaven.

Some will say we have free will but as shown in the example above, Jesus’ killer could not refrain from killing Jesus without derailing God’s plan. Further, to pre-destine any one action or condition within a history changes all other conditions and pre-destines all conditions within the plan. Think the butterfly effect.

Having said the above and having shown that we have no free will if anything is pre-destined, I think it would be quite immoral for God to judge or punish us for being and doing exactly what he pre-ordained for us in his plan. We have no choice and to punish us is immoral.

Do you agree?

If not, why not?

Regards
DL

I think there is a lot to discuss here. You aren't putting forward the right argument so it is easy to pull holes in it as you are doing.

 

[Demonslayer]

I think there is a lot to discuss here. You aren't putting forward the right argument so it is easy to pull holes in it as you are doing.

I can't speak for DL but I think the main thrust of the idea is this...can mere humans alter the will of God?

God sent his only begotten son to Earth to die for our sins. There was a moment when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd "who shall I free" and we all know what happened next. Barabbas was freed and Jesus was executed, fulfilling God's plan to send his son to die for us.

Could the people have yelled "Free Jesus!" instead? Did they have the capability to decide, or was it just an illusion of a having a choice? Because if people truly have free will, they could have yelled "Free Jesus" and by doing so mere humans would have altered the Will of God. Seems incredible that lowly humans could be so powerful that they could change God's will with the utterance of two words. How powerful can God really be if we can change His Will on a whim?

 

[Greatest I am]

I think there is a lot to discuss here. You aren't putting forward the right argument so it is easy to pull holes in it as you are doing.

If you do not like mine then provide yours.

Criticizing something is easy.

Let's see you do better. This is not a challenge. I am just curious.

Regards
DL

 

[Robert.Evans]

I can't speak for DL but I think the main thrust of the idea is this...can mere humans alter the will of God?

Interesting point

God sent his only begotten son to Earth to die for our sins. There was a moment when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd "who shall I free" and we all know what happened next. Barabbas was freed and Jesus was executed, fulfilling God's plan to send his son to die for us.

Could the people have yelled "Free Jesus!" instead? Did they have the capability to decide, or was it just an illusion of a having a choice? Because if people truly have free will, they could have yelled "Free Jesus" and by doing so mere humans would have altered the Will of God. Seems incredible that lowly humans could be so powerful that they could change God's will with the utterance of two words. How powerful can God really be if we can change His Will on a whim?

It depends on your understanding of God. I think the entity that we consider to be "God", has replicated itself and divided (like cells) many times over. The further it goes, the more incomplete, the more error (hence the physical world) and the base level of that is us. Thus we are a part of God. As all of this that I speak of I see as conscious-energy, this means that it (like a cell) replicates what has gone before. But there is always error, as minds forget.
So we all have an intuitive side to us which is part of the higher consciousness of the world/universe/god(of this aeon). So, yes, we have freewill, and no doubt use it from time to time, but we do not use it sufficiently to change anything major.
A simple allegory might be that a dog does what a dog does, a policeman what the police does, etc.... hard not to, it is what you are.

 

[Etritonakin]

I gave my evidence. Where is yours?

Regards
DL

Reality

 

[Vishvavajra]

God sent his only begotten son to Earth to die for our sins. There was a moment when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd "who shall I free" and we all know what happened next. Barabbas was freed and Jesus was executed, fulfilling God's plan to send his son to die for us.

Could the people have yelled "Free Jesus!" instead? Did they have the capability to decide, or was it just an illusion of a having a choice? Because if people truly have free will, they could have yelled "Free Jesus" and by doing so mere humans would have altered the Will of God. Seems incredible that lowly humans could be so powerful that they could change God's will with the utterance of two words. How powerful can God really be if we can change His Will on a whim?

Seems like a pointless question when you consider that this scene in the Gospel is a literary construct. The characters say what they do not because actual historical people said those things verbatim, but because it made for the best narrative in the eyes of the author. It's a bit like asking if characters in a novel have the free will to do things other than what the author of the novel intended.

In other words, it's fruitful to ask why characters in the Gospels say and do the things they do, but only if one keeps in mind the genre we're dealing with, how it was composed, and why. That is, a Doylist rather than a Watsonian perspective.

 

[Augustus]

To think like you do, that the opposite would be true and that man can be saved by ignorance and lack of knowledge is quite a novel idea that you seem to want to live by.

Regards
DL

Surely you can work out that that's not the only other option.

I quite like knowledge, I just know it can't save us. Thinking it can is the real ignorance.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Surely you can work out that that's not the only other option.

I quite like knowledge, I just know it can't save us. Thinking it can is the real ignorance.

Knowledge must be combined with wisdom, compassion, empathy and virtue in order for it to make a positive change.

 

[JustWondering]

Is it moral for God to punish us?

Is it moral for an all-knowing and all-powerful God to set in motion a history that he designs and then condemns others for?

We live in a history that God has set up and is fully responsible for. God, punishing man, who can do nothing but follow God’s plan and the nature God has put in us, is having innocent people suffer for the wrongs God himself has pre-destined and which cannot be altered.

For example.

God chose to have Jesus sacrificed. God, in his planning book would also have decided who would kill Jesus. There would be no way for that man to not kill Jesus or God’s plan would fall off the rails and in this case, we would not have a messiah or scapegoat to ride into heaven.

Some will say we have free will but as shown in the example above, Jesus’ killer could not refrain from killing Jesus without derailing God’s plan. Further, to pre-destine any one action or condition within a history changes all other conditions and pre-destines all conditions within the plan. Think the butterfly effect.

Having said the above and having shown that we have no free will if anything is pre-destined, I think it would be quite immoral for God to judge or punish us for being and doing exactly what he pre-ordained for us in his plan. We have no choice and to punish us is immoral.

Do you agree?

If not, why not?

Regards
DL

Where does it say in the bible that God is ALL knowing? Where does it say God is ALL powerful? If god isn't Omnimax and his intention is to create a utopian society populated by compassionate, decent, and law abiding people in the future then his moral's are comparable to a normal decent persons.