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my apologies I just noticed that was actually the plural of hypothesis , so now I look like the fool lol
It is called the open view of God, a theological concept that destroys your complaints about a God you don't believe in. I initiated a description of it, and got an arrogant smart assed answer from you, if you have read the Bible you know what I mean when I say I will cast no more pearls before swine. Continue your trolling without me, you are only motivated by your own ignorance,
I don't think i'm trolling.. i'm also not sure what part you thought was smart assed. I mean the post after that one was kind of smart assed but that response wasn't really. I was also more concerned with the whole "God existing" bit. I mean I don't think the open view of god really destroys the idea that he isn't very nice now does it? he's still omnipotent isn't he?
Heh.
Works for me. Then tell me about your God. If It is indeed superior to this concept I would love to hear it. I am not apposed to faith as a concept, just apposed to faith in gods I can't believe in.
You are asking if God has free will, do you think he does ?
The existence of true love requires truly free will, the existence of truly free will requires the ability to use it incorrectly, the existence of the ability to disobey God entails the resultant existence or evil and suffering. Without God their exists no objective moral duties and values to obey or disobey. Without God all you have are subjective ethical preferences and opinions. Without God there is no good to be and no evil to avoid. With God all the suffering and evil suffered during life is redressed by eternal and perfect justice. Without God all the evil and good done by extremely finite biological anomalies which lack any objective value are all observed by a pitiless and indifferent universe which eventually ends in heat death for everyone and everything. Hitler and Billy Graham are rewarded equally without reference to merit or malevolence, by eternal nothingness. Without God you get at least the same level of evil, without any of the hope his existence provides. Quite a depressing picture without God.
I'm not sure if hope is enough of a reason to believe in god though.
I've heard this about 100 times now and it all seems to miss the point entirely. The question I ask now is " Is it even worth arguing about at this point?" Honestly I'm leaning towards no not really. Would it even be relevant if God was "evil" ? No not really because how exactly can you fight against that level of evil? It was a kind of interesting question to start but now I keep hearing the same thing over and over from both sides so you know..I think that this whole "problem of evil" thing is only a problem with those who have contradictory opinions about God's omniscience and omnipotence. They seem to believe that if God knows everything and can do anything, that He MUST know everything and MUST do everything; it's the Calvinistic puppet master being addressed.
However, what if 'omniscience' means 'knows everything that can be known" and omnipotence includes the ability to NOT do something?
After all, the whole problem of evil goes away if men can make their own choices without God stopping them from making stupid ones.
Set this scenario up: God created mankind and sends us all to be mortals on some planet so that we can learn what making one's own choices can result in; we can make 'em, and we have to deal with the consequences of them. However, because our lives are short and at the end we die and go back to Him, our choices HERE may not have eternal consequences (except perhaps to our own character development).
He isn't going to interfere much, if at all, with our choices, good, bad or indifferent. If some drunk gets in a car and mows down a toddler, God isn't going to stop that. He WILL, however, comfort the toddler who came home to Him early, and the drunk has to deal with the consequences.
What about natural disasters? You realize that 'natural disasters' are generally disasters only if humans end up getting killed or inconvenienced. There's a volcano out there right now which is erupting several times a day, I understand...and nobody is calling it a 'disaster,' because nobody is getting hurt, and we may end up with a new island. Everybody, however, is worried greatly about the extreme loss of life another Mt. Vesuvius eruption would cause. That would be a natural disaster.
We have evidence for a series of tsumamis having scoured the coast of Washington...and nobody is calling any of 'em 'natural disasters' unless that big wave took out a human village or two.
So what makes those things 'evil? ' They are just how the planet works. It is the choice of PEOPLE to live there. I live in earthquake country...about...oh...fifteen miles from the San Andreas fault. I've been in a few big ones. I imagine I'll be in a few more. The next one might shake my house down (probably not, but...) Whose fault would it be if it does? God's? HE did not make me live here. I chose to live here. I'd like to move, but considering that I'd like to move to a place where the Yellowstone super volcano would take me out instantly if it goes, one can hardly claim that I'm trading a bad decision for a good one.
Nah. I think that if God is omnipotent, then He has the power to NOT do something, and since I believe He DID give us 'free agency," then the responsibility for evil here is also ours. Free will isn't free if we can only make good decisions.
I guess it's like the kid who stole his dad's car and runs it into a tree and complains that it's his dad's fault because Dad didn't hide the keys well enough.
Sorry....our choices, our consequences, our responsibility.
What is your reason for believing or disbelieving in god then?
Of course
The view you're mentioning here is the classical view of God. Its a view, that while still popular among laymen, within scholarship and theological teachings, died shortly after the Holocaust. The Holocaust changed a great deal, including how God was seen. Basically, the question came up, if God is all loving, and all powerful, how can evil exist, and in such a way that would allow the Holocaust.