Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[Falvlun]

When Adam and Eve sinned, sin and death entered into the World. Satan is the "prince and power of the air" for NOW. Until Jesus returns.

God made those rules. Nobody and nothing constrained God into making it a rule that the sin of two people MUST bring death and suffering. God chose that. He also, incidentally, chose for the punishment for the sins of two people to extend to all of humanity and life on Earth. He also decided that Satan could have dominion over the Earth for now, as you say. Nobody forced God to do this. He chose it. Kinda strange, huh?

 

[1robin]

God made those rules. Nobody and nothing constrained God into making it a rule that the sin of two people MUST bring death and suffering. God chose that. He also, incidentally, chose for the punishment for the sins of two people to extend to all of humanity and life on Earth. He also decided that Satan could have dominion over the Earth for now, as you say. Nobody forced God to do this. He chose it. Kinda strange, huh?

That is not exactly accurate. God is the sustainer of life. To become separated from him is to forfeit life's sustaining force. God is life, the default position is death. You also equate death with something unjustifiable. God creates life, if that life uses it to rebel against it's creator and his requirements that life is taken back. That person is granted exactly what they chose. Hitchens's used to say he did not want to go to heaven because he would be miserable even if it existed. That is true. Taking back a life not owned by the being it was entrusted with is perfectly just. God allowed Satan to operate on the Earth because that is what we chose. We denied God and inherited Satan by default. We hid from the light and demanded darkness and were given what we chose.

Your not making an argument, your appealing to emotion. Evil has two components. The emotional one (the fact we do not like the end result of what we choose) will always be there but does not reflect truth about justification. The philosophical components of evil and God are perfectly reconcilable and almost mutually necessary and present no logical problem whatever.

No one will ever like pain but no one can ever show pain is inconsistent with a good God either. Not to mention the promise of that God is to eliminate pain and al other evils forever.

 

[Falvlun]

That is not exactly accurate. God is the sustainer of life. To become separated from him is to forfeit life's sustaining force.

Who decides whether we have become separated from God? God does, no?

God created the rule "If you do something I don't like, then you are sundered from me." Again, no one forced him to make that rule.

God is life, the default position is death. You also equate death with something unjustifiable. God creates life, if that life uses it to rebel against it's creator and his requirements that life is taken back.

Says who? Did someone force this rule upon God?

That person is granted exactly what they chose. Hitchens's used to say he did not want to go to heaven because he would be miserable even if it existed. That is true. Taking back a life not owned by the being it was entrusted with is perfectly just. God allowed Satan to operate on the Earth because that is what we chose. We denied God and inherited Satan by default. We hid from the light and demanded darkness and were given what we chose.

I don't recall hiding from light or demanding darkness. Also, who decided that people are "granted exactly what they chose"? If your child demanded a tattoo, would you let them get one?

Also, didn't God punish everyone and curse the Earth based upon Adam and Eve? I wasn't involved in that. Why wasn't I allowed a chance to walk upon a perfect and unsullied Garden, with the opportunity to either eat of the apple or not?

Your not making an argument, your appealing to emotion. Evil has two components. The emotional one (the fact we do not like the end result of what we choose) will always be there but does not reflect truth about justification. The philosophical components of evil and God are perfectly reconcilable and almost mutually necessary and present no logical problem whatever.

Not sure what you are talking about here. My argument (yes, it is an argument) is that God was not forced to do anything. He was not forced to make the law that "sins must be punished with separation and death." He did not have to make it a law that no one can ever be good enough to repay his debts. He chose to do that. He chose those laws. Do you deny this?

No one will ever like pain but no one can ever show pain is inconsistent with a good God either. Not to mention the promise of that God is to eliminate pain and al other evils forever.

I have yet to see a good God reconciled with the existence of suffering.

And the Christian God is particularly difficult to reconcile based upon his questionable choices in a) the rules he chose to implement and b) the method he chose for salvation.

 

[cottage]

Your not making an argument, your appealing to emotion. Evil has two components. The emotional one (the fact we do not like the end result of what we choose) will always be there but does not reflect truth about justification. The philosophical components of evil and God are perfectly reconcilable and almost mutually necessary and present no logical problem whatever.

No one will ever like pain but no one can ever show pain is inconsistent with a good God either. Not to mention the promise of that God is to eliminate pain and al other evils forever.

Utterly and self-evidently false, both of the red highlighted sentences.

And the blue highlighted sentence is offered as if it were some form of compensation being offered to grateful supplicants! It doesn't wipe out the suffering caused/allowed by God, which remains forever to prove the contradiction.

With respect you breezily assert ‘no logical problem’ without even attempting to address the contradiction:

P1. If God were all merciful there would be no suffering.

P2. There is suffering

Conclusion: Therefore there is no all merciful God.

P1 is a necessary truth; P2 is evidential. In order to disprove the conclusion you must show that P1 is false, i.e. that there can be suffering where there can be no suffering, which is impossible, or you must demonstrate that suffering does not exist, which would be absurd since you acknowledge its existence. And ‘justification’ simply states the problem and confirms the contradiction by admitting that there is evil and suffering that has to be dealt with (by more suffering!).

And it is logically absurd to assert (in both senses of your statement) that evil and God are ‘almost mutually necessary’. (!)

 

[1robin]

Who decides whether we have become separated from God? God does, no?

The entire point of Christianity is that we decide whether we are united with God or not. That is pretty much the point to the whole creation. God wanted to create a race of beings perfectly able and free to choose or reject him. We do so. If we separate ourselves from the fireplace is it it's fault if we freeze? If we separate ourselves from doctors is it their fault we die of disease?

God created the rule "If you do something I don't like, then you are sundered from me." Again, no one forced him to make that rule.

Sin is not what prevents man from being untied with God. Disbelief is. If God will not allow sinners into heaven then what is there is little point in Christ's dying only once as we all still sin. Since God said all men have sinned and if any man claims to be without sin he is a liar, it cannot be simple disobedience that keeps us from God eternally. This is a very simple idea but is a complex doctrine to explain. Regardless it is by far the most sophisticated, comprehensive and sufficient salvation model ever offered.

Says who? Did someone force this rule upon God?

I sure do sense a lot of hostility not so subtly boiling under the surface. That is like asking if God forced circles to be round.

I don't recall hiding from light or demanding darkness. Also, who decided that people are "granted exactly what they chose"? If your child demanded a tattoo, would you let them get one?

Do you think Hitler, Stalin, or Mao admitted their moral insanity to themselves? The most self assured group on the planet are in insane asylums. They do not believe there is a God, they know they are him. I have been on both sides. Darkness is what we get if we do not choose the light and if we (as is currently popular) call the light darkness. You may reject the reality of God but the aspects and characteristics of knowledge or wisdom and what it's nature and source are follows necessarily from his existence. It is so straight forward I can think of no way to make it any simpler. You can either adopt and believe in the source of all truth or simply gaze at aspects of it found in what he created through a dim lens and miss the whole picture instead obsessing on relative trivialities, at least until the end comes and even that is severed as the bible teaches.

Also, didn't God punish everyone and curse the Earth based upon Adam and Eve? I wasn't involved in that. Why wasn't I allowed a chance to walk upon a perfect and unsullied Garden, with the opportunity to either eat of the apple or not?

This is not a doctrine I am competent in. My small understanding is that Adam was a perfect representation of what we would all have done. It is never the less an absolute fact we almost all choose non-belief voluntarily for a portion of our lives so we are guilty in our own right. As usual Adam and more so Israel's great benefits came with huge costs. For every advantage Israel had they had a similar higher criteria they were held to. Be careful what you wish for.

Not sure what you are talking about here. My argument (yes, it is an argument) is that God was not forced to do anything. He was not forced to make the law that "sins must be punished with separation and death." He did not have to make it a law that no one can ever be good enough to repay his debts. He chose to do that. He chose those laws. Do you deny this?

God had a choice concerning purpose. he did not have to create anything. Once purpose was determined everything else followed necessarily. Like producing circles requires roundness and squares straight lines with 90 intersections. Purpose demanded freely given love, this mandated freewill, freewill demanded the ability to choose wrong, that necessitated suffering to indicate the difference and by necessity. You must find a problem between God and purpose the rest is necessity.

If you mean moral law, no God did not chose what was right. God does not create morality by fiat, he is morality, he is the locus of all moral truth. Morality is a characteristic of his nature not something he decided was funny or inconvenient. Moral law is only a reflection of God's nature. Only God can endow man with any actual objective value to be deprived of, only with him is human life sacred and have inherent sanctity, only with him is equality more than a word. Let me illustrate the reverse of this:

Atheists often argue that they can make moral claims and live good moral lives without believing in God. Many theists agree, but the real issue is whether atheism can provide a justification for morality. A number of leading atheists currently writing on this issue are opposed to moral relativism, given its obvious and horrific ramifications, and have attempted to provide a justification for a nonrelative morality. Three such attempts are discussed in this article: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s position that objective morality simply “is”; Richard Dawkins’s position that morality is based on the selfish gene; and Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson’s position that morality is an evolutionary illusion. Each of these positions, it turns out, is problematic. Sinnott-Armstrong affirms an objective morality, but affirming something and justifying it are two very different matters. Dawkins spells out his selfish gene approach by including four fundamental criteria, but his approach has virtually nothing to do with morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil. Finally, Ruse and Wilson disagree with Dawkins and maintain that belief in morality is just an adaptation put in place by evolution to further our reproductive ends. On their view, morality is simply an illusion foisted on us by our genes to get us to cooperate and to advance the species. But have they considered the ramifications of such a view? Each of these positions fails to provide the justification necessary for a universal, objective morality—the kind of morality in which good and evil are clearly understood and delineated.

[...]We can get to the heart of the atheist’s dilemma with a graphic but true example. Some years ago serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to over thirty murders, was interviewed about his gruesome activities. Consider the frightening words to his victim as he describes them:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong”….I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me—after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.


While I am in no way accusing atheists in general of being Ted Bundy-like, the question I have for the atheist is simply this: On what moral grounds can you provide a response to Bundy?
https://www.google.com/#q=what+percentage+of+atheists+are+moral+realists&start=20

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

I have yet to see a good God reconciled with the existence of suffering.

That is odd because he has been informally for 500 years and formally for at least 2000 years. See any number of papers by Aquinas, Plantinga, or Craig, etc...

And the Christian God is particularly difficult to reconcile based upon his questionable choices in a) the rules he chose to implement and b) the method he chose for salvation.

As for the rules you MUST produce a standard more transcendent that God to even be able to have any foundation to argue from. I do not care what his moral dictates are we simply have no access to criteria that are capable of judging him, as divine command theory explains. I for instance think Allah is not agreeable to my moral sensibility. I can reject him, I can say he is not compatible with my moral sense, but I can never say he is morally wrong. Unless the atoms bouncing around in your mind constitute the absolute moral arbiter of all truth you lack any foundation to condemn as actually wrong anything God did. No doubt you are going to assign all kinds of fancy words to what you think but in the end it is simply an opinion and of no more value than mine that God is moral. That inevitable fact is why Dawkins admitted without God who can say if Hitler was right or not? Neither God nor man has a moral standard to be compared to absolutely without theology.

As far as his method. It is by far the most sophisticated, comprehensive and sufficient of any known but that does not make it true. Even after I was born again it never settled with me that faith is that arbiter of approval mainly because merit is how men do so. It did not until I tried to imagine any other merit or obedience based form of salvation and gave it up as impossible. So it is the best but is it true. Hundreds of millions claim to have experienced it's truth, far more than any other faith can claim by far. But it can added to in many ways. One example is this. Most NT scholars from either side agree to 4 historical facts among many others.

1. Christ came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority. (in this context it matters not whether I can show he actually had it).
2. he was killed by crucifixion.
3. His tomb was found empty.
4. He was sincerely claimed to have appeared afterwards to many including his enemies.


Now the best and most comprehensive explanation by far for these facts and others is that God raised him. That means God validated whatever he taught and he taught salvation by grace. I am out of time, have a good one.

 

[cottage]

That is odd because he has been informally for 500 years and formally for at least 2000 years. See any number of papers by Aquinas, Plantinga, or Craig, etc...

You really ought to support the name-dropping with the actual arguments. I'm familiar with Aquinas' arguments, and I consider hen to be rather weak. But I know you're a Youtube fan, so why not give us Plantinger and Craig's arguments, in your own words, and we'll see how well they stand up?

 

[Falvlun]

The entire point of Christianity is that we decide whether we are united with God or not. That is pretty much the point to the whole creation. God wanted to create a race of beings perfectly able and free to choose or reject him. We do so. If we separate ourselves from the fireplace is it it's fault if we freeze? If we separate ourselves from doctors is it their fault we die of disease?

My understanding of Christianity was slightly different-- that God could not abide us due to the stain of sin. I am sure support can be found for both theological positions, however, so I won't belabor it.

Regardless, a relationship takes two to tango. If God wants a relationship, he cannot put all the onus upon an imperfect person, born into a world full of darkness and without understanding.

If God wanted us to be free to choose him, then why are the cards so stacked against us? We are not free to choose, and no one has been since Adam and Eve. By this, I mean, we do not have the ability to make a true decision; we can make a choice as in a random lottery-- Door #1 or Door #2-- but we have not been given the information required to know what is behind Door #1 or Door #2, or why we should choose one over the other.

God knows where I am. But I don't know where he is. God knows the depths of my heart. I have no clue who God is. It seems silly to blame the person without any knowledge (or else, someone who has been given misinformation) of doctors for running away from them; it seems preposterous to tell a person that it was their fault for freezing when they have never experienced fire.

Sin is not what prevents man from being untied with God. Disbelief is. If God will not allow sinners into heaven then what is there is little point in Christ's dying only once as we all still sin. Since God said all men have sinned and if any man claims to be without sin he is a liar, it cannot be simple disobedience that keeps us from God eternally. This is a very simple idea but is a complex doctrine to explain. Regardless it is by far the most sophisticated, comprehensive and sufficient salvation model ever offered.

Condemning people to death for one mistake is not reasonable. Making the same punishment for large and small crimes is not just. Refusing to acknowledge, and actively belittling, attempts to be good is counter-intuitive.

Killing an innocent person in order to "pay the wage of sin"-- a payment that God himself created and could have simply let go at any time-- is monstrous.

If belief in God is all God wants, then jesus' sacrifice was completely unnecessary, BTW. If sin isn't what's keeping us from God, then why did Jesus need to die? Why couldn't all of us sinners just say "I believe and love you Lord and I will do my best to serve you, even though I know I will make mistakes now and then."

I sure do sense a lot of hostility not so subtly boiling under the surface. That is like asking if God forced circles to be round.

No hostility, and no logical inconsistency. It's a very simple question. God made all the rules. So, you cannot use a rule to explain why God had to act a certain way. God chose to set things up in a way that made it impossible for humans to ever please him.

Do you think Hitler, Stalin, or Mao admitted their moral insanity to themselves? The most self assured group on the planet are in insane asylums. They do not believe there is a God, they know they are him. I have been on both sides. Darkness is what we get if we do not choose the light and if we (as is currently popular) call the light darkness. You may reject the reality of God but the aspects and characteristics of knowledge or wisdom and what it's nature and source are follows necessarily from his existence. It is so straight forward I can think of no way to make it any simpler. You can either adopt and believe in the source of all truth or simply gaze at aspects of it found in what he created through a dim lens and miss the whole picture instead obsessing on relative trivialities, at least until the end comes and even that is severed as the bible teaches.

So God made me insane, or gave me a faulty sense of morality? How is that my fault?

This is not a doctrine I am competent in. My small understanding is that Adam was a perfect representation of what we would all have done. It is never the less an absolute fact we almost all choose non-belief voluntarily for a portion of our lives so we are guilty in our own right. As usual Adam and more so Israel's great benefits came with huge costs. For every advantage Israel had they had a similar higher criteria they were held to. Be careful what you wish for.

God walked with Adam. I would kill for that. To have such evidence.

God had a choice concerning purpose. he did not have to create anything. Once purpose was determined everything else followed necessarily. Like producing circles requires roundness and squares straight lines with 90 intersections. Purpose demanded freely given love, this mandated freewill, freewill demanded the ability to choose wrong, that necessitated suffering to indicate the difference and by necessity. You must find a problem between God and purpose the rest is necessity.

Did Adam have free-will?

He lived in the Garden of Eden. No suffering. Adam also knew God. He was able to talk to God. This did not curtail his ability to choose, did it?

If you mean moral law, no God did not chose what was right. God does not create morality by fiat, he is morality, he is the locus of all moral truth. Morality is a characteristic of his nature not something he decided was funny or inconvenient. Moral law is only a reflection of God's nature.

Well, that's actually one of those famous philosophical debates (Euthyphro dilemma): Is it Good because God loves it? Or does God love it because it is Good?

You take the former.

But I don't think I was talking about moral law. I think moral laws are things like "don't hurt people on purpose", "don't murder", "don't steal", "don't lie", etc.

I don't think there is any moral law that says "If you are mean to your sister even once, that means you deserve to be tormented in hell forever" or "Because your great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather ate a piece of fruit God told him not to eat, the entire world must be cursed and every woman must have pain at childbirth." And other such things that God does (or people claim that God does).

Only God can endow man with any actual objective value to be deprived of, only with him is human life sacred and have inherent sanctity, only with him is equality more than a word.

This is kinda sick. Humans have worth. I don't know how objective worth differs from subjective worth, and I don't know why the distinction should matter, but yes, every person has value, even if God never existed, even if tomorrow God decided that he wouldn't value humans anymore.

 

[Sees]

Excellent post :highfive:

My understanding of Christianity was slightly different-- that God could not abide us due to the stain of sin. I am sure support can be found for both theological positions, however, so I won't belabor it.

Regardless, a relationship takes two to tango. If God wants a relationship, he cannot put all the onus upon an imperfect person, born into a world full of darkness and without understanding.

If God wanted us to be free to choose him, then why are the cards so stacked against us? We are not free to choose, and no one has been since Adam and Eve. By this, I mean, we do not have the ability to make a true decision; we can make a choice as in a random lottery-- Door #1 or Door #2-- but we have not been given the information required to know what is behind Door #1 or Door #2, or why we should choose one over the other.

God knows where I am. But I don't know where he is. God knows the depths of my heart. I have no clue who God is. It seems silly to blame the person without any knowledge (or else, someone who has been given misinformation) of doctors for running away from them; it seems preposterous to tell a person that it was their fault for freezing when they have never experienced fire.


Condemning people to death for one mistake is not reasonable. Making the same punishment for large and small crimes is not just. Refusing to acknowledge, and actively belittling, attempts to be good is counter-intuitive.

Killing an innocent person in order to "pay the wage of sin"-- a payment that God himself created and could have simply let go at any time-- is monstrous.

If belief in God is all God wants, then jesus' sacrifice was completely unnecessary, BTW. If sin isn't what's keeping us from God, then why did Jesus need to die? Why couldn't all of us sinners just say "I believe and love you Lord and I will do my best to serve you, even though I know I will make mistakes now and then."


No hostility, and no logical inconsistency. It's a very simple question. God made all the rules. So, you cannot use a rule to explain why God had to act a certain way. God chose to set things up in a way that made it impossible for humans to ever please him.


So God made me insane, or gave me a faulty sense of morality? How is that my fault?


God walked with Adam. I would kill for that. To have such evidence.


Did Adam have free-will?

He lived in the Garden of Eden. No suffering. Adam also knew God. He was able to talk to God. This did not curtail his ability to choose, did it?


Well, that's actually one of those famous philosophical debates (Euthyphro dilemma): Is it Good because God loves it? Or does God love it because it is Good?

You take the former.

But I don't think I was talking about moral law. I think moral laws are things like "don't hurt people on purpose", "don't murder", "don't steal", "don't lie", etc.

I don't think there is any moral law that says "If you are mean to your sister even once, that means you deserve to be tormented in hell forever" or "Because your great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather ate a piece of fruit God told him not to eat, the entire world must be cursed and every woman must have pain at childbirth." And other such things that God does (or people claim that God does).


This is kinda sick. Humans have worth. I don't know how objective worth differs from subjective worth, and I don't know why the distinction should matter, but yes, every person has value, even if God never existed, even if tomorrow God decided that he wouldn't value humans anymore.

 

[kjw47]

God made those rules. Nobody and nothing constrained God into making it a rule that the sin of two people MUST bring death and suffering. God chose that. He also, incidentally, chose for the punishment for the sins of two people to extend to all of humanity and life on Earth. He also decided that Satan could have dominion over the Earth for now, as you say. Nobody forced God to do this. He chose it. Kinda strange, huh?

Consider this-- When satan told Eve that they would become like God, knowing good and bad--- he was basically saying that they wouldn't need Gods direction in life if they knew both sides-good and Evil---God chose for mortals to know only good. This was a direct challenge to Gods universal sovereignty in front of all creation( 2 mortal, millions upon millions of spirit beings.
1) God could have killed the 3 rebels on the spot, but that only would prove he was stronger, and the seed would be cut off right then( no one who ever had life would have lived) or 2) let it be proven once and for all time so it can never happen again--that we need Gods direction to live lives of true happiness. And its 100% fact--we do. Gods kingdom is a cure all, live for it now.

 

[Falvlun]

Let me illustrate the reverse of this:

Atheists often argue that they can make moral claims and live good moral lives without believing in God. Many theists agree, but the real issue is whether atheism can provide a justification for morality.

Justification for morality: To make living within a community easier and to reduce personal likelihood of suffering.

Why's it gotta be any more complex than that?

A number of leading atheists currently writing on this issue are opposed to moral relativism, given its obvious and horrific ramifications, and have attempted to provide a justification for a nonrelative morality. Three such attempts are discussed in this article: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s position that objective morality simply “is”; Richard Dawkins’s position that morality is based on the selfish gene; and Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson’s position that morality is an evolutionary illusion. Each of these positions, it turns out, is problematic. Sinnott-Armstrong affirms an objective morality, but affirming something and justifying it are two very different matters. Dawkins spells out his selfish gene approach by including four fundamental criteria, but his approach has virtually nothing to do with morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil. Finally, Ruse and Wilson disagree with Dawkins and maintain that belief in morality is just an adaptation put in place by evolution to further our reproductive ends. On their view, morality is simply an illusion foisted on us by our genes to get us to cooperate and to advance the species. But have they considered the ramifications of such a view? Each of these positions fails to provide the justification necessary for a universal, objective morality—the kind of morality in which good and evil are clearly understood and delineated.

Good and evil are not clearly understood and delineated. So why should you expect one theory to completely explain our sense of morality?

Even divine command theory, in which morality comes from God, doesn't explain everything clearly and perfectly.

[...]We can get to the heart of the atheist’s dilemma with a graphic but true example. Some years ago serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to over thirty murders, was interviewed about his gruesome activities. Consider the frightening words to his victim as he describes them:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong”….I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me—after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

While I am in no way accusing atheists in general of being Ted Bundy-like, the question I have for the atheist is simply this: On what moral grounds can you provide a response to Bundy?

No response to Bundy is required. Whether morality is relative or absolute there will still be Bundy's out there.

As for the frightening prospect of moral relativism, I think it's a philosophical bogeyman. Even if morality has been created by the subjective preferences of humans, there are still objective reasons for preferring a society (and people) with a sense of morality that is typical of most people. It is also the case that society enforces its morality essentially as an objective standard. Simply replace society with God and there's not much difference between a relative morality that has developed due to society and one that God decided upon.

That is odd because he has been informally for 500 years and formally for at least 2000 years. See any number of papers by Aquinas, Plantinga, or Craig, etc...

The same way God has been proven to exist?

Obviously, these philosophical arguments have not convinced me. They all tend to boil down to "free will demands that suffering exists." I don't buy this. Free will doesn't require cancer any more than it requires us to be able to breathe underwater.

As for the rules you MUST produce a standard more transcendent that God to even be able to have any foundation to argue from. I do not care what his moral dictates are we simply have no access to criteria that are capable of judging him, as divine command theory explains. I for instance think Allah is not agreeable to my moral sensibility. I can reject him, I can say he is not compatible with my moral sense, but I can never say he is morally wrong. Unless the atoms bouncing around in your mind constitute the absolute moral arbiter of all truth you lack any foundation to condemn as actually wrong anything God did. No doubt you are going to assign all kinds of fancy words to what you think but in the end it is simply an opinion and of no more value than mine that God is moral. That inevitable fact is why Dawkins admitted without God who can say if Hitler was right or not? Neither God nor man has a moral standard to be compared to absolutely without theology.

Why not?

If God gave us the ability to discern right from wrong, then surely it is valid to use this sense to determine whether something is right or wrong. I see no reason why God's actions should be exempt.

Neither should God be above his own law. If it is not moral for us to punish the children of a murderer for the crimes of their father, then neither is it moral for God to do so.

As far as his method. It is by far the most sophisticated, comprehensive and sufficient of any known but that does not make it true. Even after I was born again it never settled with me that faith is that arbiter of approval mainly because merit is how men do so. It did not until I tried to imagine any other merit or obedience based form of salvation and gave it up as impossible. So it is the best but is it true. Hundreds of millions claim to have experienced it's truth, far more than any other faith can claim by far. But it can added to in many ways. One example is this. Most NT scholars from either side agree to 4 historical facts among many others.

1. Christ came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority. (in this context it matters not whether I can show he actually had it).
2. he was killed by crucifixion.
3. His tomb was found empty.
4. He was sincerely claimed to have appeared afterwards to many including his enemies.


Now the best and most comprehensive explanation by far for these facts and others is that God raised him. That means God validated whatever he taught and he taught salvation by grace. I am out of time, have a good one.

I know the Gospel. I still think it was a pretty bad plan, both logistically and morally. Note that Jesus could still be sincere, his death could still provide salvation, even if my contention that the whole thing was sick and mismanaged is true.

Thanks for your time!

 

[Falvlun]

Consider this-- When satan told Eve that they would become like God, knowing good and bad--- he was basically saying that they wouldn't need Gods direction in life if they knew both sides-good and Evil---God chose for mortals to know only good.

If we knew only good, then does that mean we didn't have free-will at that time?

Alternatively, does this mean that free-will can exist even in the absence of evil?

This was a direct challenge to Gods universal sovereignty in front of all creation( 2 mortal, millions upon millions of spirit beings.
1) God could have killed the 3 rebels on the spot, but that only would prove he was stronger, and the seed would be cut off right then( no one who ever had life would have lived) or 2) let it be proven once and for all time so it can never happen again--that we need Gods direction to live lives of true happiness. And its 100% fact--we do. Gods kingdom is a cure all, live for it now.

So humans suffer because God was worried about his reputation? Nice.

1) God could have started over. Are you really claiming that God wasn't powerful enough to get rid of Adam and Eve and still have humans?

2) I can think of a thousand better ways that God could have taught us that we need him in our lives.

Who is the better teacher? The one who helps and guides us through our mistakes, or the one that beats us and then kicks us out of school when we get our first question wrong?

 

[CG Didymus]

When Adam and Eve sinned, sin and death entered into the World. Satan is the "prince and power of the air" for NOW. Until Jesus returns.

So where was sin before Adam and Eve sinned? Where did it "enter" from? And, how come The Adversary wasn't mentioned in the Torah? Yet, Christians, not Jews, find him every where? In Job, he talks to God? But, Christians say he was cast out of heaven? What's he doing back up there and making bets with God? It's all a "cute" story and a "cute" interpretation of why there is pain and suffering in the world. But, so is the story of every other religion in the world. And, every other religion establishes rules of moral conduct and explains why we suffer and how to alleviate suffering. And all of those other explanations work for the believers.

Jesus works for you, but to other good and moral people in other religions he doesn't. They have a different interpretation of who he is and how he relates to them in their religion. Yet, all of us suffer and die, even Christians. If Christianity worked, that is for everybody, and was united, that would be a different story, but it doesn't and it's not. Christians are all over the place in their beliefs, showing that even they can't agree on what it is they believe and how they should live it. They all have Biblical "proof" of why they are the ones right, showing that the Bible is not clear and can be interpreted 100's of different ways.

Why do some Christians take it so literal? Yet, not literal in everything? A serpent is not Satan, yet to them it is. Does Satan have to crawl on his belly? Or, did serpents once walk upright and talk? Or, was it a poetic, spiritual story meant for the Hebrew people? It laid the foundation for their beliefs, not Christianity. Christianity has to fumble and change meanings to get it to work for them. And then they say that it's the truth? Yes, for them, the "true" believer and no one else.

 

[1robin]

My understanding of Christianity was slightly different-- that God could not abide us due to the stain of sin. I am sure support can be found for both theological positions, however, so I won't belabor it.

Regardless, a relationship takes two to tango. If God wants a relationship, he cannot put all the onus upon an imperfect person, born into a world full of darkness and without understanding.

If God wanted us to be free to choose him, then why are the cards so stacked against us? We are not free to choose, and no one has been since Adam and Eve. By this, I mean, we do not have the ability to make a true decision; we can make a choice as in a random lottery-- Door #1 or Door #2-- but we have not been given the information required to know what is behind Door #1 or Door #2, or why we should choose one over the other.

God knows where I am. But I don't know where he is. God knows the depths of my heart. I have no clue who God is. It seems silly to blame the person without any knowledge (or else, someone who has been given misinformation) of doctors for running away from them; it seems preposterous to tell a person that it was their fault for freezing when they have never experienced fire.


Condemning people to death for one mistake is not reasonable. Making the same punishment for large and small crimes is not just. Refusing to acknowledge, and actively belittling, attempts to be good is counter-intuitive.

Killing an innocent person in order to "pay the wage of sin"-- a payment that God himself created and could have simply let go at any time-- is monstrous.

If belief in God is all God wants, then jesus' sacrifice was completely unnecessary, BTW. If sin isn't what's keeping us from God, then why did Jesus need to die? Why couldn't all of us sinners just say "I believe and love you Lord and I will do my best to serve you, even though I know I will make mistakes now and then."


No hostility, and no logical inconsistency. It's a very simple question. God made all the rules. So, you cannot use a rule to explain why God had to act a certain way. God chose to set things up in a way that made it impossible for humans to ever please him.


So God made me insane, or gave me a faulty sense of morality? How is that my fault?


God walked with Adam. I would kill for that. To have such evidence.


Did Adam have free-will?

He lived in the Garden of Eden. No suffering. Adam also knew God. He was able to talk to God. This did not curtail his ability to choose, did it?


Well, that's actually one of those famous philosophical debates (Euthyphro dilemma): Is it Good because God loves it? Or does God love it because it is Good?

You take the former.

But I don't think I was talking about moral law. I think moral laws are things like "don't hurt people on purpose", "don't murder", "don't steal", "don't lie", etc.

I don't think there is any moral law that says "If you are mean to your sister even once, that means you deserve to be tormented in hell forever" or "Because your great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather ate a piece of fruit God told him not to eat, the entire world must be cursed and every woman must have pain at childbirth." And other such things that God does (or people claim that God does).


This is kinda sick. Humans have worth. I don't know how objective worth differs from subjective worth, and I don't know why the distinction should matter, but yes, every person has value, even if God never existed, even if tomorrow God decided that he wouldn't value humans anymore.

Favlun I am hung up and I like morality and want to spend sufficient time on it. Get back to this as soon as I can.

 

[kjw47]

If we knew only good, then does that mean we didn't have free-will at that time?

Alternatively, does this mean that free-will can exist even in the absence of evil?


So humans suffer because God was worried about his reputation? Nice.

1) God could have started over. Are you really claiming that God wasn't powerful enough to get rid of Adam and Eve and still have humans?

2) I can think of a thousand better ways that God could have taught us that we need him in our lives.

Who is the better teacher? The one who helps and guides us through our mistakes, or the one that beats us and then kicks us out of school when we get our first question wrong?

Every being has free will.

Yes God could have gotten rid of Adam and Eve--the seed which started every mortals life that ever lived would have ended right there--no one ever born would have been given life.

All who know the true God--knows God uses his 4 major attributes in every decision--Love, Power, Wisdom, Justice.( most likely justice had its part--- God always chooses the right thing to do.

And if God didn't let it be proved once and for all time--other beings could have kept bringing up the same accusations over and over--this way it ends and can never be brought up again.
Gods kingdom will never end when it takes full control--soon.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Every being has free will.

Yes God could have gotten rid of Adam and Eve--the seed which started every mortals life that ever lived would have ended right there--no one ever born would have been given life.

All who know the true God--knows God uses his 4 major attributes in every decision--Love, Power, Wisdom, Justice.( most likely justice had its part--- God always chooses the right thing to do.

And if God didn't let it be proved once and for all time--other beings could have kept bringing up the same accusations over and over--this way it ends and can never be brought up again.
Gods kingdom will never end when it takes full control--soon.

God could've done a better job by not being so hung up on rules, being petty and narcissistic by demanding that we love and worship him, make his desires for us known in an absolutely clear way instead of having flawed humans with agendas write down in his "word" in an extremely vague way, making himself more apparent in our lives, not leaving us to suffer when we do believe in him and cry out to him, etc. Basically your god comes off as a sadist who loves to punish us when we don't even have half of the information needed in order to make a clear choice in life. The Bible isn't clear about much of anything. It's like your god is playing a game and enjoys watching us fumble throughout life and suffer. We've been waiting for centuries for this god to come back and fix things. We just get silence in return. Al Pacino's character in the Devil's Advocate was totally right about your god.

Oh, yeah - the Bible god could've done a much, much better job.

 

[Falvlun]

Every being has free will.

Yes God could have gotten rid of Adam and Eve--the seed which started every mortals life that ever lived would have ended right there--no one ever born would have been given life.

All who know the true God--knows God uses his 4 major attributes in every decision--Love, Power, Wisdom, Justice.( most likely justice had its part--- God always chooses the right thing to do.

And if God didn't let it be proved once and for all time--other beings could have kept bringing up the same accusations over and over--this way it ends and can never be brought up again.
Gods kingdom will never end when it takes full control--soon.

You didn't address anything I said. You just repeated yourself.

 

[Falvlun]

Favlun I am hung up and I like morality and want to spend sufficient time on it. Get back to this as soon as I can.

Sounds good!

 

[Sees]

You didn't address anything I said. You just repeated yourself.

This should be a saved preset reply

 

[kjw47]

God could've done a better job by not being so hung up on rules, being petty and narcissistic by demanding that we love and worship him, make his desires for us known in an absolutely clear way instead of having flawed humans with agendas write down in his "word" in an extremely vague way, making himself more apparent in our lives, not leaving us to suffer when we do believe in him and cry out to him, etc. Basically your god comes off as a sadist who loves to punish us when we don't even have half of the information needed in order to make a clear choice in life. The Bible isn't clear about much of anything. It's like your god is playing a game and enjoys watching us fumble throughout life and suffer. We've been waiting for centuries for this god to come back and fix things. We just get silence in return. Al Pacino's character in the Devil's Advocate was totally right about your god.

Oh, yeah - the Bible god could've done a much, much better job.

God sent his son.--God stated from heaven at his baptism--This is my son the beloved, whom I have approved, LISTEN TO HIM. Few do. If all did--the world would be at peace. A lack of love prevents it. God always makes the right decisions--all of creation is involved, not just individuals. You see little--God has seen it all--you don't have a clue.
If you knew revelations, you would know Gods kingdom is close.