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.
Very well, I respect your stance… Not for the bible degree though, merely on the fact of how far you have delved into the subject…
@froodster:
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.
Not all men will accept the garments of Christ and be allowed entrance to heaven. However, no person will be able to use the excuse that they did not know God existed or that Christ is the Messiah. Especially in today’s day and age.
So you are perfectly free to believe whatever you wish. THat is part of free will, and part of what God wishes us to practice. He prefers that we choose to believe in him and have faith in him so that he may be reunited with us after our death. But just as a mother cannot force her sons to love her, neither will God force us to love him.
we cannot be tempted to virtue, only to vice God would rather woo us to virtue through glimpses of our role in eternity
God has given us a means to reunite and regardless of the month Jesus is still that means
God could reveal himself and have us worship out of fear but then it is not true faith
the pharisees had vast biblical knowledge as well, they didn’t get it either
You know, I think that a LOT fo you are messed up about what SHE actually wants her followers to do :mrgreen:
i think God transcends gender, as well as our comprehension
i think God transcends gender, as well as our comprehension
No man may know the mind of God.
Which pretty much is true also about men knowing the mind of a woman.
So God MUST be a woman :-D
:lol: touche :-D
