I think it would be fascinating. Of course, I know Diogenes knows this, but we’re wrestling with some of the oldest questions of Christianity here: if God is so good, how can He allow evil? I’m not about to break a more than 2,000 long streak myself today and answer that question; I just thought I’d point it out.
CJ
CJ wrote:
How could man be a free moral agent if He were not allowed to reject goodness?
I just want to add that there is no such thing as a tormenting hell forever for anyone, and if it matters to any one , I’ll provide the relevant scriptures and sources pointing out the translation irregularities that lead to an impression of permanent torture, and references to early church leaders clearly believing in the ultimate universal salvation for all mankind. Allah be praised.
Diogenes the Cynic, you’ve brought up an interesting question, but may I suggest that your wish to avoid eternal life is based on your perception of what eternal life would be like at this time. I’m confident that at the moment you are not interested in ending your life. Given that is a choice you will make every day until you find life for whatever reason intolerable. Not to comment on your temporal life however, how can you be so sure when your day of judgement comes that given your improved awareness of what the future holds for you, and His supreme love for you, that you won’t bend your knee before Him in gratitude? Free choice yes, but as much free choice as you have right now to live for tomorrow. 
I think it’s funny that people think they don’t want to go to Heaven. People fail to realize, if Hell exists, that it is complete total seperation from God. This seperation, no person (except Jesus) has experienced. It’s not a place I’d want to go for Eternity (unless you are a Nihilist.) I don’t know, for a fact, that Heaven or Hell exisits. It’s not really important. What is important is, if you are Chosen, you will go to Heaven whether you like it or not! And you WILL like it! You can’t prevent yourself from being Chosen. If you aren’t a sheep, you aren’t a sheep. LOL. Oi.
The way I spelled it was the way my concordance showed it, so not sure for the different variations. I noticed the Greek spelling you used is slightly different from my concordance as well. The definition matches my concordance, although naturally it doesn’t say Greek mythology since it’s primarily designed for Christians. I still use Strong’s concordance to find verses I’m looking for rather quickly. Their definitions aren’t something I always rely on. On the honesty scale, how would you rank it? Did any of your classes find it useful?
JZ
Latro–“Could you compile a list for me with all the different denominations of the Judeo-Muslimo-Christian faith on it, please?”
Jersey Diamond–“No need to compile a list. Here goes. If any other “christian” religion contradicts, adds, takes away from the Bible, they are wrong…Now, wasn’t that easy?”
Not sure how many Muslim sects there are, but there’s actually one Christian man that has been compiling a list for Christianity and to date he has counted over 35,000 different Protestant sects of Christianity alone. Imagine that. I’ve heard of having to choose with a fork in the road, but 35,000 paths to pick from is ridiculous.
JZ
It’s deeper than that, though, Lib. It’s not just about free will. The theodicean question goes more to a seeming lack of justice on Earth. Why did God allow the holocust? Why does God allow a four-year old girl to be kidnapped, raped and murdered? If God will not intervene in circumstances such as these, then how can we trust that God is good? If God has the power to prevent unimaginable suffering by the most innocent among us, and does nothing, is God, himself, not culpable?
How can God be “good” if he allows bad things to happen to undeserving people?
Although, on preview, I see that Diogenes has made the point with better language.
My formal Greek training was in Attic, not Koine, so we didn’t use Strong in class, but FWIW, I think Strong is very useful if you’re trying to read a Greek New Testament (Obviously, that’s what it’s designed for). It does have a pro-Christian theological bias, but I think that that bias shows through more in interpretation than in strict translation. It may not give you every possible definition or connotation for a specific word. I would suggest using a back-up Lexicon to get a more complete picture on some words. I have found certain angles or alternatives for some words or phrases that that are not listed in Strong.
I thought I covered that pretty thoroughly in the Love thread when I wrote the thought experiment of watching through “God Glasses” while He destroyed Sodom.
When God “looks down” upon the earth, He does not see merely dying things (what you most likely call “living things”) — He sees our spiritual “bodies” as well as our physical ones.
Sorry for all the quote marks, but this is a metaphysical topic, and metaphysical things can be addressed using only metaphors. “God” itself is a metaphor for whatever is a perfect ontological state. So, bear with me here, and make an attempt to meet me half-way.
It is a moral travesty that a girl is raped and murdered but not because atoms are flying about. Atoms are always flying about, and the girl is dying from the moment she breathes. The rape and murder are moral travesties because the rapist and murderer has made a moral decision to cut off God’s love.
The girl is not dead, as you can clearly see looking through your God Glasses. She is quite alive. Your God Glasses help you to see here thriving spirit.
Heaven is not made of atoms. There are no dying things there. There are no cells to reproduce, no meat to rot, no internal organs to decay.
A dying brain might suffer physically when it is smashed by a murderer for a tiny period of time on the evolutionary scale, but eternity is spiritual in nature. And whether our moral play on earth was 5 minutes or 50 years, it will all seem like the blink that it is when it is over.
There is no good death. If the little girl had lived to 90 and died of cancer, there would still be tragedy in the wake — people who loved her will mourn, a good influence in the community will be lost, and those who believe that the atoms are real will still be left wondering, “But why did she have to die?”
If God were an earthly King, and heaven were an earthly place, then earthly events would have eternal significance. But the earth is temporal, and man’s visit here is a quick flash and it’s over.
What is truly alive is not our atoms, and therefore there is no true death when they decay. What is truly alive is our spirits, and no murderer can destroy those.
But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
Alan Watts. 
I don’t know whether to take that as a head-pat, a thank-you-for-playing-anyway, or a Lib-that-was-interesting, so I’ll just say that what is real is surely what is eternal.
Well, Lib, if Heaven (eternity with God/Love) is so much better then Earth, why is there an Earth? Why aren’t we concieved and live in Heaven from the start?
What if we had kind of a “try and buy” option on heaven? If it’s not as advertised we can opt out.
Can someone with more spiritual connection to his holiness than myself forward this to the heavenly suggestion box? Thanks in advance.
An excellent question. There are so many reasons.[ul][li] The universe provides an amoral mis-en-scene that helps us to act out our moral play. Being amoral, it provides a morally neutral and metaphysically convincing context in which our spirits can make moral decisions.[/li]
[li] The universe is a chronosynclasticinfundibulum. Because of that, there is always uncertainty about what lies ahead and irretrievability of history. Our lives are always lived in the clean-slate present, but with bearings from the past and hope for the future.[/li]
[li] Our lives on earth provide a political environment that allows us to interact as sovereign entities. We are surrounded by others who are imbued with God’s spirit, and thus have the opportunity to facilitate goodness among one another.[/li]
[li] Our brain conciousnesses are ablative, and therefore no two events ever are shared from the identical perspective at the identical time in the identical place in the identical way. Thus, there is no encumbrance upon our free-will by duplicate experience.[/li]
[li] Our faculties of reason are petitio principii, and are therefore incapable of proving or disproving existence except by begging the question. That makes faith a gestalt phenomenon, which is necessary to bridge two metaphysically dissimilar ontologies.[/li]
[li] The fact is that heaven — the Kingdom of God — is already within us, and thus is only metaphorically a place to exist. So, we do live in heaven from the start; or rather, heaven lives in us.[/li][/ul]When I consider the sheer brilliance and simplicity with which God has enacted His plan, I am astounded and awed.
When I consider the sheer brilliance and complexity with which you posted above, I am astounded and awed.
I didn’t mean to sound patronizing, I was just amused that you had basically described the Eastern concept of Maya. The 'grand illusion" that is the universe. What looks bad to us, looks bad because we see the universe through the hallucination of our egos rather than with, as you put it, the “glasses of God.” There is a saying in Sanskrit, Sarvam kalvidam Brahman: (“This, too, is Brahman,”) meaning that all things ultimately derive from God and will return to God. Sometimes Maya is described as Brahman “dreaming” the universe.
Your last post, specifically your exposition of an “amoral mis-en-scene,” is also found in the Vedantic idea that the universe is Brahman at play (sometimes symbolized by the dance of Shiva). In this scenario, every soul (or “atman”) is really God in disguise, but God has forgotten that he is God. Alan Watts describes it as a sort of cosmic game of hide-and-seek. Brahman “hides” as the universe. The goal is for each individual to “remember” that s/he is God. Of course, such a realization also necessitates the realization that everyone else is also God. Obviously, in this paradigm, evil is illusory because God cannot really hurt God.
I don’t know if you’ve ever studied Buddhism or Vedantic Hinduism (Vedantism is basically a cleaner, less doctrinaire school of Hinduism, very similar in some ways to Zen) but if you looked into it at all, you’d probably be amazed at how close you were to this worldview. (although you might stop short of an advaita “non-dualist” position.
But the universe isn’t morally neutral*. Some people come from backgrounds that preclude them being able to love. Hell, some people have chemical imbalances in their brains that make them hate and fear everything.
*On our scale. It matters not at all in a cosmic way if I rob blind beggars. But it sure as hell matters to the beggar.
Right. Put the Vonnegut down, Lib. I can’t grok your meaning in fullness if I must Google every third word. (Mwa ha ha.)
And, are you asserting that just because we cannot fully know the results of an event, that those results aren’t happening?
Why should we have to facilitate goodness among each other? Isn’t that just doing over what God failed to do right the first time? Or, if you help someone get a job, you have performed an act of goodness, but has God not performed an act of evil by making someone not have a job in the first place?
If I get you, you are stating that because no two people experience the same reality*, you can’t say, “You came from a Fundamentalist household, therefore you must be closeminded and judgemental.”
If you are saying this, then I say, so what? We have not tested that every rock on Earth will fall when dropped. This is because it’s worked up through now. Similarly, although there may not be a one-to-one correlation between experience A and reaction A, there is still enough of a correlation that a connection can be drawn.
*Well, technically, we all experience the same reality. We just experience different parts of it.
Ah-ha. A point we agree on. The presuppositions “There is a God, and he Loves, with a capital L,” and “There is a universe, and it is consistent,” are both presuppositions.
Yes. (Well, ‘No,’ from my perspective, but assume yes for a mo’.) So what? Internal kingdom of God or no, there is still no good reason for God not to create us in Heaven the way he wants us, sans suffering.
One last question. You have evidence (your own experiences) which convince you that a luminous being you are, not this crude matter. (SW paraphrase, Yoda. I’m not plagarizing. Really.) What evidence do you have that the rest of us aren’t just sacs of meat?
I’m arguing logic and religion with someone who used gestalt and ontologies in one sentance. Someone put Debate 911 on standby.
Excuse me, Jersey Daimond, that was Saen who made the reference to “consensus.” Sorry!
You said:
The same is true for me. So not all of my guidance comes from the Bible. There are many ways that God speaks to me.
I don’t think that I have seen any Christians here who don’t follow the Bible. Some of them seem very scholarly in terms of Biblical knowledge, in fact. It’s been a long time, but I began college as a Christian education major in a small church-affiliated college. It was two years before I changed my major and moved to another college.
So I have had quite a few classes on the Bible. I grew up going to Sunday School and church EVERY Sunday and I didn’t miss a Sunday School class for several years. I was also a counselor in church camp many, many times. I assure you that I am very familiar with the Bible and its teachings.
I mentioned that there are many ways that God speaks to me. God and my psychiatrist seem to agree: No one can tell me what I should think or feel or believe.
I am willing to listen to what you believe to be the truth for you and to be respectful of your right to believe that way. But I am not willing to have you tell me what God or Jesus require of me – no matter how much you “need to,” as you said earlier.
I offer this to you with an open mind and heart.
Diogenes, I asked you about why you stopped playing with your child when that was your idea of bliss. It wasn’t an empty question.
I would imagine that like most parents, you stop playing with your child because it’s her bedtime or you need to make diner, or you must get some bills out with the mail – whatever. You have these other needs that require that you stop for a while.
Again, hypothetically speaking, if you take the feelings of joy that you have from playing with your daughter and multiply that happiness beyond anything you can imagine and discover that those feelings never have to end and boredom and tiredness will never overcome you, and you will have no other needs, would you still choose to be obliterated?