Why the insistence on a punitive God? My understanding of God is that he provides the opportunities for us to evolve spiritually. If one chooses not to eveolve, or even to devolve, well then I suppose you could call it hell, but I don’t. God will always welcome us back to the source, and will always continue to provide the opportunities. It is truly up to us to decide what to do with them.
If you want to talk about this in the simplistic, literal terms of Heaven and Hell, well then I suppose Hell is the state of being separate from God. But I don’t believe in it as a physical place, so I don’t see the hole in my logic.
I’ve said this many times, and I’ll probably have to say this many more times, Libertarian: Disagreeing with your position does not mean I do not understand your position. It could possibly mean that I fully understand your position and think that it is wrong.
When did I say that you don’t understand my position? So far, you’ve seen cites I didn’t give you, contradictions where none exist, and misunderstandings that never happened. Are you all right?
What does this even mean? Why would knowledge cause his will to trump ours? God does not have to suppress his knowledge in order to prevent himself from compelling our actions. He can choose not to compell us, despite his knowledge.
Why should his knowledge of someone’s moral decision make him uncomfortable? He doesn’t have to block out that knowledge, and you have not explained why you think he does.
Calliope:
Lib, you said you agreed with Calliope, but I think you should read this over again if you still think god is blocking out knowledge.
Lib:
I could say that it is offensive to me that you believe in a god that can be proved logically, deliberately blocks knowledge from himself, and that you enjoy attacking people who disagree with this personal god of yours. I believe in a God that requires faith, knows everything, and never takes away the chance of salvation. I believe that we will keep trying until we get it right, and that eventually everyone will be saved. Personally, I wonder what the psychiatric term is for someone who actually seems to take pleasure in the thought that some people will be choosing an eternity of pain. Why not believe that they will eventually get it right?
Libertarian, might I suggest that you quit using terms like “deliberately obtuse” and “bully”? I am not the subject of this thread, and your attempts to argue my motives as you imagine them instead of the points of the actual discussion do nothing to further the discussion.
Does the god that you worship know everything or not? Note that everything by definition must include the knowledge beforehand that some of the people he creates will not be saved. If he chooses to make someone that he knows will not be saved, how can this person make it into Heaven?
We know that it is logically impossible for God’s omnipotence to limit itself, and we know that it is logically impossible for God’s omniscience to limit itself.
I don’t see any reason to believe that God couldn’t limit his omniscience.
However, if He did so, he would no longer be omniscient, and thus would no longer be God. (What would He become? I don’t know… but He would be something other than what we consider God to be.)
God cannot limit His knowledge and remain God.
While God’s perspective is atemporal, that doesn’t allow us to get around the problem.
From an atemporal viewpoint, the results of a decision and the decision itself both exist ‘at once’ (there’s no English word to describe things out of time, this is the best I can do). However, the concept of ‘choice’ as we usually mean it is not meaningful, as there can never be uncertainty as to the outcome of any ‘choice’.
How do we make choices? What mechanism determines our selections? If the mechanism is deterministic, then there is no other choice we could make. If the mechanism is non-deterministic, then God cannot know from within time what the outcome will be, and from outside time has always known what the outcome is (but the selection is ‘random’ and has no causal relationship to events that are ‘before’ it).
If you are refering to John Collier’s famous short story The Chaser, there is no antidote. The other potion the man sells, the expensive one, the one he is sure to mention to the young man before selling him the love potion, is a deadly and untraceable poison.
This may or may not say something about god, but if it does, I’m glad I’m an atheist.
He can’t really do so, as I tried to explain in a previous post. If he’s omniscient, when he created you, he knew exactly, and always had known, everything you’ll ever do. He has always known what path you’ll follow, if he were to create you. Nevertheless he choose to do so. He could have created whatever other human being, who would have followed any path imaginable. Amongst these infinite posibilities, he choose to create someone (you) he knew will follow the path you followed/will follow. Since he can choose who he creates (he’s omniscient and omnipotent), he deliberatly created a being who will follow a given path (yours). It’s not really “free will”, here, or at least this free will is meaningless from his point of view.
As I said in my example he choose to create you knowing fully what will be your choices in your life, in the same way one would choose to put a little pale blue bead on a string rather than a big bright red one. He doesn’t force you to be a little pale blue bead . Rather, he created you as little pale blue bead. You can’t be something else.
The only way out, is to assume that god has limitations; for instance, is not omniscient and don’t know how a being he creates will act, or is not omnipotent, and can’t chose who he will create. Libertarian supports the idea that god has self-imposed limitations.
a) Isn’t it marvelous, and a clear sign of the Creator’s omnipotence, that the earth *just happens
to satisfy a very large number of important criteria, every one of which is necessary for human life? Even the laws of the universe as a whole! I mean, do you realize that if water froze like most fluids freeze–from the bottom up–that life would never have developed?
b) Do you realize that if you control for social prestige, political power, and socioeconomic status, neither race or sex has anything to do with the likelihood of a given individual running a major corporation, holding major political office, or otherwise being one of the people who play a major role in controlling our world? But so many people think that racism and sexism are meaingful factors in one’s ability to succeed in our society, go figure!
c) It is the goal of our noble political party to establish a society where 100% of our fair citizens will be living above the poverty line. It is beneath our dignity as enlightened people to have a significant portion of our populace forced to live in the bottom percentiles. And when it comes to education we want to see every student perform at average or better rates, and there is not excuse for not taking the steps necessary to attain this dream!
I think it’s all a variant on petitio principii, begging the question.
Picking a nit: The poverty line is defined on an absolute and not a relative basis.
Possible Answers to Question, Choose 1 or more (or less)
Hell isn’t so bad.
G-d isn’t so good.
G-d is not omniscient.
G-d is not omnipotent.
G-d is good, but we misunderstand him and Her situation; different perspective, you see; our morality is a mere human one.
It’s a mystery.
Others Answers (Ducks, IMHO)
Don’t ask the question.
It’s not G-d’s fault, it’s the sinner’s fault.
Problem of Evil, possible answers
The world is actually the best of all possible worlds. (Free will may enter here. As well as faith.)
G-d isn’t so good.
G-d is not omniscient.
G-d is not omnipotent.
G-d is good, but we misunderstand him and Her situation; different perspective, you see; our morality is a mere human one.
It’s a mystery.
Variants
During creation, G-d was omnipotent. Not anymore. By design.
Once we admit the possibility of an entity with multiple aspects, other possibilities present themselves.
From our perspective, God creates someone, they live and die, and go on to their eternal reward, all in a straight linear fashion, timewise. You ever thought that maybe time works differently for an omniscient being, in a way that casts a completely different light on the OP question?
I know there is a verse, somewhere in proverbs, i think, that says exactly that: That some folks God created for evil.
Let me try and find it by tomorrow unless someone else can.
But its there.
And tracer’s quote from Revelation is intended for the tribulation, God will send folks a delusion to worship the False Prophet and take “the mark”.
Really, nobody really would otherwise.
Does that imply God is cruel?
I’m really not trying to be trite or offensive, but this question becomes very clear to us atheists. To paraphrase George Carlin, the biggest fraud of all time was convincing people that there is an invisible man up in the sky who watches all, knows all, sees all, demands we follow his rules (though he contradicits himself frequently), and if we don’t he sends us to eternal pain and damnation… but he loves us.
If you think of most religions that believe in hell – and more specifically, that are convinced that if you don’t follow their particular rules then you are damned to hell for forever – well their thoughts lead to the conclusion that yes, god does expect the vast majority of the world to go to hell. Yet they consider this deity to be “good” and “kind.”
So my answer is – god didn’t create anyone that will go to hell. It’s procreation and evolution, and when a biological machine dies then its ride is over. Not the answer you were looking for, true, but I believe in looking at every angle and this one seems to have slipped through the cracks in this thread.
… but that still doesn’t explain why God – who presumably wants as many people as possible to be Saved and go to Heaven – would intentionally delude folks into believing in a false prophet.
“The Lord works out everything for his own ends-even the wicked for a day of disaster.” – Proverbs 16:4, New International Version (“The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil”, New American Standard Bible; “The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil”, King James Version)
Thank you MEB.
I knew someone would find it.
Cruel?
Well, the fundies I know (and i don’t know any other kidn in real life)
would say, "God gave them lots of chances, and when the rapture happens, if they still won’t accept Jesus, then it’s their own fault if they go to Hell.
I don’t claim to udnerstand it all.
I am glad I’m saved, so supposedly God chose me; sortof like a lottery i guess, I’m not exactly worthy.
i thought the whole dealie with God was that his nature was unknowable?
anyway.
this is what i was taught about freewill.
bearing in mind i was taught by my hippie christian parents.
imagine your life is a tree. and your choices are branches on that tree. everytime you make a choice your life branches.
god can see the whole tree, he can see all the alternative lives you can have, he can see how best to help you in all of them. but he chooses not to prune the branches, because he prefers the tree natural, with all your choices your own.
so he sees your life in all it’s possibilites and he lets you live that life.
i think he would prefer you to make some choices more than others, but he never forces.
thus it is possible to believe that every person, by making the right choices, can attain paradise, and that god puts this capability in everyone. it is thus up to the person whether they make the choices or not.
sorry, does that make any sense?
i’m not saying what those choices are, i have my opinion, and i’ll let others differ here.
so god creates ALL people equally, with the ability to reach heaven. it is how these peoplechoose to use this ability that determnes whether they get there.
and life is a balance. you cannot fully appreciate joy if you have never known sadness
.
i think that the verse in proverbs is saying that no evil situation is ever without a grain of good. kind of a making lemonade out of lemons thing.
ying has a little yang, yang has a little ying.
balance is in everything.