Why does God Permit....

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Voyager]
If God really cared about us, he wouldn’t make us guess about his existence.
[/QUOTE]

I would say that it matters very little whether we believe in God, but that we seek knowledge of God. IANAG (I am not a god), but I would guess that all pursuit of knowledge is smiled upon by the Omnipotent One(s).

People are always baffled by the conundrum of “how can a good God ‘let’ bad things happen.” But it’s not that complex of a question. The rules of nature are that we have to earn our rewards. For example, you have to peel an orange and get the sticky, citrusy residue on your hands before you can taste the delicious, citrusy goodness. Either that, or you have to use your intelligence to construct an orange peeler, or pay someone else to peel your orange. Either way, you have to earn your reward. If mankind can find a way to conquer evil, then all of mankind gets their reward, which is paradise (peace on Earth, no disease, no famine, etc). If we were born into paradise, we wouldn’t have earned it. For some reason, being born into paradise isn’t as great as it sounds. As we see with kids born into rich families, they have no knowledge of a hard life. They probably have to battle with their curiosity…maybe even seek a way of gaining knowledge of not only paradise, but also poverty.

82

Charger, it seems to me that if we have to earn our rewards, then we should only get those punishments that we have “earned”, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it?

83

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Charger, it seems to me that if we have to earn our rewards, then we should only get those punishments that we have “earned”, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it?
[/QUOTE]

I have an off-the-wall theory about this. Maybe the person who is cursed with a lifetime of struggles and bad luck is also the person who isn’t as bothered deep down by all of those things as someone else. They may envy someone with a seemingly easier life, but the person with the easy life has their day ruined by something much smaller and insignificant.

Told you it was off-the-wall. But maybe the difficulty level of the things we face in life directly affect the quality of our afterlife. That crack baby who suffered a slow death the day after being born with rule over us all.

84

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
OK make your own rules then. I will give you that Satan seemed more like a ‘buddy’ of God in the OT (Job), and like a enemy of God in the NT, but what’s to say Satan has to stay the same - obviously there was some transformation along the way, this does not negate that it is the same entity. The author of Genesis died before the birth of Christ, how is the author suppose to know about Satan at the time of Christ.

[/QUOTE]

If you remember, I said in Genesis. The story in Genesis makes no damn sense if the snake is Satan - why is he incarnated as a snake, and why would God punish snakes in general for Satan taking one over?

As for why would the author of Genesis know about Satan - maybe because it was divinely inspired? How would he know about the creation? No one was there but God - did God not know about Satan?

As for Satan changing - clearly Job was after Adam and Eve. Did God welcome Satan back? Why would he do that after Satan caused man to fall - except maybe because God and Satan set Adam and Eve up. Ever think about that?

The Bible is really fun that way - it is such a chaotic mess you can come up with all sorts of interesting conspiracy theories.

As for your Revelations quote - all I can say is that Christians distort the Tanakh so much that Mel Brooks is a literalist in comparison.

85

[QUOTE=Charger]
I would say that it matters very little whether we believe in God, but that we seek knowledge of God. IANAG (I am not a god), but I would guess that all pursuit of knowledge is smiled upon by the Omnipotent One(s).

[/quote]

Ah, another non-sked theology. I of course agree with you, since I think there is no such beastie, but you’re going to have to stretch to come up with a justification for this statement. Most gods seem to want a lot of worship.

Well, having to work is quite literally a punishment from Genesis, so that wraps up the “it’s good for you” argument. The guys who wrote that were no dummies, and didn’t try to pawn the hard work is good argument off on us, especially because they were priests who every so often slaughtered a goat - maybe got a blister on their finger.

In any case, I don’t see how God drowning people does much for their spiritual advancement. Course I can’t say much about your god, be he Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin, since you haven’t said much about what variety of god he is.

86

[QUOTE=Charger]
I have an off-the-wall theory about this. Maybe the person who is cursed with a lifetime of struggles and bad luck is also the person who isn’t as bothered deep down by all of those things as someone else. They may envy someone with a seemingly easier life, but the person with the easy life has their day ruined by something much smaller and insignificant.

Told you it was off-the-wall. But maybe the difficulty level of the things we face in life directly affect the quality of our afterlife. That crack baby who suffered a slow death the day after being born with rule over us all.
[/QUOTE]

Too bad that along with good people who suffer are assholes who suffer. Good people sometimes do well also.
Know what my theology is? Someday God’s Daddy is going to show up, see what a mess God made of the place, and give him a whuppin’ that can be heard from here to Andromeda. Hey, I could have been a theologian and make up three new apologetics before breakfast. But I have self respect, and I wouldn’t join any religion that would have me as a member.

87

[QUOTE=Voyager]
If you remember, I said in Genesis.
[/QUOTE]

Yes I do and did remember.

[QUOTE=Genesis=3:1]
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=2 Corinthians 11:3]
3But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
[/QUOTE]

At the very least I think we can agree this does not seem like a ordinary snake.

But I have not be able to make a solid scriptural link between the serpent and Satan if I exclude the Revelation, but can offer:

[QUOTE=1 John 3:8]
the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
[/QUOTE]

The first sin (the beginning) was that of the lie of the snake.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The story in Genesis makes no damn sense if the snake is Satan - why is he incarnated as a snake, and why would God punish snakes in general for Satan taking one over?
[/QUOTE]

I am going into speculation here, God created angels, man and animals, and created them ‘good’ but gave them the ability to do bad. Each level (angel, man, animal) seems to have it’s own set of rules (i.e. Satan can murder till that power was taken away, man is prohibited), animals, still a creation of God have some rules, it is possible that snakes fell also, allowing demonic possession, and it is for that they were punished.

We (man) are not really given the rules of angels and for that matter animals, but thee does seem to be some regarding angels and at least one that was committed by animals.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
As for Satan changing - clearly Job was after Adam and Eve. Did God welcome Satan back? Why would he do that after Satan caused man to fall - except maybe because God and Satan set Adam and Eve up. Ever think about that?
[/QUOTE]

Thought about and rejected. Going further on my above speculation, God did not dismiss Satan after the fall of man so God never had to take him back, what Satan did was not, for lack of a better term, a angelic sin, there was no rule that Satan broke. I strongly suspect that things changed radically after Satan tried to have the Christ child killed, and latter had God nailed to the cross, I’m assuming that was such a sin.

[QUOTE=DtC]
The fact that the Satan of OT was on God’s side and had no servants?
[/QUOTE]

Demonic possession

[QUOTE=1 Samuel 16:14]

Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.
[/QUOTE]

88

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Going further on my above speculation, God did not dismiss Satan after the fall of man so God never had to take him back, what Satan did was not, for lack of a better term, a angelic sin, there was no rule that Satan broke
[/QUOTE]

After review it does appear that Satan has sinned ‘from the beginning’ as I posted above, so I have to retract the above, all I can say to this is I don’t know, except angels have different rules. Perhaps this shows that God is capable of forgiving at least once.

89

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
At the very least I think we can agree this does not seem like a ordinary snake.
[/quote]

Balaam’s ass was no ordinary ass. That doesn’t mean it was Satan.

If it’s not in Genesis, it doesn’t measn anything. You can’t use a later book to prove anything about the authorial intent of an earlier book. Yes, we know that the New Testament distorts the meaning of the Tanakh. Thatmeans nothing.

Interesting you would say this since a reading of the text will show you that the snake didn’t lie. God did.

When did that happen? I don’t remember that from the Gospels. Matthew says it was Herod.

Wasn’t that whole dying on the cross thing God’s idea? What did satan have to do with it and how would it be a sin to carry out God’s will?

Demonic possession
[/QUOTE]

90

[QUOTE=Charger]
I would say that it matters very little whether we believe in God, but that we seek knowledge of God.
[/quote]

Why should anybody be expected to seek knowledge of something they on’t believe exists?

Who made those rules?

Why do we have to “earn” it? What does that even men? Are those children who were tortured to death in the holocaust just “earning” their way into Heaven. What kind of a dickhole God do you worship, man?

91

Forgot this:

What does an “evil spirit” have to do with Satan? You keep trying to impose a Christian demonological system onto a text written by people who had none.

92

[QUOTE=Sapo]
No. That is what you are saying I am saying because that might be easier for you to counter. I am saying that suffering doesn’t diminish the victim’s potential for salvation. In a trascendental way, suffering is powerless on the victim. It places the full of its burden on its agent.
[/quote]
Now i’m very confused. I think you’re saying that suffering does have an eternal effect on the person, but that it does not have an eternal negative effect. Is this right, or have I misunderstood again?

My point about experiencing every kind of suffering was that you said we were on this Earth in order to experience suffering and understand it. By that logic, I should experience every kind of suffering, because otherwise I can never fully understand it.

The opposite of this argument of course is that I don’t need to experience suffering to understand it. And if I don’t need to actually experience suffering, I don’t need to be on Earth at all.

I’m confused. What is the difference between knowledge obtained by experience and knowledge obtained through God flicking his fingers? Are you suggesting that God is unable to grant us knowledge of suffering or love without actually exposing us to it?

Alright. I just wanted to clarify.

My arguments are coming out of what arguments you’re making. I don’t have an “atheism playbook” that I copy what i’m saying out of.

My point with this was; if we are on Earth to learn about suffering, or to experience it, then for there to be people who are unable to learn about suffering or experience it is pointless. There should be no such people. I merely used the analogy of a test since it was the best thing I could think of at the time. How about this, then; imagine a psychopathic person, who does not care for anyone or anything. This person is free to do whatever they like on Earth, as are we all. When this person stands before God, it would be easy for them to select salvation (assuming they wanted this); they feel they have done no wrong.

To reference a point you make later; let’s assume then that, on death, he is stripped of his blindness as to others and becomes an empathic being. Surely, then, he is a different person than the one he was on Earth? This new empathic being has not experienced suffering or love either. Again, that such a person exists seems pretty pointless.

Mortal life isn’t the actualization of our moral choices. After all, we didn’t choose to be created and put on Earth. The results of that may be partially our choice (since we do not have free reign on Earth) but we did not select the original situation.

I’ve addressed this up-post a bit.

Yes, you can really know suffering and know you are causing it and not see it as wrong. You yourself have made the argument that it is so; a father who lets go of his son’s bike when teaching him to ride. That causes suffering, if minor, but the father thinks it right to do.

No, I don’t need to see the human causers of suffering suffer. After all, while they may have some blame for what they do, in a universe with a God it is his ultimate responsibility. God should be the one suffering for his sins.

And we’re still left with the problem that Hitler will get salvation much easier than you or me, beings with conscience. Does that really seem fair to you?

Yes, and that reason is doing it in real life is funner than a computer game. Not because of the pain, but because of the adrenaline and the physical activity and the, well, fun of it. Yes, you could really play football with no sensation of pain, and yes, it would be fun. And hey, parents wouldn’t need to worry about their kids, either! Happiness all round.

So no, then? After salvation, we are drugged, happy zombies? Beings who experience no sin or suffering, nor can cause it?

Seems rather pointless to be put on Earth at all, really, if all the experience we have won’t be taken into account afterwards.

You have never killed anyone (I assume :wink: ). You don’t understand that form of suffering. Is it not necessary to understand suffering in order to make us the person we will be when we face the choice of salvation? And if it isn’t necessary, why do we need to suffer at all?

Oh, and can we inflict suffering after salvation?

You keep repeating this; it’s just not so. Removing suffering from the world does not make it make-believe, unless you are saying all forms of experience other than that of suffering on Earth are simply role-playing.

After all, I could add something we can’t do; let’s say, the ability to choose not to be born. A world without this choice is just make-believe. Role-playing. Doll-House Tea Time.

93

[QUOTE=DtC]
If it’s not in Genesis, it doesn’t measn anything. You can’t use a later book to prove anything about the authorial intent of an earlier book. Yes, we know that the New Testament distorts the meaning of the Tanakh. Thatmeans nothing.
[/QUOTE]

If the snake was Satan why would the author of Genesis know this? Why could not the true identity be given to man later?

[QUOTE=DtC]
Interesting you would say this since a reading of the text will show you that the snake didn’t lie. God did.
[/QUOTE]

How I read it that the snake said you won’t die, God said you will, AFAIK A&E are sinners and dead, how did you get that God lied?:

[QUOTE=Genesis 3]
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

2The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

3but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’"

4The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=DtC]

When did that happen? I don’t remember that from the Gospels. Matthew says it was Herod.
[/QUOTE]

&

[QUOTE=DtC]
Wasn’t that whole dying on the cross thing God’s idea? What did satan have to do with it and how would it be a sin to carry out God’s will?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=1 John 5:19]
We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
[/QUOTE]

You are imposing human rules onto angels. We are not told about angel rules and it is just my assumption that nailing God to the cross is a ‘angelic sin’.

In Revelation we have this which be more to the point of the radical change of Satan:

[QUOTE=Revelation]
4And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and (L)threw them to the earth And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.

5And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.

6Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

7And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon The dragon and his angels waged war,

8and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.

9And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=DtC]
What does an “evil spirit” have to do with Satan? You keep trying to impose a Christian demonological system onto a text written by people who had none.
[/QUOTE]

What do you take a ‘evil spirt’ as? and what is a Nephilim then?

[QUOTE=Genesis 6:4:]
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
[/QUOTE]

94

Satan is referred to as a “serpent” in more than one occurance in the Bible. The snake interpretation has always seemed a bit odd to me. There is one theory that the serpent was a handsome man who seduced Eve, and that the “fruit” was sex (hence, “be fruitful and multiply”). There’s a lot of sexuality in the story of Eden, the nudity and then the shame that came after they sampled the “fruit of knowledge.” The phrasing elsewhere in the Bible uses “knew” as a way of saying “had sex with,” using “knowledge” to describe carnal knowledge. I like this interpretation. It makes more sense than a talking snake with an apple. But I also like to see the whole story as a parable, not necessarily involving real people. Either way, the point being that mankind’s selfish desire for personal gratification is responsible for the world being something other than paradise.

As far as bad things happening to innocent people, that’s why God created Superman. If Superman is not enough, that’s why God created the Justice League.

95

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
If the snake was Satan why would the author of Genesis know this? Why could not the true identity be given to man later?
[/quote]

The “true identity” is whatever the author thought it was. He was the one making up the story, after all. You seem to have some idea that the author didn’t know the identity of his own characters.

Because God was lying when he said that eating from the tree would kill them. It didn’t. The serpent told them the truth – that it would make them “as the god” knowing good from evil. Eating the fruit isn’t waht made the mortal either, if that’s what you’re getting at. They were already mortal. God just wouldn’t let them eat from the tree of life and become immortal.

What angels? There are no angels involved in with either the slaughter of the innocents (except for the one tells Joseph to flee to Egypt) or with the crucifixion.

It was humans who did it, not angels. If you want to tke the gnostic position that the world is ruled by Satan, what does that say about the free will of humans?

Anyway, how can doing God’s will be a sin? Was the crucifixion God’s will or wasn’t it?

Revelation has no insight into the authorial intent of Genesis.

As an evil spirit. No one really knows what the nephilim were supposed to be exactly. Genesis says the “sons of God” porked human women and produced the nephilim as offspring. It’s an odd passage, to be sure. It’s probably an artifact of the pre-Judaic, Canaanite, polytheistic origins of these myths. They had nothing to do with Satan, whatever they were supposed to be.

96

[QUOTE=Charger]
Satan is referred to as a “serpent” in more than one occurance in the Bible.
[/quote]

Not in the OT.
The snake interpretation has always seemed a bit odd to me. There is one theory that the serpent was a handsome man who seduced Eve, and that the “fruit” was sex (hence, “be fruitful and multiply”). There’s a lot of sexuality in the story of Eden, the nudity and then the shame that came after they sampled the “fruit of knowledge.” The phrasing elsewhere in the Bible uses “knew” as a way of saying “had sex with,” using “knowledge” to describe carnal knowledge. I like this interpretation. It makes more sense than a talking snake with an apple. But I also like to see the whole story as a parable, not necessarily involving real people. Either way, the point being that mankind’s selfish desire for personal gratification is responsible for the world being something other than paradise.
[/quote]

Snakes were commonly associated with myths which explained mortality. Snakes were symbols of immortality because of their ability to shed their skins (seemingly dying and being reborn). There are multiple ancient myths (Gilgamesh, for instance) which involve snakes stealing immortality from humans.

On a related note, a recent discovery in Botswana uncovered the world’s earliest known religious shrine. It’s an enormous, 70,000 year old python.

97

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Now i’m very confused. I think you’re saying that suffering does have an eternal effect on the person, but that it does not have an eternal negative effect. Is this right, or have I misunderstood again?
[/QUOTE]

A couple paragraphs down you seemed to have accepted my scraped knee analogy. Is this a different question?

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
My point about experiencing every kind of suffering was that you said we were on this Earth in order to experience suffering and understand it. By that logic, I should experience every kind of suffering, because otherwise I can never fully understand it.
[/QUOTE]

No. Of course not. You do not need to drive every car to learn how to drive. You don’t need to love every person to know Love.

And I am not saying life is the Suffering 101 lab. What I am saying is that the freedom to do evil and inflict suffering is what makes us Moral beings and that you cannot know what it means to inflict suffering on others without having experienced suffering yourself. (plus it seems only fair that if you get to dish it you have to be able to get some, too)

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
The opposite of this argument of course is that I don’t need to experience suffering to understand it. And if I don’t need to actually experience suffering, I don’t need to be on Earth at all. I’m confused. What is the difference between knowledge obtained by experience and knowledge obtained through God flicking his fingers? Are you suggesting that God is unable to grant us knowledge of suffering or love without actually exposing us to it? Alright. I just wanted to clarify. My arguments are coming out of what arguments you’re making. I don’t have an “atheism playbook” that I copy what i’m saying out of.
[/QUOTE]

You guys don’t have a playbook? You really need to up your game. :slight_smile:

How would a magically implanted experiential knowledge of suffering be different from having experienced suffering? And if it is, wouldn’t it be insufficient?

And no, the opposite argument to “you have to experience all suffering” is not “you have to experience no suffering”. You are leaving out the reasonable “you have to experience some suffering”, as previously explained,

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
My point with this was; if we are on Earth to learn about suffering, or to experience it, then for there to be people who are unable to learn about suffering or experience it is pointless. There should be no such people. I merely used the analogy of a test since it was the best thing I could think of at the time. How about this, then; imagine a psychopathic person, who does not care for anyone or anything. This person is free to do whatever they like on Earth, as are we all. When this person stands before God, it would be easy for them to select salvation (assuming they wanted this); they feel they have done no wrong.
[/QUOTE]

Again, we are not here to learn. But imagine the sufering of suddenly looking back on your life and seeing all the damage you have caused without knowing it then. There are plenty of this kinds of experiences in mortal life. A recovering alcoholic who sees all the damage he did to his family while intoxicated (when he wasn’t really in control and not directly responsible). A terribly selfish or callous person who is humbled by a life experience and changes. Some people in real life can’t easily cope with a retrospective analysis of their previous wrongdoings, even if they can be exculped from them.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
To reference a point you make later; let’s assume then that, on death, he is stripped of his blindness as to others and becomes an empathic being. Surely, then, he is a different person than the one he was on Earth? This new empathic being has not experienced suffering or love either. Again, that such a person exists seems pretty pointless. Mortal life isn’t the actualization of our moral choices. After all, we didn’t choose to be created and put on Earth. The results of that may be partially our choice (since we do not have free reign on Earth) but we did not select the original situation. I’ve addressed this up-post a bit.
[/QUOTE]

Are you sure you didn’t choose to be put on earth? That is not the point, though. What I am saying is that for us to be Moral, we need to be Free and to be Free we have to be knowledgeable of the choices presented to us. Our choices in life are not only moral (no caps) but a repercussion of our Moral choices.

As for your example of a psycopath. Would giving a physically blind person the ability to see make him a different person? His life would change of course, but he would still be the same person. The same John Doe. The same brain/mind. Just with a heightened perception of the world around him.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Yes, you can really know suffering and know you are causing it and not see it as wrong. You yourself have made the argument that it is so; a father who lets go of his son’s bike when teaching him to ride. That causes suffering, if minor, but the father thinks it right to do.
[/QUOTE]

But that is a necessary suffering that leads to a much greater good than the suffering itself. Not only that but it is an unintended suffering. A secondary effect of an action with a different primary effect.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
No, I don’t need to see the human causers of suffering suffer. After all, while they may have some blame for what they do, in a universe with a God it is his ultimate responsibility. God should be the one suffering for his sins.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that is the POE to which I started saying I had no answer. I was just addressing the POS. If God knows what we will choose before we choose it, why create people who will choose Damnation? And if God knows what we will choose before we choose it, are we really Free to choose? That is an issue for which I have no immediate answer.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
And we’re still left with the problem that Hitler will get salvation much easier than you or me, beings with conscience. Does that really seem fair to you?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t see that he is getting an easier path to Salvation. As I said, a retrospective view of a life with a heightened perception could be a terrible burden to bear. That is one of my starting points. That all people have the same potential for Salvation. Otherwise we would all be crying foul at the injustice of not having died before birth so we would have no sins to account for.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Yes, and that reason is doing it in real life is funner than a computer game. Not because of the pain, but because of the adrenaline and the physical activity and the, well, fun of it. Yes, you could really play football with no sensation of pain, and yes, it would be fun. And hey, parents wouldn’t need to worry about their kids, either! Happiness all round.
[/QUOTE]

Can you really extricate pain from tactile sensation? from selfperception? If what you are asking for is just a limiter on the sensation, something that takes the edge of pain but still lets you get the useful sensation of having been tackled to the ground, then my answer is: How do you know there isn’t one?. How do you know there isn’t a much greater suffering that we are prevented from feeling. As they say, God squeezes but doesn’t crush. I have seen people overcome all different kinds of suffering. I don’t think we are getting more than we can handle.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
So no, then? After salvation, we are drugged, happy zombies? Beings who experience no sin or suffering, nor can cause it?
[/QUOTE]

Again, we are Eternal. Time is not a succession. We are static in the plenitude of our choice. There is no need for experience.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Seems rather pointless to be put on Earth at all, really, if all the experience we have won’t be taken into account afterwards. You have never killed anyone (I assume :wink: ). You don’t understand that form of suffering. Is it not necessary to understand suffering in order to make us the person we will be when we face the choice of salvation? And if it isn’t necessary, why do we need to suffer at all?

Oh, and can we inflict suffering after salvation?
[/QUOTE]

Don’t stress too much about my killing habits. I am an ocean away.

We have been through all this already but here goes a real quick recap. Our mortal experience does matter. It changes us and defines us in that it shapes our choice for Salvation. Suffering is necessary because our ability to cause it is what makes us Moral beings.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
You keep repeating this; it’s just not so. Removing suffering from the world does not make it make-believe, unless you are saying all forms of experience other than that of suffering on Earth are simply role-playing.
[/QUOTE]

Again, if you remove suffering, you remove our ability to cause it and with it our ability to make moral choices, to be Free.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
After all, I could add something we can’t do; let’s say, the ability to choose not to be born. A world without this choice is just make-believe. Role-playing. Doll-House Tea Time.
[/QUOTE]

For one, you don’t know that you don’t get too choose not to be born. Secondly, if I ask you if you want vanilla or chocolate, you can’t choose strawberry. There are limits to human freedom.

98

[QUOTE=DtC]
As an evil spirit.
[/QUOTE]

(In to response to what do you take a evil spirit as)

[QUOTE=Acts 19:]
13Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15(One day) the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” 16Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
[/QUOTE]

Which is the link from ‘evil spirit’ to demon. I am not able to find the link where demon = (fallen) angel however.

[QUOTE=DtC]
The “true identity” is whatever the author thought it was. He was the one making up the story, after all. You seem to have some idea that the author didn’t know the identity of his own characters.
[/QUOTE]

You take Genesis as a made up story, I take it as a divinely inspired symbolic representation, much like Revelation, and do like the symmetry of having symbolic passages at the beginning and end. But if you just take it as a work of fiction then that’s what it is, there was no snake to be Satan then.

[QUOTE=DtC]
Eating the fruit isn’t waht made the mortal either, if that’s what you’re getting at. They were already mortal.
[/QUOTE]

Eating the fruit made them sinful, and therefor unworthy of God, and would be condemned to die outside the kingdom of God.

Well at that time yes, but the tree of life comes back after the resurrection:

[QUOTE=Revelation 22:2]
in the middle of its street On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
[/QUOTE]

So A&E still have the possibility of eating from it.

Man has a choice, ultimately it will come down to taking the mark of God or the beast.

Herad chose to serve Satan.

[QUOTE=DtC]
Anyway, how can doing God’s will be a sin? Was the crucifixion God’s will or wasn’t it?
[/QUOTE]

Yes it seems like the crucification was sacrificial move by God

[QUOTE=Matthew 26:39]
And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
[/QUOTE]

Which is Jesus praying to the Father, showing that He is not exactly thrilled with the notion of being crucified, but it is the will of the Father.

As for if the will of God can lead to sin, the will of God gave us free will, which lead us to sin.

An interesting passage showing the relationship between Christ and Satan:

[QUOTE=Mark 8:33]

But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
[/QUOTE]

It would seem like Satan has some claim or right to be part of man’s interests.

99

[QUOTE=Charger]
Satan is referred to as a “serpent” in more than one occurance in the Bible. The snake interpretation has always seemed a bit odd to me. There is one theory that the serpent was a handsome man who seduced Eve, and that the “fruit” was sex (hence, “be fruitful and multiply”). There’s a lot of sexuality in the story of Eden, the nudity and then the shame that came after they sampled the “fruit of knowledge.” The phrasing elsewhere in the Bible uses “knew” as a way of saying “had sex with,” using “knowledge” to describe carnal knowledge. I like this interpretation. It makes more sense than a talking snake with an apple. But I also like to see the whole story as a parable, not necessarily involving real people. Either way, the point being that mankind’s selfish desire for personal gratification is responsible for the world being something other than paradise.

[/QUOTE]

That’s a far more plausible interpretation than the usual religious one. I’m sure it was partially a just-so story, but the sexual subtext is there - snakes are famous phallic symbols.

100

[QUOTE=Sapo]
A couple paragraphs down you seemed to have accepted my scraped knee analogy. Is this a different question?
[/quote]
Well, i’m continuing on the assumption that that’s a correct understanding of your position. I just asked to make sure.

Fair enough. Surely, in that case, there is no point to the birth of children if they are unfortunetly killed soon after birth (or aborted, depending on your beliefs)? They have no chance to inflict suffering on others or to suffer; are they then unable to make a choice for or against salvation?

Ah, sure, just because you guys have your book, you have to take the mickey out of everyone who doesn’t. :wink:

I would imagine it would be different in the “actually having suffered” part. Would it be insufficient? That would, normally, depend on whether or not you accepted the implanted knowledge as being different from experienced knowledge, which of course we can’t know one way or the other. However, this is a special case; God’s omnipotent. So yes, God can do it without it being insufficient.

Erm, the opposite of “all suffering” is “no suffering”. That there must be some suffering is just another argument.

The problem with some suffering is; well, how much? If we assume God exists, the correct answer would probably be “just enough to allow us to understand suffering, and no more”; since he’s benevolent, he’d let us experience the amount of suffering that’s appropriate, but not any added pointless suffering that won’t change our decision. Which is perfectly reasonable in and of itself; after all, all people are different, and so they’d probably need to know suffering to different amounts. That would tend to imply, however, strange similarities for suffering across cultures in examples of genocide.

Alternatively, it could be that God does not actually control the amount of suffering; he gives us the capacity to understand it, but (since free will is his top priority) he doesn’t dole it out; he lets us do that. Unfortunetly that would mean that some people get much more suffering than they need, which is obviously bad, but also that some people get less - which on the face of it is pretty good for them, but it means they don’t know suffering enough to make the decision of salvation.

And i’m sure there are such people. I’m merely pointing out that there are other people - people who cause suffering, but think that they are in the right - who won’t learn about suffering. They are incapable of it. I don’t think i’m able to convince you that such people exist, however, so I think this in particular is going to be a dead-end argument on both sides.

Good point, actually. I could have had the choice, but then had my memory wiped of it. Wouldn’t that mean, though, that I am not knowledgeable of the choices presented to me?

And on top of that, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe that God exists; I don’t feel him nor see him in the world. Clearly, if God does exist, I am not knowledgable of the choice to follow him.

I’d say it would, to some extent, in that it would cause them to have different reactions to people and things. But there’s a difference between being blind and not being empathic; blindness stops you from seeing, from taking in information of a certain kind. Not being empathic is a function of the self, a part of what you’d call “me”. If I take a calculator and let it work by voice-recognition, it’s still a calculator. But if I add in a letter-recognising function and some information, it’s now a calculator and a dictionary.

That’s true. But plenty of people in history have done something bad for the greater good - and often our idea of good is very different from theirs (And there’s still the people who cause suffering but think it’s ok anyway).

This is something I don’t think i’ll ever understand. If you find that there’s something that doesn’t make sense about your god, why do theists still believe?

But you’re just taking that on faith. It seems like, according to your beliefs, that Hitler will get it much easier than you or me. But you have faith in another belief that means this isn’t so. Faith I get, but faith that your other faith is wrong?

Can you really extricate pain from tactile sensation? From self-perception? Yes, God can. An omnipotent being is perfectly capable of removing the pain but still allowing us to feel the sensation of being tackled.

You’re quite correct; God could be protecting us from some amount of pain that we would normally experience. But we do still feel pain. If someone hits me with a baseball bat and God comes along and switches it for a cosh; well, that’s nice of him, but i’m still getting hit. “no more than we can handle” isn’t good enough for a benevolent being; it really should be none.

That would be a “yes”, then, I think. There is no need for experience on Earth, either. Yet, we choose to experience things. If that choice is taken away from us by God - if, in fact, we are locked in a single moment of eternal bliss - that’s nice, but kinda takes away from the whole free will business. And if we’re just going to be locked up there anyway, what’s the point of having people pick between that and non-salvation (whatever you believe that to entail)?

Hey, you might kill a Doper I like! Besides, i’m enjoying this argument. I’d hate for it to be cut short by you being arrested. :wink:

Ok, let me sort this out. We need to be able to cause suffering to be moral (and choose not to); in order to cause suffering, we need to know it, and thus we are put in a position where we can know it. Is that correct?

If so, what’s the difference between that and me saying that we need to be able to cause bleenwort to be moral; in order to cause bleenwort, we need to know it, and we should be in a position where we can know it. Why are we not in a position to know bleenwort?

We don’t have bleenwort, either. And plenty of people are unable to cause (or experience) suffering, or to understand it. These people, therefore, cannot be free, capitalisation or otherwise.

Choosing strawberry is not a moral choice. Choosing to live is. But yes, you’re right, I don’t know whether I did or not. I wonder what happens to those who choose otherwise?