What a reading that was...

Alright, this is for secundus... I had recently asked myself "What IF God lied that He never lies (which makes everything a possible lie)? What happens then? What if He is not what He says He is..."
That sounds similar to many of your questions, right? Let's presume this is the case, let's presume you already know that... what happens for you? What would you choose to do, if you know this?
Let's also presume a second situation - God is the way "worship or suffer"... what would you choose (again)?

Come on now, make a few presumptions for me, please, I'd love to read what other people think of that...

This post has been edited by Kozunaki Silen: Aug 6 2009, 03:59 PM

No, I don't believe in hell (as a form of eternal torment in the afterlife). I'm suggesting that 1) there is a difference between temptation and desire and 2) there are finite consequences for our finite sins that will be dealt in this life or the next, just as there are consequences to breaking the government's laws or your house's rules.

I'm suggesting that when one is tempted, they need not actively think on the action they might do. I could be tempted to go off a diet if I saw a candy bar sitting on someone's desk (it's always food, isn't it? You'd think I weighed 500 lbs.) It becomes a credible desire once I decide that what I'd really like to do is rip that candy bar off that person's desk and devour it in a matter of seconds. I was really counting on a cookie monster smiley or something.... Hm.

I'm not sure that I can explain the difference, but I believe there is one. And many other people do to-- I've argued about it once or twice and sadly been rebuked.



But an action done with malice is sin for which there are consequences. Think about karma, I suppose. What goes around comes around.



But you had to sustain the consequences, the karma, before you got there. And even without physical or emotional, etc. consequences, it still matters: haven't you ever disappointed someone? Imagine doing the worst thing possible to the best person possible.... Doing wrong matters a lot when you care about someone and with the truth, you will care a lot.



Sorry, then. I'm trying to paint a picture and it's not coming out well at all....



But logic gives me no reason not to do evil. If I found a way around the law, and it benefited me to do so, why not kill? Logically, that would benefit me the most.

Conscience isn't a plausible answer, because then the question arises of why your conscience thinks the way it does.

I rest on one law. Love one another. I think that governs everything pretty well. There are, as always, people who will break the law, though.



On the contrary, you asked me why I believe that God is good and holy, not how I know. Which I answered in the only way I know how: with the evidence provided through subjective truth and whatever credibility that allows. It might not seem like much but it's everything to me.

May I make a suggestion? If you are really interested in who God is and what he has to say, why don't you try talking to him? Ask questions, make mistakes. Allow yourself to grow through experience. I think that's a lot of why we're here.

If you believe that the world is a beautiful place all by itself, why does it spoil the surprise to discover that someone loved you enough to give you all of this? Forget "worship or torture" and just think about how lucky we are to have existence in the first place.

Then I would put the same question to you as I put to Atlantis; what's the point? If it isn't necessary for this to happen on Earth and God already knows what our decision will ultimately be anyway, why not just take those who are going to believe into heaven straight away? Why create those whom he knows are going to "choose" hell?



That may not be the only explanation, however. Maybe they just saw someone who looked like Jesus, for example, and having had faith in the real Jesus, did not bother to question.

Also, you have to bear in mind that, from an atheist's point of view, resurrection isn't very likely either.



I'm just making the point that willingness to die for one's beliefs doesn't make said beliefs any more true. We can only use the zeal of the apostles to demonstrate that they believed they saw Jesus, not that Jesus actually did rise from the dead. And even then, it's not a certainty. They might have known that their deaths would accomplish something else or further some other agenda. If there was some kind of deception going on, who can say how deep it may have gone? Perhaps Jesus himself was, in fact, Satan, and the actions of the apostles were the result of possession. Just a thought.



So why not begin it then?



Sure, but it's only "always been that way" because it was made to be that way in the first place. If God had decided that it would be about the Bible and what it said, it would be about the Bible.



Perhaps, but many schisms were still influenced by, if not directly caused by, differing interpretations of the Bible. If the Bible had been made to be crystal clear and impossible for anyone to unwittingly misinterpret, one would imagine that there would be a great deal less division, thereby making the church a more united and credible force.

Heck, even if there was some reason as to why the church would be a more favourable tool than the Bible itself, a simple note at the end of the Bible saying "This is not the be-all and end-all of God's word" would have cleared up a lot of misunderstandings.



And my point is that we could simply be given this knowledge right from the start, thereby eliminating (or at least greatly reducing) the significant chance of someone making a decision that is uninformed.



If I knew that God was lying about never lying? I probably wouldn't do anything different from what I am now; which is to say, refusing to make assumptions about him one way or the other. Maybe that's all he lied about, maybe it isn't.



I value my integrity and I will not kneel before a tyrant. Besides, even if I did cave in and decide to worship him in that situation, God would presumably know that I still don't want to worship him and am only doing it because of the potential consequences if I don't. Would he accept that? Probably not, so the choice basically comes down to "Suffer" or "Suffer with my integrity intact."



But you've yet to really explain what they are.



I'm not seeing the difference, aside from magnitude. Either way you want to eat the candy bar.



Wait wait wait. What's this about karma now? You never mentioned anything about that before.



That sounds like an emotional consequence to me.



So is there still suffering in heaven, then?



"I'm going to kill you because I love you. This world is cruel and inhospitable, and you do not deserve the suffering that you will endure if you remain here. I'll kill you and you will get to go to paradise right now. That is the best thing I can do for anyone. Then, so that your loved ones don't have to suffer over your death, I will kill them too."

It can go wrong all too easily.



Then you believe without knowing?



I'm curious. Suppose someone claimed to have come to a "subjective truth" that God is a hate-filled, evil monster that doesn't even deserve recognition, let alone worship or love. Would you accept that?



As I said in an earlier post, I have done this. I did it for years when I was a Christian and while I was on the journey to atheism. And as I asked, does that mean God wants me to be an atheist?



It doesn't, but that's not the point. I quoted that excerpt because I reject the idea that I "must" think there's some grand, underlying meaning to it all, and I reject the notion some people (not necessarily you) seem to have that we need the attention and love of some mysterious superbeing so that we don't feel empty and unfulfilled when the material world is quite fascinating enough as it is.

Hey secundus, Are you a Christian?

Allow me to first give a rudimentary explanation of omnipotence. Omnipotence is standardly defined as "unlimited power," but I don't think this really properly expresses. I would define it rather as "systematic arbitrary power." Simply, there is nothing that is possible that God can't do (hence it is systematic).

Things that can't be done are logical contradictions. For instance, a circle cannot be made into a square and still be a circle, and visa versa. It is simply logically impossible, and since it is not a possible thing, then God can't do it, not for a lack of power, but because it is definitionally impossible.

Another example could be "If God is omnipotent, then why can't He cease to exist?" The answer is simply that He is Himself existence; something exists insofar as it compares to the form of existence who is God. That which is existence itself can't not-exist by definition, hence God can't do it, but not for a lack of power.

Applied to the situation you are speaking, I believe the reasoning is roughly the same, although with several qualifications.

Could God create beings immediately into Heaven? Sure, but He must also offer free will to those creatures if He wishes for them to be able to love Him; and having this free will, they are free to reject Him; hence Satan and the fallen angels.

In our world, where there is time, it must necessarily pass for our free will to be acted upon, hence we must exist for a period of time outside of Heaven. However, why create us in time at all? That is the question I am working up to.

For a being to be virtuous, it must have the option of being vice. Otherwise such virtue is artificial.

Why not create a world in which there happens to be both free will and a lack of evil? Well, I'm not doubting God's power to do this, but I think there is a reason why God chose to make this world instead of, or in addition to, that world.

A more valuable virtuosity can only exist where there is suffering from evil. If we all lived in a utopia, and were free of suffering, then our virtue to love is untested, unhindered, "unhardened" we might say. You can recognize this as well as I; if a boy could love his father because his father always doted on him and never let the boy experience any real responsibility, we would have reason to doubt the real value of the boy's virtue. A love that hasn't experienced suffering is simply not as valuable a love which exists despite suffering.

When you would place the hypothetical person who has never suffered and loves God next to the person who has suffered and still loves God, which love is more valuable; that which is a given, or that which has grown?

I think that evil is a necessary process to draw out valuable, strengthened love.



But that is just simply very silly; 12 men, and all of them would go to their deaths preaching the resurrection of a man who they thought they might have seen after death and burial?

The other possible scenarios are just grasping at straws.



Well naturally no.



Sure, but how likely do think it would be for Satan to give birth to an organization that couldn't be vanquished by God?



Because the Church was and always would be necessary to interpret the documents in the first place, and would also need to have a higher authority than the documents to define the documents' authority.



If He had so decided to make it possible for Christianity to be a religion of the book, sure. However, the fact of interpretation and the necessity of an infallible guide to the interpretation of such book would then necessitate the organization.



But could the Bible be made in such a way? I don't think so. It's awfully easy to misinterpret even simple things, but the Bible speaks of very complicated topics.



The reason it wasn't put in the Bible is probably because those who wrote the Bible had never known that the Bible would ever be held up as an end-all be-all of God's word, and even so, such a proposition would not hold up to logical rigor.

"Why isn't the Bible the end-all be-all of God's word?"

"Because it says so."

It would require an external force (i.e. the Church) to so define the limits of the Bible, whatever those may be, and so even then, such a proposition in Scripture would merely be redundant.



But if growth is necessary, then the formation of thought is also a necessary process, and so one must go from ignorance to knowledge to wisdom.

Out of curiosity, were you a Protestant Christian?

As I've said, I used to be, but no longer am.



Ah. But is it truly impossible, or does it just seem that way to us because of our mental limitations? As humans, we cannot fathom the idea of a circle being both a square and a circle, but of course, all we have to work with are these mortal, fleshy brains. God, on the other hand, is far above that. Perhaps what we consider to be these simple, inviolable "laws" of logic are just as much a plaything to him as anything else. We wouldn't know, because we simply cannot think on that level.



Hence those who reject him are cut off from him and subjected to this "punishment", whatever it may be.

I do not, however, see why that should be the case. Consider a human father who loves his child unconditionally. One day, his child packs up his things and moves out of the house, leaving his father a letter saying that he no longer wishes to communicate with him or be under his jurisdiction. The father is understandably heartbroken, and though he would love to take his child back into the household and continue taking care of him, he also wants to respect the child's wishes. So instead, he dedicates his life to stopping crime and funding research into cures for diseases, all in the hopes of making the world a better place for his child to live in. In doing so, he can continue to improve his son's life whilst still respecting his wishes.

Now, why can't God do the same thing? Why punish (forever) these people whom he professes to love instead of allowing them to exist in a world that is good, but just not Heaven? In that way, he is respecting their wishes to be alone, but still caring for them indirectly.

You may say that any place "outside of God's jurisdiction" cannot possibly be good because God is the source of joy, but I'll remind you that you said yourself that God is existence. If God is existence, the only method I can see of "cutting someone off" from him is to simply remove them from existence.

Also, I don't know if I've said this before, but if God is truly benevolent then I seriously doubt that anyone but the most deranged and masochistic would reject him if they were to see him as he is. If he is all he's cracked up to be, as it were, then people reject him either because they're seeing him as something he isn't, or because they're just not convinced that he's real.



Doesn't that make God's own virtue meaningless, then, since he is incapable of being anything but virtuous?



I would put forward that the reason "tested" virtue is more valuable than "untested" virtue is that tested virtue is more likely to hold when severe hardships come along to challenge it. If such hardships simply don't exist then there is effectively no difference between one virtue and the other.

Also, since God already knows who will remain virtuous beneath Earth's hardships and who will break underneath the pressure, it seems rather pointless to actually bother with it.



People are capable of very silly behaviour. Besides, maybe Jesus himself spoke to this man beforehand and told him to say he was Jesus after he died. It was just a thought I was throwing out.



What other possible scenarios?



I think it's perfectly possible if God is not all-powerful, as he claims to be. Or perhaps he can vanquish it but, for whatever reason, does not want to, just as there is presumably some reason why he doesn't want to destroy Satan altogether and remove his influence from the world. Besides, once it's ingrained in the minds of humans, how could he vanquish it without either violating free will or just killing everyone involved?



Why not? It may be beyond the wit of mankind to create a "perfect" book like this, but I don't see why it should be beyond God. He could just decide that anyone who reads the book miraculously understands it. It'd also transcend the problem of language barriers that way.



Which, again, could have been avoided if God had simply stressed the importance of what they were writing.



Ah. While I admit I didn't think of this amusing loophole, I don't think it would make any practical difference. Those who already believed that the Bible is not the be-all and end-all of God's word would not need the warning, and those who didn't would read the warning and have to accept it as truth.



Well then it could be a natural part of growth. As a person gets older, they automatically begin to understand more and more of God's word, just as they automatically grow taller and become smarter and get acne.



This is rather complicated. While I have no interest in revealing my personal details, I'll simply say that there was a bit of a Catholic/Protestant division among my family and so I found myself trying to reconcile the two beliefs because I didn't want to think either side was wrong.

This post has been edited by Secundus: Aug 9 2009, 08:41 AM

Secundus, may I suggest that the problems you see aren't because of the Bible but rather interpretations or beliefs of Christianity? I believe in God but don't really follow any of the things which you seem to be questioning.

A few people, like myself, would reject the idea of an eternal hell in which God punishes people. Some people were destroyed out of wickedness on the earth but the wage of sin was death rather than eternal torment (in my beliefs). As I've already said not accepting a way out of the price of sin, through Jesus, would mean one ends up paying the price themselves (which is death in the sense of no salvation). The punishment, if such a belief is truely correct, is one not being accepted by Jesus for salvation because of their rejection of Jesus (salvation). It's essentially choosing the same path as this "devil" character which will end up receiving, basically, death.

The idea of a God who is angry against sinners yet allowing the devil to exist seems a little contradictory in my opinion. What if God is a more tolerant and loving God than that but we don't really understand it? The Bible appears to show Him as a sort of God which would have compassion on just a few mere people.

(Also, if it matters, the verse I was referring to a long time ago in this thread is Jude 1:7 I believe. It says "eternal fire" when talking about the destruction of two cities but I believe it to mean destruction.)

This post has been edited by HlMelody: Aug 9 2009, 12:21 PM

The idea of logic ever not-working is illogical. If such ideas can't be understood at our level, then we cannot say anything meaningful, as it would always be void under the fact that the laws of logic are merely constructions and nothing more.



He is letting them have exactly what they want. What more could be demanded of God? Are you demanding that He give people what they expressly don't want? Maybe they don't want a world that is objectively good (like medicine and justice), but good only insofar as it fulfills their subjective wishes?

You see, you're advocating a certain type of universalism, which is a breach on man's freedom. If you were to demand God give those who reject Him what they don't want (what might be objectively determined to be "salvation"), then you demand God to be a tyrant (because the subjective complement to the objectivity of salvation would be absolutely disposed towards wanting to be away from God).



And so maybe they rush forevermore away from the center of existence towards non-existence, and so hence the pain that is described as a lake of fire?

I've thought of these things before.



I don't think it really is that way. The primary reason I imagine people rejecting God is because they want themselves more than they want God; the idea Jesus espouses when He says "He who wants to live must lose His life."

C.S. Lewis in his book The Great Divorce has a great quote on this;

“There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something that they prefer to joy--that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.”



No, because He Himself is also the fount of meaning; He is the Logos. It is towards Him that we aspire to be. If what we aspired to be didn't already exist, then what we aspired to be (infinitely virtuous) would never exist.



But why is one virtue more likely to withstand hardships than another? It's because it is greater. How could a virtue that overcomes hardships not be a greater virtue than one without?



It wouldn't be pointless, because if He didn't "bother with it," it would never have happened. It would be pointless for Him to not go forward with what He wants to create.



I know, but its just that these ideas are silly, insubstantial, grasping at straws.



Like the one where Jesus didn't really die, or where the Apostles simply couldn't find Jesus' tomb and so assumed He'd risen, or mass hallucination, or conspiracy, or etc.



Or maybe He's in the process of vanquishing evil? If there is an Omega Point, then evil will be vanquished at the end, and anything before then is the struggle to remove evil.



But He decided to create a perfect (as in infallible) Church in the first place, which can go beyond the book and remain perennially relevant to the world, unlike the metaphor and symbols that a book would be dependent upon.



Or they could just throw out the certain book of the Bible that made that statement and go on with believing the Bible is the end-all be-all? What's stopping them? I mean, if you started with that belief, then anytime you found something like that in the Bible, you would be "warranted" to dispose of that warning.

See what Luther did to the book of Maccabees. He threw it out because it contradicted him; he asserted there was no reason to pray for the dead, Maccabees stated it was "right and good to pray for the dead." Since Luther was already convinced he was right, then that book must've simply not belonged in the Bible.



But if a person grows up with a wrong conception, and never have a reason to ponder the correctness of that conception because it juts "works" so well, they'll grow without being corrected.

For instance, if I believe in God, and grow up with that belief, and simply find that my worldview is made coherent by this belief, I may never find reason to challenge this belief. So while I grow, I'll still be mistaken, and will cease to be able to understand the world as it really is.



Okay, understandable. It just seems you so strongly want to believe that Sola Scriptura is practical.

Did you know that there's actually no such thing as cold? That it's actually the lack of heat. From what I believe, that's how sin, and the lack thereof, works. Let me explain.

God is the one who bestows love, compassion, patience, hope, understanding, etc.... Because he is love. He is the epitome of love, compassion, patience, hope, he is the only one, the only thing, that will ever have those qualities and therefore he is the only one that can give it to people. When Satan was cast the earth, it was because he wanted to be like a God himself. When away from God, you can't have love, peace, compassion, and hope, understanding, because God's the only thing in the Universe that has it and can bestow it to us. The real issue isn't whether God will bestow it to you, he always does, but if you're willing to take it. When someone is bestowed compassion, that means s/he's no longer indifferent. When someone loves another, that means that they don't hate them. When someone has hope, that means that they are no longer hopeless. Each one of those things which God is, are a gift which we can choose to receive or not. There's always something enjoyable about the negative. Hating people gives a sort of feeling of accomplishment, and it's hard to give up. When you don't give it up, you find yourself with complete opposite qualities of God and going down a completely different life than he intended for you. When we feel that we have no hope it's not because God said with a booming voice "Because you have turned away from me, I give you no hope." It's because our cup is empty. When a cup is filled it's no longer empty.

When you have hope, you' re no longer empty. I admit, I don't understand why we are sent to hell if we don't follow God but I do believe that it's not God saying "You have not chosen me therefore you will burn!" I think that like what I talked about before, it's simply a result, which is consequently from not following God, not his revenge of any sort. I know that in the bible it says that hell was not intended for humans, it was intended for Satan in the end times. If you read, Satan's on earth right now. He can't go to hell, the only things with access to that place right now are demons. Earth still has access to God's gifts, compassion, hope, love, etc ... because God's influence is over earth. But hell is the only place that God does not touch.

I don' t know if that was helpful whatsoever. It' s a little off topic and didn't answer many of your questions but I felt like it was meant to be said. I believe that before you can go into those questions you have to first ask what' s God' s personality, his character? What does he gives and what does he take away? How does his love work? Once you've studied those things then you can jump into the questions of "why hell?" Otherwise it' s like trying to figure a complicated math equation without the formula. You're not going to get anywhere and you' re simply going to frustrate yourself. As for myself, I've only started studying those things lately and as a result I feel like I understand more things than I've even asked. I guess there are positives to reading the bible. ;)

Who says God is internally consistent?



The idea of what we think is logical, you mean. And yeah, it would seem illogical to us. That's kind of my point.



And? Maybe that's exactly what's happening.



No he isn't. The child strikes out on his own because he wants the opportunity to make a good life for himself without constantly being under the shadow of his father. What he's getting is "screwed", to use the scientific term.

If I shoot myself in the head under the belief that doing so will cure my brain cancer, I'm not getting exactly what I want when I die messily. Likewise, if a child moves away from his father believing that he'll still be able to have a good life, he's not getting exactly what he wants when he discovers that this is literally impossible, and also that his father will now never take him back for some reason.



I am not, and have never, demanded anything of God; I simply question whether certain actions could really be considered consistent with the way in which Christianity portrays him.



Except that he gives those who reject him what they don't want anyway; Hell. As I've explained, if anyone "rejects" God, it's either because they don't believe he exists or because they see him as something other than what he is.

Let's be perfectly frank here. Imagine none of this is an issue, and that when you die, your salvation is determined solely by a single question. "Do you want to go to paradise and be happy, or do you want to suffer forever?" Who but the most utterly insane person is going to choose the latter? And even if they are insane, that's not their fault, so one would hope that they'd be taken in anyway.

Nobody wants to go to hell, and if God is indeed a perfect, benevolent being, it logically follows that nobody would want to reject him if they saw him for what he was. He may be giving someone who rejects him "what they want", but the fact is that "what they want" is based on a misinformed decision.



How can non-existence entail pain? If you don't exist, how can you experience pain, or indeed anything?



But the question still remains as to whether or not their desires would change if they fully understood God. If they don't, how is it anything but natural that they would value their own lives over something else?



Who's to say it exists? That "infinite virtue" isn't just a meaningless concept?

Also, who's to say that God is the "fount of meaning"? Is it not entirely possible that the universe was created by some other entity, who then created God, who then proceeded to create Earth and all its inhabitants so that he could pretend it was him?



See, I would argue the exact opposite. It isn't more likely to withstand hardship because it's greater, it's greater because it's more likely to withstand hardship. However, if the hardships are removed altogether, it becomes meaningless. It's like having two types of potato, completely identical except that one of them is immune to potato blight and the other isn't. Obviously, if you're a farmer, you're going to want the one that's immune. However, if potato blight suddenly ceases to exist altogether, it no longer matters which potato you choose.



Are they? All I'm going to say is that sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction.



Also possible, although I'd question why an omnipotent being would ever need to be "in the process" of doing something rather than just snapping their metaphorical fingers and just doing it. What's the hold-up?



Why is a book dependent upon metaphor?



By the same token, what's stopping them from throwing out the Church and just believing whatever they feel like?



Sure, except that this isn't an issue if the beliefs we're ingrained with are correct in the first place, as I suggested.



Did you know that when you type like that and someone tries to quote you to formulate a response, they are assailed by an unstoppable horde of [color] tags?

Seriously. It looks pretty, but let's leave the colourful gradient effects in the world of images. That's where they're most comfortable.

That said, let's get straight to the crux here:



Read my first post again. That's essentially what I put forward; God doesn't "send" people to hell, it just happens as a consequence of their choices. However, if he's putting people in a position where they're forced to make the choice, he's still ultimately responsible, hence the "locked room" analogy. Just because I have no control over your fate once you're inside the room doesn't excuse me from putting you in there in the first place.



If we're questioning what God's character is at a basic level then we should hardly be starting with the assumption that he loves us, or even that he experiences love at all.

This post has been edited by Secundus: Aug 30 2009, 10:51 AM

I suppose that either God has principles, or we can do anything and make Him happy. The problem with the latter is that the Bible probably wouldn't support it as an overall message, and the Bible is probably the greatest or about the greatest text you will find concerning this "God" of the Bible.

God is the Logos. If God is not Himself principle, then how can He be the fount of reason and order?



What justification is there to assume that what has all appearances of logic shouldn't be believed to be logical?



If that was exactly what was happening, then that would mean the laws of logic are void. If the laws of logic are void, then we cannot justifiably use them. If we cannot justifiably use them, then nothing makes sense, including this whole syllogism.



I'm sorry, but the idea of life without God when it is God who created life is simply absurd. How can anything created, which only exists by God, be sustained without God, let alone become greater than God (to escape His shadow)?



I don't understand what you're saying. God will take back whoever wants to be taken back. He rejects no one; Hell is for those who reject themselves from God. Hence, God is letting people have exactly what they want. The idea that any person can be justified in admonishing God for giving them exactly what they want is kind of silly, I think. Is it God's job to make sure reality happens as you, a finite creature of mere flesh and blood, think it ought? You can't move from one spectrum, denying our ability to reason, and then think we can reason better than God on the other without contradicting yourself. Which is it? Can we not reason, or can we reason better than God?



If you question, then prepare for an answer.



A "rejection" of God is not really a rejection of God. It can have the appearance of rejection, but only God will know if its rejection or not. Hence, only God knows hearts, and whoever truly desires Him (no matter what intellectual positions a person who can very well be mistaken may have) will be saved.



In the end, it is a real choice not hindered by anything from this world except what hindrances we make on ourselves. Your speculation is really kind of meaningless; I have already pointed out that God (who is omniscient) will know who really rejects Him and who doesn't.

I don't think the question can be properly put that way, then. It's not "Paradise of suffering?" but "God or you?" Those who want themselves over God will find union with God nothing but torture.



*sigh*

If a person really rejects God, then God will know. Misinformation doesn't enter into the equation.



I didn't say there enter into non-existence, but that they rush towards non-existence; it is like the term "approaching zero" in math; the value will never actually be zero.



God will know (by His omniscience) whether they would reject Him or not if they fully understood Him. Its not as if anyone fully understands God, anyway.



God by definition is not created. If you think its rational to entertain the notion of God being created, we aren't talking of the same thing.



Except that one potato will still be more resilient than the other potato.



Rescuing people who are evil from evil first?



A book is literature. Literature uses metaphor, symbol, and all other sorts of literary tools.



Nothing. They have free will; they are allowed to act and believe as unjustifiably as they wish.

Maybe he isn't. That's kind of what I'm getting at.



I'm not saying there is. I'm saying that assuming we are inherently limited and assuming God cannot be fully understood, there are things in the universe that we simply cannot wrap our heads around, otherwise it would be possible for us to fully understand God. I'm not saying that logic itself is flawed; I'm saying that our perception of it, on some level, must be, if God exists and is incomprehensible in his entirety.



Why? If I create something it can still exist independently of me.



Can a person come back from hell, then?



Then, again, if God already knows what the outcome will be and doesn't actually care if people "outwardly" reject him, I don't see the point in any of us being here.

Also, doesn't that mean God is intentionally creating people whom he knows will end up in a state of eternal torment?



Even a person who "wants themselves over God", as you put it, would see that it is the logical option to choose God because, according to you, living without God is simply not an option. If a person likes vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream, they're obviously going to opt for vanilla should you present them with the choice, but they're likely to reconsider if you also mention that the vanilla has poison in it.



Well now I'm confused. Again.

If God is "giving them what they want" then shouldn't they stop existing altogether? If God is existence and they still continue to exist then logically they are still in the presence of God.



OK, so if God acts on what we would do if we were fully informed rather than what we actually do, why should I (or anyone) even bother reading the Bible or being a Christian, since God already knows what I'd do if I did?



How do you know that? OK, you say he is the fount of meaning and existence and so on and so therefore logically he cannot have been created, but what if he isn't and he's just saying that he is?

Think about it for a second. We have an entity that is all-powerful. For its own reasons, it creates the universe, Earth and humanity. It also creates a lesser being (which we would later end up calling "God") and says "Do as you will with these creatures."

How is this not possible?



But it's completely meaningless because there is not, nor will there ever be anything for it to be resilient to. There is absolutely nothing desirable about its resilience.



...again, I don't see why this should be an impediment to someone who is omnipotent.



Not necessarily, no. Certainly metaphor is often employed in literature and it is a useful tool, but I don't see how it's necessary. It is possible to write a book without using it.



So where, may I ask, was it said that the Church was infallible? I would hope we have something other than their word for it?

This post has been edited by Secundus: Aug 31 2009, 08:09 PM

What else could be the Logos except that which exists eternally?



There is no flaw where ignorance is known.



But why should anything want to exist independently of God?



No. Hell is the "state of eternal separation from God." A person is in Hell because God knows that's what they want. If they want eternal separation, then that's what they'll get.



Maybe that's the point; to see it.



Yes.



You're kind of missing the point here. God gives them what they want, end of story. There's no poison, there's no ice cream, it's God or them.



That's one way of looking at it. If, according to you, no person "in their right mind" would choose themselves over God because they would know choosing themselves would result in separation from God (but what's so bad about that if they want themselves over God anyway?), then what if that person chooses God, while they still really want themselves? That would be Hell.



Fatalist fallacy. Allow me to present an analogy of what you're saying;

There's a tornado. Since you know that you will either end up being killed or not killed, you decide not to do anything, since you can't do anything to affect the choices.

You can see what's wrong with this statement.

If you care to be with God, you'll bother to seek God the best you know. If you don't care, then you won't.



Why the real God do this?



Except to the person (like you or me) who knows there could be a blight for it to be resilient to.



Because these people are in time and will take their time? Maybe it isn't God's hold-up, it's ours? If you looked back on this in a year, and we suppose you'd become a Christian or something, wouldn't you see yourself being the one holding things up, and not God?



Sure. What's your point? This just comes back to the fact that there's no reason why the Bible need ever have been meant to be our sole inerrant guide.



Who would recognize the Church as infallible and not enter it? Doesn't that make it a Catch-22? It seems you're asking me to find some source who says "The Church is infallible" without that source being from the Church in some way. That's like asking me to try and find a YEC who believes evolution explains diversity of life.

It has been documented from the beginning of the Church's history that she thought herself infallible.

It it logically demonstrable that the Church must be infallible, or else we're screwed.

History demonstrates that the Catholic Church has never erred by contradicting herself on infallible teachings.

Is this "God as he actually is" or "God as he is perceived by humans"? Either way I think this question has been answered before; the former being "They wouldn't" and the latter being "Because they think he's a crazy evil jerk," among other reasons.



Right, but it is possible for a person to change their mind. Especially once they find out exactly what separation from God entails.



Wait. You mean the point of being here on Earth is to see what the point is of being here on Earth? Isn't that a little...recursive?



Follow-up question, then; why would he do such a thing?



Well this is what I was getting at with my vanilla/chocolate ice cream analogy. A person who prefers vanilla over chocolate will still choose chocolate if they know that the vanilla is poisoned and will result in death. Likewise, a man who prefers himself over God will still choose God if choosing himself leads to eternal suffering. The person still wants vanilla, but isn't going to choose it anyway because he knows what will happen if he does.



Well, yes, but I don't really see how the comparison works.

In the tornado scenario, you know that if you move away from the tornado, you are less likely to be killed by the tornado. Therefore, it makes sense to take action.

However, in this scenario, God is making a judgment based on what I would do if I knew everything about God, which cannot ever happen. Whatever actions I take will not influence this judgment because I cannot possibly attain this level of enlightenment. If I don't read the Bible, we will end up with exactly the same result as if I do, and my actions are therefore completely immaterial. It's less like there's a tornado and more like there's a tornado that is guaranteed to hit you no matter how far away you run. In which case, why run?



Why would he not? Maybe God is one of many gods who are to "Real God" as humans are to God, and this is all part of some long and elaborate trial to prepare them for their ultimate fate. I don't know. I can only think in terms of human motivations; we can't just transplant those on to a being that is not human and is also completely beyond our comprehension and assume they still work.



...right, but since this is God we're talking about, the only blights around are the ones he allows to happen. If he says there are no blights, there cannot be a blight.



OK, but "It must be, or else X happens" only works as proof if "X" is logically impossible. I don't see how it is logically impossible for us to be screwed.

And whose fault is that?



And what is that?



No.



Why shouldn't He?



Who says Hell is suffering, at least anymore than day to day life is?



Then it should seem that we have a better ability to know God this side of time than you would attribute us.



There's no real reason to posit such a scenario, though, so why should we?



Perhaps it isn't His purpose to pamper us.



God said "I shall not ever let man seek in vain."
God doesn't lie (because He is Truth).
Therefore, God would have made sure that man could find Him if they sought Him.

What? Thinking God is evil? I don't know. Depends on the situation, doesn't it?



I have no idea. I was asking you about this earlier, remember? At this point I can only assume it's something bad. If it isn't then yes, I could certainly see why someone would choose themselves over God.



Well, here we come back to the argument I originally posited; If God forces people into a situation in which they will suffer, does that not make him responsible for their suffering? Why do we not get to opt out of the whole thing?



Quite a lot of people, actually. Such as every Christian I've ever spoken to, aside from a select few.

I don't think that's what you meant, though. No, I do not claim to know what hell is, but my point is that if it is something horrible and undesirable, the vanilla/chocolate analogy works. Unless you're rabidly in love with vanilla ice cream to the point of actual insanity, you're not going to eat it when you know without a doubt that it will kill you.




Not sure what you mean by that, but that might be because it's getting increasingly late and my eyes are starting to glaze over.



This brings us back to the old chestnut of "How do we know we can trust God?" *If* God is truth then obviously he can be trusted. However, that's a big "if", because we have no idea if God himself was not created and therefore is not truth.



I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying it seems odd to suggest that we should be put here to develop "resilience" when the only reason that this resilience is even important in the first place is because God allows bad things to happen.

Depends on the person.



If they view themselves as the highest good, then sure, having themselves over God wouldn't be all that bad.



Maybe we do.



I contend that past eternal separation from God, there is nothing worse. Of course, this is a subjective stance, because it is my desire to be with God. For those who don't want to be with God, then being with God is Hell. My Hell is separation from God, their Hell is union with God.



Perhaps we are much more responsible for our actions and our knowledge here on earth before we die than you have been attributing.



Do we have any reason to think God isn't Truth? If God isn't Truth, then wouldn't that make God in subjection of some higher principle, and so God would be less than omnipotent? Further, if God is that which exists eternally, He must necessarily be Truth, for else there would be nothing existing that we would call "Truth," for everything that exists besides God can only be what it is as it compares to the being of God.

For instance, if you were to go ahead and create a universe (without first existing in a universe), you would only be able to create a universe that reflects your being, your mind. If it wasn't there in you, it couldn't be found in the universe.



I'm still of the belief that resilience is better than non-resilience. Otherwise, we're nothing more than pampered children who don't really know how to appreciate God's love or our privilege of worshipping Him.

So nobody actually goes to hell, then?



I thought you yourself said that God cannot be fully understood.

Besides, even if he can be, and even if someone did somehow manage to do it, how would it make any impact on their fate? If a person knows everything there is to know about God and wants to reject him, is that actually their fault? Do we, as humans, really have control over what we want, deep down? Judging from what you've been saying, even God himself doesn't have that, because he can't just decide that he hates everything he has created and wants only to see it undone.



No, but we also have no reason to think that I am not regularly visited by invisible fairies; that doesn't mean we should just assume that it's true until it is proven.



Yes. Still a great deal more powerful than us, granted, but not omnipotent.



But if he was created at some point then he didn't exist eternally, so I'm not sure where you're going with this.



Doesn't look like we're going to reach a consensus on this issue. I think that this is a bad thing because it means that you will not be ready to deal with challenges and hardships, whereas you, for whatever reason, seem to think that it's just bad in and of itself.

Besides, as I recall, Jesus himself had some views on people becoming as little children.

This post has been edited by Secundus: Sep 2 2009, 12:11 AM

I have no idea. All I know is it depends on your perspective.



Being able to understand fully doesn't mean fully comprehending God. Like evolution; it's not yet fully comprehended, but its still a valid and working theory.



If a person wants to reject God, then yes, that is their own fault. It's not as if God caused them to reject Him; that's simply absurd.

And no, God can't hate because He is Love. He lacks the character to hate. That's like telling the color white to be black, or a circle to be a square. It's plainly illogical.



Then where did this being come from, if there exists some higher, but non-personal, principle? Non-personal things don't cause into existence other things, as far as I know. Since its only God, a person being, who can exist before all other things, then the only logical conclusion is that He is Truth.



Let us assume that we're talking about the being who is God, who is the necessary consequent of "Nothing with a beginning began itself," k? If we need to keep stopping to discuss absurdities, this train will never reach a worthwhile destination.

Any created being is not God by definition. Hence we don't need to stop and discuss such a being.



What?



Yeah, sure. What do you mean?

I'm not sure what the distinction is here. Perhaps we can understand what we know of God, but surely a complete understanding would require knowing everything about him.



I'm not saying it's God's fault. I'm asking if one's desires can really be considered a conscious decision on one's part. I mean, I didn't choose to like apples, for example. I just do. I cannot just make myself stop liking apples. I can stop eating them, but that's not the same thing.

Likewise, if a person understands God fully and yet doesn't want him, how are they supposed to change that? Yes, they can still choose one way or the other, but that has no bearing on what their actual desire is.



I never said there was a higher principle; I'm just saying that maybe the being you worship isn't it.



I'm only using the term "God" because that's what Christians call him. For the sake of avoiding confusion, though, I will henceforth refer to the being who sent Jesus down to earth and so on as "Jehovah", and the hypothetical "true creator" as God.



I'm saying my position is that being a "pampered child" is only a bad thing by virtue of the fact that it leaves one unready for the harsh realities of life. If life wasn't harsh to begin with, it would be a non-issue.

You, on the other hand, seem to disagree with that, so either you must have some other reason for thinking it is bad or you just think it's bad in and of itself.

Also, a question. If this "resilience" is of such importance, why would God allow children to die in their infancy, before they have a chance to learn anything about the world or Christianity? Doesn't that mean they aren't "resilient" and therefore their love is of lesser value?



Well, I'm saying that if Jesus himself wants us to be like children, how is being like a child a bad thing?

This post has been edited by Secundus: Sep 2 2009, 02:20 AM

That's what I'm saying. We can apprehend God, but not comprehend Him.



Kant would argue that a person is obliged to simply do the right thing for the sake of itself, and something is more moral the less inclined a person is to doing it. If a person chooses God simply because they know its the right thing to do, then its inevitable that they'll be "rewarded" (using the term lightly) by being able to enjoy God.



Okay, let's work with that then. I would just say Ockham's razor; there's no need to posit extra unverifiable variables, and the theory that it is God who is the direct author the Christian religion, and not some created god.



God is omniscient. He knows all the potentials. While we may not know of some potato blight, God does, and God would know which potatoes would be resilient to it. It's because of what God knows that greater virtue is more desirable.



Good question. Let me answer that a little bit later, I'm busy now.

Well, wouldn't that mean a person can enjoy being with God regardless of whether they would prefer to choose themselves over him, then?



Invoking Occam's razor here seems like begging the question. What we're trying to establish is whether or not Jehovah is truthful. However, the reason it appears to be the "simplest" solution that Jehovah is the creator is because of the divinely inspired events/writings that Jehovah himself is responsible for. That is the whole origin of the theory. If Jehovah had said "I was created", you'd probably be calling Occam's razor on that to someone who said "Maybe he wasn't." To say that we should simply use Occam's razor essentially requires that the premise (Jehovah is truthful) be true.



Again, though, any potential potato blight that God is aware of could easily by averted by God himself. It's only an issue because he allows it to be...which seems kind of like us having a chemical that could destroy the potato blight for good but refusing to use it so that the blight-resistant potatoes will continue to be more valuable.

They choose what they do because its what they do. The idea of a person doing something not because they want to is a contradiction in terms. "We do everything that we want to do."



Either Truth is found in God, or else there is no real meaningful sense of truth.



Maybe the "chemical" is the blight resistant potatoes themselves?

Is it?

A lot of people don't go to work because they want to. A lot of people hate going to work. But they do it anyway, because they need to be able to support themselves and their family, if applicable. If they could somehow support themselves without a job, they would do so, but the option simply isn't available, so they're stuck doing something they don't really want to do.



Perhaps, but is the God in which truth is formed the same being as the one responsible for the creation of the Bible?



That doesn't really make sense for two reasons. First, unless we actually use the blight-resistant potatoes to eliminate the blight, we're doing exactly the same thing anyway in that we're allowing the blight to continue in order to preserve the value of the resistant potatoes. One look at the world should tell anyone that "blight" has not been eliminated. Secondly, if this is God we're talking about, would he really have to rely on his potatoes to do anything for him?

On an related but tangential topic, I really want some hash browns now.