Did God Create the Best Possible Universe?

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Tomdstone said:
Jesus is God from God, true God from true God and yet He existed in time and space for roughly 32 years.
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The Son of God existed in this world as a man, not as the Creator of heaven and earth who transcends time and space - and sustains everyone and everything in existence.
 
nownzen said:
The more I think about it, the more I think God had no real say in my coming into existence. Humans are free to procreate and fill the earth, if my folks had wanted 12 kids, then God would have infused these other sperm-ovum cells with a soul. My folks were, as far as biology allowed them, to have as many kids as they wanted. As i said earlier, i’ve been eternally on God’s mind because my folks procreated and about 9 months later i came out alive of my mother’s womb (which I wish I did not). The way God chose to organize stuff, he does not create you, he does not create me, I am the result of a biological act, and God added an immortal soul to that bunch of cells (i.e. the more primitive stage of myself). In this system, God may have placed a limit on his power, he may not have had a say in my being conceived and born. Did I summarize correctly your world-view, oldcelt. If so, I’m inclined to think that’s how the world works.
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Even though we choose to have children the power of procreation is created by God. If we misuse it He is not responsible.
I hate the word “gift” being ascribed to existence. Hell, anything could be called a gift. If your add beats you up and as a result you mistrust your earthly father and fully trust and love your heavenly father, then the abuse was a gift. :rolleyes: Elliot Roger’s existence was nothing but a gift (all the more so thinking where his actions led him eternally), same with Ricardo Lopez, Dylan Klebold etc. …
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Our existence is a gift because we have the power to choose what to believe and how to live. If we misuse it we alone are responsible.
All the people with lives stuck, stagnation, frustration, loneliness, despair, battling mental issues or otherwise, with no real hope of ever being fulfilled, satisfied, well-adjusted. But these people are also expected to get in line, take the straight and narrow, or else…
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God does not expect the impossible. To think otherwise is a distortion of Christianity.
 
tonyrey said:
The Son of God existed in this world as a man, not as the Creator of heaven and earth who transcends time and space - and sustains everyone and everything in existence.
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Do you believe that Jesus was God from God, true God from true God while He was on earth or not?
 
Tom_Baum said:
Are you saying that God never appeared to OT Moses in the “burning bush”?
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“appeared” is the key word.
Are you saying that God never became One of us in the Incarnation?
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God became one of us as a man.
Are you saying that Catholicism/Christianity is a lie since without God becoming One of us, Catholicism/Christianity simply does not exist?
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God became one of us as a man.
Are you saying that Paul, who used to be called Saul, wrote lies about his encounter with Jesus?
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Paul encountered Jesus as a man.
Are you saying that ALL of the people in both the OT and the NT that said anything about an encounter with God were ALL LIARS?
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All those people encountered God as a manifestation .

According to the Catholic Church and according to what is written in the bible, God has done very much in “time and space” besides just creating both of them.
As far as your quote, ““In Him we live, move and have our being””, are you saying that we live and move and have our being “timelessly and spacelessly” since to be “In Him”, we would have to be somewhere that is “timelessly and spacelessly” since that is where you say that God “exists and acts” and that God seemingly never does anything in “time and space”?
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Our bodies exist in time and space but our souls exist beyond time and space.
I happen to disagree with you.
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I happen to believe that God is a very Personable God and that many people have had some type of “Personable” encounter with God.
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Even in the Old Testament it is made clear that no one can encounter God in His divinity:

18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
21 Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
Exodus 33:18-23
 
oldcelt said:
An omnipotent god could certainly get around that…If he chose to. he Christian god did not. Under his system we are forced into an existence where he already knows the outcome. A great many people, I believe, don’t like to play a fixed game.
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Knowledge is not the same as causation…
Of course, as a Deist, I don’t believe any of it. My life is the result of a physical act between two humans, preordained by no one.
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If nothing is preordained then the Deist’s god doesn’t know what he is doing and is not worth having - or even postulating. In practice deism amounts to atheism because it makes no difference to anyone or anything. It simply serves as a refuge from believing in the blind Goddess and an escape from all moral obligations which are reduced to convenient conventions!
 
tonyrey said:
The caterpillar is not quite so perceptive as a person - unless that person assesses everything in terms of comfort and pleasure…
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Even I could have created a universe without the necessity, not to mention horror, of the parasitic wasp.

shudders
 
@Tonyrey,
I don’t know about everyone else, but I find your approach extremely annoying. You seem to be the self-appointed apologist. I’m sure God will reward you mightily, but I’d like the discussion to evolve freely, for ideas to be expressed freely, and not for God’s chief advocate to thwart a thread that has potential. You’re entitled to your world-view whereby “all’s well in tthe best of worlds”, but not everyone shares your enthusiasm (yes, i know what the word means). You have a twisted definition of “gift”, what people have in mind when talking about a gift is something that you’re at least minimally happy to receive. You twist the poor word beyond recognition.
I also notice you keep deceiving people with your unorthodox ideas about Jesus with regards to the hypostatic union. Your similarity with Jesus is exactly like the similarity between an orphan living in a violent favella and Donald Trump. You breathe, Jesus breathed, you eat, drink, as for the rest you have Original sin, your intellect is darkened and weakened, so is your will, all you have is a damaged human nature, Jesus had an intact human nature just like Adam enjoyed at first, and Jesus also had a divine nature. In a nutshell: 100% human, 100% divine.
 
tonyrey said:
Knowledge is not the same as causation…

If nothing is preordained then the Deist’s god doesn’t know what he is doing and is not worth having - or even postulating. In practice deism amounts to atheism because it makes no difference to anyone or anything. It simply serves as a refuge from believing in the blind Goddess and an escape from all moral obligations which are reduced to convenient conventions!
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You’ve said all this before Tony. It meant nothing to me then…and nothing has changed. Look around…creation continues throughout the universe, and if you cannot see the difference between Deism and Atheism, then that is something you need to deal with. I have that part down.
 
oldcelt said:
Knowledge is not the same as causation…
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The truth bears repetition - especially if it has been ignored. If statements are false they should be refuted not dismissed out of hand. Why does deism make any difference if God doesn’t know and doesn’t care what He is doing?
Look around…creation continues throughout the universe, and if you cannot see the difference between Deism and Atheism, then that is something you need to deal with. I have that part down.
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There is no difference if creation is purposeless.
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nownzen said:
@Tonyrey,
I don’t know about everyone else, but I find your approach extremely annoying. You seem to be the self-appointed apologist. I’m sure God will reward you mightily, but I’d like the discussion to evolve freely, for ideas to be expressed freely, and not for God’s chief advocate to thwart a thread that has potential. You’re entitled to your world-view whereby “all’s well in tthe best of worlds”, but not everyone shares your enthusiasm (yes, i know what the word means). You have a twisted definition of “gift”, what people have in mind when talking about a gift is something that you’re at least minimally happy to receive. You twist the poor word beyond recognition.
Code: 
 I also notice you keep deceiving people with your unorthodox ideas about Jesus with regards to the hypostatic union.  Your similarity with Jesus is exactly like the similarity between an orphan living in a violent favella and Donald Trump. You breathe, Jesus breathed, you eat, drink, as for the rest you have Original sin, your intellect is darkened and weakened, so is your will, all you have is a damaged human nature, Jesus had an intact human nature just like Adam enjoyed at first, and Jesus also had a divine nature. In a nutshell: 100% human, 100% divine.
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In addition to discourtesy and false allegations - which infringe the forum conduct rules - your statements do precisely nothing to further the discussion.
 
987mk said:
Even I could have created a universe without the necessity, not to mention horror, of the parasitic wasp.
shudders
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A preposterous claim which merely underlines the weakness of your objection.
 
oldcelt said:
An omnipotent god could certainly get around that…If he chose to. he Christian god did not. Under his system we are forced into an existence where he already knows the outcome. A great many people, I believe, don’t like to play a fixed game.

Of course, as a Deist, I don’t believe any of it. My life is the result of a physical act between two humans, preordained by no one.
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Since we are only working with human experience evidently,
who do you know that considers a great gift as something being forced on someone?
Was your birth an act of “forcing” on your mother’s part, a “fixed game” in your language.

Let me ask you a serious question in good faith:
when your mother cooperated in conceiving you and gave birth to you, did she know ahead of time that you would die someday and your flesh rot into the ground? Did she know that you would suffer this and that in your life?
Did she have that foreknowledge?
 
tonyrey said:
In addition to discourtesy and false allegations - which infringe the forum conduct rules - your statements do precisely nothing to further the discussion.
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Actually they do. I have eyes to see that many people are profoundly unhappy and miserable in their stuck lives. That there is a chronic despair never parting with them. That God is infinitely just , merciful ,loving, kind yet the minimal cost of eternal damnation is one (1) mortal sin. Which means that many people will go to hell*. Jesus’ Gospel, good news to these people is: suck it up, you will win in the next life. Hardly a gift. But i understand you read somewhere that existence is God’s great gift to all of us, and seeing how such is not the case creates a cognitive dissonnance, then you turn around, block your ears, call someone “discourteous” and twist the meaning of the poor word “gift” to the point where it is unrecognizable, all that in an attempt to solve the cognitive dissonnance.

*You lack good faith, hence you will minimize hell by saying hogwash like “people choose to go there, even if they don’t believe in it(sic)”, “people choose to exclude themselves from the eternal banquet/feast”, “people want to be in hell”, “hell is a choice whether you believe in it or not” How can you choose something you’re not even aware of exists?!? Hell is the only real problem with existence, otherwise I come from the earth and i return to the earth, and at most I will have lived the life of a subhuman for 80 years. But hell is like God multiplying my life and the disarray, despair and stagnation i’ve known times 1 hundred billion trillion years. Very gracious.
 
987mk said:
Even I could have created a universe without the necessity, not to mention horror, of the parasitic wasp.

shudders
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There’s one of the important mysteries, the horror of and suffering that comes with evil overcoming the good.

Your example reveals that you believe in evil and in the good.

So, if you want to know what we think, you can read.

If you want to tell us how it is that evil and good exist, please do so.
You said horror exists. Don’t go saying its relative or an illusion.
 
oldcelt said:
. . . creation continues throughout the universe. . .
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Are you saying this moment is being created?
New creation as in new people?
Science, at this time at least, would assumes that nothing ever was, is or will be created.
I can’t wrap my head around Deism.
The idea of a god who is not love seems like something out of ancient Greece.
 
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