God forced me into existence

[Zatzat]

If God is real, God forced me into existence. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I’ve been forced into existence, so that I may freely choose to reject him

My forced existence will have me languishing eternally in hell.

If God had not forced me into existence, I wouldn’t be able to reject him and I wouldn’t have to spend eternity suffering in hell.

God sounds rather selfish and cruel to me. Surely non existence would preferable to eternal torment?

Discuss.

 

[JohnDamian]

1. Why do you assume God forced you into existence?
2. Why do you assume that Rejecting God is either admirable or desirable?
3. Why do you assume that rejecting God per se is enough to warrent hell. From a Catholic perspective rejecting God in itself is not nessecarily a mortal sin; as full knowlege is not nessecarily entailed. If full knowlege is entailed,

i) I must ask - why would you want to live a more miserable life on earth and hereafter?
ii) And would not God be far crueller to compel you to love him?

Lets break down what you are saying:

If God is real, God forced me into existence. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

This is assumed.

I’ve been forced into existence, so that I may freely choose to reject him

This is not nessecary. You could spend your entire life burning yourself with ciggarrettes; that would be no ones fault but your own.

My forced existence **will **have me languishing eternally in hell.

There is no causal nessecity between existing and languishing in hell, it is only through fully understood rejection that this would occur.

If God had not forced me into existence, I wouldn’t be able to reject him and I wouldn’t **have **to spend eternity suffering in hell.

You do not “have” to spend eternity suffering. Your causality is extremely flawed.

peace

 

[Zatzat]

I certainly did not choose to exist. Either God forced me into existance or I came into existence by random chance…without Gods intervention.

I can only reject or accept God because I exist. If God hadn’t created me, I wouldn’t exist and run the risk of rejecting him…and ending up in hell.

If God had no role in my existence, then the God of the Bible isn’t real and there is no heaven or hell.

 

[davidv]

{snip}

God sounds rather selfish and cruel to me. Surely non existence would preferable to eternal torment?

Discuss.

Why do you think these are you only choices?

 

[JohnDamian]

I certainly did not choose to exist. Either God forced me into existance or I came into existence by random chance…without Gods intervention.

I can only reject or accept God because I exist. If God hadn’t created me, I wouldn’t exist and run the risk of rejecting him…and ending up in hell.

If God had no role in my existence, then the God of the Bible isn’t real and there is no heaven or hell.

There is no “risk”. There is a clear and certain choice to do what is good or what is bad.

 

[Zatzat]

There is no “risk”. There is a clear and certain choice to do what is good or what is bad.

I am forced to make that choice for one reason only. God not only forced me into existence but he’s forcing me to make a choice.

Do I have the option of opting out of Gods plan of salvation? May I sit on the proverbial fence?

No, God forces me to choose and I didn’t even volunteer to take part in his cruel plan of salvation.

 

[00Sherman]

This is true, god did force us into existence, In a way he Willed are formation more then anything.

We are faced with the question of Why? What does man offer an all powerful god?

We could say the only two persons that god forced, willed, or made where Adam and Eve. They where given a clear choice to stay with god in perfection and grace, or sin and live with the torment of being without him. They choose as we know to live in sin, and through that we are here today.

All people after the two, where willed into existence by the intimacy of there parents AND the formation of there soul by god. This Burden of existence is are gift and punishment. The gift of life comes with the cost of grace and sin, a choice made by those before us and something we are unable to escape.

Now that we live, we must face the problem and learn.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

How do you know that before you were born God didn’t ask, “Hey, I’ll give you two choices. You can come to Earth and try to earn Heaven, or I can eliminate your existence. Your pick.” And you answered, “I’ll give that salvation thing a shot, God.”?

 

[JohnDamian]

No, God forces me to choose and I didn’t even volunteer to take part in his cruel plan of salvation.

Yet, every day you acquiesce with his plan when you eat, when you breath etc… It is incredulous and absurd that you both despise God’s gift for life, yet prolong it. You appear either confused or jesting.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

BTW, I consider this an interesting question. I’m not trying to ridicule here, just bring up a new aspect to your arguement.

 

[00Sherman]

Yet, every day you acquiesce with his plan when you eat, when you breath etc… It is incredulous and absurd that you both despise God’s gift for life, yet prolong it. You appear either confused or jesting.

It was not to despise his gift for life, but his gift of salvation and condemnation and the conflict of the two inside all men.

Before I was man, why would i need salvation? That would mean god made me imperfect even before original sin passed over me as I came into this world.

 

[Zatzat]

Why do you think these are you only choices?

Do I have the choice of ceasing to exist upon my bodily death?

God has forced two choices upon me;

Heaven or hell.

 

[Belloc_Fan]

If God is real, God forced me into existence. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I’ve been forced into existence, so that I may freely choose to reject him

My forced existence will have me languishing eternally in hell.

If God had not forced me into existence, I wouldn’t be able to reject him and I wouldn’t have to spend eternity suffering in hell.

God sounds rather selfish and cruel to me. Surely non existence would preferable to eternal torment?

Discuss.

This seems to be saying nothing more than God freely gave us a gift, and gifts often require some degree of corresponding duty. You could just as easily say that your parents gave you a free car, and this gave you the possibility to kill yourself through reckless driving, so your parents are selfish and cruel. But that logic is patently flawed: your reckless driving was the proximate cause, not the car. Likewise, it’s your sinful rebellion, not your existence, which is to blame here. Saying that the proximate cause is *made possible *only by a further removed cause is irrelevant, because you still had a free choice. Certainly, the argument as you’ve constructed it would be viable against those forms of Christianity which deny any degree of free will, but that’s it.

Also, none of this establishes that God is selfish or cruel at all. If anything, perhaps rather trusting of us? Because I don’t see a way to turn “gift” into “selfishness,” and your failure to account for the possibility that the result of this gift is eternal happiness in communion with God in Heaven seems to be missing the very point of this whole thing we call life.

 

[Zatzat]

How do you know that before you were born God didn’t ask, “Hey, I’ll give you two choices. You can come to Earth and try to earn Heaven, or I can eliminate your existence. Your pick.” And you answered, “I’ll give that salvation thing a shot, God.”?

What an absurd gamble…[BIBLEDRB][/BIBLEDRB]

 

[Marc_Anthony]

What an absurd gamble…[BIBLEDRB][/BIBLEDRB]

Maybe we’re the crazy ones. Maybe we’re all just really optimistic (even those of us who seem depressed really aren’t in comparison to those who chose not to exist at all).

Or perhaps God only created those he knew would try and attain salvation when given the choice between that and nonexistence.

 

[Zatzat]

This seems to be saying nothing more than God freely gave us a gift, and gifts often require some degree of corresponding duty. You could just as easily say that your parents gave you a free car, and this gave you the possibility to kill yourself through reckless driving, so your parents are selfish and cruel. But that logic is patently flawed: your reckless driving was the proximate cause, not the car. Likewise, it’s your sinful rebellion, not your existence, which is to blame here. Saying that the proximate cause is *made possible *only by a further removed cause is irrelevant, because you still had a free choice. Certainly, the argument as you’ve constructed it would be viable against those forms of Christianity which deny any degree of free will, but that’s it.

Also, none of this establishes that God is selfish or cruel at all. If anything, perhaps rather trusting of us? Because I don’t see a way to turn “gift” into “selfishness,” and your failure to account for the possibility that the result of this gift is eternal happiness in communion with God in Heaven seems to be missing the very point of this whole thing we call life.

Terrible annalogy. I have the option, the free will to refuse the car. I have the free will in choosing not to drive the car.

 

[slywakka250]

There is no “risk”. There is a clear and certain choice to do what is good or what is bad.

Here I will explain the idea of “risk.”

I’ll start with two premises.

1. No one would freely choose to go to hell if they knew exactly what hell entailed; hell is pure suffering and eternal torture of the worst imaginable kind. hell is being separate from God who is the source of all good, all pleasure, etc.

When someone freely chooses hell, they aren’t choosing the torture and suffering, they are choosing sinful behavior which seems good to them while on earth, it is only when they die that they realize they have fully rejected God. I am certain no one tolerates hell, all want out! all wish they had repented, but they know its too late!

This being the case, those who “freely choose” hell certainly “choose hell” without all of the requisite knowledge and understanding of what exactly hell would be like, therefore there choice of hell is free only in the sense of the freely choosen actions that merit hell, not hell itself.

1. At the end of time there is a true count of the number of people in heaven, and a true count of the number of people in hell. Obviously the number of people in heaven vs hell is unknown and could be perhaps 1,000,000:1 very optimistically, 1:1 which would still be ok, or something like 1:40,000 which starts to lead us to despair quite quickly if we knew such to be true. Its probably a good thing God hides this knowledge from us!

So from these two points, if they are true, we can derive the risk. We work backwards from the second premise, we see that the final outcome defines the level of “risk” our very existence entails.

Consider a possible world where God only created those people who he Knew would freely choose him; the “risk” would be zero, despite those people still feeling the full weight of their free will, perhaps still sinning, and working out their salvation with fear and trembling, the fact that God in his omniscience refrained from creating anyone who would choose against him, lowers the hell risk of existence to zero.

We are considering here, what precisely is the nature of man, is he more good or more evil? just how many will choose heaven over hell?? , Just how much did the fall affect man’s mind and ability to choose God??

God instead of the above scenario created men knowing a certain number would choose him, and a certain number would reject him. Whatever ratio which was in God’s mind at this point, constitutes the “risk.” As I showed above God could have created man with a risk of zero, but he clearly did not; the question is, just how risky is existence really, what are the real odds we make it to heaven??

and why shouldn’t I be angry that God forced me to take on this risk my forcing my existence and not allowing me to be annihilated?

 

[Belloc_Fan]

Terrible annalogy. I have the option, the free will to refuse the car. I have the free will in choosing not to drive the car.

I considered that, and let’s assume you have a modicum of decorum. If so, you’re not going to refuse the car given to you, because that’s rude. So it’s not really that terrible, if you can imagine having decorum.

Also, it’s reasonable to expect that once you’ve been given a car, your parents won’t be willing to cart you around everywhere anymore, so it comes with a concomitant responsibility (meaning you’ll need to drive, to be able to get places you need to go).

 

[slywakka250]

I considered that, and let’s assume you have a modicum of decorum. If so, you’re not going to refuse the car given to you, because that’s rude. So it’s not really that terrible, if you can imagine having decorum.

Also, it’s reasonable to expect that once you’ve been given a car, your parents won’t be willing to cart you around everywhere anymore, so it comes with a concomitant responsibility (meaning you’ll need to drive, to be able to get places you need to go).

But you parents are not omniscient, like God is. If your parents were omniscient, they would have foreknowledge that you would freely choose to die in a car crash the next day, and they would do everything they could to make sure that didn’t happen.

God on the other hand, would happily give you the car, and let you die. Be happy you don’t have God watching out for you…

 

[Zatzat]

But you parents are not omniscient, like God is. If your parents were omniscient, they would have foreknowledge that you would freely choose to die in a car crash the next day, and they would do everything they could to make sure that didn’t happen.

God on the other hand, would happily give you the car, and let you die. Be happy you don’t have God watching out for you…

This true and a very good point.

…your parent would know you were going to die in the car they bought you and after you were killed…they’d look at your corpse, shrug their shoulders and say ’ free will’.