It demands the question: “why could not have God simply forgiven our trespasses, without going through that charade of sacrificing ‘himself’?” After all a parent can and does simply forgive his children, without demanding a sacrifice. And moreover: “save” from what? From the hell, he himself created? What a ridiculous picture!
Nah, the problem with your stance is why wouldn’t they?Yeah the whole problem with this is, why would an infinite being…WANT anything?
As a designer (with many decades of experience behind my back), I answer you: the logic is not flawed. It all depends on the knowledge and foresight of the designer.
Rather oversimplfied. The problem to be solved can be simple and can be very complex. That only affects the design of a solution which is commensurate with the question. To say that every “perfect” solution does only one thing, is trivial: it does exactly what it is supposed to, no matter what the surrounings may be. It takes all the (name removed by moderator)uts into consideration. That is why it is “perfect”.
That is true enough. Do you say that God is as ineffiicient as we humans?
Well when you see Him you could ask Him
Sure. I will, and a whole lot of other questions. But I was interested in your opinion. Why could God not simply forgive without doing that “self-sacrifice”?
I have no idea. Since hell is separate from God, and supposedly God was “alone” before he created everything else, he must have created hell as well. Or maybe someone else did? Who? With or without God’s permission? In accordance with or against God’s will?
What others? According to Christianity there was nothing before the creation. There were no “others”. Yes, I maintain that every action is motivated by fulfilling a need - maybe just to alleviate boredom, or anything else. Someone who has no needs, does not do anything.
It does rule out meaningful love of mutual understanding and respect. It can only be the one as I stipulated - the “love” of a pet toward its master, whom it does not understand.
Yes. Many do. So what? Since when does the number of believers lend credence to a belief system?
It is a possibility, that is for sure. So the world as we see it - with all the suffering, mayhem, pain, etc. - is precisely what God intended. And you call that God: “loving” and “caring”? Who intended some people to suffer eternally in hell? Sure it is possible… but I would not “worship” such a being…
I did not say creation of the universe, I only said creation. Obviously the angels were created as well.
Our needs influence what we do, but does not cause it.
“Need” is used the widest sense - not just alleviating a physical hunger. And I said that explicitly.
Again, you are misunderstanding me. Humans are basically “equal” as opposed to dogs (for example). Perfect equality is not required. And if God allows us to “frustrate” his will, then he is stupid - especially since wants the best for us - at least according to the believers.
Since the “majority” has no arguments, just blind faith, there is nothing to refute.
That is trivially simple. There are humans who are good, who would never cause harm to others - and yet they have free will. God could have created everyone like them. Or do you say that good people are robots?
I am not assuming anything. It was you who said that God created exactly what he wanted. Some people will go to hell. So God intended it. Simple syllogism.
You confuse “possibility” with “actuality”. It happens all the time. Besides we do not have “genuine” freedom to act, we only have freedom to imagine, or “want”.
You are still interpreting God in human terms by regarding Creation as an event that had a beginning…
You stated that every action is motivated by fulfilling a need.
It is used in such a wide sense it becomes meaningless. How do you define a need?
The analogy of the human-dog relationship with the God-human relationship is absurd.
In that case all love is stupidity because love entails respecting a person’s freedom.
Your condescending attitude towards the vast majority of human beings is a sign of hubris.How would you justify your belief that they have no more than blind faith? Is it due to their low intelligence?
This is blatantly false. The fact that some human beings who are good never cause harm to others does not imply that God could have created every human being like them. It is impossible to be good unless we have free will and free will implies the possibility of causing harm to others. People choose to be good or evil regardless of God.
This is also blatantly false. To permit is not to intend…
Are you denying that we are free to make decisions to act in a certain way and then act on our decisions? Is our freedom restricted to our imagination and desires? If so we cannot think rationally because our thoughts are determined by images and desires.
I sure did. The need can be physical, intellectual, emotional, or whatever. It is very broad, but far from being meaningless. There can be no action without some kind of a motivation.
In a sense it is absurd. The difference between a human and a dog is much smaller than the difference between a human and God.
Well, well.
Next time you see your child attempting to poke a wire into a live socket, just stand by and “respect” his freedom to electrocute himself. And then try to defend yourself by proclaiming your “respect” as a sign of love. A hint for you: the jury will not accept it.They never exhibited anything else, and I have been asking for a long, long time. To state that God is “good” in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is blind faith, nothing else. A good God would feed the hungry, cure the sick, protect the innocent. Or rather would never have created a world where these are actual, and not merely potential.
This is getting boring. The **possibility **of harming does not imply the **actuality **of it. How hard is that to understand?
If you can prevent it and if you foresee that it will happen, then “allowing” **IS **“intending”. If you see a child about to run into the traffic, and you can prevent it, but choose to stand by and allow it to happen, then you intended it to happen.
You stated that every action is motivated by fulfilling a need.
Yes but human love and God’s love are freely chosen whereas a dog’s love is not - unless of course you regard dogs as morally responsible. Unlike pets we know that God does not expect blind obedience and that our conscience is our ultimate authority.
The case of children poking wires into live sockets is irrelevant to the case of adults deliberately choosing to live for themselves at the expense of others.
You are implying human beings have no responsibility whatsoever for the evil in the world. The vast majority whose “blind” faith you despise realize human beings would not be free to choose between good and evil if God prevented evil .
In other words you require God not to actualize the possibility that human beings harm others and thereby prevent them from being free to choose.
There is a vast difference between children about to run unwittingly into the traffic and adults **deliberately **choosing to harm others. To foresee and allow is not to intend. To choose the lesser of two evils is to permit the lesser evil because it is unavoidable.
No matter what else is attributed to hell it is separation from God.
"I, Sister Faustina Kowalska, by the order of God, have visited the Abysses of Hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence...the devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God, What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: That most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell." (Diary 741)
http://divinemercysunday.com/srfaust4.jpg The Apostle of Divine Mercy
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
of the
Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy
"Today, I was led by an angel to the Chasms of Hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw:
**The First Torture that constitutes hell is**:
The loss of God.
**The Second is:**
Perpetual remorse of conscience.
**The Third is**
That one's condition will never change.
T**he Fourth is:**
The fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it. A terrible suffering since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God's anger.
**The Fifth Torture is:**
Continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own.
**The Sixth Torture is:**
The constant company of Satan.
**The Seventh Torture is:**
Horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. These are the Tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings.
** Indescribable Sufferings
**There are special Tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings related to the manner in which it has sinned.
**I would have died
**There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me.
**
No One Can Say There is No Hell
**Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin. **I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like**...how terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God's mercy upon them. O My Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend you by the least sin." (Diary 741)Correct.
No, because we can choose to leave that need unfulfilled. You still confuse a motivating factor with determinism.
And the “refusal” to obey leads to eternal pain and torture. This is what the people in organized crime do: they stick a gun to your head, and “allow” you to choose: obey or disobey. Not much of a choice…
The lack of prevention of the second one is **much **worse. If you **know **that someone is about to commit a rape and murder, **and **you have the wherewithal to **prevent **it, and choose not to… you will become an accomplice. Your hypothetical defense that you did not wish to interfere with the criminal’s intent, and you did not do it out of “love” and “respect” will not fly. You will be charged and sentenced as an accomplice.
On the contrary. They would still be free not to love God, while being unable to hurt others. Even perfectly good people can be atheists, while respecting other human beings.
You still refuse to see the alternative: the people can see the possibility of doing evil, but they freely choose not to commit it, having a good disposition. Everyone would see the evil choice - as a theoretical exercise, would be able to commit it (no physical “coersion”) but would not wish to do it… out of real love for others. This is the world that God should have actualized if he wanted free will.
You are attempting to draw a difference between guilt by omission and guilt by comission. There is no difference.
According to you even the choice to leave a need unfulfilled is motivated by another need. Why should inaction be radically different from action? Don’t you think both are the result of decisions resulting from needs?
It is not a question of refusing to obey arbitrary commands but a question of choosing to love oneself at the expense and neglect of others. The misery of a person lacking in love for others is the result of self-inflicted isolation.
How do you propose crimes should be prevented by God? By interfering with people’s thinking processes? Moreover people who deliberately choose to live for themselves at the expense of others need not commit a crime at all. Most of the suffering in the world is not caused by legal crimes but by people’s indifference and failure to help those who are in need. To be selfish is not a crime yet it is one of the greatest causes of suffering.
In that case you advocate psychological or surgical techniques of brain-washing people so that they are incapable of committing crimes?
If God prevents evil it is impossible to choose evil. It has nothing to do with loving God. It is absurd to suppose people are evil if they don’t believe in God. How can they love what they regard as an illusion? Who said that atheists cannot be perfectly good people who respect other human beings?
You are assuming that people can be forced to love others but real love implies freedom of choice.
In other words you prefer to be perpetually forced to do what is good, right, just, kind and compassionate even when you don’t believe it is good, right, just, kind and compassionate. You prefer not to be able to make your own moral decisions even when there is an element of doubt. You prefer to be a yes-man with no right even to think or contemplate something that is wrong… in other words to be morally brainwashed…
You are in dreamland. Where exactly do you think your sense of conscience came from? Were you born in a vaccuum. Who built western civilization? Catholics. And you my friend are a beneficiary.
Maybe, just maybe now you will get it. The “dreamland” is exactly what a benevolent and capable creator would logically do. A perfectly designed system, where no further interference is needed, which does exactly what the creator intends. Why would a benevolent and able God create anything less than a “dreamland”? Since now we disposed of the false argument of “free will”, do you have any other one? And please do not say that it is a “mystery”. That is the ultimate cop-out, and I heard it too many times.
Hehe. And the Protestants and the Muslims and the Buddhists and the aheists and all the others. You don’t have first dibs on anything.
You still don’t get it. There is no need to force anyone. People with the correct disposition and attitude freely do what they want to do since they will do the right thing.
And I disagree along with everyone else. No society ever worked under the principles that everyone is allowed to do anything. We try to prevent criminal activities as much as we can.
Indeed the justice you speak of is poor substitute for prevention. Injustice can never be rectified. The past cannot be “undone”. Ever heard the phrase: “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”? It does not refer only to medical cases.
This time you have omitted your reason why your puppets have the “correct” disposition and attitude:
Unfortunately people who do good automatically are incapable of love… There is no merit or value or originality or responsibility in mechanical activity.
No society has ever worked under the principle that everyone should be brainwashed into doing what the State or an individual like yourself considers to be right - although some Communist regimes have attempted to do so…
Not by altering people’s brain processes and producing saints by genetic manipulation - but you would no doubt implement that policy if you were in control.
How do you know justice can never be rectified? If a person returns what he has stolen, apologizes for his crime and proves his sincerity by giving the victim a gift is the injustice not rectified?
The past cannot be “undone” but people can make amends - although you probably believe good can never come out of evil…
Your pound of prevention leaves an ounce of free will. Your dreamworld is filled with do-gooders who confirm automatically to the slightest detail of the moral code, smiling and waving happily to everyone they meet in an earthly paradise that exceeds the power of the strongest imagination. You have forgotten to add that in your Utopia there is no frustration, pain, misery or failure of any description. In short it is an absolutely perfect world where life goes on forever without the slightest mishap, setback or disappointment. There is only one thing wrong - everyone would be bored to tears and regard it as hell on earth!
This dreamland would be like “Pleasantville”. Devoid of feelings, love and of course free-will. We would be programmed robots do exactly follow the program. We would not have freedom. This is not love.