I love you . . . but you chose to burn . . .

[theMutant]

jahozafet:

So what you are saying is that you are freely choosing to have blind faith.

No, my faith is the result of years of study and research and many long long hours contemplating many questions; including the very question that you posed at the opening of this thread. My belief in the Church is nothing less than the conclusions reached through the exercise of my gift of reason. Therefore, my faith is not blind. If you can show me any reason (not just your plattitudes disguised as arguments) to no longer believe in the Catholic Church, then I will cease to be a Christian. However, that is a topic for a different thread because changing topics in a thread is against the forum rules.

 

[YinYangMom]

jahozafet:

You just said it yourself . . . god sets the consequences. Therefore, he could choose anything to be the consequence. And he chose and eternity of torture and misery. That is not an act of love.

It is not for us to question his choice.
It is only for us to choose our path.

Does it matter if the end is not what we perceive to be an act of love when there are thousands of examples of just how deep His love runs for us that we can perceive as genuine love?

For those not of the faith it must be difficult to understand that sending His only Son to this earth to reveal Himself to us only to be brutally tortured and executed by us is a display of ‘love’. I would imagine Jesus’ passion is in about the same range of horror as fire and brimstone for eternity… Yet it is the ultimate example of God’s love.

The only reason He did that was so man can be reunited to Him. Until Jesus rose from the dead all souls were kept from God’s presence…all the people who died after Adam and Eve…that’s a lot of souls! After all we did to upset Him, all the rejection we showed Him he still longed to have his creations beside Him.

You spoke earlier about God’s parameters…do you realize that God followed His own parameters in order to satisfy that longing? Per God’s own laws, a blood sacrifice was required to cleanse our souls of original sin…He set that requirement…and He fulfilled it Himself by sending His only Son as that ultimate sacrifice. Christ is the Lamb Of God…the one who cleanses our sins.

Christ then appointed Peter to lead His Church and then he conferred upon Peter and the other disciples the power to forgive sins in His name (since we have proven over and over again that we tend to keep sinning even when we don’t want to), and to baptize others into the Faith to remove original sin from their souls (since Jesus won’t be coming back for that purpose next time He has spared having all the souls after His death wait on the outskirts of Heaven like the fist batch of souls had to). That’s an awesome gift!

And THAT is the Loving God we know and love.

 

[jahozafet]

Trinitatem:

Life is choice. God gives us free will, because without it we would be robots. We would never grow nor learn.

I think that blindly subscribing to a system of beliefs that has been handed down to you from an archaic hierarchy with a track record of abuse is far more “robotic” than thinking for yourself.

I never said that people should not be held accountable for their actions. I said that god would not let us burn if he loved us. You give the example of a murderer. What about good people who don’t believe in god?

 

[theMutant]

jahozafet:

Islamic extremists have their reasons, too. Even though they are horrible, they are still reasons.

I never said that they didn’t. You are the one claiming that their faith is blind. I merely maintain that it is badly misguided and that, specifically in the case of the extremists, it has led to evil.

 

[jahozafet]

YinYangMom:

It is not for us to question his choice.

It is only for us to choose our path.

In your opinion. I think that not questioning it means blind faith. Why not question it? What harm will come from that?

YinYangMom:

You spoke earlier about God’s parameters…do you realize that God followed His own parameters in order to satisfy that longing? Per God’s own laws, a blood sacrifice was required to cleanse our souls of original sin…He set that requirement…and He fulfilled it Himself by sending His only Son as that ultimate sacrifice. Christ is

the Lamb Of God…the one who cleanses our sins.

This makes no sense. If God is all powerful, then he doesn’t have to follow any parameters. A loving god requires blood sacrifice?

 

[jahozafet]

theMutant:

I never said that they didn’t. You are the one claiming that their faith is blind. I merely maintain that it is badly misguided and that, specifically in the case of the extremists, it has led to evil.

Which is exactly the reason that blind faith is not a good idea.

You maintain that faith is not blind and then that the church ultimately is always right = blind faith

 

[jahozafet]

squirt:

Nope. Some of the papers are a bit technical. That’s all I’m saying.

Right on.

 

[theMutant]

jahozafet:

This makes no sense. If God is all powerful, then he doesn’t have to follow any parameters.

What you are saying is that, if God is all powerful, He could choose not to be God, that He could choose to sin or to redefine sin. This is not the case because God is eternal and can never change; that’s the definition of eternal.

 

[YinYangMom]

jahozafet:

That is the definition of blind faith.

It is not blind. It’s based on reality, something tangible.
Jesus is real.
Jesus came, spoke and showed us the way to eternity.
Or are you saying our belief in Jesus is blind?

 

[theMutant]

jahozafet:

Which is exactly the reason that blind faith is not a good idea.

You maintain that faith is not blind and then that the church ultimately is always right = blind faith

Therefore, if I believe that the force of gravity will always act upon me for as long as I am within its range, and I base that belief on my own experience and study, then my sure belief that if I jump off of a cliff I will plummet to its base is blind faith. You are basically saying that if I refuse to jump off of the cliff because I believe that I will plummet that my faith is blind. This is flawed reasoning. I believe that the Catholic Church is always correct in pronouncing teachings regarding faith and morals because she has demonstrated this to me just as surely as any scientist can demonstrate the law of gravity. That is not blind faith.

 

[jahozafet]

theMutant:

What you are saying is that, if God is all powerful, He could choose not to be God, that He could choose to sin or to redefine sin. This is not the case because God is eternal and can never change; that’s the definition of eternal.

That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying that if he’s all powerful, he can create any parameters under the sun. All-powerful beings don’t have parameters, or they are not all-powerful.

 

[YinYangMom]

jahozafet:

Here’s one:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” - Epicurus

What gets me about that line of reasoning is it’s limited.
It’s an example of how man wants God to operate within man’s own limited realm of rationale.

God’s willing **and **able…but why should He change perfection?
God created the universe and all it’s natural laws of order perfectly, including granting us ‘free will’.

Evil is the result of choosing NOT to follow God’s plan.
When Lucifer went against the plan he paid the consequence.
When Adam and Eve went against the plan they (and the rest of humanity as a result) paid the consequence.

 

[jahozafet]

theMutant:

Therefore, if I believe that the force of gravity will always act upon me for as long as I am within its range, and I base that belief on my own experience and study, then my sure belief that if I jump off of a cliff I will plummet to its base is blind faith. You are basically saying that if I refuse to jump off of the cliff because I believe that I will plummet that my faith is blind. This is flawed reasoning. I believe that the Catholic Church is always correct in pronouncing teachings regarding faith and morals because she has demonstrated this to me just as surely as any scientist can demonstrate the law of gravity. That is not blind faith.

Science and religion are not interchangeable. What differentiates the two is that science is based on proof, and religion is based on faith. If the proofs used in religion were strong enough, then it would no longer be religion, it would be science. So your analogy doesn’t work. To question in religion is heresy, to question in is science is required.

 

[YinYangMom]

jahozafet:

Is your implication that one who is well-versed in logic will find the Catholic view to be correct?

Well many, many converts to Catholicism have been led to that conclusion after studying extensively well-versed logic. Many have sought science and logic to disprove Catholicism, and instead converted. That’s not an implication. It’s a fact.

 

[jahozafet]

YinYangMom:

What gets me about that line of reasoning is it’s limited.
It’s an example of how man wants God to operate within man’s own limited realm of rationale.

God’s willing **and **able…but why should He change perfection?
God created the universe and all it’s natural laws of order perfectly, including granting us ‘free will’.

Evil is the result of choosing NOT to follow God’s plan.
When Lucifer went against the plan he paid the consequence.
When Adam and Eve went against the plan they (and the rest of humanity as a result) paid the consequence.

But nature is not perfection. Humans are inherently flawed according to catholic belief . . . original sin. We are born sinners. God created imperfect beings and expects us to behave a certain way and allows temptation and if we can’t do it well enough we fry, which is sadistic.

 

[Hannibal]

SteveG:

While it is a punishment in that sense, it isn’t doled out by God per se. God wills that all men be saved. Hell is chosen by those who will go there.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. Atheists don’t “choose” to go to hell, they don’t believe in it in the first place.

Why would an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god even create such a situation in the first place? If you want to argue “free will”, your god could have made a free will that did not require the 'choice of going to hell".

Since an omnipotent being could do this, and an omnibenevolent being must do this, this refutes the existence of such a god.

In addtion, god as the creator created both free will and all the parameters within which we make ‘choices’ so your god still determines who goes to hell and who does not. As this must be abitrary by definition, you still have a conundrum on your hands.

As C.S. Lewis put it, in the end, a person will either say to God ‘Your will be done.’ or God will say to the person ‘Your will be done.’ Speaking of C.S. Lewis, I would recommend his book ‘The Great Divorce’ . It is a fictional story, but is an easy read and sheds light on some of these questions.

Lewis was a mediocre theologian at best. His arguments all commit the reification fallacy.

 

[jahozafet]

YinYangMom:

Well many, many converts to Catholicism have been led to that conclusion after studying extensively well-versed logic. Many have sought science and logic to disprove Catholicism, and instead converted. That’s not an implication. It’s a fact.

It’s also a fact that many people well versed in logic come to the exact opposite conclusion . . . that the notion of a god is ridiculous.

 

[theMutant]

jahozafet:

That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying that if he’s all powerful, he can create any parameters under the sun. All-powerful beings don’t have parameters, or they are not all-powerful.

So, to use an old childhood joke, if God is all-powerful he could make a rock so big that He Himself could not lift it. It has become obvious to me that the main problem with this discussion is that you are using a different set of definitions than we are. The all-powerful nature of God is the ability to do anything that is His will; however, you do not stop there because you go on to define all-powerful as the ability to change His will but that is a completely separate topic. God’s will is eternal and can never change. His omnipotence is the absolute ability to make His eternal will a reality. Therefore, God cannot change the so-called parameters but that does not in any way remove anything from His all-powerful nature.

 

[YinYangMom]

jahozafet:

In your opinion. I think that not questioning it means blind faith. Why not question it? What harm will come from that?

No harm…just a waste of precious time, again, in my opinion

jahozafet:

This makes no sense. If God is all powerful, then he doesn’t have to follow any parameters. A loving god requires blood sacrifice?

One cannot improve upon perfection.

It doesn’t make sense to man, perhaps, because we are limited in our ability to comprehend everything. I’m certain it makes perfect sense to Him.

 

[Hannibal]

theMutant:

I believe that the Catholic Church is always correct in pronouncing teachings regarding faith and morals because she has demonstrated this to me just as surely as any scientist can demonstrate the law of gravity. That is not blind faith.

Hi,

Actually, that’s a textbook definition of blind faith.

Science is falsifiable, and works by rigorously challenging falsifiable hypotheses. Stating that you believe that an entity is ‘always correct’ is a completely non falsifiable, dogmatic view, the exact opposite of scientific tentantiveness.