I understand. But God is behind this decision making. I suggest allowing Him to reconcile these difficult considerations we face as humans and trusting in Him.
Have you ever noticed that lifes problems as they come our way and our reaction to them are relative? I’ve noticed this. I am faced with a relative minor life distraction (like a blow to my ego at work for example) and I am momentarily devistated. Yet I am faced with something much more important (like the sickenss of a loved one) and I step up to the plate (hopefully). Point being that our “quality of life” is not as apparent as it may seem. The fortunate are unfortunate and the unfortunate fortunate in certain mystical ways. Let’s do the best with what we have. Whether it be a lot or little. And let God be the judge. Maybe it’s part of the plan.
I’ve already addressed the 99 percent God’s grace and 1 percent faith and works issue. You supposedly need both to make 100 percent and 100 percent is necessary to enter heaven. Unless you believe it’s possible to go to heaven in a state of mortal sin.
If you don’t know what heaven is, then I’ll leave you to your own hopes and comforting speculations. I won’t debate the meaning of poetry.
Have you ever seriously considered universal reconciliation? Universalism makes some sense to me.
It isn’t really a matter of suffering mortal life (although I consider that too) but specifically the risk of hell (or at least the risk of not attaining heaven). By dying young and going to heaven, a child is free of the risk of going to hell (or the risk of not going to heaven). That’s lucky and a huge advantage.
And yet some don’t have to work towards it as I’ve shown. Or they are denied the opportunity, whichever way you want to look at it. They get a qualitatively different deal.
I’d bet those souls in heaven would prefer to remain with God rather than risking the free will to sin and go to hell.
I don’t think anyone, same age or not, has the same exact experience of life. There are general perspectives we can agree upon (If a person makes X action with Y intent, it is or is not sinful), but the unique intricacies of each person’s life will, I’m certain, be accounted for. After all, it’s hard to call salvation ‘chance’ when the rules and odds change from individual to individual.
As you don’t believe in God why are you arguing so hard that’s its unfair young children go to Heaven. You don’t believe we go anywhere anyway!
The trick is to know in what we are trusting. Is it really God or is it what we think God wants.
I wouldn’t call having no participation in a real life a relatively minor distraction. There is an absolute difference in the character of life for many. So different that the same rules cannot apply to them. They never participate in life in any meaningful way.
This is always arguable and hard to prove either way, if you consider more typical yet diverse lives of people.
Because it is unfair, hypothetically. Since none of us has been to heaven, we can only speak of it hypothetically in any case.
Yes. Everything is subject to Providence. He does what’s best. You must remember that this is all part of a coherent whole. Those people were in the same family, those people all lived in Indonesia, those people were all brought to the same place at once (instead of you or me) from all eternity. They weren’t just there and God decided to have them die. He arranged for them, and only them, to be there at the time, and those that survived to not be in danger of death.
Niether is a “better” or “worse” explanation, really. It’s a choice you make. Each is beyond testing or proof. We can never prove that events are really just chance and not God, no experiment can test that as it is a philosophical assertion. You choose whether to believe or not. But don’t say that you think ours is less valid.
No. Haven’t you seen “The Minority Report”? The point is…it is not Just to punish people before they commit a crime, even if you know they are going to do so. You can use your foreknowledge to try to prevent the crime…but you can’t actually punish them for things they never end up attempting. God has to let our hypothetical choices become real choices before being able to punish or reward us for them justly.
No. That’s exactly the point. They aren’t deserving of Hell, because God stops them before they could ever do something that would merit them hell. He prevents them from going down the dark path, that he sees they would otherwise, and so saves them from themselves.
They haven’t done any evil yet. So they don’t go to hell. God stops them before they destroy themselves. He never puts them in a situation where they would choose evil, in order that they can be saved.
Depends what you mean by “real” need. Obviously, God’s hands aren’t tied by the sacraments. GOD doesn’t ultimately need baptism to save people. God can do whatever he wants in that regard, obviously.
In short, we have to trust that God’s grace sustains us. Calvinism (“heretical Predestinarianism”) means that nothing we can do can separate us from God (in the context of Hell). Besides discounting free will, it also places the negative action in God’s hands, and that’s the real heresy. That is, it makes God the one who sentences non-believers to hell–rather than they themselves simply be responsible for their own choices.
Sorry–going a little post crazy here. If you accept the Bible, you clearly recognize that God is a loving God. These kinds of concerns are things we can trust to God’s wisdom, but it really shouldn’t be our concern–since we did not “earn” salvation ourselves.
So he engineers the destruction of whole villages. Is that how God decides things? Sometimes one person at a time other times whole villages? With women and children as the primary targets.
If God predestines a baby to die, isn’t that denying freedom of the will in that instance?
Not really, since I’ve shown that either it is chance or God chooses to be arbitrarily non-methodical in how he selects those for early termination, which is indistinguishable from chance. It is as if God is throwing darts at a dart board while blindfolded to decide what to preordain.
You are proposing that a good God would deliberately cause an event that kills, and in doing so, denies some from exercising free will.
(above emphasis mine)
That is more like it. I think you understand my point.
Agreed.
But are babies responsible for their own choices?
Note that belief is necessary. To “every believer” including the “vilest offender who truly believes”. I can’t imagine babies having beliefs.
As is a miscarriage.
One problem I see in your reasoning is the assumption that heaven and hell are both entirely static states of existence - heaven for me is the same as heaven for someone else, hell for me is the same as hell for someone else, etc.
Heaven and hell are necessarily speculative since no one has the experience of being there. The only assumption I make is that heaven is good and hell is bad, and their importance (along with worship of God) is greater than any other concerns we have in our temporary physical existence. If a fetus goes to heaven, then that’s good for the fetus. If a conscientious atheist goes to hell, what ever hell means, then that’s bad – for me.
So then deceased infants are denied the opportunity. What is unfair are the different opportunities and risks. It’s like being given a 75 percent chance at winning one million dollars but with a risk of death at 25 percent, or being given a sure 100 thousand dollars. Which one would you take?
The workers parable may try to explain why we can’t complain (although I still do because the stakes are higher, with some souls being punished, and not rewarded in any way), but it does not explain the motive or the reasoning except as a chance event. The parable doesn’t justify caprice positively, it only defends it by making it seem all to the the good. All the workers were at least paid and that makes the parable almost work.
I wasn’t criticizing the validity of your basic claims (Heaven = Good, Hell = Bad), merely pointing out that you’re limiting yourself to 2 options upon death by these examples, when in reality it’s not necessarily so simple.
Well, at this point you’re just pulling out numbers. It’s tempting, but even the Catholic Church will say that there is no way to know who is in heaven (aside from the saints) and who is in hell (including Judas, Pilate, etc.) While universal salvation is considered unlikely, it’s certainly not ruled out as impossible.
Again, you’re limiting yourself to ‘eternal heaven’ and ‘eternal hell’. Just as a possible scenario, would you object to the unfairness of universal salvation if certain people had to go experience purgatory before attaining it?