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zaffiroborant
Guest
Well at least it wasn’t an outright fabrication like this apparently was.
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rmcmullan
Guest
What, this discussion is still going on? And no one has answered my question:
If there is no pre-existence, then God created us and therefore gave us our will. Our disposition to do good or evil. In other words, God created us Evil. That cannot be. We must have a will of our own and for that, we must have our own independent existence–a pre-mortal existence. If not, then our will has been created by God.
Seems like we have a dox here. Maybe two of them–a pair’odox!
If there is no pre-existence, then God created us and therefore gave us our will. Our disposition to do good or evil. In other words, God created us Evil. That cannot be. We must have a will of our own and for that, we must have our own independent existence–a pre-mortal existence. If not, then our will has been created by God.
Seems like we have a dox here. Maybe two of them–a pair’odox!
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GEddie
Guest
Not unless two MDs are on the thread; and I assume they wouldn’t waste their time with it!
Seriously. Of COURSE God created our will! As He created our mind, our head, our body, etc!
Yet in the same way that He created our limbs, yet we can wiggle and stretch them as we choose; He created our will, but respects it’s freedom.
No appeal to spiritual pre-existence is required.
Shalom, ICXC NIKA
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rmcmullan
Guest
He created our will, but respects it’s freedom.
Sorry, that makes no sense. You agree that God is creating evil. I can’t!
Sorry, that makes no sense. You agree that God is creating evil. I can’t!
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GEddie
Guest
Then you reject human free will, since obviously the human being can choose good or evil.
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rmcmullan
Guest
Me reject human will? You are the one who is rejecting it. It either belongs to me because I’m an eternal being or God created it in which case He controls its creation.
Maybe you’re saying that God has no control over what He creates? He puts his hand in the magic hat and isn’t sure whether He’ll pull out a fluffy bunny or a hideous monster that’ll eat the fluffy bunny. I don’t know which idea is more distrubing.
Maybe you’re saying that God has no control over what He creates? He puts his hand in the magic hat and isn’t sure whether He’ll pull out a fluffy bunny or a hideous monster that’ll eat the fluffy bunny. I don’t know which idea is more distrubing.
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Miriam1947
Guest
You are not eternal. Your soul is immortal. We have free will and can choose to be evil or good.
And you might be just a bit more careful about how you describe God who is eternal.
eternal |iˈtərnl|
adjective
lasting or existing forever; without end or beginning : the secret of eternal youth | fear of eternal damnation.
• (of truths, values, or questions) valid for all time; essentially unchanging : eternal truths of art and life.
• informal seeming to last or persist forever, esp. on account of being tedious or annoying : eternal nagging demands | she is an eternal optimist.
• used to emphasize expressions of admiration, gratitude, or other feelings : to his eternal credit, he maintained his dignity throughout.
• ( the Eternal) used to refer to an everlasting or universal spirit, as represented by God.
PHRASES
the Eternal City a name for the city of Rome.
eternal triangle a relationship between three people, typically a couple and the lover of one of them, involving sexual rivalry.
DERIVATIVES
eternality |ˌētərˈnalitē| noun
eternalize |iˈtərnlˌīz| verb
eternally adverb
eternalness noun
ORIGIN late Middle English : via Old French from late Latin aeternalis, from Latin aeternus, from aevum ‘age.’
THE RIGHT WORD
There are some things in life that seem to exist beyond the boundaries of time. Endless is the most informal and has the broadest scope of all these adjectives. It can mean without end in time
an endless argument) or space the endless universe), and it implies never stopping, or going on continuously as if in a circle to consult an endless succession of doctors).Unending is a less formal word used to describe something that endures or has no end, and it can be used either in an approving sense
unending devotion) or a disapproving one unending conflict).Never-ending is a more emphatic term than unending; it, too, can be used in either a positive or a negative sense
a never-ending delight;: a never-ending source of embarrassment).In contrast, interminable is almost always used in a disapproving or negative sense for something that lasts a long time
interminable delays in construction).Everlasting refers to something that will continue to exist once it is created, while eternal implies that it has always existed and will continue to exist in the future. In Christian theology, for example, believers in the eternal God look forward to everlasting life.
immortal |i(m)ˈmôrtl|
adjective
living forever; never dying or decaying : our mortal bodies are inhabited by immortal souls.
• deserving to be remembered forever : the immortal children’s classic, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
noun
an immortal being, esp. a god of ancient Greece or Rome.
• a person of enduring fame : he will always be one of the immortals of hockey.
• ( Immortals) historical the royal bodyguard of ancient Persia.
• ( Immortal) a member of the French Academy.
DERIVATIVES
immortality |ˌi(m)ˌmôrˈtalitē| noun
immortally adverb
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin immortalis, from in- ‘not’ + mortalis (see mortal ).
Just because Mormons believe that God was once a man does not make it true.
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Telstar
Guest
God creates us, but we’re not His puppets that can only do what He intends for us to do, by pulling on our strings. He certainly doesn’t create some of us good and others evil, either. God can never do anything evil. That’s our own choice to make in this life. We always have a choice whether we’ll follow Him or not. That’s what free will is all about. Why would it make any difference when we’re created, as long as we have free will to be whoever or whatever we want to be, from the time we’re created? There’s no such thing as predestination in the sense that we’re somehow forced to be one way or the other. It’s always our own choice.
We’re the ones that always choose to be good or evil. God doesn’t make that choice for us. Even though, He always knows what our choices will be because He exists outside of time. He doesn’t want us to follow Him mechanically, like puppets on a string. He wants us to follow Him because we truly love Him. If we love Him, then we’ll want to do everything that’s good, because that’s how we’ll be able to share in His love for all eternity. If we don’t really love Him, then we’ll choose to do our own will, and won’t care about what God wants us to do. Being good goes against our human nature (the flesh/carnal nature), so it’s much easier for us to choose to be evil than good in this life.
But, God will never interfere in our choice to love Him or not, because He wants us to be happy, and free to do whatever we really want to do. He knows that no one can ever force anyone else to love them. But, He wants us to choose to love Him because of Who He is (Goodness and Love), and not just for what He can give to us. He doesn’t want us to be ‘good’ just for the sake of earning the rewards that He promises us, because that’s just selfish human ‘love’, not Divine Love. There’s a big difference between the two.
Human love tends to be selfish and conditional, always looking for, “What’s in it for me?”. But, divine love is completely selfless. It’s the kind of love that causes a man to lay down his own life in order to save his friends, like Jesus did for all of us on the Cross. Divine love is self sacrificing and self effacing, rather than being like human love, that’s always looking for recognition and reciprocation from those that we claim to ‘love’. When we don’t feel that we’re getting what we think we ‘deserve’ from those that we love, then that love tends to disappear, and we go somewhere else looking for a love that will satisfy our own needs and wants.
We’re here on earth for God to test whether or not we will truly love Him enough to fight against our natural ‘human’ (carnal) tendencies, and do what He wants us to do as a spiritual being (having an immortal soul), through divine love. It’s the same way that He first tested Adam & Eve in the Garden, by giving them a choice to trust and obey Him out of pure love, or to follow their human nature, and listen to the seduction and temptations of the devil, that made ‘promises’ to them that he knew he could never keep. We’re all created to share in God’s eternal love and life, that He offers to us as a free gift. But, it’s always our own choice whether or not we’ll accept that gift by following Jesus the way He showed us, through expressing a truly divine love of God and our fellow man, or by rejecting Him to do whatever we please through following our own carnal passions, wants and desires. Ultimately, the choice is always ours to make.
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rmcmullan
Guest
Telstar, it sounds like you are of the school that believes God doesn’t know what He’s going to create.
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Nicea325
Guest
First of all, your first error is the belief you are eternal being. ONLY GOD ALONE is ETERNAL. You were created,thus you are FINITE. Mormons really should learn God’s nature and stop making up foolish beliefs. Second, no one is saying God has no control over creation,but moreover,Mormons are the ones claiming finite creatures are eternal like God. Now that is very disturbing.
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Telstar
Guest
It sounds to me as if you’re of the school that believes that, somehow, God should (or actually does) interfere with our free will, by ‘preordaining’ who we are and what we’ll do, even though LDS claim that nothing should ever interfere with our ‘free agency’, or with our ability to choose our own path in life. But, you can’t have it both ways. Either you’re the one that’s fully responsible for your own choices when you make mistakes and commit sins, or God is. Which one do you think is correct? Do you think God is the one that makes you sin, by setting you up to fail, on purpose? (That certainly seems to be what LDS believe happened to Adam & Eve.) Is it the devil that forces you to commit sins? Or, is it you that makes the real choice for yourself? Where does the guilt really fall when we choose to sin?
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GEddie
Guest
The fact Of being created does not in any way neglect freedom. Your mind is created, yet you can think whatever you choose. Your limbs are created, yet you can wiggle them however you care to.
I am not LDS, so I cannot say what your faith teaches about human preexistence. I do know that it’s foreign to Scripture. Scripture teaches that a human being’s spirit is “formed within him.”
Scripture also teaches that only God is eternal or immortal. He can give us eternity, but it’s not in our innate nature as human beings.
Shalom, ICXC NIKA
I am not LDS, so I cannot say what your faith teaches about human preexistence. I do know that it’s foreign to Scripture. Scripture teaches that a human being’s spirit is “formed within him.”
Scripture also teaches that only God is eternal or immortal. He can give us eternity, but it’s not in our innate nature as human beings.
Shalom, ICXC NIKA
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TexanKnight
Guest
That is a misrepresentation. God does not create evil, nor was that even hinted. God creates people and gives them the freedom to choose. Maybe you can accept being a robot…I can’t!
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TexanKnight
Guest
you limit God. Apparently you believe that if there is no Pre-existence, God is incapable of creating people who have free will. The true God is all-powerful. Maybe you should try the true God instead of the weak LDS One.
Come Home!
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KathleenGee
Guest
Human beings do not share eternal immortality with God.
We have a beginning and an end with God. We accept Him in this life or we do not.
We are given our immortal souls at conception through the cooperation of our parents.
It is God Who is the author of life, Who imparts the fertilized human egg with His Spirit and life.
Our mother is pregnant with us.
But God is not ‘pregnant’ with us before our conception.
We have a beginning and an end with God. We accept Him in this life or we do not.
We are given our immortal souls at conception through the cooperation of our parents.
It is God Who is the author of life, Who imparts the fertilized human egg with His Spirit and life.
Our mother is pregnant with us.
But God is not ‘pregnant’ with us before our conception.
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soren1
Guest
You are exactly right. I God is a free being, and the source of all being, it would be an imperfection in his creative work if he could not endow his creation with some mode of autonomy. This is especially true of a creation containing a personal being like man who images God by possessing a spiritual nature. Note that by spirit I do not mean a finite piece of super-subtle matter, but rather an incorporeal substance that has properties exceeding the limited powers of and mechanical laws that govern matter. How God is able to make free beings is tough notion to understand because God’s freedom and omnipotence are hard to understand. But if we accept the fact that God is free and omnipotent, and these the words express infinite truths about the divine nature, then we would be denying God’s perfection as a creator is was said he dimply could not impart freedom to his creature.
The medieval axiom that “The Good is diffusive of itself” is a good axiom to commit to memory and remember when considering questions like this. God wants want to communicate himself to creation, that means he want to communicate his proerties to creation. The very perfection of God’s freedom is seen in the fact that he can communicate it to his creature. We must accept that fact in piety and not be carried away by the exclusively philosophical assumption of materialist causality, already implying a finite God, that underlies mcmullan’s argument.
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ParkerD
Guest
soren1,
I left your post as is, although there are several misspelled words (I note that for other readers so they don’t think I changed the words to be misspelled).
McMullan didn’t imply “materialist causality” in his posts. Satan’s rebellion wasn’t a “material causality”.
What I would appreciate someone explaining following the logic trail that says God created Satan from “nothing” and that also says God is “all good” and that also says God is completely all-knowing and omnipotent, is to explain and answer,
then why did God create Satan and endow him with “some mode of autonomy” if he gave Satan all his attributes (by the definition of the words “create from nothing” meaning there is no attribute Satan has that was not “put there” by God) and therefore God knew completely exactly what Satan would do with his “autonomy”?
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KathleenGee
Guest
God created everything out of nothingness — that is what it is to us --through His will.
He said the Word and the world was created…through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, Three in One.
The angels were created with intelligence and free will. Lucifer was the highest of all angels, but freely chose to reject God and assume His place. Lucifer and other angels likewise also refused to serve God, and were expelled from heaven by St. Michael and the faithful angels.
Rejecting God, wanting to be as Him instead is the foundation of all evil.
Evil is the absence of God and disobedient to the very will of God that created the universe.
God gave us life and spirit at our conception. He knew us before we were born. Existence requires as well the creative work of our own parents.
Lucifer, now named Satan, went to war now against Adam and Eve and their descendents, tempting them with the same desire that he had, to become as gods.
Adam and Eve could already see God before the fall and walk with Him, God being Wisdom itself.
So they had full knowledge of God, disobeyed Him, and ate the forbidden fruit through the temptation of Satan.
He said the Word and the world was created…through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, Three in One.
The angels were created with intelligence and free will. Lucifer was the highest of all angels, but freely chose to reject God and assume His place. Lucifer and other angels likewise also refused to serve God, and were expelled from heaven by St. Michael and the faithful angels.
Rejecting God, wanting to be as Him instead is the foundation of all evil.
Evil is the absence of God and disobedient to the very will of God that created the universe.
God gave us life and spirit at our conception. He knew us before we were born. Existence requires as well the creative work of our own parents.
Lucifer, now named Satan, went to war now against Adam and Eve and their descendents, tempting them with the same desire that he had, to become as gods.
Adam and Eve could already see God before the fall and walk with Him, God being Wisdom itself.
So they had full knowledge of God, disobeyed Him, and ate the forbidden fruit through the temptation of Satan.
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TexanKnight
Guest
Ah…you are, in effect, arguing that we do not have free will.
You are saying that IF God knows what we will do, then we MUST do it because to not do it would mean God was wrong.
The fact that God knows what will happen does not mean God controls free will. For example: I know my son. I know him very well. I know that, if faced with a certain choice, which option he will choose. Does me knowing affect his choice? No. It is the same with God.
What I find remarkable is that you, of all people, would make this type of argument.
There was a D&C Section that, for the moment, I cannot remember the number. In this “revelation” Joseph claims that God told him that some guy would serve a mission in the Spring. He is one of several who will go. Before Spring, the guy dies.
Now, assuming God is all-knowing, He would have known the guy would die…right?
So, we have either:
- God lied to Joseph
- God has no clue about the future
- Joseph lied about what God said or
- Joseph lied about being a prophet.
But, God created the being that would be referred to as “the Devil”. He gave “the Devil” freedom. Did God know what Satan would do? I am sure God did. Could God have stopped it? Yes.
It is the same issue with Adam and Eve. Did God know that Eve would be tempted and that they both would fall? I am sure God DID know. But he let it play out anyway.
Do not minimize God
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Telstar
Guest
Apparently, Soren was typing quickly, trying to get his point across with a minimal amount of time spent doing it. (He must be very busy.) So, he made a few mistakes along the way. It’s not like he was writing something to publish in a book or other publication where accuracy is more important. This is just an internet forum. It also shows that he’s not perfect and doesn’t try to imply that he is, as some of us that post here tend to do.
It’s not specifically his post that indicates “materialistic causality”, but Mormon “theology” in general, that formed the foundation of his post, is materialistically based, as opposed to spiritually based theology. Materialism forces God to conform everything He does to the laws that govern the material universe. Believing that all matter and other things, such as “intelligences”, are eternal and have always existed along with God, diminishes the true power of God to create anything. Because, in materialistic beliefs, God is limited and subject to only using ‘eternal matter’ to create everything. It even defines spiritual entities as being composed of some type of physical matter, that is also subject to universal laws.
But, in Catholic/Christian theology, God is a purely spiritual Being that always existed, alone, before His great creation of the entire universe. God and other spiritual entities are not composed of any kind of physical or spiritual ‘matter’. He created everything that exists from nothing, including all forms of physical matter. That’s the major difference between Mormon’s materialistic kind of theology, and the spiritually based theology of all Christians, at their core.
Lucifer (aka Satan) was an angel, created by God. He was perfectly good when God created him, just like Adam & Eve were good when He created them. He was the highest angel in Heaven, second only to God. He was the most intelligent, most beautiful, and most powerful angel of all. But, God didn’t want to create robots that would only obey Him by force. He wanted them to be able to choose to obey Him out of pure love for Him, so He gave them the intelligence, self awareness, and free will to make their own choices. God certainly knew if He did that, there was the probability that some of them would make poor choices, and reject His love. But, He loved them so much that He wanted to let them be free to choose whether they would love and obey Him, or follow their own will and reject His love. We also have that same choice to make.
All of the free gifts that God had given to Lucifer went to his head, and puffed him up with pride in himself. He didn’t think he should have to rely on God for anything, nor did he think he should have to serve God because he didn’t think he owed Him anything, even though he owed God his very existence. But, he didn’t appreciate anything he had been given. All that he had been given was never enough for him. He wanted even more respect and power than he already had, and, he wanted to be worshiped just like God was worshiped by all of the other angels. In short, he wanted to be seen by all other creatures as being equal to God in all power and glory.
Eventually, he grew more and more jealous and resentful of all the power that God had, as well as the love and respect that the other angels showed to God, that they didn’t show to him. He thought they should all love and obey him as much as they did God, because he felt that he deserved it just as much as God did. So, like a spoiled child that always got much more than he could ever want, or deserve, he decided to rebel against God when He refused to give him any more.
Pride in himself and in his own existence, because of everything that he was given by God, was Lucifer’s ultimate downfall, in the same way that it’s also the most common downfall of all mankind. When we start believing that we’re “God’s gift to the world”, and think we deserve more respect from others because of everything that we’ve been given by God, that’s when we start going down that very slippery slope to hell, too. If we don’t show our humble appreciation, and give thanks to God for everything that we have, then we’re following Lucifer’s example, instead of following the example given to us by Jesus. Truer words were never spoken than, “Pride goeth before the fall.”. Lucifer had all of the same choices that we have to make, but, “He chose… poorly.”
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