Were you and I ever meant to be here originally?

[Gorgias]

It just doesn’t make sense. It all sounds like your God set all this up, knew about the nature of humans and continued to proceed with it anyway regardless.

So, wanting to create us so that we had a chance to choose Him freely, but knowing that we’d mess it up, He does it anyway… but with a “second chance” option that we can go to, again and again, so that we keep getting more chances to say “yes”. That doesn’t make sense as something a loving Father would do?

As if he wanted to get angry and “save” humans, which doesn’t make any sense.

You’re right – looking at it that way doesn’t make any sense! I suspect you’re getting this “angry God” notion from Protestant theology, because this isn’t what the Catholic Church teaches. God doesn’t get “angry” with humans (or with Jesus!). He asks us to accept Him in love, and when we don’t, He sends His son, and His son gives up his life for us – out of love! – so that we might continue to have the choice to love Him.

“Angry Creator” isn’t what the Catholic Church teaches.

(Edited to add:

Not a very attractive being to want to worship!

Not seeing what’s “not attractive”. Knowing that we’d be bums, God has the choice to create us anyway, or just chuck the idea and leave us all uncreated. He creates us. We mess up, again and again, and He keeps giving us chance after chance. Ultimately, He sends His son, so that we’d always have “still another chance”.

How’s that not “attractive” for a deity? He literally never consigns us to the trash heap, and always gives us another chance to say ‘yes’ to Him!)

 

[Mmarco]

So are humans some kind of test?

Not at all. If you read more carefully what I’ve written, you will understand that it has nothing to do with a test.

 

[Irishmom2]

So our life is predestined. In the fact that our free will is already chosen?

No, our life is not predestined. We choose what we are doing. But God in his knowledge of all, already knows what we will choose. He isn’t choosing for us, he just knows what we will choose.

 

[Irishmom2]

So God KNEW humans would sin. Wouldn’t it have been better had he not made humans? Sounds to me he was setting humans up for failure, no?

He is setting them up for failure because he lets us choose what we do? We all can choose the right things. We can’t blame God for our choices. We choose our sins, not God.

And what would be the alternative? A world where people are predestined and only doing what God has decided for us? I could imagine the whining that we would be reading here on CAF if that were the case. But it’s not. We have free will.

 

[MadeAnew]

From my understanding God can see all the different outcomes if we were to make a decision in different ways, but He also knows the choice we will inevitably make. Because we have free will. Eve used her free will choice to make the decision she did. So God knew what the outcome would be.

 

[MadeAnew]

I find that all the bad decisions I have made and all I have lived through and learned have molded me into a better person. A better spouse, a better parent, a better Christian, a better friend. When I look at how bad I once was and see how much I have changed through my trials given to me I do not question what life is about. Life is a test of faith.

 

[Mmarco]

Why not be directly judged on what we will choose without all the centuries of earthly suffering to get to the same end?

Actually, there is also much love and happiness in our life and during the centuries.
On the other hand, sufferings can help us to understand better the value of life and to become aware of our sins. Therefore, the end is not the same, because through sufferings we may become better people.

 

[goout]

Why not be directly judged on what we will choose without all the centuries of earthly suffering to get to the same end?

Because suffering is part of the human condition, and we embrace the whole of our humanity. And that includes embracing the fallen condition that is a consequence of the failings of others and our own failings. The virtue of acceptance means that we have a well grounded (humility) and realistic image of ourselves.
All at the same time: we are beloved children of God, and we are sinful creatures. Sin has consequences for everyone. By the virtue of acceptance, we have a true point of conversion, whereby we can move toward the kingdom of God. If we have an unrealistic image of ourselves that denies sin and suffering we are “stuck in cement”.

If we don’t embrace the whole of life including the “bad stuff”, then gratitude becomes difficult. We become selective whiners. We all do it. It’s a struggle to be grateful for life. And “eucharist” is rooted in the word for gratitude.

 

[Gorgias]

Why not be directly judged on what we will choose without all the centuries of earthly suffering to get to the same end?

Our choices – the bad ones, at least – are the cause of earthly suffering.

 

[Gorgias]

Our choices cause earthquakes, famine, etc?

Those are categorized as natural evils, not moral evils. But hey, I’ll play along: are you saying that famine isn’t caused by failures of agricultural production and distribution; and that this isn’t a result of bad human choices? Are you saying that anthropogenic climate change isn’t, in fact, ‘anthropogenic’?

I think that the attempt to lampoon the notion that our poor moral choices lead to negative results is a self-defeating proposition.

 

[mythbuster1]

It is written, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” Humans can be assumed into Heaven without dying, as Enoch and Elijah were and as will those who live to see the Second Coming.

 

[Vico]

…

God knows everything so that includes the fall. Eve alone was not the cause of the transmission of original sin.

Catechism

417 Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called “original sin”.

489 … At the very beginning there was Eve; despite her disobedience, she receives the promise of a posterity that will be victorious over the evil one, as well as the promise that she will be the mother of all the living.128 …

128 Cf. Gen 3:15, 20.

 

[Gorgias]

Again, you’re focusing only on natural evils, not moral evils. If you’d like to keep beating on that straw man, please be my guest.