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severntofall
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Ok, you tell me. Where did the christian concept of eternal damnation originate?
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severntofall
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jean8
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raikou
Guest
God does not demand just anything from us. He demands what would be good for us. Who would know best what would be best for us if not he who made us - who knew everything about us - our temperaments, characteristics, nature etc.? Just a simple analogy, don’t we consult the manufacturer first if we want to use some gadget appropriately? Similarly, who should we consult if we want to know how man can live his life well?
For the second part, you seem to have a preconceived notion that God is a sadist who created man to fail. I’m afraid (or rather, gladdened) that’s not true. Do you know the deepest desire God has placed in the human heart? It is the possession of God or union with him. God created man that he might share his divine life with him. 2000 years ago, Christ, the God-man, revealed this to us. And he desires to give us all the means to do so. He granted us the possibility of forgiveness of sins through his sacrifice at the Cross. He gives us the Church through which he lets himself known and which dispenses the graces we need to aid us to that path of union with him. He gives us all the means. All he asks for is our free cooperation.
If you think that human life seems a miserable failure considering only all these fleeting pleasures of the world, I agree with you. They do not fully satisfy the yearnings of the heart, which longs for the infinite. But God is a substantial part of the picture. He is that infinite which the heart longs for. And He seeks to give himself to us. He wants our deepest desire fulfilled. I suggest that you look more into the Catholic faith for a better understanding of this.
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Justafool
Guest
Does having dominion over the earth not include moral dominion?
I think so therefore man, not God is to be the authority here. God proclaimed it.
Don’t mess with God’s will.
Regards
DL
I think so therefore man, not God is to be the authority here. God proclaimed it.
Don’t mess with God’s will.
Regards
DL
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agangbern
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I don’t know where. But sure, Jesus did not invent it. Eternal damnation is what we call hell. And hell was already recognized even before Jesus was born. Here,
Amos 9:2,
Though they go down even to hell, thence shall my hand bring them out: and though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. scripturetext.com/amos/9-2.htm
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agangbern
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No. Man’s dominion did not include the power to make own moral laws according as he likes
Here,
Genesis 1:28 (New International Version)
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1:28
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agangbern
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Jesus ordered human slaughter? This must be another wild imagination. There may be slaughters in history, but certainly Jesus did not order them.
What do you know about heretics? As far as I know, the way to determine who is a heretic is not in the way you presented here. You would be judging a person as heretic without fair trial.
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raikou
Guest
But what is meant here by “dominion?” Does it mean abandoning man to control creation at whim? Obviously, this is not the case, as in the subsequent books of the Bible, we see God intervening to lay down a set of commands for the people.
Who assigned man to have dominion over the earth? It is God. By appealing to God’s command that man be the steward of creation, you agree that God is the ultimate authority, not man. Man has authority insofar as it is given by God to him.
This given authority means that man is in-charge of creation, not in an absolute manner, but to rule in accordance with God. He gave it with an accompanying responsibility. It’s like electing a president. We vote a candidate in order that he may rule the country in accordance with good governance. It is possible though for that candidate not to rule it well.
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severntofall
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Ok, perhaps you need an update of christian theology. Jesus, according to YOUR beliefs, is god and has been god since…well forever. There were slaughters described in the OT that god ordered…jesus is god.
As far as the hertic comment, believing that Jesus is not god is a christian heresy. Not that I should talk, I don’t believe that god’s is god.
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agangbern
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Let us see what slaughter in the OT you are referring to.
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severntofall
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Have you ever read the OT? I quote just one of them earlier in this thread.
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agangbern
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Joshua 5:20, 24-27? Nothing there says that God ordered slaughter.
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Justafool
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This quote confirms my point. Are we not living creature that moves on the ground?
Yes we are and are to have dominion. That includes moral rules.
Why else do you think we were given the tree of knowledge to learn from? Just for show?
Regards
DL
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Justafool
Guest
Are you saying that Jesus/God did not initiate Noah’s genocidal flood?
That was the slaughter of millions including children and babies too many to count.
What about all those poor animals as well? I certainly call that a slaughter.
Regards
DL
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Justafool
Guest
You are slightly confused but can be saved.
If I say to you, here is a world and I give you dominion of it and perhaps some advise in terms of a list of commandments that I used before and then I go away to leave you to your dominion; then that means that I relinquish all control to you. If you screw up that is your problem. If you do well that is your good.
If I come back at end time and see a mess, can I blame you? Yes but at the same time I have to blame myself for placing you in charge. In other words I gave up the right o punish you because I put you there. Not your fault for my decision.
See what I mean?
Man is to rule and be wise or fool for his efforts.
Regards
DL
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Oreoracle
Guest
I don’t think it’s the most pressing question in everyone’s life (it’s not going to make or break one of my decisions). But I think knowing what people in general want is a persistent question that is important to me.
I’m a bit slow on the concept of God, so you’ll have to forgive me. I think I can agree with why God must be simple if he is infinite, but why must he be infinite?
You’re making goodness an objective, observable quality. Do you really think that we can say that God is good in the same way that we can say a basketball player is 7 feet tall? The subjective “sense” you speak of is required. You include the fruits of this “sense” as one of your premises in your logical arguments. Someone else could just as easily have a different result come from their sense and also have a logical argument. You can’t just ignore the fact that all your ethical conclusions sprout from emotions simply because you deem them unreliable. That’s like saying that you didn’t have parents because their advice was unreliable. Like it or not, you share their DNA, just as ethical conclusions share the subjectivity of their parent: emotions.
Yes. I have to admit that I’m confused about why God must have infinite qualities.
Thanks. The week before spring break is always a killer.
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Oreoracle
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You are officially my hero.
The only semi-reasonable response to why God, who is supposedly the epitome of goodness, posited eternal torture that I’ve heard is “well…those parts are symbolic”.
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severntofall
Guest
Your Lord ordered numerous merciless slaughters. The bold verses are the best examples of god’s love.
*Joshua 6:2 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.” *
numbers 31:1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”
3 So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites and to carry out the LORD’s vengeance on them. 4 Send into battle a thousand men from each of the tribes of Israel.” 5 So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel.
7 They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. [a]
13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.
**15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 "They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. **
19 “All of you who have killed anyone or touched anyone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives. 20 Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood.”
21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the soldiers who had gone into battle, "This is the requirement of the law that the LORD gave Moses: 22 Gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, lead 23 and anything else that can withstand fire must be put through the fire, and then it will be clean.
32 The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 33 72,000 cattle, 34 61,000 donkeys 35 and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.
36 The half share of those who fought in the battle was:
337,500 sheep, 37 of which the tribute for the LORD was 675;
38 36,000 cattle, of which the tribute for the LORD was 72;
40 16,000 people, of which the tribute for the LORD was 32.
(note 32 virgins were sacrificed to the lord).
1 Samuel 15:Samuel said to Saul, "I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. 2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy [a] everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ "
**7 Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt. 8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves ** and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. **
**10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 11 “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night. **
13 When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”
14 But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
15 Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
16 “Stop!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul replied.
**17 Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. 18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the LORD ? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD ?” ****
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Sarpedon
Guest
The question of eternal salvation or damnation is ultimately going to be of utmost importance in our day-to-day decisions.
"Now we assert that God is infinitely perfect in the sense explained, and that His infinity is deducible from His self-existence. For a self-existent being, if limited at all, could be limited only by itself; to be limited by another would imply causal dependence on that other, which the very notion of self-existence excludes. But the self-existing cannot be conceived as limiting itself, in the sense of curtailing its perfection of being, without ceasing to be self-existing. "
Italics and underline refer to two different things, for the sake of clarity:
What this means is that the self-existent being (God) (the source of all other being, the uncaused cause) cannot be limited in any way. If the self-existent being was limited by some existent thing outside of itself, then the self-existent being (God) requires some form of existence outside of itself, which is contradictory to the nature of a self-existent being.
It is important to note that Catholics worship this self-existent being, not some lesser created spiritual creature (like angels).
Judgment calls are not necessarily based on emotions. When I make the judgment call that I will believe God is good, I use reason to examine my experiences. Experiences are not synonymous with chemical emotions.
How do you define emotions? If you define emotion as simply subjective judgment calls, I agree that “emotion” is needed at some stage. While the moral law of God exists outside of man, and God reveals this law to us, every person needs to make a personal decision in regards to what they will observe as moral. This is a subjective choice, but it is a choice about objective laws. Furthermore, simply observing that people need to make a subjective decision about objective laws does not mean that we should let subjectivism serve as a replacement for the objective laws.
I agree that we must make a personal choice and judgment call as to what God’s will is and whether we will follow it, but I do not agree that this observation means that subjectivism should be our standard. We do have to reach the standard through subjectivism, but we should not replace the standard with subjectivism as Utilitarianism does.
If you define “emotions” as chemically induced feelings in the brain, rather than personal choices and judgment calls, then I will address this aspect as well.
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