Why can't the Holy God interact with a fallen race? Presumably he did that all the time in the old Testament. Unless of course all the prophets who had direct communication with and verification of God were not part of the fallen race.

If Adam and Eve disobeyed him, they didn't really fear him, now did they?

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(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: Why can't the Holy God interact with a fallen race?  Presumably he did that all the time in the old Testament.  Unless of course all the prophets who had direct communication with and verification of God were not part of the fallen race.

Because he's only partially omnipotent?

Why wouldn't he create us with the knowledge of good and evil? And if men were never meant to have the knowledge of good and evil...why not just get rid of A&E and start over, instead of going through all the trouble of condemning every single person that's ever going to live and setting up the laborious process of sacrificing himself to himself to provide an out from his own rules?

You have to justify why the world is so shitty somehow.

@Randy:

Hide tags work like this...


You have to type them in manually; we don't have niceties, such as a button or anything.

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

(May 20, 2015 at 6:27 am)pocaracas Wrote: [ugh, use hide tags when quoting such a wall of text... makes for a better forum experience! ]

What are or how do I hide tags? I'm trying to figure out the formatting of this site, but it is VERY different from many I have used.

Yeah... the "new" WYSIWYG editor is crap. On the bar on top of the text window, when you're replying, the last button on the right changes to a standard forum BBcode layout, making it far easier to edit monster posts.
Also, using hide tags is simple:
Which results in:
The text below will be hidden:

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

Quote:Let me see: how fast can the fastest human calculator calculate 1345684423673.65267845688 * 453167785.12345 *10^-4 / 12.54546773356 + 235.678324456?

Can we agree that the humble silicon calculator can do this much faster than any human could?

The calculator is faster than a human, but God would not have to do the calculation. He knows the answer before you ask the question because he knows what you are going to ask before you do.

God doesn't "think" at all. He knows. There is no moment of discovery or arrival at a conclusion for God.

Your question was about "a creator god". I merely used the analogy I have for any creator thing - man as creator of machines that do some work.
If man can create something superior to himself, why not a god?

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)Randy Carson Wrote:

Quote:That said, I don't think a creator "must" be superior to anything in that creator's creation. It can be superior, I can think of scenarios where that would happen, but I can also think of scenarios where it wouldn't. So no, I can't agree with your statement.
(even granting that mighty big IF which will need to be assessed in separate).

Hmmm...hard to imagine how the greater thing is brought into being by the lesser.

Can your "creator god" create another creator god or two? Two creator gods would be greater than just one, yes?
That's one way.

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)Randy Carson Wrote: But I asked because one of the attributes of God is that he is holy.

How would anyone know such a thing about any god?
And what does it mean for something to be holy?
hmm... you seem to try to explain it below...

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)Randy Carson Wrote: This is a tough word to define with respect to God...normally we say that something else is holy in relation to God. So, I'll try it this way (and I do recall that you are a non-believer - I'm simply explaining what Christians believe):

If you are familiar with the scriptures, do you recall the reactions that people had when they came into God's presence?

Fear.

Adam and Eve had walked with God in the garden before they disobeyed; after, they hid from him. Why?
God told Moses, "No man can see my face and live." Why?

I could provide other examples, but I offer these as representative of the fact that a Holy God is not going to be able to interact with a fallen race in the heartwarming manner which you described in your long post because we are sinners. We are not holy. We would flee from God in terror because He is awesome.

Only after we are made righteous are we able to come into His presence because nothing impure may enter heaven.

Faith in Jesus is what makes this purification possible.

I must have missed the part where you define holy.... anyway...
It says in your book that people fear the god... it says so repeatedly. Does that make it true?
In 20th century fiction, man-god encounters have been conceived where fear is not the resultant emotion.





Oh well... I can conceive of a situation where no such fear would be induced. People's mentalities have evolved and most westerners (at least) should cope pretty well with meeting a creator god. Believers would prostrate themselves, non-believers would poke the guy and, in between, we'd arrive at a pretty well educated notion of what this god really is... sadly, such is not the case... we have to rely on ancient scripture emanating from the Middle-East, where other similar scriptures have also emanated... not to mention yet other scriptures that come from other parts of the world... Sorry, I have no reason to accept your particular scripture as trustworthy.

Also, no, we are not sinners. Sin is a concept invented by religions which conveys actions that those religions do not want humans to undertake... and your particular brand of religion is one of the worst, in this respect, convincing people that they are born in such a sinful state.
And it is a concept which, fortunately, seems to have no real-world implications, except for those imposed by the believers in the concept. If there were no believers, the concept of sin would disappear, fade into forgetfulness... There would be no sin at all. Mankind would live on this planet without sin.
Doesn't that seem like a worthy goal?
Not exactly the way you'd put it, huh?

Which brings us back to "holy", another concept invented by religions to describe proximity to the divine. God is defined as 100%holy and all others are some smaller percentage of holy. Did I get the gist right? Of course, this percentage is attributed by people to people and things and is a completely subjective value. So... why should I care about any holiness?

(May 20, 2015 at 9:44 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: Why wouldn't he create us with the knowledge of good and evil?  And if men were never meant to have the knowledge of good and evil...why not just get rid of A&E and start over, instead of going through all the trouble of condemning every single person that's ever going to live and setting up the laborious process of sacrificing himself to himself to provide an out from his own rules?

Reverse engineering sucks when you have no engineering skillz.

(May 19, 2015 at 9:43 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Why did Luke Skywalker turn off his computer and rely on the Force? 

Some things in works of fiction are never understood.

It was a shitty computer, it looked like it was no help at all. Anyway he could already bullseye womp rats so he had mad skillz. 

(May 20, 2015 at 9:39 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: Why can't the Holy God interact with a fallen race?  

Probably just can't stand constantly facing up to His own bad design flaws. So much potential this animal that we are has and yet so many of us bog down in worship. That must be the equivalent of failure to launch syndrome for creator gods. A human which can't help but grovel and 'worship' is probably more annoying than a grown dog that can't greet you without humping your leg.

But it boggles my mind...he waited up until Noah to hit the 'reset' button when he knew humans were fallen and sinful and condemned. Why not hit the reset button after Adam and Eve and simply not put the Tree of Knowledge anywhere in the garden?