(March 7, 2012 at 5:58 pm)chipan Wrote:Quote: I am not saying God could create a world in which free will was possible and doing bad things impossible. I am simply saying God could have created a world in which ETERNAL TORMENT for such things was not a part of reality. Although God could have made us immortal from the start and allowed all planets to sustain life thus eliminating harm in the first place.
He started making us immortal. God said to man "do not eat of the tree or you will surely die." to then say never mind would be dishonest of him. And he wants us to choose him. in this world we have choice so he was successful in that matter.
Quote: As far as God cannot do something outside of his nature what caused God to have his own nature? God is said to be uncaused and always to have existed but something caused the imprinting of his qualities. I never understood why people get upset about the idea of infinite regression with the Universe when God is defined in a way as to have never begun but always had these qualities as a part of nature. I won't get too far into that because that would derail the thread into a different topic.
God dwells outside time and doesnt have a begining or an end. Neither does his qualities and characteristics. The reason we can't say the same about the universe is because time is a fixed part of the universe and as far as your cosmology goes, it always was. If you claim it wasn't then you will need an explanation for the origin of time.
Quote: I am all for the idea of God choosing to love us and therefore us wanting to love him. However God's way of getting our love seems to be through threats and gifts. If we do not give him our love he will deliver us to the worst kind of agony and if we do we get rewards. This reward/punishment morality/love system seems very primitive to me and I have a hard time believing an all wise being came up with it. I freely admit there may be some form of deity out there but I find it extraordinarily hard to believe Yahweh is that deity.
It's not rewards punishment. In life he rewards even when we don't deserve it. He also rewards when we do deserve it. God is simply trying to save us from hell and if you don't want to be saved then you won't.
God first of all could have saved everyone from Hell by not making it in the first place. It is so weird that God portrays himself as a hero even though what he is saving you from is HIS CREATION in the first place.
Actually God gave two people that crack at immortality apparently. They screwed it up so no one else gets a shot? In addition to that how did Adam and Eve know that obeying God was good? It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil right? So before eating of it they knew neither good nor evil? If that is the case how did they know that it was GOOD to obey God? Which was it? Did they have knowledge of good and evil before eating of the tree or not?
Time is a perception we have come up with. The only way you could define time is energy fluctuating I suppose. Time is a construct we invented its not something tangible just something we use to track the passage/transitions in matter. God does NOT explain the origin of existence/time in the first place. God's own existence first of all must be proven and second of all you are arguing that time always did exist just in some other form.
God existed in reality in some form or the other. So in a sense time, in some format, has always existed it just wasn't measured. There is nothing special about time it is just a concept not a reality. So God is not the author of that because WE invented the idea of time. If someone didn't teach you about "time" you would just see reality and notice cycles in nature I.E. the sun/moon/stars. It was only after you were told about it that this idea of time existing was even imposed on your reality. Do you think animals know what time it is or just have synced up to the cycle of things?
