RE: Prayer?
August 13, 2012 at 12:48 pm
(This post was last modified: August 13, 2012 at 12:50 pm by Undeceived.)
(August 13, 2012 at 12:06 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote: You cannot prove the Garden of Eden ever existed. You cannot prove anything of what The Bible claims of our origins so cut that shit out right now.When I argue for God I argue for the Christian God and everything He entails. Take the full package or nothing at all. If you don't, we're just supposing a god in thin air whose attributes we cannot begin to guess. The Bible gives us a starting point.
Quote:How would you not be able to earn or give gratitude in a world where a God is evidently active, loving and protective of his creation? You don't think people would be grateful for that?Suffering reminds us of God and how dependent and indebted we are to Him. Without death, we become self-sufficient. We don't need God. God ceases to be "evidently active" the moment he gives our bodies a permanent clean bill of health. Or would you advocate the Manna in the Desert scenario, in which our bodies are not immune but we receive food every morning? That didn't work out too well--the Israelites still grumbled. They did not love God; they only tolerated Him because they got food. Is that how you want your spouse to act toward you? To take your generosity and go out and sleep with another man? God created us for a spiritual love story; an active relationship. If we have everything we need without asking, we set ourselves up as gods and forget about the real Creator who wants to get to know us.
Adam and Eve can help explain this God. They too had perfect bodies. They walked with God every day--until temptation (in the form of free will) came. They desired knowledge equal to God. They looked inside themselves and sought to be autonomous, able to live without Him. If Adam and Eve refused a visible God, how would we even remember an invisible one? So ever since Eden God has made weak our bodies, so that we might know we are but created organisms, fully indebted to Creator God, and that we might seek Him to overcome our shortcomings with a new body in Heaven.
Describe to me a world in which utopia and free will coexist.