I want you to know I will not be answering any question dealing with your personal feelings or beliefs. I will however address biblically based questions. so If I missed something you want to discuss, then you will have to rephrase.
[quote='Skepsis' pid='323098' dateline='1344950044']
[quote]You're not seeing my point.[/quote]actually I do. You are wanting to force this topic to fit a known philosphical arguement, that pits the popular understanding of free will against a all knowing creator.
The problem is you are having to introduce a red herring to make this arguement fit what I have said in this thread. Which I will address in your 'explaination' of God's plan.
[quote]You think? I'd say that most times justice is administered it is based on viable evidence. Unless you are suggesting that all judicial systems in the world are unjust and flawed...?[/quote]
Which is why God's Righteous Judgements are not considered to be 'justic' For He does not levy a Judgement on incomplete information. therefore a generally accepted 'fairness' is not required.
[quote]If the alternative is to burn in hellfire?[/quote]Did you just not say God's Judgements sickened you? So that would mean not all would find Heaven to their liking. What if you wnet to Heaven and found you had to serve as a Slave for eternity? would you rather be a Slave to God or be seperated from Him?
[quote]I find this rather insulting then. You are here to save the atheists from hell or "Spiritual Torment", yet belief isn't the deciding factor. Are you insinuating that atheists are intrinsically immoral? Or amoral?[/quote]Another Red Herring. I said "Belief' was not the deciding factor." I did not say christian morality was.
Eitherway know both Christian and Atheist morality fall far short of earning on a spot in Heaven via their deeds. for no matter what version of 'morality' you adopt it is a personal version of the righteousness we have been called to with the sin we are willing to incoperate (live with) set into that standard. which makes our 'morality' (which ever version) Meaningless before God.
[quote]So belief is necessary anyway?[/quote]Belief is the catalist for this whole process.
[quote]And in your God's plan there isn't an alternative.[/quote]Heaven or Hell.
[quote]Unless it has changed since Adam and Eve, then the plan remains that we are left no alternative than to sin. Then, he planned odd, ritualistic vicarious redemption through a blood sacrifice of his own son that wasn't really a sacrifice because he went to heaven in the end anyway, though for some reason he didn't plan the actions of every human being.[/quote]
More or less, and I would like to add we do not know what the full extent of Christ's sacerfice was. Something changed between The Father and The Son, but we do not yet understand the extent of it.
This next bit is the Red Herring I mentioned in the beginning of this post:
[quote]But by the nature of God he must have planned how every single event that would ever occur would play out and what our choices would be given the universe he created, seeing as how he knew the consequence for the creation of any given universe before he created it.[/quote]
what is the nature of God as you understand it? Do you have supporting scripture to back these assertions? If not, how can you have so much intimate knoweledge of a God you say does not exist and then know Him better than one who has spent 20 or so years studying Him from the bible?
-or-
Is this simply how you need God to be, inorder for the rest of your arguement to work?
[quote]Therefore, he also had to know, before he created anything, what everyone would do every second of their lives given and choice they might be given.
I can hardly think of anything more analogous to programming than that scenario.[/quote]This straw man all kinda falls apart when your forced to work with only the stated nature of God, as per the bible.
[quote]Answer me this, according to your mythology: Am I free to choose my breakfast? You said earlier that one of the only choices we have is to sin or not to sin, and I took that to mean that you believed there to be little choice at all, which is why I accused you of special pleading.[/quote]
Ok I see now what you are saying. My arguement says we are only garanteed one choice. not that we are limited to one choice.
[quote]Like I said, I looked at it as something I would be looking for long. The fact that my prayers weren't answered at any age would have led me to question my skepticism that I now lead my life based on. [/quote]Again how do you know your prayers have not been answered? you can only say for certain that your prayers have not been answered the way you thought they should be answered.
[quote]Skepticism killed religion for me, not unanswered prayer.[/quote] Do you truly not see they are linked?
[quote] Still, why was my attempt half assed, according to you?[/quote]You said you did not goto Church, you did not read the bible, yet you felt like you knew God well enough to make wishes, at an age when God is perceived to be a great wizard anyway, and based on what happened here you have changed the rest of your life... Respectfully, in your estimation how is this not a 'half assed' attempt?
In the passage of Luke 11 that i posted it says we are to Ask, Seek and Knock for the Holy Spirit. For He will provide the 'proof' we all seeks (and many other things that will sustain belief as well.) We ask in prayer (you did ask, sort of if you are willing to take a very liberal interpertation of prayer) You did not seek, for we seek in the bible, in Church, and in discussions like this. and you did not knock. Which has one asking and seeking till He gets what He wants. One could potentially spend a life time knocking, but it is usally limited to the hardness of one heart. (willingness to let their sins of choice go)
[quote] I did all I felt I could for quite a while, and if God really knew me he knows what I needed to justify me in my faith. Why didn't he give me that?[/quote]
again How do you KNOW this is not what is happening now? Why do you assume God had to give you want you wanted in the way you were asking? God knows you better than that. I was a youth minister for a while and I know better than to grant a wish to a 13 year old without restrictions or modifications. Especially a wish dealing with the knoweledge or wisdom of God. If you asked God to answer a wish that a wizard would grant, then you at 13 are establishing God as a wizard in your minds eye.
This is a problem because God is not a wizard, so it would be foolish to reinforce an incorrect view of who God is. For what would happen to you and your faith when you found out that God was not the wizard who 'prooved' Himself to you when you were 13?
would you have God lie to you? Or is the God of the universe creator of all things bound bound to change His nature to fit your finite understanding of who He is supposed to be?
Wouldn't it be more wise to bring your understanding up past the comperhension of a 13 year old rather than lie or change the order of the universe to fit the understanding that you specifically had at 13?
again Now what if in order for you to change your understanding of God you had to learn to question and resolve issues that you could not get past, while doing what you would have done if God answered your prayer the way you wanted it answered?
If God was looking to change your understanding of Him by forcing you to seek and ask,(BTW don't look now but this is exactly what you are doing) then endowing you with a good measure of skeptisim would be an answer to your orginal prayer.
The only question now is, what will you do with this answered prayer? Will you seek God? Or will you seek a philosphy that allows you to further seperate yourself from Him?
[quote] Just a "mystery of God"?[/quote]
Only if you do not know Him.
[quote]I don't base my entire life on unanswered prayers.[/quote]Two observations. 1) you haven't lived your life yet, so you do not know what you will do. 2) you do not know God did not answer your prayer.
[quote]Are you calling me naive or unwise due to my age? [/quote]I said exactly what I meant. You have not live long enough to know. you were speaking from a point of absolute knoweledge of how your life will unfold. the only way we can do this is by looking back after we have experienced something. @ 18 you can not say this. Wisdom (outside of being to indentify this process) does not play into the equasion.
[quote]My timeline is insurmountably small compared to his. I might live to be 80, if I am lucky. he'll live forever, and exists everywhere at all times. Nothing is stopping him from saving me.[/quote]He already has, you just have to accept this salvation.
[quote] Nothing. Yet, he sat at the sidelines and watched as I threw my life to sin.[/quote] tells us in Romans 8 we are in sin all of the time (even after we are saved) So to turn you over to the sin you are already commiting is nothing that hasn't already happened. the only difference is how you feel about sin and how you feel about God. Your heart now reflects your actions.
[quote]I have always yielded to my skepticism, asking the questions I felt needed to be answered regardless of discipline. In my younger years (lol) I was more rebellious and would ask controversial questions all the time.[/quote] It's not just about asking questions it about living them and the answers that follow.
[quote]Still, what if you were right? Why didn't god give me the answers so I could follow your path or one like it?[/quote]How do you know you are not living the path I walked for the first 1/2 of my life?
The only difference I see is the order in which you have decided to walk this portion of the path and the amount of time you will spend here.
[quote]"confidence in what we hope for" = "wishful thinking"
"assurance about what we do not see" = "I'll believe regardless of whether or not I can prove this shit"
I'd say I was spot-on with my faith at that point in time.[/quote]
Maybe you should try the easy to read version, it takes alot of the room you used to jump to the wrong conclusion about faith out of the discussion.
11 Faith is what makes real the things we hope for. It is proof of what we cannot see. 2 God was pleased with the people who lived a long time ago because they had faith like this.
[quote='Skepsis' pid='323098' dateline='1344950044']
[quote]You're not seeing my point.[/quote]actually I do. You are wanting to force this topic to fit a known philosphical arguement, that pits the popular understanding of free will against a all knowing creator.
The problem is you are having to introduce a red herring to make this arguement fit what I have said in this thread. Which I will address in your 'explaination' of God's plan.
[quote]You think? I'd say that most times justice is administered it is based on viable evidence. Unless you are suggesting that all judicial systems in the world are unjust and flawed...?[/quote]
Which is why God's Righteous Judgements are not considered to be 'justic' For He does not levy a Judgement on incomplete information. therefore a generally accepted 'fairness' is not required.
[quote]If the alternative is to burn in hellfire?[/quote]Did you just not say God's Judgements sickened you? So that would mean not all would find Heaven to their liking. What if you wnet to Heaven and found you had to serve as a Slave for eternity? would you rather be a Slave to God or be seperated from Him?
[quote]I find this rather insulting then. You are here to save the atheists from hell or "Spiritual Torment", yet belief isn't the deciding factor. Are you insinuating that atheists are intrinsically immoral? Or amoral?[/quote]Another Red Herring. I said "Belief' was not the deciding factor." I did not say christian morality was.
Eitherway know both Christian and Atheist morality fall far short of earning on a spot in Heaven via their deeds. for no matter what version of 'morality' you adopt it is a personal version of the righteousness we have been called to with the sin we are willing to incoperate (live with) set into that standard. which makes our 'morality' (which ever version) Meaningless before God.
[quote]So belief is necessary anyway?[/quote]Belief is the catalist for this whole process.
[quote]And in your God's plan there isn't an alternative.[/quote]Heaven or Hell.
[quote]Unless it has changed since Adam and Eve, then the plan remains that we are left no alternative than to sin. Then, he planned odd, ritualistic vicarious redemption through a blood sacrifice of his own son that wasn't really a sacrifice because he went to heaven in the end anyway, though for some reason he didn't plan the actions of every human being.[/quote]
More or less, and I would like to add we do not know what the full extent of Christ's sacerfice was. Something changed between The Father and The Son, but we do not yet understand the extent of it.
This next bit is the Red Herring I mentioned in the beginning of this post:
[quote]But by the nature of God he must have planned how every single event that would ever occur would play out and what our choices would be given the universe he created, seeing as how he knew the consequence for the creation of any given universe before he created it.[/quote]
what is the nature of God as you understand it? Do you have supporting scripture to back these assertions? If not, how can you have so much intimate knoweledge of a God you say does not exist and then know Him better than one who has spent 20 or so years studying Him from the bible?
-or-
Is this simply how you need God to be, inorder for the rest of your arguement to work?
[quote]Therefore, he also had to know, before he created anything, what everyone would do every second of their lives given and choice they might be given.
I can hardly think of anything more analogous to programming than that scenario.[/quote]This straw man all kinda falls apart when your forced to work with only the stated nature of God, as per the bible.
[quote]Answer me this, according to your mythology: Am I free to choose my breakfast? You said earlier that one of the only choices we have is to sin or not to sin, and I took that to mean that you believed there to be little choice at all, which is why I accused you of special pleading.[/quote]
Ok I see now what you are saying. My arguement says we are only garanteed one choice. not that we are limited to one choice.
[quote]Like I said, I looked at it as something I would be looking for long. The fact that my prayers weren't answered at any age would have led me to question my skepticism that I now lead my life based on. [/quote]Again how do you know your prayers have not been answered? you can only say for certain that your prayers have not been answered the way you thought they should be answered.
[quote]Skepticism killed religion for me, not unanswered prayer.[/quote] Do you truly not see they are linked?
[quote] Still, why was my attempt half assed, according to you?[/quote]You said you did not goto Church, you did not read the bible, yet you felt like you knew God well enough to make wishes, at an age when God is perceived to be a great wizard anyway, and based on what happened here you have changed the rest of your life... Respectfully, in your estimation how is this not a 'half assed' attempt?
In the passage of Luke 11 that i posted it says we are to Ask, Seek and Knock for the Holy Spirit. For He will provide the 'proof' we all seeks (and many other things that will sustain belief as well.) We ask in prayer (you did ask, sort of if you are willing to take a very liberal interpertation of prayer) You did not seek, for we seek in the bible, in Church, and in discussions like this. and you did not knock. Which has one asking and seeking till He gets what He wants. One could potentially spend a life time knocking, but it is usally limited to the hardness of one heart. (willingness to let their sins of choice go)
[quote] I did all I felt I could for quite a while, and if God really knew me he knows what I needed to justify me in my faith. Why didn't he give me that?[/quote]
again How do you KNOW this is not what is happening now? Why do you assume God had to give you want you wanted in the way you were asking? God knows you better than that. I was a youth minister for a while and I know better than to grant a wish to a 13 year old without restrictions or modifications. Especially a wish dealing with the knoweledge or wisdom of God. If you asked God to answer a wish that a wizard would grant, then you at 13 are establishing God as a wizard in your minds eye.
This is a problem because God is not a wizard, so it would be foolish to reinforce an incorrect view of who God is. For what would happen to you and your faith when you found out that God was not the wizard who 'prooved' Himself to you when you were 13?
would you have God lie to you? Or is the God of the universe creator of all things bound bound to change His nature to fit your finite understanding of who He is supposed to be?
Wouldn't it be more wise to bring your understanding up past the comperhension of a 13 year old rather than lie or change the order of the universe to fit the understanding that you specifically had at 13?
again Now what if in order for you to change your understanding of God you had to learn to question and resolve issues that you could not get past, while doing what you would have done if God answered your prayer the way you wanted it answered?
If God was looking to change your understanding of Him by forcing you to seek and ask,(BTW don't look now but this is exactly what you are doing) then endowing you with a good measure of skeptisim would be an answer to your orginal prayer.
The only question now is, what will you do with this answered prayer? Will you seek God? Or will you seek a philosphy that allows you to further seperate yourself from Him?
[quote] Just a "mystery of God"?[/quote]
Only if you do not know Him.
[quote]I don't base my entire life on unanswered prayers.[/quote]Two observations. 1) you haven't lived your life yet, so you do not know what you will do. 2) you do not know God did not answer your prayer.
[quote]Are you calling me naive or unwise due to my age? [/quote]I said exactly what I meant. You have not live long enough to know. you were speaking from a point of absolute knoweledge of how your life will unfold. the only way we can do this is by looking back after we have experienced something. @ 18 you can not say this. Wisdom (outside of being to indentify this process) does not play into the equasion.
[quote]My timeline is insurmountably small compared to his. I might live to be 80, if I am lucky. he'll live forever, and exists everywhere at all times. Nothing is stopping him from saving me.[/quote]He already has, you just have to accept this salvation.
[quote] Nothing. Yet, he sat at the sidelines and watched as I threw my life to sin.[/quote] tells us in Romans 8 we are in sin all of the time (even after we are saved) So to turn you over to the sin you are already commiting is nothing that hasn't already happened. the only difference is how you feel about sin and how you feel about God. Your heart now reflects your actions.
[quote]I have always yielded to my skepticism, asking the questions I felt needed to be answered regardless of discipline. In my younger years (lol) I was more rebellious and would ask controversial questions all the time.[/quote] It's not just about asking questions it about living them and the answers that follow.
[quote]Still, what if you were right? Why didn't god give me the answers so I could follow your path or one like it?[/quote]How do you know you are not living the path I walked for the first 1/2 of my life?
The only difference I see is the order in which you have decided to walk this portion of the path and the amount of time you will spend here.
[quote]"confidence in what we hope for" = "wishful thinking"
"assurance about what we do not see" = "I'll believe regardless of whether or not I can prove this shit"
I'd say I was spot-on with my faith at that point in time.[/quote]
Maybe you should try the easy to read version, it takes alot of the room you used to jump to the wrong conclusion about faith out of the discussion.
11 Faith is what makes real the things we hope for. It is proof of what we cannot see. 2 God was pleased with the people who lived a long time ago because they had faith like this.
