(June 30, 2015 at 6:11 pm)Godschild Wrote: You aren't think about what goes one here, how many thousands of times have atheist here said they wouldn't live a life limited by God.They are usually referring to a specific god or a specific description of god. No one wants to live under a tyrant, and if they see god described as a tyrant, it's natural that they reject that god. Keeping in mind that until any god makes his existence known, it's hypothetical to them as well.
Godschild Wrote:In the end Satan would accuse God of forcing people to do what He wanted, He would ask God what kind of love is forced love, he would say forced love is no love at all, and he would be correct.I don't think he would be correct. I don't see why god would give us the ability to turn away from him if the only possible outcome of that is eternal torment. It's a pretty fine line between offering that and forcing us to obey. How free can we really be when one of the two choices ends in the worst possible outcome?
Godschild Wrote:Yes I do believe they understood what death meant as for lies I do not believe they understood what deception is, that to me would have been a knowledge that came from the tree.But this implies that they were expected to obey without question. In the face of deception, their only recourse was blind obedience to god, otherwise they risked damnation. That doesn't seem very different from the concept of forced love.
Godschild Wrote:I noticed you said risky. It's only risky for those who refuse to choose Christ.I meant risky for god, in the sense that he desires for everyone to be saved, yet implements a situation that he knows many will fail. If each lost soul pains god in the way that a lost child pains its parents, he has placed an enormous burden upon himself, even though it's in his power to change it in a way that makes it better for everyone: him and all of humanity.
Godschild Wrote:God doesn't see choice as a flaw, in actuality it's a gift, one to be used as we desire.But with a very bad end to those whose desires do not follow those of god. It's a bad choice because god has the capability to save us all if he chooses. He chooses a situation where most will fail and suffer. That is a bad setup. Why couldn't we have the freedom to choose anything except to reject god? Is it really a bad thing to be incapable of choosing only the things that would be bad for us? Would world be a worse place if no one felt the urge to hurt one another?
Godschild Wrote:Sounds to me you are like a number of people I've known, you went through the motions until you got tired of trying to do God on your own and then quit, I think you didn't turn your heart over to Christ and receive the faith God has for you.I don't know how to judge my time as a Christian. To the believer, there has to be an explanation that covers what they expect from god, and so it is not possible that I was sincere or that I was doing it the right way. To me, it seems much more sensible to recognize the extent to which we interpret our lives when we want god to be real, and understand that if we have to do all the lifting, then god is either very lazy or not there.
I've skipped over any parts that I don't want to respond to or that I am satisfied with your reply. You can consider those points conceded in your favor.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould