(November 17, 2017 at 9:45 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:[/quote](November 17, 2017 at 8:10 pm)SteveII Wrote:(November 17, 2017 at 6:57 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: I feel like I'm not explaining my thoughts properly.
So, god is sitting around contemplating creating existence and people. He, I dunno, imagines what he would like in a creation. The instant he does so, he sees/understands exactly how the entire scenario is going to play out, including the choices and fates of every single human being who would end up existing. Now that he understands how plan A will go, he has to make some decisions. I'll posit some options below:
* Go forward with plan A anyway, knowing how many of his "children" he'll be damning to an eternity of suffering.
* Perhaps a plan B. Same as plan A, minus hell.
* Plan C. Don't go through with it at all, and save everyone's soul in an instant.
* Plan D. Something else. Anything else. Make purple smurfs who are morally perfect and incapable of sin. He's god; he can literally do anything.
But, God chooses plan A for us, doesn't he? Where was our choice; our will in all of this? We had none. We were never meaningfully in control of our existence. God picked what he wanted for our souls out of an infinite number of possibilities, knowing how it would play out, and said, "this is the future I've chosen for you." Please explain to me again, how are we free?
Quote:Plan A includes creating us with free will. This is important because it seems thinking, rational beings capable of choice, morality, and a real relationship between creator and creature seems to be the pinnacle of anything anyone could ever create--including God.
So, is god limited in his creative forces?
If God created people with free will, then he has by definition, subordinated his ability to control everything.
Quote:Quote:Plan B is not possible. Holiness and justice are essential (couldn't have been any other way) to God. They are perfections. Sin (from A) creates the barrier because of his Holiness and a need to pay the penalty because of his justice.
So, god is not capable of thinking up a consequence that teaches his creation the error of his ways without damning him to eternal torture? I mean, why was torture the only option? I'm starting to feel like this god character is not as all-powerful as people allege he is.
Two things. If you are asking could he have done something else, then no. A perfect nature can not be violated, ever. The consequence is separation from God. It is not like there is some overlord planning out the daily torture. The torture is just complete separation from God--something that apparently has a tremendous effect on the soul.
Quote:Quote:Plan C -- God chose to create thinking, rational beings capable of choice, morality, and a real relationship between creator and creatures. I, for one am not going to whine that I should never have had existed and my wife and children shouldn't have existed because other people make the wrong choice. The potentially infinite goodness available to all, chosen by a minority does not make God's choice to create everything problematic from a logical nor a moral standpoint.
Billions of thinking, feeling, living, loving humans in the world, and you take no moral issue with the lot of them suffering in pain for a literal eternity, in many cases simply for the fact that they were raised with the "wrong" religion, or born in the wrong location? These are the actions of an all-loving being?
I dunno, Steve. Coming back to my original charge, each response to my hypothetical scenarios seems to imply either lack of ability or lack of will on the part of your god.
IMO (with Biblical support), God makes his presence known to everyone at some point and each is judged on his/her response to the information they have been given. Wrong religion or wrong location does not mean hell. God's ability or lack of will has nothing to do with it. These are the consequences of the conjunction of free will, God's holiness, and God's justice.
Quote:Yes, God chose plan A for us. I for one, am glad he did. He did NOT chose a future for us -- only that we had a future to chose. Listen, there is nothing illogical about any of this. You objection is on an emotional level. I understand that. But it really isn't the problem you imagine for Christianity.
It's certainly illogical when your god is supposedly omnibenevolent and omnipotent. We, as a civilization, don't even torture serial killers for the remainder of their finite lives, lol.
Omnibenevolent and omnipotence subordinated to our Free Will. People don't go to hell for finite crimes. They go to hell for rejecting an infinite God while possessing an infinite soul, therefore infinite consequences.