How far reaching are God's powers?

[Angrboda]

1) Of course.

So, in other words, you think it's moral to hurt someone for doing something that they couldn't have avoided doing?

No, not in other words. You're deliberately removing a crucial part of my argument.

It is moral to hold someone responsible for an evil act they have committed. The rest of what you wrote is just an excuse. Just because God made us evil doesn't mean we're blameless. We're evil. We can't change what we are, and that much isn't our fault, but just because we were made evil doesn't mean we shouldn't be held responsible for our evil acts. How else are we supposed to understand the gravity of sin?

And you'll say that doesn't make sense, and on its own I could somewhat agree with you, but you must take context into account. It isn't as simple as you would like to paint it. God is raising up children to be made in His image, that is, knowing good from evil. The only way to know good from evil is to experience evil for ourselves. That entails necessarily committing evil acts and suffering the consequences thereof.

If God had created us as evil, with there being no purpose to that evil except freedom to commit it, then that would've been evil of Him because the evil would've existed for its own sake, and not to accomplish good. God uses evil for good, therefore subjecting us to evil is a moral act, despite the suffering it entails.

So, let me see if I get this. You believe that people who aren't to blame are not blameless? I'm pretty sure that's what blameless means. What exactly are they being blamed for? It sounds an awful lot like blaming someone for being black or having brown hair. Is it right to punish someone for being black?

And you're right, I wasn't aware of your greater context. So in other words, if someone uses bad to do good, that would be moral, correct? Let's try this out. Let's say there are 6 people in an emergency room, one of whom can be easily fixed, but the other five will need an organ transplant which will not be available. If I kill the one guy for his organs so that the other 5 can live, then I've done bad to accomplish a greater good. So that would be moral to you, killing the one guy?

2) Well, I've staked my life on being right about God, so if I'm wrong, then I will pay for it with my life.

That's admirable.  But it doesn't answer the question.  Entertain it as a hypothesis, let's assume that you're wrong for the moment -- what are you doing in your life that would eventually lead to you discovering that fact?

It's not admirable. I've done nothing worthy of praise whatsoever. God has had mercy on me because He chose to, not because I chose it or earned it. Nothing admirable about that at all, except on His part.

To answer the rest of this, the Lord would have to forsake me. He would have to abandon me in some way I couldn't possibly explain. Give me cancer, for instance, or put me through some terrible and debilitating accident. Short of taking my life or giving me over to sin, those are the only options (well, that may not be true. There can be terrible spiritual consequences as well that I won't get into here). So far, the Lord hasn't forsaken me in any way that I can make that conclusion with any certainty. I've suffered, but my suffering has been deserved and needed, and the damage not permanent, so far as I can tell anyway.

Well, that would be all well and good if we can depend upon your information about God, but you're forgetting the first premise here. In this exercise we're assuming that you are wrong in one or more of your particulars about God. That's the assumption. And you need to show how you would figure that out to be the case. You can't depend upon any of your specific beliefs about God as it's possible that very belief that you are depending on may be one of the things that you are wrong about. So the above would be reliable if your knowledge of God were reliable. But that's not the question. The question is how would you discover you are wrong about God, if in fact you are wrong in one or more particulars. In that case, your answer is of no use.

Try again. How would you discover that you are wrong?