On Hell and Forgiveness

[Abaddon_ire]

All of that was amusingly wrong.

Is there any crap you will not swallow sideways?

[The Grand Nudger]

Drich, for most people...even most believing people, morality is not about loving god (or following the law).  It's about doing what is right, and not doing what is wrong.  It's about what we deserve in either case.  

At best, you believe that god set up a separate system to make an end run around moral agency and responsibility.  This is why, in all the time you've been here..you've made no headway with the whole "pop morality" thing.  Most* of the people here do not believe in your god, a moral person (believing or otherwise) has no need of reference to your god, and the thing you are describing has nothing whatsoever to do with morality.

*By most I mean no one, ofc. You're the only person here who believes in your god.

[Drich]

Drich, for most people...even most believing people, morality is not about loving god (or following the law).  It's about doing what is right, and not doing what is wrong.  It's about what we deserve in either case.  

but you confuse what is right with what is right for you. you are even willing to live with and accept evil in this standard of right. that what makes it pop morality. because right and wrong are a generational thing. just think 25 years ago and even hillary clinton's position on Gay people (don't ask don't tell) now look at it. "right and wrong mean nothing." the question is can you keep up with the standard of what society wants to live with.

At best, you believe that god set up a separate system to make an end run around moral agency and responsibility.

This is where you and legalistic christian fail to look past your own assumptions about the 'Agape' required (I hate saying love here because it gives you a false impression.) Look at what Agape' meant to Christ. If you were inclined to read the gospels and truly find out, all the crowds all the healing all the making fish and bread/feeding all the speeches took a great toll on him. yet he stayed and gave of himself.

look at Him praying in the garden to have the cross burden taken from him, but went anyway because of us/those who wish to be saved. look at what was endured on our behalf, try and think of all the spiritual pain we can never know while he was dead those three days.

That is Agape' That is doing far and beyond what is simply right. that is giving yourself up to be ravaged by the wolves for the sake of maybe saving a few from what you know will be a terrible life. Why do you think I come back day after day? I truly do not need to be verbally lashed by a few dozen people talking turns till they wear themselves out, only to be picked up by someone else the next day. But it is not about me. it is bout showing you the grace I was shown when I was standing in your shoes.

IT is about showing you what agape means by giving you a maximum effort each and every time I try and explain something one of you asks about and it is about consistency in the fact that no matter how heated things get I try treat each post as if it were the first.

Why because again that is what I needed and as a direct result of the 2nd command Christ gave us, to treat you as I want to be treated. or in this case how I was treated till I changed.

Despite what people think about this, in run around morality, Christ Himself boiled the whole law down to two single points for Christians that is 1 Love/show Agape to God with all that you have, and 2 show your neighbor the agape you want to receive for yourself. which by default makes you want to go beyond what is right if you are honest with yourself. i use the word agape as a substitute for love because people now discard the word love as it means too many trivial things. Agape is a specific all encompassing type of love built on duty respect and honor for a person. this is more of a warrior/hard fought bond and not a valentine's greeting which is quickly forgotten.

To show one the agape you yourself needs puts you preaching to the crowds after they take and take and take from you, after they beat you up it puts you in prayer to have this burden taken from you. In that you just want to have a normal job/life and not feel responsible for a mob of strangers who hate and revile you most of the time. this agape will even see you to your own personal cross/real death, or even years and years of service with no promises, no end in site.
You may trivialize Jesus two rules for Christianity, but if you gave it any serious thought, you would see there is far more being asked of you in the way of doing not your 'right thing' but God's 'right thing' which mirrors what has already been done for you.

  This is why, in all the time you've been here..you've made no headway with the whole "pop morality" thing.  Most* of the people here do not believe in your god, a moral person (believing or otherwise)

of course not because morality is that generational standard that changes to fit the amount of evil you want to live with. morality is not about being or doing good it is about making excuses for evil. Is it moral to steal, still no.. is it moral to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving children? yes of course it is. Is it moral to kill? no again, is it moral to kill a baby? 1000x's no.. is it moral to kill a fetus, yes...

Do you see? morality is not about doing right.. it is about justifying wrong. or rather making wrong right, and right wrong. So if God is righteous, then by the actions of 'morality' God becomes what is wrong, while what once was evil become what is right/the gold standard. So of course if you use a corrupt standard like morality where generationally good is redefined to accept evil society wishes to live with, then of course God will become less and less moral in your eyes.

Do you see? you created a standard to fit your tastes.. So did the colonial Americans when they adopted Slavery, So did we when we slaughtered the american indians, So did hitler when he slaughtered the jews citing us when we killed the indians..
before you just react, think about that for a second.. in hitler's germany, it was one's MORAL Obligation to help the state any way you were asked to kill all the jews within the boarders of your country. Do you see the connection? do you see how far 'morality' can stretch? do you know if they won the war, this would not be any different than the execution of criminals or the extermination of all the fetu-i? we have aborted since roe-v-wade?
6 million jews dead, and in that state, in that time, it was your MORAL obligation to do so..

It is only by the grace of time and society do you have the perspective to call those germans wrong or evil. There were 80 something million people living in germany just before WWII, don't think for an instant you are unlike anyone else here who lives by pop morality then or now. Any one living by this pop standard would have not the wherewithal to buck the pop morality of hitler's germany.

Why can I say that? because they like you were conditioned to blindly accept anything "science" said. If information was packaged in such a manner sourcing from science through the right political affiliation (what we now deem as propaganda) would be considered to be iron clad truth to them. Just like darwinism or global warming is to us witnessed by our willingness to spend trillions, or in the case of germany or the jews Science through a political party Identified everyone in this race of people as a genetic parasite on the human race, citing their facial features (noses/hooked hair black and matted curly, eye placement ect ect..) all of these things were supposed scientific proof that the jews were a genetic plague which did nothing more than horde valuables (creating an artificial gap in the standard of living/They had money supposedly and the "better breed" of people starved because of it) and consume resources better spent on again on the master/purer race.

The point is not from your life and social pov can you look at this point in time in this society with everything you know now, and discern whether or not you would fall for the propaganda.. no..

The point is given the frame work which the government structured the delivery of 'scientific fact' are you inclined right now, to act in favor of a 'scientific fact/truth' or can you stand objectively against what popular culture thinks/says even if 'science does not support you? can you right now stand on blind principle? That is why 80 MILLION Germans followed hitler. Their political party saved them from starvation with socialist public works, and science has provided them with the industry and technology to make them the strongest nation in the world..

Right now the (thankfully) the political system is not aligned with 'science' but when it comes around again and the push all the carbon taxes and get all the legislation they want eventually they will have to start to deal with the real problem... over population. and people hardest on resources. I don't see camps or ovens, but i can see a denial of public resources to 'people who do these things to themselves.' and I'm sure 'science will be used to back such a thing.. You know like a culling of say all heavy drug users, we don't put them in camps we just deny them public service (like Im sure some sort of obama care will be in place we can't afford making us choose who gets medical and who doesn't) or what about the extremely obese? they do it to themselves so as a people we vote and decide to refuse to waste precious medical resources on a person over 300 lbs.. or the old.. say a man only works 1/3 of his life paying into the system and need crazy expensive care the other 2/3s, should those who put in 100% be at risk for denial of service just because this guy who only put in 1/3 took more from the system? again no camps but the net result is the same. what about food distrbution? Say it comes down to a government service like in all socialist countries..
Who gets what and how much? and on and on. there are hundreds of ways of killing people in this own homes/no camps needed, when society turns on a smaller group to save the larger what mechanism do you have in place that says no? Can it say no to science? can it say no to all the leftist nut bags you guys worship? then why hasn't it?

then we move to genetically modifying all children so there are no birth defects, and then no obesity genes, and on and on till we do indeed have a master race. again instead of camps we do it clean/let nature take it course let darwinism have it's natural selection powered by a little more scientific advancement.

Again if you are not in a place to objectively refuse and justifiably so, the 'truths' or morality of modern popular culture you are currently NO different than those 80 million germans who allowed their pop morality to include murdering 6 million men women and children because of their faith and genetic features.

Without an absolute standard there is no end to what you can 'morally justify.'

So you call me immoral you call god immoral, I say thank you. I can stand apart from society and say no that is not right no that is wrong! Despite what our government may demand or what science may say.. and what is the knee jerk reaction? what have you been programmed to do with someone who can stand apart from society? you attack them personally of course you make them out to be a fool and dismiss them quickly so their ideas do not infect anyone else/you don't want you or your peers to think for yourselves.. just keep sucking from the nipple of science and social justice, nothing bad has ever come of that!

has no need of reference to your god, and the thing you are describing has nothing whatsoever to do with morality.

*By most I mean no one, ofc.  You're the only person here who believes in your god.

wouldn't be much of an atheist website if I weren't.
As far as other Christians go it is a personal Journey. not that I am at the end or the final revelation, but God will meet you any where along this path. if you need a legalistic God, he still has rules you can follow, but this is/what I describe what He wants for us to share with Him. not the crap the R/C church teaches but freedom and a direct one on one relationship where you can feel if you were to ask God to XYZ you know if your stuff is together you would XYZ

[The Grand Nudger]

but you confuse what is right with what is right for you. you are even willing to live with and accept evil in this standard of right. that what makes it pop morality. because right and wrong are a generational thing. just think 25 years ago and even hillary clinton's position on Gay people (don't ask don't tell) now look at it. "right and wrong mean nothing." the question is can you keep up with the standard of what society wants to live with.

I think that criticism might apply more stringently to yourself.  My rights and wrongs extend to myself and to all others.  Your right and wrong is nothing more or less than an attempt to please your god.  That may have something to do with what's right for you, but it's not even in the same category as right by any other non-idiosyncratic definition.

If it's a problem, it's a problem..but it's not my problem.

This is where you and legalistic christian fail to look past your own assumptions about the 'Agape' required (I hate saying love here because it gives you a false impression.) Look at what Agape' meant to Christ. If you were inclined to read the gospels and truly find out, all the crowds all the healing all the making fish and bread/feeding all the speeches took a great toll on him. yet he stayed and gave of himself.

look at Him praying in the garden to have the cross burden taken from him, but went anyway because of us/those who wish to be saved. look at what was endured on our behalf, try and think of all the spiritual pain we can never know while he was dead those three days.

That is Agape' That is doing far and beyond what is simply right. that is giving yourself up to be ravaged by the wolves for the sake of maybe saving a few from what you know will be a terrible life. Why do you think I come back day after day? I truly do not need to be verbally lashed by a few dozen people talking turns till they wear themselves out, only to be picked up by someone else the next day. But it is not about me. it is bout showing you the grace I was shown when I was standing in your shoes.

IT is about showing you what agape means by giving you a maximum effort each and every time I try and explain something one of you asks about and it is about consistency in the fact that no matter how heated things get I try treat each post as if it were the first.

Why because again that is what I needed and as a direct result of the 2nd command Christ gave us, to treat you as I want to be treated. or in this case how I was treated till I changed.

Despite what people think about this, in run around morality, Christ Himself boiled the whole law down to two single points for Christians that is 1 Love/show Agape to God with all that you have, and 2 show your neighbor the agape you want to receive for yourself. which by default makes you want to go beyond what is right if you are honest with yourself. i use the word agape as a substitute for love because people now discard the word love as it means too many trivial things. Agape is a specific all encompassing type of love built on duty respect and honor for a person. this is more of a warrior/hard fought bond and not a valentine's greeting which is quickly forgotten.

To show one the agape you yourself needs puts you preaching to the crowds after they take and take and take from you, after they beat you up it puts you in prayer to have this burden taken from you. In that you just want to have a normal job/life and not feel responsible for a mob of strangers who hate and revile you most of the time. this agape will even see you to your own personal cross/real death, or even years and years of service with no promises, no end in site.
You may trivialize Jesus two rules for Christianity, but if you gave it any serious thought, you would see there is far more being asked of you in the way of doing not your 'right thing' but God's 'right thing' which mirrors what has already been done for you.

None of that is relevant to me or to morality.  

of course not because morality is that generational standard that changes to fit the amount of evil you want to live with. morality is not about being or doing good it is about making excuses for evil. Is it moral to steal, still no.. is it moral to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving children? yes of course it is. Is it moral to kill? no again, is it moral to kill a baby? 1000x's no.. is it moral to kill a fetus, yes...

Yet another idiosyncratic definition.. informed by your beliefs, and made in abject ignorance.

Do you see? morality is not about doing right.. it is about justifying wrong. or rather making wrong right, and right wrong. So if God is righteous, then by the actions of 'morality' God becomes what is wrong, while what once was evil become what is right/the gold standard. So of course if you use a corrupt standard like morality where generationally good is redefined to accept evil society wishes to live with, then of course God will become less and less moral in your eyes.

That may be what your morality is about, but it has nothing to do with mine or with the morality of the people you criticize.  

Do you see? you created a standard to fit your tastes.. So did the colonial Americans when they adopted Slavery, So did we when we slaughtered the american indians, So did hitler when he slaughtered the jews citing us when we killed the indians..
before you just react, think about that for a second.. in hitler's germany, it was one's MORAL Obligation to help the state any way you were asked to kill all the jews within the boarders of your country. Do you see the connection? do you see how far 'morality' can stretch? do you know if they won the war, this would not be any different than the execution of criminals or the extermination of all the fetu-i? we have aborted since roe-v-wade?
6 million jews dead, and in that state, in that time, it was your MORAL obligation to do so..

I'm a moral realist, my tastes aren't the operative metric..but by all means, carry on talking to no one but the people in your head.

It is only by the grace of time and society do you have the perspective to call those germans wrong or evil. There were 80 something million people living in germany just before WWII, don't think for an instant you are unlike anyone else here who lives by pop morality then or now. Any one living by this pop standard would have not the wherewithal to buck the pop morality of hitler's germany.

Why can I say that? because they like you were conditioned to blindly accept anything "science" said. If information was packaged in such a manner sourcing from science through the right political affiliation (what we now deem as propaganda) would be considered to be iron clad truth to them. Just like darwinism or global warming is to us witnessed by our willingness to spend trillions, or in the case of germany or the jews Science through a political party Identified everyone in this race of people as a genetic parasite on the human race, citing their facial features (noses/hooked hair black and matted curly, eye placement ect ect..) all of these things were supposed scientific proof that the jews were a genetic plague which did nothing more than horde valuables (creating an artificial gap in the standard of living/They had money supposedly and the "better breed" of people starved because of it) and consume resources better spent on again on the master/purer race.

The point is not from your life and social pov can you look at this point in time in this society with everything you know now, and discern whether or not you would fall for the propaganda.. no..

The point is given the frame work which the government structured the delivery of 'scientific fact' are you inclined right now, to act in favor of a 'scientific fact/truth' or can you stand objectively against what popular culture thinks/says even if 'science does not support you? can you right now stand on blind principle? That is why 80 MILLION Germans followed hitler. Their political party saved them from starvation with socialist public works, and science has provided them with the industry and technology to make them the strongest nation in the world..

Right now the (thankfully) the political system is not aligned with 'science' but when it comes around again and the push all the carbon taxes and get all the legislation they want eventually they will have to start to deal with the real problem... over population. and people hardest on resources. I don't see camps or ovens, but i can see a denial of public resources to 'people who do these things to themselves.' and I'm sure 'science will be used to back such a thing.. You know like a culling of say all heavy drug users, we don't put them in camps we just deny them public service (like Im sure some sort of obama care will be in place we can't afford making us choose who gets medical and who doesn't) or what about the extremely obese? they do it to themselves so as a people we vote and decide to refuse to waste precious medical resources on a person over 300 lbs.. or the old.. say a man only works 1/3 of his life paying into the system and need crazy expensive care the other 2/3s, should those who put in 100% be at risk for denial of service just because this guy who only put in 1/3 took more from the system? again no camps but the net result is the same. what about food distrbution? Say it comes down to a government service like in all socialist countries..
Who gets what and how much? and on and on. there are hundreds of ways of killing people in this own homes/no camps needed, when society turns on a smaller group to save the larger what mechanism do you have in place that says no? Can it say no to science? can it say no to all the leftist nut bags you guys worship? then why hasn't it?

then we move to genetically modifying all children so there are no birth defects, and then no obesity genes, and on and on till we do indeed have a master race. again instead of camps we do it clean/let nature take it course let darwinism have it's natural selection powered by a little more scientific advancement.

Again if you are not in a place to objectively refuse and justifiably so, the 'truths' or morality of modern popular culture you are currently NO different than those 80 million germans who allowed their pop morality to include murdering 6 million men women and children because of their faith and genetic features.

Without an absolute standard there is no end to what you can 'morally justify.'

So you call me immoral you call god immoral, I say thank you. I can stand apart from society and say no that is not right no that is wrong! Despite what our government may demand or what science may say.. and what is the knee jerk reaction? what have you been programmed to do with someone who can stand apart from society? you attack them personally of course you make them out to be a fool and dismiss them quickly so their ideas do not infect anyone else/you don't want you or your peers to think for yourselves.. just keep sucking from the nipple of science and social justice, nothing bad has ever come of that!

has no need of reference to your god, and the thing you are describing has nothing whatsoever to do with morality.

*By most I mean no one, ofc.  You're the only person here who believes in your god.

wouldn't be much of an atheist website if I weren't.
As far as other Christians go it is a personal Journey. not that I am at the end or the final revelation, but God will meet you any where along this path. if you need a legalistic God, he still has rules you can follow, but this is/what I describe what He wants for us to share with Him. not the crap the R/C church teaches but freedom and a direct one on one relationship where you can feel if you were to ask God to XYZ you know if your stuff is together you would XYZ

..words and words and words......but if you can't get it right, you just can't get it right.  : shrugs :

[robvalue]

Morality is how you win the game! You just have to learn how the big man likes his dick being sucked, and that's what you have to do. Get him off, and he'll let you off. Maybe. Or perhaps he'll just change his mind and burn you anyway, since we have no evidence that he ever actually follows through with these rules.

That's what would make it so much worse if he really is burning people, because us just thinking he is provides the same deterrent.

[SteveII]

How can god possess libertarian free will if he is bound by his nature? If god isn’t free to consider what is or isn’t just and then act accordingly, then he isn’t actually free.

Libertarian Free Will just means your choices are not causally determined by something outside yourself. Having a nature/characteristic that governs your actions/thoughts does not in any way impinge on free will. Every conceivable conscious being has such influences/limits.

I have no idea what perfect justice is.

While I appreciate your humility in this answer, it seems to pose further problems. If humans can’t or don’t know what perfect justice is, then we have no rationale to support the notion that god’s actions are perfectly just. We must simply accept the bible’s claim of it at face value. But more importantly, if god is incapable of making cogent determinations about what is or isn’t perfectly just, then there exists no rationale for his actions. Without any rational his actions are essentially arbitrary, and the claim, ‘god is perfectly just’ simply hangs there as a bare, and meaningless assertion.

Human's ability to know what perfect justice is in no way affects, at all, that God would have perfect justice. The God we are talking about is conceived as the greatest possible being: the objective standard of things like Justice, Love, and Morality. God's rationale for his actions are founded in that concept (along with omniscience) and therefore cannot be judged by those that are no so equipped.  If God exists, his nature is the objective standard of all those qualities.  If God exists, it is incoherent to say that God may or may not be just--because you cannot ground such a determination in anything objective. 

I heard a good example this week. For three years people followed Jesus around watching him do miracles. Thousands of people saw and even more heard. In 1 Cor 15:6, we hear that there were more than 500 people that actually saw him alive following his crucifixion. In Acts 2, there were only 120 that believed enough to be wait in Jerusalem as Jesus had told them to do. The point is that being shown miracles, signs, and even the ontological argument, does not get a person's heart to the right place to meet God. It is almost always a process.

Or...that as time passes, people’s credulity becomes more reserved, which is perfectly rational. In any case, I’m not talking about Jesus performing miracles as a man who lived thousands of years ago, and the fallout of that. I’m talking about god revealing himself without any intermediaries, indisputably, to every person on the planet who ever lived and ever will live.  This is the only action that can logically follow from his expressed goal. 

You are talking about the concept of what should we expect God to be like or to do. To answer that, we can't start with, "well, if I were God, I would...". We have to infer our list from revealed information, the concept of God, and the natural world. 

1. From the concept of God, we get he is worthy of worship. This is a foundational concept. If a very powerful being exists and he is not worthy of worship, he is not God. 

2. Is it not the case that God is hidden from everyone. There are countless testimonies of people's experience of God. There are no defeaters for these billions of experiences so the claim really is: God is hidden from me when atheist demand or surmise that God would show himself if he were real.

3. God provided substantial evidence of himself in the person of Jesus and the events of the early first century. This is exactly what you seem to be asking for. God himself lived among us for 33 years and did many miraculous things culminating in the death and resurrection--with has huge existential meaning in both salvation and the possibility of a personal relationship through the Holy Spirit. 

4. God provides substantial evidence of himself in nature that is easily reflected on and has been for millennium. Why is there something rather than nothing? 

5. God gives everyone a sense of himself: Sensus divinitatis 

6. Every bit of evidence suggests that God's purposes are personal in nature. God desires a personal relationship with each person--NOT recognition that he exists. To treat the question does God exist as a science question to be analyzed is to miss the point. Experiencing God is not a proposition that can be examined outside each person. The end purpose of God is to bring your mind to a place where it desires a relationship with God. This necessarily takes time and a different path for each person. To say it another way, knowing God exists is not the goal. Satan, demons, angels, etc. know God exists. 

Oh, come on now, Steve.  Don’t be obtuse.  If our consciousness continues infinitely beyond our physical death, then our ability to make choices is obviously also infinite.  God is the one inserting arbitrary restrictions and ultimatums here. Why is that?

Can a disembodied soul make choices? There are no inputs or outputs.

There is so much wrong with this that I don’t even know where to start. First, what the heck does that even mean?  What is existence like for a disembodied soul with ‘no inputs or outputs’? Are you saying that human souls have no experience?  The concept alone seems incoherent to begin with.

Further, how could you possibly know that a disembodied mind cannot experience inputs and outputs? Where did you derive this knowledge from?  

You asked why is it too late to make a choice when we die? Why can't we make it afterwards? You picture a waiting room where we can sit around a conference table and discuss this with Peter and give him notice on your change of mind. When you die, you no longer have access to anything. How are you supposed to see, hear, process new thoughts, etc. without the hardware to run on? Am I correct? No one knows. Seem plausible to me. 

Last, isn’t god a disembodied mind? According to your faith, does god not speak to us? Does he not hear prayers?  Does he not enjoy an interactive relationship with humans that involves actively giving and receiving love? Sounds to me like you are making this stuff up as you go along, Steve.

Are you really arguing that Gods existence would be dependent on the physical world like ours is? Really? 

Anyhow...all of my objections aside, I’ll give you your assertion about inputs and outputs for the sake of the argument.  Because, my point of contention here is that if we are no longer free to make any choices (into literal eternity) after physical life ends, then your god plainly does not value free will.  If he valued free will, he would not impose an arbitrary time limit on it.

You are saying that because you do not choose God before you die, there are consequence and that somehow shows God does not value from will. Those two things are not logically connected. At most you have is an objection to the requirement to accept God while you are still alive. Objection noted. 

Forgiveness is not the same as atonement. I can forgive a murderer for killing my brother. I can't take away the consequences. Atonement takes away the consequences. It would be like Jesus literally sitting through the trial, taking on the humility of facing the victims, then prison and then the death penalty and the actual murderer going free.

So basically, ‘somebody has to pay’?  Why?  Why is god so hung up on punishing someone for actions he knew ahead of time that humans were incapable of resisting? Furthermore, how can you reasonably argue that that is ‘perfect justice’ if you admit yourself that you don’t even know what perfect justice is?  If I know my dog is going to get into the garbage if I leave him alone, and then I go for a jog and he eats last night’s table scraps, is it just of me to punish him for that?  Is it just of me to punish some other dog in his place? 

In short, I don’t hear any rationale or reasonable explanation for why forgiveness alone is less than perfect justice. You’d need to be able to define it first, or else your argument doesn’t even have a starter.

You would have to show that God could have logically created a universe where everyone would freely choose him. It is clear that is almost certainly not actually possible. So, he settled for a universe where the greatest number of people would freely accept him. 

God is holy. He cannot be in the presence of anything less than holy. Holiness is a standard of perfection without any fault. In no definition of 'forgiveness' does it remove the fact that you have done something. Only God atoning for your removes the imperfection (wipes the slate clean). Only then can you be holy and in the presence of a holy God.

[LastPoet]

God is holy. He cannot be in the presence of anything less than holy. Holiness is a standard of perfection without any fault. In no definition of 'forgiveness' does it remove the fact that you have done something. Only God atoning for your removes the imperfection (wipes the slate clean). Only then can you be holy and in the presence of a holy God.

Attributes that you aeldom pull out of your ass. You have no idea how big is the universe. How can that perfect thing create imperfection? Lets hear it, I am sure you will come up with something.

You talk a lot about your god that cannot stand in the presence of anything less than holy. I guess you are just making yourself big and holy.then

Why is there something instead of nothing? You just like to pretend you do. For all I care we are. There be scientists trying to figure that out, not simpletons that limit themselves to say "goddidit" and are slick of tongue.

[The Grand Nudger]

How can god possess libertarian free will if he is bound by his nature? If god isn’t free to consider what is or isn’t just and then act accordingly, then he isn’t actually free.

Libertarian Free Will just means your choices are not causally determined by something outside yourself. Having a nature/characteristic that governs your actions/thoughts does not in any way impinge on free will. Every conceivable conscious being has such influences/limits.

Oh?

Libertarian free will means that our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature and free from any predetermination by God

https://www.theopedia.com/libertarian-free-will

If our "free will" is governed by our nature, internally..then how is this different to the free will of a clock?  


What you're looking for is a compatibilist free will, not a libertarian one.  The moment you start talking about things that bind us and govern us (or gods) you are describing causal determinism.

Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem, which concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

This is anecdotal, but in my experience, christians refer to libertarian free will as a justification for gods general bitchiness towards us (because that's what they were told)...but in describing how that will operates they abandon that concept and start talking compatibilism (because that's what they believe). Theologies that reject the notion of libertarian free will in favor of human depravity have stronger scriptural support but simultaneously rub up against a modern sense of fairness or justice. It's a tough spot to be in..but them's the breaks when it comes to fairies and their scoring system.

A compatibilist free will makes allowances for our nature..and believers contend that this nature is gods creation. Created sick, commanded to be well.

Additionally, I'm wondering what slate is supposed to have been wiped clean? I'm not aware of anyone being unmurdered..for example. If by this you simply mean that god gives passes when he pleases....well, that's not wiping anything clean, it's just ignoring moral responsibility for people who fluff the divine peener. YMMV, but to me, rewarding sycophancy doesn't strike me as moral or just or perfect. It's a common human flaw. More a sign of the times and the value of fealty than something "holy".

[Abaddon_ire]

While I appreciate your humility in this answer, it seems to pose further problems. If humans can’t or don’t know what perfect justic, e is, then we have no rationale to support the notion that god’s actions are perfectly just.

No, that leaves your god with huge issues. Perfect justice and mercy are incompatible.

We must simply accept the bible’s claim of it at face value.

Like fuck we do.

But more importantly, if god is incapable of making cogent determinations about what is or isn’t perfectly just, then there exists no rationale for his actions. Without any rational his actions are essentially arbitrary, and the claim, ‘god is perfectly just’ simply hangs there as a bare, and meaningless assertion.

Correct. Your god is capricious, vengeful, immoral....basically evil.

Human's ability to know what perfect justice is in no way affects, at all, that God would have perfect justice.

Would he? The bible says he is immoral. The Koran agrees.

The God we are talking about is conceived as the greatest possible being: the objective standard of things like Justice, Love, and Morality.

Then your god also possesses the quality of greatest evil. Or if not, then your god is limited.

God's rationale for his actions are founded in that concept (along with omniscience) and therefore cannot be judged by those that are no so equipped. 

Wrong. Omniscience necessarily precludes free will, further limiting your god.

If God exists, his nature is the objective standard of all those qualities.

Pretty big "If". But in any event, ALL of the claimed gods carry out immoral actions. It's a theme with them.

If God exists, it is incoherent to say that God may or may not be just--because you cannot ground such a determination in anything objective. 

The hell we can't.


[quote='SteveII' pid='1816629' dateline='1537461968']Or...that as time passes, people’s credulity becomes more reserved, which is perfectly rational. In any case, I’m not talking about Jesus performing miracles as a man who lived thousands of years ago, and the fallout of that. I’m talking about god revealing himself without any intermediaries, indisputably, to every person on the planet who ever lived and ever will live.  This is the only action that can logically follow from his expressed goal. 

And your god keeps on failing to do exactly that over and over and over. And anyway, what is your god's "expressed goal" and how do you know that?

[quote='SteveII' pid='1816629' dateline='1537461968']You are talking about the concept of what should we expect God to be like or to do. To answer that, we can't start with, "well, if I were God, I would...". We have to infer our list from revealed information, the concept of God, and the natural world. 

And the evidence is that IF he/she/it/housecat actually exists, he is a total jerk.

1. From the concept of God, we get he is worthy of worship. This is a foundational concept. If a very powerful being exists and he is not worthy of worship, he is not God.

I have yet to see any god presented that is worthy of worship. Do you have one? 

2. Is it not the case that God is hidden from everyone. There are countless testimonies of people's experience of God. There are no defeaters for these billions of experiences so the claim really is: God is hidden from me when atheist demand or surmise that God would show himself if he were real.

God is apparently the universal winner of the longest hide-and-seek game ever. And the defeater? Those people simply made up crap.

3. God provided substantial evidence of himself in the person of Jesus and the events of the early first century.

Wrong. You can't even demonstrate that there was a jebus in the first place.

This is exactly what you seem to be asking for.

I am asking for EVIDENCE, not the iron age equivalent of Harry Potter

God himself lived among us for 33 years and did many miraculous things culminating in the death and resurrection--with has huge existential meaning in both salvation and the possibility of a personal relationship through the Holy Spirit. 

Prove it. You can't.

4. God provides substantial evidence of himself in nature that is easily reflected on and has been for millennium. Why is there something rather than nothing? 

Do not attempt to play that puerile game.

5. God gives everyone a sense of himself: Sensus divinitatis 

Ahh Calvinism, one of the more amusing branches of christian wingnuttery.

So tell me, why was I apparently left out?

6. Every bit of evidence suggests that God's purposes are personal in nature. God desires a personal relationship with each person--NOT recognition that he exists.

So in order to achieve a personal relationship with everyone, god runs and hides. Well that is just a stupid claim.

To treat the question does God exist as a science question to be analyzed is to miss the point. Experiencing God is not a proposition that can be examined outside each person.

The it is a functionally useless proposition.

The end purpose of God is to bring your mind to a place where it desires a relationship with God.

Yet another baseless assertion that you pulled out of your butt. Your god is an immoral thug.

This necessarily takes time and a different path for each person. To say it another way, knowing God exists is not the goal. Satan, demons, angels, etc. know God exists. 

Yeah, none of those exist either.

[quote='SteveII' pid='1816629' dateline='1537461968']Are you really arguing that Gods existence would be dependent on the physical world like ours is? Really? 

It must necessarily be so. Or your god cannot affect the real world. It's a fairly straightforward idea. If your god can interact with the real world, then that can be measured and tested. If your god either cannot or will not, then it's a useless god.

[quote='SteveII' pid='1816629' dateline='1537461968']You are saying that because you do not choose God before you die, there are consequence and that somehow shows God does not value from will. Those two things are not logically connected. At most you have is an objection to the requirement to accept God while you are still alive. Objection noted. 

Now, you are simply recycling Pascal's wager.

You would have to show that God could have logically created a universe where everyone would freely choose him. It is clear that is almost certainly not actually possible. So, he settled for a universe where the greatest number of people would freely accept him. 

Does Satan know god exists for a fact? And did not Satan STILL reject god? And does that not demonstrate that god proving his existence is no barrier to the exercise of free will?

God is holy.

What does that even mean?

He cannot be in the presence of anything less than holy.

Scripture says your nose is growing, Pinnochio.

Holiness is a standard of perfection without any fault.

And your god fails to meet that standard

In no definition of 'forgiveness' does it remove the fact that you have done something. Only God atoning for your removes the imperfection (wipes the slate clean). Only then can you be holy and in the presence of a holy God.

If your god is so perfect, why did he engage in ritual human sacrifice? Genocide? Rape? Slavery? Incest? Illegal import of kangaroos and koala bears? And their subsequent export?

Why did not the chinese notice his big flood, or the aboriginal Aussies?

Why did nobody notice the Zombie Apocalypse of Jerusalem?

Why was jebus an also ran in the resurrection game?

Who was at the tomb and what exactly happened?

[Mister Agenda]

Which is it, is God omnipresence, or not in the presence of anything that isn't holy. The only way to have it both ways is if everything is holy.