How far reaching are God's powers?

[The Grand Nudger]

You know what is interesting about this is that this is all supposedly hypothetical for you. You probably believe that you DO have moral responsibilities (correct me if I'm wrong), but now that I have given you an "out" you insist that you have none.

And I realize you aren't "actually" insisting that, I'm simply asking if the knowledge that you have no control changes how you feel about the evils you've committed. Should it?

Correct, this is all hypothetical for me.  The list of my moral responsibilities is exhausting, lol.  You're as incapable of offering me a moral "out" as christ was, and I have no particular desire for any moral outs in the first place.  

Should knowing that I cannot choose otherwise change how I feel about whatever evils I've committed?  I suspect not, and particularly if feeling a different way about it were the good thing to do - I'm incapable.

You're clearly ignoring what I've written. Just because you don't believe doesn't mean God hasn't given you the grace to do good at times, including learning from your evil ways.

You're excusing god for no reason.  I must have an unending supply of a god's grace if this is how I've been managing my moral decisions...though, I have to be frank with you - the process seems a bit more pedestrian from here on the inside.

That's like saying "how can I stink, if I stink?" If you're morally incompetent then you automatically are going to accrue moral debt. Your problem is the same as all sinners have: you refuse to take full responsibility for your own actions. Much easier to blame God. Not that I'm condemning you for it...we've all done it or will do it at some point.

You're the only one between us that's blamed god for anything....?  I wasn't waxing on about how god should have never created us, that was you.  I like it here, no take backsies. Don't even have to wipe all the tears away.

I'm asking you how we can possess moral debts if we lack moral agency.  How we can be morally responsible if we lack moral agency. It very much does remind me of the stink question.  We both agree that we stink - but outside of there being a smell - how is it that we can stink?  You asked about moral responsibility, and I pointed to two facts which seemed relevant.  Let's call those smell facts.  We say we smell when certain smell facts are met.  If we smell without those facts being met, we do need some other explanation for why (and when) we smell.

---

You keep repeating this "if I'm incapable of doing good" mantra. As I just mentioned in my last post, I never said God hasn't given you to do good. You are simply incapable of doing good absent His grace. He gets all the credit for the good, you get all the credit for the evil, because the former isn't in your nature, but the latter is.

And Christ's suffering on your account doesn't equal some millisecond. You're responsible for the whole thing. As I've mentioned, since we all suffer and die on an individual level, then Christ suffered and died for us on an individual level.

I'm not sure there is any point in further argument.

This, well, this would be fantastic news.  If I'm responsible for all of it, then god can retroactively call the whole thing off and save himself the weekend.  As I said before, I won't kill the better man to pay my parking tickets.  I'm fundamentally set against it by my nature...which is, I suppose, a credit to god as the designer of my nature?

[Peebothuhlu]

Commiting sin causes evil?

Right, I've grokked that.

My question is thus. Person 'A' commits sin (Maybe one, maybe a dozen or more). How does the sin move from person 'A' to person 'B' and thence cause cancer (As the conversation is putting it).

Also... does that then imply that doing a sin then has the sin some how moving on and causing a bad thing such as a tidal wave to happen?

If so, how?

EDIT: I completly missed your line of, "Cancer (and viruses) are simply a physical expression of the spiritual reality."

Cool! What is a spiritual reality? How does it interact with us? How do we interact with it? WHat might we use to better detect such a thing?

Not at work.

I'm really unsure if you are being serious or deliberately thick. "Sin" on its own does nothing. God determines the consequences of all committed sin. God causes the cancer, because of the sin. This is truly uncomplicated.

Wait a minute.

I'm asking the 'How' of this sin you're talking about.

Like "How does the light bulb work?"

As for your comment "God causes cancer..." ?

So... your diety kills people then? Y'know, 'Fred died because his cancer caused life ending complications.'

Also... since you've mentioned that your deity seems to be all the 'Omnis' (Omniscient, omnipotent etc) THEN, while you are correct that your diety's powers do indeed have your diety killing people with cancer I feel we'll just spiral around the problem of 'Human's free will. Diety's predestination of Human's fate." type of conversation that you're already having with a couple of other posters/forum members.

After all:

"If said diety wants to prevent sin, but is unable. Then they aren't omnipotent."
"If said diety is able but does not want to, then it's malevolent."
"If the diety is both able too and wanting to. Whence comes 'Sin'?"
"If the diety is neither able nor willing? Then why bother with siad diety?"


(Yes, I'm ripping off a far smarter person's saying.)

Not at work.

[Angrboda]

Any possible world in which God chooses evil is a world in which he is not God, by definition.  So there are only two possibilities: a) worlds where God does not do evil, and b) worlds where God does not exist as God.  So God could not choose to do evil and still be God because that would be a logical contradiction.  The only possibilities for a good God are not doing evil.  He couldn't choose evil.  That's simply false.  It's a logical impossibility.

No, your premise is incorrect because you say "God chooses evil." God has never chosen evil. He chooses good through evil.

It was your premise that God could choose evil. I was pointing out that your premise was false. You've lost your place in the discussion.

[MilesAbbott81]

No, your premise is incorrect because you say "God chooses evil." God has never chosen evil. He chooses good through evil.

It was your premise that God could choose evil. I was pointing out that your premise was false.  You've lost your place in the discussion.

Okay, this has devolved into a useless conversation of nitpicking.

Your questions are just stupid traps on the same level as "Can God create a rock He can't lift?" Any logical answer is going to have some flaw, or some way to artificially extend the conversation.

The bottom line is that you have no interest in an actual answer, same as The Grand Nudger, same as Peebo.

I've explained myself more than adequately to anyone interested in learning the truth. The only interest you three have is in yourselves, so our conversations are now concluded.

[The Grand Nudger]

Three more souls condemned, all because you couldn't explain yourself.

Are you responsible for that? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that you may be doing evil, here?

[Duty]

No offence FM, but RE the thread title: I don't know, when did you stop beating your wife?

[HappySkeptic]

I've explained myself more than adequately to anyone interested in learning the truth. The only interest you three have is in yourselves, so our conversations are now concluded.

It must be good to know "Truth".

People who have lived long enough to recover from teenage Jesus Camp experiences normally learn a little nuance about their religion.  They realize that the bible has contradictions, ancient story, myth.  They realize that the answers that the bible gives are often not sufficient to explain life with respect to a modern education.  They often find that they stop worrying about what their pastor says about what God allegedly thinks about their neighbors and just start living life as a human being.

You come here and think you have things all figured out.  Here is what I believe.

• The priests invented "sin" to try to explain how a perfect God could've created an imperfect world and imperfect humans.
  
• The explanation makes no sense even to an ancient mind, because it requires God to be the creator of sin.
  

The modern person has an understanding of DNA, evolution, the Big Bang, the history of the Earth, and that bad stuff happens because it can.  The modern person understands that physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and everything in the universe works according to an arrangement of relationships that we call laws.

Where is your "sin"?  What does "sin" look like?  Is it a part of our DNA?  Does it float around in the wind?  The bible infers that sin is disobedience to God.  So, now the whole universe disobeys God because a person (Adam) living on some backwater planet became a conscious moral agent?

You have not clearly explained anything.

[Peebothuhlu]

Okay, this has devolved into a useless conversation of nitpicking.

Your questions are just stupid traps on the same level as "Can God create a rock He can't lift?" Any logical answer is going to have some flaw, or some way to artificially extend the conversation.

The bottom line is that you have no interest in an actual answer, same as The Grand Nudger, same as Peebo.

I've explained myself more than adequately to anyone interested in learning the truth. The only interest you three have is in yourselves, so our conversations are now concluded.

?

Really? You explained exactly how sin wends it way through reality?

You've explained how the spiritual realm interacts with the physical realm?

*Looks back though thread*

Uhm... nope. I'm not reading any sort of explanation to those questions.

 

Not at work.

[Angrboda]

It was your premise that God could choose evil. I was pointing out that your premise was false.  You've lost your place in the discussion.

Okay, this has devolved into a useless conversation of nitpicking.

Your questions are just stupid traps on the same level as "Can God create a rock He can't lift?" Any logical answer is going to have some flaw, or some way to artificially extend the conversation.

The bottom line is that you have no interest in an actual answer, same as The Grand Nudger, same as Peebo.

I've explained myself more than adequately to anyone interested in learning the truth. The only interest you three have is in yourselves, so our conversations are now concluded.

This is my neighbor's hamster, Charlie. If explaining yourself to an intelligent woman is too much for you, maybe the hamster is more your speed.

Have a nice day!

[The Grand Nudger]

You have to wonder why they thought that describing something so completely alien to humanity as a god, or something so obviously untrue as our utter depravity, would be easy.