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WHAT??!! Not the evolutionary paradigm I learned about! The evolutionary paradigm posits, that here was no master plan, and no Master Planner. Things just evolved after primitive protozoa formed on Earth partly as a result of electrical activity in the atmosphere.
Stop dragging religion into a secular theory.
You're thinking about, evolution from a materialistic viewpoint. Many Christians, myself included, hold to theistic evolution otherwise known as evolutionary creation in which God kicked off the evolutionary process.
Biblically speaking, sin resulted in man falling short of God's perfect standard of righteousness resulting in man's relationship with God being broken. For that reason, Jesus came into the world to go to the cross and die for our sins.
So by our very constitution it is not possible for us to measure up to God's standard of righteousness, and it seems that this must have been by design. At the same time I know from your previous posts that you believe in eternal punishment and hell.
If God created man (by means of evolution) with a constitution that is incapable of living up to His standard of righteousness, can you explain how God would be just in sending anyone to hell?
It seems to me that man was set up to fail from the very beginning. Can you explain how that isn't so?
God knew from eternity past that man would not be able to measure up to his perfect standards and so provided the means of resolving that problem by providing the means of eternal salvation through Jesus' redemptive work on the cross. Man has volition. He can either avail himself of God's plan of salvation or reject it. If he chooses to reject it then God is perfectly just in sending him to the lake of fire which I do not believe to be a literal fire but simply a place where those who reject God's plan of salvation will spend eternity without God.
While God created mankind because he wanted a relationship with man just as he has a relationship with angelic beings, mankind may also be key in resolving . . . call it the angelic conflict. Many angels rebelled against God despite being in the very presence of God. To demonstrate to the angels why God was justified in sentencing the rebellious angels to the lake of fire, God created, through evolution, a lesser being - man, and gave him volition knowing that man would also rebel, but providing a way for man to be saved by responding to God's provision for eternal salvation. If man could respond to God's provision, if he could choose for God, then this would demonstrate to the angels who were superior to man, that they had no excuse for rebelling against God. Those members of the human race who reject God's plan and offer of salvation would share along with the angels, God's provision of the lake of fire which again, I do not take to be literal fire.
To put it more simply, God created man to have an eternal relationship with man but also to demonstrate to the angels that the angels who rebelled against God were without excuse.
God knew from eternity past that man would not be able to measure up to his perfect standards and so provided the means of resolving that problem by providing the means of eternal salvation through Jesus' redemptive work on the cross. Man has volition. He can either avail himself of God's plan of salvation or reject it. If he chooses to reject it then God is perfectly just in sending him to the lake of fire which I do not believe to be a literal fire but simply a place where those who reject God's plan of salvation will spend eternity without God.
It may resolve the problem individually for some (those who avail themselves of God's plan), but I don't see how it resolves the problem of humanity as a whole being essentially unfit on purpose, and punished for it at the same time. Not to mention there is simply no historical grounding within Christianity for this type of theology.
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
While God created mankind because he wanted a relationship with man just as he has a relationship with angelic beings, mankind may also be key in resolving . . . call it the angelic conflict. Many angels rebelled against God despite being in the very presence of God. To demonstrate to the angels why God was justified in sentencing the rebellious angels to the lake of fire, God created, through evolution, a lesser being - man, and gave him volition knowing that man would also rebel, but providing a way for man to be saved by responding to God's provision for eternal salvation. If man could respond to God's provision, if he could choose for God, then this would demonstrate to the angels who were superior to man, that they had no excuse for rebelling against God. Those members of the human race who reject God's plan and offer of salvation would share along with the angels, God's provision of the lake of fire which again, I do not take to be literal fire.
To put it more simply, God created man to have an eternal relationship with man but also to demonstrate to the angels that the angels who rebelled against God were without excuse.
This makes it seem like God feels guilty about what He did to the fallen angels, so He needs to somehow justify His actions. Why would God feel compelled to justify His actions to any created being? In this set up, God is insecure because He either wants to placate His conscience, or He wants to double down on the fallen angels in an act of "I'll show you!"
As a sidebar, evolution is not a "secular theory". I would posit that it's an anti-theistic ideology.
Evolution is a scientific theory. That means it is a conclusion based on falsifiable evidence that has been tested, peer reviewed, and found to be true to the best of the knowledge that we have at this time. Scientific theories are not "anti-" anything.
It may resolve the problem individually for some (those who avail themselves of God's plan), but I don't see how it resolves the problem of humanity as a whole being essentially unfit on purpose, and punished for it at the same time. Not to mention there is simply no historical grounding within Christianity for this type of theology.
Perhaps not in Roman Catholicism, but Roman Catholicism is but one sect of Christianity.
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This makes it seem like God feels guilty about what He did to the fallen angels, so He needs to somehow justify His actions. Why would God feel compelled to justify His actions to any created being? In this set up, God is insecure because He either wants to placate His conscience, or He wants to double down on the fallen angels in an act of "I'll show you!"
No, it doesn't make it seem like God feels guilty. If God wants to demonstrate the fairness of what he does to his creation he is perfectly free to do so.
Not to mention there is simply no historical grounding within Christianity for this type of theology.
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Originally Posted by Michael Way
Perhaps not in Roman Catholicism, but Roman Catholicism is but one sect of Christianity.
No, I meant all of Christianity. Where is your historical grounding? What am I missing?
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Originally Posted by EscAlaMike
No, it doesn't make it seem like God feels guilty. If God wants to demonstrate the fairness of what he does to his creation he is perfectly free to do so.
Well sure, that's technically true. Your theory just seems outside the character of God to me. The angels would have already known God's perfect goodness and fairness at the moment of their creation, so a redundant demonstration of it seems pointless and below the dignity and honor of God.
No, I meant all of Christianity. Where is your historical grounding? What am I missing?
This is what I said and which you claim has no historical grounding.
God knew from eternity past that man would not be able to measure up to his perfect standards and so provided the means of resolving that problem by providing the means of eternal salvation through Jesus' redemptive work on the cross. Man has volition. He can either avail himself of God's plan of salvation or reject it. If he chooses to reject it then God is perfectly just in sending him to the lake of fire which I do not believe to be a literal fire but simply a place where those who reject God's plan of salvation will spend eternity without God.
Now, which part of that do you have a problem with?
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Well sure, that's technically true. Your theory just seems outside the character of God to me. The angels would have already known God's perfect goodness and fairness at the moment of their creation, so a redundant demonstration of it seems pointless and below the dignity and honor of God.
To you. But God could have sent Satan and rebellious angels to the lake of fire immediately but didn't. Instead, that doesn't happen until the end of the Millennial kingdom. God therefore had a reason for not immediately carrying out the sentencing of Satan.
This is what I said and which you claim has no historical grounding.
God knew from eternity past that man would not be able to measure up to his perfect standards and so provided the means of resolving that problem by providing the means of eternal salvation through Jesus' redemptive work on the cross. Man has volition. He can either avail himself of God's plan of salvation or reject it. If he chooses to reject it then God is perfectly just in sending him to the lake of fire which I do not believe to be a literal fire but simply a place where those who reject God's plan of salvation will spend eternity without God.
Now, which part of that do you have a problem with?
The first part of the first sentence: "God knew from eternity past that man would not be able to measure up to his perfect standards"
Now, I don't have a problem saying that God knew from eternity past that mankind would fall (whether through a literal Adam or otherwise); but from my point of view that's very different from saying that mankind is literally and constitutionally incapable of measuring up.
That's where I'd like to see some historical grounding; someone else teaching something to that affect, the earlier the better.
I think what my struggle here really boils down to is that I can't see how the problem of evil is reconciled in an evolutionary paradigm. How do you reconcile it?
It may resolve the problem individually for some (those who avail themselves of God's plan), but I don't see how it resolves the problem of humanity as a whole being essentially unfit on purpose, and punished for it at the same time. Not to mention there is simply no historical grounding within Christianity for this type of theology.
This makes it seem like God feels guilty about what He did to the fallen angels, so He needs to somehow justify His actions. Why would God feel compelled to justify His actions to any created being? In this setup, God is insecure because He either wants to placate His conscience, or He wants to double down on the fallen angels in an act of "I'll show you!"
I suspect this will be futile and fall on deaf ears, but all this angst over why we are as we are and have such difficulty achieving what God wants from us is the result of our ignorant primitive ancestors' interpretations of our relationship with God and our purpose. The need for obedience to God is purely instructive, not to assuage or appease God to prevent punishment or receive rewards. It is to learn how to develop and mature our souls for eternal life, period.
The successful development of our soul is the main purpose of human life. The process for achieving our purpose is very simple in principle. The common principle in practically all civilizations and at all stages of their development is self-denial. In primitive cultures, the various forms of denial were motivated by taboos. In the more civilized cultures, denial was seen more directly as the means of delivering the soul from its earthly bonds to make possible a spiritual contact with eternal truth and the deity.
We can begin to understand this process if we go back to the beginning and reinterpret our basic experiences as described in Genesis. There is nothing in our universe that is created fully mature. There is a maturation sequence for everything. This applies to our soul as well. In the story of Genesis, most religious interpreters would have us believe, God became angry with us because we did not control our animal body and did what we were forbidden to do.
This silly idea of God getting angry over a fruit, symbolic, sexual or otherwise, is an excellent example of what can be achieved through interpreting childhood as though it were adulthood! The Genesis stories simply capture our primordial consciousness of the beginning of human life and chronicle the necessary universal basic experiences (lessons) of human development.
The episodes in Genesis describe our basic experiences. Teaching, at the very basic level, requires experiencing more than explanation. Words have no meaning without some base to relate them to. If you sit down and discuss all the ramifications of touching fire with your toddler, you are wasting your time. An intellect without experience cannot be taught by talking. There are certain basics in life that must be experienced.
Once your toddler touches something painfully hot, he will learn what the words "hot" and "burn" mean. Thereafter, when you tell him not to touch the end of a cigarette because it is hot and will burn him, he can relate what you have told him to his basic experience and learn about cigarettes burning without experiencing it. Let's face it, you wouldn't want your child to learn about hot and burn by touching the red-hot electric burner on your stove and receiving third-degree burns!
On the other hand, your child must learn consequences in some fashion. All of parenthood consists of orchestrating and controlling the experiences of our children so that they learn the basics in the safest and least harmful ways. Each individual must learn everything for himself with the aid of his parents or society.
It is common knowledge that each and every human being must experience and repeat the entire pattern of human development. Thus, existence in the womb is a repetition of the evolution into a human being, and the various stages of fetal development mirror that evolution. The birth represents the seeding of a soul, the breathing into man's nostrils of the breath of life (Atman, Adamah). Infancy represents Eden, with parents as the all-providing God, and so on through maturity. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."
Humankind as described in Genesis had just been born. He possessed the mere infant of a soul. A suggestion that this infant soul would be punished for its inadequacies is absurd! Naturally, this soul was inadequate to control the animal body it inhabited. In fact, in the more advanced lesson described in the myth of Noah and the flood (where humankind was surely more developed than in Eden) this understanding of youthful ignorance as the source of misbehavior was specifically verbalized,
Genesis 8:21,
. . . I will never again curse the ground on account of Man, for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Only by interpreting this passage in the way being proposed does it make any sense. Otherwise, the passage would be suggesting that God won't punish man BECAUSE made him evil or some such absurdity!
Clearly, our species infant consciousness wasn't expected to be able to control its body, because it was the mere seed of a soul. A seed bears no fruit. It must germinate into a full-fledged tree bearing the fruit of eternal life. Therein is probably the explanation of the kingdom of God described by Jesus in the parable of the mustard seed.
Somehow this mere seed of a soul, this minute consciousness, has to become aware of the basic process it must perform to produce eternal life. You don't try to teach calculus to a toddler. You must start with very basic concepts and build upon them. First, this soul had to learn that there was something to achieve. Then it had to be given a rudimentary idea of how to achieve it.
Since the process for achieving our purpose consists of controlling our animal nature and eliminating certain destructive responses, this basic idea of selective satisfaction of our internal desires had to be conveyed to the infant soul. Left on its own in its animal body, it wouldn't have the faintest idea that there was any need to differentiate between good and bad behavior. To an animal, all responses to its inner drives are "good."
Without external teaching and an external referent, this infant soul would have learned this erroneous concept from its animal nature, and continued to react without censure and control. In fact, it would devote itself to perfecting means of satisfying all of its animal drives. It would become a truly superior animal. It would kill more efficiently, hate more efficiently, be greedier, be more vengeful, create orgies and debaucheries to increase sexual satisfaction, and so on. Seem familiar?
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