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The God books don't tell you that people are not going to die and suffer...
this is unbelievable....good thing I'm checking in.
If anything God books offer solace in living without malice ....affording the
obvious difficulties in collective harmony in man...
.....So we'll scratch that off the list , as of right now....thats really reaching
Ringwielder...
Hueff I guess avoided my last post...where it is very plain in my offered analogy as follows.....
...if something is all powerful, we cannot say...it cannot be....anything it wants to be...Hueff suggestion would require proof that God is not all loving ...and proof that God is all powerful..from..an all knowing all powerful perspective...
The bottom line in my view is, we are not all knowing, therefore we do not know... the full scope of this love where ....an after-life is well in play with the meaning.....
(Hueff.... says...Playing that trump card is akin to burning down the whole house just so you don't lose the card game.)
Blue says....You forgot the Heading to note...
God is all Loving and All Powerful.... Eternal Existence.
There...now the house doesn't have to burn down . You cannot evaluate
the Love from this perspective in our beginning to the totality of Eternal Existance...can you.?
Besides....you really want something that comes easily....what a drag.
I feel kinda good today.....this has been a really good thread
I dont want to be disrespectful, and I hope I am not unintelligent, but I didnt understand much of that.
Hi Hueffenhardt Been reading your post and I understand your reasoning but I don't think you are carrying it out far enough.
Is God all powerful? Yes if you are a believer you know he created everything and is always in control of his creation. If you are not a believer it is a moot point.
The real question is if God is all powerfull and all loving how can he put us through the pain that we go through? Is it neccessary? The answer is YES it is neccessary.
I will give you an example. Lets say you are a parent and you love your child. You are well off so you can afford to give your child anything he needs. Being a loving parent you don't want him hurt so you hire people to take care of him. They carry him around so he cant fall and hurt himself.
They feed him. Of course no contact with other kids who might hurt him. No sports or games or runnung or playing, he might get hurt or suffer emotional pain. No correction if he does do something wrong because it would hurt. I know it seems ubsurd but is this a life you would wish for your child? A pampered spoiled child who can't even feed himself.
God is creating us in his image. I trust Him so I know the way he is doing it is the best way. Like a parent, which I am, he will let us learn by making mistakes, we will be chastized when we do wrong. Sometimes it may seem cruel to us, the child, but the parent, God, is alway around and ready to catch us when it is neccessary and pick us up when we fall, but he does let us fall, just like I let my children fall when learning to walk, or ride a bike, but I was always there to pick them up.
Could he have chosen anothe way? Maybe But I trust him so this is the best way.
So yes God is all powerful and he is powerful enough to let us learn and mature in the best way which also makes him all loving.
The justification for pain and suffering always seem to be reduced to a something minor, something that teaches us a lesson.
If you are a parent, would you stand by and let your child be sexually abused, tortured and killed? And what if your child fell off his bike and hit his head and died...wouldnt you feel just a little guilt if you could have prevented it? Would you say ...'Well see thats what happens when I let you go off with strange men or thats what happens when you are learning to ride a bike, sometimes you fall off and die.' Would you be all-loving to stand by and watch and let that happen or would you stop it?
What lessons do those learn who dont survive the pain and suffering?
What lessons did the babies and the unborn that God had slaughtered in the OT learn? Not to be born into the wrong tribe?
Read over this stuff and want to clarify my post 174 so people don't get bad feelings...this thread has been dried up since June 2010 and I thought I would give it a kick at the cat....
In post 174
I post..." nothing in thread 18 pages had any significance..."
As you see the word used is "had"...I was most definitely referring to the dried up old thread as having no significance in the effort to help the topic suggestion......NOT comments made like Mystics and other very good insights put forward in the ressurection of thread a few days ago....to be sure.
So....thats what I noticed and gotta be careful as hurt feelings can happen in a snap. Sorry for the interruption of the interesting talk.
The justification for pain and suffering always seem to be reduced to a something minor, something that teaches us a lesson.
If you are a parent, would you stand by and let your child be sexually abused, tortured and killed? And what if your child fell off his bike and hit his head and died...wouldnt you feel just a little guilt if you could have prevented it? Would you say ...'Well see thats what happens when I let you go off with strange men or thats what happens when you are learning to ride a bike, sometimes you fall off and die.' Would you be all-loving to stand by and watch and let that happen or would you stop it?
What lessons do those learn who dont survive the pain and suffering?
What lessons did the babies and the unborn that God had slaughtered in the OT learn? Not to be born into the wrong tribe?
Hi Ringwielder The example I gave was a very small scale of comparing God the Father to a human father. God the Father is much more.
The lessons he teaches us go beyond death and into ressurection.
The time we spend on earth in this life is very short. Most will not be saved and converted in this life, only Christ's Elect. The rest of mankind will go through the "lake of fire "and be chastized, judged, repent and be cleansed.
The reason we need child molester, muderers, thief, and evil people is again to offer an opposite to the virtures we need to develop. There is no virture that is not a overcoming of a vice. The carnal heart will naturally reject God and seek carnal pleasures because that is what it wants. God created us with a carnal heart so we would desire these base things. This is so that when we overcome them ,and we will overcome them, we will be converted to the image of God. By experiencing evil we will have a knowledge of good and evil.
God has determined that this is the best way to turn us into his true sons and daughters. I know some people will say why did he just not create us knowing all these things. Maybe we need to develop an appreciation for them. The only good responce I have is what Paul said in Romans 9:20
"But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"
"But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"
That kinda says it all."
Actually, it does say it all. It seems to me to be rather arrogant for a created being to challenge the Creator with "You sure did a rotten job of designing the world and how it runs. I, on the other hand, being of great intelligence, wisdom, and compassion, have come up with a much better way."
This whole thread is really a variation of the sovereignty of God question. In particular, is God a god of wrath and judgment, or a god of love and mercy? The answer is "yes". This answer really stirs up the "you did a rotten job" crowd because with our human limitations we cannot rationalize the contradiction. But God did not create us in His image with ALL His attributes, only some of them. He is capable of being both merciful and judgmental (whole new topic) because He is God.
Want me to explain this so everyone can understand it? I can't. Neither could Paul. We know enough of God's attributes, however, to exercise faith to believe in Him and obey Him IF WE SO CHOOSE.
I guess then that chocolate cannot taste yummy if you've never had vinegar.
Being loved and embraced won't feel good unless you've been hated and beaten.
Do I have it right?
Hi Hueffenhardt Been reading your post and I understand your reasoning but I don't think you are carrying it out far enough.
Is God all powerful? Yes if you are a believer you know he created everything and is always in control of his creation. If you are not a believer it is a moot point.
The real question is if God is all powerfull and all loving how can he put us through the pain that we go through? Is it neccessary? The answer is YES it is neccessary.
I will give you an example. Lets say you are a parent and you love your child. You are well off so you can afford to give your child anything he needs. Being a loving parent you don't want him hurt so you hire people to take care of him. They carry him around so he cant fall and hurt himself.
They feed him. Of course no contact with other kids who might hurt him. No sports or games or runnung or playing, he might get hurt or suffer emotional pain. No correction if he does do something wrong because it would hurt. I know it seems ubsurd but is this a life you would wish for your child? A pampered spoiled child who can't even feed himself.
God is creating us in his image. I trust Him so I know the way he is doing it is the best way. Like a parent, which I am, he will let us learn by making mistakes, we will be chastized when we do wrong. Sometimes it may seem cruel to us, the child, but the parent, God, is alway around and ready to catch us when it is neccessary and pick us up when we fall, but he does let us fall, just like I let my children fall when learning to walk, or ride a bike, but I was always there to pick them up.
Could he have chosen anothe way? Maybe But I trust him so this is the best way.
So yes God is all powerful and he is powerful enough to let us learn and mature in the best way which also makes him all loving.
(Side note: I am going on a trip and will not be able to respond to this thread after this post until next week).
You said that if I am not a believer it is a moot point. I disagree. Although I don't believe there is a god, I do acknowledge that it is possible some sort of god might exist. All I am saying here is if a god does exist, there is at least one thing we can be sure of about that god, it logically cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving.
As I have explained many times in this thread, if god is all-powerful, our pain logically cannot be necessary. Throughout the rest of this post I am going to show you in as many ways as I can think of why that is so in the hopes that at least one of them will click with you so you will have that eureka moment when you see that this must be.
I will grant you that in the current reality, there may be some things we cannot develop or learn without pain, so pain might be necessary in the current set-up. But, an all-powerful god is not limited to the current set-up, he could have any set-up he wants. Not only could he teach lessons and develop attributes in us in any possible way, even eating an apple could give us knowledge of good and evil, he could even change or do away with the concept of lessons, knowledge, behavior, etc. He not only could set up our brains differently, he could give us something totally different than a brain. Not only could he create concepts like love, he could create something else we've never dreamed of and value it more highly than love. He didn't even have to create us. Anything that is logically consistent is possible to an all-powerful god.
So, whatever his purpose for our pain is now, in this current set-up, he could accomplish without us experiencing pain in some other set-up. In fact, he could have two identical choices before him, in which everything is the same, he'd accomplish the same ends, we'd have all the same attributes and learned the same things, except one choice has us suffering and one choice doesn't have us suffering.
(Let's pause here for a moment, is there something in you resisting this possibility? That god could have had two identical plans, only differing in that one includes pain, and pain serves no purpose because it changes nothing in the results except that we suffer? Are you having trouble with that? Ask yourself why? Is it because you are too stuck in the mindset of the current set-up of reality? If so, you have to free your mind of that and really entertain the possibility. Are you stuck because you think well, in order for us to have this [whatever this is] we must experience pain. That is only true in our current set-up. An all powerful god controls all the rules, nothing "must" be any particular way to him. He creates and defines the concepts and designs the hows on how to obtain them. That is what all-powerful means. I'd be happy to illustrate with a few specific examples you provide. Heck, he could even give us the memory of a pain we never had to experience. Let me know if you are still hung up here, but I am going to move on).
So, god could have two identical choices in front of him of his own creation. One that included a pain that serves no purpose, because remember any potential purpose for that pain is already satisfied in the alternate plan. So, what would an all-loving god choose? Of course the plan without the needless pain. The plan without the pain will always be the best choice to an all-loving god who is also all-powerful enough to get all the same results that he could get from a plan with pain.
Since we are in a setup that has pain, one possibility is god is loving but was not powerful enough to create an alternate plan that could accomplish all the same purposes without pain, so this was the best plan he was capable of producing while still accomplishing his purposes. This seems to be the position of most of the believers I debate on this issue, but most won't word it that way, because they still want to hold onto the idea that god is all-powerful, while admitting, not explicitly, that their god isn't able to do somethings and thus really isn't all-powerful.
An all-powerful god can do anything that is logically consistent. I think many people's hang up is they limit god to only what is possible in the current set-up, but an all-powerful god is not limited to only what is possible in the current realm. A vast array of possibilities open up when you realise how much an all-powerful god can define and create. Attributes are no longer required to be only obtained through a narrow route, and it is still logical because all things are possible.
The problem with your example of me as a parent is that I am not all-powerful. I have to make the best choice from the options available to me. An all-powerful god can create whatever options he wants. He can't use the excuse that he wanted to spare us pain but he couldn't and still have us turn out the way he wanted. He is all-powerful, he could spare us the pain and still have us come out the way he wanted.
You repeated often that you trust god. The fact that we have pain means that god is not all-powerful, or he is not all-loving, or he is neither all-powerful nor all-loving, or that he doesn't exist. If god is all-powerful, but not all-loving, he is sadistic for putting us through pain when he did not have to and is not to be trusted. If god is all-loving but not all-powerful, there are things beyond his control, and so he might be trustworthy, but only to a point, there may be some promises he can't deliver on and some fates he can't save us from. If god exists but is neither all-powerful or all-trusting, then he is obviously not someone we should put much faith in. And if he doesn't exist, then it would be foolish to trust a figment of our imagination.
One final note, if one claims that there are somethings that god cannot do because in order to have or get this (whatever this is), one must experience pain, one has to ask who created that rule and why can't an all-powerful god change it. If god created everything, then it is god who created the concept of pain and the linkage between this other attribute which he created and pain. He did n't have to create that linkage, but did. And if god did not create the concept of pain and the linkage with that attribute, who did? If the concept of pain can exist without a god creating it, maybe the universe exists without a god creating it, and off we go down another implication of all this.
I love the power of the logic that shows god cannot logically be both all-powerful and all-loving; it just keeps bringing forth good fruit.
Again, feel free to respond, but know that it will be at least half a week before I can get around to responding.
if you understand pain/pleasure from a different perspective then you can understand that YES God is both all powefull and all loving.........before we entered the material temporary platform we were pure in spirit,ever since we've been subjected and effected bye material nature and the laws of karma and reincarnation,''what we reap so shall we sow'',,''he who is first will be last and last will be first'',thats from the bible,im not christian but to me that points to karma and reincarnation,,sometimes we need to punish our kids to teach them,when we die we will be judged on our actions and have to take birth in a suitable condition,and if weve caused alot of pain in this life then we will suffer that in another,we would have known these laws when we first entered the material platform,billions of lifetimes ago on the higher planets when our bodys were made of subtle energy's(pure intelligence),and not gross matter,so theres no excuse no matter how ignorant we are,we will reap what we sow,on the other hand God can show mercy and instead of 3 slaps on the hand we might only get one.
(Side note: I am going on a trip and will not be able to respond to this thread after this post until next week).
You said that if I am not a believer it is a moot point. I disagree. Although I don't believe there is a god, I do acknowledge that it is possible some sort of god might exist. All I am saying here is if a god does exist, there is at least one thing we can be sure of about that god, it logically cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving.
As I have explained many times in this thread, if god is all-powerful, our pain logically cannot be necessary. Throughout the rest of this post I am going to show you in as many ways as I can think of why that is so in the hopes that at least one of them will click with you so you will have that eureka moment when you see that this must be.
I will grant you that in the current reality, there may be some things we cannot develop or learn without pain, so pain might be necessary in the current set-up. But, an all-powerful god is not limited to the current set-up, he could have any set-up he wants. Not only could he teach lessons and develop attributes in us in any possible way, even eating an apple could give us knowledge of good and evil, he could even change or do away with the concept of lessons, knowledge, behavior, etc. He not only could set up our brains differently, he could give us something totally different than a brain. Not only could he create concepts like love, he could create something else we've never dreamed of and value it more highly than love. He didn't even have to create us. Anything that is logically consistent is possible to an all-powerful god.
So, whatever his purpose for our pain is now, in this current set-up, he could accomplish without us experiencing pain in some other set-up. In fact, he could have two identical choices before him, in which everything is the same, he'd accomplish the same ends, we'd have all the same attributes and learned the same things, except one choice has us suffering and one choice doesn't have us suffering.
(Let's pause here for a moment, is there something in you resisting this possibility? That god could have had two identical plans, only differing in that one includes pain, and pain serves no purpose because it changes nothing in the results except that we suffer? Are you having trouble with that? Ask yourself why? Is it because you are too stuck in the mindset of the current set-up of reality? If so, you have to free your mind of that and really entertain the possibility. Are you stuck because you think well, in order for us to have this [whatever this is] we must experience pain. That is only true in our current set-up. An all powerful god controls all the rules, nothing "must" be any particular way to him. He creates and defines the concepts and designs the hows on how to obtain them. That is what all-powerful means. I'd be happy to illustrate with a few specific examples you provide. Heck, he could even give us the memory of a pain we never had to experience. Let me know if you are still hung up here, but I am going to move on).
So, god could have two identical choices in front of him of his own creation. One that included a pain that serves no purpose, because remember any potential purpose for that pain is already satisfied in the alternate plan. So, what would an all-loving god choose? Of course the plan without the needless pain. The plan without the pain will always be the best choice to an all-loving god who is also all-powerful enough to get all the same results that he could get from a plan with pain.
Since we are in a setup that has pain, one possibility is god is loving but was not powerful enough to create an alternate plan that could accomplish all the same purposes without pain, so this was the best plan he was capable of producing while still accomplishing his purposes. This seems to be the position of most of the believers I debate on this issue, but most won't word it that way, because they still want to hold onto the idea that god is all-powerful, while admitting, not explicitly, that their god isn't able to do somethings and thus really isn't all-powerful.
An all-powerful god can do anything that is logically consistent. I think many people's hang up is they limit god to only what is possible in the current set-up, but an all-powerful god is not limited to only what is possible in the current realm. A vast array of possibilities open up when you realise how much an all-powerful god can define and create. Attributes are no longer required to be only obtained through a narrow route, and it is still logical because all things are possible.
The problem with your example of me as a parent is that I am not all-powerful. I have to make the best choice from the options available to me. An all-powerful god can create whatever options he wants. He can't use the excuse that he wanted to spare us pain but he couldn't and still have us turn out the way he wanted. He is all-powerful, he could spare us the pain and still have us come out the way he wanted.
You repeated often that you trust god. The fact that we have pain means that god is not all-powerful, or he is not all-loving, or he is neither all-powerful nor all-loving, or that he doesn't exist. If god is all-powerful, but not all-loving, he is sadistic for putting us through pain when he did not have to and is not to be trusted. If god is all-loving but not all-powerful, there are things beyond his control, and so he might be trustworthy, but only to a point, there may be some promises he can't deliver on and some fates he can't save us from. If god exists but is neither all-powerful or all-trusting, then he is obviously not someone we should put much faith in. And if he doesn't exist, then it would be foolish to trust a figment of our imagination.
One final note, if one claims that there are somethings that god cannot do because in order to have or get this (whatever this is), one must experience pain, one has to ask who created that rule and why can't an all-powerful god change it. If god created everything, then it is god who created the concept of pain and the linkage between this other attribute which he created and pain. He did n't have to create that linkage, but did. And if god did not create the concept of pain and the linkage with that attribute, who did? If the concept of pain can exist without a god creating it, maybe the universe exists without a god creating it, and off we go down another implication of all this.
I love the power of the logic that shows god cannot logically be both all-powerful and all-loving; it just keeps bringing forth good fruit.
Again, feel free to respond, but know that it will be at least half a week before I can get around to responding.
your whole argument seems to based on the fact that we feel pain,and that God could have created life without pain.
to me this is how i see that.......for eternity,there is no pain,we are not created beings but are eternal spiritual beings that for eternity haqve been living in an eternal universe that is filled with ecstatic bliss,everything is made of this pure transcendental ecstatic bliss including us,but somehow weve missused our free will and ended up on the temporary platform,but we'll only be here for a breif moment in the eyes of eternal time which is most likely billions of lifetimes,why did we step into the materil temporary platform,,,,well its said that we wanted to become God,God is the Supreme Enjoyer and we wanted to become the enjoyer,we anted to enjoy outside of God,so we end up as pure beings(since we would have never sinned)on the highest material planet(heavenly planets)Brahmaloka,where a day is billions of earth years.......................................its then we start desiring material pleasures and in doing so we accumulate karma,our very purpose is to serve and the highest purpose is to serve God,so when we fall from that sevice and start serving our own senses we start to become ignorant,and loose sight of our spiritual purity,then after a gradual process of falling down due to our desires for material nature we end up as single celled organism's,then work our way back up,,,,,,,,,
.....but to get back to your point about pain,its said that it is possible to be stuck in the material platform forever,but that in time all will return home,i think this could be due to the fact that pain exists,pain exists even on the highest material planets,birth,old age,disease and death are constant in the material worlds,and in time the soul will learn and move towards its liberation from the bondage of material life.
how can you logically explain that God has innumerable form's,that he is an energy that exists throughout the whole universe,and at the same time is localised in the hearts of every living entity,yet at the same time lives in his own worlds playing the parts of different quality's of himself,yet at the same time expands Himself to a giant form and breathes out innumerable universes,yet at the same time fits into every atom,,of course God can be All powefulll and All loving,we cant comprehend God with our tiny little minds,we can try logically,and some times we need to put logic into the equation too,like i feel its logically immpossible for God to torture people for eternity,why???,because to be God there has to be certain qualitys there,but understand that many things will be immpossible to understand,inconceivable.
pain and pleasure is only temporary here,when we wake back up into the spiritual kingdomn its gonna be like waking from a dream,we'll ponder on it for a few seconds,then we'll get back to livin out our eternity on a very magical plane filled with bliss and knowledge.
An all-powerful being could do anything by any means. Therefore, it could do anything without a need to implement suffering. Therefore, causing suffering is not necessary for an all-powerful being, no matter what that being set out to achieve.
So, if an all-powerful god existed, it chose to cause suffering when it didn't have to, meaning it cannot be "all-loving". (unless you think purposefully hurting others is all-loving..)
(and of course there are the paradox problems like can he cook a burrito so hot even he couldn't eat it, or can he cause suffering without causing suffering, but accounting for these would mean throwing all logic out the window.. we're assuming true and false are mutually exclusive here)
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