Religious Questions (have a try)

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I have heard that there's a difference between a philisophical position and belief. What do you think about this, and, is it your philisophical position that we have no free will, or is it your belief, or both?

Why is it, Ragtime, that you seem to feel this compulsion to jump into any thread with a theological topic even if you don't want to discuss that topic? You have already stated that you do not want to address any of Mitch's questions, so why are you here? Do you think that it is a service to God to steer this conversation off topic thereby preventing him from getting any answers?

If you are right TheMachine1 then this entire conversation is moot; it doesn't matter. The only reason we are discussing it is that God has decided that we would participate in this useless discussion. Sounds like a rather boring soap opera to me

As for the afterlife thing, I figure the road to Heaven is being a generally good person - God gave us as many roads their as we could understand. People began assuming their way was the only way, but then, people tend to do that anyway. (I also think Niven and Pournelle had it right in the novel Inferno, which posited that Hell was God's last-ditch attempt - if you'd spent your entire life denying Him, you got to be confronted with the absolute truth of His existence, by facing the punishments of Hell. The way out was to acknowledge Him, at long last, and admit that you had failed Him. Most of the people in Hell were too proud to do that last bit, though.)

Why is there evil? Because nothing can truly exist without its opposite. If there were no darkness, light would mean nothing; without suffering, there would be no state to know as "joy".

Onmiscience doesn't necessarily mean knowing how things are going to turn out; that would be dull indeed. It does mean knowing everything that's happening now, but that doesn't imply knowing how they'll come out in the end (both quantum physics and basic psychology argue against precise predictions).

"Intelligent design" is not a religious argument; it is an argument posited from an incomplete knowledge of reality, and a refusal to comprehend how incredibly grand God's plan can be. It insists that God can't plan a universe in which His creatures can grow, and change, and become more than they were, which is (IMO) a bleak outlook indeed. It also ignores the various foolish bits of, for instance, the human design (the appendix, the coccyx, the questionable design of the human leg and arm joints...).

(And don't get me started on the "Young Earthers", who basically accuse God of lying - I mean, if he went to all that trouble to make it look as if the universe is some fourteen billion years old, our Earth about five billion, and all life forms on it evolved from more primitive ancestors, who am I to doubt Him?)

Perhaps I do need a brief break from being attacked. I'm frustrated with being asked to repeat my answers endlessly. (I'm on this site way too much, and it wears on me.)

Nevertheless, I'm in a good mood at the moment (Bailey's Irish Cream), and I will therefore put together some answers to your questions...

Last edited by Ragtime on 04 Jun 2007, 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

You will not find an answer to this question in this life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. We can, however, think up possible answers. (To some, this is simply a waste, while to others, it helps. To each his own.) My own theory is that God, before creating mankind, was a bit lonely. He then foresaw a way to end up with many free-willed friends. And that way was to create a group of free-willed beings, and give each of them an equal opportunity to end up with Him in the end. Now, free will, being truly free, is out of God's hands. Choices are 100% determined by the possessor of free will. (This point cannot be stressed enough, as it is easy to forget, once its implications start mounting up.) Free will still remains free even though God sees the future. (I'll explain if asked.) While he would forsee some people rebelling against Him in their hearts, and therefore going to Hell, it would be by their own choice, 100%, for He is a completely fair judge -- sometimes more than fair, but never less: He is merciful. So, God is not in the wrong morally. God-lovers go to Heaven, and God-haters go to Hell: and they make themselves either one or the other entirely on their own, of their own volition.

But that whole theory might be a bunch of bollocks (that one's for you, Soph ).



Satan, also, was a free-willed being: Lucifer was a cherubim of staggering beauty. He fell in love with his beauty, and sought to make himself "like God" (blasphemy).

"How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are you cut down to the ground, who did weaken the nations! For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High" (Isaiah 14:12-14).

Major pride going on there.

Hell was created for Satan and the demons who followed him in his rebellion (Matthew 25:41). One-third of God's angels followed Satan and thus became demons (Rev 12:4). (I find it personally interesting, therefore, that our nights are one-third of our daily cycles.) I've noticed that God is neither written nor implied to destroy a spirit -- even those which descend to Hell. I mean to say that spirits are never nullified out of existence (for whatever reason, I do not know). Also, it seems that God simply will not violate free will, no matter what the cost. He simply won't. I don't know why. But when Lucifer made his decision to rebel against God, God expelled him, and did so permanently. Angels don't get second chances. Probably because their decisions of rebellion were completely well-informed, made upon absolute, face-to-face knowledge of God, and therefore quite final. By contrast, He gives us many chances.



The world was created without evil. Evil is one of the two possible outcomes of any true free will. Evil also completely verifies the existence of conciousness in the full sense of the word. That is to say, the ability to know God is almighty, all-good, Alpha and Omega, etc. -- and to STILL have the ability to choose to hate Him, seemingly from out of nowhere. (This is mind-bending to try to comprehend.)

So, evil was: a necessary evil. Necessary to the existence of true free will. (Clearly, God puts quite a premium on free will -- so much so that He will allow a world which He created good to turn evil.)



God is not so concerned with whether our brains eventually find what we determine to be a preponderance of physical evidence to support His existence. Evidence won't change our hearts. And that is what is required.
This is the real question He wants us to decide -- and we all have made a decision, already, within our hearts, which we can still change:
If God exists, do you love Him?
If God exists, do you hate Him?
This is not flipping a coin. This is a concious, informed choice within the heart. There is no randomness involved; it is 100% deliberate, either toward wanting to serve Him, or wanting to be your own god, as Lucifer did.
So, the choosing, itself, is not difficult. What is difficult is letting in God's love. If we mistakenly take the "figure out God" route, it's not just difficult, it's impossible (Rom 11:33) with our relatively tiny minds. We need only look into our hearts to intellectually come to grips with our chosen opposition to Him, and that is done through prayer. You may have heard the expression "Love is a choice". It sounds a bit odd, at first hearing, because most of us don't normally think of love as entirely volitional. But pure love is. Well, the same thing is true of belief. Belief is neither an emotion, nor an abundance of evidence. It is a simple choice. And we've all made it, though we still have time to change it, if we wish, for God gives us greater mercy than He did the fallen angels.



God has a sense of humor! There are some phenonema in nature for which I find no other perceivable reason than the inducement of laughter, which, if you think about it, He also created.




Well, I promised I'd answer this if asked -- and I'm already asked, before I'm even done with this post! So, here's my answer:
Suppose you set up a camera to film a bunch of random people walking around for a hour. Further suppose that you're not monitoring this session yourself. You press stop on the camera after an hour. Then, you rewind the tape only 15 seconds' worth, and you then play back those final 15 seconds of the tape for yourself to view. In this footage, you notice a guy in a yellow shirt feeing two ducks in the lower-right corner of the screen. Then, naturally, you hop in your time machine, and travel to minus 1 hour. You exit your incredible machine, and proceed to a place from which you may view the area where the yellow-clad man will feed the ducks in an hour.
Question: Are you making the man feed the ducks?
No more, then, is God making us do what we do.

Last edited by Ragtime on 04 Jun 2007, 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well I'm an atheist so I do not think there is a God being entertain by us. But humans
love to follow the weather. My brother-in-law is a little weather obsessed. And the
weather is predictable if you have all the variables inputed into the computer with no error factor. So he is aware that the weather has no real choice and he still enjoys following it. So I see no reason why a God could not be entertained by seeing the entire
universe evolve.

First of all, although I think most of your questions are purposefully loaded, I do think that some of them are good questions. I will write out some of the ways that I answer some of your questions in a moment. Before I get to that, I'd like to say that we all have to not only choose what questions to ask ourselves but also our own answers so I don't expect you or anyone else to think my answer is what you should believe if you can't honestly believe it. I think everyone should believe what they think is honestly right.

Most of what I'm about to say is very influenced by Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

I don't personally think that your question about evil is a good question so I'm not going to try and answer it, but I did want to say that I think people wrongly define good and evil as if humans are in some kind of vacuum, good being that which benefits humans and evil being that which doesn't. But what if the focus of the question of good and evil was moved to the planet Earth? What is good for Earth might not be good for people and vice versa, so what is the good? Now if people realized that they depend on the Earth rather than the Earth depending on them for sustainment maybe they would focus their definitions of what is good and evil on what is beneficial or not beneficial for the planet instead of just for themselves.

The only question I really wanted to try and answer for myself (you can take it or leave it) is the one about why God would make it hard for us to believe in His/Her existence. I think that what is meant by the fall of humankind in the Bible is that it wasn't good for humans to divorce themselves from instinct by making conscious choices and now because of the success of conscious choices we are destroying the planet and can no longer return to instinct. If it is conscious choices that make us fallen then for God to allow us to make a conscious choice to believe in Him/Her, which would be our salvation according to the Bible, would be a paradox.

First of all, I agree that if mankind's intention was to destroy all life on earth and make this planet uninhabitable we are going about the right way. However I don't agree that the problem was caused by Adam (which I think is the Hebrew word for man) making a conscious choice in the Garden of Eden. Actually, (at least as I see it) that was God's doing; when he breathed the Breath of Life into them he freed them from their instincts. The problem was the choice that they made. They didn't have to believe the serpent. As I understand it, if they told him to shut his lying mouth he would have had to obey them. That would have been a conscious choice too, and a much better one.

I do agree, though, that if God made his existence more obvious it wouldn't help. Adam knew he was God and effectively, flipped him off anyway.

Yep, if justice is goodness then God is good. Justice is necessary in a world where there is evil, we understand something as evil because we can compare it to something good. If there was no evil, there would be no goodness either. God is perceived as good because we can compare Him to the devil who is evil. When the devil is "removed from office" we will still be able to understand how good God is because we have learnt the difference between good and evil.

Justice is a good thing for those who haven't sinned and for those who repent and therefore will be saved, but God will not spare anyone who is evil. God is compassionate and kind, to some people.

These are just some of my thoughts, very simplified because of my poor knowledge in English...