Question for moderate to conservative Christians

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Maybe that hunter/gatherer life was our Eden.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Sometimes yes, but how does the suffering of innocent children build their character? What lesson does their suffering teach them later in life? What lesson does their untimely death teach them in the afterlife? It makes no sense that this was part of any deliberate plan.

But if we have multiple streams of consciousness accessible to our subconscious, then such experiences eventually become subconscious information providing our conscious self with intuition at a later point. These evil experiences don't build character, they build judgment regarding what to avoid. For instance, that intuitive feeling you get about someone you meet warning you that they will harm you. Your subconscious warns you because in another stream they did harm you. Similarly, when hypnosis reveals repressed memories of childhood abuse, these may well have happened in other streams.

It's not a matter of God allowing evil, as much as us acquiring judgment from everything we experience. The suffering is temporary and serves us beyond this life. It makes no sense if this is the only life we get. It can only be understood in the context of an everlasting life.

Heaven isn't some other place distinct from this existence, where everything is perfect and lions don't attack lambs and where good people find their reward. Heaven is the very system of multiple streams of consciousness of which we are and have always been a part. This system is everlasting life. All that we experience in all these alternate streams assists us as members of our soul in the long run. If we tune into our subconscious - call it God if you like, or your soul - it provides us with intuition to make the right choices for situations that our collective self (soul) has encountered. And the additional judgment we acquire in this lifetime from learning the consequences of our actions adds to this pool of intuition. Living our lives by trusting our intuition is what scripture refers to as "walking in faith / living in Christ". If we lack the intuition it's because we haven't yet fully learned that lesson. We only sin for lack of judgment. If we truly appreciated the consequences we would never sin.

If mankind was inherently evil, then it follows that God must be evil too since we're supposedly made in God's image.

Life really only makes sense, if everything we do - good or evil - teaches us moral lessons and helps us and our soul acquire better judgment. Mankind is not inherently evil, he just lacks judgment. One life is not enough time to acquire that judgment.

I dunno. Looking at history, you don't see much of man's humanity toward man. As far as war, man made famine, genocidal persecution, and the like are concerned, I think a good argument can be made that there is something inherently rotten about the human soul. And no, I'm not saying that all of us are guilty of such horrible things, but that we all have the capability of doing them.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

but compared to so many other animal species we hold compassion in a way that to my knowledge havent been observed anywhere in teh animal kingdom so arent we trying to make an absolute judgement out of relative evidence here?

We are still - as ruveyn has said, the baddest monkeys in the monkey house - despite our ability to feel compassion.
But what do you expect - I'm a Lutheran - I was raised with notions of man's depraved nature.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yes, humans are capable of good and bad because our species has evolved beyond purely instinctive behaviour. It's only through exercising our free-will and becoming conditioned by the suffering caused us by our immoral choices and the joy brought by our ethical choices that we truly acquire moral judgment and wisdom.

We could manage very well if we judiciously consulted our conscience regarding the moral choices we make - because that is a direct connection with our soul, with our personal god/saviour, if you like. The problem comes when we allow other immoral influences to guide our decision making, such that our instinctive and intuitive connection is broken. Ironically, the Bible itself would count as probably the worst influence on mankind over the last 3000 years.

Why? Because it essentially says "I am God, do as I say, not as I do".

*) From the Old Testament: "Thou shall not commit murder - but it's okay if I do it, I instruct you to, or you believe I'm instructing you to. In fact, commit genocide in Canaan and rename it Israel/Judea." Thus, wars are fought and genocide is justified even today for the simple fact people believe God is on their side and would want them to.

*) From the New Testament: "Believe that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of all sins and you will be saved, regardless of whether you follow a moral code. Only faith in this will save you. In fact, you will not be saved by following a moral code." i.e. you are not accountable because someone else paid the price for you. This just makes it so easy for people to continue in their sinfulness, rather than appreciate the fact that they have to suffer the consequences of every immoral choice they make.

Humans are capable of living moral lives, but that's generally only when they break away from religion / superstition and begin to become personally responsible and accountable for their behaviour according to the system that's naturally built into them.

I wouldn't say there's something inherently rotten about the human soul; I'd say we're easily tempted to believe what we want to believe in order to justify doing what we want to do. The Bible gives people the justification to do whatever they want, because it can be interpreted anyway they choose as it is inherently self contradictory and inconsistent.

Regarding being saved by faith alone - it should be remembered, faith is never alone. That is, without producing works, faith is dead.
And, again as a cynical Lutheran, I was raised with the notion that we have free will - - to be bad. If we're good, we can only attribute that to God's grace.
And I absolutely agree - there are people who think that Christian affiliation will be enough to save them, but who turn a blind eye to their own failings and bad behavior. As Christ himself had one said ( and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing), "Not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord,' will get into the Kingdom of Heaven."
Don't worry, I'm not about to start cursing people to hell just for believing in the goodness of human beings.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

This is the typical atheist queiston and a straw man question at best. Bad things happen period God how ever has nothing to do with it. It's called free will

Evil isn't necessarily the opposite of good in the sense that it is an inverse--its the opposite of good in the sense that cold is the absence of heat. It is the lack of good. Which is why God's creations will sometimes turn against Him.

Very well said but still this is just a straw man statement of a question that is a weak queistion.

Yes, evil and good exist along a spectrum of behaviour, just as hold and cold exist along a spectrum of temperature. Each acquires meaning in comparison to the opposite extreme. Those who wrote the scriptures fell into the trap of anthropomorphising these extremes to create entities of absolute goodness and evil.

That isn't what your brethren in this thread have been saying. The opposite actually.

Hurricanes, volcanoes, droughts, famines, and epidemics are free will? Whose? While they don't constitute evil, they do cause suffering.

I don't know if this explains anything to you - or even for myself - but Jesus had said, "It rains on the just and the unjust."
Or in the parlance of out times: s**t happens.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Of course they constitute free will. God's will. Though does God have free will? I doubt it. He can't seem to help his nature, being a giant as*hole kid with a magnifying glass