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Author | Topic: Will I see Hitler in heaven? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
iano writes: Measured against Gods standards we're all full of evil. "Full of evil" is a meaningless phrase. We are all capable of evil, but some of us don't have the means, motive and/or oppurtunity to express it. Hitler was just more efficient than most. God's standards are based on what is best for us, not best for Him. From our point of view, Hitler had a worse effect on mankind than most other grains of sand. From God's point of view, we all die anyway. Hurrying up the process doesn't offend Him like it offends us. Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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iano Member (Idle past 1941 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
The Christian position is that you, arguing about Hitlers relative-to-you evil is the same as one grain of sand on a beach arguing that it is closer to the sun that the grain of sand next to it. Measured against human standards, Hitler was full of evil. Measured against Gods standards we're all full of evil.
That makes sense in the christian worldview since God is the source of evil The Christian position doesn't say that God is the source of evil but the we are. The Christian position is that if God doesn't act to halt it then we will do evil. This is not the same as him being the source of it - in the sense that evil emanates from an evil attribute of his. God allowing evil is not the same as it finding its source in him The rest of your post is based on your incorrect understanding of the Christian viewpoint so needs no further reply Edited by iano, : No reason given.
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iano Member (Idle past 1941 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
The same with God. God may be so good that the difference between Hitler and you is not very large by comparison, but the difference is still there. If there is a difference then God can discern it of course. It is not necessarily so that Sidelined is less evil that Hitler. Its Gods measure and standard that will count. If being angry with a brother is considered murder then it rakes the beach up somewhat. Hitlers evil gave an order. But his is only a small part in the whole show. People were actually killed by others. The order was only a signature on a piece of paper.
The only way that you and Hitler are the same on the evil-ness scale is if God isn't capable of discerning minute differences in evil. No one knows who will be considered more or less evil than another. It could be that all the grains of sand are equally evil - when all is taken into account. Unlikely but hey! I don't know
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5908 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
iano
The Christian position doesn't say that God is the source of evil but the we are My error.I should have said the biblical position as outlined in Isaiah
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things]. Sorry for the mix up.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
Cavediver. I'd like to ask you about your faith. Obviously it would be a legitimate response to say it is none of my business. I'm only asking, as I am genuinely interested in how you balance your faith and your physics. I'm not asking you so that I can start an argument, I'm only interested in learning for my own edification.
First off, if I may be so bold, you say that we live in a deterministic world. (If I understand you correctly.) As I understand this in the natural world you hold something of the position that God does not physically intervene in our lives. Is this correct? By this do you mean from the time of the BB, the time that the Earth came into existence or from the time that the evolutionary process was begin. If Jesus is God incarnate I'm wondering what that means to you if God was not supernaturally involve somehow in coming into physical existence. How does God allow for free will in the physical? I might mindlessly while I'm walking kick a stone, which could conceivably start a chain reaction with many possibilities. How does God allow for all of these possibilities? Is it your belief that all of God's intervention in this world done strictly through a spiritual connection with His created beings? Thanks cavediverGreg
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The Critic  Suspended Member (Idle past 3138 days) Posts: 12 From: conn Joined: |
I just hate going places there because you have to find your own way back but jesus hates nazi's so my answer is somewhere you'd probably have to ask.
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Brian Member (Idle past 4959 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
but jesus hates nazi's If He hated the Nazi's, why did He sit on his lazy ass and do nothing about them? Brian.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
Brian writes: If He hated the Nazi's, why did He sit on his lazy ass and do nothing about them? Maybe he sent an army to defeat them. If there wasn't evil in this world then goodness wouldn't be able to exist either. Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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Brian Member (Idle past 4959 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
Maybe he sent an army to defeat them. He took His time then didn't He? Six million of God's chosen people slaughtered while Jesus sat preening His beard, cutting His toenails, washing His shrouds, and helping the Pope count the Vatican billions. Jesus needs a good talking too.
If there wasn't evil in this world then goodness wouldn't be able to exist either.
Aren't you assuming that we live in a dualistic universe? Brian.
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
Brian writes: Aren't you assuming that we live in a dualistic universe? Not at all. I'm just saying that if evil didn't exist then the concept of goodness would have no meaning. It would be the same with joy and sorrow. If we didn't have the ability to know sorrow we couldn't know joy. The same with love and hate, like and dislike or hot and cold for that matter. Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3978 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.3 |
Brian, in exhange with GDR, writes: Maybe he sent an army to defeat them. He took His time then didn't He? Six million of God's chosen people slaughtered while Jesus sat preening His beard, cutting His toenails, washing His shrouds, and helping the Pope count the Vatican billions. Jesus needs a good talking too.
If there wasn't evil in this world then goodness wouldn't be able to exist either.
Aren't you assuming that we live in a dualistic universe? Brian. Brian, GDR: This is a question near and dear to my heart, the question of God's existence and/or nature in light of the slaughter of innocents. Forgive me for rambling through your exchange. I wrestled with this from an early age, and the lack of satisfying answers helped drive me first to young, aggressive atheism and then later, less emotionally and more thoughtfully, to a skeptical agnosticism. Essentially, all the Abrahamic faiths root their answer in mystery, for there is no human justification for Job's misery or the misery of any child born into crushing poverty. Reason cannot justify God's ways to man, and the believer who attempts it is on a fool's errand. Only mystery, only the impossibility of human comprehension, can give these faiths moral cohesion. My personal walk-away from my childhood faith hinged greatly on these questions. In a matter of months, I moved from wondering about the reasonableness of killing 40 children for taunting a prophet to understanding that the entire Bible required one's acceptance of the necessity of the slaughtered innocents; beyond the question of God's existence lay that of worship--shall I worship the fount of necessary evil? Is this the father I should adore? I found I could not accept that necessity within the framework of a loving, personal, all-knowing and all-powerful God, leaving three possibilities: I had arrived at a stubborn refusal, a rebellion that was practically Satanic; there was no God; the human understanding of God was in error. For many years I only entertained the former possibility, that there simply was no God, and I was forceful about it. Still, I am first a poet, and the lyrical beauty of life and love pulled me always back to thoughts of spirit and eternity: it's a human thing. My sometimes ecstatic love of wild nature remains a great counterbalance to evidence-free conclusions of "only" or "merely." I don't know. I deeply, sincerely, don't know. So, I find myself again looking at necessity and contingency and looking more closely at the third option--that the human understanding of God is in error. If I understand the theology of it correctly (my Southern Baptist roots didn't need much theology beyond an angry God, a bass guitar, and sex), Christian apologists usually come to rest at balancing the necesssity of evil with the necessity of free will, suggesting that God was bound by some sort of moral calculus that required that toddlers be raped and throttled. I still can't go there. Nonetheless, I have somewhat re-balanced my leaning-away agnosticism--right down the middle, trying to see without histories, mine or otherwise. The repugnance I feel at the above apologies is at the apologies, not the world; neither the tiger nor the lamb break my heart, because I see the march of their generations (and mine) like a parade: life is long enough, after all, and the answer to the slaughter is to stop it whenever one can. I find myself wondering whether God really has to line up an infinite series of falling dominos to be God, or whether the true essence of divinity could be purely creative, the contingency of life as true as the necessity, and all because it was the only way there could be any being at all, and if divinity could blot the horror of our human stain, it would. My apologies for thinking with my fingers. God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ”Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’ --Ann Coulter, Fox-TV: Hannity & Colmes, 20 Jun 01 Save lives! Click here!Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC! ---------------------------------------
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
I'm hesitant to respond because you have thought about this deeply, and frankly I doubt that I can add anything that you haven't thought about previously. However it isn't easy shutting me up.
Omnivorous writes: Essentially, all the Abrahamic faiths root their answer in mystery, for there is no human justification for Job's misery or the misery of any child born into crushing poverty. If you look at the story of Job you can choose to take it literally at face value if you like. Frankly I find the literal story to be inconsistent with the God that I know of in the NT and well as the God that I know in my life. If however you take the story to be a metaphor for the fact that we will struggle and face sorrow and hardship, but that through it all we are still loved by, and valuable to God. It tells us that we should be people of courage, hope and perseverance.
Omnivorous writes: So, I find myself again looking at necessity and contingency and looking more closely at the third option--that the human understanding of God is in error. If I understand the theology of it correctly (my Southern Baptist roots didn't need much theology beyond an angry God, a bass guitar, and sex), Christian apologists usually come to rest at balancing the necesssity of evil with the necessity of free will, suggesting that God was bound by some sort of moral calculus that required that toddlers be raped and throttled. I still can't go there. Who can understand the evil that goes on in the world except the perpetrators and maybe not even them. I think one of the problems in our society is that we are made, through the media, acutely aware of acts of horrendous evil but we remain oblivious to the millions of incidents of love and charity. To try and bring it back to the OP, we can look upon Hitler and concentrate on the evil that he brought about and forget about the many acts done by people like Corrie Ten Boom. The OP is asking whether Hitler will be in heaven or not. The Bible says that we are not to judge the individual, but we are called to judge the actions of people. I would suggest that based on Hitler's actions that even if he were to find himself in heaven he would find it totally repugnant as he would have to face the evil of what he did for eternity. My guess is that he will find himself more content in hell. To get back to your post I repeat that if we can't know sorrow we can't know joy. Are you prepared to give up knowing the joy that you feel when, for example, you hold your new born child in your arms for the first time by giving up the sorrow that you feel when you lose a parent? I would suggest that even with all the sorrow in the world there is more joy. There are relatively few that choose suicide over life. When we look at the life of Christ in the NT we can also see that God suffers with us. Christ suffered for us. There aren't any easy answers but I have no doubt in my mind that my Christian God is a God of love who hates evil, and hates suffering. This of course begs the question of why doesn't He end it if He is all powerful and all I can say is that it would leave us an human beings who would be unable to choose to feel love, compassion or joy. What kind of existence would that leave us with? Everybody is entitled to my opinion.
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iano Member (Idle past 1941 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
Brian, GDR: This is a question near and dear to my heart, the question of God's existence and/or nature in light of the slaughter of innocents. In attempting to reconcile things you might consider changing the word 'innocents' at the end of the above sentence to that which more accuratly reflects the Fall view of thing: 'the guilty'. There is nothing irreconcilable about a holy God pouring out his wrath on the guilty. Our own justice systems mirror (if somewhat haphazardly) this concept.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3978 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.3 |
Yes, I understand the Fall thing. I just don't believe it.
Babies are not guilty, Ian. You can theologize all you like, but I grew up with baby siblings, baby nieces and nephews, made babies and diapered grandbabies. I was a baby. Babies are not guilty. Little girls who stop politely for the wrong stranger are not guilty. Grandmothers who squint and step into traffic are not guilty. The handful of people killed each year by lightning are not guilty. The conjoined twins (and the Down's syndrome kids, sweet and heart-breaking as anything), are not guilty. Even me, Ian, flawed and struggling as I am, trying to see the truth by the best light that I can, I am not guilty. The vaporized children of Hiroshima set the wheels of their fates in motion no more than I set mine, nor did we choose our own natures or the nature of this world. We all grapple with the cards we were dealt and the flow of the game. Whatever else they and I may be, we are not guilty of some primeval stain that justifies our torment and slaughter. We are executives of our own will, and we stand to account for ourselves, not our fathers. I have more respect for the reply of mystery, for "It is God's will" than the old, creaking, deus ex machina of original sin, cranking out apologies for the lost and forsaken, wiping the blood from some strange god's hands. IMHO, of course. God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ”Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’ --Ann Coulter, Fox-TV: Hannity & Colmes, 20 Jun 01 Save lives! Click here!Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC! ---------------------------------------
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Brian Member (Idle past 4959 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
Hi Omni,
Babies are not guilty, Ian. You can theologize all you like, but I grew up with baby siblings, baby nieces and nephews, made babies and diapered grandbabies. I was a baby. Babies are not guilty. But, according to the warped fundy mindset babies are indeed guilty, all of mankind is guilty. My friend John, who is now teaching in the USA, essentially answered your question when I enquired about the nice old grandma who helps when she can and never insults anyone, where is she going when she dies. His reply was that she is rancid with sin until she accepts Jesus into her heart, it doesn't matter how nice you are, or how much you help others, everyone is tainted with sin until you accept Jesus' sacrifice and repent. Remember, when talking to fundies, you need to consider their mindset, they only have a one track mind, the veracity of the Bible, every syllable. I think the easiest way to reconcile suffering with a loving God is to realise that there is no such thing as God. The concept is very outdate now and the only real growth area for Christianity is in third world countries, or oppressed countries, or wealthy countries with home schooling. The problem is, some people need the comfort of there being a big daddy in the sky to look after them and give them a reward at the end of it all, and to keep this delusion alive they will accept any pathetic apologetic (of which free will is the saddest) to keep it intact. Liberating yourself from the suffocation of believing in God doesn't make you a bad person, but it does enable you to be a free thinker, and frees you from racist and sexist legends. Brian.
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