Heretics - Reverend Carlton Pearson

I remember years and years ago, watching one of the Christian TV stations, a program by Herbert Armstrong (I believe), who headed a literalist, evangelical church. However, in this program Armstrong was quoting Bible verse after Bible verse proving that an eternal Hell did not exist for humans.In fact, I seem to vaguely recall Seventh Day Adventist doctrine is that there is no eternal Hell for unbelievers -- they believe that the unbelievers will simply be annihilated after the final judgement. Some other evangelicals seem to believe this, too.And then on one of the more liberal religious channels I watched a program where a Baptist minister explained that his belief is that Hell isn't eternal (and simply consists of "seperation from God"), and that even after death the sinner will have opportunities to repent and find salvation.Edited by Chiroptera, : corrected an error of the typographical kind; also added a clause

---

Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

quote:

---

This morning, I listened to the "This American Life" podcast on the way to work. I kept thinking, "Damn, Jar would love this."

---

I heard it on the radio a couple of days ago and thought the exact same thing.

There is a thread here somewhere with a long prologue which puts out a pretty possible picture of the evolution of religion. I can find the topic if need be, but for now I will paraphrase; At one time man feared what he did not know. He ascribed all things mysterious to a divine force or deity, including those which were harmful to him such as disease and natural disaster. After a time mankind felt sure that to prevent evil and procure good, they must appease their chosen deities. This appeasement came in varying forms, including cannibalism and human sacrifice. These acts of 'worship', whatever they may be, are what Ringo is describing as the 'straight and narrow', but you can see that in some cases they neither benefit a flock or a shepherd, as with cannibalism. I think his theory is putting the cart before the horse in some aspect; he is looking at religions which have shown reason, in that appeasing God much of the time benefits society as well. Many rules, and many religions, accomplish no practical or beneficial purpose at all.

What do you define as moderate?

This is a great summation of the Gospel Of Inclusion! Carlton sounds honest and quite comfortable in his faith.He was willing to give up his fame and fortune for what he came to believe in.Im not an inclusionist yet, but I am open to the belief, should God lead me that direction.Edited by Phat, : add

Universalism has been preaching universal salvation -- "there's no Hell" -- since the 1790's. In 1961, it merged with Unitarianism to form Unitarian-Universalism (UU).A UU anecdote tells of a Baptist Sunday School student interviewing ministers from different denominations about their beliefs. She was shocked with the UU minister told her that we don't believe in Hell. "Then why be good?", she asked. "Because it is the better way."Such a pity that there are people who refuse to be good unless they are threatened with the most dire punishment possible.

The whole point of orthodox christianity, however, is that we can't ever be good enough anyway....despite our best efforts.Hell was never created for people. It was created as a destination for rebellious spirits that refused to bow before God. The only way we would end up there is to refuse the obvious best solution.

An example would be "Yahweh is a really powerful god." It's moderate in the sense that a more extreme version of the statement can be conceived; eg, "Yahweh is the most powerful god" or "Yahweh is omnipotent."My theory is that other members of the faith will reward believers who believe the more extreme version, over time creating a selection pressure to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely loving, infinitely just, infinitely »anything desirable« God.[edit]I should also say that, if scripture suggests something moderate, then this force can push people away from the most obvious solution. It forces people to be unbiblical.For example; I look at the gospel and think it reads something like "Sin is pretty much a force God can't just wipe out -- he is not all-powerful. Howver, because he loves humanity, he sends his son to atone for the sins of Adam, giving us an escape hatch." This seems to me like a fairly natural reading of the gospel. It becomes unacceptable only as God's power moves from 'very great' to 'omnipotent'. By making God omnipotent, you invalidate the sacrifice of Christ. The tendency to deal with God as an infinite being makes the bible seem like nonsense.Edited by attssyf, : missed a point I wanted to express.

I do not doubt that this seems to make sense to you. I am not sure if you can provide an example of another situation where making God less than omnipotent would make the story easier for you to swallow, but in the example you just gave you have drawn the wrong conclusion as I see it. You seem to believe that God can not wipe out sin. It would be good to think about what sin really is. When you think about it, sin proves in a way that God IS omnipotent. God is supposed to be all powerful, all knowing, completely perfect. I will not argue from any side, but even if God were created by man, He has come to be viewed by man as all powerful, all wise etc. That is what makes Him God. Now assuming that our idea of perfection has been called 'God' then we can also believe that there can only be one way to do something perfectly. When we do something less-than-perfect it is sin. It is going against God. We can not be sure of what exactly is the perfect way to do things, but we have come up with a list of some obvious imperfections, called the commandments. Religions have added other things, based on what they feel would be the perfect thing to do, and these things (how we pray to God, what we do at church, etc.) are constantly debated. If there is only one correct answer to a problem, all other answers are less than perfect. In religion the other answers are called sins. It would seem from this that we do think of God as perfect, or we would not expect a correct answer from HIm. It also seems obvious that God can not wipe out sin. As long as He exists perfectly, and we have free-will, we will have the ability to do something imperfectly. He could possibly wipe out free-will, yes. He could force us all to know the truth and be perfect, but I would not hold my breath. In the meantime, just know that God did not creat sin, anymore than a mathmetician created wrong answers to multiplication. We can not ask any teacher to wipe out poor students. If we were always going to be perfect, we would have to all be gods.

God commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. If he were omnipotent, he would know they aren't going to follow the command, making it a bit of a show. If he really didn't know, the command is an honest request.Adam and Eve hide from God. It makes sense to think of God as neither omniscient nor omnipresent.God comes to regret creation before the flood, suggesting he hasn't got perfect foresight.In Genesis 6, many angels rebel from God, suggesting all is not in perfect harmony in heaven.In Job, Satan convinces God to plague Job with terrible afflictions, suggesting he's not perfectly loving and is even sometimes influenced by the devil.Lots of stories make more sense when you see God as powerful but limited.The biggest one is the salvation offered by Jesus; if God was all-powerful, he could, if he chose, absolve all sin, for all men, for all time, and not only that, rearrange the world such that sin were not possible. What use is Jesus's sacrifice unless God can't just absolve the entire human race?If you see God as not having that level of power, then God's attempts (often unsuccessful) to lead his chosen people in righteousness are just that; attempts by a powerful lord at helping his people prosper. Well, not necessarily. People have believed in gods for a long time, but many stories of the gods have them as imperfect or less than omnipotent. The Greek gods, for example, are very powerful in contrast to humans, very knowledgeable in contrast to humans, but not beings that manifest some mathematical infinity of power or knowledge. I think there is a useful conception of Yahweh as being very, very powerful but not omnipotent, very very clever but not omniscient, very very loving but not 'omniphilic'.This God makes the stories in the bible more reasonable; it makes the Christian message much more reasonable. God is powerful but cannot trivially defeat the devil, thus the devil is a real danger. He cannot stop all suffering, thus suffering exists in the world. He cannot negate all sin, but can offer us a way out. That is a theology I find coherent. Powerful, not infinite. Sin's a tricky concept, because it can mean at least two thingsIf I say "murder is a sin", then I'm describing a whole set of actions that count as sin. It's a bit like describing the fouls you can commit while playing a sport.If I say "The murder of abel is a sin", then I'm describing a particular time when the rule was broken.Now, when you say 'God did not create sin', there are two readings of it;(1) God did not set up the rules that define sin.
(2) God did not create anything intrinsically sinful.I think the bible suggests meaning (1) throughout; that God did not set up the rules for sin, that sin and death are forces that God doesn't have full control over, and that he is engaged in a battle with them. It also suggests meaning (2); the things that God creates are good. ("And he saw that it was good")Once you hold dogmatically to the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent, omniphilic, omnipresent God, you get into all the old theological problems like the problem of suffering, which really aren't problems if God isn't infinite.----Ultimately my point is this; here I am making a moderate interpretation of scripture. How many bishops would ordain me if I express this theology, or a better-argued version of the same? How many congregations would accept me as their priest? I'm thinking, very few.There would always be a pressure to say, today, that God is a little more powerful than I described him yesterday, and no pressure to say he is less powerful. That thrusts our description of God towards the infinite, which I believe has severe problems.

God gave Adam and Eve a choice. He is timeless and sees into the future as if it were present; of course He knew what they would choose. Does this mean he should have stopped the world and went back to make humans without choice? Of course not. His plan is timeless, unchangeable, and perfect. For Adam and Eve, in a finite world, the command was necessary, so that a choice could be made. It is not show, but a protection for the creatures who could choose to follow the command. Adam and Eve simply believed that they could hide from God. It is this futile and pitiful belief that gives emphasis to their shame, and their realization after sinning that God's way was perfect. This is again choice. Angels have choice. Though more perfect than we are, they are still not capable of complete understanding of God's plan. In the above, I have tried to show you that these stories make sense even with an almighty God.To your credit, you have thought this out much more deeply than I had at first expected. I think you are saying that if you personally were to read the bible and interpret its meaning with no other source or knowledge of God, such as a church affiliation or reference to dogmas and doctrines, then you might come up with a god who is less than perfect. A literal view of the Bible might very well give this impression to some. This is why I am consistantly telling those who believe otherwise, that the Bible is not the answer in itself. Countless variations and interpretations exist, some of them completely contradictory. This is why the ancient church fathers went to great lengths to define the concepts within the Bible through reason, as accurately as human mind can so do. What they came up with may be disdained as doctrine and termed 'unbiblical', but it is absolutely important. A big one of these is the concept of free-will. Most of what you have given as examples can be summed up in that one word. You may be willing to ask yourself where you stand on that one.

That's exactly it. To me the bible just makes more sense that way. An omni-everything God just demands too many extra explanations, requires people to explain things in more convoluted ways, makes too many stories hard to fathom.I remember reading a thread on another forum, between a Christian and an atheist, and the Christian was talking about a time when his father had been involved in an accident. The father had been out hiking when a large boulder dropped off an outcrop an caught him in the head. Luckily, he was almost entirely unharmed. This Christian, the son, had interpreted the escape as a miracle, as God saving his father. What struck me at the time was the question "well, who threw the rock?"It seems to me that if God is all-powerful, then he is ultimately responsible. You have to look at the situation and say, "God threw a rock at my head. He didn't throw it as hard as he could." That doesn't seem very loving, or helpful spiritually. How can you fell grateful because someone throwing rocks at you didn't use their full strength?Look at it the other way, though. If the impersonal universe randomly 'emits' a rock at me, and God intervenes because he's looking out for me, then I owe him a real debt, some real gratitude. He's like a friend who's got my back. But that only works if he's not the one who engineered all the danger as well.

Heh. This reminds me of an episode of "God-Man", Ruben Bolling's ("Tom the Dancing Big) recurring series that makes the Christian God into a comic book superhero.It shows God-Man teamed up with Human-Man. During their adventure, Human-Man gets shot, so God-Man calls 911. In the operating room, the surgeons are convinced that Human-Man isn't going to make it...then, miraculously, he pulls through.Last panel shows God-Man visiting Human-Man in his hospital room.Human-Man: Hey, God-Man, instead of just barely saving me in the nick of time, why didn't you just arrange that I didn't get shot at all?God-Man: Now don't make me mad, Human-Man!

---

Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

Consider your alternative as far as laudable explanations go. Surely, if God exists, there is no way to assimilate every aspect of Him. But what exactly stumbles you in particular? Maybe nobody threw the rock, least of all, God. Everything that happens does so for a reason, but some things happen apart from direct intent. For instance, if the rock is on a cliff and somebody pushes it off, therein lies intent. But suppose that same rock is teetering on the edge and gravity has acted upon it. The reason the rock fell was for a reason, in this case, gravity, but it happened apart from intent.Whether it was a miracle or not is between that man and God. I wasn't there and I can't presuppose either way. But I'm sure stranger things have happened. If He is all-powerful then He can offer freewill to His creation. How does that make Him culpable? Are your parents at fault when you do wrong because, technically, they made you? I'm a little bewildered as to why you think God threw it at all. How have you come to this understanding? But you forget that physical constants exist for a reason and the mere fact is that organisms need to die to make room for the next cycle. Can you make a painting only to have the painting criticize how you fashioned it?

---

Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust, vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot fully understand what He's doing, but you know that you know Him." -Oswald Chambers

Hopefully answering this point answers all, or at least most, of your questions.First CauseWhat I'm arguing is that if God has perfect foresight and total power, then he is responsible for every event in the universe. It's an application of the 'first cause' argument.It goes like this; I ask, what is the cause of an event, E? We say, it is a preceding event, E', or perhaps a set of causes. This leads us to ask the cause of E', and we come up with a cause E''. And so on, possibly infinitely.(In the story above, E is the dropped rock, E' is a gust of wind, E'' is low pressure in the east, etc.)Ultimately, how far back can we go?Well, God's creation of the universe is a pretty good candidate. God makes the universe. And it doesn't matter how you believe he did it, with a big bang or in seven days. The point is, God's creation of the world is the first event in a chain of events that leads ultimately to our event in question, E.In summary;(1) God created the universe, setting the world in motion.
(2) a bunch of stuff happens in between, as a direct consequence of (1)
(3) A rock drops on someone's head, as a direct consequence of (2)Therefore, (3) happens as a direct consequence of (1).God created the universe. Ultimately, he started the ball (or rock) rolling. God threw the rock.IntentionThe second part of the argument is about intention; did God want the rock to drop?Now we get into the idea that God knows everything, particularly about the future. Does God know the future, in full detail?If he does, then he must have known, at the point of creation, that that rock was going to drop on that man's head. He could have chosen to create the world differently; a slightly different spin on an electron here, a slightly different wing shape for a butterfly, and that gust of wind never happens and the rock never drops.So. God causes the rock to drop, and he knows the rock will drop. He has full knowledge of what he does, and he does it. If we were arguing it in a court of law, we could say, he knew what he was doing (mens rea) and he did it (actus reus).God's going to the Big House for Grievous Bodily Harm.Free WillFree will doesn't help you out of this one. In fact, it's an argument for a non-omniscient God. Here's how.If God can predict the choices people make, then he choses to put you on the earth at a certain time, knowing how you will act, and then punishes and rewards you. It's like God arranging the cards in a deck, letting you play one hand of blackjack, and rewarding you if you beat the house. Sure, you have the free will of hit or stick, but THE GODDAMNED GAME WAS RIGGED!On the other hand, if God doesn't know how you're going to choose, he can be at least a little surprised at how you act; either delighted or disappointed. Both these emotions are a form of surprise, a consequence of not knowing the future. It seems our choices become more significant, that our choices aren't all pre-determined before we are born. Human choice is significant only in a world where we aren't being cold-decked by God.