Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God.

I don't get you. God says "you may operate within these boundaries, and not outside them. If you operate outside them there will be consequences". Then a person operates outside the boundaries and you think it is immoral of God to judge the person as having done so and applying the penalty due. Thats basic law and order Ikabod. The Bible tells us that all will act in opposition to Gods standard. No one will reach it no matter how hard they try. God is not setting us up for a fall, we are BORN fallen. 'Born sinners' means sin will follow because sinning is in our natures. Just like a foxes killing of chickens is in its nature, sin is in ours. To a farmer, foxes are a pest and he will shoot them on sight. Same thing for sinners. Sinners are no use to God. Ultimately they will be thrown on the rubbish heap. There is nothing immoral in this as such. God isn't threatening: "Do this or else!" is a threat. God is telling us that we cannot do it. That there is no way for us to keep to his standard. As such we are rubbish and will be disposed of unless HE does something to change us, to transform us from being rubbish into something useful. He offers to do this for anybody who wants itThe Bible is all the education you need. It teachs (in ample fashion) what God does in response to sin in man. And it teaches what the way out of the dilemma is for anyone who doesn't want to be rubbish.Rubbish can chose to remain rubbish if it wants however

Its a hackneyed old phrase but a "paradigm shift" is what's needed here. You are a manufactured good. You belong to him. God (for he is your God too) will 'stick his face in your business' whether you like it or not. He has every right to do with you what he wants.You have free will within boundaries allowed you by him. Even when those boundaries allow you to do things which he does not consider in your best interests. He allows you to spit in his face and call him a fool. He allows you to curse him if that is what you want to do. But you cannot be free of him. You might want that after this life God would cause you to cease to exist - but that is not within the boundary he sets. All will be called to account for the expression of the will he gave them to express.That is just the way it is. Shift your paradigmEdited by iano, : No reason given.

I think people are great too. They are made in his image and likeness and when they reflect that aspect of him there is nothing more beautiful than that (bar him). But people are crap too - that is their falleness coming out. That is ugly. Gods purpose is to restore us to that which he intended us to be. That is what this whole gig is about. If that cannot be done then for all its complexity and wonder it is still a malfunctioning version of what was intended and is considered by him to be rubbish.God is perfect and can only relate to that which is perfect: like can relate to like. His purpose is to make us perfect so that we can relate to him. It circumvents a free will which prefers to reject his advances. Some want him to "stop sticking his face into my business". Your suggestion would have made us automatons. You cannot relate to automatons.God is a personal God. He relates one-to-one. But there must be a one to relate to.

God is the supreme authority. There is no one to whom he must refer in setting law. Now law isn't something he dreamt up. More accurately, it derives from his very character. If you take a close look at Jesus you see Jesus acting in ways which reflect Gods nature. Jesus as a man may attract or repel you - but he always acted according to the nature of God.When Windows crashes on me, Bill Gates is responsible. He created Windows and all its good and bad is down to him. Windows has no free will - it cannot chose to do good or bad. We were given free will and so can be responsible for what we do. God is responsible for having made evil possible. But not responsible for evil when it occurs.Built in obedience means robots. This is a lower goal than God is after. He considered it worth the effort to end up with people who he could relate to and who could relate to him.Its not dicator its King. You are not in a postion to comment on the moral order of that. You can enter the kingdom as a willing subject or stay outside of it and be an enemy of the King. Them's d'options Adam fell. God permitted Adam expressing his own will. The Creator isn't complaining about us being sinners. His justice demands that sin not be allowed go unpunished. Rebel insurrection needs to be crushed for the good order of the kingdom. The farm is Gods. He didn't take it over from anybody - it was his from the start. God didn't make us rubbish - Adam did. God is willing to recify what Adam enabled in us. He offers to rectify the situation for anyone - no one is excluded except those who would exclude themselves. We cannot rectify the situation - in that sense we must rely on God. But we can prevent his rectifying the situation - our choice to reject his offer. In Gods eyes all men are born rubbish. "There is no one righteous ('good') not even one" and "all have fallen short of the glory of God". God does not condemn for being human - he condemns sinners.He doesn't put any condition on our situation being rectified. If we believe in Jesus Christ it is because he has enabled us to do so - so that is not a condition of our salvation (in the sense that we have to do something to meet the condition). If saved, God has done all the work. If lost we have chosen that route.Salvation is offered as a gift. If you want to hold that our accepting the gift is a condition then by all means do so.

The alternative is to manufacture your own sense of worth. "I'm worth it - why - because I decide so" Worth after a fashion perhaps - but a very circular and subjective form of worth. There is no objective worth in subjective worthThings are worth something because someone else finds them worthwhile. God finds us all worth the effort and grief we cause him. You can believe that he does or you may not. It doesn't change things.Until the time when he says to those who reject him "Rubbish you insist on remaining - thy will be done"

I think it was the work of sheer genius myself given all that has to be woven together.An illustration I've heard before is the one where what we see from our perspective is the underside of a tapestry that is being woven: a crazy maze of looses, straggeldy threads of all kinds of colours. Order is kind of apparent but disorder seems to rule the roost.Then the tapestry gets turned over and we see what has been woven.As the man says, you cannot make an omlette without breaking eggs.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

God permits man to commit evil if man wants. But God warns that there is punishment for the evil that man does. Surely any natural sense of Justice you hold to permits that notion some airtime"Keep off the Grass" can be ignored as can "30mph". You pays your money This is one King who cannot be usurped.There are two ways I can express choice: within the boundaries he finds acceptable or outside the boundaries he finds acceptable. I accepted his offer to make it possible for me to return to exercising my free will within his boundaries. I could have rejected his offer which would make this possible - I chose not to. It was an exercise of my free will. That is my salvation dealt with. You invoke human nature as if you know human nature. But the only human nature you know of is fallen human nature (which has a propensity/desire towards sin). This wasn't Adams nature so the comparison is a poor oneHe's not picking on anyone. Adam injected himself with a disease in sinning. He passed on the corruption down the line. You can blame him for our sinful nature. Not for our own sin however - that we chose to inject ourselves - addicts to sin that we areForgiveness is available to all: from Mother Theresa to Hitler. The only sin God will not forgive (because he cannot) is the sin of refusing his offer to forgive. The unforgivable sin. There are no conditions we have to fulfil in order to be saved in the sense that we do not have to jump through any hoops We cannot save ourselves, no. There is nothing we can do. What do you suggest we could do? We cannot help but I didn't say we could not hinder. Read it again. If a man is saved then it is the result of Gods actions. If a man is lost it is because he rejected Gods attempts to save him. Man loses himself if he is lost The above may clarify

Q: Who am I?Q: Why am I here?Q: Where am I going?Three central questions which mankind has struggled with in one form or another since man began to ask questions.A: You are a man, a being created in Gods image and likeness. If you want further sub-definition, ask Him.A: Your chief purpose is to know God and enjoy him foreverA: Heaven (his choice) or Hell (your choice)Three definitive answers to three unavoidable questions. Mans alternative efforts have produced a bewildering variety of half-starts, dead-ends and possibly-maybes. A result of his search for absolutes. Man craves absolutes. He buys a piece of expensive jewelery for his wife but checks the hallmark before he does so. He builds his buildings, road and adult toys using instruments which are calibrated against carefully controlled standards, whose temperature, pressure and humidity controlled storage evirons ensure absoluteness as certainly as can be acheived. Even his tentitive science is a struggle to eliminate the inherant tentitivity. When it approaches close enough to what is supposed to be the line of absolute, man rejoices in and is comforted by the virtual Fact he can now enscribe in stone.For his sense of self-worth, he measures himself against completely arbitary and self-defined standards of worth: the money he earns, the car he drives, the beauty of his wife, his giving to charity, the letters after his name - to name but a few of the more common.Self-defined worth doesn't cut it for me because cut it cannot. By definition. One cannot be sure if one is worth anything once it is accepted that there is no standard against which to measure worth. For seeking to measure your worth against standards arising out of others mens need to establish their own worth is an arguing in a circle."I'm worth it. Why? Because other men who are similarily looking to establish their worth say so!"Simply dotty. This question arose out of a previous question regarding the salvation of people pre-Christ. Do read the answer I gave - it is not difficult to understand. No True Neandrathal is my short answer to you otherwise.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

"I am who I am" - Rene Descartes modified to travel in an even tighter circle. Circular answers aren't answers. Deciding you need no answers means the question doesn't get asked. Thats one way of dealing with it I suppose And when you do you end up in mystery for abiogenesis is not an answer - its a wild guess. Again the question isn't asked. No answer - for the question is seen as irrelevant.Answers to the BIG questions that man has asked: "The questions are irrelevant" Does the fact that so very many have disagreed with you and spent their lives in pursuit of answers not tickle your fancy at all? Whats a Neandrathal? Is it human or not. If not, then it is an animal. I have no idea where animals go after they dieEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

'I am' concludes these things. Who is the 'I am' that concludes these things? A set of traits, beliefs, schemata concludes this about itself. Self-definition, self-verification, self-calibration , self-worth. Illusions. Except when it references God. The answer to the question "Who am I" can only be found in one place thus. Would you agree? I'll remember that next time your psychology education is used as a mechanism of debate I'll have to plump for your answering they were human seeing as you won't. Men and women. Why not? The Christian God is the same as the OT God. Abraham believed God and was declared righteous (and thus saved). Mr and Mrs Neandrathal man, card carrying members of the human race could believe too. Like you don't need to read the Bible to be saved.

Because they have no moorings. A boat which anchors to itself is not a boat which is anchored (seeing as things have gotten decidely nautical this last few days) Why not. If who I am is defined by something outside me (and not a bunch of others who are as mooring-less as myself at the point of embarking on the good ship "Who am I?" then were is the problem? Did they have a spirit given to them by God? I am confused Larni. Why would they have no way of knowing God. The only way a person can know God is if God reveals himself to them. It matters not in which age that happened. God revealed himself to me - thats how I know him. I don't follow you

Things which spin in the wind point to whereever the wind points them. They don't decide anything. They don't even know if they are happy - that too is spinning. Okay If they are soul-less then they are sinless. Condemnation is not the correct term to apply. You enter the realm of "what happens animals?". The answer to that is: I don't know. If soulful you enter the realm of man in which case apply the argument already given for man. Could they hear? Adam heard. Not at all. Logic tells you that God has to reveal himself to man in order for man to know God exists or know anything about God. It happens to be the Christian perspective too.Edited by iano, : typo

You dealt with a not-irrelevant subject matter in your post Lfen, but it changes what I said not at all. Man can believe in fairies, the IPU's and all the rest...God (if he exists...a sop to you) will only be known to a person when he reveals himself.That was all I was saying. One might (should they ponder it a bit) suppose that a meeting with someone/thing wonderful, who/which does not exist, will differ in hue from a meeting with someone who does, in fact, exist.One would have to have experienced both in order to compare though, I suppose.

I thought you said you were looking for answers. Answers as I though you meant it are destinations. Philosopy never gives answers in that sense, it gives you places to park along whichever road you chose to travel.

I suspect that Robin (at least) is aware that salvation by faith alone is the consistant message of the Bible. I doubt he would conlude the same about the shifting sands of philosophy.