Why did God forgive our sins?

A quiet evening watching the foottie would seem like heaven at the moment
But seriously I do get what you mean. Unsurprsingly I don't accept that my love for others is as a result of God within them but, as usual on this general subject, you make your point eloquently, passionatley and well. If there is a God I hope this is true. If there is a God but this is not true then as far as I am concerned the God in question is unworthy of anyones companionship and is not a God I would want to have any dealings with. Whatever the consequences of that decision might be.You should talk to ICANT. He seems to have a very different view.

What would happen to my 2 year old son should he (God forbid) die unexpectedly? 3 years jail time vs an eternity in hell............
Do you really compare?
Is Gods justice based on Caymen island justice? Or should it be better?I see you have avoided the main point of God allowing ignorance of the law needlessly and unjustly Er maybe that of those that dwell in "your" building would at least be morally necessary even if not legally. Can God kill, maim, rape, pillage, destroy etc purely on the basis of having ctreated? Should my son be subject to my whims in this way? Should I be allowed to torture and murder my "creation" in this way? Because with free will comes moral judgement. Because creation in itself is not an excuse. Because if God is good his actions should also be good. Because if we are to follow God he should set an example worth following. Because if there is any sort of absolute morality (as I suspect you would advocate that there is) wrong is wrong regardless of who commits the act. Even God. Possession is no excuse. In my view we should be much less flippant and much more questioning of the need for such things. Morally speaking. Apply these questions to a being other than God and see how consistent your answers are (or are not!!!!).
Apply these same questions to one who is ignorant of the very question that will decide his fate.You have still failed to reconcile a loving God with a God who will condemn those ignorant of his choice to eternal damnationWhy? Because the two are obviously irreconciable.

Need? I have not claimed that an omnipotent omniscient God would need anything.
If anyone has claimed God has needs it is you. Apparently he needs and and wants man to choose to love him for some inexplicable reason
My argument relates to what a good and just god should do if he is indeed good and just as you claim. Not what he needs to do.Condemning people for ignorance to the same fate as those who consciously did wrong is not good and is not just Forget need. Think of should. So I say again -Straggler writes ICANT Writes So in summary -God is omnipotent and omniscient
God chose a method of spreading his message of redemption that has left huge swathes of the world’s population unaware of the choice that they are required to make.
This however is not Gods fault.
Regardless of fault those unlucky enough to be unaware of the choice they need to make will burn in eternal damnation.
God loves us. No!!! Even if I believed that your God existed I would never be able to worhip one so heartless and indifferent to human pain and suffering. Whatever the consequences to myself. See above. I don't want such an opportunity with your God. You seem like a good, decent and well meaning person. As such I am utterly unable to understand how you can believe and worship a god with whom you have to justify utter indifference to eternal suffering with a simple shrug of the shoulders and the argument "Why does God need our approval or permission to do anything He desires with what was originally His?"A good and just God would not need to be explained or justified with such arguments.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

With your definitions etc. you sound like a lawyer!!! Never a good sign on questions of morality. How can God be good and just if he makes laws and upholds laws that are evil?Again - A truly good and just God would not need such tortuous explanations or justifications. You would not need lawyers tricks and dictionary definitions if your God were both good and just.ICANT you are just plain wrong on this question.Consider the following
If I were a ruler and I both created laws and decided upon the method of communicating those laws to my subjects - I personally would not condemn anyone to eternal damnation who was genuinely ignorant of those laws.
I might give a relatively minor punishment to demonstrate that the guilty party should make better effort to learn the law of the land in future. But I would also take some reponsibility for communicating my own laws to those who need to know them.
I certainly would not dish out the same punishment to those that are ignorant as those that willfully and knowingly break the law. I think this would be morally unjustified.

Would this make me an evil in your view?

Would this make me unjust in yor view?

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If not - how do you reconcile these answers with the answers you give with regard to your supposedly good and just God? Am I, in the example above, more or less just than your God?

How convenient!Straggler asks ICANT writes Given the number of people of faiths other than your own in the world (each equally convinced that you are as wrong about your beliefs as they as you believe they are about theirs) this seems a somwhat random, inefficient and pointles method of information distribution.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

One woman who felt compelled to go to your church for whatever reason........? One woman who no doubt was raised at least fully aware of, even if not part of, the Christian message and community.
One woman.
That is your answer to the eternal suffering of billions?What about the millions of Hindus who are never going to randomly decide to wander into your church?
How does God give them a choice?Why does a good, just and omnipotent God use such unjust and inefficient methods of making people aware of a choice which will determine their eternal fate? Why does a good, just and omnipotent God effectively condemn billions of people to eternal damnation for no reason other than ignorance?If I were in Gods position I would ensure that everyone knew the choice I had put before them and that they had the opportunity to make that choice.
That would seem only fair given the dire consequences of ignorance.Am I more just and more good than your God?Such a God is not good and not just. Think about it ICANT. How can you defend this and justify it to yourself? I don't understand.Or of course maybe your God is just not there at all. Then it all makes sense....................? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

The idea that there even is an "eternal perspective" is a fairly baseless assumption on your part. 1) This is your opinion/assumption and is ultimately a baseless assertion.
2) Even if you were to be correct regarding the consequences the fact that you dislike the assumed consequences of man-made morality is neither here nor there with regard the actual existence of any absolutist alternative.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Is misery possible in heaven.......?Some might think that watching passively and powerlessly as ones loved ones are consigned to eternal damnation in a lake of fire is in itself a form of hell.

At absolute best this shows that Luke said that Jesus said that God was good.
More realistically this shows that 'someone' has written that Luke said that Jesus said that God was good.So it seems that Onfire might have had a point no?

ICANT your version of "heaven" sounds awful. An endless bout of misery and guilt and emotional pain........

And when your mind turns to those who suffer eternal torment in a lake of fire while you large it up in your 'perfect body'?Not a single moment of remorse? Emotional pain? Guilt? Misery? As per your previous post.

It was you that started down the path of absolute morality again. It is you who has been unable to defend this quite evidently impractical and nonsensical position again.Whether the scriptures are internally consistent or not has little bearing on whether or not the idea that a God that already knows everything sends down his "son" to cleanse us of sins that he knows we will continue to perpetrate regardless of this "sacrifice".

It is not. With no real malice involved you need to understand that I sometimes feel that talking to you guys is like talking to flat Earthers. How would you react to someone who vehemently insisted that the Earth was flat? Exasperation and some piss taking are almost inevitable in the face of such absurdity. Lashing out? I would call it questioning evident ridiculousness. Your sensitivity to questioning, criticism and even ridicule of your baseless beliefs are your problem. Not mine. "God says"......????????
Surely this is the point that Onfire and I are making. The bible is only what "God says" if you assume that God actually said any of it. Quite an assumption!! People who assume that the bible is the word of God can have all the conviction in the world but that no more makes it the word of God than it makes The Lord of The Rings the word of Gandalf. I have an enormous problem with a dependence on faith in all spheres. Not just Christianity. The truth can always be questioned. Those who claim otherwise are invariably hiding their ignorance, stupidity or desire to deceive. Religion is the ultimate in self justifying nonsense. Have faith. Don't question. Then you will be rewarded.It is easy to see why those peddling a lie would resort to such an argument.
It is a lot less obvious why an omnipotent, omniscient being would hold unevidenced faith in his existence in such high regard. That in which you have faith is as equally unevidenced and uncorroborated as many of those things that you would also call 'myths'. 'Myths' that many others have equally as much faith in the veracity of as you do the bible. I reject equally all such unevidenced myths. Not just yours. So don't take it personally. The very antithesis of science is to require that you believe because you are told to believe. The evidence leads the way. Not authority. The published evidence for current theories is available to all. Including you.Scientifically accepted theories of cosmological evolution rely on prediction and verification as do all accepted scientific paradigms. Verified prediction of new physical phenomenon rather than after the event subjective interpretations. The ultimate in objective, tested, scientific evidence. Such is the nature of scientific investigation.If you can create a theory that genuinely and accurately predicts new physical phenomenon and allows the calculation of known entities to the same or a greater degree of accuracy than the current theories then your theory will be taken seriously and will eventually supercede the existing and currently accepted answers. The history of science is full of such examples.However simply asserting, as you frequently do, that you find the answers derived from current scientific theories unsatisfying is not an objective or valid argument against them. One requires faith.
The other requires understanding.
My objections to faith have been explained. What are your objections to objective, prediction based, evidentially supported and tested understanding?
I would suggest that 99% of the time you are happy to accept the conclusions that the scientific method leads to. Only when it contradicts your unevidenced faith based dogma do you have a problem with the conclusions of evidence and prediction based investigation. Hmmmm God loves us.....But not enough to avoid condemning the vast majority of us to the ultimate fate of an eternal lake of fire. Apparently. Why trust and faith? Why are these the test? Why not reveal himself to us fully and indisputably and then let us exert our fully informed freewill as to whether or not to follow him? Informed freewill rather than obsfucation, secrecy, vagueness and contradictory evidence?Why? Does he really love us and forgive our sins? Or does he punish us with eternal damantion in a lake of fire for what apparently is the unforgivable sin of disbelief?Ultimate love and forgiveness in conjunction with the ultimate in punishment? Is that not wholly contradictory?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

There are many men each with equally strong faith in many contradictory things.For this reason faith can be no measure of truthfulness.On what basis do you suggest that a third party discern between the truthfulness of two contradictory but equally believed positions?On what basis do you procalim that faith and truth bear any relation to one another?

Well I for one am not making that mistake. I think it deeply unlikely that God said anything at all written in the bible.How do you decide which bits you think he did say and which he did not? So God loves us and wants us to join him in heaven. But has condemned most of us to burning in hell for eternity instead. That makes sense. Oh that's OK then. If God creates the apple, the serpent, the very concepts of sin and evil, man and freewill then to suggest that he is devoid of all responsibility for mans fallen fate is quite a severe abandonment of responsibility. Oh. Especially if you happen to be omniscient and know all of this at the point of creating each of the aforementoned phenomenon.How about just not creating the serpent? Could God not make the default position heaven rather than hell?
Could not God make the default position oblivion reserving hell for the really wicked and heaven for the truly good?A God of infinite love and forgiveness who has consigend the vast majority of people to be discarded in a loveless eternal damnation "lake of fire" for crimes they themselves did not commit. Crimes that were an inevitable result of Gods combination of creations (snakes, apples, man etc. etc.) in the first place.Honestly what an amazing heap of contradictory nonsense.