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Member (Idle past 6206 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Meaning Of The Trinity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member |
Why couldn't God avoid creating evil by creating a world that didn't evolve? 1) Who says such a thing is even possible? 2) Men do evil and it is impossible to create humans with free will where some of them won't do the wrong thing. Also, motivation from pure motives is not the only way to create progress. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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jar Member (Idle past 137 days) Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Man created the concept of evil and a moral sense exists only within the mythos of a culture, society or era. It totally arbitrary and it too evolves over time.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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ringo Member (Idle past 710 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
If God isn't useful to us, what's the point of having a God?
As it is a fact that we have evolved, the question as to why God didnt do it differently is actually rhetorical in the sense that we logically would want a God that was useful for ourselves. Phat writes:
Creating a world with a limited food supply is evil.
And....more to the point...is clubbing your neighbor over the head to steal the limited food supply for your own offspring evil?
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ringo Member (Idle past 710 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
Who says such a thing is even possible?quote: NoNukes writes:
See above.
Men do evil and it is impossible to create humans with free will where some of them won't do the wrong thing.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
See above. Can God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Jon Inactive Member |
Can God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? Now you're just being ridiculous.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I'm going to attempt an actual reply to the topic of this thread. Though I am not ChristianI used to be, but long before I was capable of considering things like the meaning of the TrinityI imagine the Trinity as being a single being with three simultaneous manifestations.
It is easier to think of if you imagine that for one moment the manifestation is Jesus, for another moment the manifestation is the Father, and for another moment the manifestation is the Holy Spirit. Easy enough to comprehend. There is nothing strange in a God that can manifest in three different ways. The mental jump comes when we say that God can manifest in these three different ways at the same time. God does not have to choose when to be Jesus, when to be the Father, and when to be the Holy Spirit because He can be all of themand is all of themat once. And yet, just as when they were manifest at different times, they are still independent of one another while being manifestations of the same one God. It really is a one, two, three logic trail: One god -> Doublethink -> Trinity But it works. Love your enemies!
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Epee Junior Member (Idle past 3531 days) Posts: 13 From: Florida Joined: |
1) Who says such a thing is even possible? It's god. He can do anything. See Ringo's post.
1) Who says such a thing is even possible? He could have easily have made doing evil things as repulsive to us as eating dirt. You'd still get a small minority that would do it, but you would be preventing 99% of the evil in the world. You still have free will to choose to do whatever you want, but now there's no motivation for evil.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
He could have easily have made doing evil things as repulsive to us as eating dirt. Not without programming you in such a way, which I contend does not leave you with free will. How many of what we seem to universally find repulsive is not socially learned? How much of what is left is not a product of evolution? In particular, not eating dirt is a learned response. People put all kinds of things in their mouths (penises, cigars, yogurt without fruit) that I would find repulsive to try. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Omnivorous Member (Idle past 173 days) Posts: 4001 From: Adirondackia Joined: |
Jon writes: I'm going to attempt an actual reply to the topic of this thread. On-topic! Whoa. Radical. As a nonbeliever, I take a functional, historical view of the Trinity: Judaic monotheism was hijacked by a charismatic teacher, requiring the Son; his teachings and subsequent oral history opened the door to the Holy Spirit. Functionally, the Trinity breaks the rational mind; you cannot reason your way to the Trinity any more than you can reason your way to a God. It is a theologically useful way to say, stop thinking and just believe. Perhaps, as women make more gains, prompting a greater recognition of the feminine creative principle (if a god created everything alone, what's more likely--male or female?), we may arrive at the Quadrinity: the Mother, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Though the Prodigal Daughters may not be satisfied with that."If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
As a nonbeliever, I take a functional, historical view of the Trinity: Judaic monotheism was hijacked by a charismatic teacher, requiring the Son; his teachings and subsequent oral history opened the door to the Holy Spirit. Yet there is apparently a bit more to Trinity doctrine than forced monotheism. What I find most intriguing (i.e. as silly) about the doctrine is the use of it to designated other followers of Christ as non-Christians. In trying to track down and understand the doctrine, I came across a controversy over the fact that evangelist T.D. Jakes embraced held a non-traditional view of the Trinity. While I am able to the distinction between Jakes old view, which he has now renounced and the traditional view, it's a lot more difficult to convince me that the difference is anything Jesus spoke about. According to almost all evangelistic fundies, people like T.D. Jakes with his reformed view is a heretic despite the fact that they agree with 99.44% of everything he says. Of course those same people invariably believe the earth is 6000 years old.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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ringo Member (Idle past 710 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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NoNukes writes:
That just emphasizes how silly the concept of an "omnipotent" being is - as silly as the concept of a "trinity".
Can God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I imagine the Trinity as being a single being with three simultaneous manifestations. Nothing particularly strange with that, but what you imagine is definitely not the Trinity doctrine. It is close to the Oneness doctrine embraced by the United Pentecostal Church. As best as I can tell, most fundies would consider that belief heretical. Oneness Pentecostalism - Wikipedia
quote: Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
That just emphasizes how silly the concept of an "omnipotent" being is - as silly as the concept of a "trinity" Exactly. But most Christians are not quite so literal about the word omnipotent. Even the verse you quoted from the Bible described something rare but not logically impossible. Christians who call God omnipotent aren't looking for God to make an invisible, shining, white opaque object that absorbs all light. And the people telling me that I should hold God responsible for the fact that our sun only has a few billion years worth of hydrogen are invariably atheists.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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ringo Member (Idle past 710 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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NoNukes writes:
As soon as you give up omnipotence, "God" becomes just an alien overlord. Then the question becomes: do you "worship" it or charge up the phasers?
But most Christians are not quite so literal about the word omnipotent.
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