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Author | Topic: Is Christ cruel? (For member Schrafinator) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Actually, no, I don't know. He seems to have made some claims, but I don't have any verification that God's claims are valid, nor that they justify the demands that he makes.
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mikehager Member (Idle past 6466 days) Posts: 534 Joined: |
Okay, you don't understand the argument at all. Fine. I give up. Anyone else want to try?
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Still having problems with this one:
Faith writes: What you've left out, as everyone always does, is that He has mercifully and fairly allowed you to learn everything you need to know to save yourself from the pit. Let's grant for the sake of discussion that God has placed before Schraf the necessary information to understand both that he exists and what he expects from her. The important point is that God created Schraf. He created her ability to perceive and interpret this information. How does the fault lie with Schraf? Making the same point in a slightly different way, God created you and God created Schraf. He gave you ability to perceive and accept his gift, but he denied it to Schraf. How do you conclude that you deserve credit and Schraf condemnation, rather than that it's just how God created you both? --Percy
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
Good point on skepticism.
There is the logic of faith and the logic of unbelief. God condemns the logic of unbelief. Aberaham, for example, could have reasoned, well, it is not logical that I am hearing God talking to me, telling me to move, because no one else seems to have heard God, etc, etc,.... Or, he could have reasoned, since this is God talking to me and knows a lot more than I do, it is logical to move and believe the promises He made to me. The former line of reasoning is based on the skeptics logic and is condemned whereas the latter is approved and rewarded by God. But often the skeptic condemns the whole premise of the logic of faith and chooses the logic of an assumption of doubt. I would rather though be approved of God and rejected of the skeptic than vice versa.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: And our mental hospitals are filled with people who reason just like this.
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randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4898 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
So you arguing that in supporting the concept of faith, the Bible encourages people to insanity?
Well, at least we know where you stand.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
No, I am arguing that people who hear God speaking to them have good reason to be skeptical.
Surely you aren't arguing that everyone who claims that God is speaking to her is exhibiting the kind of faith that you find admirable?
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nator Member (Idle past 2169 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Well, I don't.
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roxrkool Member (Idle past 988 days) Posts: 1497 From: Nevada Joined: |
Me either. And I used to go to church. I was there listening for a time and nothing ever came to me.
Maybe I asked the wrong questions or required the wrong answers. Even so, I am here (atheism) and if god exists, god made me this way.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Whilst I disagree, in some elements, to the OP, there is a valid objection to the God created schraf specifically to sin argument. God created Schraf with freewill and all the tools at her disposal to accept Christ as her saviour.
Her choice is to deny Christ. God clearly did not create her specifically to deny Christ...in fact, God only created Adam and Eve, from the original sin onwards, man was on his own. God did not specifically create Schraf, however He did send His only begotten Son to die for her sins. Schraf can either accept this, or deny this. The true argument is that God created Adam and Eve - should He have known that they were fallible and able to be so easily tempted by the Serpent? Or perhaps God created humanity for His own evolutionary ends. Only the worthy souls survive, the rest are selected for and burned. This message has been edited by Modulous, Wed, 01-June-2005 09:01 PM Eternity is in love with the productions of time. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
quote: While I can't speak for shrafinator, I doubt that it is entirely her choice. I used to be a Christian (of the fundamentalist, evangelical kind). I never chose to become an atheist -- I wanted very much to remain a Christian, and I fought the loss of my faith very hard. The problem with the "mainstream" evangelical ideology is that it cannot accept the idea that people may be damned to eternal torment for something beyond their control -- that is why there is this idea that somehow non-believers must "know", deep in their hearts, that God and Jesus are real, and that they must willingly choose to deny God. It's not to convince us non-believers of anything -- we, after all, know what we believe -- it is to allow the believers to sleep at night.
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Modulous writes: Her choice is to deny Christ. God clearly did not create her specifically to deny Christ...in fact, God only created Adam and Eve, from the original sin onwards, man was on his own. God did not specifically create Schraf, however He did send His only begotten Son to die for her sins. Schraf can either accept this, or deny this. This seems a slightly different argument than Faith's, since you say God did not create Schraf. But with an all-knowing and all-powerful God the flaw in Schraf's soul was implicit when he performed the initial creation. The initial creation event governed all that came after. God creates souls, they do not create themselves. On the other hand, in a universe without an all-knowing and all-powerful God, one who perhaps created the universe but does not control everything in it or know everything about it, then souls being created outside his purview is a possibility. But then there remains the question, where did Schraf's soul come from? She certainly didn't make it herself? Did the devil make it? In that case you can't blame Schraf for hearing but not heeding God's message, can you? Of course, the overarching issue is the claim that God has provided unequivocal evidence of his existence that one must accept and who one must worship on pain of eternal damnation. As has been said many, many times here over the years, this is inconsistent with a loving and forgiving God, as well as with all-knowing and all-powerful God. Why would such a God demand worship? Further, the claim of unequivocal evidence is belied by the sheer multiplicity of faiths and sects, and just as importantly, religion is an issue of faith, not evidence. People accept God not because evidence was presented in books and blackboards but because God spoke to their hearts. --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Still having problems with this one:
Faith writes: What you've left out, as everyone always does, is that He has mercifully and fairly allowed you to learn everything you need to know to save yourself from the pit. Let's grant for the sake of discussion that God has placed before Schraf the necessary information to understand both that he exists and what he expects from her. The important point is that God created Schraf. He created her ability to perceive and interpret this information. How does the fault lie with Schraf? Making the same point in a slightly different way, God created you and God created Schraf. He gave you ability to perceive and accept his gift, but he denied it to Schraf. How do you conclude that you deserve credit and Schraf condemnation, rather than that it's just how God created you both? Well, I don't deserve credit at all, I know I don't deserve salvation, and I'm well aware that I could have gone on to my death never knowing God and am extremely grateful to Him that He didn't leave me in that condition. I do have to agree that this is a knotty problem to sort out, because scripture does teach us that our faith is a gift from God. But it's not that He "created" me and Schraf different, it's not a matter of one's native "ability to perceive and interpret," it's that eventually He did supply me with the faith to believe -- I'm well aware that there is no difference between me and Schraf as far as native ability goes -- because NOBODY has the native ability to believe without God's intervention. This is the crux of the knotty problem of course, but it's really just a theological hangup because scripture simply exhorts us to believe and doesn't put this kind of knotty problem in our way. I can only sort the problem out on the basis of scripture's clear calls to believe, so that it must be possible to believe, meaning that anyone who wants to believe will be given what it takes to believe, as the man in scripture said, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24). In the first days of believing in God I was afraid that I would lose it again, would fall back into doubting it all as I had done for most of my life, and lose God again, and I prayed that He would not let that happen. I think that kind of will to believe, but especially the dependence upon Him to bring it about, He will honor. Of course an unbeliever can scorn this as an irrational process, if you prefer. Look, the Bible is VERY clear. What happens here at EvC is that everything about it is aggressively and proudly doubted so that its very clear message is trashed. But it is very clear: believe and be saved -- the ONE thing people will not do is what it asks -- BELIEVE IT. It warns repeatedly against believing what the "world" says, what the "wise" of the world, the philosophers or thinkers of the world say -- and yet this is what unbelievers do anyway and are even exhorted to do as if it were the rational thing to do. But Jesus says to believe. Therefore they are "without excuse." Scripture also says that God is not the author of sin, so that anything we do that is sin, that opposes God, that is disobedient, is our responsibility, not His. He DIDN'T "create us this way" in the sense of creating our sin, our fallenness. Again, I'm sure there's plenty of reason in the above for confirming a person in disbelief who has a mind to disbelieve.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Her choice is to deny Christ. God clearly did not create her specifically to deny Christ...in fact, God only created Adam and Eve, from the original sin onwards, man was on his own. God did not specifically create Schraf, however He did send His only begotten Son to die for her sins. Schraf can either accept this, or deny this.
This seems a slightly different argument than Faith's, since you say God did not create Schraf. But with an all-knowing and all-powerful God the flaw in Schraf's soul was implicit when he performed the initial creation. The initial creation event governed all that came after. God creates souls, they do not create themselves. Yes I do disagree with Modulous's idea that God did not specifically create Schraf, but I agree if what he means is that God did not create her sin nature, that original sin we all inherit from Adam. God is not responsible for our disobedience even if He foreknew it.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
This is, of course, free will versus predeterminism. If God is all powerful then He is capable of creating something which acts independently of Him, with its own free will. If He does create the souls, and it is the souls that make the decision, then He must create the souls with the capability to accept Him, and to accept Christ. He also creates souls with the ability to choose to either heed to the words of the temptor (with prior knowledge the existence of the temptor) or to ignore the words of the serpent and to re-embrace the Lord and come back to the flock.
It is argued that Schraf has chosen, of her own free will, to st(r)ay out of the flock and heed the words of the subtle one.
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