Okay, here's an analogy. Given as with all analogies it breaks down at some points.
Light is. It's a partical or wave, or whatever. Last I heard the jury was still out on that one. But in any case it is something. It is something we can measure, it is something that can be tested.
Darkness isn't. It isn't anything. Darkness is the absence of light. The only reason darkness is, is because light isn't there.
God is. He is light, he exists with all his attributes that I'm sure have been talked about several times around already. Since God is good, then anything he is (love, etc.) is good. Anything that is not like God is, is evil. God didn't create evil, the idea of evil existed as something that was not like God. By allowing free will God allowed this evil to become a reality with the fall of Lucifer. Evil was not created, it existed as opposite of what was already there. Evil exists because it is the places where God's attributes have been turned aside from.
Although Phatboy did a pretty good job of reading my mind on a few points, I'll explain better what I said.
(a) God cannot be directly measured (in contrast to light)
I was not trying to measure God in this post. This was only to explain my point because I couldn't properly define what light was. To make my point that it was something, I put qualifiers in. Perhaps, this only shows my scientific knowledge that I've never claimed to have....
(b) You attribute the property good to god (for which you have no prove and given some of the contents of the bible, I'm sure some would claim that this is not so, but anyways...).
In the context of the thread, it did not need me to prove God was good. I believe it was an assumed because of the statement phatboy made about God creating the knowledge of good and evil, not evil itself. Besides, if God was evil or even amoral, the answer would be self-evident.
Now you say that by measuring "good", we can deduce God's existence? That's like saying, by knowing that light exerts a pressure (albeit small) on matter it interacts with, we can deduce the presence of light from the observation of pressure?
Where in the world did I say anything about measuring good? This post was not about scientifically finding God, but about where evil came from.....
(c) You keep forgetting about omni-presence (so there's no place where he isn't) and omnipotence... Never mind that he's the creator of everything...
Yeah, he knew it was going to happen, he was there, but perhaps that discussion better stay in the free will thread....
I said it was an analogy and it broke down at some points, but your reading far more into it then I ever intended to be there.
I will have to whole heartedly agree with Phatboy on this one. There is one church. Denominational walls mean nothing to God and very little to most of the younger generation.
There are a lot of things that the churches disagree on, but that's our own fault. Not God's. Sometimes we as humans are so bound by tradition, or pride, or whatever that we aren't listening. I'm including myself in here! What it really comes down to is that there are certain things that you have to believe in order to be a Christian and the rest doesn't matter in the long run anyway.
It doesn't matter if your a presbyterian, baptist, pentecostal, catholic, or whatever other denomination you want to throw in there. If you can believe in your heart and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, your part of the invisible church. That's the church that's the bride of Christ. Many people who sit in the pews week after week don't belong to it and many people who you never see there do!!
Maybe I'm biased because I'm 22 and have attended 5 different denominations even though I wasn't Christian for most of my life, or maybe it's a local thing,(I hope not) but the denominational walls are really beginning to crumble. Maybe it's part of the pluses of the postmodern movement, but nobody I know my age cares what denomination you attend. I attend a denominational Bible College for a denomination that I have never attended with students who attend 5 or 6 different churches (it's a small college).
When it all comes down to it, it doesn't matter if your a pre- post- or ammillenialist, a Pentecostal or a cessationist, a contemporary or orthodox worshiper. We've all got some of it wrong because we all allow ourselves to get in the way.
What matters is that we begin to move in unity, and let what has kept us apart in the past go. I will probably never find someone who agrees with all my theology, but it doesn't matter. They are all my brothers and sisters in Christ.
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