Calling all Christians!

[Jester]

He didn't make us perfect, He didn't clone Himself. He created us with the ability to fail, but also with the ability to succeed. We are not tinker toys, we are not flawed works of art, and we are not failed machines. We are living beings. We are given a free life to live and make choices. If He made us obediant then it would not be a choice. Perhaps I phrased it wrong, He wants us to choose to be obediant. It is in the copacity of everyone to choose obediance. He is not responsible for our choices, we are.

Do you want to be a puppet, an action figure, an automaton? I think it would be more perverse of God to create us a toys for His own enjoyment and ego, than as living beings for His love and friendship. That would invalidate our lives. Ultimately what good would it do God to force us to love Him? What would be in it for Him if all we were is just a bunch of trophie wives here to massage his feet as long as we get the keys to the mansion?

Just because God knows the outcome of a choice before you make it dosen't mean He dosen't desire for you to choose the right thing.

When God made man He knew he would sin, this is true. God did not make man for the purpose of sinning though. God gave him the ability to choose. Even knowing that man would choose sin, God so greatly loved and desired man's fellowship that dispite the pain of seperation God knew He'd feel He created man anyway. God even gave man sacrifice (though it was wasteful) to try an rebuild the lost relationship between them. Although nothing compared to the pain of eternal death sacrifice was painful for man. God felt the pain that man felt when he had to sacrifice. So to permanately bridge the gap in His relationship with man God Himself gave the perfect sacrifice to end all sacrifices, Himself. He did it all so that even though man would fail by man's own choosing, that He could forgive man and fellowship with him again.

To sum up, despite the foreknowledge that man would fail and sin repeatedly, God created man because He knew that despite all the failings and wrong choices that a man could and would make, man could easily choose to, and would only need to lovingly obey to recieve forgiveness and fellowship with God again. Loving obediance being all that God has ever desired of us.

Why I don't hold God to the same stardard as someone who makes a defective item is because God dosen't make defective people. The people choose to make themselves defective. I don't want to sound like a broken record but God's omnipotence and omnipresence is not making your choices for you (figurative you and all that...), you are. That's not to say God dosen't have the ability to make your choices for you, it's that He loves and respects you enough to make them for yourself.

[Saint of Killers]

So what were the angels created for then? To be perfect obedient servants, right? Whoops, Lucifer fell.

I think it would be more perverse of God to create us a toys for His own enjoyment and ego, than as living beings for His love and friendship.

I don't know about you, but I don't expect obedience out of my friends.

Why I don't hold God to the same stardard as someone who makes a defective item is because God dosen't make defective people. The people choose to make themselves defective.

So retarded, crazy, and handicapped people choose to be that way?

That's not to say God dosen't have the ability to make your choices for you, it's that He loves and respects you enough to make them for yourself.

And enough to kill thousands of innocents if you make the wrong choice.

[youandwhosearmy]

I am a little concerned with yoru operational definitons here. I have always understoood the term "Perfection" to be a pure ideal when dealing with physical things. All things degrade to entropy and all matter changes forms, so i think perfection refers more to a full (and physically impossible for normal things) state of pure, undiminished function uncompromised with any flaws or wasted energy. So for me perfection is more of a mechanical term than a term referring to any act, selfless or not.

Second, i am confused with your use of the term selfless in regards to perfection, why would such an act be perfect? because it is a pure act of altruism, I would be inclined to say that first of all, all of our actions are not just motivated by cognitive states, but by what we are conditioned to do. So guessing the motivation of the behavior is presumptuous, they may have had nothign to gain, but prior conditioning may be what affected how the person reacted, so the act was not inherently pure. Second, selfless and selfish are dangerous words because they carry a value judgement, selfish is inherently negative, and it assumes that a person has time to weigh all the possible outcomes,and choose one that rewards them more than another course of action. "Faith" in this case serves as another layer of conditioning, so while the behavior of jumping in front of a bullet, or saving a child form a burning building, or whatever, but i would say your person who did the act without the benefit of religious faith, did so because of another form of conditioning,and as such their act equates(on your reckoning) that of the person with faith. Both actions are motivated by how a person gets themselves through the day, its just a question of what conditioned them to act.

Y'see I am using the idea of a selfless act as an all encompassing thing. I believe everyone on this planet is capable of being selfless, but my idea is based on "being selfless without faith" and viewing the very idea of faith as a training wheel.

Think of it this way, when god, who by definition was always self-aware and always there and powerful, decided to create us in his image, did he do it without faith? Does he exist without faith? Does he do the things he does without faith?

And are we capable of the same things, of something truly selfless, and giving, and sacrificing something as sacred as our lives for another one, without having to believe in something. Without giving ourselves over to him. Doing it without justification.

Thats my question.

And my theory is, wouldn't that make us like him?

[arjue]

I'm not even a christian and no virtually nothing of the bible or christian god as such, but I'll throw in my two cents.

1) By murdering the babies, it is not the babies who suffer, but their families (how can a baby suffer if its dead?), ie the followers of the Pharoah. Besides, I'm of the opinion that the bible is a theological text to learn from, not a historical recount.

2) God gives us the ability to learn from our mistakes, and the only way we can learn from our mistakes is through tough consequence. Without this ability to learn, we'd all be the same, and what would be the point in creating more than 1 of the same person like that?


yawa: I'm not sure if I understand you properly, but from what I can gather, God would have had to had enough faith in the human race to have given us the gift of choice, so perhaps we aren't capable of doing a truly selfless act without faith.

I find the actual discussion in this thread (as opposed to the shit stirring) very interesting. Best read I've had in a while. keep it up guys!

[Saint of Killers]

1) By murdering the babies, it is not the babies who suffer, but their families (how can a baby suffer if its dead?), ie the followers of the Pharoah.

I guess murdering orphan babies would be just fine, then.

And in case you didn't know, ancient Egypt wasn't a democracy. They followed the Pharoah because they would be killed otherwise.

Seriously, I can't believe people would actually defend the idea of murdering babies. Think of him as a person and not some infalliable deity for a second. You can't possibly justify a person killing thousands and thousands of children for any reason whatsoever. But hey, it's okay for god to do it, 'cause that Pharoah needed to learn a lesson.

Gimme a break. The Judeo-Christian god is far, far worse than Hitler and Stalin combined.

[Captain Vegetable]

There's your problem, SoK. Don't think of Him as a human.

And your understanding of omnicience, omnipotence, and perfection are a bit loose. Those qualities are more restricting than liberating.

[rezo]

Don't think of him as a god either. Think of him as a being with the ability to act with intentions that has performed a particular act. If he is a rational thing he would have a reason that killing the children was necessary. What is that reason? If you consider his reason justified, then any other being(like a rezo, or a Captian Vegetable) that were to use the same reason, in the same circumstances ought to be equally justifiable.

However, if the conclusion is being drawn based on who he is, and not the properties that go into the act itself, I don't think thats how it should be looked at.





Jester: If god knew that his creation would choose to sin and still designed it as is, the defect of sin is his fault, and not humanities. If anything, I would say the argument of wanting us to have the ability to choose is why he gave us access to sin. Why he provided the "defect". After all, we are not free to instantly consider every possibility in every circumstance and respond in any manner we deem appropriate. There are limits to our "free will". Capabilities that must have been intentionally restricted, and yet the ability to sin was left in.

[Captain Vegetable]

Don't think of him as a god either. Think of him as a being with the ability to act with intentions that has performed a particular act. If he is a rational thing he would have a reason that killing the children was necessary. What is that reason? If you consider his reason justified, then any other being(like a rezo, or a Captian Vegetable) that were to use the same reason, in the same circumstances ought to be equally justifiable.

However, if the conclusion is being drawn based on who he is, and not the properties that go into the act itself, I don't think thats how it should be looked at.

This is an extremely valid point. However, He must be looked at as God. It is what He is. It is His very substance. To catagorize Him differently, or to say that we should refrain from categorizing Him as God for the sake of moral argument is rediculous. Tigers kill antelope all the time. Even baby antelopes. But let's, for the sake of moral argument, consider a Tiger as "a being with the ability to act with intentions that has performed a particular act." If the Tiger is rational...etc. The point is that beings are stratified. Tigers are not human, and thus the laws and moral behaviors of humans do not apply to them, just as God is not human, and the laws and moral behaviors of humans do not apply to Him.

That said, God is perfect. He cannot preform an act that is not perfect, not because He chooses to be perfect, but because perfection governs His every action. He is forced to do what He does, in a sence, because to do otherwise would be imperfect, a state that we know God does not exist within.

Putting God on our level, or putting us on His level, in any capacity, is falacious. Please, let's maintain God is God, and man is man, and but for Jesus Christ, never the two shall meet.

Another thing would be to make sure it is understood that God didn't do the killing. You, Rezo, say He is ultimatly responcible because He, Himself, preformed the act of the slaughter, when in fact, it was an angel. The angel of death. Angel is a mistranslated word, in the Hebrew it means simply "messenger." The Angel of the Lord is the messenger of the Lord. That said, it is the angel of death, or the messenger of death that did the killing, and I've already told you that sin is what brought/brings death into this world. You can make the necessary connection from there.

Jester: If god knew that his creation would choose to sin and still designed it as is, the defect of sin is his fault, and not humanities.

This is simply untrue. The defect of sin is Sin's fault. It is not a passive force.

As much as God desires His will to be fulfilled and takes action in that direction, is as much as Sin desires God's will not to be fulfilled and takes action in that direction.

God knew Sin would influence His creation, but through the wicked actions and intentions of sin itself. Sin imprisoned God's people. Sin enslaved God's creation. And what did God do in responce? He sacrificed Himself and His Son at His own alter in order to give us freedom from the enslavement of Sin. Since sin demands death for atonement, God satisfied this requirement Himself, as He knew we never could.

If anything, I would say the argument of wanting us to have the ability to choose is why he gave us access to sin. Why he provided the "defect". After all, we are not free to instantly consider every possibility in every circumstance and respond in any manner we deem appropriate. There are limits to our "free will". Capabilities that must have been intentionally restricted, and yet the ability to sin was left in.

All we need do is obey God. You don't need to consider all of the potential outcomes to any given act. Just love Jesus Christ and love His law. That's it.

[rezo]

This is an extremely valid point. However, He must be looked at as God. It is what He is. It is His very substance. To catagorize Him differently, or to say that we should refrain from categorizing Him as God for the sake of moral argument is rediculous

Thats not where I was going with the "don't look at him as a god". I would have said "don't look at him as a human" if he were a human. I think its better to look at all of the requirements that go into doing something or its equivalent, and judging based on that. Because, should those requirements be met by something else, regardless of what it is, they would be on equal terms. And since it is the meeting of certain requirements that we are judging, and whatever meets those requirements isn't relevant, I say disregard the character. For instance, as you brought up a tiger. If a tiger kills an antelope and eats it purely for the sake of survival, a human that would do the same, in that circumstance would be on equal terms with respect to the reasons and means that go into procuring his survival.

This thought is sort of a response to the next thing I'll quote

Putting God on our level, or putting us on His level, in any capacity, is falacious.

Man can walk. God can walk. Should god be walking, and I be walking, we would be on the same level with respect to being "walking things". Thats what I was getting at. Saying god's walking is on a different level than walking is to say that it isn't walking. While he may be capable of things beyond humans, he is also capable of things within the human spectrum, and within the ants spectrum, and should he choose to act or think at that level he would be at that level and there would be no reason to say otherwise. So we get back to the "reason" he did what he did. If a human is capable of having the same reason of wanting something to be done, the fulfillment of that action would be equally justified, whether it is god or man that comes up with it.


re: angel of death. If the angel is an individual, then he is responsible for killing the children, and god is responsible for giving him the order(by proxy perhaps, just to cover any chain of command in heaven I'm not aware of) to do so.

You don't need to consider all of the potential outcomes to any given act.

Perhaps that would be why god didn't give us that ability. However, if you want to have a chance at making the best choice in all the opportunities you have to choose its necessary. However, god did intentionally create something that would sin, and for whatever else he kept from us that was left in.

[JM]

This is simply untrue. The defect of sin is Sin's fault. It is not a passive force.

As much as God desires His will to be fulfilled and takes action in that direction, is as much as Sin desires God's will not to be fulfilled and takes action in that direction.

God knew Sin would influence His creation, but through the wicked actions and intentions of sin itself. Sin imprisoned God's people. Sin enslaved God's creation. And what did God do in responce? He sacrificed Himself and His Son at His own alter in order to give us freedom from the enslavement of Sin. Since sin demands death for atonement, God satisfied this requirement Himself, as He knew we never could.

If sin is an outside force, then there is something outside of god & "his" creation. How was it created? Does that mean there is some other god out there capable of creating things outside of the christian god? How is god perfect if he has no control or say over "sin"? I thought in the christian religion, god is the source of everything.

On the other hand, If god did make sin, then the whole freewill issue is moot. "He" wants us to chose him over some other thing that he made specifically to tempt us away from him. It all sounds like a sick game.

JM