I've decided to devote a thread to the belief system in which I believe God works on.
Let's begin on what God is all about: 1rst we will look at choice. As many of you will argue that religion is something that once you get into it, you will simply blindly follow and you are given a ball and chain and there is absolutely no choice whatsoever. That's simply not the case. I'm sure you know as well as I do that there are extremist out there, but nonetheless God created us with freewill. Otherwise there wouldn't be any atheist to go haywire on this thread after they have read it. We as humans have a choice in which we set our faith (or lack thereof) our morals, our beliefs, and so on and so forth. God didn't want robots without any choice. He wanted something you could make that he could love him and something intelligent enough to love him back.
2nd we will look at faith. Religion is based completely on faith. Hebrews 11 is all about faith (NIV translation)
Verse 1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. Verse 3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at Godâs command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Verse 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
In part of God not wanting robots he decided to make life more interesting. He wants us to love him through faith and nothing more. This way he can understand how real your love for him truly is.
Now let's delve into Compromised Choice shall we. Atheism is the lack of faith of a divine being. Athiest prefer backed evidence compared to stories or biased sources. They need to see to believe contrary to Hebrews 11:1. But why would that be contrary to God?
Why would an omnipotent being need to be seen only through faith?
Because remember the first thing about God - he is all about choice. Therefor revealing himself outright would compromise this. Let me put it in a case of a scenario. If right now, wherever you are, God appeared right in front of you. He called you by name, then snapped his fingers and all of a sudden an elephant was created next to you, or he healed someone right there in front of you. Better yet let's say he did it at an international science convention where it was broadcast all over the world. Now God is there preforming miracles for the entire scientific community to see. Every single scientist in the world could run any number of tests that there is and get positive results that standing right there is indeed an omnipotent being.
So given that scenario, you have all the evidence you need. You have seen with your own eyes along with the rest of the world that God exist. You have all the scientific evidence in the world to back it as well. What reason would you have to NOT believe God existed? There would be miniscule reasoning to not believe in God.
Now this brings us to the second part of the Compromised Choice system. Faith. If you could see God right there in front of you, there would be no reason to have faith. You could love him or not but either way that love would be superficial. If you knew you could go to heaven or hell just by loving him there would be little choice in choosing a path because the only logical thing would be to believe in him.
God does not want to work on human terms because he has no need to. He gave the guidelines for what he would like for us to do and he has kept those guidelines for thousands of years and we continue to have a choice in what we do. But there is logical reasoning behind him never showing himself in the first place because he refuses to compromise his original intentions.
@wolf I'm having a hard time understanding your question.
A compromise is something that mutually benefits two parties, however to reach a compromise each party must sacrifice something to reach common ground.
I'm asking what God is giving as his part of the compromise. It's obvious what mankind must give up.
Because remember the first thing about God - he is all about choice. Therefor revealing himself outright would compromise this.
If we are to believe the Bible God made appearances and preformed miracles right in front of people all the time without such ill effects. So clearly this is not true. Seeing him first hand would have me accepting he was real, I would still be free to to accept or deny him based on his actions.
There would be miniscule reasoning to not believe in God.
It could be an alien with advanced technology capable of replicating what we would consider to be godly powers. So yes even with it being demonstrated first hand there could still be some room for reasonable doubt. Though for me a being appearing before me and creating even a small amount of matter/energy in a way that I could be sure I wasn't hallucinating or dreaming I would accept his claim as God.
If God does exists he gave us the ability to reason. By using that ability we can determine what is real or not based on evidence for everything else, without it effecting our free will. There is no reason to require those same standards for God.
I for one would not worship God if we revealed himself to me. He's much to sadistic and cruel.
First if you know your choice will ultimately land you in Hell regardless if there is evidence or not, well that's just moronic. Second how so? Read the book of Job to understand God's nature of this world.
So if a piece of paper came in the mail saying it was from God telling you to build a bomb and blow people up would you do it?
I will direct you to a quote I made in the beginning of the thread:
. I'm sure you know as well as I do that there are extremist out there, but nonetheless God created us with freewill.
If the situation you propose is a compromise, then both parties must meet in the middle. However, nothing in your statements suggests god sacrifices anything. So the question is simple: What does God sacrifice as his part of the compromise?
I'm not sure you realize the context of the defintion of the word comrpomise I was intending. What I was intending was this: (Webster) 3.Weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable - commercial pressures could compromise safety
But even if we are looking at terms of compromise under the definition you bring up, Samy did beat me to the punch. John 3:16 cut clean and clear.
First if you know your choice will ultimately land you in Hell regardless if there is evidence or not, well that's just moronic.
Not really, most revolutionaries understand that their actions will most likely get them killed. Besides how could I enjoy being in heaven when billions of souls are in hell?
Second how so? Read the book of Job to understand God's nature of this world.
God had 42 youth mauled by bears because they made fun of a prophet's baldness. I do not care what excuses he makes divinity can not explain away that. I need no other information to know that god is not love and therefore by claiming he is he has lied.
Samy did beat me to the punch. John 3:16 cut clean and clear.
Oh but I view god's sacrifice of Jesus as his apology to us. He created us sinful, he knew we would fall, he let Satan into the garden. His sacrifice was atoning for eternally screwing us over.
I can't convince you that God is love Samy so I will leave you with your own opinions, yet he didn't create us sinful Samy. He gave us freewill and it was mans own doing to bring sin into the world. Otherwise there would be no such thing.
He gave us freewill and it was mans own doing to bring sin into the world.
That, and god made the tree which gave man original sin, and let the devil into the garden to talk them into eating it. I mean really...They were COMPLETELY ignorant according to the bible, HOW in the WORLD were they SUPPOSED to even KNOW that there was even such a thing as LYING?
God had 42 youth mauled by bears because they made fun of a prophet's baldness.
I guess I'll butt in here. This argument has become surprisingly popular around here. I know a few things about this...
1. They were young men not children. I know you didn't say children you said youths but the point is that they weren't immature and just didn't know what they were doing.
2. 42 men that happen to be outside a city when a prophet comes by isn't coincidence. They organized themselves to come their with the soul purpose to insult him.
3. I'm not sure if this is true but they may have been referring to leprosy.
4. When he used God's name, God had three choices. Kill him for using his name in vain. Kill the men. Do nothing. God couldn't kill him because he needed him. God can't do nothing because then the people would think God has no power. So the only thing left is to kill the 42 young men. From what i heard, he was punished later for this but I don't know when or where if that is true.
From what i heard, he was punished later for this but I don't know when or where if that is true.
God was?
Listen, I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less why these men were out there or how old they were. There crime was insulting someone, no human being would ever condone an action like this so why should god be able to commit it? I do not give him extra room, he should be perfect by his own standards (no killing is a nice little Christian tenant).
He gave us freewill and it was mans own doing to bring sin into the world.
But he knew we would sin, we knew that every human would suffer because of that sin. He shouldn't have created us due to that knowledge but he did anyway, now we all live in a perpetual living hell and most of us are doomed to an eternal hell?
Also: For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,
They were young men not children. I know you didn't say children you said youths but the point is that they weren't immature and just didn't know what they were doing.
That is no valid excuse. Lives are lives.
42 men that happen to be outside a city when a prophet comes by isn't coincidence. They organized themselves to come their with the soul purpose to insult him.
I'm not saying what they did is good, but....let's put it this way. if a group of kids at my school start to insult me (nothing big, just, let's say they insulted my face) would that be a valid reason to take out a gun and start shooting them? I don't think so.
God had three choices. Kill him for using his name in vain. Kill the men.
I thought that guy was omnipotent. I could come up with an other billion choices.
No i just don't remember the name of the prophet :\\
Listen, I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less why these men were out there or how old they were. There crime was insulting someone, no human being would ever condone an action like this so why should god be able to commit it? I do not give him extra room, he should be perfect by his own standards (no killing is a nice little Christian tenant).
So no humans will condone killing someone for insulting them eh? I thought that throughout history you pretty much couldn't do anything that would slightly anger a king without being killed (this doesn't apply to all kings).
That is no valid excuse. Lives are lives.
Lives are lives and have been lost to stupider things.
I thought that guy was omnipotent. I could come up with an other billion choices.
What other choices could you possibly think of?
I'm not saying what they did is good, but....let's put it this way. if a group of kids at my school start to insult me (nothing big, just, let's say they insulted my face) would that be a valid reason to take out a gun and start shooting them? I don't think so.
I can't convince you that God is love Samy so I will leave you with your own opinions, yet he didn't create us sinful Samy. He gave us freewill and it was mans own doing to bring sin into the world. Otherwise there would be no such thing.
Then he must have created us flawed. And the personal sins of humans do not explain the state of the world we live in. Our moral choices are not going to have such physical effects on the world to the extent required for things like this to exist.
