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.
You gave me the impression you had conceded to use my definition. Furthermore even under your definition the deck remains stacked. How has he lowered his expectation? How can he even have expectations if he is all knowing? Do you not see the flaw in that?
I don't know how I gave you that impression in any form, considering I gave you the counterdefinition and you simply continued with your own definition. I gave you an example that even if we were using your definition that it would still work in the favor of my argument that went on to say but we are sticking with the original definition.
I used the webster definition to give you an understanding. If a spy is on a mission but he is discovered he becomes compromised. He falters and the intended situation fails.
I don't know how I gave you that impression in any form, considering I gave you the counterdefinition and you simply continued with your own definition. I gave you an example that even if we were using your definition that it would still work in the favor of my argument that went on to say but we are sticking with the original definition.
I used the webster definition to give you an understanding. If a spy is on a mission but he is discovered he becomes compromised. He falters and the intended situation fails.
Fine a miscommunication then. Regardless that lovely ramble completely avoided my question. Even under your definition the deck is still stacked. How has god lowered his expectations?
I apologize the example with the spy is a much more lucid definition. Given that once something is compromised the intended action falters and fails. If choice and faith are compromised God's intended action for humans is no longer superlative and love therefor becomes superficial making humans just like the robots he chose not to make.
I still don't understand what your saying but i feel like we are basically arguing wether or not the bible is moral. Which no one said it was.
Okay this started with God doesn't show himself so he doesn't effect free will. You said morals aren't from God. Because again doing so would effect free will. The commandments (moral rules or or guild lines) being from God would go against both of these points. They would have to come from a person and not God in order for 1.God to not effect free will through revealing himself and 2.laying down any sort of moral code for humans to follow. You can't say "make up your own morals" then go and say "these are the moral you should have".
Johna and the whale. Johan used his free will to not follow god's demands. god responded by having him eaten by a whale. In essence, god is negating Johan's free will by his interference.
That was not really relevant to his point. Either way, Johna had the choice of wether or not to listen to God, he chose not too, and was punished.
Johna and the whale. Johan used his free will to not follow god's demands. god responded by having him eaten by a whale. In essence, god is negating Johan's free will by his interference.
God gave Jonah a command and Jonah said he would do it then decided to run from God. God punished Jonah with the whale but even after he was spit out Jonah still had the choice to continue on with God's will or not. He could have simply walked away. Understand your Bible refrences before you make them next time please.
