salvation through the church according to Mel

Grandmaster is advancing a theory that I myself have darkly hinted at on a few occaisions. That it seems unlikely anything would be omniscient and omnipotent, loving and into the concept of freewill.

Think about that POSSIBLY being true, then go back and read the bible - it'll make every hair on your body stand on end.
 
So you would rather God created controlled people-robots that had no free will whatsoever? Think about the concept of Cupid. . . when Cupid shoots his arrow into somebody then *bang*, they're in love. Now, think about that cute girl at college that's been catching your eye. Would you want Cupid to shoot her with an arrow, and have her artificially fall in love with you? Or would you want that love to be pure, sincere, because this girl knows exactly who you are and she loves you because of it? Why would the Lord want billions of artficially influenced subjects who bow to Him because He makes them?

Free will is in this world because God loves us, and he wants us to love Him too.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]That it seems unlikely anything would be omniscient and omnipotent, loving and into the concept of freewill.
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Thanks for the classic example of man limiting God.
 
Yes, but how would it be if I made a million versions of this girl I wanted to love me so that I was certain of ONE of them loving me naturally? The rest I could then abandon to their own devices...

You have to think deeper than the face value morality of actions.

And Peon, just because the church foresaw the difficult question and invented a special name for it, doesn't make it less interesting that they still haven't come up with an answer to it.
 
I think this concept is flawed Eon, because God just like man does not produce spouses.  They produce children, and love them accordingly.
 
Reallly... The minute you see people throwing children into a lake of fire for eternal torturing, you give me a call and we'll continue this discussion. Or is that how you see God? Staggering home at midnight, drunk, with a belt in his hand?
 
I see Him as a parent that has tried His best to correct and improve his children and when a child chooses to go against the Father and His household. The Father must turn that child out for the good of the family.

Would you allow a child that lied, cheated, and stole from you to stay in your house after they became an adult?
 
Nope. But would I thrash said child to within an inch of his life every day, and then throw him out of the house when he became abusive?

Let's stop messing about here and look at what your religion claims to be your Gods hit rate. How many will be saved, how many will be eternally tortured. And if God is the father, and we're his wayward children, then how much of the blame is his?

Note - if the answer to my question is greater than absolutely none, then the entire concept of God being infalliable is shot out of the water. Whoops!
 
Alright, like you said, time to stop messing around. The responsibility of God for our actions is nil, because we are the ones who made those choices. The perfect father can still have a wayward son, and you don't put the father in jail for the son's mistakes.

Bottom line: God is a being of pure and complete good, and if there is even an ounce of sin in our lives, then we cannot abide with Him in heaven. That is why He came and died for us. . . He is perfect and sinless, and the only thing strong enough to counteract all the sins of mankind in one fell swoop. Because of that, the sins that we commit are already paid for. . . we just have to accept it.

No father on earth has ever been perfect, that's why our comparison of God to an earthly father is not perfect. He is the only true perfect example, one that we can never fully follow because of the nature of sin in our lives.

If Adam and Eve had never sinned, then our lives would be perfect, but we are forever paying for the sin they committed. That's life.
 
Eon why do you think God thrashes people to one inch from death? I am curious is this from personal experience?

As for how many children God wants to save.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2Pet 3:9
 
Tasty, there are a number of reasons for my thinking, but I'll go over some of the more important ones.

Let's start with the story of Adam and Eve. God forbids them to eat fruit from the single tree. If he is in fact omniscient, he knows that they will disobey him, but he makes the rule anyway. Then when they disobey, he punishes all of mankind. That's like me setting someone up and then going, "Gotcha, sucker! Now you're gonna pay for what you did!" Sounds like something a real jerk would do. Or maybe this story is a total load of crap, so god is possibly actually a nice guy. But then that would totally invalidate Christianity since the story of Adam and Eve is crucial to the belief.

Next up: god doesn't "force" anyone to love him, he wants us to have free will so he lets us choose whether or not to follow him. Well, why is the alternative to not following him an eternity of "weeping and gnashing of teeth?" The people who follow are bribed with the reward of heaven and the people who don't are threatened with hell. Again, I don't usually consider people who bribe and threaten others to be "loving."

The third point I'll mention is how god allows people who don't believe to be eternally punished. Basically, people are being punished for apparently not being smart enough to make the "right" choice by choosing Christianity. That sounds pretty dumb to me. If I can't seemingly make the right choice because I am flawed, then why the hell am I going to be punished for that? Clearly, choosing the "right" religion isn't an easy thing, considering all the different beliefs out there. Frankly, there is nothing more compelling about Christianity than any other religion out there, but, even so, I am still going to be punished for not accepting Jesus. "Faith" is a foolish concept. It requires me to believe in something without any real proof or material evidence. So why is god going to fault someone for not believing in something when they can have no real basis for believing in that particular thing in the first place?

Essentially, if I was to accept the Bible as being true, then I could not accept the Christian concept of god being a loving, purely good father. Or, if the Christian concept of god is a valid one, then I could not accept the biblical account of god. But with so many ridiculous contradictions, there is no reason for me to accept either as being true. If god exists, I don't think he is having any kind of interaction with us, and so I don't think that it would even matter whether I believe or not. He probably wouldn't care.
 
First off, Grand Master, I'd like to say that your last post was very well put together and well expressed. I was genuinely stumped on the questions you posed. I can completely understand why you think they way you do, and I had quite a hard time sorting this one out. CARM was a great help to me, and I'll quote some things that they have said in their website, which helped me out immensly in thinking through your post.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]God did not lack anything in Himself that prompted His creative act. He wasn't lonely or bored. To say such a thing about Him would be to imply He is not eternally self-sufficient and perfect. But, if God is perfect and doesn't need anything, why would He then create us -- and the universe for us to live in -- that has fallen into sin? What purpose would it serve?
I suspect the answer lies within God's nature and a few clues spread throughout God's word. To begin with, God is love (1 John 4:16) and the nature of love is to give. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son..." I cannot help but believe that the most natural quality of love is to give, to be other centered, and, according to Jesus' own words, to give of one's self to the point of death. John 15:13 is where Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."
According to Jesus, there is no greater demonstration of love than self sacrifice to the point of death. Since God is love (1 John 4:16) and there is none greater than He, I conclude that God can and will be the one who demonstrates the greatest act of love. I cannot see God allowing a mere creation to demonstrate this in a better way than He. It would be a necessary outcome of His own nature and a necessary manifestation in any universe He created that the two greatest commandments spoken of by Jesus to love God and love your neighbor would be supremely demonstrated by none other than God Himself. Jesus was God in flesh who loved the Father perfectly and He loved us completely by laying down His life for us. This is the greatest and most perfect act of love according to Jesus.
If this is true, then it might just be that God had to create the universe so that the fall would be included in His plan for the very purpose of demonstrating and manifesting His perfect character: Love! To demonstrate the very greatest part of His nature of love, He would have to die for someone else. This could not be done if there was no one to die for and no reason to die for them. There could be no reason to die if there were no need for an atonement. There would be no need for an atonement if there were no sin. If there was no fall, there would be no sin.
Therefore, perhaps it is possible that God created the universe with "free will" creatures in it who would fall into sin. Without this fall, ultimately no death would be necessary to atone for them and without that death, the greatest act of love could not be demonstrated. Also, this would mean that the truest and most perfect quality of love would not be fulfilled. Would this then mean that God would not be perfectly fulfilled without having given of Himself? I don't know. But I can't help wondering that for God to truly express His perfectly loving nature, He Himself had to be one who laid His life down for others. For this to happen, He allowed sin to exist in this world.
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This definitely makes sense to me, though it is by no means a definitive answer.

Second: God doesn't threaten or bribe us. The reason those who do not accept his free gift go to hell is because of that very nature of God spoken of in the above quote. God is a God of pure good, and unless the sin in our lives is paid for by a perfect sacrifice, we cannot abide with him in Heaven. Sin seperates us from God, but the blood of Christ is our atonement. That is the only reason we can enter heaven, because our sins are paid for and wiped clean. He doesn't bribe us, he beckons us to Him, but some refuse that free gift - not understanding it or not willing to put aside their pride to accept it.

Third - those who do not accept the free gift are the ones who are punishing themselves with seperation from the creator. God is not threatening or bribing - again, the answer relyies wholly on His nature of pure good. If our lives are tainted by evil which has not been atoned for, then we cannot thrive with Him in heaven. It's not as if He is punishing us, it is simply the nature of good and evil which stands in the way of mankind's ultimate ingrained goal - communion with his creator.
 
It's not so much the seperation from the creator, and more the eternal torment in a lake of fire that gets to me...
 
on the adam and eve thingy, i would refer to C.W. Lewis' perelandra, when it was forbidden to stay on the firm land. now there is no real point to that rule other than showing that in all things u are obediant to God. since Adam and Eve sinned i see it as a failure to be obediant.
 
Eon, if yoy truly want to enlighten yourself regarding

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The minute you see people throwing children into a lake of fire for eternal torturing
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Why not pick up a book to buy, loan from a library or get an ebook over the internet called:

"The Case for Faith" by Strobell.
 
i know I'm idle, but I'm working Design on a project coming up for Alpha, learning the Bass guitar, learning Dutch and still trying to cram sleep in between times. Since you have no problems with this issue, why don't you summarise for me?
 
You are aware that if you took the time you will be putting into asking questions or debating (oh, I hate that word) any points further in this post (I am quite sure somebody will post some kind of summary for you, it never fails), you could've read the one chapter in that book?

I'll be perfectly honest with you.  You have that post in which you discuss your believes.  In that post, I brought up some questions.  You answered them.  Had you answered with a suggested resource for me to read, guess what?

I would have enough respect for you to actually have gone to find the book and read it.  It would be my position that you obviously felt the resource adequatly answered my questions and that if I had further questions, I would have the resources in the book (ie..endnotes and bibliographies) to do more research.  Or, I could even discuss points brought up in the point intellegantly, instead of from a point of ignorance.  I have many books on many topics from Christian and non-Christians alike in my reference library to show as evidence to my statement.

I too have a very busy life, I am aware everybody has a busy life.  I simply choose not to use it as an excuse not to do something.  If I did not want to follow up on a suggestion, I would respect the person who made the suggestion and tell them why I was not planning on following up.
 
<shrugs> I respect you as a debator and a philosopher - and I certainly do appreciate you taking the time to suggest reading matter you think will help clear up this issue for me. That post had a lot less sarcasm than I think you assumed - the reason why it was flat sounding was because I was at work until 23:30 yesterday, and the post was written at about 07:30 this morning. I have a one hour commute into work - you guess how much sleep I've had.
 
About as much I?

If you haven't noticed, and I am sure you have, I haven't been posting in this forum as much. I don't have the time to research my points anymore. I don't like coming into an debate where I am not comfortable with what I am posting. I spend many hours researching, even topic I know well, I'll go back and recheck my evidence.

But, to give you the quickest synopsis, which is useless in that I haven't reread the chapter:

A: There is no reason to believe there are children in Hell or Hades or that there even will be. God has promised that children under the age of reason (which we do not know and it is most likely different for each person) will be taken to be with him heavan.

B: If you spend all your life against God and his commandments, his laws and how God would want to you to live, wouldn't it actually be more like hell to be forced to spend eternity in that way of life?

C: God is not in hell. He is not torturing souls there. It is unlikely that even Satan is torturing you there. The torture described in the Bible appears to be more self inflicted and not physical.

D: Hell was created as the alternative desitination for those who do not choose God or his Son for eternity. Rather than destroy you or your soul, God respects your choice not to spend eternity with him. Seeing as you have choosen not to spend eternity with God and his ways, where else is there to go? God did not create hell on the first day, it was created after man fell. Much like the first buildings in any new civilization do not include jails until somebody breaks the law.

There, big time synopsis. And I am not willing to discuss them anyfurther as it would be to your best interest to spend some time to read the details. If you (not just you Eon, any Christian as well) trully want to come to a better understanding of what hell is most likely like (nobody knows for sure as nobody knows for sure what heavan is like), then why not read what the experts have said?
 
Thanks for the synopsis, and I will read the whole thing at some point. But, for discussions sake, what about Dante's Divine Comedy?
 
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