How can Christians reconcile the tornado damage in Oklahoma

[Munising]

Well, the Christian conception of God does not propose that God can do anything. He can't do anything that is not in accord with His holy, just, rational, loving nature.

So preventing a rape must not be in his loving nature. If I'm correct, then you have a twisted idea of what 'loving' means.

God must be omniscient in order to be God.

"For God so loved the world," the Bible says.

So, on all counts your "simple logic" misses the mark concerning God.

Not when you're making assertions which come into play in our physical world.

THe fact is, God kills us all.

Sounds like you agree with George Carlin that God is the biggest mass murderer of all-time. And he's loving? Can you please provide me your definition of 'loving'. Would a 'loving' person prevent a rape if they had the power to do so?

That's His unique prerogative as the One who gives and sustains all life. In this world corrupted and made deadly by sin, the means by which each of us may die has multiplied greatly. Disease, accident, natural disasters, old age, war, criminal violence - all these God uses as means to ending human life. In doing so He shows us that indeed the "wages of sin is death," that our world has been been made a lethal place by our sinful choices.

You're sounding more and more like a pantheist. Substituting 'God' for all causes of death.

The end of our temporal existence is by no means the absolute end of our existence. In fact, the eighty-some years we may live on this planet are less than a fraction of a fraction of a blink of an eye of the existence that follows the death of our physical body. God has made us, not just for time, but for eternity. And death is the door through which we enter eternity.

Why did God set it up so there is a temporal life? Why not have us go directly to eternity?

God of course sees this very clearly but we often fail to do so. We get to thinking this earthly life is all there is and that God is impossibly cruel in taking it from us. From God's perspective, though, the eternal life awaiting us on the other side of death is the ultimate existence for which we were made. Death, then, is not the horror we imagine it to be - at least not for those who love their Maker. It is the beginning of real living. God, then, doesn't do us evil when He allows the end of our temporal life to come to us.

Then why did God create us so we have to live our lives in fear of death?

Really, the atheist is obliged to show that God has no positive purpose in the suffering and pain of the world whatsoever before He can proclaim that God is evil for allowing it. But this is quite impossible to do.

You have that backwards. We are merely responding to claims Christians have made. The burden of proof is upon one making a claim. And you've claimed that God has a positive purpose for the pain and suffering in this world. Can you prove there is a positive purpose?

All the theist has to do to defeat the idea that God is evil for allowing pain and suffering in the world is to offer a possible reasonable explanation for why God might do so. He/she doesn't have to know for certain what goal God is pursuing in allowing pain and suffering; it is enough to be able to posit that He could have any of a number of possible reasons and/or goals for allowing pain and suffering that are in accord with His holy, righteous nature.

If God can do anything, then he can accomplish his "purpose" without any pain and suffering in this world. If that's not true, then you're on the hook to explain how God's omnipotence would be lessened if he prevented a rapist from raping a child.

 

[RDKirk]

If God can do anything, then he can accomplish his "purpose" without any pain and suffering in this world. If that's not true, then you're on the hook to explain how God's omnipotence would be lessened if he prevented a rapist from raping a child.

God can do what He wants to do, which is not necessarily what you think He should do.

In 1 Corinthians it tells us, "Don't you know you will judge the world? ... Don't you know you will judge angels?"

If this is so, what does it entail? Can someone who does not know the good and evil be an effective judge? So if that is God's ultimate plan--to develop a corps of people capable of judging humans and angels, it becomes logical that these people must know the difference between good and evil. Moreover, this must be a lesson so well taught that it will last for all eternity.

So God planted a tree and gave a command: "Do not eat of this tree."

I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet."
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for without the Law, there is no sin.

I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. -- Romans 7

Paul states an obvious tautology that if no commandment is created, then no commandment can be broken; there is no sin unless there is a law to sin against. But Paul goes farther to say that the existence of the law itself creates an inevitable impulse to break it.

So by uttering the commandment, God guaranteed that it would be broken (and if that wasn't effective quickly enough, there was always Lucifer--created by God--to move things along). If God had not created the opportunity to sin, there would never have been sin.

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. -- Genesis 3

I would submit that it was God's intention all along for man to "become like on of us" in the particular point of knowing good and evil so that he could judge men and angels in eternity.

But...

...the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. -- Proverbs 3

...because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. -- Hebrews 12:6

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11

A Navy SEAL goes through more painful training than an Air Force airman. The pain of the training is commensurate with the seriousness of the role it prepares us for.

If someone was going to be sent on the mission of a SEAL, it's an act of love to put him through commensurately painful training; giving a SEAL the relatively painless training of the Air Force would not be love at all.

I would submit that we are going through painful discipline--training in good and evil--and tough enough training to last for eternity. All of this incredible horror is what it takes to convince us that doing things our way leads to nothing but horror. Does it really take this? Does it take your example of a sexually molested child? Clearly, it does.

And lastly, remember that for those of us who believe in eternity:

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.-- 2 Corinthians 4

 

[Munising]

God can do what He wants to do, which is not necessarily what you think He should do.

I don't decide what he should do. The dictionary does - based on the definition of 'loving' and/or 'love'.

In 1 Corinthians it tells us, "Don't you know you will judge the world? ... Don't you know you will judge angels?"

If this is so, what does it entail? Can someone who does not know the good and evil be an effective judge? So if that is God's ultimate plan--to develop a corps of people capable of judging humans and angels, it becomes logical that these people must know the difference between good and evil. Moreover, this must be a lesson so well taught that it will last for all eternity.

Does God know the difference between good and evil when it comes to a child being raped?

So God planted a tree and gave a command: "Do not eat of this tree."

I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet."
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for without the Law, there is no sin.

I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. -- Romans 7

Paul states an obvious tautology that if no commandment is created, then no commandment can be broken; there is no sin unless there is a law to sin against. But Paul goes farther to say that the existence of the law itself creates an inevitable impulse to break it.

So by uttering the commandment, God guaranteed that it would be broken (and if that wasn't effective quickly enough, there was always Lucifer--created by God--to move things along). If God had not created the opportunity to sin, there would never have been sin.

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. -- Genesis 3

I would submit that it was God's intention all along for man to "become like on of us" in the particular point of knowing good and evil so that he could judge men and angels in eternity.

But...

...the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. -- Proverbs 3

...because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. -- Hebrews 12:6

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11

A Navy SEAL goes through more painful training than an Air Force airman. The pain of the training is commensurate with the seriousness of the role it prepares us for.

If someone was going to be sent on the mission of a SEAL, it's an act of love to put him through commensurately painful training; giving a SEAL the relatively painless training of the Air Force would not be love at all.

I would submit that we are going through painful discipline--training in good and evil--and tough enough training to last for eternity. All of this incredible horror is what it takes to convince us that doing things our way leads to nothing but horror. Does it really take this? Does it take your example of a sexually molested child? Clearly, it does.

And lastly, remember that for those of us who believe in eternity:

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.-- 2 Corinthians 4

If true, then what greater good is gained by allowing rapist to molest a child?

 

[RDKirk]

If true, then what greater good is gained by allowing rapist to molest a child?

We wouldn't believe it could happen, unless it did.

 

[RDKirk]

After all these pages I think it's safe to say this was never a question that any Christian could answer to the OP authors satisfaction.

If we consider the definition of what is asked, reconcile:to cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired.

It would indicate the poster wants Christians to make arguments against their faith by admitting bad things happen and God doesn't intercede because he's not really there.

Yes, you're right.

 

[Munising]

After all these pages I think it's safe to say this was never a question that any Christian could answer to the OP authors satisfaction.

It can be answered to my satisfaction.

All you have to do is point out which one of the following three is true:

1) God is not capable of stopping the children from getting raped
2) God doesn't know when and where the children will get raped
3) God doesn't love the child enough to prevent the rape

If we consider the definition of what is asked, reconcile:to cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired.

It would indicate the poster wants Christians to make arguments against their faith by admitting bad things happen and God doesn't intercede because he's not really there.

If reconciling it causes you to admit something that is contrary to your faith, then the only conclusion is that your faith encompasses accepting logical fallacies.

 

[RDKirk]

It can be answered to my satisfaction.

You do realize, don't you, that nobody is obliged to satisfy you? The answer is the answer...if it does not satisfy you, that's only your problem.

I've got it reconciled within my faith. I accept that it's not reconciled within your faith because you don't have any faith.

 

[aiki]

Well, the Christian conception of God does not propose that God can do anything. He can't do anything that is not in accord with His holy, just, rational, loving nature. So preventing a rape must not be in his loving nature. If I'm correct, then you have a twisted idea of what 'loving' means.

As you've stated things here this is a non sequitur. There are many things at play in God's decision to allow sin to proceed unchecked. One of the things that is evident even to us from our very limited vantage point as human beings is that sin must be allowed to follow its course if the decision to sin - or not to sin - is to be a genuinely free thing. If God intervenes every time a person chooses to do what is morally wrong and prevents the consequences of that immoral choice from coming to pass, He essentially negates the choice to do wrong that a person makes. But this means a person is not truly free to choose to do wrong. And if they are not free to choose to do wrong, then they are not free to choose to do right, either. Unfortunately, without genuine free will, without the capacity to freely choose, we humans cannot genuinely love God, which is, above all, what God desires from us. So, God, not willing to empty our love of its genuineness, enables and allows us to make good and evil choices, which necessarily entails also allowing the consequences of those choices to occur.

God does intervene at times to protect us from harm. Not always. But not never, either. If God was evil, why would He bother? God could, for the reasons I outlined above, allow all evil to have its head, but He doesn't. He does at various times prevent or limit the destructiveness of evil. This seems to me to put the lie to the idea that God is evil.

God also has ordained a time when He will judge all wickedness. No one "gets away with it." But if God is evil, why would He care to judge evil? Obviously, an evil God would promote evil, not try to curb it by the threat of judgment and punishment.

THe fact is, God kills us all.
Sounds like you agree with George Carlin that God is the biggest mass murderer of all-time. And he's loving? Can you please provide me your definition of 'loving'. Would a 'loving' person prevent a rape if they had the power to do so?

But the important difference between God and mass-murderer is that God is the One who gives life to all. This is not true of the mass-murderer. God, therefore, has the unique right to take the life He gives. This is what it means to be God; and there is nothing evil in God exercising His unique right. A mass-murderer, on the other hand, who cannot bring life into being as God does, has no such right. It's unfortunate that George Carlin doesn't think more carefully before he says some of the stupid things he says.

Why did God set it up so there is a temporal life? Why not have us go directly to eternity?

Adam and Eve only suffered death after they disobeyed God and ate of the Forbidden Fruit. Initially, it seems they were made to live eternally without experiencing death. The eternal life we will eventually experience is a return to God's original plan, a restoration to what was lost at the Fall. The Bible tells us that those who are children of God will be resurrected in glorified bodies that cannot suffer the corruption and death of sin.

Then why did God create us so we have to live our lives in fear of death?

No one has to live their life in fear of death. That is the Good News of the Gospel! Christ has come to free us from the "sting of death"! Only those who reject the gift of salvation God offers live as you describe.

You have that backwards. We are merely responding to claims Christians have made. The burden of proof is upon one making a claim. And you've claimed that God has a positive purpose for the pain and suffering in this world. Can you prove there is a positive purpose?

Actually, you started this thread by proposing certain things about God. It falls to you, then, to prove that you are correct in the things you're asserting. I have shown that you are not. Feel free to show me where I'm in error.

I have offered one very plausible reason for why God allows evil to occur. It is a necessary consequence of allowing us to freely choose to love Him. In making a carving knife that can carve and shape wood, one also unavoidably makes a knife that is capable of piercing flesh and ending life.

If God can do anything, then he can accomplish his "purpose" without any pain and suffering in this world.

I've already explained that God cannot do just anything. He is limited by His own nature in the things He can do. I have shown how that obtaining our love necessarily and logically entails that God allow evil to exist. God would have to either violate our freedom to choose and thus to genuinely love Him, or violate the laws of logic in order to accomplish His purposes without any evil in the world. God's rational and loving nature, then, preclude Him from doing as you think He ought to.

I notice that you seem to go back and forth between objecting to evil in the world and objecting to pain and suffering as though they are seamlessly intertwined. But, they aren't. One can experience pain and suffering without being the victim of evil. In fact, pain is often a vital factor in remaining healthy. Just ask a leper if this is so. Or a surgeon. Or a dentist. Suffering produces strength. Just ask a weightlifter if this is so. Or any Olympic caliber athlete. Although all of these people deal with pain and suffering they do not do so necessarily because of evil in the world, nor do they think of all pain and suffering as fundamentally bad things. A person dying of leprosy would give a great deal to be able to feel pain again.

Selah.

 

[aiki]

A rape victim doesn't freely choose to get raped.

I haven't suggested otherwise. It is this very fact, however, that is part of what makes sin, as the Bible says, so "exceedingly sinful."

How is God negating the rapists choice to develop the intent to rape a child (or any choice) taking away the person's ability to choose if God later causes the rapists car to break down while he's on the way to rape the child?

Keep in mind that if God is obliged to stop the rapist from raping, then He is also obliged to stop the gossip from gossiping, the liar from lying, and the lazy person from being lazy. God must prevent selfishness, and hypocrisy, and carelessness, too. Not many people become rapists, but all people have at times been selfish, and dishonest, and hypocritical. We talk of God preventing "serious crimes" like rape, never realizing that our demands that He stop such evil also obliges Him to stop all evil - including our own "lesser" evil.

If a person cannot even form the intent to do wrong because God prevents Him from doing so, then He is simply a prisoner to God's will, a puppet acting out only what God has ordained He should act out. The effect is the same if God allows a rapist to choose to rape but interferes with him acting on that choice. If the rapist chooses to rape but hasn't the freedom to enact his evil choice, then his choice is merely a sort of academic exercise. After the twentieth time the rapist set out to rape but was prevented by divine interference from doing so, it would be plain to him that his choice to rape was pointless since it is not something upon which he could truly act. The choice to act a certain way has no meaning if the ability to fully enact that choice is impossible.

Tornadoes are not the consequence of human choices. They are acts of nature.

Sometimes, if the Bible is to be believed, natural disasters are also the means of God's judgment.

If God desires us to love him, then why would he behave in such a sadistic and evil way? Killing people.

There is nothing sadistic in God taking the life He has given. It's His unique right as God to do so. And God has made a way for all people to continue to live with Him eternally after their earthly life has ended. What's sadistic and evil about that?

Doing nothing to prevent a rapist from molesting a child.

How do you know God always does nothing? I have heard many personal testimonies to God's prevention of evil. He cannot always prevent all evil for the reasons I have explained (and doubtless many others I can't, as a finite being, begin to comprehend). God doesn't want puppets or prisoners but loving children. But God is loving and does act at times to protect and preserve people from disaster and evil.

Allowing a massive earthquake to kill or seriously injure hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti. Only a sick and demented god would behave that way.

This is an unjustified statement as it stands. Really, its a flat-out non sequitur.

And such a god thinks we'll love him? If your god is available for a little education, I'll be happy to teach him how to best procure love.

*Sigh* Feel better now? Do you feel good about yourself being so disrespectful to the One I worship and love? Wow.

I'm not positing an evil god. I'm merely saying if your god is fully capable of preventing a rapist from molesting a child but chooses not to, then he's a sick and demented god.

You have to show that God did not have some higher purpose He was serving in allowing this evil act to occur before you can say He was evil to allow it. But you can't possibly know all that factors that go into God's decisions, so at best all you can really do is assume that God has no higher purpose He serves in allowing evil to exist. But this assumption speaks merely to your bias, not to something that you can actually prove.

A surgeon must often cause very serious injury to his patient in order to effect a cure for them. Does he do evil, then? If you knew nothing of modern surgery and saw a neurosurgeon drilling through the bone of person's skull and then cutting into a person's exposed brain, would you wonder at his methods? I think so. How much more obscure are the actions of an infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God to we who are so tiny, so finite, so limited in our knowledge and perspective? What seems to us from our severly limited standpoint to be evil on God's part is nothing more than the arcane and seemingly destructive work of the Divine Neurosurgeon.

But the important difference between God and mass-murderer is that God is the One who gives life to all. This is not true of the mass-murderer. God, therefore, has the unique right to take the life He gives.
You can't be serious!!! That's like saying a human parent has the right to take away the life of his own child because he gave life to that child.

No human creates life as God does. In this regard God is truly unique. God determines when and if a baby will be born; He decides its sex and all of its physical characteristics; He chooses the personality of the baby and the natural abilities it will possess; most of all, God gives it the animating force of life, the soul, of the human person. No human has direct control over any of these things as God does. Drawing a comparison between human parents and our Creator doesn't really work, then, in this instance.

After we are resurrected, will we have the freedom to choose between good and bad?

Yes, our freedom to choose will remain, but the desire to choose evil will be forever ended.

Fear of death is a natural human trait.

Fear of the pain that causes death is natural. But death itself is not something a mature follower of Christ fears.

If an eternal life is such a great place, then why are the loved ones of a recently deceased relative so despondent?

Why should one not feel sorrow over the loss of one who is loved? Are people not allowed to miss their loved ones? Christians may feel the unhappy pangs of separation, but they are comforted in knowing that the separation is not permanent. My grandfather died recently and his funeral service verged on a celebration. We miss him, of course, but we know where he has gone and this is a cause for rejoicing, not only sorrow.

I have offered one very plausible reason for why God allows evil to occur. It is a necessary consequence of allowing us to freely choose to love Him.
Once again, that doesn't work if God can do anything. What you're essentially saying is if God stopped evil, then it would somehow diminish his omnipotence. Perhaps I'm right. If so, how would that work?

No, I'm not saying that stopping evil would diminish God's omnipotence. Not at all. I've argued that genuine love necessarily is freely given. One cannot truly love by being forced to do so any more than one can be a married bachelor. True love, by definition entails the freedom to choose the object of one's love, just like a circle, by definition, entails the absence of right angles in its form. God, who is perfectly rational, cannot do what is logically impossible. He cannot force love and have it be true love any more than He can make a circle have right angles.

You could have simply selected the option, "God can't do anything" and that would have satisfied me. But I appreciate the additional dialog you've offered.

Maybe it's the way you have phrased things, but "God can't do anything" sounds like you're saying God is utterly impotent. God cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature but this doesn't mean God is impotent.

Regardless of what the suffering is a result of (e.g. a rapist, a tornado, a murderer, a tsunami), an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god would - by definition - prevent it from happening.

Well, here you're just demonstrating blind bias, not intellectual honesty, which makes it very evident to me that you aren't willing to hear and truly consider any other point of view but your own. Do you really think such intellectual myopia will lead you to truth? I don't.

Selah.

 

[TangoSprite]

Yes, you're right.

I know. It becomes painfully obvious as to the agenda after this many pages. I think the question now becomes, what is their point?

The question itself in the OP declares a smug satisfaction that decries Christianity and God, so when there is no answer that they would accept, as we witness in the regurgitation of points they require to be addressed, what is it that they really want?
I think we know. They're attempting to tell every Christian here that they are actually Maltheists. And that God is Malevolent.



More's the pity for them. More's too for us if we feed the evil that fosters the dark heart to action.

 

[aiki]

More's the pity for them. More's too for us if we feed the evil that fosters the dark heart to action.

Don't forget that there are many others who are reading this thread. It is for them as much as for the OP that I write.

Selah.

 

[Munising]

I haven't suggested otherwise. It is this very fact, however, that is part of what makes sin, as the Bible says, so "exceedingly sinful."

Keep in mind that if God is obliged to stop the rapist from raping, then He is also obliged to stop the gossip from gossiping, the liar from lying, and the lazy person from being lazy. God must prevent selfishness, and hypocrisy, and carelessness, too. Not many people become rapists, but all people have at times been selfish, and dishonest, and hypocritical. We talk of God preventing "serious crimes" like rape, never realizing that our demands that He stop such evil also obliges Him to stop all evil - including our own "lesser" evil.

If a person cannot even form the intent to do wrong because God prevents Him from doing so, then He is simply a prisoner to God's will, a puppet acting out only what God has ordained He should act out. The effect is the same if God allows a rapist to choose to rape but interferes with him acting on that choice. If the rapist chooses to rape but hasn't the freedom to enact his evil choice, then his choice is merely a sort of academic exercise. After the twentieth time the rapist set out to rape but was prevented by divine interference from doing so, it would be plain to him that his choice to rape was pointless since it is not something upon which he could truly act. The choice to act a certain way has no meaning if the ability to fully enact that choice is impossible.

Sometimes, if the Bible is to be believed, natural disasters are also the means of God's judgment.

There is nothing sadistic in God taking the life He has given. It's His unique right as God to do so. And God has made a way for all people to continue to live with Him eternally after their earthly life has ended. What's sadistic and evil about that?

How do you know God always does nothing? I have heard many personal testimonies to God's prevention of evil. He cannot always prevent all evil for the reasons I have explained (and doubtless many others I can't, as a finite being, begin to comprehend). God doesn't want puppets or prisoners but loving children. But God is loving and does act at times to protect and preserve people from disaster and evil.

This is an unjustified statement as it stands. Really, its a flat-out non sequitur.

*Sigh* Feel better now? Do you feel good about yourself being so disrespectful to the One I worship and love? Wow.

You have to show that God did not have some higher purpose He was serving in allowing this evil act to occur before you can say He was evil to allow it. But you can't possibly know all that factors into God's decisions, so at best all you can really do is assume that God has no higher purpose He serves in allowing evil to exist. But this assumption speaks merely to your bias, not to something that you can actually prove.

A surgeon must often cause very serious injury to his patient in order to effect a cure for them. Does he do evil, then? If you knew nothing of modern surgery and saw a neurosurgeon drilling through the bone of person's skull and then cutting into a person's exposed brain, would you wonder at his methods? I think so. How much more obscure are the actions of an infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God to we who are so tiny, so finite, so limited in our knowledge and perspective? What seems to us from our severly limited standpoint to be evil on God's part is nothing more than the arcane and seemingly destructive work of the Divine Neurosurgeon.

No human creates life as God does. In this regard God is truly unique. God determines when and if a baby will be born; He decides its sex and all of its physical characteristics; He chooses the personality of the baby and the natural abilities it will possess; most of all, God gives it the animating force of life, the soul, of the human person. No human has direct control over any of these things as God does. Drawing a comparison between human parents and our Creator doesn't really work, then, in this instance.

Yes, our freedom to choose will remain, but the desire to choose evil will be forever ended.

Fear of the pain that causes death is natural. But death itself is not something a mature follower of Christ fears.

Why should one not feel sorrow over the loss of one who is loved? Are people not allowed to miss their loved ones? Christians may feel the unhappy pangs of separation, but they are comforted in knowing that the separation is not permanent. My grandfather died recently and his funeral service verged on a celebration. We miss him, of course, but we know where he has gone and this is a cause for rejoicing, not only sorrow.

No, I'm not saying that stopping evil would diminish God's omnipotence. Not at all. I've argued that genuine love necessarily is freely given. One cannot truly love by being forced to do so any more than one can be a married bachelor. True love, by definition entails the freedom to choose the object of one's love, just like a circle, by definition, entails the absence of right angles in its form. God, who is perfectly rational, cannot do what is logically impossible. He cannot force love and have it be true love any more than He can make a circle have right angles.

Maybe it's the way you have phrased things, but "God can't do anything" sounds like you're saying God is utterly impotent. God cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature but this doesn't mean God is impotent.

Well, here you're just demonstrating blind bias, not intellectual honesty, which makes it very evident to me that you aren't willing to hear and truly consider any other point of view but your own. Do you really think such intellectual myopia will lead you to truth? I don't.

Selah.

Your arguments are so full of inconsistencies and holes that I don't know where to begin. Did the forefathers of your religious beliefs ever take the time to cover their tracks?

 

[aiki]

*Sigh* You can lead a horse to water....

Selah.

 

[Munising]

*Sigh* You can lead a horse to water....

Selah.

I intend to respond to your recent post at greater length later.

I take it you feel you've presented me with sufficient evidence your god exists. Am I correct?

Would you be surprised to know that in my entire life (at least 25 years), I have never seen any evidence of a being which knows everything, a being which can do anything or a being which loves everyone.

Every day, I give your god (if it really does exist) a chance to show me that it exists, but it does absolutely nothing - essentially making it indistinguishable from a non-existent god. Or is it possible the god you believe to exist wants to appear as if it doesn't exist? If that's the case, how would it serve such a god's interests to appear as if it doesn't exist?

 

[Hammster]

MOD HAT ON



Closed for review.


MOD HAT OFF