The Problem of Evil

JAL said:

You object to the idea that Yahweh can change. But you claim that He changed into a man.

So whenever YOU claim change, its find and dandy, but whenever I claim change, I must be in the wrong?

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Now you bear false witness also ? No surprise, but so quick to do so !

Ken-1122 said:

No you didn't I never asked a question concerning this full protection you speak of, I asked a question about free will.

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I need you to read between the lines a little. I can't write a whole book here spelling out every detail of my thinking voluminously.

To answer your question, if God had given us full protection from sin at the outset, we would have been a lot more like robots than volitional companions. Nobody wants that kind of girlfriend or boyfriend, as it wouldn't effectively satisfy our loneliness.

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Yahuweh told the Israelites : You must be holy (set apart) because I the Lord your God am holy (set apart). And it was already possible.
Jesus told the disciples : You must be perfect (not the definition of English though) , as your Father in heaven is perfect. This already is possible also, as written.
.

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I didn’t ask if holiness was possible, I asked why didn’t God make all of our desires holy.

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Now you bear false witness also ? No surprise, but so quick to do so !

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Did anything ever happen in Christology? Was there any event such as the Incarnation? Or no such event ever happened? Yahweh never changed one iota?

Because the Yahweh of Moses' day didn't need to engage in learning. He wasn't making an effort to learn Hebrew. But the Yahweh in Mary's womb, upon entering the world, engaged in precisely such behavior. Scripture states that He engaged in a learning process.

How is that not change? Do you believe the Scriptures or not? Seems to me you don't.

If today I don't know Hebrew, and tomorrow I learn it, that's a change.

JAL said:

I need you to read between the lines a little. I can't write a whole book here spelling out every detail of my thinking voluminously.

To answer your question, if God had given us full protection from sin at the outset, we would have been a lot more like robots than volitional companions. Nobody wants that kind of girlfriend or boyfriend, as it wouldn't effectively satisfy our loneliness.

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As I said before, I would prefer the robot that would never reject me than a girlfriend if I were the type of person to send her to prison for rejecting me. Also I would rather be a robot with a guaranteed ticket to Heaven than a human with free will who ends up in Hell. Wouldn't you???

Ken-1122 said:

As I said before, I would prefer the robot that would never reject me than a girlfriend if I were the type of person to send her to prison for rejecting me. Also I would rather be a robot with a guaranteed ticket to Heaven than a human with free will who ends up in Hell. Wouldn't you???

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Ok I see your point now. You think that God is sending people to hell for rejecting Him. That's a superficial perspective. And it might be a valid complaint about some historic theologians but not in regard to my own theodicy.

I know of only one definition of evil, sin, unrighteousness - whatever you wish to call it - namely disobedience to conscience. That's the only thing that God can justifiably punish us for.

But the Scriptures seem to teach (see Romans chapters 1 and 2) that God has stamped a primordial, essentially subconscious knowledge of Him upon our conscience. This vague portrait, Paul seems to say, periodically comes to the foreground of our consciousness as a result of certain triggers, specifically impressions from Nature - for example anything from a smiling face (reminding us of the kindness of God), to peals of thunder and lightning (reminding us of His power).

Thus God can condemn us to hell for rejecting the portrait painted in our conscience, as well for any other acts of disobedience to conscience.

Ken-1122 said:

I didn’t ask if holiness was possible, I asked why didn’t God make all of our desires holy.

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Your question / posts were fine. A good question but don't expect a truthful answer from someone who thinks God is somewhat of a physical being instead of Spirit as Scripture says clearly... (not referring to Jesus , so far as seen here>>)
See just now "terrible errors" how the false teachings portray/ view God ....
Holy “Spirit”? Wrong. That’s Not His Name.

Ken-1122 said:

Also I would rather be a robot with a guaranteed ticket to Heaven than a human with free will who ends up in Hell. Wouldn't you???

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That's the whole problem. Please do a search for my statements about guarantee on this thread. God WANTED to guarantee you that ticket. He could not. I've already covered all this.

Thus heresy exposed.

Right. We already agreed you are infallible, didn't we? Funny I don't see you addressing the charge of contradiction. And after you resolve THAT one, I've got about a half-dozen more....

Ken-1122 said:

A girlfriend with free will is my equal. If she rejects me I will not send her to Hell in any way nor will I punish her with torture for rejecting me.

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I would. In fact, telling her that I would is my best mack.

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Your question / posts were fine. A good question but don't expect a truthful answer from someone who thinks God is somewhat of a physical being instead of Spirit as Scripture says clearly... (not referring to Jesus , so far as seen here>>)
See just now "terrible errors" how the false teachings portray/ view God ....
Holy “Spirit”? Wrong. That’s Not His Name.

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I just don't get why you would blindly hold to beliefs that are not humanly coherent and have no clear defense in Scripture, meanwhile claiming to be a student of the written Word.

You believe that 'Spirit' is the best translation just because a lexicon has told you so? You don't care to evaluate the context yourself? What is your basis for belief in the concept of spirit? Just curious.

Ken-1122 said:

Also I would rather be a robot with a guaranteed ticket to Heaven than a human with free will who ends up in Hell. Wouldn't you???

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I always think I write with enough clarity but, when people repeat the same kinds of questions, I begin to doubt my clarity. So I'll do another recapitulation here.

I agree with that statement of yours. And thank you for saying it, because I'm so sick and tired of hearing Christians insist that free will is such a good thing that instituting it is self-justifying. Free will is a very dangerous and destructive thing.

But God had to achieve maximal perfection ('holiness') to serve as our protector. And that learning process and practice-regimen were too daunting and excruciating to face while also faced with the excruciating specter of eternal solitary confinement/loneliness. Not only was it too daunting but it increased the risk of failure due to weakened resolve. Failure was not an option. And if He had made us robots from the start, it would not have fully placated His loneliness.

Look, I'm already burned out. I'm supposed to be increasing my education to further my career and I'm in danger of losing my career if I don't. And yet I'm mentally emotionally exhausted - after just a few decades on this planet? But God was faced with a task that, at minimum, cost Him 13 billion years of labor and education! How was He to avoid burnout other than to promise Himself a REAL girlfriend, instead of a mere robot?

Suppose I said to you, 'Come work for me for 13 billion years.' You say, 'At what salary?'
My reply, 'At the end of it all, you get a wife.'

Is that fair? I don't think so. I think God got the short end of the stick. This was the most unselfish, self-sacrificial act in history. This is why He deserves my praise.

OldWiseGuy said:

The problem of evil is that we, being not-so-good ourselves, are quite comfortable with it. God instructs us to 'put away evil', but we rather like cozying up to it. It's exciting, profitable, fun, and appeals to that side of our nature. And we are willing to pay the price it exacts on us.

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That is our sinful nature which is opposed to Gods laws. Paul speaks about this

Romans 3:10 to 12
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.…

Galatians 5:17
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Romans 7:18
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

There is Gods will and there is human will. Modern secular society follows self will. Putting faith in human ability thinking that we have the capacity to achieve anything. Following the desires of the flesh which is about hedonism, pleasure seeking, personal satisfaction and standing. People don't want to follow God as they perceive that it means giving up control.

Timothy also mentions that people will be sinning more and rejecting God in the last days before Christ return
2 Timothy 7:18
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

JAL said:

As a result, it CANNOT be shut down. He CANNOT turn it off, neither now nor in the future.

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So, He used to have free will, but now He doesn't anymore, right?

G-d did not create us as perfect human beings. He did, however, teach us how to be righteous. The purpose of G-d’s teachings is for us to know how to be righteous. Of course, He could not have given is free will, but created automatons who don’t know good from bad because we could only be good, but also could not decide our own actions. Then there would have been no purpose for our lives. He might as well have left us as two people in a garden with no decisions to make and no reason for us to use the minds that He gave us. Our existence would be meaningless.

Instead G-d did three things: he gave us free will with a goal for which to strive, the intellect and ability to reach that goal, and the concepts of good and evil.

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” ~Isaiah 45:7

Moral Orel said:

So, He used to have free will, but now He doesn't anymore, right?

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Limited free will. He can choose between multiple good options but can never choose a bad option.

How then was Christ able to suffer temptation in the wilderness? The Immune System isn't stupid - in fact it is the Third Person of the supremely knowledgeable Godhead. For purposes of the Incarnation, the very same Third Person who normally immunizes the Godhead against sin assumed the responsibility of disimpassioning the holiness of the incarnate Son to allow the possibility of temptation-on-earth. But isn't this an example of the Immune System behaving contrary to purpose? Not at all. The purpose of the Immune System is to preserve the Godhead. The incarnate Son was probably a mere paltry few particles of the unfathomably dense Godhead - any corruption there would not jeopardize the Godhead as a whole. Far from being contrary to purpose, the incarnation afforded the opportunity for atonement (payment for our sins on the cross) thereby helping to secure one of God's purposes - a bride for Himself.

By the way, let's summarize the Trinity. Maurice Merleau Ponty wrote a famous book named The Phenomenology of Perception. In that book he argued that the behavior of the human body cannot be explained in purely mechanical terms, rather it self-propels by free will and spontaneous intuition. For example a piano-player can quickly switch from a large organ to a smaller one even though the spatiality of the keys is different. Such a quick transition, he argued, cannot be explained in terms of consciously memorizing all the new angles and distances. Rather it is a kind of mechanistically inexplicable intuition, it is 'knowledge in the hands' (his words) and thus, 'the consciousness of the body invades the body, the soul spreads over all of his parts' (his words). He wasn't a Christian (he didn't mean the body has a soul in the Christian sense), in fact he was refuting Descartes' definition of a soul that localizes the soul to the head and thus reduces the rest of the body to a mere machine.

Descartes was unable to convincingly explain pain in the body - his view might be able to explain pain in the head (a headache) but not pain in the feet for example. The upshot of all this is that identity is an elusive concept. Which part of your body is the real you? Which cell in your brain is the real you? I am not a singleton but a multiplicity. Each part of my body engages in self-propelled acts of free will. I am multi-volitional. Given that such multiplicity is a fact of human experience, the Trinity is not a concept beyond human understanding.

With that as the backdrop, we can define the Trinity as three physical subsections constituting the Godhead. Man was literally made in God's physical image. The Father is a human-shaped figure, therefore, seated on a throne. The Son is likewise a human-shaped figure seated at His right-hand. The remainder of the divine Presence is the Third Person entitled the Holy Wind/Breath who, for example, issues forth by divine speech (note we generally exhale breath when speaking).

durangodawood said:

Hmm.

If Adam could have chosen differently, then why cant we?

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Beacause we're already fallen. Born fallen.

JAL said:

Limited free will. He can choose between multiple good options but can never choose a bad option.

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But if we humans were such that we could choose between good options but incapable of choosing a bad option, you would call us robots, correct?