Why is God evil and why is there no freedom of choice?

[aiki]

1. I never said that Pizzaro is like God. I said that what he did sounds similar to the attitude which you describe your God as having.

But, as I explained, what would be evil in Pizzaro because it does not arise from a perfectly holy and just nature is not evil in God. Is the serial killer who cuts off a person's leg in a fit of sociopathic savagery the same as the surgeon who cuts off the gangrenous leg of his patient? They are both cutting the leg off of someone, so they must therefore be exactly the same, right? Well, of course this is false. But this is how you're reasoning in your comparison of God to Pizarro.

2. The Bible tells us to imitate God. Do you torture your kinds with fire? If indeed it is a good and righteous nothing-then why don't YOU do it and prove that you really consider it a virtue?

Well, if I used your reasoning here, I should also create a universe, and die on a cross for the sins of humanity, and then resurrect myself three days later! What, in context, does it mean to imitate Christ or God? God has a unique prerogative as God to judge and punish our sin in the manner in which He does. Only God can properly decide who enters His kingdom and who suffers the torment of Hell.

3. Anyone who claims that perfect justice is being served via roasting humans alive forever just to see them scream doesn't know what justice is and is as far from knowing what justice is as darkness is from light.

Here, again, you are arguing in an emotional way. God does not cast people into Hell "just to hear them scream." He casts them into Hell as a judgment upon their enormous wickedness. Whether they scream or not is quite irrelevant.

It is a testament to how comfortable with sin you are that you would call God's punishment of it an evil thing. God sees your sin clearly; you do not. You were born in sin, the Bible says, and live all of your days in a World steeped in sin. Sin is all around you and in you and you think you can assess it objectively and accurately? I think not. When we recoil from, and object to, God's terrible judgment upon all sin we reveal just how far off a correct view of our sin we are. We think it's really not that bad. Certainly not worthy of eternal punishment. But Hell testifies to us that our sin is much, much worse than we understand it to be.

4. I'm not appealing to emotion. I'm appealing to basic human decency which demands that totally unnecessary human suffering inflicted by anyone be considered an evil thing. Claiming to love while roasting humans alive sounds hypocritical to most people.

But, as I have told you, God isn't human. For one thing, He isn't steeped in sin as you and I are. And so His reaction to it is going to be different from ours. Instead of demanding God operate from your own sin-cursed, and corrupted, and limited, and weak, and ignorant position, why not try seeing things from the position of the One "in whom there is no darkness at all," and who created and sustains the universe, and who is perfectly just? Maybe if you were to spend less time looking at God through the lens of what you think He should be and more time simply letting God tell you who He is through His word, the Bible, you might come to understand some of the things I've been sharing with you.

5. Personal preferences? The only personal preference I have is to not imagine the creator as a sadistic criminal.
That's my personal preference.

It is the guilty and condemned criminal who looks at the judge and calls him a "sadistic animal." But this is what one would expect from a criminal. His description of the judge doesn't speak so much to the character of the judge but to his own criminal character.

6. God doesn't disagree. You disagree and prefer that heinous interpretation over plausible ones.

Well, if you think your view is more plausible and mine is "heinous," prove it. Show me from Scripture how you reconcile your view with the many verses that speak of God's wrath, and of hell, and of divine judgment. Show me how mine has got it all wrong.

7. True, his thoughts are not our thoughts. That's why his thoughts are NOT those of a human sadistic crazed maniac.

I've never said that they were.

8. Many beliefs are claimed to be solidly grounded in scripture are actually mere misinterpretations. Ask a certain denominational member why he doesn't celebrate the Lords Supper by doing it exactly as Jesus instructed and he will say he has good solid scriptural reasons why. Ask others why they roll on the floor and they have solid scriptural reasons. Leaders of the Inquisition were claiming the same thing-solid scriptural reasons. It's common for people to claim solid scriptural reasons for whatever they believe.

This is a very obvious deflection. Many beliefs that are claimed to be solidly grounded in Scripture actually do faithfully and accurately interpret what the Bible says. That some abuse Scripture and mistake or warp what is says does not preclude any and all right interpretations.

9. Comparing giving and taking life to eternal roasting of humans is a false analogy.

I was not analogizing. I was explaining that being the Creator and Sustainer of all life gives God unique prerogatives and powers.

10. It's not the punishment of wickedness that is the issue. That is a strawman. It is the manner of punishment that is the issue.

You have not shown why this is necessarily so. You seem to think it is a foregone conclusion that God's harsh punishment of the wicked must be wrong. You have not refuted my explanations of the severity of His judgment, however, but rather simply dismissed them as self-evidently in error. No argument can be justified by simply dismissing its contradictories.

11. Yes, there is emotion involved when I consider the request that humans totally ignore what is being done to other humans as if these tortured humans had become non-humans as you imply simply because they sinned.

Being human doesn't automatically protect you from the right punishment of your sin. Being a wicked sinner is not to be non-human but to be VERY human. This is the testimony of Scripture:

Jeremiah 17:9
9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

Selah.

 

[Hawkins]

Your classification of people who unrepentantly sin as being devils and non-humans isn't scriptural. Where you derive that idea from is beyond me.

It's a logical deduction, with the assumption of faith that who God is!

God is the only source of good in this universe. When humans are put to a permanent separation. Tell me, what they will be!

Without God and His guidance, everyone will have to finally turn to a devil without exception. It's a matter of time.

Do you think that if this universe without God that any beings can still be good and full of love? God is love, and Law (including your moral code He has written in your heart) belongs to God. When you are abandoned you'll get none. You have no love and no law in you.