razeontherock
Well-Known Member
But as you said to Elman, we know reality. And that is that G-d Loves us, and it is not limited to any book. How can you say, considering your position, that this is a reality you are aware of?
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Right but would you even know about any of it if it weren't written down for you? It all springs from this ancient text called the Bible, so whether or not it is credible matters. At least it matters to me because I care about whether or nor my view of reality accurately reflects reality.
It seems more reasonable to me that I exist for a reason than to assume our existence is random and ultimatly meaningless. It seems more reasonable to me that our Creator is good and loving than to assume the Creator is evil and unloving or neither good nor evil. The reasonable conclusion is God is loving.Why do you believe God loves us? Probably because of some ancient text or texts or at least your interpretation of them. It's circular reasoning. The first you ever heard about a loving God was when you either read about him in an ancient text, or someone told you about their belief in him based on an ancient text.
I believe God is love because an ancient text says that God is love so any ancient text that says God is love is true and the rest are false because God is love. And I believe God is love because.... [repeat]
But as you said to Elman, we know reality. And that is that G-d Loves us, and it is not limited to any book. How can you say, considering your position, that this is a reality you are aware of?
It seems more reasonable to me that I exist for a reason than to assume our existence is random and ultimatly meaningless. It seems more reasonable to me that our Creator is good and loving than to assume the Creator is evil and unloving or neither good nor evil. The reasonable conclusion is God is loving.
You're again looking for in a test tube type evidence? I thought we'd already covered that.
No, it's not an objective thing. Neither is it solely up to the individual as in make believe. Different people all over the globe have gotten essentially the same thing, independently.
So then it's not my fault for not believing. God didn't give me the evidence
evidence and assurance mentioned in Hebrews 11:1 required for faith.
And that brings us back to the original question then: How is hell in anyway Just if God is the one who provides one of the essential parts of a saving faith?
I know, I know, "Shall the clay question the potter?" No, because clay isn't sentient, it doesn't have consciousness, emotions, self determination, or a fear of pain and death. But we do, so I think we have every right to question the potter.
This does make sense to me. One of the first things I did upon finding CF was explore Calvinism. They do have explanations for all sorts of things like this that vex me, and they are rational. They just don't line up with Scripture, so I reject such a simplicity that "if G-d wanted to save you, He'd have done so all by Himself by now."
Scripture makes it clear He wants all to come to Life.
And here we have another conundrum: I profess (personal) evidence to believe, and yet I'm not perfect. Far from it in fact. I evidence this all over the place, and probably in every post I write. Once in a while G-d is able to get a point through to someone anyway, and that moment is wonderful. You profess not to have evidence to believe, and you should know. You can probably communicate your ideas more clearly than I can.
So were you formerly a Christian? You had no evidence to believe.
You're right I guess I was missing it. But that's still subjective, anecdotal evidence. It can't be measured or used to convince other people, only yourself. If you go up to someone who has never heard of any of this and say "Jesus is real and my proof is my faith in him" you won't get very far. And what about other people's faith in other gods? Some muslims seem to have pretty strong faith in Allah.Faith IS evidence. You're missing that point of this passage
WHOA. Now you're forging ahead as if western evangelical doctrine is literally true. (Heaven / hell repeat after me type prayer now you're saved and guaranteed heaven type stuff) Under that set of assumptions your comment here makes sense, but I never adhered to that. It has no integrity and is an over-simplification. If this is the Christianity you rejected I say bravo!
I have said I don't know. The non existence of a loving Creator is not objecitve truth. When you refer to deists are you talking about God being everything in general and nothing in particular?Again, it doesn't matter what SEEMS reasonable. It only matters what is objectively true. It SEEMED reasonable that the shape of the earth on average is flat...until we found reason to believe otherwise. It SEEMS reasonable that particles fly around and behave like tiny billiard balls...until they discovered that they behave sort of like waves AND billiards balls at the same time.
And now today, it may SEEM reasonable that there must be some uncreated creator, but there's no reason to jump to that conclusion. What's wrong with admitting that we don't know?
Let's pretend we do have reason to believe in an uncreated creator of the universe. Can you REALLY say that the most reasonable conclusion when you look at the world is that it loves us? I think of all the people who believe in a god, deists are the most reasonable. If a god exists, it doesn't seem to involve itself in the world. Almost everything that used to be attributed to god can now be explained as the result of some physical process. The "god of the gaps" shrinks more and more every year. It's no longer the most reasonable to believe in a creator by defaut, and it's definitely not the most reasonable default position to conclude that it cares about us if it does exist.
Oh i must have missed it. I was still in ultra debate modeI have said I don't know
Right but what is the default position? The non-existence of unicorns isn't objective truth either but what is your default position on their existence? My default is that I lack belief in unicorns. It doesn't mean that I believe that they absolutely don't exist, I just haven't been convinced that they do. I can go a step further and say that while I don't know for certain that unicorns don't exist, I can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that they don't exist as described in Harry Potter, i.e. magical silvery blood that cures you of injury.The non existence of a loving Creator is not objecitve truth.
When you refer to deists are you talking about God being everything in general and nothing in particular?
Just repeating what sabercroft said. Total annihilation of the soul at death would accomplish the same thing. Are you a parent? Could you ever imagine condemning your child to suffer FOR ETERNITY simply for not accepting you as a father?
it's more than accepting me as a father, it would be loving me and doing what I said.
My default postion is their existence or non existence has nothing to do with my existence. A creator would effect my existence. It would mean I exist for a reason.Right but what is the default position? The non-existence of unicorns isn't objective truth either but what is your default position on their existence?
I also cannot say for certain this universe was created by a intelligent being. I do find it unreasonable to assume we just happen to exist as the result of chemical merging and being heated up over a long period of time. I just don't belileve we are here by coincidence. When I was in my early twenties I believed in coincidence a lot, but some things happened to me that made that belief unreasonable.So, I can't say that some divine intelligence didn't create the universe, but there is also no evidence that one did. Therefore there is no reason to believe it. That doesn't mean I have a positive belief that no god exists, just that I lack belief until presented with evidence. The default position is atheist, a-unicornist, a-bigfootist, etc.
I agree God being everything make God being nothing in particular as far as I can tell.No I think that's pantheism which I think is a waste of time, because if God is the universe and god created the universe, therefore the universe created itself, why not just skip a step and say the universe started with the big bang and we don't know how. There's nothing wrong with not knowing.
As I said above, I believe at one time that God existed but did not act in this world. I then experienced some things that caused me to change my view. I now believe God does interact sometimes--not always and not in everything, but sometimes.Deists believe that some god created the universe but now doesn;t interact with its creation because it either doesn't care or doesn't even realize we're here. Or maybe it died, possibly even during the act of creating. To me this is the most reasonable form of theism because there;s no evidence that a god interacts with the world at all.
I agree with the search for truth--whatever we may find.People can fill in every void in their knowledge with a god if they want but to me that's not interesting. It stifles curiosity and doesn't advance the human condition, in fact it has been known to hold us back. At one point it was believed that diseases were caused by demons or were punishments from the gods or God. Now we have germ theory and our lives are better.
I think God has made HImself or Itself known to me, but not in such a way that I can be certain--just enough to shove me off my position that He is not there and does not care.I'm not against the idea of a god, but I'm more interested in what is true. If we come across a god in our exploration of the universe, or if one makes itself known to us, I'd be incredibly interested and excited. But until then, I have no reason to believe in unicorns...I mean gods
My default postion is their existence or non existence has nothing to do with my existence. A creator would effect my existence. It would mean I exist for a reason.
I also cannot say for certain this universe was created by a intelligent being. I do find it unreasonable to assume we just happen to exist as the result of chemical merging and being heated up over a long period of time. I just don't belileve we are here by coincidence. When I was in my early twenties I believed in coincidence a lot, but some things happened to me that made that belief unreasonable.
I agree God being everything make God being nothing in particular as far as I can tell.
As I said above, I believe at one time that God existed but did not act in this world. I then experienced some things that caused me to change my view. I now believe God does interact sometimes--not always and not in everything, but sometimes.
I agree with the search for truth--whatever we may find.
I think God has made HImself or Itself known to me, but not in such a way that I can be certain--just enough to shove me off my position that He is not there and does not care.
Ok awesome. And if I ever have a similar experience, maybe I'll believe too. But until then, from an outsider's perspective, it's just anecdotal.
Oh well that makes it ok then.
Hell is perfectly good and holy.
So you would sentence your child to eternal torture of a finite lifetime of rejecting you?
yes, if they had the same situation that we do with God. Namely that salvation is free. But if they love darkness rather than light it just means that God already knew they would love hell more than heaven anyway. So yes I would send my child to an eternal fire. If I could read their mind and predestinate.
That's evil. If God is real and if he were to appear to me in the flesh and tell me he agrees with what you said, I would still say it's evil. I don't think a god like that deserves worship. Hopefully god isn't like that. A loving and just god wouldn't send deceived, misguided souls to hell to be tortured forever. He wouldn't even eternally torture purposefully rebellious souls for a mere 80 years of rejection. A perfect being doesn't need revenge, it wouldn't need anything. It would loose nothing by just wiping out the non-believers. Hell is a sign of a spitefulness, vengeance, jealousy, in other words; imperfection.
TL;DR: Abraham should have said no.
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