Why would God create a flawed creation?

[Messy]

Because ROBOTS!

monkeys is also an option

 

[Dave Ellis]

Yeah, Job did not fail, satan failed. Satan tryed to tempt God.

No, in the story of Job Satan and God essentially made a bet.

Satan said he could turn Job away from God, so God let him give it a whirl. He wound up failing despite essentially ruining Job's life.

Even worse, God then told off Job when he asked him why he'd let Satan do all that stuff to him.

 

[yesyoushould]

How does that address my argument at all?

What "argument". I don't want to argue. Just speak truth.

 

[yesyoushould]

No, in the story of Job Satan and God essentially made a bet.

Satan said he could turn Job away from God, so God let him give it a whirl. He wound up failing despite essentially ruining Job's life.

Even worse, God then told off Job when he asked him why he'd let Satan do all that stuff to him.

"Yes satan, call me a liar. "

Satan rejects God.

 

[Messy]

P.S. As an interesting sidenote, Genesis 22 is one of the old holdover verses from the time the Jews were a polytheistic society. "The man has now become like one of us"... it's plural, denoting more than one god in a pantheon. This makes no sense if your god is the only god, but it did make sense in the time before Judaism evolved into a monotheistic religion.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

 

[TLK Valentine]

TV

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

So why is that the only place in the entire Bible where God speaks of Himself in the first person plural?

 

[Dave Ellis]

What "argument". I don't want to argue. Just speak truth.

What I meant is your reply had nothing to do with my statement. So what did you mean by it?

 

[Dave Ellis]

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

The idea of the trinity was not invented for roughly 1,500 years after the Book of Genesis was written. Furthermore the Book of Genesis was written during the time that the Israelites were still a polytheistic culture.

So to be clear, I was talking actual history, not post-hoc apologetics.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Actually, not doing it right the the first time is the best possible reason to do it again. Even though you didn't need to do something, that's no excuse not to do it right.

This has nothing to do with whether I'm doing it right, it is a matter of whether people accept a different opinion from theirs. To say you or anyone here can determine whether we are right about our faith is pretty haughty, seeing that there is no participation in what we believe on the level that we do constantly. I find it pretty disturbing that you keep trying to push the blame to me when the problem here is not who is right or wrong, but the disrespectful attitude shown towards me.

Because it's also a debate forum, and no disrespect, but you seem new at this.

Nobody is being despised or mistreated -- while this is probably not the sort of treatment you're used to, you're hardly being mistreated.

Getting personally offensive about a Deity they do not know and constantly finding occasions to twist people's words to mock that Deity is much worse than disrespect or mistreatment.

 

[WoundedDeep]

What an absurdly arrogant statement.

I said I don't consider it a healthy relationship to have to love a being that I have no evidence exists, which is a completely logical point. In fact, if I have no evidence such a being exists in the real world, and therefore don't believe said being exists, it's impossible to have a relationship with it.

I was at one point a Christian, and I have spent years studying the history of Christianity, and the theology behind it. On what basis apart from your own unjustified assertions do you have to state I've never attempted to understand your god?

There is nothing absurd or arrogant in that statement of mine. Not that I despise study, but studying about someone is a far cry from actually having a relationship. Therefore, you cannot assert that you had any relationships with God when all you did was to study about Him. Relationships are built on communications and experiences, not on mental knowledge. My statement stands.

Sure if you believe you cannot have a relationship with a Being you cannot know to exist, but if all you did before that was to study about Him, I'm afraid you have not actually began any relationship with Him so to speak.

In short, just because I don't believe in your imaginary friend is no reason to make judgments on what I've spent years reading about, debating and learning. It's complete arrogance for you to make pronouncements about those things simply because we disagree on this topic.

What a quick labelling placed on me. I am being honest and nothing more. Tell me where you have ever read that relationships are formed from studying or reading up about another person? Are your relationships only based on mental knowledge? If not, what understanding did you really have about God when all that understanding was formed based on study?

First off, the original languages that the bible was written in all had far more limited vocabularies than English does.

That being said, if you want to use this argument to justify your point, then I'm sure you know what the original word was, and what a better word in English would be.

So what language was the original scripture in, what word was mistranslated, and what would be a better word to use in its place?

It was written in Hebrew, the original word is קַנָּ֔א. There are also different forms of the Hebrew word which was translated into jealousy, so clearly they are all different. I am not a student of Hebrew, so I do not know what it should be translated into. But I tried putting that word on Google translate, and it did not give any translation of "jealous". Instead, it was translated into "nearly", "very close to". If you apply this translation to Exodus 20:5, it does not seem to be non-sensical either.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me (original Exodus 20:5)

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a near God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me

The point here is that the word used to translate to jealous is also indicative of zealousness. I would think zealous would be a more suitable translation given how jealous is defined today.

No, not really... You've stated that you know, you're just not good at describing the difference. Well, how do you know what you claim to know?

If you can pass that info on to me, then I can go check your sources, and get a better understanding of what you're having difficulty in explaining.

I know because God gives me understanding, apart from independent study. You can know if you look at the real Hebrew word, where both jealousy and zeal are its meaning. Clearly then, the jealousy refers to a different kind of jealousy from the negative connotation of the English word.

Except they didn't, God imposed himself on the Isrealites. Read Genesis Chapters 12 through 17. God basically tells Abram / Abraham what to do, then winds up making a covenant with him that applies to all of his descendants.

Abraham was already a follower of God even before he was called Abraham. He did not approve of the idol worship done by his ancestors if you know that part of history. God called Abram because He knows that he is the only one faithful among everyone around him, just like Noah in the time of the flood. There was no imposition like you falsely claim.

At no point earlier in Genesis did anyone explicitly agree to follow god, and nowhere was Abraham given the choice either. Furthermore, the covenant is binding to all of his descendants, so there's no choice for them as well.

See above, God's covenant is imposed upon the Israelites as descendants of Abraham (Genesis 17 to be specific). They can't be said to have betrayed god when they never made a commitment to him in the first place.

This only shows your lack of biblical knowledge. Everyone who was actively called by God to do something were already willing to be faithful to God when they were called. God never called someone in active rebellion against Him to do His will. That's common sense, please.

So your argument that these people decided by their own free will to worship god, then decided to turn their backs on him does not appear anywhere in the bible narrative. You're simply making stuff up.

I'm making things up?

And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and that He had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. (Exodus 4:31)

The above was before they even came out of Egypt. They bowed and worshipped God on their own accord.

So who is making things up?

On another note, if someone agreed to follow me, then decided for whatever reason to stop following me, I am not justified in putting them to death. Your god for whatever reason thinks it's ok to kill people who change their minds on this particular topic though.

You are not God, you have no authority over other people's lives. God has that authority, because He made and gave life to humanity. To betray an authority figure as high as God is the grossest and greatest crime any man can commit. If human crimes can be worthy of capital punishment, crimes against God should only be met with greater penalty. That is not unjust.

As for the great stuff that god apparently did, he also knowingly let them be enslaved and mistreated in Egypt for 400 years (Genesis 15:13) before "miracling" them out of there. Furthermore, he had them wander around in the desert for 40 years, when the walk from Egypt to Israel in reality takes a couple weeks.

So god wasn't exactly all that friendly to these people either.

What if those 400 years God was giving the people of Egypt a chance to repent? When Israel was first brought into Egypt through Joseph, the Pharaoh honoured them well because of Joseph. But evil came only when the new and wicked Pharaoh took the throne. What if, God was showing His mercy to the Egyptian people all those 400 years by allowing His people to endure a temporary time of hardship? You, who have no concept of why God allows suffering, like to impose your own biased thinking onto God's plan. Pretty appalling.

Either way, the point still stands, even if he had been perfectly good to them and they still legitimately betrayed him, putting people to death isn't exactly a reasonable punishment.

So what should God do? Let betrayers stay in His camp and continue betraying Him? Let them possibly influence the rest of His people to also betray Him? Or leave them in the desert (which will probably cause them to die from hunger and thirst too) and bring His faithful away from them? Or send them back to Egypt so they can be enslaved again? Which way is "reasonable"?

First off, it's absurd that an all powerful morally good god would ever get jealous, especially of a golden calf...

Secondly, getting angry at a betrayal is fine, unless you impose your conditions on a people. Under those circumstances you should expect for some people to opt out of the deal.

You really think God is angry over a golden calf? If it was not a serious topic I could almost laugh.

God is angry over the spiritual straying away of His people's commitment to Him, and crediting His work to a statue that cannot talk. Furthermore, those people were inspired by demons to create that statue, so in effect, they were switching from worshipping God to worshipping demons. Not only is that betrayal of God in full, that is bringing harm to the Israelites themselves because by pledging allegiance with demons, the Israelites open doors in their lives to demonic oppression.

What if the conditions God mentioned were meant for protection of His people from demons? What if opting out meant certain death? What if getting away from God means they will be subject to demons?

What other gods would they be worshipping? I thought your god was the only god?

Then you seem to forget there is a great antagonist in the Bible called the devil, along with his horde of fallen angels, constantly trying to usurp God's control and become rulers in this fallen world. The devil and his angels like to pose as gods, and they have done it since the time of Adam and Eve. Have you never considered why people will have the idea of creating a statue, bowing down to it and offering it sacrifices as to a god? Do you really think they are mere madmen acting out irrationally? Or were they under some influence that overpowers their rationality - which would tell them that bowing down and worshipping a speechless statue is insanity since we would not even worship a fellow human being?

 

[yesyoushould]

What I meant is your reply had nothing to do with my statement. So what did you mean by it?

What kind of answer are you fishing for?

 

[ananda]

If that were possible don't you think He would at least have the capacity of our brain to think of that?
If you're innocent and create everything perfect you don't expect it to rebel and become evil.
Maybe He did create it all perfect and it didn't work, so He had to do it this way. Derek Prince says there first was another creation that was totally corrupted by the devil and destroyed. That would make sense. First create everything perfect, it becomes one big disaster, then you do it different with a redemption plan, the only way possible.

That would mean that he is not omniscient (aware of all every permutation of every consequence of his initial choices), since, if he was omniscient, he would have automatically chosen the best, perfect course of action from the very beginning without having to "go back to the drawing board".

 

[ananda]

What saith me, lol.

I say God is perfect, in all ways.

Which God, and why?

 

[ananda]

God knows all, all of it, from the beginning to the end.


I entered this post late but I'm here now. Surely it counts for something.


Does anybody think I'm wrong? If so, how come? Maybe you have questions for me.


I want to be involved. lol

If he knew all of it from the beginning to the end, then why is creation so flawed, with death, destruction, evil, etc.?

 

[yesyoushould]

If he knew all of it from the beginning to the end, then why is creation so flawed, with death, destruction, evil, etc.?

That is easy. Choice.

God does not force Himself on you or me or anybody for that matter.
You and me and everybody, are given the choice to rejoice in good or evil.

 

[yesyoushould]

Which God, and why?

God. The Creator of all.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Hey, you're catching on

You're absolutely right, the idea that he could be tempted is utterly absurd, which is another reason why the story makes no sense.

Just because it doesn't make sense to you does not make it false. Jesus was indeed tempted of satan, meaning that He was indeed capable of falling into sin while in His fleshly body.

 

[ananda]

That is easy. Choice.

God does not force Himself on you or me or anybody for that matter.
You and me and everybody, are given the choice to rejoice in good or evil.

So, no choice in heaven, right?

 

[yesyoushould]

So, no choice in heaven, right?

All is already good in heaven. Evil isn't allowed.

 

[yesyoushould]

Nobody is dumb enough to choose evil in heaven lol.

Don't worry too much, this is news.