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Vexcalibur
Proud to be smug as heck
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Joined: Jan 18, 2008
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 Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:36 am Post subject: |
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| bizboy1 wrote: | | Free will. |
Does this mean we are created to entertain and humor god?
| Candles15 wrote: | | I wonder this myself sometimes and My conclusions usually differs each time but a Christian would argue it's due to Free Will/ evil is there to test us/ to bring the best out in us ect |
Why would god need to test us? Isn't it omniscient and thus should know all including the way we would act if tested, making the suffering when tested unnecessary?
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CrazyCatLord
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Joined: Oct 25, 2011
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:50 am Post subject: |
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| Vexcalibur wrote: | | Candles15 wrote: | | I wonder this myself sometimes and My conclusions usually differs each time but a Christian would argue it's due to Free Will/ evil is there to test us/ to bring the best out in us ect |
Why would god need to test us? Isn't it omniscient and thus should know all including the way we would act if tested, making the suffering when tested unnecessary? |
Perhaps we're lab rats and the gods are infecting us with various diseases in order to find a cure for their own medical conditions?
I've never understood why people automatically assume that if there is a god, he must be a kind and loving being who wants to help us. Unless he wants to punish and torture someone of course, in which case people assume that it's just and deserving. I bet cows on a farm or rats in a lab environment feel pretty much the same way. Their gods are even real and visible, and actually do something to help them (such as feeding them). Until they're shipped off to a slaughterhouse or injected with tumor cells. I mean, why would a hypothetical god be the only creature in the universe without ulterior motives and a selfish agenda? |
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Mike1
Velociraptor
Joined: Jul 13, 2010
Posts: 445
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:51 am Post subject: |
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| Because without evil we wouldn't be able to appreciate the good nearly as much. No one would be able to appreciate a perfect world if they hadn't experienced an imperfect world to compare it to. A perfect world also can't exist at the same time as free will. At least some amount of evil is required in order to appreciate the good, and free will causes people to develop imperfect traits from that. Humans weren't intended to be perfect to begin with. They were intended to learn from their free will and become wise and emotionally developed individuals. Had God created a perfect world with no evil, everyone would be emotionally numb, lacking wisdom, and lacking purpose. Most evil is caused by humans and could be eliminated by changes in human behavior. There are no automatic fixes for all of the unnecessarily evil in the world. All of the evil in this world must be eliminated manually by humans and by the spirits of humans. The portion of spirits that contributes to improving conditions in this world is known as the Mercy Band. The Mercy Band is influential but limited. More focus is probably given to containing the world rather than improving it. Weapons of mass destruction must be contained in order to prevent another tragedy like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from happening. The rest of the spirits who are not part of the Mercy Band serve other purposes like educating other spirits who were aborted as fetuses or died young about Earth life and other things, inventing things and impressing their ideas on the minds of individuals to pass on their inventions into this world, rehabilitating drug addicts, fanatics, and the mentally ill in the Spirit World, and many other things. God plays no direct role in anything that happens in this world. The will of God can only be fulfilled through individuals. Even spirits can only assume that a God exists. The fate of this world is entirely up to the people who inhabit it and the spirits who intervene with it. |
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CrazyCatLord
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| Mike1 wrote: | | Because without evil we wouldn't be able to appreciate the good nearly as much. No one would be able to appreciate a perfect world if they hadn't experienced an imperfect world to compare it to. A perfect world also can't exist at the same time as free will. At least some amount of evil is required in order to appreciate the good, and free will causes people to develop imperfect traits from that. Humans weren't intended to be perfect to begin with. They were intended to learn from their free will and become wise and emotionally developed individuals. Had God created a perfect world with no evil, everyone would be emotionally numb, lacking wisdom, and lacking purpose. Most evil is caused by humans and could be eliminated by changes in human behavior. There are no automatic fixes for all of the unnecessarily evil in the world. All of the evil in this world must be eliminated manually by humans and by the spirits of humans. The portion of spirits that contributes to improving conditions in this world is known as the Mercy Band. The Mercy Band is influential but limited. More focus is probably given to containing the world rather than improving it. Weapons of mass destruction must be contained in order to prevent another tragedy like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from happening. The rest of the spirits who are not part of the Mercy Band serve other purposes like educating other spirits who were aborted as fetuses or died young about Earth life and other things, inventing things and impressing their ideas on the minds of individuals to pass on their inventions into this world, rehabilitating drug addicts, fanatics, and the mentally ill in the Spirit World, and many other things. God plays no direct role in anything that happens in this world. The will of God can only be fulfilled through individuals. Even spirits can only assume that a God exists. The fate of this world is entirely up to the people who inhabit it and the spirits who intervene with it. |
It's strange that we don't employ this profound philosophical insight in child rearing. If I break my leg, it supposedly was the will of some heavenly father, who wanted to teach me to appreciate my ability to walk. But suppose I did the same to my own child. Imagine I'd take a sledgehammer and... I can't even spell it out, because it would be utterly evil. Instead of occasionally hurting or maiming our children, we try to raise them in an environment that is as safe and comfortable as possible. We do this because we love them and only want their best. All living creatures that are actively involved in offspring care do this.
Of course you could say "Ah, but we punish children in order to teach them not to do certain things that would hurt them worse than the punishment". Yes, some people use corporal punishment, although I think that carefully explaining things to children is a better way of educating them. But even parents who occasionally beat their children don't inject them with cancer cells or throw them in front of a bus. We'd sentence people to prison for doing that. Because, again, we know that this kind of behavior is evil. Anybody who did this, including a divine being, would be utterly despicable, morally corrupt, and of course unworthy of worship.
You could also argue "but god didn't break your leg. He gave you free will, and you chose to do something that put you in danger and ultimately harmed you". Again, imagine we would raise our children in this manner. Two year old little Johnny plays in the middle of the road? "Well, I told him not to do that. He has free will. If something happens to him, it's a consequence of his own choices and his punishment for not listening to me." That's also utterly unthinkable. I'm not a lawyer, but I think this would be punished as gross negligence or willful neglect.
No matter how you turn it, if there was a creator god like the Christian god, his actions would be immoral according to our standards. And not because god's morals are better than ours. If that was the case, the abusive and neglectful kind of child care that I've described would be superior to our way of raising children, which is clearly not the case. |
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Vexcalibur
Proud to be smug as heck
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:42 am Post subject: |
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| Mike1 wrote: | | Because without evil we wouldn't be able to appreciate the good nearly as much. |
How about people whose lives has been 100% bad stuff? God was just a jerk about them? Or are you saying me that the girl that was a constant rape victim since 5 years old and then became a crack addict that has to live next to a rat nest should now be able to enjoy the taste of candy better?
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Mike1
Velociraptor
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Vexcalibur wrote: | | Mike1 wrote: | | Because without evil we wouldn't be able to appreciate the good nearly as much. |
How about people whose lives has been 100% bad stuff? God was just a jerk about them? Or are you saying me that the girl that was a constant rape victim since 5 years old and then became a crack addict that has to live next to a rat nest should now be able to enjoy the taste of candy better? |
Free will can't exist in a perfect world because all free will results in some level of imperfection. Without free will there is no purpose of existing. Humans have abused free will to a large extent. The lives of people that are 100% bad are the result of humans and not of God. God is to a large extent unknown. God could be a being, the universe itself, or a concept. If God is the universe itself or a concept then God wouldn't have the ability to interfere in those situations. The only supernatural interference would be by spirits with more limited power. It is not the will of the spirits that someone should experience these tragedies. They do what they can to help. Life also needs to have good parts to be able to appreciate what's good. There are many bad things that are inevitable. People should try to eliminate the bad things that they can and learn from what they can't. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
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Age: 76
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: Why didn't God create a word with no evil? |
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| American wrote: | | Why didn't God create a world with no natural or human-caused evil. Why wouldn't an infinitely good and powerful God create beings that never committed evil? God must not be all powerful and all loving. |
God is not fully competent.
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Sweetleaf
Metalhead
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Because he didn't create the world.
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snapcap
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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Apparently, God did, but then a couple that were a part of his infinite taspestry looked at him the wrong way and he snapped.
According to some's interpretation.
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androbot2084
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| if God would have created a world without evil people would not like it because it would be a commie world. |
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DentArthurDent
Evolve Ye Christians & Dozers
Joined: Jul 27, 2008
Age: 48
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Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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As I recall the story;
God creates the universe and all within it from his throne in his kingdom 'heaven'. Now god is all seeing, all powerful and ever present. One of Gods important vassals decides that he has enough power to ursurp the throne of this ALL POWERFUL god (strange that god did not see it coming or that he wsa not present during the revolutionary meetings) naturally he loses (after all god is all powerful) unfortunately for god he is not all powerful enough to completely vanquish Satan and the guy manages to escape and invade gods greatest creation the earth. Once again the all powerful god is not all powerful enough to prevent Satan from corrupting the minds of those he has created (in his own image) and satan has been running amok around the earth for the last 6000 or so years. God did have a chance to vanquish satan when the two met up when god was disguised as his son but was once again not all powerful enough to do much about it.
So this is why the earth and some humans are not very nice.
Makes perfect sense to me 
Alternatively OP you could consider that there is no god and that natural laws are essentially nasty, or at least ambivalent with regard to ethics.
NAH that is far to outrageous a concept, lets all stick with the far more sensible god hypothesis
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"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" Karl Marx
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American
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Jan 18, 2012
Posts: 66
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:22 am Post subject: |
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Mike1, God, being all powerful, can indeed create a world with free will and no evil. That's what all-powerful means, right? He can do whatever "he" wants.
CrazyCatLord, I agree with your assessment. If I went to Africa and had lots of food and clean water and medicine that could heal illnesses and then refused to help the starving, diseased people there, would people worship me or tell me that I am a sadistic POS? This is basically what God is doing, standing in front of a suffering child with food , water, and medicine, yet refusing to help the child. Countless millions have died such horrible death because God doesn't intervene. Furthermore, if any human came up with some of the sick, twisted plots that Jesus does, he or she would be rightfully called insane and carted off to the loony hospital. ("I'm so angry at you for eating this apple but if you beat, whip, and torture me and then nail me to a cross, I will forgive you.") Right... |
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snapcap
Phoenix
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Age: 31
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:24 am Post subject: |
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| American wrote: | Mike1, God, being all powerful, can indeed create a world with free will and no evil. That's what all-powerful means, right? He can do whatever "he" wants.
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What makes you think he is all powerful?
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techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:04 am Post subject: |
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I still can't get my head around the idea of 'free will' for those who suggest it. Even if we now know that our universe from the ground up is not Newtonian, not mechanistic, even if we feel like we have a very big rising tide of evidence for mind/body dualism, to me it stops being simple reductive/materialistic determinism and simply becomes complex determinism.
The suggestions I keep hearing is that people are here for lessons, things they can't learn in a realm of infinite love, and that the unethical nature of this Earth and what people go through are counterbalance that, an 80 year slice of infinity is essentially 0, as in this experience only marginally exists in the broader scheme of things. What I still find very revealing is that we'd *need* to be sent here - with certain strengths and weaknesses - to live a pre-prescribed life, timeline, witness certain events without certainty of a higher power or with the feeling of separation from that, it goes to tell me that a mechanism still needs to be put under rigors of environment to evolve which means, to me at least, that the free will model is vacuous.
As for evil in this world; its environmental. We have acute stresses, very frail mind and bodies, and we make up the difference by profoundly abusing each-other while we're here. We've at least come a few steps passed our days of recommending honor suicide to those who weren't making the grade or trying to burn them at the stake as witches but I still cannot really think of a major evil that isn't systemic. My imagination for a devil and fallen angels is severely lacking at this point because an omniscient and all-powerful God is omniscient and omnipotent because he cannot create something that he can't be aware of the outcome on (ie. yes, being omniscient and omnipotent means there are certain things you definitionally can't do). If he did create a Lucifer and had 1/3 of his host fall, he *designed* it all to happen and they have full agency. For him though to create that and condemn them makes absolutely no sense. Similarly though, for us to ever do something that would surprise him seems equally incomprehensible under any circumstance. I think this is where the idea that this life and body are a 'filter' to augment us makes the most sense. As for whether we have eternal 'free will' though I suppose that's really definitional - ie. 'free will' in the sense of one's ability to separate themselves from the chain of causalty and environment is utterly impossible, as you don't get to chose who you were nor the experiences you've already had, nor what's going on at this moment. OTOH if one wants to define it as the ability to simply do what we want - I'd agree its there, albeit I have a difficult time calling it 'free will' in that it stretches the definition (and by extension obligations/culpabilities) farther than I'm comfortable with.
All that said I really can't escape the feeling that, if there are any agents inducing evil in the world its far more likely non-fallen angels working with what's already hear in the way of structural adversity and then bringing people - through their life experiences - to be providers of adversity. |
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American
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Jan 18, 2012
Posts: 66
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| snapcap wrote: | | American wrote: | Mike1, God, being all powerful, can indeed create a world with free will and no evil. That's what all-powerful means, right? He can do whatever "he" wants.
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What makes you think he is all powerful? |
I don't think that. I am challenging believers. God is a fantasy. He is no more powerful than Rumpelstiltskin. |
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