Question about Original Sin (Christian only plz)?

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That's the problem. You think limited beings should be made responsible for things beyond their control rather than a supposedly omnipotent being who has control over everything.

Yes,God created the world. Though, it was perfect. The one who threw it off balance because of an idea was Satan.

How certain are you that that's the truth? Do you really believe this?

Lolwut? That's the problem - you don't believe that people should have free will. You think people shouldn't bear responsibility for their own decisions, instead of God, who relinquishes control to allow for people to make their own decisions.

If someone punches you, would you blame them, or God for creating them (for the purposes of answering, we're working on the basis that God exists)?

I don't think people should be made responsible for things beyond their control. I do think that they are affected by things that are under the control of other people.

Is God obliged to protect people from their ignorance, be it wilful or not?

God and Satan. Two entities for which there is not a shred of empirical evidence supporting the thesis that they exist.

ruveyn

No, I don't believe in free will. The concept of free will is often used by religious people as a cop out argument to excuse their God's lack of control over the unwanted behaviors of beings in this universe, but free will is such a paradoxical impossibility that the likelihood of us having free will is extremely close to null (if not exactly zero).



Why should it be God who should be excused rather than man for behaviors they cannot control, especially the behaviors of their distant ancestors?

If you don't believe God exists, it makes sense that nature is cruel the way it is and that humans often exhibit a so-called "dark side" that can be disturbing for some to accept. But how can you reconcile all this with the belief that a God exists unless you accept that God is either uncaring or he simply isn't capable of stopping us from harming others?



If God exists, I would definitely hold God accountable for not stopping him from punching me. I may get impulsive and punch the other person back or whatever (unless I perceived that he had a really good reason to be so angry at me as to punch me), but why should I blame a limited being like more than God? Maybe I did something to hurt the person emotionally, which may explain why he punched me. But then where is God to resolve this issue between us?



Earthquakes and other natural disasters are not under the control of any person, though. And yet they kill zillions of people all the time. If God exists, and he created this universe, why did he allow for natural disasters to occur and cause us extreme pain and suffering?



If ignorance is harmful, then yes, I believe God is obliged if he cares.

The word Satan is an anagram of the word Santa, and Santa exists... or does he.

If humans don't have free will, then why complain about what God does, since He probably won't have free will either...

What was there first, the volcano or the town? If you douse yourself in petrol and start playing around with a lighter, stop complaining when you set yourself on fire. If you insist on walking under a piano that's held by a fraying rope, don't moan when it lands on you. If you decide that you want to live on a flood plain, you really have no cause for objecting to the water coming in through your front door.

I'm sure, if you really want to, we can put you in isolated containment in prison, MCalavera. You'd like it there. There's no way anyone can hurt you, or you can hurt them. We can't let you interact with other people, of course, because that wouldn't allow for the possibility that you will hurt them or they you, emotionally if not physically.

Except your God is supposed to have free will. Or are you saying that God's freedom of will is dependent on whether or not limited man has free will? If so, then how is he God?



Who created the volcano according to your faith?



I don't think there should ever be an excuse for a caring God to allow any of the above to happen.

I certainly wouldn't just stand by and let someone I care about burn himself to death simply because he didn't see it coming.



I don't see imprisonment as the ultimate solution. Empathy is a better solution.

Oh? Wasn't it God who created the first humans, Adam and Eve?

Genesis 4:27:

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Even when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God basically said in summation:

Genesis 3:14

"So God said to the serpent: "Cursed are you above all animals. You will crawl on your belly the rest of your days, and I will let their be hatred between you and mankind, so man will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel.

To Eve He said "You will have immense pain in childbirth, and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

To Adam He said " Because you listened to Eve, and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, the ground will be cursed because of you, and through hard labor, you will eat of it all your life. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food, until you return to the ground. Since from dust you were taken, so to dust you will return."

Ok so let's break down the punishments:


1. Snakes are cursed to live on the ground, they will hate man, and man will hate them, and man will try to kill them, and the snakes with strike back.

2. Women will have immense pain in childbirth. They will desire a husband and desire to be faithful and serve him.

3. The ground is cursed, man has to grow his own crops through hard labor, and he will live off them until he dies.

I don't know about you, but I all I see that is really severe in this passage is mortality. I don't see anything about physical limitations, mental diseases and disorders, physical deformations, etc.

There is a difference between being born a mental disease/disorder, physical disease, physical limitation and having free will, and being born "normally" and having free will, and being injured because of it.

When you are born with say schizophrenia, autism, severe manic depression, quadriplegia, paraplegia- these were things that were given to you in your creation. They stay with you until the day you die, you CANNOT change it. Your "free will" is how you respond to it- whether you are angry, disappointed, and bitter because you have no clue why you were created different, or if you merely accept yourself and look past your disability. Your creation wasn't of free will, but your reaction to it is free will.

Those who were born "normally", who had "complete" free will, and some accident or some stupid decision caused them to get injured, that sucks. But I would argue that it is different because one would rationalize that it was an "accident" or you did something foolish that put you in that position to get harmed.

If you play with aerosol cans and lighters, create an explosion that gives your face and hands 2nd to 3rd degree burns, that is the result of doing something foolish, that was of free will, that got yourself injured. You only have yourself to blame for that.

But for instance, let's say you are driving your car, and a drunk driver T-bones your car driver side at an intersection. You are severely injured, and your legs are so mangled and damaged that they have to amputate the legs in order for you to survive. You can blame your circumstance on several things- the drunk driver's intoxicated judgement, and a freak accident/misfortune.

You don't think "God did this to me!" You think "It is the drunk driver's fault, and this was an accident". Because when you are born with "complete" free will, you are just like everyone else, and if some misfortune befalls you, it isn't God you blame because He made you just like everyone else. It is a misfortune, an accident, an outside occurrence.

So in essence- limited "free will" vs. "complete free will"

Your entire argument, in essence, is that every destructive or debilitating thing that occurs in this life- natural (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, snowstorms) and accidental (buildings collapsing, water pipes busting, electrical outages) disasters, diseases, physical deformations, mental disorders, freak accidents, and deaths, are the result of free will.

I agree with you partially, especially considering free will that leads up to an accident, disfigurament, or "act of God" like a natural disaster. But "free will" doesn't explain why people were born with certain physical and mental limitations. "Free will" doesn't explain why a perfectly healthy adult couple, without any history of genetic disorder, having a severely mentally ret*d son. "Free will" doesn't explain why you have someone who is neurotypically and physically normal in the United States, and halfway across the world, you have a man who was born with a 20 lbs. tumor on his face, that makes him look like a creature from hell. "Free will" doesn't explain naturally occurring stillborns, pre-mature births (not induced through the use of abortion).

Free will explains a lot, but it doesn't explain everything.

It does - *if* you believe that the fall caused God to retreat somewhat from the world, allowing it to begin to decay. If we still had access to the Tree of Life, we could probably use it to heal a lot of our problems, at the cost of allowing evil free reign indefinitely.

When the fall happened, the entire creation fell, and has been decaying ever since. This is basic theology, pretty much every Christian (and quite a few Jews) would agree with me on this - it was created good, then man messed it up. Without God correcting everything, then, you get corruption of what is good - cancer, developmental disabilities etc. It's random chance, the current law of the universe. The guy born with the tumour on his face is just very unlucky.

That's not to say that God won't step in and do a miracle if we ask; indeed, very often miracles do happen - I haven't yet seen on with my own eyes, but other people, who I trust, have. So maybe if we ask, God will step in. Or maybe He won't; He's God after all, and can see what the best outcome will be, even if we can't from out dim vantage point.

After all, now we see through a glass darkly...

Doesn't change the fact that God still allowed the fall to happen according to your theology.



Yes, more and more examples of God standing by not doing anything to stop these disasters.



Just because you trust these people doesn't mean they're telling the truth.

What are *you* doing to stop suffering, MCalavera? Are you doing *everything* that you can?

But you're forgetting the promise of redemption in all this. God *has* done something, and that something is Jesus.

Though, you're arguing from the position that humans neither have free will, nor should have free will lest they hurt themselves. You're the first person I've talked to who thinks that God *should* be a totalitarian dictator who controls every aspect of our lives...

If it was false, well, I honestly don't know why God would intentionally make angels perfect at first, yet leave humans flawed right from the get-go. Besides, if Satan was a poor sap, and God was the angry one, I don't think he would really care for true love from either angels or humans.

I don't see asking God the above. Why do you insist on excusing God from all the suffering going on in this world?



And you know this, how? You just read a compilation of ancient books and blindly believe, it seems.



If God exists, and he cares, then he should allow us some freedom, but without allowing us to ever experience suffering. There's no point to suffering in a universe that's actually created by a caring God.

The reason why suffering exists is because the ability to experience pain helped our ancestors survive long enough to reproduce and yield offspring that also experience pain. This is understandable within the context of evolutionary history.

In the presence of a caring God, on the other hand, this is not understandable at all. If you had a child, and you sensed your child was about to do something dangerous to himself, I'm sure you would not even bother considering his "free will" and you would actually attempt to stop him from hurting himself. This wouldn't make you a totalitarian dictator, would it? But it would mean you're a parent who cares about your child.