Theists, please give your opinion on this quote from Epicurius.

[Mesogen]

I can explain to you why that is, but, 1) it is not the subject of this thread, and, 2) you would not be ready to receive it because of your anti-Biblical presuppositions.

It is the subject of this thread.

Is God able to stop evil but unwilling to do so?

So please, explain why God created Adam for the purpose of committing evil and then damning him for it.

 

[Kludge]

Define perfect.

Knowing all and being able to do anything flawlessly.

 

[Mesogen]

Knowing all and being able to do anything flawlessly.

So God doesn't have free will then. (or his will is pointless)

 

[Mesogen]

And remember the terms flaw and perfect imply purpose or a goal.

If I aim for the bullseye and hit it then the shot was perfect. If my aim was to miss the bulleye and I miss it, then the shot was perfect.

If everything God does is perfect, then all the evil humans have committed was part of the goal or purpose. Again we are left with God is able to stop evil but is unwilling to do it. Part of the purpose of humans is to commit evil, suffer, and then die.

 

[Kludge]

So God doesn't have free will then. (or his will is pointless)

God doesn't know everything, or else we couldn't have free will.

 

[Mesogen]

God doesn't know everything, or else we couldn't have free will.

An imperfect god. Hmm.

That sounds a lot like paganism.

 

[Josh_LA]

An imperfect god. Hmm.

That sounds a lot like paganism.

sounds like logic

 

[Original_Intent]

God doesn't know everything, or else we couldn't have free will.

I am not sure I follow. Why not?

 

[Kludge]

I am not sure I follow. Why not?

Your life would have already happened. God would know everything you're going to do in your life before it "happens", which makes prayer frustratingly pointless (after all, His "plan" cannot be altered). It'd also make the concept of the time pointless (edit: well, I suppose it's still useful to us humans), since God is in all times, as He knows all.

His life sounds awful, TBH. Humans crave knowledge. What would we do if we knew everything and were unable to have unique experiences (since we already know what will happen and what it will be like)? I guess we'd make flawed people to amuse us, but if we already know every course of action every person will take, what's the point?

The Rapture itself has already happened if we accept that God is truly omniscient.

 

[Original_Intent]

CS Lewis reply (which I agree with) is as follows: (not put as well as he did, apologies).

Just because you know that putting dough in an oven at such and such a temperature for such and such a time results in bread does not mean you do not have to go through the process.

Isn't it possible that eveen though God knows how it will all turn out, that we cannot become what he wishes us to become without going through the process of becoming?

You may say if he is omnipotent we could become whatever He wants with a wave of his hand. But what if what He wants is for those who will chose Him to actually make the choice? what if the circumstances for free will to actually be exercised are exactly the conditions we find ourselves in?

(I definitely did not word it as well as Mr. Lewis did. Sorry I could not remember the reference or I would have looked it up.)

Of course if you believe in ex nihilo creation, you are right, the whole thing is pointless.

 

[Original_Intent]

Your life would have already happened. God would know everything you're going to do in your life before it "happens", which makes prayer frustratingly pointless (after all, His "plan" cannot be altered). It'd also make the concept of the time pointless (edit: well, I suppose it's still useful to us humans), since God is in all times, as He knows all.

His life sounds awful, TBH. Humans crave knowledge. What would we do if we knew everything and were unable to have unique experiences (since we already know what will happen and what it will be like)? I guess we'd make flawed people to amuse us, but if we already know every course of action every person will take, what's the point?

The Rapture itself has already happened if we accept that God is truly omniscient.

Let me address the bolded sections one by one.

1. Maybe the point of prayer is not what we get or don't get out of it, but what the action of praying does to us. Certainly God already knows what we need - but humbling oneself enough to ask certainly has an effect on us.

2. I kind of agree, but I don't have His perspective.

3. Maybe He is trying to make companions worthy of His company? I really don't know...

 

[Kludge]

Interesting. Thanks for the replies.

 

[idiom]

Winkey Pratney made the observation that even if God knows everything that can be known, that doesn't imply that He knows what decisions will be made or which events will unfold precisely.

If it doesn't exist yet, it can't be known, it can be thought about and predicted, but its not know yet.

And a perfect being cannot create things, by definition. The Omni-God contradicts the Bible God.

 

[Original_Intent]

Winkey Pratney made the observation that even if God knows everything that can be known, that doesn't imply that He knows what decisions will be made or which events will unfold precisely.

If it doesn't exist yet, it can't be known, it can be thought about and predicted, but its not know yet.

And a perfect being cannot create things, by definition. The Omni-God contradicts the Bible God.

However, if He knows everything that is perfectly, it only stands to reason that any prediction that he made would also be infallible.

 

[idiom]

However, if He knows everything that is perfectly, it only stands to reason that any prediction that he made would also be infallible.

Only if your free will is totally based on the conditions around you and is predictable. That is determinism and not 'free-will'. If it is predictable, its not free-will. Whatever set up the inital conditions is responsible for *everything* that happens.

Also, that is in a Newtonian universe. If you only knew most things pretty well, chaos would make predictions unreliable. If you knew everything perfectly, quantum mechanics will through you off eventually. Einstein rejected Quantum mechanics on the basis that is amounted to "God playing dice with the universe". Unfortunately he was proven incorrect.

 

[dgr]

When my nephew was in the 7th grade, he had to write an end year term paper
"Random Occurance vs Divine Providence" I told him to save it , that he could use it someday in college.
Free Will is the choice we all make between good and evil, right and wrong, or simply put for most of us, if I do this I'm goona pay one way or the other, so how much do I want to pay'
As for why bad things happen to good people
My mother told me some were life lessons
other were to help you grow stronger, if you didn't have to struggle, you would not know the satisfaction of overcomming or victory.

 

[TurtleBurger]

And a perfect being cannot create things, by definition.

How is that "by definition"? The dictionary doesn't say anything about "inability to create" in its definition of the word "perfect"

 

[idiom]

How is that "by definition"? The dictionary doesn't say anything about "inability to create" in its definition of the word "perfect"

I addressed this above. Was God perfect before or after He created the world? Creation represents a state change.

There are many questions like that and they only exist because some people refer to the 'Omni-God' instead of the God of the Bible.

The silliest one is 'God is perfectly Good'. What is Good? Whatever God does. So God perfectly does what God does. Horray.

The Omni-properties are not biblical, they were thought up by philosophers and applied to God. Now we have whole decrepit theologies built around them explaining why it is not nessecary to be a missionary. Or why you don't have free will but are still responsible for what you do.

God can only be defined empirically, because He is a person, not a formula.

 

[Theocrat]

Evil is No Problem for God

It is the subject of this thread.

Is God able to stop evil but unwilling to do so?

So please, explain why God created Adam for the purpose of committing evil and then damning him for it.

You have to first understand that God is sovereign, which means He is in control of all things, both good and evil. God is not arbitrary because He has a reason for allowing everything that He does, even if our finite minds do not understand everything that He does. That is comprehended by faith in God's power, wisdom, and goodness. God's will in the affairs of men and events of nature are based on His own pleasure and purposes for His creation whereby He makes Himself known to His creation and glorifies Himself.

Having said all that, you also need to understand that God allowed Adam to sin so that God could renew His creation through the second Adam, His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. In Genesis, God gives us a promise of this second Adam Who would come and destroy the power of sin, which was instigated by the devil, as we read, "And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent - Satan] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel" (Genesis 3:15).

This was fulfilled 4,000 years later with the coming of the Messiah, and His resurrection was the vindication that the power of death and sin had been overcome by Jesus Christ as the new Adam of creation. In Christ, we are a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), and instead of a garden as the first Adam had, we have the whole world as our inheritance as the second Eve (the Bride of Christ - the Church). This is the glorious and victorious result of how God used the sin of the first Adam to make the world better through the righteousness of the second Adam (Romans 5:12-21).

From a decretal perspective of God's eternal will, it is true that God knew all along that Adam would sin by eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, Adam did not know that, being the finite person he was. He had God's law revealed to him to not eat of that tree (Genesis 2:16, 17), and his duty of love was to obey his Father by faith. So, you see, God did not force Adam to sin because Adam had already received warning from God not to eat of the tree or else he would die. Even though Adam had every other tree in the Garden to eat from (including the Tree of Life), his lust and pride led him to disobey God at the instigation of his wife, who was beguiled by the serpent. Adam should have known better.

Concerning Adam being damned by God, I don't think that's what we read in the Genesis account. As a matter of fact, we see that after Adam and Eve sinned, God clothed them with animal skins (Genesis 3:21), which was a picture of redemption and forgiveness of sins, foreshadowed by the temple sacrifices for sin in the Levitical priesthood and coming to its fruition in the righteousness of Christ, as we're clothed in His righteousness as a garment to appease God's wrath for sin (Romans 13:14; Revelation 19:8). Adam was even called a son of God in the genealogies listed in Luke (Luke 3:38). So, even Adam himself received grace in God's eyes after his first sin, and I believe he is in Heaven with God's people away from the damnation of hell.

So, evil is no problem for God. As we're told in Romans 8:28-30,

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.

To the Christian, that is a great comfort, and we know that God will overcome evil in its entirety one day. In the meanwhile, God is pleased to use evil to show how omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent He truly is (Romans 9). Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear can understand this great mystery.

 

[TheEvilDetector]

It is the subject of this thread.

Is God able to stop evil but unwilling to do so?

So please, explain why God created Adam for the purpose of committing evil and then damning him for it.

I would take that a step further and tell you that God knew the outcome before he even started (he is all knowing, see Note A), so the exercise had to have been a sadistic urge from the beginning.

...

Having said all that, you also need to understand that God allowed Adam to sin so that God could renew His creation through the second Adam, His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. In Genesis, God gives us a promise of this second Adam Who would come and destroy the power of sin, which was instigated by the devil, as we read, "And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent - Satan] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel" (Genesis 3:15).

...

From a decretal perspective of God's eternal will, it is true that God knew all along that Adam would sin by eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, Adam did not know that, being the finite person he was. He had God's law revealed to him to not eat of that tree (Genesis 2:16, 17), and his duty of love was to obey his Father by faith. So, you see, God did not force Adam to sin because Adam had already received warning from God not to eat of the tree or else he would die. Even though Adam had every other tree in the Garden to eat from (including the Tree of Life), his lust and pride led him to disobey God at the instigation of his wife, who was beguiled by the serpent. Adam should have known better.

All knowing Superbeing giving pointless warnings that he knows ahead of time are not going to be heeded, following up with essentially murder, when he could have skipped this step all along?!

But wait there is more, God encouraged the sin, by introducing a sly serpent (see Note B), this is called entrapment is it not?

In fact, its worse, because God knew ahead of time that the serpent would be successful, here God is acting like the Devil. Think about it.

The woman then believed the serpent (while God did not provide any warning about listening to the serpent that he himself introduced and the woman did not
have any experience in dealing with such situations) and God summarily punished her.

Why does God need to test his creations, when he already knows the outcome?

Was letting Adam and Eve suffer his intended goal?

You feel this is operations of a perfect being? Hardly.

You can ask a corrupt cop to do this (absent the creation part).

With respect, your beliefs are very amusing.

Let me make it clear, it seems to me that perfect beings should not:

give pointless warnings
suffer from sadistic urges
engage in entrapment
need to test their creations
make their creations suffer pointlessly (for their own amusement?).

Theo, I invite you to believe in the purple teapot orbiting Saturn, it's less irrational and sadistic and can make you a cup of tea if you pray nicely.

Note A:

http://galatiansc4v16.wordpress.com/2006/05/21/does-god-know-all-things-equiporg/

"The Bible repeatedly tells us that God knows everything. His knowledge, in fact, is “perfect [Job 37:16] and is “beyond measure” [Psa. 147:5]. He sees every move we make, He knows the innermost thoughts of our hearts and He even knows what we are going to say before we say it [1 Sam. 16:7; 1 Chron. 28:9; Psa. 139:1-6; Jer. 17:10; Heb. 4:12-13]. Unlike the false gods of our time, the Lord knows everything: Even what’s going to happen in the future [Isa. 41:21-24; 42:9; 44:7]. Jesus, interestingly enough, also tells us that our heavenly Father numbers the very hairs on our head. By the way, it’s interesting to note that God actually revealed to Isaiah the name of Cyrus even before he was actually born — in fact, one century before he was born. Cyrus, of course, was the king who returned the Jews to their homeland after the Babylonian exile [Isa. 44:28-45:1]."

Note B:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_Eve

"Genesis 3 introduces the Serpent, "slier than every beast of the field." The serpent tempts the woman to eat from the tree of knowledge, telling her that it will not lead to death; she succumbs, and gives the fruit to the man, who eats also, "and the eyes of the two of them were opened." Aware now of their nakedness, they make coverings of fig leaves, and hide from the sight of God. God, perceiving that they have broken His command, curses them with hard labour and with pain in childbirth, and banishes them from His garden, setting a cherub at the gate to bar their way to the Tree of Life, "lest he put out his hand ... and eat, and live forever.""