- I called this thread a “goofy thread” because the OP asked for opinions regarding whether or not humans are a mistake, and in my opinion the question assumes a non-human creation, cause, or origin for humans, presumably earthling humans, strictly speaking.
- The OP author’s first egregious mistake, IMO, was deciding to use the Hebrew word Elohim to “blame” for the existence of humans on earth: a mistake, I say, because Michael Heiser, now deceased, has “snuffed” the notion–much to Dr. Bhaarat Jhunjhunwala’s chagrin–that all elohim [there are more than one]–have creative power as an attribute.
- Personally, I find it amusing that your “parsimonious”, but incorrect explanation of "Elohim follows immediately after a post by a self-acknowledge Lay Non-conformist preacher, whose views place him closest, IMO, to Quakers, although I may be wrong.
- I say “amusing” because you two have more in common, that I have with either of you.
- Be that as it may, I note that you are not so parsimonious with your words when it comes to publicly telling folks what you think Christianity is all about and what, in it, or among Christians disappoints you about Christianity. but you’re really slow to tell folks–unless I’ve missed it–what exactly is it that you do believe.
- Perhaps, unbeknownst to you, you’re a fellow traveler with Bharat? If so, perhaps you two could collaborate. I’m sure Bharat would be thrilled.
- I, for one, would be pleased if you could explain to him why, believing that believing Noah is “a common prophet” indicates that he believes in the Flood, and–as far as I can tell–makes him a YEC, which apparently upsets him.
- By the way, for kicks, I’m sharing a two-dimensional drawing that I’ve made of a Cubic Unit of your “Ineffable God” alongside a Cubic Unit of “Absolute Space”, which is very effable.
God in the Old Testament explicitly says that he regretted creating us. And I can wholeheartedly see why Since sin is out of time and space and reality it has an equal power with that of God. Since sin entered Satan (sometime)sin must have existed before Satan’s creation. So there was always two powers ahead. One good one bad. Now I believe God will win as it is written .
Are humans a mistake?
God said, yes.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
But… God can work with mistakes.
Living organisms are by definition not a product of design. If something is a product of design then it is a thing like a machine. But the nature of living organisms is that they grow, learn, and develop according to their own choices. They try different things and go with what works for them. So what you are talking about here is not a mistake on the part of God. That sort of thing would be our own responsibility.
What hypothesis are you referring to?
hypothesis 1: We are a product of design by an omnipotent all knowing God. Well that hypothesis doesn’t work for science or theology. In the case of theology it would mean we are tools made for an end, which is contrary to ethics and would thus make God something I could never believe in.
hypothesis 2: We are a product of our own evolutionary development and God decided to adopt us as children and give us responsibility over the earth. Considering what God says above about this mistake, describing it as an experiment is off the mark. God took a chance on us. And it didn’t work out so well… not so much in the time of Noah and not so much now either. But this is not a disinterested experiment but the investment of a parent in His children. God said… “and it grieved him to his heart.”
Your hypothesis: This is just an experiment. This is called Deism. And it seems to me that this inevitably leads to atheism because a God like that has nothing to do with the living of our lives. It might as well not exist and we have little reason to care one way or another.
Can God use hyperbole? Or not.
I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
Malachi 3:6
With all due respect, I must disagree and point out that many people have a talent for reading or hearing only what they expect to read or hear, and alternative statements are a wall they cannot climb.
Adieu
Did God say these words or were they put in Hi s mouth by the writer?
Did God actually make a mistake or did/does humanity judge both themselves and God?
If God is truly God, then He cannot make such a drastic error of judgement. It is a contradiction of the definition of God.
An all-knowing and infinite God cannot do something without knowing the consequences or results.
Humanity can only be a mistake if God did not calculate or envisage the decisions and actions that them/we could/would make, having allowed them/us the freedom to make them.
Richard
Even if you delete the word mistake from the original question I believe we are still left with a world which is a massive experiment with humans as pawns in the game.
Don’t pre-judge what I may or may not do. Thank you
That would only be true if God had no idea what we would do.
Richard
1 Like
I think there is more wisdom in the Bible as it was actually written than what people want to change it to according to their judgement that this was just the view of some human writer.
In an authentic relationship, events don’t just depend on you. Thus it is the nature of authentic relationships that you can make a mistake even if you are perfect. At least we call them mistakes even when it is really no fault of our own. And we second guess ourselves and wish things were otherwise despite not really being to blame.
I don’t believe in the God enslaved to human theology with this list of things He cannot do. God CAN be in an authentic relationship because He can limit Himself, choose love and freedom over power and control, and thus take risks and act on faith.
The omnipotence of God is often confused with the omnipotence of a dreamer which is too trivial for a God worth believing in.
The God I believe in chose love and freedom over power and control and thus created life, to give rise to organisms who would do thing for their own reasons and choices and not simply because divine design or pre-existing conditions dictate what they do. Thus God made the world so that we write history together and He chooses to be a participant rather than reading ahead to know what will happen beforehand. That is what you do when you create for a relationship. This is the God of the Bible who is a shepherd, rather than the watchmaker god of Deism.
1 Like
You make it a choice between absolute control or disinterest. There is a third option, that of parental love.
2 Likes
Since God is sovereign over molecules and DNA, mistakenness is not something I will ascribe to him, nor the vagaries of chance or ‘luck’.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
Proverbs 16:33
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:29-31
I’m not disagreeing with you, Mitch, but the resolution between God’s sovereignty and love, our free will and the ‘randomness’ of evolution I will once again suggest is God’s omnitemporality, the wonderful mystery that we will not be able get our heads around, the mystery of a how a God who is not bound by time, the Eternal NOW, relates to us who are limited to sequential time and the (only) four dimensions of this physical creation.
Remember Judas. Did he have free will? Yes. In God’s ‘plan’ (a timebound word)? Yes.
…woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.
Matthew 26:24
(Those who are not familiar with the concept that helps affirm God’s omnitemporality might do a little browsing about spacetime slices, starting with the oldest of the four links – they’re not lengthy.)
1 Like
I wish you would get off this high horse of yours. I am not and never have been a Deist in the form that you indicate here.
Knowing and controlling are not the same.
The option is there for us to take or not. God gives us choices not directions or commands
Richard
I always do. And I remember what Jesus said, that “it would have been better had such a man never been born.”
Yes.
Where we disagree is on this idea that God planned for Judas to betray Jesus. Where we disagree is that God requires the magic of human sacrifice to forgive. Where we disagree is that God demanded the death of Jesus. Better he had not been born means it was NOT God’s plan. It is my belief that it is Israelites who demanded the death of Jesus as it says in the text. Was Jesus a willing sacrifice and did He give His life for the salvation of mankind? Yes and yes, just as brave soldiers gave their life for the freedoms we have in our country. But it is not a magic spell and it is not some divine requirement. It is evil people that require such things – not God.
Then why did He both allow (even encourage) it, and, both accept and use it?
If it was not God’s intent, why send His so in the first place?
The Gospels make it clear that Jesus knew the outcome long before it happened.
I am sorry, but You seem to underestimate God. And overestimate the influence of Humanity, specifically the people in Jerusalem at that time.
Richard
You may not (apparently) agree with what I think we really disagree about, which is whether or not ‘plan’ (and likewise ‘planned’) is actually a legitimate word to use by itself with respect to God in his omnitemporality, since it is such a timebound word. Because you continue to use it without any qualifiers, it would certainly seem you think it is.
Unless we can agree that it must be used with an understood and implicit proviso (and be reminded of it frequently and explicitly!), namely that it is such a timebound word and, without any said qualification, the word intrinsically limits God to sequential time. The criterion likewise applies to words like predestination, election, foreknowledge, etc. (I’m not a Calvinist – I’m a God-is-omnitemporal non-Arminian.1 Oh, and I’m not a Molinist either. ; - )
1 I know I have said elsewhere I’m a God-is-omnitemporal Calvinist, but maybe the above is more accurate. And maybe also ‘Calvinism’ is better to avoid since so many are put off by it. 
John 18:37 For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
Like with the soldiers who died for our freedom, it is only required that they stand up for what is right even if they must die to do so. But no death is not actually a requirement. Their death is at the hands of evil men who stand against the truth.
God became man to overcome sin and the separation between man and God, with a renewed inheritance from God as the 2nd Adam.
Yes. The possibility was there from the beginning and only grew worse as time went on. But in Gethsemane Jesus still hoped for a different outcome. He accepted that it was not to be when His disciples could not even stay awake and pray with Him.
I am sorry but you underestimate God with all these things you tell us that He cannot do. You overestimate the importance of Christianity.
I am Christian because I think it has got far more things right than other religions. But I certainly don’t think God and all existence revolves around the meager knowledge and understanding of Christianity.
And… I am not. Open theism best describes me (like for example John Polkinghorne) on that “spectrum” (i.e. rejecting Calvinism and Arminianism also since it doesn’t go far enough).
I don’t understand how the fantasy of an afterlife gives a religion justification for making everyone follow their rules. The Jewish religion certainly had the idea that following God’s laws brought blessing and violating them brought a curse, but only within the Jewish community. Jesus ‘fulfilled’ that requirement in favor of believing that love and forgiveness for all people would bring freedom and produce a more generous and inclusive culture. Following Jesus in that regard is supposed to be the ‘ticket’ to the afterlife. In America, it appears that many ‘Christians’ have given up on that idea, at least politically.
Yes, I wonder who it was that heard that, other than God, assuming it was accurate. The disciples were both a distance away and asleep.
Besides, the prayer is to show Christ’s human vulnerability, not to change the outcome.
I have never put a limit on God but you seem to by claiming that He would not sacrifice His son.
The direct comparison is Abraham and Issac. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son and would have done so if God had not stopped him. God went the extra mile.
I am sorry if such thoughts make you uncomfortable.
Richard
1 Like
Never made such a claim. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son…” What I don’t believe is that God cannot forgive anything without some magical spell requiring human sacrifice. That is just nonsense.
It is more about what too many people need in order to change. Some will only change when their sins cause the death of innocent people even children. This is not a requirement of God but our own evil. I don’t go with the Calvinist belief that humans are incapable of goodness and that God cannot appreciate the good we do without Christian abracadabra – there are too many counterexamples in the Bible. But the depravity of man is very real and profound even if it is not the total and absolute depravity of Calvinism.
The contrast is that God did not require Abraham to sacrifice his son, but we DID require God to sacrifice His son. For God it was sufficient that Abraham was willing, then He could believe in Abraham. But we could not really believe in God until God did sacrifice His Son. Of course God was willing. Jesus was likewise willing – 100%.
And that I cannot believe, because too many human beings have done better than that for so much less. “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” No! If human beings can do better then the idea that this is required to show Jesus’ humanity is just nonsense. I can only believe that Jesus begged for an alternative and would say it would be better if Judas had never been born is because there was a better alternative, however remote the possibility because of our lack of faith.