I’m pretty sure he was wondering why there was a serpent in The Garden
Riiight. And that proves prelapsarian zoothanatology how?
1 Like
I understand that God being present is important in teaching us anything to you, that it’s unfair for him to demand our cooperation if we don’t even see him.
In the end this is where we disagree I think, Bible shows really well that God being visible doesn’t really change anything for humans, they will always find a way to justify their decisions and keep doing what they think is good. I think it also is visible from personal experience, if you hear some wisdom it doesn’t matter if you see the person that taught it, the same is with wisdom that you disagree with, even if the guy is present and explaining it to you, one will still disagree.
I think, even though it feels cruel to us sometimes and unfair, that we will surely act differently if he was here to tell us exactly what to do, God made a good decision to let us decide ourselves if we agree with him or not, after all, that’s all there is, if you understand what is Bible trying to teach you and accept it’s lessons, there’s not really anything else you need to reach salvation. At least in my view.
I have no idea what that means
Pre-Fall animal death.
1 Like
Hense God created evil. Finally a Christian understands what I was trying to say in some older threads about evil and God.
Sorry but an infinite being couldn’t find any other way? If God is beyond our understanding and “his ways are not ours” how can you put limitations on what he can do as you did claiming he couldn’t do it any other way?
To me this is a scapegoat to really mask how evil God can be sometimes. I mean he created it. So how can a good loving being create something so destructive and evil that makes us monsters such as sin? Either he has to be evil (at least on some part as well)or the sin must be preexisting hense making it a power equal to God.
At least you acknowledge that God created it
I have not read all on this thread, so my comment is confined to the age-old question of who “created” evil.
To address this, I note as a beginning, evil is an act and not a created thing. In most cases we discuss acts by us on others, and these acts are motivated by hatred, jealousy and so on; ie human attributes and human acts.
The other point to note is that we are not free from such attributes, and this is where the “free will” argument fails.
So the anti-theist argues that he does not believe in God, but when he observes evil acts done by humans to others, he blames God for creating evil? How does this work?
I will wait for a response as otherwise I would post a lengthy discussion which may not be relevant to this thread.
Sin=evil acts. God created free will. With free will God created sin as well . Sin=evil acts again.
Simple
Anti-theists are agnostics as well. Not only atheists and even if they were they have every right to make that argument
Oh I got you! So apparently God told Adam and Eve to subdue the Earth with a word that connotates conquest, and Adam and Eve had to eat from the Tree of Life in order to stay immortal, with people living outside The Garden in cities by the time The Primordial Couple had children.
Would that be the word translated as dominion? A quick google search turns up a lot of different biblical explanations. I’d lean toward this one, admittedly not based on all that much background.
[
Meaning of Dominion - Bible Odyssey
https://www.bibleodyssey.org › passages › related-articles
(https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/meaning-of-dominion)
Dominion ” is better conceived as the human exercise of skilled mastery among our fellow creatures, with special reference to perpetuating food security for …
1 Like
Chris Walley had a unique vision for the future as Christians utilized Alcubierre type drives, terraformed distant planets, and cloned animal life whose extinction we were responsible for before the great awakening.
Obviously that kind of wishful thinking doesn’t excuse our carelessness with the world today, but it’s still good to dream a little.
1 Like
Totally agree. If one believes we’ve been tasked with the responsibility to our fellow creatures, trashing the planet and driving the vast majority of the creatures into extinction is a complete fail. But even for someone who doesn’t look to the Bible for their marching orders (like me), it is pretty clearly entirely up to us what happens here and I think it is urgently important.
1 Like
That’s the problem. It’s the height of foolishness to say there is no God, or that it doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t.
“Professing to be wise they become fools.”
And the need for wisdom today is as great as it ever was.
I still remember the look of disbelief in my professor’s face, when we as a class were presented with one of those moral dilemmas about not saving one to save many, and my response was that if the person making the decision were willing to sacrifice his or her life, and also prayed for wisdom, there may be another way.
1 Like
Absolutely. And that passage was written in a pre-industrial time with the intention of reflecting God’s ordering chaos, so we have no excuse to exploit.
1 Like
The anti-theist argues that he/she has the fundamental right
- to question the existence of God;
- to say that, if there is a God, He is an evil Creator because He made humans who can and do sin, i.e. do evil acts;
- and to be absurd.
To understand the anti-theist mind, it may be helpful to reflect on a model of human thought shared with me by a Pythagorean Monist twenty years ago. Unfortunately, because some here would consider the language of the model offensive, I cannot share it publicly. However, if you are interested PM me and I’ll share it privately offsite.
However, C.S. Lewis managed to capture some sense of the anti-theist thought process in the 7th Book of his Chronicles of Narnia entitled “The Last Battle”:
- Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren’t strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn’t see any one but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening.
“Look out!” said one of them in a surly voice. “Mind where you’re going. Don’t walk into our faces!”
“All right!” said Eustace indignantly. “We’re not blind. We’ve got eyes in our heads.”
“They must be darn good ones if you can see in here,” said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
“In where?” asked Edmund.
“Why you bone-head, in here of course,” said Diggle. “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”
“Are you blind?” said Tirian.
“Ain’t we all blind in the dark!” said Diggle.
“But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,” said Lucy. “Can’t you see? Look up! Look round! Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you see me?”
“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?”
“But I can see you,” said Lucy. “I’ll prove I can see you. You’ve got a pipe in your mouth.”
“Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that,” said Diggle.
“Oh the poor things! This is dreadful,” said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stooped and picked some wild violets.
“Listen, Dwarf,” she said. “Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that.” She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle’s ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
“None of that!” he shouted. “How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It’s like your sauce! And who are you anyway?”
“Earth-man,” said Tirian, “she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian, your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are.”
“Well if that doesn’t beat everything!” exclaimed Diggle. “How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn’t come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now—even now—when you’ve been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you’re still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we’re none of us shut up, and it ain’t dark, and heaven knows what.”
“There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool,” cried Tirian. “Come out of it.” And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
“Ow! Ow! What d’you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You’ve nearly broken my nose.”
“Oh dear!” said Lucy “What are we to do for them?”
“Let 'em alone,” said Eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart’s desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion’s feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, “Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour.”
“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you—will you—do something for these poor Dwarfs?”
“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the Stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a Stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at!
Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said: “Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do.”
He went to the Door and they all followed him. He raised his head and roared “Now it is time!” then louder “Time!”; then so loud that it could have shaken the stars, “TIME.” The Door flew open.
2 Likes
I don’t actually disagree with this part, especially what I’ve bolded. However I conceive of what gives rise to God belief pretty differently. The difference isn’t an impediment from my side but likely would be from yours.
There are many ways to profess your own wisdom in folly and some expressions of Christian theology amount to the same thing IMO.
1 Like
And I say that the height of foolishness is “to claim a right to be absurd.”
Exceeded only by the one who claims alone to know who is wise and who foolish. Besides Christian belief is entirely adequate from my point of view, the equal of every other sufficient system of belief. Mine has the advantage of not needing to believe mine alone is correct. But Christians are on my side even if they don’t know it, certainly more so than any antitheist.
1 Like
Is it foolish to pray?
We don’t have any way of knowing who is saved, or who ends up in heaven ( and by ends up in heaven I don’t really believe we go to heaven but that the restoration processes includes some fort of resurrection and eternal life for the saved ) and I’m only half convinced eternal life even means that versus carried on in the memory of future spiritual offspring which is those who hear us responding to the gospel.
1 Like