When was America great ?

[*michaelsean*]

(07-10-2023, 10:34 AM)KillerGoose Wrote: I think we come back to using your analogy here - if I know for a fact that a person is planning on committing a mass shooting and I provide them with the weapon to do so, fully knowing they will use that weapon to kill people, then I am culpable in some manner for that shooting. There would be an extra moral penalty if the people that were killed were those that I loved. When we speak about god's design and his omniscience & omnipotence, he knew that by giving us free will we would sin. We would have the capability for committing terrible acts and cause suffering. His beloved creations would cause suffering amongst themselves, and he would have to assign a large portion of his beloved creations to suffering for eternity because by that same free will, there would be those who choose to not believe in him. 

This is a strange decision to make for a benevolent, all-loving god. Why is free will designed in this way? Why does free will have an implicit inclusion of sin? We are talking about the creator of the universe - all universal laws would have been created by him. Why not create free will, or life, without the ability to commit terrible acts? Again, he knew everything that was to come of his design choices, so why would he continue with them despite having the ability to change it? 



Sure, he didn't have to offer us salvation at all. However, he also didn't have to offer the current version of free will. He could have offered us anything. He could have replaced gravity with something else. He is all-powerful and there is no limit to what he could have done, but he still designed us imperfectly unless, by his eyes, we are perfect. If we are a perfect creation, then his design would have to be intentional, for better or for worse. He would have the foreknowledge of all that was to come and the eternal fates of many of his creations, and he would have to approve of those outcomes. This would change the idea of a "loving god" to one that is similar to a person being proud of their ant colony and the ecosystem they designed rather than a creator who loves all of his creations individually and wants to protect them and keep them safe/happy. One that is interested in the simulation of life rather than the life itself. 

He designed us perfectly.  If you think this life is all there is, then it might suck.  But if you look at it that souls choose their life, including atheists,  for experiences outside of perfection, and this isn't reality or our natural state, then it makes more sense.