07-11-2023, 06:55 AM
(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.
I understand your reasoning here. I just disagree with the notion that God holds responsibility for the shooting happening. I think perhaps the issue here is what you mean by "responsible" because that to me sounds like God is the reason that the shooting happened and not the individuals own desire to shoot people. Or am I wrong?
Quote: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?
Honestly I don't really know why God created this way over another. But I'm also not overly concerned with that detail. But I will say that while I don't know exactly why he created this way over another I will continue in my belief that it wasn't so we would suffer. The fact that God doesn't have the worst interests for us and even gave us an alternative option to suffering (salvation) is enough for me to consider a finite life of suffering a fair trade off with eternal peace. When you compare the two, finite suffering pales vastly in comparison to eternal peace.
Quote: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.
Well that depends on how one defines "perfection" because really... what does it actually mean to be perfect? I would say God is the only perfect being in the purest sense of the word.
Human beings can never truly be "perfect" on God's level because that would then make them God. It's the very same reason why complete free will cannot exist because to have complete free will is to have the free will to do anything, which would include becoming a being as powerful as God, which is paradoxical. You cannot have more than one "God".
So right from the get go God already has to limit what we can and can't do based on the contradictory nature "free will" presents.
Where things get iffy for people is the fact that God created divine law from which we can be punished. Why? I'm not sure, but at the same time I believe God deserves that right since he created the universe and everyone in it.
As for the love aspect, I think this again comes down to how one defines love. God doesn't want us to suffer. I believe he wants us to live in peace because he loves us, otherwise why even offer it? Its not like God actually needs us to live in peace with him. He doesnt need us to suffer fir him either. In fact, he doesnt need us at all. He wants to give us peace on his terms and is not willing to bend to what man wants in order to give them peace.
God also gives us mercy, literally everyday. God could be striking us all with lightning bolts everyday and killing off humanity on a whim, yet he doesnt. There's also the fact that God sent Jesus to die for our sins to also show his love for us. Again, I understand peoole have a problem with defining that as "love" but I guess that's just where "agree to disagree" comes into play and people will see such thought process as "insanity/ludicrous/illogical etc...".
But it could be argued that it's insanity/ludicrous/illogical to defie an all powerful god with which we know we cannot win who has offered us the very thing we seek in life, which is eternal peace, all for the sake of being able to have a little more choice than we had before. Now, I don't think anyone should follow God simply because he's all powerful, because that wouldn't be what God wants in my opinion.
