free choice or free will doesnt exist within christianity
Offline you cannot choose whether to exist or not. you cant kill yourself because you burn, even if your alone on a desolate planet and you have terrible pain blah blah with nothing but food, water and a suicide pill. you certainly cant choose whether to exist before you come out. so then free will doesnt exist? i dont know if im missing something that says you get free will except the choice of existence but that defeats the point in my opinion (I won't lie I coudn't read it all but I studied it at school).
They say life is god's gift to mankind. so you know ultimate suffering like Job and your just sposed to grin and bear it because atleast you exist? how can existence be a gift if its a bane? you dont get guys coming to your birthday party shouting "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUDE" and chopping your arm off, calling it a gift. surely this reason alone is enough to denounce god if he has committed ultimate evil against you and committed you to a life of ultimate suffering (go crazy think of the worst things that can happen to you without being killed). a christian argument i spose would be "atleast it better than hell" thats like the guy cutting your arm off at the elbow rather than the shoulder YEAH ITS BETTER BUT IM STILL MISSING HALF AN ARM.
yeah evil exists cos some chick and a guy you dont know 10,000 years ago ate the forbidden fruit, everything was cool until they screwed it up. if my dad dies do I get his parking tickets or criminal record? (my dad has no criminal record outside of this metaphor) they don't even question why god put it the forbidden fruit there and told them about it if it was forbidden why didn't he hide it? bah how can they be so blind
btw was i right about the freewill thing, is there anything in the bible stating that you have freewill in everything but existence?
Heaven's closed
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The concept is that you can always choose to ignore God's law and suffer enternal damnation. No, this doesn't look like much of a choice, but it is essential for Christian theology that they claim that we have this choice. Otherwise, God is responsible for evil just as much as good.
The problem is that this doesn't square with God's supposed omnipotence. How can we act in opposition to the will of an omnipotent being? Even if we aren't under his direct control, how can it be that the omniscient creator didn't know everything that everyone was going to do the instant he thought of creating the universe? Since he knew, how is he not equally responsible for every act of evil that has followed?
This the the Problem of Evil and it proves that God, as he is described in the Bible, has self-contradictory characteristics and therefore can't logically exist. Naturally, theists have a million ways to attempt to weasel out of this but I have never seen one that holds water. Their best option is to "reinterpret" the Bible's passages claiming God's omnipotence, effectively turning him into a really powerful alien that is constrained by natural law. This works, but begs the question of why we should worship him.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
yeah doesnt matter how deep you go into christian theology it always comes out with an answer steeped in irrational thought.
if god existed what gives him the right to create the universe? its not because he has the power too, i have to power to kill people doesnt mean i have the right to. so they pretend that god lives in another dimension where logic works differently an he keeps all his reasons to himself and we can never comprehend it until we've given up our live to servitude and died and went to heaven.
Heaven's closed
The christian version of free will is a farce. Does anyone know if anywhere in the bible there is a specific reference to "free will" in the first place, as a construct that god deems of value bestowed on Adam and Eve or anyone else?
Religion's version of free will is more like an ultimatem usually. Sure, you can go out with your friends instead of staying home studying, but um, if you come back and the door is locked and all your stuff is on fire in the front yard, don't blame me. It was your free will.
There is no such reference. It's all ex post facto rationalization.
In fact in the Gnostic reading of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve seize freewill for themselves by eating from the tree of knowledge. In that version, it's the mission of the god of creation (also known as "the blind god" or "demiurgos"
to keep humans imprisoned in ignorance in the garden, and the serpent is the good guy who leads them to knowledge. So it's possible to get all kinds of readings from the same source material.
Personally when I read Genesis 3, I don't even see the Christian doctrine of "original sin" there. It seems pretty plain in Gen 3:23 that God didn't banish Adam & Eve from the garden for breaking the rules. He banished them quite clearly so that they wouldn't eat from the *other* tree--the tree of eternal life--and live forever. The consequences of (not punishment for) knowledge is death, and God for some unspecified reason cut humans off from the cure.
This is why reading the Bible made me deconvert. It's full of this stuff.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
thx, I didn't read it in quite that much detail, it's a shame because if everyone did read into it properly we might not have this god problem
archaic language is pretty hard to digest and the the further away it gets from the original text the more screwed up it gets...... that makes me wonder what the original bible was like =/ cos theres no way this one can be very close
Heaven's closed
Well the orginal poor reader was Augustine of Hippo, who decided in the 4th century that Gen 3 said that everybody inherits Adam & Eve's sin. But he was really into sin and that whole good vs. evil thing, having been a Manichean before his conversion.
We also have him to thank for the doctrines of predestination, infant baptism (since unbaptised infants go to hell), part of the technology of Grace, and the idea that Jews will be converted to Christianity at the end of time. What a guy.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
That's pretty much the same way I feel. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, they were banished because if they did eat from the tree of eternal life, they supposedly would become just like god right? Doesn't that nullify the whole creator claim in the first place? If you can become god by eating a fruit, then whoever created the tree of eternal life is the real god, and the judeo-christian god is a charlatan?
I have often wondered, people make a big stink about the holy grail. It seems to me if there was an ultimate christian artifact, it would be that tree of eternal life. Surely, a tree that gives eternal life isn't something that would die? Where is it?
The Abrahamic god(s) are fear based.
Certianly you have a choice.
1. Chose to love me, and I wont hurt you.
2. Chose not to love me and I will beat the crap out of you.
Would we think the same thing if it were a mugger giving us two choices?
1.Chose to give me your wallet and I wont shoot you.
OR
2. You can chose to keep your wallet. But if you chose to keep your wallet, I will shoot you.
There is nothing moral or "free" about emotional blackmale.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Very well put!
This goes well with my essay on the other half of the equation, which is whether the notion of god and heaven as a means to promote "good" behavior is that honorable.
In my analogy, I cite a scenaro where someone finds a wallet and returns it for a reward. They do a good thing and get rewarded for it. In a similar scenario, another person returns a wallet anonymously and refuses to accept a reward. They do a good thing and do not want, nor expect special treatment.
Are both "good" acts equally noble and benevolent? This is the difference between religion as a force for good, and humanism and situational ethics absence of dogma, as a force for good. Some like me, think there's big difference, and this is why religion is phony and insincere, and most certainly does not have any moral high ground to stand upon.