Franky
All need mercy, and all things work to the Glory of the Grace of God. If you have commented here, ask yourselves why. May God gives you eyes to see your own sinful motives. This was posted in order that you think about the nature of God. If you seek emotional satisfaction from an emotional argument, I ask you please don't comment or even speak up in discussion, not until you can do so with relatively cool heads. My brother Bryant is a great example to follow. He is not only educated on the matter through deep study of the scriptures, but also he debates the issues with a level head and loving kindness, and this is the guy who stands in my direct opposition in the debate. My pride aside, debate well, please, I firmly believe its not the concept of my God that would scare away a non believer more than the misconduct of Christian discussion. We should take after Bill, he tugs heartstrings and debates philosophical truths like a pro. This was not meant to be condescending as much as to moderate.
July 10 at 3:23am · Like
Daniel
Cameron: do you not think yourself a member of the elect?
July 10 at 3:41am · Like
Daniel
If not: then are you prepared to be damned.
July 10 at 3:41am · Like
Daniel
?
July 10 at 3:46am · Like
Cameron
I believe I am a wretched sinner saved by Grace
July 10 at 3:47am · Like
Daniel
What were those people in the video? Damned from the start? God's chosen victims? How can you sleep soundly with faith in a God who needed those people's blood and screams of agony. They scream in the video. And they eventually just sit there, burning, as if they accepted God's will for their life. It would be east I guess to believe that God didn't really want that for them. But I take the hard road and choose to believe that God wanted them to die that way. To die at the hands of their neighbors. In fire, In Pain, In excruciating agony. Because God needs that pain to get off. Otherwise what's the point?! Oh, that's right, he just needed them to die because he needed 5 human beings to die on this little 3rd rock from the sun in the spiral arm of the Milky Way in the Galactic Cluster that Makes up our corner of the Observable universe.
July 10 at 3:57am · Like
Daniel
Your conception of reality is so small, limited, arbitrary, and in the end unjust. You can conceive of a better way. You choose to stick with the familiar.
July 10 at 4:01am · Like
Daniel
it should at least give a person pause.
July 10 at 4:01am · Like
Cameron
He didn't "need" their deaths, but I believe he ordained them.
July 10 at 4:16am · Like
Daniel
then he is a douche. A mega super douche who has to have a plan that ordains the deaths of those 5 people. Of the 6 million jews of the holocaust. of the 200,000 or more of the genocide in Rwanda. He did absolutely need them if you believe he ordained them, or he would have found another way. If that answer makes you uncomfortable, it should.
July 10 at 4:23am · Like
Daniel
if you choose to defend a contrary position you might as well just buy a swastika armband. At least then the rest of us can tell what you really stand for and let you know where we think you can go. Even if I don't believe in a hell, you do, that should be enough to make the point.
July 10 at 4:29am · Like
Franky
If you conceive of a God anything less than ours, prepare yourself for nothingness. Prepare yourself for a letdown, because you just went there.
God, in his great pleasure and for his own glory, created this world destined for decay. He subjected this world to corruption. He brought all things to being and brings all things out of being. This is the God who raises up nations against one another as well as binds a mother and child in love. God will plan death, rape, murder, and cancer just as he plans peace, artichoke, and bodily health.
God is not Intergalactic SantaClaus, and yes, he is VERY focused upon this little rock.
God is all powerful, and all knowing. All things happen as he sees fit. God is not weak, and God does not do things halfassed. God is bigger than any conception of Good that can fit into your human mind. He is more Glorious than you can possible come to fathom in your entire lifetime. He is bigger than rape and disease.
If you ever realize how in need of him you are, you will put no more confidence in yourself.
Why is it so hard to believe that you could be partaking in the greatest story ever told? Why can the grimy bits not be attributed to the author as much as the happy bits. You can't have good sine bad, and you surely can't have a good story sine evil.
No matter how one slices the cake, there is still the problem of: why is there evil? If you say "God didn't want it, but it just kinda happened... because it was somebody elses fault" you are making God out to be ignorant and a fool.
There is only one way to accept the truth if one believes in an omnipotent omniscient God: that he made beings for the purposes of good and evil.
Praise God, for this being chose to forgive my sinful bones which he knit in my mothers womb.
July 10 at 9:16am · Like
Bryant
I'll get back in on this conversation shortly. Can't type good responses from my phone.
July 10 at 10:09am · Like
Joseph
The problem is that if you have a god of this type, then he is truly a capricious asshole. In what way is it glorifying to have robots mindlessly do your bidding while you arbitrarily treat some nice and burn and brutalize the rest? You're on the wrong side of the problem of evil. There are other ways for there to be an answer to the problem of evil. Before you start another conversation such as this, I strongly recommend you read up on them. I've already told you one place to go. Now go, read and learn. You will profit mightily.
July 10 at 10:19am · Like
Franky
Joseph, a footnote is not supportive if you don't propose points.
July 10 at 11:57am · Like
Joseph
I've told you to read St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica. That's your footnote and in it you'll find your points. Read his writings on the will of God, the problem of evil and whether or not God is the cause of evil. In it you'll find the teaching of the oldest and biggest church.
July 10 at 1:30pm · Like
Franky
Well in a thread like this feel free to support claims with reasons, then say where you got them, but don't just tell me to go read a book lol, otherwise ill send you a, reading list as well and there's no fun in that
July 10 at 1:50pm · Like
Joseph
Ah, but if I tried it'd be predigesting your food for you. You ate neither illiterate nor uneducated. If you're gonna bring up something like this of your own volition you'd better be prepared to do more research.
July 10 at 2:27pm · Like
Joseph
Besides that, I have brought up philosophical objections to your faith which you have not answered. How does Calvinism not make God the worst bastard that ever lived?
July 10 at 2:36pm · Like
Jim
I was going to post a flippant remark on sovereignty, but then I read the conversation. Wow. At a certain point the question ceases to be 'how sick is your god' and becomes 'how sick are you'. Those who worship a genocidal, murdering pedophile really ought to ask themselves, "How sick is this that I'm doing?"
July 10 at 2:52pm · Like
Cameron
You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to the potter, “You know nothing”? Isaiah 29:16...Who are you to judge God good or bad? Seems to me that a God that just sits back and watches evil happen but has no sovereignty over it is worse than a God that uses EVERYTHING to the good of those who love him!
July 10 at 3:47pm · Like
Joseph
A god who has directly been responsible for evil entering into the world in the first place, when it was completely within his power to stop evil entering into the world or simply not to create the world, is not benevolent.
July 10 at 4:00pm · Like
Joseph
Your understanding of God's sovereignty demands that you concede him to have directly willed Adam's fall, removing Adam's culpability and the root of sin. This makes all the evil in the world the result of God's whim. Shall we do evil that good may come? God forbid! And why should we not do evil that good may come but he may?
July 10 at 4:02pm · Like
Joseph
If you accuse God of doing evil that good may come then you accuse him of breaking his word. This is something that he cannot do.
July 10 at 4:06pm · Like
Cameron
I believe that Adam had a choice...and once he chose we all chose! For, any of us in his same situation would have made the same choice!
July 10 at 4:16pm · Like
Joseph
Then God is not sovereign in the way you've been arguing, for he relinquished control over Adam's choice. That, or Adam didn't really have a choice because he was incapable of rendering another choice, namely to obey God. This would still make it God's fault if he built Adam in such a way that he would have no other inclination than to take the fruit.
July 10 at 4:19pm · Like