erk... it's at times like this that I wish we were sat around a table in a pub somewhere because face to face it would be much easier for me to tease out some kind of understanding.

I get why A => A is vacuous. What I don't get is A. 'A' seems to be a seemingly arbitrarily awarded characteristic or a definition of God that enables the deduction 'God can't sin'. I don't see how 'God can't sin', can be a stand alone fact, how you can start there, because it comes from the premise that God is exclusively benevolent. God is exclusively benevolent therefore he can't sin, which really seems to me to be equivalent to 'god can't sin because he can't sin'.

There's a deduction being made and a conclusion being drawn, how you can you just start at that deduction/conclusion? Don't you need at least one premise?

I don't think it's ridiculous, at worst I'd say that it makes no sense to me, but I might not understand it.

No, this presumption is incorrect. We cannot take God's perspective because that understanding is not available to us.

Not at all. Since I rejected your opening presumption, this reasoning simply has no basis.

Given my comments above I am left with no conflict.

I think I pretty clearly told you that no a deduction and conclusion is NOT being made. Only an assumption. And RLK endorsed my explanation of this.

As in, he is not saying "God is exclusively benevolent therefore god can't sin". He is ONLY saying "God is exclusively benevolent". He is only making that assertion. The phrase "god can't sin" isn't being deduced, its just a rewording of the initial assumption. Its like asserting A and then later asserting A' where A' is exactly the same as A but written in french. But it is not A=>B where B is a distinctly different thing.

People can assume whatever they like. You or I don't have to find that assumption justified (this is where you should be attacking it), but for the purposes of logic we simply begin with this or that assumptions and proceed from there. So RLK has an assumption that there exists a deity whereby what he means by deity as as an intrinsic property this all good non sinning nature. It is part of the assumption, not a conclusion he is attempting to logically deduce.

Your criticism of him was that he was making an empty deduction of the form A therefore A. He wasn't. He was only making as assertion.

If I may, I think a more standard response to OrP may be something like this: we use the bible as a guide for what God finds to be right or wrong. However, given the asymmetry between humans and God, our understanding of His morality and what He finds to be good is so imperfect that even when it might appear in our limited understanding that God is not doing good, he is. We are thus left to try and do the best we can, and put our faith in God to help us do that.

I am not sure what you are trying to say with "standard response". If you mean that this is a response that would be more common among Christians, then perhaps you are correct. If you are saying that this is a better statement of my point of view, then I would have to object.

At this point I feel that my statement captured what I was trying to say pretty accurately.

this

Do you feel that parents have no obligation to take care of their children after they're born because they've already given them the greatest gift--which is existence?

Do you feel that those Christian parents who drown their children in bath tubs are exempt from criticism because they gave the children the exquisite gift of life, owe them nothing more, and can take that gift back any time they like?

After a gift is given, can the giver come along and take it back any time they like?

If someone commits a crime and justice prevails, they are dealt a fair and suitable punishment for that crime. This is basically what justice is, isn't it? That the perpetrator might be forgiven of their misdeed is beside the point. But if forgiveness meant that the perp was no longer punished for the crime, then has justice still be served? I'd say clearly not. Forgiveness is through God's mercy, is it not? The deserved punishment is waived. In what way is "justice always provided for"?


(As an aside, some atheists describe an illogical nature of God as being both omnipotent and omniscient, these being contradictory traits. Scripture does not use those words, and the notion that they are contradictory is a weak one imo. Instead, there is another pair of traits that are scriptural, and that are much more clearly contradictory: that God is just and God is merciful. But anyway...)


Re: the former, it might be considered unjust because the entire nation is not actually "wicked" or, if there was some truth to the "wickedness" label, that wiping out the entire nation (including children, pregnant women etc) because of the transgressions of those few is unjust.
Re: the latter, as I mentioned above, justice and mercy are contradictory actions. Showing mercy is withholding the justice deserved, and as a matter of definition would be unjust.

This is why I don't consider Christian morality to be viable. Telling a lie, sleeping with someone before being married, killing someone, are not the same thing. In fact, none are necessarily bad.


But I think I forgot the original point being made, so this might be wandering off topic!

Considering that God allowed Satan and the demons to remain in heaven for an unspecified (by human standards, very long) time after Satan became an opposer/sinner, is there a reason God can't allow sinful humans into his presence long enough to convince them of the error of their ways, or to correct the ignorance of non-Christians?

Personally, it would only take a few seconds to convince me. Do you believe that Satan was in heaven for hundreds or thousands of years, but a few seconds is too much to stomach my presence?

The views you hold, while they make some sense, are not biblical. If we are talking about the Christian God and how he is depicted, I would say you've not quite grasped the Christian fundamentals. Hope that doesn't come off too rude, it's not my intent.

You should first realize that you are applying your own moral code, what you consider to be bad and not so bad. This really is irrelevant, since what you and I think is good has no bearing on what God considers good. This has been a theme of this thread.

I'm not saying that all sins "are the same", whatever you take that to mean, only that God requires perfection, so even if you've committed a "small" sin, you've already failed and will be found guilty. How God chooses to judge each person is a mystery, and I'm not trying to imply that everyone will be judged the same.

I'm not sure how long Satan was in heaven after he sinned, but it's not about evil being in God's presence, that is slightly incorrect, or else God could never have spoken to Moses like he did, or the other numerous biblical examples, because all people are sinful.

Heaven is spoken about like marriage. There are numerous metaphors, and marriage itself is supposed to be a likeness of our relationship with God. The Church is called the bride and Christ is called the bridegroom, heaven is referred to the marriage supper, and we will be one with Christ, like a man and wife. God is not going to unite himself with sin. Just like a bride wears a white dress symbolizing purity, God requires us to be pure, white like snow. That's what the "God not uniting himself with sin" refers to, not just simply avoiding someone sinful in his vicinity.

As for God "convincing" you, that's what life is about. Christ died for sins, and all you have to do is accept the gift, you have your whole life. Just like the two thieves on the cross, one accepted and the other did not.

Some words about suffering and evil:

First of all we don't know anything. We are just here, just existing for a moment. When someone tells us the truth about our existence, we still would not know anything. Unless the truth is shown to us and the knowledge of its secrets are taught to us, we don't know anything. All we can do is speculating. So all I will write here is speculative. As we do have the ability to think rationally, I will try to do it in a rational way for that it at least makes sense and is comprehensible.

Assuming God exists, the first question which comes to lots of minds is: why did he create world and me and ....everything else in this world? Regarding this thread why did he create a world which makes us suffer and why did he create an evil which misleads us?
First of all: God didn't create this world not for that people don't suffer here and not for that people don't sin. This seems to be rational. Didn't God want us to suffer or to sin, he would have send us to a world, where suffering and sinning is impossible.
Conclusion: God did create this world for that we suffer here and we sin here.

From an Abrahamic point of view, we are even created so weak that we cannot withstand evil and we cannot not suffer unless God supports us. They say you must try it but from trying you don't get there.

But if this is the case than suffering and sinning might not be 'bad' at all. This leads me to think about the nature of suffering and sinning.

Is suffering bad? Suffering has two ends: One, it leads some people to break and two, it leads some people to become stronger.
I take an extreme example of suffering: people who are tortured because of their (political, religious...) belief. Some break, some give up and some although they have been tortured and must fear to be tortured again as soon as they are free they continue even harder to fight back and don't give up on their belief.
One of the most effective torture methods is sleep deprivation. On the other hand someone who wants to become like Jesus or Buddha god like, he will not success unless he overcomes his sleep. From a medical point of view, there is nothing worse for a human body than sleep deprivation. From a 'mystical' point of view there is nothing worse for the human soul than sleeping. It seems all the sins come from sleeping. It seems that in your dreams evil motivates the basic instincts in a way that you cannot withstand them, you might withstand for a moment or for some days, but at the end you lose the fight almost always. (BTW: Don't try to overcome your sleep, unless there is someone like Jesus or Buddha who did learn not to sleep and supports you from inside, you will lose your mind)
So the men of God (all of the prophets etc.) they go the way of suffering not the way of comfort. God doesn't like comfort of body.
Conclusion:
Suffering is not bad from nature. It is only bad for those who break (those are usually those who don't have faith, and I don't mean here only the faith in god, one only needs to have faith in good and one will not break). The others become stronger. A small mosquito ruffles badly a rich man, but someone like Mandela or Gandhi is not thrown by anything easily.
So if god exists, it seems he did create suffering for that people have the opportunity to become stronger.

The next problem is evil, why evil? Why making the world in a way that all people (inclusive Jesus and all the other prophets and god likes and atheists and just everyone without exception) grown up as sinners? On the other hand god says as long as this world exists, you can repent your sins and I will forgive.
To what leads when one feels he is a sinner? He will not see him self as godly but as 'bad' and as 'weak' (he couldn't resist the temptation) and whoever discovers the 'bad' and the 'weak' in himself, he will also learn to forgive others. And not only to forgive others but also learns to mantle others weaknesses.

I will not and it wouldn't also be ok to write here a long talk, what I did write was already to long so, here is the last conclusion:
God seems have to created evil out of 3 reasons:
1) That we learn to forgive.
2) That we learn to mantle others weaknesses: At the end what is more difficult than not to criticize others?
3) It seems to be clear that god loves to forgive! Otherwise he wouldn't have created so many sinners.

And it seems they might be some kind of punishment for those who repent and/or don't repent, at the end God loves to forgive and will forgive everyone.

You might say: wait, we must all suffer and sin and god did create such an awful world cause he loves to forgive?

But you will not be able to name anything what is more beautiful to learn than:
Forgiving and mantling others weaknesses

And you will not be able to name any characteristic which is higher than:

'LOVING TO FORGIVE'

I was contrasting my views on morality against those of the Bible, that I see differences between lying and killing, but the Biblical God does not differentiate between them (it does seem a bit odd, given this, that there is at least one unforgivable sin).

Regardless, my point was that mercy, by definition, means that justice is not served (I commented "repent and you'll be completely forgiven of every sinful act"). That all sins are considered equally unrighteous by God doesn't change this. Hope that clarifies.

Well, I appreciate you tackling the question.

You said, "Biblically, God cannot be with sin. If your sins are not forgiven, you cannot enter heaven." I don't want to play the semantic word games that are so common in RGT, but I think those two statements are pretty clear, and match up with what 99.999% of Christians (or at least the apologists) say about the subject--namely that sinners cannot enter heaven even for a short time because God cannot (or will not) be around sinners.

Yet Satan was supposedly in heaven with God at least from the time he tempted Eve to the time of Job, which was about 1900 years. I'm certain that upon my death, just 1900 seconds would be enough for me to correct my ignorance about God's existence, gain and display a genuine faith in Him and in Jesus' sacrifice, and have time left over for some harp lessons. But according to Christian apologists, I would not even be allowed to enter heaven for a second.

Analogies are meant to make concepts clearer, but I think addressing the question of sinners not being allowed into heaven with your analogy of heaven (ostensibly a place) being somehow like marriage (a relationship) only muddies the issue.

By letting people see heaven, and see what they'd be giving up, God would not be uniting Himself with sin, he would be ensuring that people were fully informed when making a decision with eternal repercussions.

I think this is another inconsistency. God judges us worthy of heaven or not based on whether we accept a gift that most humans who have ever lived have not been aware of (despite earnest searching), and when even God's very existence is in doubt. This is apparently because the God that wants us all to attain heaven intentionally hides Himself from us.

I kinda dropped this thread after people decided they wanted to play semantics instead of deal with the content but,

This whole thing is something that made total sense to me while I was a Christian and seemed really ****ing weird once I stepped back.

The idea that God simply can't forgive someone "just because He wants to" but can forgive someone because an innocent dude was tortured in their place is just straight up weird.

On top of that, if the punishment for sin is death, and Christ pays for sins by being tortured to death so we don't have to be, there's no real reason we shouldn't also be able to enter heaven by paying our own debt. Christ's sinlessness is what gives him the ability to accept the punishment on behalf of others, but there's no reason we shouldn't be able to pay our own debt.

If we assume that the punishment for sin is not physical death, but damnation in hell, Jesus ends up skipping out on that and going to heaven anyway, so he's not really enduring the punishment of eternity in hell... it's pretty much just a symbolic gesture.

And as always, keep in mind that even if you buy into all that stuff, all those convoluted rules exist purely because God set the rules that way, on purpose.

I'm kind of in a hurry, I'll respond to you guys when I have a little more time Deuces and Beaucoup. Just one thing that caught my eye is the bolded.

Theoretically, if you never sinned, then you would not need salvation, your debt must be atoned for by a "spotless lamb", see the OT. The reason why Jesus' sacrifice was acceptable for atoning sins, is that he was spotless. How do you figure you'll pay your own debt since you've already sinned, not sure I'm understanding you here?

I'll answer you in full later, just wanted to throw that out there for clarification.

I also don't claim to have all the answers, I'm only explaining the common interpretation of the bible concerning these things. All this flies out the window if you don't believe the bible.

Forgiveness is one thing; but life, another: "the wages of sin is death; but the gift of G-d is eternal life in Messiah Yeshua our Lord" (Ro 6:23).

I think it's erroneous for humans ( other than Yeshua the Mashiach ) to be able to think they can correctly assess the morality of any action/inaction of Hashem ( "G-d"), because almost all thinking human beings are essentially morally depraved - so much so, why on earth would Hashem save any human being today? It's only by His grace, mercy and love; despite humanity's total depravity, there is a Way. In addition, human beings do not have the requisite knowledge and spiritual understanding that Hashem has, although Hashem does give some light through the Ruach HaKodesh to some human beings.

The truth is that there is sufficient food in the world to feed everyone in the world, but "G-d" works through human beings: whether to feed starving/hungry people, to preach the "good news"/gospel, or to take away the sins of the world. If one believes to have been called to serve "G-d" by helping eradicate world hunger, then one ought to actively serve to do this; but not everyone has the same calling and different people often have different gifts. The biggest need today is spiritual, not physical.

One word doesn't seem to have the seriousness that it once had: teshuvah ~repentance; e.g., see the Wikipedia article on teshuva(h). Also, passages in the New Testament literature mention not just "turning from sin" but "turning to G-d".

It seems rather strong to say that God does not differentiate between sins. For starters, God examines the heart, and context is always essential. For instance, if God destroyed Sodom because of their wickedness, why did he not destroy every other city, since they would all be seen just as sinful to him? In the book of Acts, Ananias is killed for lying, but Moses goes seemingly unpunished for doing the same. God obviously does not look at all sins the same way, but rather your motivations and intentions are more important.

As for God not being just because he forgives every sinful act, it seems like it is more a matter of perspective. God says that Christ dying was the justice he requires, if you do not believe that to be true, you are entitled to that. Again though, does you or I deciding what is just or unjust really matter objectively? Biblically, God is just, while still forgiving sins.

I am not trying to downplay your objection, if you do not believe it is just, that is fair, I am only pointing out what the bible says regarding this, which is that God is both perfectly just and merciful.

Semantics = content. People who want to be loose in their argumentation often fail to recognize this, and then wonder why people don't think their arguments are any good.

It's one thing to say that you don't agree with/believe the message being communicated. It's quite another to try to claim logical problems with it. (See the responses to Mightboosh.)

If you don't think the message of the Bible makes sense (because you think God can sin), that's fine. But just say that and don't try to couch it in terms that need to be redefined on the fly in order for your argument to proceed. It just doesn't work.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying, perhaps I was not all that clear. When I say that God cannot be with sin, I am not implying that you could not be around God. There will be a judgement, and presumably people will literally stand before God on his throne. There are numerous examples of God being in the presence of people. In Job, God speaks to Satan, and while Jesus was on earth, he surrounded himself with sinners, even though he was sinless.

The marriage metaphor should not muddy the waters, it is supposed to be the clear distinction between merely standing before God, and being with God. When we accept Christ we are made pure and are ready to "marry" Christ. This is very different than just being in the vicinity of God. Your objection is that you would not be allowed in God's presence long enough to believe, but that is not the picture the bible presents. You will stand before God, but if you have not accepted him before the judgement, it is too late. Take Matthew 7:21-23: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

So it is not about seeing heaven and then accepting Christ, since people will dispute heaven with the Lord on the day of judgement, so obviously they believe by then, and are in his presence.

How God deals with other people is somewhat of a mystery, but the bible does say that he judges people as he sees fit. I never understood this objection, to decline God based on the fact that one is not aware how God will judge people that may not have heard of Christ. Ironically, those people may end up forgiven, and others that objected to God because of them, not forgiven. If you believe God is just and merciful, you should trust that he will take care of those people.

It's not necessarily about not believing the bible, but about not believing the common interpretation. The real value comes in the interpretation.

You seem to have accepted a rather literal interpretation, but there is a lot that doesn't make any sense with this interpretation beyond the few points mentioned in this thread.

Jesus said, "I disclose my mysteries to those that are worthy of my mysteries."

He said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find."

Also, "For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed."

I responded to this pages back. You took issue with my changing of the word "ought" when that word isn't even present in most English translations, and what I said in the post you took issue with does accurately reflect the majority of English translations, as well as (I believe) the obvious spirit of the text.

Okay, well this might not apply to you then. But here is the reason for my presumption.

Most Christians are moral realists, that is, they think that there are true moral statements, and they are not moral skeptics (they think we can know at least some of these moral statements). Furthermore, I think they would say that if any moral statement is true, then it would also be true from God's perspective. Thus, since they know some moral statements are true, then they also know that some moral statements are true from God's perspective. For instance, they might know that the Holocaust was evil, and thus was evil from God's perspective as well. On this view, if it wasn't evil from God's perspective, then it wasn't truly evil after all.

Just out of curiosity, do you accept the story of Satan as an angel that was cast out of heaven for leading a rebellion against God?