I don't agree with Wizard-50's views on God. But I respect him for answering these questions patiently. I don't have a problem with people who believe in God who are not rubbing their beliefs on others and are also willing to listen to the other points of views.

I'm cool with that as well.. but I just don't understand why a person would believe in the concept he believes in. His belief is basically that humans are this low life form that does not deserve anything , it actually deserves all kinds of beatings , punishments, abuse, etc, but God is so good and he doesn't do that so he is to be worshiped for..

I just don't get it.. sounds very masochistic..

So any sin at all is worthy of the death penalty? even the smallest tinyest sin ? ( or are all sins equal in your eyes?) At least I am getting a clearer picture of why you need jesus to have died for you, so that you dont have to die.

I am a sinner. I have, do, and will always fall short of God's standard of righteousness. Only by Jesus Christ, God become a man in humbleness to live a sinless life and conquer sin and death, can i be given His righteousness.

God is shown throughout the Bible to be wrathful. God's temper burns on a long wick, and he is quick to forgive. I believe mankind has/does/will deserve much more wrath than God imparts on us. We take for granted how patient He is, and how often he forgives. Though we are deserving of neither.


God's wrath is righteous, because we deserve it. To say that He is unforgiving is crazy. I thought you'd read the Bible. Yes God was worthy to be worshiped always. God is unchanging. Different circumstances, a different covenant, but just as worthy of worship.

God sent the prophets Elijah and Elisha to them. If you read previously to this passage in 2 Kings 2, Elisha just finished cleansing their unclean water to bring health, and to stop miscarriages. Mind this all happened after the people of Bethel(where the youths are from) witnessed Elijah perform miracles, bestow the spirit of the Lord on Elisha, then get taken to Heaven. How gracious is God! His revelation upon the people of Bethel is astounding. Yet these youths rebel against Elisha, and in effect God. It seems to me that it fits into a deterministic manner.

Thank you. It does take a lot of effort to patiently listen, consider, and address various issues people take with the Bible. Sometimes I slip and rage, but I do try to put thought and effort into posting.

It would be cool if God would hold himself to the same standards, but he doesn't...

sick Masochism...

Either you are a psychopath(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy) or you are brainwashed to believe in this nonsense and you don't realize that...

Sorry , I still don't see any justification to the killing of those 40/50(whatever) young kids/adults (whatever) ...

It's pretty sick!

Your cliff notes are inaccurate and poorly represent my beliefs.

I believe we were created in God's image. Pretty far from a low life form.

God creates us and blesses us with many Godly qualities. You'll notice in Genesis that we are the only creation that He 'breathes' life into instead of simply creating with his 'hands'. God, our creator, continually blesses us. Faithfully serves us in our needs and desires. Yet we choose apart from Him. We choose the ungodly, the sinful. And yes I believe that is deserving of death.

I def agree with this.

That said, what he's saying is insane. That's not a personal attack against you, Wizard. I agree that you're very patient and courteous. I'm 100% attacking your crazy beliefs. I agree with gskowal that you seem brainwashed; and you do seem otherwise intelligent, which makes it even more disturbing.

gskowal, I'm not responding to any of your unreasonable and/or disrespectful posts.

Thank you i guess. If you're up for it feel free to discuss my beliefs. Operating on the basis that the Bible is the infallible word of God.

*grunch*

Nietszche says that Christianity, and the story of the crucifixion got muddled up by one of the apostles (Paul, I believe).

What Jesus did was create a philosophy that was universally applicable, for anyone in the world that was suffering. It was basically another form of Buddhism.

The apostles and the resulting religion known as Christianity created all of these stories of sin and guilt, etc.

So, in short, Nietszche agrees with you. Therefore, /thread.

1. he created us in a way where sinning is unavoidable.
2. no we don't "choose apart from Him"
3. "And yes I believe that is deserving of death" - what deserves death? what sin deserves death? GOD designs us in such way that we are prone to sinning and then we deserve death for it? Well, if GOD would have designed us in a better way it would have been avoidable. Nothing stopped him from creating everyone with all the knowledge , or in heaven where there is no sin. PLAIN and SIMPLE.

Someone who created a being who is prone to doing bad **** cannot blame the creation for making bad choices.

Why do you believe you are a sinner?

I think you are missing the point of my question, but let's just keep going to see where this rabbit hole leads.

How can one be wrathful yet also quick to forgive? How does mankind "deserve" God's wrath if God is so much higher and better than us? This is like getting angry at an ant for not listening to me, and after asking nicely for 1 year, drowning them all after a burn a few with a magnifying glass.

Again, *why* do we deserve it. You need to answer that part. You keep saying we deserve it because we are sinners, but thats just glossing over the question. WHY does "we are sinners" = "we deserve God's wrath"?

I say God is unforgiving because he is unforgiving. For an entity who is so powerful and so much above humans, he appears to be fickle and easy to anger, and based on his actions in both the OT and NT, its clear that although he does forgive, there are many times where he chooses *not* to forgive. It doesn't matter if God is unforgiving because of XYZ, the point is he is unforgiving, and for an entity that is suppose to be so great and worthy of worship, he acts like a child.

It's non-deterministic because in today's world, you are incapable of determining whether God's grace will be bestowed on someone or not, regardless of whether they are a Christian or what they do. Everything in today's world that you call "God's grace" has happened enough times with non-believers and believers alike that there is no correlation, just pure chance. Me praying to God is the same as praying to a jug of milk. If you want to test out this theory I would be happy to oblige.

lol, why cause I'm pointing out your issues? Sorry dude but it seems clear to me that your view of Christianity is MASOCHISTIC. Your responses about HOW HUMANS deserve pain and suffering sound like ramblings of a psychopath.

Again you may find this disrespectful that I am stating this, but I am just stating what I am observing from your posts. Nowhere I am doing this to offend you but rather point out what seems obvious to me from your responses.

So you won't discuss with me cause I am disrespectful(not sure how, while in my responses I claimed for none of my posts are meant to be offending in nature) yet you offer to discuss your beliefs with fds while he just agreed with me.. nice..

For someone claiming to be observant, I thought you could follow why I am not going to have a conversation with you. I thought wrong.

"All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you
'Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World"

Oh I pretty much know why. I am pointing out the obvious and you don't like it.

Here's my conclusion since you don't want to continue the discussion.

Religion has brainwashed you. Religion has made you think that you and everyone around you is unworthy of this life so that they could sell you the idea of GOD rescuing everyone. Sorry but christian dogma fails on many points...

1. Assuming that GOD is omniscient , omnibenevolent and omnipresent he can basically do anything.
2. He creates humans in his image but doesn't give them the same abilities and knowledge.
3. He sets them in the garden telling them not to touch the tree of knowledge of the good and evil.
4. Dumb Adam and Eve since they were not as intelligent as GOD himself fell for a trick of Satan himself who tricked Eve into having the fruit. When God finds out (where was he when Satan was trying to **** around with them?isn't he omnibenevolent? he couldn't step in and tell Satan to **** off? Either he is omnibenevolent and observed the whole thing and didn't want to interfere or he isn't omnibenevolent and the whole bible lies about it later on.
Knowing in advance and observing while it was happened Adam and Eve get tricked and he gets really mad And kicks them out from the garden. Acting like a douchebag.

I can go on and on and on and point out the fallacies of Chrristian dogma...

This video truly delivers. You should watch it...

part 1
http://youtu.be/oUaLbt-0Ic0
part 2
http://youtu.be/e4KiGq-hdJI

Maybe if you'll listen to someone else spew their fallacies you will understand that your ideas are also disturbing...

When given the choice of good/right/godly, or bad/wrong/ungodly(for lack of better terms) i often choose the latter.

I don't think wrathful and forgiving are mutually exclusive qualities. In your analogy, give the ant a reasonable amount of understanding, asking for an excessively long time(depending on the situation), and then offering the ant even more blessings and opportunities(for example a prophet to perform miracles, or sacrifice your firstborn son in exchange for his 'not listening'). I think that's a better analogy.



I think the closer you get to my analogy than yours, the more this makes sense.

Seems more like the actions of a father to me.



I'm confused. I thought we were discussion the determinism of God in 2 Kings 2.

Here are a few questions for you guys if you don't mind considering them and answering. Assuming God exists, etc.

1) Is free will a good or bad quality to be given by God?

2) Is free will still free will if God in His omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence were to interfere or intervene when one chose wrongly?

3) Would you prefer God to be just or not? If yes, could death ever be considered just? Why/why not?

a)Depends on what type of free will you are referring to since I've heard so many version of it from Christians. Is it good that people have a choice , yes. Is it good that people are going to be punished for eternity for making a bad choice in regards to single belief of accepting his existence or not? NO!

b)Majority of humans that have ever existed never reached maturity therefore free will was unnecessary for them I have addressed this and linked the paper by Greg Paul (http://gregspaul.webs.com/Philosophy&Theology.pdf)

Depenends on how he does it. If he shows up and gives me the knowledge of my options and what could happen when I pick 1st door rather then the 2nd and I understand the consequences then I am still free to make the choice so in this example it is still free will.

God should be just.
What type of death are we talking about?

Thanks for being courteous and respectful in this post. I appreciate it.

Bolded is what I was referring to. The rest is off topic(someone was reading ahead!...or behind i guess? haha).

I meant directly interfering/intervening when we were going to choose wrongly. The way you described it seems more like preventative measures than intervention.

But let's go with your preventative measures idea. It seems that this:

"If he shows up and gives me the knowledge of my options and what could happen when I pick 1st door rather then the 2nd and I understand the consequences then I am still free to make the choice so in this example it is still free will."

is very similar to this:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17


We can discuss both. Would you say that since God gives Adam and Eve the foreknowledge of the consequences, that God's judgment of death is just? I guess answer for physical death and eternal death if your answers differ.

That is why I asked what type of intervention because intervention could mean many things..

On the first look these two may look similar , but as you look the bold text is what makes the difference. When it comes to Adam and Eve they unfortunately did not understand the consequences since understanding them would invalidate the idea that they don't possess the knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit. In order to fully understand what your actions would bring one needs to have a full understanding of the consequences. So in the example of Adam and Eve , God only warned them of Death, but Adam and Eve wouldn't be able to understand what death would mean to them. They did not understand what type of loses they would take, they did not understand the consequences of their actions, hence these two are not the same.

Unfortunately I will disagree about the "God gives Adam and Eve the foreknowledge of the consequences" , nowhere in the story of Genesis does it say that Adam and Eve understand the consequences , and something like this would actually invalidate the idea that they don't know what is good and evil before eating the fruit. It is only after they eat the fruit that they are aware what bad is, what does it mean to go against someone else's requests, etc.

Here's my reasoning. If God exists and if heaven exists there is no need for this life. Why?
1. God should have created all of us in heaven, by not doing so he is causing unnecessary pain , suffering , etc for many and I can't reason a good justification for doing so.
2. As I argued in other thread, majority of humans that have ever existed got to heaven before they reached maturity making this life unnecessary since neither they have learned anything about this life so that it would be useful in heaven or so...

Given these above, I think death as in context of GOD brining it upon people as a type of disciplinary action is unnecessary and avoidable. For everyone who does bad deeds they might have been avoidable if God would actually have explained and given the knowledge to them that would make them think twice about it. And that is possible to do since in heaven nobody sins so why not skip this "test" and let all the creation be happy.

Why would one have to have full/fuller knowledge of good and evil to know something is good or evil? God is telling them this particular thing is good(eat of all other trees), and evil(eat of one tree). Can you explain why they'd have to have full knowledge to know one thing?

If a father, who his child knows to be an expert of mathematics, tells his child that 2+2=4, doesn't that child know that 2+2=4? 4 is the right answer to 2+2. Do they need to have full/fuller knowledge of math to know this? If so is there a quantifiable amount of math before one can know 2+2=4?

Because the words evil or good weren't understood by them neither they had the knowledge what these words mean they are unable to understand the consequences of doing good or evil actions. The bible implies that Adam and Eve were unaware of the distinction between good and bad actions, whatever they were doing seemed to be done by instinct rather then rational thought. For example , a thought like this could never enter Adam's mind..

Eve pissed me off today when she told me to sit and listen to her for 2 more hours, I just felt like leaving her at that moment but it would be pretty mean so I decided to listen her out.

Any internal diologue like this invalidates that Adam and Eve were not aware of what is good and what is bad, since clearly Adam is making a distinction in his mind that not listening Eve out would be mean , hence doing something bad.

Going back to your question, unless someone understands what the word means you are unable to understand what the usage of it would bring. Imagine yourself in France where people speak to you in french and you don't understand what the words mean and then the locals punish you for not understanding it.

but neither Adam or Eve were experts on morals nor they had any understanding what morals are, because if they did then they would be aware of what is evil and bad and distinctions of one act from another.