DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Satanists Seize On Hobby Lobby To Test The Limit Of Religious Freedom

You can do whatever you want. It's just that He knows what you're going to choose.

While it's a complex issue to wrap your head around - at the same time, it's not that tough.

"you have free will, but you're path has already been determined"

uhhh....ok.

The bible is clear that if you're gay then don't have sex with people of the same sex. They can chose to carry their cross or to throw it down.

Let those non - believers be. It is sad to observe the obvious unhappiness, bitterness, and lack of direction and faith within their posts. It is their choice.

In my life, those who live with God in their hearts are content, happy and secure knowing their life is unfolding just as God planned. That in itself, brings contentment to one's life. That is all I need to know.

No.

You have free will. God is all knowing, and He/She/It allows you to make whatever decisions you make - God just knows what decision you'll make before you do.

I'll be done now.

Let those non - believers be. It is sad to observe the obvious unhappiness, bitterness, and lack of direction and faith within their posts. It is their choice.

that doesn't make any sense. at all.

As I posted earlier in this discussion, my life was sad, depressing, and horrible under Baptist religion. I was mocked and ridiculed daily and picked upon by bullies who were sons of Pastors and Deacons within Baptist school. It was not until I left that I actually was respected for who I was and treated the same.

Claiming that living under God is somehow happier by being picked upon daily by those who claim to live it is an "interesting" observation, to say the least.

As I posted earlier in this discussion, my life was sad, depressing, and horrible under Baptist religion. I was mocked and ridiculed daily and picked upon by bullies who were sons of Pastors and Deacons within Baptist school. It was not until I left that I actually was respected for who I was and treated the same.

Claiming that living under God is somehow happier by being picked upon daily by those who claim to live it is an "interesting" observation, to say the least.

Sorry you had that unfortunate experience.

and I have faith in the Universe

I have no idea what that means.

I have no idea what that means.

my same reaction when people say they have faith in god

If you believe in God, it's a living, active thing.. the universe is an inanimate object... I don't understand how one can say they have faith in an inanimate object.. it's like saying you have faith in a rock.

But CHS has responded so I will look into this person he cited and possibly ask him some questions in PM if that is his choice so I can try to understand...

god is a living active thing?

how come nobody has posted his address yet?

does he get a ton of fan mail?

whats his phone number?

if you're a Druid/pagan whatever, or believe in mother nature, than the universe is absolutely a living thing.

I haven't seen god.

but i've seen mother nature.

Modern bibles may be clear on this but it hasn't always been. The word homosexual wasn't even added to any Bible translation until 1958 and the word translated as homosexual in modern Bibles is based off a word Paul invented. There were several words in Greek that Paul could have used to describe male/male sex but instead chose to use a word that has been rarely used since. So rarely that Greek scholars have said the best evidence of the word is that it points to bestiality or shrine prostitution.

Is having sex with your wife on her period a sin? Is a single person dating someone a sin? Modern Christians have expanded upon simple terms such as Adultery and Fornication to include ever-expanding sex acts as sinful, but cleverly ignore others as being behind the times and therefore not really "sins" now. Why is polygamy practiced in the Bible (even among men the Bible admired!) but a sin among Christians today?

What? He certainly did. He created Lucifer, and he even put the tree in the garden. He created temptation itself. Also as the scripture says:



God is advertised as All Good, All Knowing, and All Powerful, but he can only be 2 of the three *at best* because of how it is laid out in the Bible. Even if he made Lucifer as "good" and Lucifer turned evil on his own, God would have known this and had the capability to prevent this, but he chooses not too. He's either not all good because he let it happen anyway, not all knowing because he DIDN'T know lucifer would become evil, or not all powerful because he wanted to ensure lucifer stayed good but didn't have the capability.

It's not free will if he knows what you're doing...

If you know a man, who will kill the killer of his child if he has the chance, and you put him in the room, with a loaded gun, and he shoots and kills the man, did he exercise his own free will, or not?

I can make ANYTHING i choose to be a living, animated thing, if we are going to talk about "faith"

so if you can say God is real, with zero proof, then CHS can say he has faith in the universe.

I can also say I believe in The Matrix.

As a matter of fact, i can make up a religion that is the direct opposite of christianity, and you have zero proof that it's the wrong religion, because "faith" isn't proof based.

I have no problem with you believing, but don't tell others they can't believe in what they choose to.

I do not believe that God created sin, but that he allowed the freedom of will so that if someone wanted to sin, they were able to do so. God did not create us to be robots.

I suppose that I look at it like this:

God created the angels, including Lucifer. Lucifer created evil and sin.

If you create your child, and your child creates some horrific invention, did you create it? Of course not. You created the one who created it, but you did not do so yourself.

I think the Bible makes it pretty clear God created everything, which by definition would include sin.



This is a valid criticism for us because we are not omnipotent. We don't know how our children will turn out. But God is held to a lower standard by theists and I don't know why. If we look at Adam & Eve another way you could make the argument that Adam & Eve were *JUST FINE* on their way to not sinning, but Lucifer had to tempt them to eat of the tree. God creates the temptation for sin (the tree), and the tempter (Satan) but denies any and all wrongdoing that man ate of the tree.

Let me put it to you this way:

There once was a man in the early 1800s who hated his brother and wanted to kill him, but he didn't want to become guilty of sin. He heard about a violent slave who killed his last two masters, so he purchased the slave and gave the slave to his brother as a gift. Now if the slave kills his brother, who does God find guilty of sin?

Or what if you had the ability to travel into the future and you find your child caused the death and destruction of 3 billion people on earth. If you go back in time and raise this child anyway, aren't you at least partially responsible? You knew what the outcome would be.

To say God is not responsible is to find the people in those last 2 paragraphs not responsible. It does not make logical sense to me.

To say God is not responsible is to find the people in those last 2 paragraphs not responsible. It does not make logical sense to me.

If we look at Adam & Eve another way you could make the argument that Adam & Eve were *JUST FINE* on their way to not sinning, but Lucifer had to tempt them to eat of the tree. God creates the temptation for sin (the tree), and the tempter (Satan) but denies any and all wrongdoing that man ate of the tree.

In your 1st example, I would think that both the brother who gave the slave to his his brother with the knowledge that he would kill his brother, and the slave himself, would likely both be guilty of murder. (and this assumes that the slave did not have a valid cause for killing any of them)

What if a man set a bomb to kill his brother ..... is the bomb at fault, or is the man? Well, both are responsible for the death of the man in one manner or another. One as the tool of death, and one as the instigator. If we have free will, then the instigator is not God, but rather the man himself is.

Either God gave us free will, or He did not.

You have beer in the fridge and liquor in the cabinet, your 15 year old has been told repeatedly to stay out of it. You go out to dinner with your wife one night and come home to find him passed out on the living room floor with beer and liquor bottles around him. The question is, how harshly do you punish yourself?

Lets say you had God's ability of all knowledge. If you had predetermined knowledge that your son was going to get drunk, or worse die from alcohol poisoning, you would allow it to happen? And you feel that morally you were in the right? If you knew your son would die that night, you would just let him do it? That sounds very immoral to me.

The only way your comparison works is if God is *NOT* all knowing, then we can accept that he just didn't know that Adam&Eve would sin. Otherwise you are saying God is... worse than us. Many evangelical pastors say maybe you shouldn't keep beer in the house as a temptation, yet God gets a free pass?

God created the world, and rather than merely wipe it out of existence when sin came along, He chose to implement a plan of salvation for the people of the world.

God knew that not only Lucifer, but that other angels would also fall with him .... yet he allowed it. Why? Frankly, I don't know. Maybe one day I'll ask God .... but at that time it probably won't be important to me, because evil and sin will be nothing but a fading memory, and eternal joy will be all encompassing.

No one has all of the answers. It is like those who somehow want us to "prove our faith". Ummmmmm .... it's called faith, because you have to take a part of it .... on faith. However, when you have faith, you also receive confirmation of that faith inside. I can't explain it, but I have zero doubt that Jesus Christ will return t this earth, gather up His followers, and judge the world. On that day, I would not want to be one who defied Jesus, and who refused to follow Him.

Here's the funny thing. In today's world, what does it cost a man to believe in Jesus Christ? Maybe some social ostracizing, the loss of a few people who would not be friends with him because of his beliefs, and very little else. Other than that, the only thing that it costs a man to follow Christ is to try and give up his sins, and to trust in a power larger than himself. However, many love their sins more than almost anything, and they trust themselves more than God ..... despite the evidence of God all around us. None of us could create a single rock on our own, let alone all of the stars in the sky, or the splendor of a rainbow ..... yet so many somehow see themselves as their own gods ...... and that pride, I believe, will be their eternal downfall.

In many ways, the Disciples of Jesus Christ had it extremely difficult, because they were continually harassed, and most were put to death in very painful ways simply for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ ..... but on the other hand, they got to see the risen Jesus Christ, who took them instantly from a defeated room full of cowards (following His crucification) planning their exit strategy, to a group of men who suffered long, and who died painfully for their Lord.

As I said earlier, no one has all of the answers. You ask some questions I have asked myself over the years, and that I cannot answer completely. In the end, though, those things do not matter. Not to me, anyway. In some manner, sin entered the world. How that happened, I do not know. It obviously happened some time before Eve and Adam took the fruit of the tree they were not supposed to eat. Man, isn't that really human too? They were allowed everything in the garden, except for the fruit of one tree, yet they could not resist that temptation. Why would God create us in that way? I don't know. In the end, it doesn't matter, because God gives us a way out of sin, if we will only accept it. Unfortunately, many, if not most, will refuse to do so. I shudder to think what it would be like to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, in all of His heavenly glory, and tell Him, to His face, that you refused to believe in Him while you lived upon this earth. I have tried to imagine what it would be like if it were me and I bet that the thoughts will race .... trying to come up with excuse after excuse, but realizing that no excuse could be ever begin to be good enough. I truly pity those who will have to try and justify themselves to the Living God at that moment.

However, that is the choice that God allows us to make for ourselves. I made my choice. God allows you to make the same choice, or to make the opposite choice, if you wish. I do hop that those who are on the path to making that decision will, at least, read the Bible before finalizing that decision. Maybe even speak to someone far more qualified than I am to answer the questions that have been brought up here. If your soul is at risk, then don't you deserve to have as much information as possible?

First, you start with the presumption that him dying is the worst thing in the world.. it would seem like the worst thing in the world to me at the time, but is it really the worst thing? If my son is peacefully in heaven and I take up the cause of underage binge drinking and it saves 10 other kids from making the same mistake, is it the worst thing? Yours is a somewhat selfish line of thinking that if something bad happens to me or to somebody I love, that it is the worst thing and God either therefore doesn't exist or doesn't love me.

Do you have kids? I have two and watching them fail, when you know you could help them, is one of the hardest things a parent has to do... but if you don't let them make decisions on their own, even though you are pretty sure they are going to fail, then they never learn, they never grow, they never learn what failure feels like or what it feels like to overcome the odds and succeed... they never learn how to make better choices...

Here is the thing, I've already stated that I don't think our future is predetermined, I don't think God sees one future for each of us and that there is nothing we can do to change it. That method of thinking sort of flies in the face of everything else that the Bible says about changing your ways, telling people about Jesus, working to overcome sin, etc.. if the outcome is predetermined, why care?

I think that God sees many possible paths for our lives and gives us the freedom to make many decisions along the way. I also think that with our limited cognitive ability, its very hard for us to contemplate how an omniscient being "thinks"... All of your examples are very linear, if A happens, then bad thing B happens and if you knew B was going to happen, then why not stop A from happening.... That makes perfect sense on a human scale... God is not on a human scale.

Trust me when I tell you, reconciling God's omniscience with my own free will is something that I struggle with, something I think about a lot.

Let's put it another way; a way that absolves the child. You are in your living room, and so is your child, when a rapist enters the room, and begins raping the child. You have the ability to at least try to stop this from happening, but you do not. You just watch, and let it occur. Maybe you stop the rapist after he is done raping, but no sooner. Do you bear any responsibility for the rape occurring? In most US jurisdictions you would be charged for being an accessory to the crime. Yet in the case of God, we say he is blameless.

I have a 4 month old. It's simultaneously amazing, scary, nerve-wracking, and alot of fun too. I agree with you that there are important lessons in failure in a child that they need to learn. Every lesson is easier as a child; whether it be learning a second or third language, advanced mathematics, or the importance of failure.

I don't ask these questions as logic twisters, or to stump people, or in some silly attempt at changing someones minds. They are just questions I have. I've spent a good deal of the last 5 years soul searching. Most of the time the end result I get for why God permitted man to sin is "because." Either because we can't comprehend God, or because it's in God's plan, or what have you. I just haven't found a better answer than that... and perhaps that's just how it will be. Do I think the answer good enough? No. But I'll keep asking to those who speak like they might know, because maybe I will find the answer wink