Pastelland Forum

The Abacus wrote:Well, essentially any decision made has SOME impact, for example choosing between first going a morning stroll to the park or to the supermarket. You could perhaps meet someone new that you wouldn't have met and then experience everything that follows – at least that's the idea.

Of course, to us. But what I'm saying is that a god who is suppose to be all knowing either would know what you would choose and what that would effect, or would know all the possible choices you were to make. My dilemma centers around God's knowingly making individuals whom he knows will reject him and thus be condemned to hell. Call me tender hearted alright, but I haven't yet understood the idea of eternal punishment for anyone, so to essentially make beings who will ultimately "choose" hell, to me, is like "then why make those people?"

The answer that some of my christian friends seem to be making right now is that there is a quality of evil in evil people such that they deserve eternal punishment. I could understand a finite punishment followed by an end to their existence if the punishment is not enough to change their mind, but where is the glory in eternal punishment for evil? Why not simply and end to their existence?

The Abacus wrote:Well, what I'm talking about is an decision between two or more truly equal options. The result of the decision should be completely random and unpredictable – at least in theory. This is all assuming that truly equal options exist, which is something I have yet to find evidence of.

To what end? You still have the problem of God's perfect knowledge already knowing what the results of a random event are, as I've already said. As for truly equal options... well, I think I know what your aiming at. Your talking about trying to find room for some kind of non-deterministic freedom, right? But that is STILL not my point. Whether we are free to choose hell or not, how can a god be justified in making people who will ultimately, freely or not, choose hell? How is eternal punishment instead of finite punishment justified?

The Abacus wrote:Ideally because that person chose their own faith?
interesting, previously I had thought about it in the sense of the necessity of balance, but this makes more sense.

Not following what you are getting out with these comments. :/

The Abacus wrote:Yes, but what is the question you were asking?

There was no question in point 4, just an addition. All those 4 points are simply setting up the scenario of "is it worth it to have the choice of rejecting God if it means even one person actually WILL reject God?"

To add a little to the possible justifications of punishment, if God were to simply view those who ultimately choose evil as simply waste by product of the overall system of creating people who will desire to choose him, perhaps he doesn't even see them as people at all. But this seems to contradict places of the bible that say things like, "God does not wish that anyone would be condemned," unless perhaps that is what he truly desires up until they leave this life and thus no longer have an opportunity to change their minds about God. It is all complicated and almost annoying because the bible is so unclear about these things. We have to build large assumption heavy theories to try to explain these things. Or so it seems to me.

To what end? You still have the problem of God's perfect knowledge already knowing what the results of a random event are, as I've already said. As for truly equal options... well, I think I know what your aiming at. Your talking about trying to find room for some kind of non-deterministic freedom, right? But that is STILL not my point. Whether we are free to choose hell or not, how can a god be justified in making people who will ultimately, freely or not, choose hell?

I think the general idea is that ALL people have the potential to change, but the problem with that is that some people don't.

The answer that some of my christian friends seem to be making right now is that there is a quality of evil in evil people such that they deserve eternal punishment. I could understand a finite punishment followed by an end to their existence if the punishment is not enough to change their mind, but where is the glory in eternal punishment for evil? Why not simply and end to their existence?

I think the idea of eternal punishment would be that it's to be the equal and opposite version of what happens to people who go to heaven. Everyone still lives to eternity.
But it wouldn't make sense to say that they deserve it because they're evil, because you can have altruistic people who won't or can't accept God and go to hell regardless of their nature.

Redafro wrote:Whether we are free to choose hell or not, how can a god be justified in making people who will ultimately, freely or not, choose hell? How is eternal punishment instead of finite punishment justified?

At the top of my head, I don't know.

Redafro wrote:

The Abacus wrote:interesting, previously I had thought about it in the sense of the necessity of balance, but this makes more sense.

Not following what you are getting out with these comments: :/

I previously had this idea of all concepts having opposites (light/dark, loud/quiet, etc.) because one is simply a lack of or more of the other (like in the yin and yang conversation). Therefore if there is a heaven, there must be a hell for everything to be in balance.
What you suggested made more sense though.

Redafro wrote:

The Abacus wrote:Ideally because that person chose their own faith?

Not following what you are getting out with these comments: :/

I was responding to this:

Redafro wrote:how do I handle a supposedly good God who would create a person for a purpose, however beneficial to others, that will eventually lead to that person's eternal pain

except considering that you said this:

Redafro wrote:All those 4 points are simply setting up the scenario of "is it worth it to have the choice of rejecting God if it means even one person actually WILL reject God?"

I no longer know if that was a question or not.

The Abacus wrote:

Redafro wrote:Whether we are free to choose hell or not, how can a god be justified in making people who will ultimately, freely or not, choose hell? How is eternal punishment instead of finite punishment justified?

he gave us free will, so we could chose our path. and if we chose the path to hell, then we go to hell

I think I've finally arrived at a little more of an answer to my dilemma. The problem was that I have become a little more of a Humanist than is compatible with Christianity in the sense that there is a way in which Humanism declares a kind of sovereignty of the individual. Individuals define themselves, who they will be, what they will do, etc. So long as you harm no one, do as you will. But Christianity assumes from the get go that we are not sovereign over our destiny, that we were made for a purpose, we fell from that purpose, and a way was made for us to be redeemed. If we reject that redemption, so be it, but a path is open. There is still some problems I have, like why must it be for eternity, but I know that the sovereignty issue is one I was ignoring, and that was creating a lot of tension in my model of God and Hell.

There is still some problems I have, like why must it be for eternity,

Because temporary prizes and punishments are not sufficient to create strong enough desire for the prize or fear of the punishment. You need to have the absolutely largest carrots and sticks if you want to control people.

IMO this is a clear sign that religions are indeed made by man, and are just tools of power and control.

The Structure and Function of Good and Evil
By Knowlegde

I want to point out from now that I am not a pastor of the lord, but I am one of his flocks. But I have come to this conclusion by means of philosophical and logic thinking. So you can choose to not listen to what I have to say, or you can chose to listen.

What is good? Well it’s not bad. So what then is Evil? It’s not good. How do we know every day when we go out into the world to live our lives what the action we do is good, and what actions are evil? Well, when we help out someone who is less fortunate than us on the streets, this acts result in the end of not hurting another, thus not a bad thing. When you are driving home from work, and there is a fight going on, if you think about joining it, that act will result in hurting both yourself and others, thus the ending results not being good. So good is the opposite of evil, and evil is the opposite of good.

But why do we have good and evil; because it’s there, or does it serve a function? When you wake up to your alarm clock in the morning, you have two choices. One is to where you get out of bed and arrive at work on time. The other is to sleep in and not go to work. These two choice result in either good or bad.

This is called Free Will. What’s free will? Free Will is when you have all your options laid out on the table in front of you, both good and bad. If there only good, and no evil, the choice of doing evil is gone, thus free will is non-existing. If you only have the ability to choose evil deeds, again, free will is lost because you don’t have the options to do good.

With Free Will brings Free Thinking amounts we Man-kind; even from the beginning of time itself, Good and Evil in terms of the Acts have always not been in Black and White, but in the Grey Area. As time move over the earth and our existences become last another day long, this Grey Area become more and more large. The definition of Good and Evil lost or changes with the flow of new times. But the true definition is always the same. Good is the opposite of Evil, Evil is the Opposite of Good. To know good and evil, you have to have good and evil; not just one of the two.

What comes from free thinking, over time from the bringing of mankind, brings motivation and influence. Motivation and Influence is what creates the Grey area of life itself. Because of the multiple different forms of influence in life, that then creates multiple forms of motivation for each of us. This results in the creation of Meaning. Because of the different forms of Influence and Motivation, creates just as many forms of Meaning.

Each person, because the ability to freely think, allows for the discoveries and teaching of different Meaning; this results in definition. Since each of us are different in our own way, create a definition of who we are, this comes from us as Free thinker creating our own mindset on how we view life.
But because of the multiple forms of both influence and motivation, the definition of us is never set. The only set part of our definition is only from the repeating patterns that occur in our defining of who we are. Because of this, all choices we make in our free will create the unequal differences that define the different types of choices.

Because our definition of ourselves is never set, create the measurement in the difference in the multiple choices we find in our lives, some choices that are simple, where others are more difficult in comparison. It’s because of the differences between the difficultly of the choices then creates or defines who we are as a person.

A man raised by a Rich, Greedy family can still choose between the live in a life of charity, or the life of greed. But the influences resulting from free thinking that defines the spouse of this man, still plays a large part in definition who that man is. The definition of each of us results in the choices we make in both the simple and hard choices that finds us in our lifespan.

When bigger choices that come in our life which task us in making decisions, which our definition of ourselves is the main part in which the outcome of the decisions is decide upon. But, we must remember what came first, Free Will. It’s because of Free Will that started all this, is still the thing in which we are not limited to one option, wither it be good or bad. This is what separates the Human Kind, and the other form of life.

If were to think of Greedy politician who care only for themselves and their power, we think of them as parasites. But we must consider that the thing that’s separates us from the animals on this earth is free will. Animals on this earth are life just like us. But what makes them different from us is that even though they too have the ability to choose, A majority of the choices will be the determine point in life or death for them.

Back to the Politician and Parasite, because an animal’s choice will result in life or death for them, the choice of a parasite is limited to either surviving by feeding off others in order to live, or to not eat the way it needs to and die. A Greedy Politician is that of a human, he/she can survive by other means than greed. But the definition of who this politician is creates a difficulty in terms of changing his definition. It might take as much time from the point to where he dies of old ages until he changes his definition of himself, but it is not impossible in the first place.

Now I want to then focus on Fate, the definition that part of your life has already been planned by higher power. Some of you don’t believe in it because of the idea you don’t have a say in your path in life. Not entirely true as I found out; if we were to look at David and Goliath. David was told by god that he would defeat Goliath and save Israel. Think Dave had no choice in the matter? Not true, for you see, his brothers, and family, and all of his friends he knew kept saying to him “Don’t fight him, you’ll die. He as big as a giant, he will kill you with one step of his feet.”

Now Dave, he did end up fighting Goliath, but the King wanted Dave to use his Armor, Dave decide not to. Because of that, Dave could have also chose not to fight Goliath, to listen to his family and friends and step out of the fight before it even began; thus fate, not being the loss of free will, but of the truth of what you can do, if you choose to do it.

So we can still have free will while having a fate to us. Like how we can choose to drop out of college, even when you have four years planned ahead for what you wish to do.

All of these factors, all contribute on the base of Choice. Choice is a part of free will which can only be truly accomplice by having both good and evil availed to us. But what is that for? If we were to look on the choice made by Gavrilo Princip; He decided to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on 28 June 1914.

That choice spark the start of WW1, which when it ended, the Allies drove Germany into the ground; this would then cause them the uproar and rebellion from the Nazi party which would then start WW2. Many things happen during WW2, such as the Holocaust, the invention of the Atomic Bomb as well as Atomic Energy. Then at the end of the war, Great Britain would have suffer from the war and end up losing a majority of its grip on other third world country such as Afghanistan. This would later be part of the cause that led to the 9/11 Terrorist Attack.
Then with the dispute between the leaders of the countries in the Allies over Germany recovery, sparks the Cold War between The United States and the USSR, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, the Red Scare, the Cuban Missile Crises, and the War in Viet Nam.

All of these historical events all of this happen because Gavrilo Princip decide to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg.

If we are to look at the choices we make each day, do we know what the causes from this effect are? Despite the effect being little or big, all of our choices are part mechanize gears which turns the fabrication of history that is to come on this Earth.

These effects are the results by the Choices we make.
These Choices that we make are determine by our Definition of who we are.
This Definition of who we are is the creation of Influence and Motivation.
Influence and Motivation are the results of Free Thinking.
Free Thinking is the results of Free Will.
And Free Will is the result of Good and Evil.

Isobel The Sorceress wrote:

There is still some problems I have, like why must it be for eternity,

Because temporary prizes and punishments are not sufficient to create strong enough desire for the prize or fear of the punishment. You need to have the absolutely largest carrots and sticks if you want to control people.

IMO this is a clear sign that religions are indeed made by man, and are just tools of power and control.

I can sympathize with this and in fact think this IS the case with many specific instances of all religions, but it is only one possibility, one of many interpretations and completely proving or ruling out any one of the possibilities is a feet pretty much impossible. For me, your particular interpretation seems true in some instances but not in all because 1. I really don't answer to any religious structure and question all religious authority openly, and 2. I've had my own continual experience with God which I have a very hard time chalking up to anything less than an authentic experience. So the only question I have is if there is a model of heaven and hell that is logically compatible with a good god. I think it is a problem and requires some non-traditional understandings of God which is what I've been working on. It still results in some unfortunate situation, namely people choosing hell, but what I have to answer is if it makes sense and if the experience of God I have is justification for believing it is so.

@WorldisQuiet: that is super super long... but good! I like it.

I just wanted to add that, when I still believed in a god and was learning about him before the first communion, or however it's called in English, I developed some beliefs, many different from what I was taught, to make my religion make more sense to myself:

1-There was no Hell, that's just evil. I decided that bad people just went to Purgatory or something to learn to be righteous before going to Heaven. Though I still kinda believed that there was nothing after death, when in a non-religious context.
+Belief or not had nothing to do with it. You went to heaven for being a good person no matter what you believed.
2-No need to pray. God knows everything, he can read my mind. Made my first and last confession kinda awkward to me. Also, see point 3.
3-God wasn't very fond of interfering with reality, not sure why. My way to conciliate with my beloved science and also my solution for the problem of evil.

After some time not thinking about it and a little consideration on ancient Greek/Egyptian polytheism, I realised that there was no need for my deist god to exist, reality would work perfectly without him. I didn't mind it so much because it didn't affect my life and I was already an atheist in practice.

Nowadays I can't concieve of grown-ups believing in a god, it's on the same level of Santa Claus to me. I'm also horrified that so many people love the god of the Bible, which for me, if you actually read the Bible, seems like an evil sadistic monster. Just my personal opinions.

zombieshooter wrote:...
Nowadays I can't concieve of grown-ups believing in a god, it's on the same level of Santa Claus to me. I'm also horrified that so many people love the god of the Bible, which for me, if you actually read the Bible, seems like an evil sadistic monster. Just my personal opinions.

This.

I just don't want to say this out loud that much, since I see how it might offend people. But it's really scary how so many people want to live according to the Bible, and force others to do that, too. Usually they are people who haven't actually read the book in the first place :/

Am I the only atheist that wants Bible study to be part of the school curriculum for this reason?