God

There is a quote and it sparked the coolest debate ever in one of my classes,
So I hope to plant it here and start a lovely debate!

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”





....ANNNNDDDDD, GO!

Meh. I'm an atheist. Or, at absolute best, a deist.

In my opinion a God or God is merely a symbollic reference to increase the popularity of a person ahead of his time or a trickster.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Well if you follow the basic structure of a god then you would come to the conclusion that a god cannot directly interfere with the living beings that he has put into play. He may nudge and prod all he likes to make life a bit more bearable for everyone but he cannot recall or directly control, kind of like a general in war. A general has no direct control over his army but merely relies on the loyalty of his troops.

to start things off, ive heard that quote already....

personally i dont believe.
however due to the fact that alot more people in this small town do, ive come up with an idea or two.
the whole fact that there IS a god is so that people can FEEL like thier being watched and/or protected by some unearthly force or what not. people wanna think that god IS there but due to his non-acting ways they say "its a test".
then again, thats more than likely the reason for doubt.

Ire-evaluate my previous statement.

God does exist.

He exists as a swirling vortex of hate dedicated to eradicating my every happiness.

That's pretty rough Mik. When I read that quote it automatically reminded me of the whole "Can God create a stone so heavy that even He can't lift it?" or however it goes.

I say....nothing that man says is going to make me falter from whatever faith I have. It may not necessarily be faith according to a religion or a bible....it's just a faith in purpose and love and overall "every thing's going to be ok" feelings.

kio wrote:
Well if you follow the basic structure of a god then you would come to the conclusion that a god cannot directly interfere with the living beings that he has put into play. He may nudge and prod all he likes to make life a bit more bearable for everyone but he cannot recall or directly control, kind of like a general in war. A general has no direct control over his army but merely relies on the loyalty of his troops.

agreed.

MaliaG wrote:

kio wrote:
Well if you follow the basic structure of a god then you would come to the conclusion that a god cannot directly interfere with the living beings that he has put into play. He may nudge and prod all he likes to make life a bit more bearable for everyone but he cannot recall or directly control, kind of like a general in war. A general has no direct control over his army but merely relies on the loyalty of his troops.

agreed.

That hardly makes sense according to the belief system that christians rely upon.

Which is the god that the original quote approaches.

God is quite obviously described as omnipotent, he has control in all things, and a power to do whatsoever he may choose.

What I consider to be a fault in this christian god, however, is this:

If god knows all, if he is truly omniscient, that means that he already has knowledge of each person's intentions, their choices made, and their ultimate ending destination.

To put it plainly, god knows if you're going to make terrible decisions.

That said, he decides if we are permitted into the gates of heaven, or cast down into the fires of hell.

Free choice or otherwise, our path through life is already known to him, so is it fair, or even benevolent for God to punish us for the choices he knows we will make, for the choices he designed us to make?

That's like placing a rat in a maze, and putting cheese at one end, shocking the rat whenever he tries to take the cheese.

You KNOW, that the rat will go for the cheese, and you KNOW that nothing you can do will change that, you designed the maze to force the rat to do as such.

So ultimately, you are setting the rat up for a determinate end result that you knew from the get-go that it would reach.

In all senses of the word, this is cruelty.

Sheakhan wrote:If god knows all, if he is truly omniscient, that means that he already has knowledge of each person's intentions, their choices made, and their ultimate ending destination...Free choice or otherwise, our path through life is already known to him, so is it fair, or even benevolent for God to punish us for the choices he knows we will make, for the choices he designed us to make?

*sigh* Keeg, for my rebuttal, I post the article 'The Bible's Viewpoint - Is Your Life Predestined?', pg.12,13 from the May 2007 issue of Awake! I find that it answers the question quite well. I do not know if you will agree with it, but please, at least give it a look. It is laid out logically, and draws it's viewpoint not from a man's viewpoint, but from the Bible.


"The Bible’s Viewpoint
Is Your Life Predestined?

One morning two men were driving to work when they decided to take a shortcut along a street where one of them used to live. On the way they saw flames shooting out of the windows of a house. They stopped their truck and used a ladder they had with them to rescue a mother and five children. “Maybe it was fate,” said a newspaper report of the incident.

MANY people feel that whatever happens to them, good or bad, has been decided by a force greater than themselves. For example, the 16th-century Reformer John Calvin wrote: “We define predestination as the eternal design of God, whereby he determined what he wanted to do with each man. For he did not create them all in the same condition, but foreordains some to everlasting life and others to eternal damnation.”

Does God really ordain ahead of time what our actions and our final destiny are going to be? What does the Bible teach?

The “Logic” of Predestination

Some who believe in predestination reason basically as follows: God is omniscient. He knows everything, even what is going to happen in the future. He knows what each person is going to do with his life, and he already knows the exact moment and manner of each person’s death. So, according to their thinking, when the time comes for an individual to make a decision, his choice cannot be other than the way God has foreseen and foreordained it; otherwise, God would not be all-knowing. Does this reasoning seem sound to you? Consider what its logical consequences would be.

If some force has already determined your future, then trying to take care of yourself is useless. Choosing to smoke or not to smoke would make no difference to your health or that of your children. Wearing a seat belt while riding in an automobile would have no effect on your safety. But this is faulty logic. Statistics show that people who take precautions suffer fewer fatal consequences. Carelessness can result in tragedy.

Consider another line of reasoning. If God chooses to foreknow everything, then even before he made Adam and Eve, he would have known that they would disobey him. But when God told Adam that he must not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad” or he would die, did God already know that Adam would eat from it? (Genesis 2:16, 17) When God told the first couple: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth,” did he know that their wonderful prospect of life in a paradise was doomed to failure? Of course not.—Genesis 1:28.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the idea that God foreknows all decisions would mean that he is responsible for all that happens—including wars, injustices, and suffering. Is that possible? A clear answer is provided by what God says about himself.

“You Must Choose”

The Scriptures state that “God is love” and that he is “a lover of justice.” He has always urged his people: “Hate what is bad, and love what is good.” (1 John 4:8; Psalm 37:28; Amos 5:15) On numerous occasions he encouraged his loyal ones to choose a virtuous course. For example, when Jehovah concluded a covenant with the ancient nation of Israel, he said to them, through Moses: “I do take the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you today, that I have put life and death before you, the blessing and the malediction; and you must choose life in order that you may keep alive, you and your offspring.” (Deuteronomy 30:19) Did God establish ahead of time the choice that those individuals would make? Evidently not.

Joshua, a leader of God’s people in ancient times, exhorted his countrymen: “Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve . . . As for me and my household, we shall serve Jehovah.” (Joshua 24:15) Similarly, God’s prophet Jeremiah said: “Obey, please, the voice of Jehovah in what I am speaking to you, and it will go well with you, and your soul will continue to live.” (Jeremiah 38:20) Would a just and loving God encourage people to do right in the hope of receiving a reward if he knew that they were destined to fail? No. Such encouragement would be hypocritical.

So when good or bad things happen in your life, it is not because these events are inevitable. Very often, ‘unforeseen occurrences’ are simply the consequences of other people’s decisions—whether wise or unwise. (Ecclesiastes 9:11) No, your future is not planned out before you, and your own decisions determine what your everlasting future will be."

If you choose to use your borrowed argument, then god is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and as such, the christian description of god is false.

One falsehood brings to light the possibility of all information on the subject being false, and as such, the above argument not only disproves my suggested theory, but likewise puts the whole of christian belief in the spotlight of suspicion and doubt.

You said that this article drew, logically, from the bible, to explain why our destiny is not predetermined.
But I never intended to say that our destiny was predetermined, though that could be one possibility.

My real argument was that God knows the choices we will make, we have the power to choose as we like, but simply by his nature, he can see those choices before we make them.

However, I should also say that god is omnipotent, and with his might, can will himself not to see our choices, to be blind to our path through life, and therefore be unknowing in regards to the direction we take.

This possibility does not undermine his onmipotence or omniscience. However, it means that god is ignorant.

Your argument stems largely from the belief that god does not lie, though it is not a foreign concept that even the greatest of heroes, the noblest and truest, can lie for the greater good. So who is to say that God did not lie outright to instill hope in people? Or to attempt to sway them?

And before you ask "Why attempt to sway those he already knows the choices of?", I must suggest that God himself, after creating the world in 7 days, was as green as the earth he had spawned, that he knew nothing of his true power, his ultimate control, and therefore may not have known the true extent of things for a long while, which would easily explain away all, or many of the contradictions in the christian view of god.

Whenever I hear or think about God being omnipotent or omniscient I never thought that he knew the one outcome that would befall us. I always thought it meant he could see all the paths that we could possibly take but it was ultimately up to our choices to determine our ends.

In which case He still is all knowing because he knows every single end that may come to us, but it's still our choices that lead us there.

I don't know where I read this, but someone said it helps to picture God as outside of time instead of thinking that He knows the future. Future means nothing to him because He's timeless. He simply sees all that is and all that was and all that will be, but for Him it's all happening in the now (for lack of a better outside of time word).

So, lets say I'm living my life and God is watching me. Throughout my years I choose to lie and cheat and steal and just be bad, despite all the opportunities to be good that come my way. When I die, I'm judged by God and He says, yes, I saw this and knew it would happen.

OR

Let's say that I'm living my life and I go to church every Sunday and Wednesday. I witness to people and I'm just an all around good person. I live a good long life, and when I die and God judges me, He says, yes I saw this and knew it would happen.

See, He saw both possibilities but it was still my choices that led me to my end. So going back to the main quote,

dismal_s child wrote:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

Yes, God is able to prevent evil, and he is willing, but like any father, he wants us to learn our lesson first. Evil comes from us. People may argue all they want that God should have never let the snake tempt eve,but that's the beauty of having free will. We, unlike angels, get to choose what we do. God gave us that gift, so why would He interfere? We can't have it all.

So would you prefer having no choice at all? No free will. No life of your own so that you can avoid evil...

Or would you choose putting up with evil, but having the choice to either do something about it or be a part of it.

kryslee wrote:People may argue all they want that God should have never let the snake tempt eve,but that's the beauty of having free will. We, unlike angels, get to choose what we do. God gave us that gift, so why would He interfere? We can't have it all.

Well Krys, just remember that in the Garden of Eden we actually weren't much different from angels. Oh, and in case you didn't know, angels to have free will, otherwise Lucifer and his entourage would have never fallen eh?

And if you think about it actually, telling Adam and Eve not to take the fruit isn't going to stop them if they can't distinguish right from wrong. When they took the fruit, they didn't know what right and wrong was, so therefore, it was there choice to take the fruit, and not listening to god would have no consequences in their mind as they don't know if it's wrong or not. Of course after they ate the fruit, they gained the ability that only god has and could distinguish right and wrong and knew right away that what they had done was wrong, and still they weren't forgiven... Fair?

LOL even if they didn't know right from wrong, they should have known better than do something that their creator told them not to....

Treat Adam and Eve like children. Not knowing right from wrong includes not knowing when emphasis is placed on something, as they wouldn't know if what God was saying was right or wrong.

God mighta sounded a bit like the adults in Charlie Brown, for all they knew. =P