A Question of Christianity, Hell and Free Will.

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Hi guys, first post!

Well, this is just a question I've been thinking about lately. It goes all the way back to Genesis. After God had created Adam and Eve, they were placed in the Garden of Eden. There were two specific trees in this Garden, the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve were allowed to eat the fruit from the Tree of Life, but not the Tree of Knowledge. God told them that the day they eat from the Tree of Knowledge they will die. When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life was taken from them, making them mortals.

Well, this is where I start wondering, what were they like before eating from the Tree of Knowledge? They most likely lacked any creativity, any imagination, they were most likely only slightly smarter than animals, but had immortality.

This leads me to believe that if we had both Life and Knowledge, we would be like God. God is basically a being who has both Life and Knowledge, humans are beings with only Knowledge, and quite likely other divine beings (angels and demons) have only Life.

The next assumption would be, if we have the Knowledge of God, why is He so much wiser and so much more intelligent than us? He is a learning being, like us humans. THAT is why He has made mistakes in the past. He makes mistakes, just like us humans, but has had so much more time to learn.

On another note, the only other being with both Knowledge and Life, is Satan. Perhaps God gave Satan both, after which Satan betrayed him, then God decided never to give anyone both again. Once again, a mistake by God, which He has learned from.

God promises to give us Life when the Messiah comes. The last question is, would this be at the cost of our Knowledge? If so, we would be back at square one. If not, we would become "Gods", which might be his master plan.

All of the above are simply theories I have thought of. I won't say it's fact, because I don't know myself, but it makes sense to me.

 

Welcome to the forums. And I must say you are bringing a whole new dimension to the discussion with the introduction of knowledge. If I'm not mistaken, knowledge refers to the knowledge of good and evil, which has nothing to do with creativity or imagination. Idiot savants are creative, but you wont say they are wise in any sense of the word.

I'm not saying you have to believe me, Abomination, but hear me out. It is the nature of man to turn away from God to seek his own gratification. As CS Lewis puts it, we are children who are content to make mudpies in the backyard, because we are unable to comprehend what a holiday to the beach means. And therein is the greatest sin, pride, which makes men believe they can be independent from God.

Those who have seen bore witnesses to God's presence are open to that temptation as well. After the impact of the manifestation, they want to go back to their independent ways. So, they write off the manifestation as good luck, the weather, more gravy then ghost etc.

The bible makes no qualms about servitude to God. Its all or nothing. And because we are unable to comprehend divine love, we prefer worldly pleasures. Again, I'll use a earthly imagery. Imagine the feelings of first love. There is nothing you wouldnt do for the one. However, a large part of that giving comes from the expectations of being recipocrated, which is hard to see with the divine. Unless you want to see, you wont see God's favor.

 

Interesting since God is anything but natural. He's something that occurs outside of natural law. So for man to be naturally inclined to turn away from Him would mean that there needs to be something natural about God.

If anything man opposes what it does not understand. I don't understand how there could possibly be anything supernatural and damned if I'm going to believe in something that, in a natural sense, doesn't exist. Old argument of purple space monkeys applies again, not being able to prove they don't exist doesn't mean they do.

Now if God or whatever supernatural being, if any, decides to give me some proof that they exist then by golly I'll believe in them. Till they do I won't believe in them.

Simply put, you people need to stop beliving in silent idols or deluding yourself into seeing their actions in things that occur naturally. I don't believe in God but I'm happy, I have people who love me and they don't believe in God either. He doesn't affect me in any way or anything around me in any way. So why think there needs to be something else? Is it so hard to grasp that there simply isn't a divine being?

The only time you can ever discover if religion is true or not is when you die, and by that time there's no way to record your findings, and that is the greatest cop-out of them all.

 

Mongerman makes some good points, just to pass some quetes

Genesis 3:

4And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

16Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

God directly tells us women are below men, clearly just like homosexuels they should not have the same rights as us....right?

22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

This part has allways puzzled me, first off God says he has become like one off us (and he dosn't use majestetis pluralis), like as if there is more then one god.

Secondly he places guards so that man cant aquire eternel life, and be as powerfull as god(s). he shows signs of fear.

on a historicall not, the old name or address form of god, is as translated Lord God, which indicated that The lord, was not only our Lord, but lord over other gods, secondly several places in the old testemony other gods are mentioned, and the jews are often punished for worshipping them. We do know today that the jews other then The lord/jehova/jahve worshipped Bhaal and Mollok, the last being reserved as a special god for the kings.

 

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three within One.

So? Just because people worshipped them, doesn;t mean they existed. Your argument here also proves the existance of God, surely? Since people worship Him, He must exist.

 

@Gnarf:
On the Red Sea, you're actually wrong there. You see, for a long time scientists thought the story of Moses was wrong, or at least that it wasn't the Red Sea, because the coast of most of the Red Sea is a straight drop down to the bottom of the Sea, meaning even if the Sea was split, Moses would still have cliffs to scale. A few years ago, however, they found one spot where there is quite a gentle slope down and back up. They dredged the mud there and, sure enough, among other weapons and armor that was used for hundreds of years, they also found chariot remains with a peculiar 5-spoked wheel that was specific to within a hundred years of when Moses supposedly crossed the Red Sea. They found enough of these chariot wheels to make a small army. So we've proven not only that it can happen (a sustained wind of about 57 MPH from the right direction would do it at this particular point, due to some unusual aerodynamic properties), but that it did.

Abomination and other ney-sayers:
Until you can actually prove the Bible was wrong, you're out of luck. Simply saying you don't believe something happened doesn't ammount to evidence.

Gagga:
You've got a few things wrong. The tree wasn't the tree of knowledge, it was the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. Also, God never said Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil were mutually exclusive, He just the punishment for eating from the one tree was loosing the blessings of the other. He never said restoring the Life would remove the other.

On top of that, God knows all things, even things done in secret or only thought about. That's why God is so smart and wise. He didn't mess up in the past, just allowed people to mess up.

Finally, Satan doesn't have the kind of knowledge God has, nor do we. Again, the tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not of all knowledge. Also, no one ever said Satan had eternal life. He's very long lived, but God can kill him and will someday sentence him to the same 'second death' that sinners recieve.

All in all some well thought out theories, but based on a few misconceptions.

Abomination:
For man to have a natural reaction to something, that thing only needs to have been around at the formation of said reaction. It doesn't have to be natural itself. Thus God, who has always been, can cause a natural reaction in humans.

Equester:
Sigh. Again you are confusing authority with inherrant superiority. God made man to 'rule over' woman, but not be better, that's part of the curse I guess.

As for 'like one of us', it is commonly accepted that God (having always spoken of Himself in the plural thus far: 'Let US make man...') was refering to Himself as the trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Additionally, you'll find that the definition of 'god' in those days was not the same as we are applying today. A 'god' was an object of worship, and thus the Golden Calf became a 'god' for the Israelites.

Placing guards was not an act of fear, but of punishment. If Adam and Eve didn't see guards, they would try to get back in I guess.

EDIT: on the 'proving the Bible wrong' issue, attacking acts of God is the wrong way to go, it relies on circular logic. If you want to 'disprove the Bible', you'll have to do it from a historic stand point. For example, if archeology showed that Bethleham wasn't made until 25 AD, then obviously Jesus couldn't have been born there beforehand. Unforturnately for you, Bethleham was founded hundreds of years before that, but that's the kind of thing you should be looking for.

 

"Go prove a negative!" I should really write a song with that phrase as the refrain. I could call it "Religious Defense" and make a mint off of irony-lovers alone. To say nothing of all those religion-haters out there somewhere.

Nice try, but even that isn't proof. For all we know they could have called some other place Bethlehem as well. When we're reusing place names and just tacking "New" on the front, I wouldn't be surprised if places got named after each other. Hell, I live in Madison, but that doesn't even tell you what state I'm in (I think there's at least three in the US)! Not to mention a confusing little town called Oregon, Wisconsin.

 

But it also doesn't tell me the Bible is right. Which is the difficulaty I have all along. At some point, you have to take a punt and say "OK. This is the thing I am going to believe." because it seems to be so difficult to prove anything (or even come up with strongly persuasive evidence) about which religion, if any, has got it right.

 

"So? Just because people worshipped them, doesn;t mean they existed. Your argument here also proves the existance of God, surely? Since people worship Him, He must exist"

@Daie d'Malkin if you had read all my post you would notice that.

A) I dont believein the bible or any gods at all.

B) that im taking does parts out of the bible to show where it contradict itself and

C) to show that the bible might condemn homosexuality but it also says women are inferior to men, yet i hear none of the people who uses the bible as an argument for not giving homosexuals the same rights as hetero sexual, use it to say that women shouldn't have the same right as men. which should prove at least that they either fear women to much or dosn't fully believe in the bible.

oh and to you father, son, holy spirit.

good job commending without thinking, the genesis is written roughly 4000years before jesus christ and the invention of the holy spirit, futher more the holy trinity is first accepted as churche dogma at a church convent over 300years after jesus's death...

NOG you have to get fact about the Holy trinity thumbed into your head to. you can't apply the wholy trinity to the old testemony, because it dosn't exist at that point.

 

Well golly susan, don;t you think that the Christians might have ALTERED the bible over the last 2000 years?

Good job commenting without thinking. I didn;t state that you did, only that your convoluted attempt toprove the existance of other gods, also proved your own views wrong. Hoisted by your own petard.
And, thank you for clarifying that you don;t believe in God. I hadn;lt caught that, the waves of bias floored me somewhat. I thought before I commented, but obviously it's a difficult concept to grasp.

 

Which supports my questions of how we can tell that Bible still represents the official Word of God. Maybe its been amended completely out of context. How do we know whether it is still valid or not?

 

@Fel:
Don't worry, I hadn't intended them to prove a negative, but I only see two options:
1.) Christians prove EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE BIBLE true, which much of it has been and more of it is every year, but which would still take centuries more at the least.
2.) Atheists cast ONE EVENT into significant legitimate doubt. I would even consider my Bethleham example legitimate doubt because the Jews didn't generally name one place after another at the time, but it still COULD happen. A better example would be the battle of Jericho. If you could prove to me that the walls of Jericho survived for 100 years past when the Bible says they were destroyed, you would have cast that event in the Bible into significant legitimate doubt.

@HB:
You're right, not proving it wrong doesn't prove it right. Archeologists, scientists, and historians prove it right, and have been doing so for centuries. Many nations and events described in the Bible were thought to be fictional by science and historians until records from other societies were found that coroborated the Bible, proving within reasonable certainty that that event did happen exactly the way the Bible says it did. Now that's not reason alone to believe EVERYTHING in the Bible is true, but it's a step.

@Equester:
The holy trinity may not have been officially named until 300 AD, but it is clearly spelled out in the New Testament, when Jesus is talking about the 'helper' or 'Spirit' that He would send them after his ascention. As for Jesus's birth, read the opening of John agian. It says that Jesus was from the beginning, and only took on human form at His birth.

Even the ancient Jews refered to God in the plural, though I'm not sure if that was in a "We are not ammused" royalty sense or in a trinity-like sense.

@Daie:

Actually, no. You want to know how I can say that? Because we have copies of the New Testament books going back to between 20 and 50 years after they were originally written. Guess what, they're the same as today. Word for word in the original language. The Old Testament books aren't much worse off. The oldest surviving copies have a bit broader range of time from the original writing, but the modern hebrew versions are still word-for-word identical to the versions written almost 3000 years ago. If you're going to say that all the changes that would ever be made over 2000 years for the new and between 3000 and 5000 for the old were made in between 20 and a few hundred years (for old and new respectively), then such drastic changes could only have been forseen and accepted by the divine will of God Himself, thus they're still valid.

 

How do you know this? Did he tell you? Prove it.

 

The wording he's using there shows he's making an assuption, based on what he does know. He's not claiming to have proof, unless I'm misunderstanding him.

NOG, I've always accepted that many of the events told in the bible are fairly accurate. It is a source of history. Where my doubt comes into play, with regards to the accuracy of it, is when you bring in the metaphysical elements of it - whether it be walking on water, turning a river to blood, or creating the world in seven days. These things, and those similar, as far as I am aware have not been proven true.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

But if I am right, then sure, the Bible can be used as a good history source, but using it as a divinely given dogma may be pushing it a bit too far. Prehaps we should use Homer's works as a base for a religion? (Yes, I know that most of it is fictional, but I'm sure you get the point).

 

From the Homosexuality thread: Leviticus has historical records of the laws of the state of Israwel and the laws given by God throught his prophets. Homosexuality is condemnded by the Laws of God, while Shellfish and pork were forbidden by the laws of the land.

Translational difference: I have the word Rule in place of Speak. Big difference.

Does not apply. Determinism and indeterminism can be listed as a spectrum. Just as coldness is an absence of heat, indeterminism is a lack of determinism. This is not a binary choice. The degree of freedom of will and choice comes from a number of options. I have several choices as to which pair of socks I will wear to church in the morning. I am free to choose which one I wear.

Those who will not believe after bearing direct witness are then damned. We will have that perfect witness at the Last day, when we sit before God and plead with Jesus for Mercy for our sins.

It's called prayer. You have the faith to pray, you get your answer via the Holy Ghost. Without that faith, you don't get confirmation of that which you have faith in.

That is exactly part of the problem. We lose the Divind, eternal perspective, and settle for a fleeting, momentary pleasure...

Actually, Some parts have been mangled, but enough remains in tact to teach the basics of morality. Prophets have corrected it in the latter days...

 

Looking at the bible as definate proof of God's existance is doubtful. Atheists have it right when they say that as long as one point is proven wrong, the whole truth is thrown into doubt. With so many historical events/ambiguities in the bible, its easy to throw many, not to say one point into question.

As a past atheist, I know how atheist detest being preached to. Being in the realm of the metaphysical, the existance of God cannot be proved, nor can it be disproved. As long as you look for it, arguments for God not existing and disproving the bible are everywhere. Even christians today are unable to decipher every ambiguity in the bible. Hence, every atheist posting here has a valid point for doubting God, especially when it comes to the bible.

Sure you can be happy without God. Love, luxuries, riches, success are all pleasures. Its when you ask yourself, so what? that you begin to look at life and the meaning behind it in a new light. Solomon, with hundreds of wifes and all the riches of the world, said that all earthly possessions are vanity. Tolstoy, at the prime of his life, asked himself the same thing. With all the riches, a loving family, his literary reputation established, he still asked, so what? Buddha himself could not reconcile life with a meaningless cycle of birth, pain and suffering for no rhyme and reason.

So many great men have achived much on earth, only to realise that in the end lies only death and dust. Without God, nothing we say or do in our life can have an impact beyond our deaths. Sure charities are still carried out in the name of mother teresa etc etc. But in the long run, does it matter if one, or even millions more people die? Without God, eventually the human race will peak, begin its inevitable decline, the sun will explode in a nova, and the story of the humans will be as nothing in the eternity of space.

If an atheist can accept this scenario, and accept that he/she is a random being, doomed to nothing beyond death, then so be it. But if you ever wonder if there is a reason to life, you cant run away from the concept of the eternal.

Finally, to answer the original posts questions. The bible has stated that God will not return till all the tribes have heard the Gospel. As for those who have died before hearing it, there are many theories. I myself adopt CS Lewis's take, which states that even those who do evil in God's name are damned, while those who do good and repent, even in the name of another God, is blessed.

As for your friend, whom you say is a better person then you, remember that when we are judged, it is by a judge who can tolerate no sin. By that measure, all of us are sinners, even the best of people. The only way we could be reconciled was if someone paid the price of sin for us. But i wont go into that. You've heard enough of that

And as I mentioned before, free will is required for un-conditional love, which is how God wants us to come to him. You are right in saying God knew many would turn away from him, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

[ October 08, 2006, 11:53: Message edited by: Mongerman ]

 

Umm... let me see. How best to answer this. "No" might work. As Indeterminsim is simply anything that is not determinism, there is no spectrum involved. Something is either determined or it isn't. Indeterminism is true if even one event in your life is not determined. There is no inbetween. None.

A random being wouldn't be the word I use. Insignificant, would probably be more fitting. Atleast when you are talking about a grander sense - throughout all of time or even just space. But on a smaller, more comprehendable scale, everyones life can have great meaning.

Why does a reason behind life have to look over eternity? Can't you just be contempt to have a shorter term meaning? Whether it is to live a happy life with your family, to invent a cure to some disease or some such. All of these can still be meanings/reasons for living and perfectly good ones. Sure, in a million years no one would care, but my question is does that really matter? Give it a bit longer and the human race will be gone. But once again, what does that matter to now or even to the forseeable future?

 

I used the word random, because without divine guidance, all creation is merely a random cohesion of molecules.

I wont dispute that life can have great meaning on the small scale. And as to your query, i have often asked myself the same thing. Some people are satisfied with little, just like some people are never satisfied even with riches. If God created them that way, is it their fault? Similarly, some people are happy to live life day by day, with no thoughts to the afterlife. Again, if God made them that way, is it their fault? I'll leave it to someone wiser to answer that, cos i cant

 

Ah, in that sense, yes, random is a fitting word.

Another problem arises for me when I think about an afterlife. I do not see how it is possible for me to live after my death. Someone trying to tell me that I will live after I'm dead just doesn't make sense to me. But then I'm not even sure I understand the common Christian view on it, so unless someone tries to explain it to me, I won't comment there.

 

Thanks for your pm Rotku. By the way, your inbox is full.

How do you live on after death? The simple answer is that we are actually our soul, and the body is just a temporary housing. Not sure if thats the answer you're looking for though.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say MOST people are looking for God, whether or not they know it. I'll clarify some points first.

1. God is love eternal
2. In God's eternal love is true happiness

Now that that is out the way, I'll use another analogy from CS Lewis. The soul is like an engine, and the fuel it runs on is God's love. The constant pursuit of happiness and improvement is but mankind's attempt to find another kind of fuel for the spirit. And I think most people can relate to this. You bask in the happiness of first love, but that soon fades away. You make your first million, and soon you're hankering for the second. You move to the place of your dreams, but soon that seaside villa looks tempting. And so on. The happiness and pleasures offered by this world is never enough.

So now i have established that MOST people are always after more happiness, riches etc (doubt anyone will contradict me here). Does it not stand to reason that if our instincts seek something, that something must exist? Case in point. We hunger, there is such a thing as food. We thirst, there is such a thing as water. We lust, there is sexual gratification. Hence, if we seek permanent, everlasting happiness, there should be something that can satisfy that seeking. That something cannot be found on the material plane, and hence we must look further, into the realms of the metaphysical.