I checked the temperature for El Paso Texas tonight and it is saying 26 degrees. My heart is hurting for all those people that were told to come here. They do not have tents or warm clothes. There are many children and innocent victims in this group. I can’t even imagine being in that temperature without any protection. Please Lord Jesus, take care of them tonight.
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Innocence does not exist.
Free will without consequence would be in opposition to an all loving God. One can not have both free will and no consequence whether consequence be good or bad.
Free will is the very essence of pure love since one can't enslave someone to one's will while also claiming they love them.
Nice dodge. Explain why he values the free will of a child rapist over the child. If you want to remove "loving" from your assertion and argue for an evil god instead I'll let you get away with it.
Not attempting to dodge.
You are confining yourself and your arguments to a hierchy of "love". That is not love and the reason why I first have to help you define it properly.
Your arguments begin on a false premise. You are pre-supposing that God "chooses" to allow anything simply on the basis that 'choice' exists for choices sake. God is love and as such leaves choice to one that his creation makes and not one that God makes. God does not give "evil" vs "righteous" paths. God provides the path to salvation or none. "None" is one that includes all that is not good. One can label it what one chooses whether one calls it evil, bad or anything else makes no difference. The end result is the same, an eternal existence in the absence of God. That is to say an existence without good, love or light. Both within and enveloped IN the absence of God.
So when you base your argument on the value of a rapist vs the value of a victim you are coming into a conversation from a false premise to begin with since the very question you pose is speaking of a God I do not know.
The point is; you presume to falsely define God from an atheist perspective. You have no perspective that could be valid in my world view. Atheism has nothing to say about God. At-least nothing that can stand to be taken seriously. You are by definition mute on point.
If you want to argue benefits of good vs bad we certainly can but we must first agree on terms. I will warn arguing good vs bad is horribly unproductive since in your world view NEITHER is "good" or "bad". Those terms are simply choices one makes in the course of an existence.
If you want to argue good vs bad within my world view than we can but you MUST first entertain the existence of God. Fair warning however, if you decide that you want to have a conversation with that in mind you will find yourself questioning and intimately jettisoning your atheist world view. I of course welcome that conversation. You on the other hand may find that you will also have to jettison many of your fleshly desires. THAT, I submit, is a bitter pill many former athiests struggle with the most. That is to say, knowing God but refusing to discard those desires.
God values love and his creations whether it be the sinner or the victim. God does not make a choice, his creations choose.
Now to address your question with regard to rapist vs victim and their value in the eyes of God. The victim, should this victim continue to live a life of good will be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven. The rapist, should he/she not repent will exist in the absence of God for eternity. So you see, it's not what God values, since God gives his value to both rapist and victim, it is precisely what victim and rapist value. His creations ultimately have the free will to choose Him or not. It's never a choice for God. He has already accepted both of them, it's up to them to reject Him.
Matthew 7:23
‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
You see, God knows no evil. Since He is incapable of evil none could come from his creation. It's either good and love or not at all. Nothing.
First of all, I hope you had a merry Christmas. I did. My first born is just old enough for it to be wonderful.
Please don't get me wrong, I'll be an a-hole and argue with you endlessly because I enjoy it and think it's good for society... Or something. I just like hashing it out.
You took a really long winded, and frankly well done, way of agreeing that whatever this God thing is, it's indifferent to human suffering. He's taken a view of free will that days its super important unless evil takes it away, then it's no big deal. He'll make you whole in the afterlife somehow.
And I do take a bit off offense. Do you think that Christianity alone has claim to good and evil? That I somehow can't see it?
You're trying to frame the conversation in a way that only allows one conclusion.
Merry Christmas to you and yours also. Children an absolute blessing for sure.
I, like you, do not view passionate conversation as adversarial in any way. I welcome anytime I can learn anything meaningful. I believe this conversation to be just that. Thanks.
The reason why I framed the two quotes above in that fashion is simply in an attempt to impress upon you the stark differences between the two world views and the fact that they are diametrically opposed. Let me clarify.
When speaking of such topics the conversation has to be completely sanitized of any emotion or feelings. Why? Because these are matters of our creation and existence and not of how one feels or "thinks". In other words, we aren't speaking of our favorite cheeseburger where we can both be right and both be wrong at the same time. I am not saying you entered the conversation with that in mind. I was attempting to get down to the root of the conversation and jump clear over any possible fluff. So when I said "we have to agree on terms" I was trying to convey exactly that in its clinical sense, in its definitional meaning.
So in that spirit let me say that Atheism, by definition, is unable to comment with regard to religion or matters of spirituality. Not because I don't think your words have value but instead because Atheism is defined by the NON belief or in more definitive words, knowledge of a "higher power". As a result Atheism is void of comment or opinion of spirituality. It simply has nothing to say about it. NOT that Atheism can't comment on spirituality but that IF Atheism comments on it, it doesn't bare meaning or weight. Again, I am not at all saying your words or this conversation has no value. In fact what I am saying is that if Atheism should have anything to say about spirituality it would be lopsided to the opposing side. Your world view, in a conversation about spirituality, only helps to sway YOU, the Atheist, towards the beleif of a higher power. Why? Since you are void of the belief of a higher power you only stand to add to your body of knowledge and not lend to anothers body of knowledge by virtue of the vacumm you posses on the topic. Not only is Atheism a vacumm but by every sense mute on the topic.
What I said above is NOT a jab or an insult it's a matter of Atheisms root meaning.
Now in regard to Christianity having sole claim on "good and bad" and that you wouldn't be able to see it and or identify it. NOT AT ALL. The fact that any human being whether Atheist or not is capable of good and bad IS a testament to the fact that a higher power exists. Why? Simply as a matter of the world view itself. Atheism, as a result of its non-belief, can not impose 'good' or 'bad' on anything. The Atheist world view in itself can not define good or bad because, well humanity simply exists and nothing else. So if it simply exists than an action or "state of being" is exactly that and nothing else. Atheism can not determine or deem anything bad or good for that matter. From an Atheist perspective, I hurting my neighbor in order to take his ration of food in order for my families survival is just that, survival and nothing else. I survive and neighbor does not. There is no "winner" or "loser", I simply evolve and my neighbor ceases to exist.
In order for "good" to exist or have meaning it would have to have its opposite, "bad". An inverse state. But you or I are unable to define it or create their meanings because we are capable of being "good" or "bad". As a result of our imperfection, we can also imperfectly define said states. As a result, the fact that those states exist ONLY lend themselves to the existence of a benevolent, flawless, all knowing and timeless higher power.
I am not arguing that you can not know or be capable of good or bad. I am arguing that without a benevolent higher power, that has defined those perameters, previous to your existence, those states have no meaning. They are simply actions.
The fact that you are able to identify those states is irrefutable evidence that a higher power exists. Once someone is able to arrive at that conclusion, and only then, can one be able to further chisel out their own belief. BELEIF. Once someone reaches that point there is no going back. THAT is what I was trying to convey. Once you know Him you can not remove the knowledge of him. Now it is only a choice whether someone wants to reject Him.
But understand my "framing" of a conversation has no effect on truth. Truth stands on its own regardless of my intent or framing.
Edit to cover your other point.
Not sure I conveyed that God is indifferent by any means. If God desired indifference than a clear path to salvation would not have been provided. But let's just entertain that premise for a second. Than what? Let's just say he was indifferent. For sport? For self gratification? If so, than why provide any evidence of His existence? And before settling on one of those conclusions, wouldn't one have to have at the very least equal the amount of evidence that He has provided for your salvation if not more? In other words, wouldn't the body of evidence AGAINST His intended salvation outcome be available or provided before one refutes His intent? Wouldn't a thief require more evidence to prove his innocence than "I was having lunch with grandma" in the face of fingerprint, video and witness accounts and evidence against him? So far as I can tell, much of what non believers provide is tantamount to the example of the thief. Yet, despite historical accounts of Jesus's life from believers, but more importantly, historical written accounts of NON believers who never met, heard of or seen Jesus wrote of the tremors and earthquake felt the moment of His crucifixion exactly as written by believers hundreds of miles away. Both of those authors had vastly different beliefs, yet wrote of the same event.