Repenting After Death

[Thumbelina]

btw many of us DID search the 'scriptures' diligently, without listening to anyone else - it's what led to our deconversion.

 

The goal of the bible was/is to get you closer to God so ... .

 

How pathetic for those of us who the Bible pushed away from God. Studying the Bible is one of the few ways a Christian can become an ex-Christian.

 

For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Heb 4:2

 

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Rom 10:17

 

I've lurked on here a lot. You guys did not hear the full gospel. A LOT of folks were afraid of eternal hell. How can one love and trust a God whom one thinks is malevolent?

[OrdinaryClay]

Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil until after they ate from the tree.

When did they become “moral” beings?

It dos not matter when they became moral agents, what matters is when they knew they were violating God's will.

 

Act 17:30

"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,

 

Evil is also fundamental because it ultimately emerged from the same source that created all things.

Created beings who have a free will were created by God. It was their choice to violate the will of God. It is their choice to do evil.

 

Evil, including ethical evil, are covered in Isa 45:7.

You are simply repeating yourself again. Your wishful thinking does not make it true. The verse does not support your bald assertion.

 

Physical evil is created by God.

Life on earth could not exist without plate tectonics, or lightening. People die from earthquakes which are the result of plate tectonics. We can not live in a physical world without people dying from disasters.

[mymistake]

You guys did not hear the full gospel.

 

So again your response is to lie. This is getting old Thumby. You have lied about me several times today. If the only way you can excuse your point of view is through lies then what does that say about your point of view? (hint: it's not good)

 

 

A LOT of folks were afraid of eternal hell. How can one love and trust a God whom one thinks is malevolent?

 

Blame your precious Bible for that.

 

(p.s.)

Nice new sig.

"If God were not all-powerful, His mercy would be helpless pity; His justice, an empty threat; His knowledge, useless information; and His love, pure frustration. Ultimate power has been coveted by both angels and mankind,but the throne is occupied [Rev.4:2,3], and there is no danger of a dethronement [Ps. 93:2-4]. God reigns without rival [Ps. 86:8-10]." Holler!!

 

Of course if God is all powerful and all knowing then either God is evil or God does not exist. It's the classic problem of evil.

[centauri]

Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil until after they ate from the tree.

When did they become “moral” beings?

It dos not matter when they became moral agents, what matters is when they knew they were violating God's will.

It matters because they didn't know good and evil until after they ate.

 

God's works are also supposed to be perfect.

A perfect being cannot by definition make an imperfect choice.

As soon as it does, it shows it wasn't made perfect to begin with.

 

Evil is also fundamental because it ultimately emerged from the same source that created all things.

 

Created beings who have a free will were created by God. It was their choice to violate the will of God. It is their choice to do evil.

You haven't established who has free will and who doesn't.

The Bible undermines the universal free will claim by claiming that God predestines and manipulates humans when he sees fit.

 

Evil, including ethical evil, are covered in Isa 45:7.

 

You are simply repeating yourself again. Your wishful thinking does not make it true. The verse does not support your bald assertion.

And you're simply repeating your baseless assertion again.

The word "ra" does include ethical evil.

You're also denying the comprehensive nature of creation, where there is only one source for all that is.

That source is God, which Isa 45:7 amply demonstrates.

 

Physical evil is created by God.

 

Life on earth could not exist without plate tectonics, or lightening. People die from earthquakes which are the result of plate tectonics. We can not live in a physical world without people dying from disasters.

Was the Garden of Eden on a physical world?

[agnosticator]

I've lurked on here a lot. You guys did not hear the full gospel. A LOT of folks were afraid of eternal hell. How can one love and trust a God whom one thinks is malevolent?

 

You assume too much. I believed the same things as you do now (I know which denomination you agree with). My faith, prayers, and relationship with the biblegod caused me to make poor decisions with disastrous results. Looking back, I blame myself for being so naive and trusting. Being "in the world, but not of it", is a fearful and divisive way to perceive other people. If God exists, it isn't going to allow humans to speak for it.

[Ouroboros]

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

 

I had a Christian nagger in my past and I am glad they nagged me!

I used to be a Christian nagger. I'm glad that I stopped.

 

And yes, nagging can tick people off even if it helped you.

 

God's principles never changes.

Except when they do.

[Paine]

AHHHhh...and on the eighth day, GOD created *PU*R*G*A*T*O*R*Y*

 

In Cctholic school I knew this who religion thing is bullshit....but I was SCARED to not believe...

[Astreja]

You see my post as condesending? I was being casual friendly as well as straightforward.

 

That's not how I'm perceiving it, Thumbelina. It sounds extremely condescending, as if you were an adult talking down to a child.

SOME actually left because they misunderstood the Word.

 

Thumbelina, I want actual evidence that "the Word" was misunderstood. Kindly tell your god to show up in physical form, in person, in My home so that I might make inquiries as to the correct interpretation. No third-party interpretations will be accepted.

I was reminiscing about you wanting to physically throw me off your property; I rememered that passion of yours!

 

Thumbelina, I *still* would physically throw you off My property.

 

But this time I'd start up on the third floor rather than the second.

[bdp]

 

 

I had a Christian nagger in my past

 

'nagger' - reminds me of South Park.

[♦ ficino ♦]

It needs to be shown that foreknowledge of future decisions that are freely willed at the moment of the decision is possible.

What does omniscience not know?

What it doesn't know.

Which is only false propositions, hence God knows all true propositions including our future choices even those we would have made given different circumstances, i.e. counter factuals.

Hence nothing can ever deviate from what he already knows will happen. When there's no temporality of knowledge, there's no "now" to know anything. Having omniscience and prescience is like knowing nothing.

 

God can't make a decision to do something different that he knows he will do anyway. What he knows, is what will happen. Nothing else. Nothing can ever change or be different. It's set in stone. It's a deterministic system. Even his own choices are unchangeable from what he already knows.

 

And it isn't a false proposition since someone not knowing what he doesn't know is the same as not knowing what he doesn't know. Someone who thinks he knows everything doesn't know what he doesn't know.

 

1. Acts 2:23 links God's foreknowledge to his ordaining what will occur, which includes human decisions. Acts 4:28 shows that God foreordained (προώρισεν) what he wills. Again, this includes human decisions. On the other hand, it remains to be shown that the bible articulates a conception of free human will in the sense in which you mean it, OC. It's clear in scripture that rational creatures decide things. It's not stated or implied that their mode of decision is incompatible with God's having predetermined the decision. That's an assumption brought in to absolve God of the accusation that he holds us morally responsible for what we do not have the power to do. I contend that indeed scripture presents just that picture of God. If the concept of "free" will is not articulated in scripture, then nothing stands in the way of letting the texts speak for themselves and allowing that absolute predestination is articulated in the bible.

 

2. My "bubbles" metaphor a while back means to illustrate what I take to be the Arminian conception, according to which God's sovereignty does not extend to the wills of rational creatures. Their "wills" are spheres of reality not subject to God's foreordination. The result is a god who is not in control of everything that happens - although Arminians hold that God has enough power to clean up the mess that he knows will result.

I have not read up on Molinism yet. So far it seems to me that they try to make a distinction between God's efficient causality (total and unrestricted) and other modes of God's causality (not total and limited by creatures' "free" wills). My instinct is to think that this will not work.

 

3. You (i.e. OC) said that God knows all true propositions. Molinists need propositions about creatures' future "free" acts of will to belong to this set. Aristotle argued (de Interpretatione, "sea battle" argument) that assertions about future events are neither true nor false, i.e. are not propositions, because the outcome cannot be known. Obviously a lot has been done on modal logic since then, which i can't get into now. It's a problem, at least, and I am not convinced that it is solved for God by saying that he is outside time.

It needs to be shown that it's coherent to say that any mind can know in advance "free" decisions, when the latter term has the sense that Molinists give it. To say "God knows everything" is not an answer if assertions about the outcome of "free" decisions have no truth value prior to the decision; they wouldn't be propositions and thus would not belong to the set of knowable propositions for God; God would only know that an assertion had been made.

 

I think in fact that this whole matter that we're debating shows the sort of incoherencies that result from trying to keep God outside time and yet have him interact -- and in a totalistic way-- with creatures who live in time. All these things are really pseudo-questions in a strict sense, but that's a bigger problem.

[bornagainathiest]

Rev 4:8

And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME."

 

This isn't a church service. Sorry! This is the Den for us Lions. And we're getting hungry!

 

C'mon lions, em, ur, if you eat us we'll give you a stomach ache!

 

My stomach's just fine thank you, Thumbelina, even after I killed and ate you. Back for more? Yum!!!

 

BAA.

[Thackerie]

I was "good" when I became a Christian, I was a good girl and virtually everybody liked that quiet girl ( apparently my only sin was not going to church and being secular) but I was snooty, I see it now. I was UNWISE cuz I compared myself with others that IS what us sinful humans do. Our standards are not God's standards. I feel better about myself now because God says I can go BOLDLY to His throne and He loves me even though I'm a mess.

snooty definition: haughty; conceited. (As if looking down one's nose = snoot, at someone.) Alludes also to having one's nose in the air meaning haughtiness. See Thumbelina, Queen of the Snots.

 

"WAS" snooty? Until she gets over her nasty habit of lying about ex-christians, dismissing our experiences, and generally acting like she's a better-than-you know-it-all who could never possibly be wrong, she's still the queen of snootiness, whose lack of empathy is matched only by her monumental lack of self-awareness.

[bornagainathiest]

this thread is getting barfworthy - I'm out.

That's what it's for. It's the quick-and-messy approach to weight loss: 1) read this thread, 2) pray to porcelain, 3) lose weight.

 

Ah yes guys!

 

But this thread (and others like it) have additional purposes.

 

1. Showing the Xian apologists up for the lying, devious, power-hungry hypocrites they really are.

2. Showing us Lions that we did the right thing to get out of Xianity and stay out.

3. Showing anyone who happens to read these threads the lengths the Xians will go to (how many pages now?) to break us.

4. Showing anyone who happens to read these threads that we Lions cannot be broken by them.

5. Showing anyone who happens to read these threads that we Lions can and do break them - even if they'll never admit it.

 

6.

Lastly, the longer these threads go on and the more time and effort the Xians put into them, the better. Let them waste their time here. We Lions are strong enough to deal with them and while they're busy with us they aren't busy hurting someone else. Someone who's wavering and undecided and thinking of de-converting. Someone who'd be emotionally and mentally injured by them. Someone vulnerable to their aggressive and uncompromising brand of evangelism.

 

We Lions will always welcome such abused and injured people with open arms and open hearts, knowing from our own experience the pain they've gone thru. For their sake we Lions should keep the Xians as busy as possible in threads like this one. Even if they put us on 'Ignore' we can still post in whatever thread they go to, pointing out their errors and their deceits. Never letting up. Never giving in. Never yielding an inch of ground. I consider it a small price to pay for the wellbeing of others.

 

To the Xians reading this:

You are engaged in an un-winnable war.

So, by all means, persist. I welcome your endless tracts of useless wordage and I welcome the opportunity to correct you, admonish you and reveal your lies. If it's war you want - you got it.

 

Bring it on!

 

BAA.

[bornagainathiest]

btw many of us DID search the 'scriptures' diligently, without listening to anyone else - it's what led to our deconversion.

 

The goal of the bible was/is to get you closer to God so ... .

 

How pathetic for those of us who the Bible pushed away from God. Studying the Bible is one of the few ways a Christian can become an ex-Christian.

 

For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Heb 4:2

 

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Rom 10:17

 

I've lurked on here a lot. You guys did not hear the full gospel. A LOT of folks were afraid of eternal hell. How can one love and trust a God whom one thinks is malevolent?

 

Thumbelina,

 

Somehow, in the twisted logic of mind, you think that being burned to ashes is a good thing?

You think that burning people to ashes is God's way of showing how He isn't malevolent?

 

 

Do please click on this link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Horror ... take a minute to think about Jessie Washington's agony and then explain to us how being burned to ashes isn't malevolent?

 

You are sadly and horribly wrong when you think that it's JUST the eternal aspect of Hellfire that bothers us. We think that any suffering God chooses to inflict on anyone is wrong. So, it's not just the duration of torment - it's the fact that He'll inflict terrible pain on anyone for any length of time. Yes, an eternity of such suffering would be unthinkably worse, but we think that burning anyone to ashes over any duration is still the action of a sadistic and evil monster.

 

If you don't believe me, start up a Poll and ask us what we think about your 'ashes' option.

 

Anyway, here's a few more images for your attention.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c_self-immolation.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02178/tibet-2_2178371b.jpg

http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2011/12/08/201917-several-cases-of-self-immolation-have-been-reported-in-algeria-in-2011.jpg

http://www.mojahedin.org/images/2010/2010512143544214340014017641.jpg

http://barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/self_immolation_afghan_woman.jpg

 

And here's poor Jacqueline Saburido, before and after she was trapped in a burning car wreck.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HR5nviRla3s/TtbbnzIYBJI/AAAAAAAAAp4/gf6hevGkTbw/s1600/JacquelineSaburido111%255B2%255D.jpg

 

This is good?

 

You think this is NOT malevolent?

 

A good and pure and holy God can do this and still be good?

 

Hmmm....?

 

 

BAA.

[centauri]

1. Acts 2:23 links God's foreknowledge to his ordaining what will occur, which includes human decisions. Acts 4:28 shows that God foreordained (προώρισεν) what he wills. Again, this includes human decisions.

+1

Acts 4:28 is a superb example (along with Eph 1:4-5-11) that God not only knows what will happen, he also determines it in advance according to his will.

 

Acts 4:27-28

For in truth against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou hadst anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with [the] nations, and peoples of Israel, have been gathered together in this city

to do whatever thy hand and thy counsel(will) had determined before should come to pass.

 

Whether or not God does this on a constant basis is irrelevant.

All it takes is just one example of this to throw cold water on the universal free will claim.

[bornagainathiest]

Here you go!

 

Acts 4:28.

http://concordances.org/greek/4309.htm Predestinate!

 

BAA.

[mymistake]

Thumbelina,

 

Somehow, in the twisted logic of mind, you think that being burned to ashes is a good thing?

You think that burning people to ashes is God's way of showing how He isn't malevolent?

 

 

While I do see your point and agree with you. Still part of me admires Thumby's courage to disagree with most Christians. At some point she realized that the eternal torment things is silly and can't be true. It's a baby step but good for her for making it.

 

 

 

edit:

Wow I read that link you provided to the Texas lynching. I don't know if I can eat breakfast now. It happened almost a 100 years ago and I wasn't even alive but just reading that story made me feel shame. Powerful stuff.

[bdp]

Seems like a good time to post this:

 

[agnosticator]

While I do see your point and agree with you. Still part of me admires Thumby's courage to disagree with most Christians. At some point she realized that the eternal torment things is silly and can't be true. It's a baby step but good for her for making it.

 

She just follows the church she belongs to: The Seventh Day Adventistshttp://www.adventist.org/beliefs/fundamental/index.html

[mymistake]

While I do see your point and agree with you. Still part of me admires Thumby's courage to disagree with most Christians. At some point she realized that the eternal torment things is silly and can't be true. It's a baby step but good for her for making it.

 

She just follows the church she belongs to: The Seventh Day Adventistshttp://www.adventist...ntal/index.html

 

Wow, I really can't communicate when I haven't had my coffee.

 

Well good for 7th Day for figuring out that one Christian dogma was stupid.

 

(The irony is that if I had met Thumby twenty years ago I would be telling myself that she isn't the Real True Christian like me.)

[OrdinaryClay]

1. Acts 2:23 links God's foreknowledge to his ordaining what will occur, which includes human decisions. Acts 4:28 shows that God foreordained (προώρισεν) what he wills. Again, this includes human decisions.

+1

Acts 4:28 is a superb example (along with Eph 1:4-5-11) that God not only knows what will happen, he also determines it in advance according to his will.

 

Acts 4:27-28

For in truth against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou hadst anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with [the] nations, and peoples of Israel, have been gathered together in this city

to do whatever thy hand and thy counsel(will) had determined before should come to pass.

 

Whether or not God does this on a constant basis is irrelevant.

All it takes is just one example of this to throw cold water on the universal free will claim.

Free will is articulated in scripture by the endless choices it states we have.

 

Jos 24:15

And if it seems evil to you to serve Jehovah, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served Beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah.

 

Both Acts 2:23 and 4:28 are compatible with middle knowledge and free will. He predetermined the actualized world in which the choices spoken of were made. The players could have chosen differently, but God would have foreknew such an alternate choice and actualized a different world. Logically it is very simple.

 

So you have ...

1) Clear scriptural indications of our ability to choose.

2) Quoted counter verses that can be interpreted easily within a middle knowledge framework.

 

I don't see the problem. I'm very comfortable both logically and theologically with molinism.

[OrdinaryClay]

It needs to be shown that foreknowledge of future decisions that are freely willed at the moment of the decision is possible.

What does omniscience not know?

What it doesn't know.

Which is only false propositions, hence God knows all true propositions including our future choices even those we would have made given different circumstances, i.e. counter factuals.

Hence nothing can ever deviate from what he already knows will happen. When there's no temporality of knowledge, there's no "now" to know anything. Having omniscience and prescience is like knowing nothing.

 

God can't make a decision to do something different that he knows he will do anyway. What he knows, is what will happen. Nothing else. Nothing can ever change or be different. It's set in stone. It's a deterministic system. Even his own choices are unchangeable from what he already knows.

 

And it isn't a false proposition since someone not knowing what he doesn't know is the same as not knowing what he doesn't know. Someone who thinks he knows everything doesn't know what he doesn't know.

2. My "bubbles" metaphor a while back means to illustrate what I take to be the Arminian conception, according to which God's sovereignty does not extend to the wills of rational creatures. Their "wills" are spheres of reality not subject to God's foreordination. The result is a god who is not in control of everything that happens - although Arminians hold that God has enough power to clean up the mess that he knows will result.

I have not read up on Molinism yet. So far it seems to me that they try to make a distinction between God's efficient causality (total and unrestricted) and other modes of God's causality (not total and limited by creatures' "free" wills). My instinct is to think that this will not work.

 

God's omnipotence does not include an ability to perform logical contradictions. It would be an interesting question to ask why God created free willed beings, but it is trivially uninteresting to ask why He cannot force a creature to do something of their of free will. Just as it is incoherent to ask "if God can create a stone He can't lift".

 

3. You (i.e. OC) said that God knows all true propositions. Molinists need propositions about creatures' future "free" acts of will to belong to this set. Aristotle argued (de Interpretatione, "sea battle" argument) that assertions about future events are neither true nor false, i.e. are not propositions, because the outcome cannot be known. Obviously a lot has been done on modal logic since then, which i can't get into now. It's a problem, at least, and I am not convinced that it is solved for God by saying that he is outside time.

It needs to be shown that it's coherent to say that any mind can know in advance "free" decisions, when the latter term has the sense that Molinists give it. To say "God knows everything" is not an answer if assertions about the outcome of "free" decisions have no truth value prior to the decision; they wouldn't be propositions and thus would not belong to the set of knowable propositions for God; God would only know that an assertion had been made.

 

I think in fact that this whole matter that we're debating shows the sort of incoherencies that result from trying to keep God outside time and yet have him interact -- and in a totalistic way-- with creatures who live in time. All these things are really pseudo-questions in a strict sense, but that's a bigger problem.

 

God's knowledge existed prior to time. The idea that a timeless being who created time knows something in advance chronologically is incoherent. God's knowledge has logical order, but not chronological order. God knew truth (which in our world are tensed truths) prior to time.

[pratt]

well, Pharoah seems not have the choice of choosing when God hardens his heart?

[OrdinaryClay]

well, Pharoah seems not have the choice of choosing when God hardens his heart?

 

God through His middle knowledge knew the circumstances needed for Pharaoh to act the way He did through his own free will. Same case with Pilate.

[mymistake]

Seems like a good time to post this:

 

 

That video made me cry. It was pure art.