When God created Adam and Eve, they were both perfect in every way. It is my belief that God didn’t create sin. By creating a free will, we had the potential for sin. When Adam ate of the apple, sin was initiated by man. Christ entered the world as a sinless man. This time in a man, there would be no sin found in Him.

Because of being sinless, it allowed him to choose to bear our sins. He accepted the task of being the sin sacrifice for the world. The sacrifices of the animals in the past would only atone for a specific sin. The amazing thing about Christ, was that he could have walked away from the cross at any time. If you remember from your days in the church, Pilate was surprised to find that Jesus was already dead.

When Christ said it was finished, he had met the requirements and chose to give up his life. The amazing thing, is this was the very moment when the sacrifice was to be given for the people in the temple by the High Priest. The religious people of that time were the ones that crucified Him in their own self righteousness. That is why we as Christians must always be on guard for our own self righteousness, because we are just as capable of using the Law to condemn by preaching the letter of the law and not the spirit of it.

That is why Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan, the letter of the Law said they could not associate with the Samaritan, but that was not God’s intent. We are to Love God and Love our Neighbors. It even says we are to love those hate us. Only God can judge and bring judgment. While we feel that Mother Theresa was a wonderful person, God says our righteousness is as filthy rags.

As men we compare ourselves to a standard which we have created. We can see that she far exceed the expectations that we have for humanity, but by God’s standard she would be doomed without Christ. Christ gave us the commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. I gain nothing by telling you about Christ. I seek no fame or money. I do this to warn others at I have been instructed. It is very easy to become like Jonah and say let the people of Ninevah die, but God will not allow us to do that. I will keep you all in my prayers and may God soften you hearts.

Randy,
I couldn’t have said it better. I too will pray. They can disagree, but they can’t stop an Almighty God.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that the universe and everything in it was designed and made/fabricated. Martin Rees (cosmologist) said, “What is remarkable is that atoms have assembled into entities which are somehow able to ponder their origins”. What he should have said is “From all the material that came into existence very soon after the theoretical Big Bang it is impossible for life to start”. “Unintelligent atoms will always be that no matter what combinations they are joined in”. The question is.. What is the profile of the designer?
The profile of God is of an eternal entity morally perfect and wise with absolute power to do whatever it/he desires and is the maker of everything. It /he desires/demands to be loved, admired, worshiped, knelt before and obeyed for reasons of the preceding qualities. Consider how puerile this is. If you were the father of a young boy or girl you would not say ‘Because I am wiser than you and can do many things that you can not and was responsible for you being here kneel down and worship me’. If you did so, you would be mad. That is absolutely true of the biblical God. Open your eyes and think. At this point, I should point out that the biblical Satan desires the same as God that is for you to kneel down, worship, and admire him.
Worship (OE weordhscipe (WORTH, -SHIP)) worthiness, merit, recognition, honour & respect, reverent homage or service paid to God, adoration or devotion, adore as divine etc, etc.
For the purpose of this discussion let us suppose that an entity (God or whoever..the whoever is very important) designed and made/fabricated the Universe and everything in it. Remembering that he is perfect in every way; would he want or desire to make anything that was flawed? Or being God would not all of his works be perfect as he supposedly is? Consider your body. How extremely fallible it is in so many ways. Your reproductive areas (the penis, vagina etc) are right next to the part of your body that excretes waste matter (faeces). Would you design it like that? If you were living from before 200 years in the past how disgusting it must have been. Even now if society broke down and you had no soap or toilet paper think of how disgusting and smelly you would be. You live on a ball of very hot iron and molten rock with a thin unstable crust. It has a thin atmosphere and is continuously bombarded by radiation from the sun which if it was not for the earth’s magnetic field would destroy all life. This ball (the planet earth) travels at 18 miles each second through the black vacuum of space in a circle round the sun. Consider how bizarre and grotesque this is. Ask yourself; is the mind of God bizarre and grotesque?
The whole of Gods creation is ugly and flawed, any intelligent person can see that. Consider that it might be deliberate maliciousness on Gods part.
To be evil, malicious, harmful and a liar means that you are flawed (mad). Would a morally perfect entity (God) make anything that could become so? And even if he did, would he not remove it instantly if it did?
Putting aside the naïve, puerile fairy story of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden consider the free will argument that religious people use to excuse the badness/ugliness of man and consider your position. A person that lies, cheats, or is malicious or amoral HAS NO FREE WILL. A mad flawed person does not have intelligence (understanding) or free will. He/she might be clever (most successful criminals are) but does not have free will. There is no logic in the argument of free will. Does the lion, tiger, leopard, eagle, crocodile, and shark, have free will when they stalk, kill and devour their prey? Does the suicide bomber, the person/soldier killing, raping or torturing, the embezzler, all the ones exploiting others, the thugs and uncaring criminals have free will? No, they do not. They do not have intelligence (understanding) or free will. According to the so-called Holy writing who is responsible? Where does the buck stop? If you are religious, the answer is God. He is supposedly both all-powerful and perfect in righteousness. How and why does this supposedly perfect entity for a microsecond allow all the evil and badness?
Consider that we are made in Gods image (Genesis 1:27). If we are corruptible and flawed..so is God. If God has perfect wisdom and is all powerful (as we attribute to him) he would have known and understood ALL the possibilities that lay ahead. Could you for one moment turn aside if you had the ability to stop a human being from being tortured? God has allowed thousands of years of lies, suffering, torment, degradation, torture, sadness, murder, slavery. NOTHING in this universe or elsewhere can excuse that. If he exists he is a mad, ugly, a criminal beyond belief.
Why do you not open your eyes?
Pause.
Now you might give the perfect stupid, worthless and puerile reply…God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. You might say..I have faith. Do you have faith that God will stop you from being burgled? Do you have faith that God will stop you from getting cancer and heal you when you do? Do you have faith that you will not be attacked at any time? Do you have faith that the world is good when it obviously is not? Do you have faith that God will guide all your footsteps and protect you? Do you have faith that the meek will inherit the earth..smile? Do you have faith that Allah will take you to paradise after you blow yourself up and everyone else in your vicinity? Do you have faith that all the bad and evil people will get there comeuppance? Do you have faith that a fictional person will give you an eternity in paradise when you die? Do you have faith when you are dieing of hunger that it is Gods good will? Do you have faith that when you are old and alone and your body hardly functions and your memory is almost gone that it is Gods will for you? Do you have faith when your child/husband/wife is taken from you that it is Gods will?
If you do, you are like Alice living in a fairytale wonderland.

Robert robert77@fsmail.net

Robert,

Thanks for your comments. Before everyone starts picking out individual points of Robert’s statement, I’ll ask that you do NOT do that because it will be a fruitless task. Instead, let’s focus on the larger concept.

It’s interesting that you do indeed believe that the universe was “created” by some sort of (presumably) omnipotent entity, but reject the notion that it was the biblical God. I know of other people who feel the same way, but personally I cannot rationalize that.

It seems to me that you are recognizing the existence of a “god” figure as creator, but choosing not to believe/obey any earthly doctrine of worship. I have no problem with this view, but as far as the discussion at hand I am forced to generalize that you do indeed believe in God, just not in the standard human interpretation of who/what he is and what he wants of us.

On the other side of the equation are people who would argue strongly that there is no way the universe was designed/made. That the argument about things being “too perfectly put together” holds no water when you are talking about an infinite amount of time.

My opinion is that we must each develop an understanding of the concept of limitless time and it’s effect on occurrences of randomness before we can choose to believe in God.

If one accepts that a “1 in a quadrillion” chance will predictably occur every quadrillion times, then limitless time would obviously render that not only possible but predictable. It’s not a large leap to then suggest that the universe has reconfigured it’s self an unimaginable number of times before the current instance, and this serves as an alternate explanation for why we exist. If one cannot accept that as a possibility then the only other alternative seems to be creationism.

Take care,

John

Who do you think has free will? You might say everyone; I would say no one. The Wikipedia Encylopedia describes free will …. The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. Addressing this question requires understanding the relation between freedom and cause, and determining whether or not the laws of nature are causally deterministic.

To the average person that is probably correct. But that in reality barley touches the answer. Free (Not in bondage to another) will (Faculty by which a person decides or conceives himself as deciding upon & initiating action).

• The first requirement to having free will is to be able to think and be aware of yourself as an entity (I think therefore I am). That would rule out all of the animal kingdom.
• The second requirement would be intelligence (that is understanding not cleverness) or the question is meaningless.
• The third would be to yourself to question and ask yourself if you had free will.
• The forth would be not let emotions have any bearing on all actions and decisions. For example, a parent has an adult child that has carried out many horrendous evil acts and is obviously mad. The way the parent views her/his child is very much influenced by the emotional fact that he/she is the parent. The parent does not have free will; the parent is in bondage to the fact that they are a parent.
• It is clear that if you have a mental problem you do not have free will. You cannot have free will for part of the time only. To have free will means that you have it continuously.
• It is logically correct to say that if you are not interested to know if you have free will you do not have it by definition.

At this point, I would guess that I have eliminated 95% of the world’s population as not having free will. If you react instantly with an emotional response to ANY situation without correction, you do not have free will. I would say that raises it to 99% of the population without free will.

At this point, consider the importance of free will. Without it all the ugliness and badness in the world is explained. Without it what is the difference between you and ALL the ugly predators that have inhabited the planet since life started here. You might say I am good and believe in God or I am a good atheist who wants the world to be better. But without free will, you are only a pawn/player in this world of ugliness.

If you are an adult you have been in affect severely brainwashed by everything that has taken place in your life. Your country of origin, culture, parents, friends, religion, education, books read, films, art, music, radio, TV, newspapers etc have all played a major part in your identity and how you view the world and your existence.

Imagine that you suddenly came into existence with no previous identity or memory but you could think intelligently, read write and talk. You would have NO preconceptions at all. If in that theoretical situation and with free will what you make of the world and civilisation, what obvious conclusions would you come to? What would your first impressions of the world be?

Would it be a world of intelligence, harmony, love or the complete opposite? Would each individual be concerned and want the best for every other individual. Would all share lovingly? Would there be no anger, hatred, murder, torture. Would there be an absence of greed? Would there be an absence of nonsense puerile religions? The answer is obvious. You would find a world of chaos with an awesome history of violence, pain and suffering.

THINK, in your theoretical uncontaminated position could you possibly say that any one of them had free will? Do you think that the person who designs and makes nuclear weapons has free will? Do you think that the men and women in Russia who make the hundreds of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles that are used to kill have free will? Do the millions of men and women in the west who buy their pampered pets expense food while people starve have free will? Does the leader of a country or the head of a religious organisation living in luxury while others have only poverty with no hope have free will? Does the suicide bomber who blows himself up and everyone in his vicinity and thinks that he is going to paradise to be served by servile virgins have free will? Do the millions who smoke, over indulge in alcohol or are addicted to drugs have free will? Do ALL the six billion plus people on this planet who go about their daily lives and cannot see anything clearly have free will? The list could go on and on and I’m sure that you would be in there somewhere.

If just one person said to me..this world is ugly and worthless and if I could not change it completely I would without pain to anyone remove it I would know two things. The first is that the person would be intelligent. The second is that while he might not have complete free will he/she would be more than half way there.

If you reply that, the answer is a man called Jesus or Muhammad not only have you not understood any of the previous and have no free will but you also have no intelligence.

Why is the world as it is? Why do people cling on to the lie that there is more good than bad when it is obviously not so. Why do people think that they have free will when they do not? That is catch22. Only by having free will can you know and understand the answer to that question. If you do not want to know, you do not have free will and you are the same as the lion, tiger, monkey, dog, flea etc.. What a sorry uncorrectable state you are in.

Robert

The question is not wether god exists but what is god? Think of it this way imagine nothing, not just a lack of atoms, but of space, time, everything. That nothing would have no existance. It could not exist. Therefore something must exist however intangable that thing is it would exist It might be as intangable as a word for instance. That point of existance would create everything. Every ancient religion agrees god created himself, and the creator god is everything, not mearly powerfull. The argument sets up two sides who want to stand apart from each other, if you were trully seeking the truth, you would understand art and science are just different ways of looking at the same thing. it is bad science to ignore inconsistencies and say I have the answer now. And it seems to me to be unchristian to say my interpritation is the only posible one. There is more than one Gospel.

the universe is infinite, therefore anything with the remotest chance of happening will happen an infinite number of times

In answer to your question, John – Yes, God exists.

ok i didn’t watch the video but i find the comment on limitless time interesting . . .

the biggest problem with the concept of limitless time is that the 2nd law of thermodynamics suggests that even if time was limitless that matter would lose all its energy anyways. so here perhaps you could suggest that we just happen to live in the right moment in the history of time, but the problem with that is it requires time to be finite because any “right” time would have an infinite amount of time existing before that, which of course is more than enough time for the 2nd law of thermodynamics to run its course. So how are you going to account for the constant reenergization of matter in a universe of limitless time? Perhaps the big bang? but then what about the first big bang, where did that get its energy. I cant accept the idea of an endless cycle because frankly i dont think an infinite regress of actually occurring events is a physical possibility.

so how are you going to account both for the creation of matter and for its energization?

personally i think the creation of matter is a logical impossibility, even for God. this is in part why I find theistic idealism to be the only completely reasonable metaphysics, ala Berkeley.

I have read the bible cover to cover twice, attended many churches in various denominations since I was a child. I’ve also talked to priests, pastors, deacons and many who are solidly entrenched in their religions.

I believe very strongly that churches exist solely for the purpose of making money. They keep people coming back by spreading guilt and fear.

My 6 year old daughter asked me recently if Santa Claus is real. I looked her in the eyes and said yes he is and he loves you. He knows when you are good and will reward you for being good. I then realized that this is exactly what all the churches in the world are saying to us. They then pass the collection plate around and tell you to give with your hearts for Jesus.

I do not believe in God any more than I believe in Santa Claus. I believe we live in a remarkable universe that can almost entirely be explained by science.

For those bible thumpers out there, picture this… imagine you are the creator of the entire infinite universe. Trillions of planets that likely support life each with billions of living things on them (unless you are Catholic and believe we are at the center of the universe alone). Would you care about the day to day happenings of one individual? Do you as a person care about the ants on the sidewalk?

I consider myself a very intelligent guy; 2 college degrees and a significant amount of knowledge in religion (many types). How can any sane adult believe in an invisible omnipotent being that helps us with our problems. I recall somewhere that we were given free will. If God is medalling in our affairs then it’s not really free will is it.

People, use your brains! There is no God. My life is still complete because I love my family and want to spend as much time enjoying them as I can while I am alive.