I have felt spiritually disconnected lately. I am having trouble coming to grips with the fact that I know God loves us, yet there is so much evil in the world.

A couple of weeks ago I met a woman who was raped at fourteen and had an abortion. Ten years later, she still cries from telling the story. I think what made her cry was not the fact she was raped, but the abortion. I am trying to understand God's will in her life. Did God intend to bring another life into the world? If so, why with so much pain? Who committed the more evil act: the rapist or the victim who chose to get an abortion? Am I doing something wrong by even trying to relate my morality to her situation?

Tonight I met a man who's son murdered his mother, the man's ex-wife. How could God allow something like this to happen? Where is God's will in this situation? What good or love can possibly come from this? The man lost a son and a woman he loved. The woman lost her life. The son lost...I can't even imagine all he's lost.

The worst part is, I have seen their faces and heard their stories, yet the dominant thoughts in my mind through-out the day are things like...does my hair look good?, I wonder if that girl likes me?, When am I gonna get laid?...petty ego-centric thoughts that dominate my life.

I am so incredibly small and petty. I am...a long list of "I" statements. I would like to leave my ego behind, yet it protects me from the reality that the world is sooooo full of evil.

I believe I have reached a point in my life where I am ready to lose myself to God and accept his will for me, yet I am scared as to what pain his will for me may include. Part of me would rather stare at myself in vain fascination rather than embrace the world, with all its ugly and dangerous faults. I think a lot of people are this way.

Has anyone else had a loss of faith? Or to be more accurate, wanted to have faith, yet was plagued by doubts and ego? Has anyone wanted to believe in God, yet was scared that they would be hurt if they let their guard down?

I really want to let go of myself and embrace the world and God instead. Has anyone else had a similar point in their lives?

Well, it really depends on which God you are talking about? There's God vs. Allah. Both have very different theologies.

I only know Christian (not Morman, Jehovah's Witness or anything) as I grew up in a Christian home...

The reason evil is allowed to exist is because Jesus wants you to beleive in him out of choice, not because he's proven it to you or because you have no other choice. Also, evil basically springs from this choice. When someone makes the choice to be evil, God is not usually going to try to counter that. He gave us the choice of free-will, meaning that it was us who brought evil into existance. God gave us free-will, and that is a major part of the christian faith. He's not about to revoke the choice he's given us. Basically, we have to sleep in the bed we've made.

Something that gave me some sort of an answer, is the comic Jack. It has one shot in it that says the following:

*Kid writes the following on a blackboard*

"Dear God,

Why don't you stop war, and kids killing kids and honger?

-Timmy Roberts"

*An angel comes by and writes an answer on the same blackboard*

"Dear Timmy Roberts,

Wht should I stop people from doing something, whent they are perfectly capable of stopping themselves?

-God"

My two cents

Try Zen first, it may help more.

Friend, I understand where your coming from here, having gone through such a period of disconnection myself. Not a religious one, as I never was, but a disconnection from this world around us.

There is no such thing as evil, it is a human misconception.

We cannot try to decide what is evil in an act, only try to learn from it what we can. Things may indeed be done in a more moral or a more responcible way, and things may indeed be learnt without pain, but if pain or hate is caused, then we must assume that it was unnavoidable, take from it what we can, and strive to improve upon ourselves the next time.

People can learn some very valuable things by going through death or pain, rape or murder. We cannot understand the touch of fire until we are burnt, and in the act of burning another we sear ourselves. A life lived in pain will only show the more strongly those things which are beautiful, and it is this very fire which is in itself beauty, for all actions are but a reflection of each other.

You must not fall into the trap of rejecting your ego, your pain, your fear, your own wrong-doings. These things must be accepted and embraced, it is only then that we may understand them. When this is all understood, your sense of pride, hate, vanity, desire, all these things become tempered with the knowledge of what they are and the wisdom of how, as a part of us, we no longer need to be controlled by them, as they spring from the same source as our reason and our love, and it is our choice how to express whichever one we choose.

It is the process of learning the good and the bad, and realising for ourselves how these are composed, that life is made of. To seperate our identiy with that of the whole that we may study every aspect of it, know not only the truth of things, but understand why that truth is how it is, and then to re-integrate ourselves into an aspect of that entire truth.

Know that allthough things may seem evil, in the end it is up to us to realise this and become a force of light in our own lives, a beacon for others to follow, and that in the end this is how it will be, that allthough pain and suffering abound amongst us now, that there is in truth only the Divine Will, which we are every part as much involved creating it as it is involved in creating us. Thus we may not accept the will of the Universe as simple fate, as we are ourselves creating that fate with every moment of our myriad of life and existence.

These may help.

'Lift thy head, O Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above thee, burning in the dark midnight sky?'
'I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks shining it.'
'Thou sayest well. And now look around thee and into thyself. That light which burns inside thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the light that shines in thy Brother-man?'
'It is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and though its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, "Thy Soul and My Soul".'

The angels aspire to become men; a Perfect Man, a Man-God, is above all the angels.

Late-Nite Thinker, for what do you need faith?

This has been talked over many times in many topics. I remember spamming at least three with my musings.

So:

God is perfect and god is loving. God loves perfectly. God wants His people to love Him and God wants them to be so close to perfection as possible, so God wants His people to love Him so close to perfectly as possible. Therefore, He gives free will and choice. Where there is free will, some people will choose the easier way, will take a shortcut to achieve their goals. They will crave tangible things temporal and won't be bothered with abstract and remote things eternal. Some others will notice that loving and trusting people are deceived easily, which is profitable, or that honourable people wil not break some rules even if they're treated badly. Yet others will seek revenge and serve justice on their own. Their own justice. There will also be people who see enough evil go unpunished that they'll lose faith in any good. Cynical or just disheartened. Or desperate. From petty little evil do atrocious crimes, those people abandon God and do evil. Eventually, they will or will not align with God (again) out of their own choice. It's believed that only someone who condemns himself is condemned - he believes his wrongs can't be repaired, he himself can't be redeemed, there's no forgiveness possible for him. He rejects God's love totally and ultimately.

What a man wants love by force? Or by lack of choice? Would God? And well, is a massive intervention enough to awake even faith in people (for long), let alone love?

Sounds like you've had a dialogue with it. I'd say that any notion of god is manmade, and thus you can't say what it is he wants and what it is he doesn't want, you can only assume.

That's right, people need to come to these things on their own, else there is little point.

Edit: This was actually in responce to chevalier's post, but I agree here with Lokken as well. We can never truly understand any of this, only do our best.

By definition, you can't understand. You're not God, so you can't understand God. You never understand or know everything, or you would be God for yourself. You won't ever have proof, or you won't need to believe and have faith.

However, what I wrote is what can be derived from the Bible according to the laws of logic. Then you either accept the Bible or not. If you make different assumptions, you'll have different conclusions.

God is an all loving god who made us in his own image. Giving us the ability to reason and choose. All throughout the bible, it is told to us.

Ladies and gentlemen, refer to Matthew Chapter 13: 19-23 and Matthew Chapter 13:24-30.

That's how they justify it.

If there's an enemy of the concept of a monotheistic fundamentalist deity, I'm it.

Look not to the deities! The answer is here before you, in the strength of your hands, the swiftness of your wit and the keeness of your intellect.

God is an all loving god who made us in his own image. Giving us the ability to reason and choose. All throughout the bible, it is told to us all loving and the image of god doesn't match if humans are that image

Umm...Shura, Matthew 13:19-23 is the parable of the sower, not what you have mentioned.

Lokken, please explain.

John1:1, 1:3, 1:4, 1:14

I have not read this particular book, but I believe it unifies and reconciles the opposing concepts being discussed.

I am paraphrasing from memory so I do not quote this.

Look not for god within a house of stone or league of men, but within yourself, and each and every one of you.

I beleive it is called the gospel according to Saint Thomas, and was removed from the bible some time ago.

To my mind, there is no difference between the perfection of self, and the pursuit of this, and the pursuit of god.

When any holy book is studied, with the due understanding and experience, you realise they are all speaking of the same thing, it is only our perception of this that has differed, and the words which have changed over time can still be read the way they were always intended.

Thus again, I agree with each and every thing which has been said so far, by all memebers who have posted. To me there has been no contradiction, though I am sure some of you have intended it as such. All of these things are true. It is only your perspective which changes.

To me, God is man's way of coming to grips with what he doesn't understand. This fundamental assumption makes the nature of God unknowable and subject to a leap of faith. Once you make that leap, it's a matter of finding the set of rituals and practices (i.e., religion) that best fulfills your spiritual needs.

I'm always suspicious of someone who tries to interpret "God's will" for any entity other than him- or herself. It's up to each individual to find his own path to the Divine and to create a relationship with it that works in everyday life.

That's my way of copping out on your question, LNT. Part of your relationship with God is finding your own answer. I sincerely wish you luck.

Thus again, I agree with each and every thing which has been said so far, by all memebers who have posted. To me there has been no contradiction, though I am sure some of you have intended it as such. All of these things are true. It is only your perspective which changes.Well-said, Manus. If more people in the world were willing to understnd that, there would be peace.

That is the parable I'm talking about.

The Xtian Deity justifies the co-existence of good and evil with the "everyone's gonna get theirs someday" attitude. This is in response to the initial point brought up by Late-Night-Thinker about the girl who was raped and whatever. Hence you cannot say "but He's teh l337est of all! Why did He allow this to happen?"

That parable points out that evil can happen now but everything's just gonna be accounted for later. Bah.

I really cannot be bothered to argue with theists since I always win anyway but I just thought that was worth pointing out. Anyway, you folks have fun praying to your 'Lord' and I'll walk my godless path.

One last point: any deity that claims to have complete dominion over humanity had better have human concepts applicable to he/she/it. Otherwise, you folks have just given your souls to an alien sovereign who 'moves in mysterious ways'.

Everyone will get what they deserve, that's why we have poetic justice.

Will get what they deserve from whom's point of view?


As for your request, I mean that if God is all loving, and the humans are created in his image, humans should be all loving.

This is a logically enforced statement, and something somewhere doesn't make sense in this. Personally I dont find humans all loving, and I really dont see why God should be either.

I agree that humans can be all loving, but I'm quite sure most aren't.

This is not really the best place to try and engage in this type of dicussion, but I do have one suggestion...read "Summa Theologica" by St. Thomas Aquinas. He brilliantly discusses the existence of God as proven striclty by the human experience (perfect for a raging anti-theist like Shura) as well as the nature of evil in our world for those who have some faith but waver (like Late Nite Thinker). The logic and reason used do not even support any particular creed or dogma, although he himself was Roman Catholic, his logic has been used by Protestants, Orthodox even Muslim and Hindu. There is Truth our there. Sometimes it is hard to find and even harder to understand, but it is there.

I was trying to say he made us how he sees us.

From a straightforward point of view, it is the classic 'problem of evil'.

The traditional Judeo-Christian God is, like Chevalier suggested, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent.

If you're thinking of the traditional Judeo-Christian God there seem to be two optiions to me: 1) don't believe it exists (which isn't the same as believing it does not exist) or, 2) bite the bullet and commit yourself to believing that it exists and that this world is as perfect a world as possible where free will exists.

The way I take the problem of evil to work is that if God is omnipotent he could change the world, if God was omniscient he would know how to change the world, and if God was omni-benevolent he would change the world. I take Chevalier (Edit because I initially thought Chevalier was Grey Magistrate - the names are so similar I guess) and many others to be denying the third portion of what I just wrote - to be saying he wouldn't change the world because there has to be a world with free will to be as perfect as possible.

The problem others have with this is that there seems to be a lot of needless suffering that serves no real purpose and is completely divorced from free will. Kids are born with Tay Sachs - where is the free will in that? Animals suffer horribly in the wilderness - where is the free will in that? Bad weather kills large amounts of people - where is the free will in that? There just seems to be lots and lots of bad, dare I say evil, in the world that can't be laid at the hands of free will.

I suppose another option is to deny that all of this stuff is evil but I haven't really had anyone bite that bullet before. The more common response is essentially: 'God works in mysterious ways' which is I beleive what Chevalier refers to in his second post when he says we can't understand. Unfortunately, this isn't a particularly satisfying or compelling answer to someone questioning - it sounds too paternalistic.

Even if the problem of evil is true though it wouldn't mean there wasn't a god it would simply mean that if there is one it wouldn't be (omnipotent AND omniscient AND omni-benevolent).

If I could believe in God I would (Edit to say that's not what I mean; I mean that I would prefer to be a believer) - I do not personally understand the atheists who try to destroy the faith of others. Personally, I have a great deal of respect for a lot of what various religions have to offer. I don't believe there is no god either, I simply don't have a belief and believe an answer is unknowable. I've had a discussion before about whether you could force yourself to believe in God, essentially brain-washing yourself (is that possible?) to believe in God. For example, make an honest effort at reading the Bible or whatever parrticular book, attending a church, going to scripture classes etc. Over a course of years I thought you may actually be able to move from a state of non-belief to a state of belief by wrapping yourself in a particular faith. I have this weird belief in epistemic responsibility though and just couldn't get myself to do it but I dunno, it might work.

Edit - and as an aside, there isn't any proof of a god by Aquinas or anyone nor is there any proof that there is not a god - all purported proofs one way or the other have been refuted rather well.

[ October 31, 2003, 20:16: Message edited by: Laches ]

To continue on a slightly off-topic note so dont I understand how some people can draw the conclusion that just because you cant prove that there is no God then the Bible/Koran/whatever has to be true. The possibility of a divine being has nothing to do with the divinity of any gospel.

Woman, before the laws of God we are as swine! We cannot read His will! -The Crucible, Act Four, Rev. Nathan Hale

OK, I have to open my big mouth. LNT, I will try to answer your question based upon my personal beliefs, and Christian philosophy as a whole. Bear in mind that there is no quick and easy answer, a subject this obscure can’t have an easy answer. Ignore the responses like “God works in mysterious ways” or “we can’t hope to understand the hand of God” or “Everyone will get their just rewards in the end”…these statements may be true, but they are woefully insufficient to answer your question.

First, evil…it does exist (here I stand in disagreement to my friend Manus, et al), but we must begin with defining what it is. Evil is everything that is in opposition to the desires and needs of life that causes suffering. From a human standpoint, evil is the discrepancy between what is and what should be. This discrepancy has haunted human thought for all time and it leads to a need to understand both the nature of evil and its origin.

By observation we can see three distinct natures to evil:
1. Physical evil causes harm to man, either bodily or mentally. Simple examples of physical evil are death, accident, sickness, but also include poverty and oppression that result from imperfections in our social organization. Mental suffering, depression, even the inability to understand those things we cannot are other types of physical evil.
2. Metaphysical evil is the more natural manifestation of evil in the world. Storms, earthquakes, droughts, even the very actions of a predatory animal ending the life of another animal in order to secure its own existence. Philosophers have debated whether metaphysical evil is really evil at all but just “how the world was made”, but the Christian response has an answer for the existence of this evil as well, so we’ll leave it in the natures of evil.
3. Moral evil is an action that is in violation to a person’s moral order. Christianity has also called this type of evil “sin”. My moral order may be different from your moral order, and although religion is typically the force that shapes moral order in most people, it is not a requirement. Try to think of it more as an act against conscience. All people are capable of moral evil, not just someone who ascribes to a given Faith.

Sometimes the evil we observe is actually a combination of more than one kind at a time, like a famine and deaths due to food riots or greed and the subjugation of another person or persons. Most philosophers are in general agreement as to the nature of evil. There are some who state that evil is merely a “lesser good”, but that theory falls apart in the face of syllogistic logic, and is not the aim of my response. Where philosophies differ radically is in the question of the origin and purpose of evil, and Christian philosophy, in my opinion, does a far better job of answering that question.

Gonna post this now and answer more later.

Late-Night-Thinker, God sent part of himself to show an example for living and to bear all the pain in the world (past and future) on the cross. Think about that for awhile. It wasn't just the nails and the suffocation Jesus was dealing with, it was all the pain that resulted from mankind's sin, all at once. And he survived it and death because he wanted his creation to have free will but still have a way to be with him in eternity if they chose to do so.

If he can bear all the pain in the world on the cross, surely we can each bear a small amount of pain and even help our neighbors bear there's. If it results in death, so be it. We all die sometime. If you believe in Christ Jesus, you are saved and will spend eternity with him through God's grace. Have faith. Fight the good fight. If you believe in Jesus then you know he has something better planned for his believers -- people who want to get rid of their sins, rid of evil, and live like God intended from Day 1, but still respecting man's free will. Live as best you can, by Jesus' example. There can be no better role model. No other man has yet to raise himself from the dead. No one else can claim that. Who was this man that lived a sinless life, healed others, hung out with sinners, died on the cross, bearing all mankind's sins, and then rose to tell the tale? Jesus. Unless you can raise yourself from the dead I wouldn't mock his words or his parables.

Perservere. Don't fear pain and death, just do the best you can. And in the end Jesus will raise you and you will live with him as it should have been from Day 1, no sin, no pain. This gift will not be something you earn nor is it a reward for being a goody two shoes. It is a gift from the grace of God, which you can receive through faith. You will have to loose your ego to accept this. The alternative is clear. You spend the rest of eternity in more sin and more pain in the absence of God, left with God's number one enemy, deceiver of man, Satan. Hey, the choice is yours. Choose wisely. It's ok to have doubts, but resolve them while you can. I'd like to see all of you in heaven someday. My words are harsh out of love, not for any other reason. So no hard feelings. Peace be with you in whatever you decide.

Oh I can start ranting about every "contradiction" in the bible I've found.
We can just grab a few verses, Psalms and books and toss it at the opposition like tossing mud.
But that would spoil the conversation wouldn't it? :)

I've found a greater force in my life, me.

I am the center of my world, right? Is there any other? One who is not hidden behind veils of doubt?
I have created truth, right? Have I not given everything a position in my world? Have I not found a use for everything that came into my world? Have I not created moral?

Should I then believe in myself? Yes.

I can say, that the last Christian died on the cross, every Christian follows their heart and calls it Jesus.

To quote Nietzsche
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."

It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?"

@Morgoth: You told us what you believe, but did nothing to answer the question at hand, unless of course you believe that YOU are responsible for all the evil in the world. If that is the case, be advised that we are summoning an army of Valar who will forthright chain you in the void! IIRC, self-awareness typically develops in the fetus. Perhaps there is an alternate way of thinking that comes up with answers that are more involved than “I exist because I do”.

Back to the topic at hand… we come to the need to explain the existence of evil in the world. Philosophically, there are three methods that attempt to account for evil. I will go over the first two briefly, as they have little to do with Christian theology.

1. Existence is evil. Good is only an illusion and the pursuit of this illusion is what makes the human race exist. This is the basis of Buddhism, which states that one can never be happy in a world where the only reality is misery, and the only goal to seek is a non-existent state of impersonal called Nirvana. A more modern representation of this is the system of Pessimism, a “faith” espoused by Schopenhauer and others which is best summed up his tenet that “pleasure is the partial and temporary absence of pain”. This school of thought does not eliminate the existence of God or a Creator, but does portray God as disaffected, detached, sometimes amused as creation futilely runs through the maze of life.
2. Evil is part of nature. This sophism equates metaphysical evil with all other forms of evil. It views evil almost as an entity that exerts its will upon life. There is no origin of evil…it is part of nature itself. These systems reject any notion of Creation or God. Moral evil is not truly evil, but an error. These errors can be corrected by improving the social circumstances of man. It is this logy that gives birth to Humanism, Socialism, Communism, Atheism and secular philosophers like our good friend Nietzsche. In the spirit of goodwill, I will refrain from offering comment on the durability of these dogmas.
3. Evil is the manifestation of one of the two opposing principles or forces at work in this world. It is due to the duality of these oppositions that the strange blend of evil and good are apparent in our world. This school of thought is illustrated in the teaching of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest of the world religions. It has served as the cornerstone of thought for Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Heraclites, and many great philosophers of antiquity. It was the foundation of faith for the Hebrews, the Gnostics and finally the Christians. It is from here that we will move to a more applicable understanding of the existence of evil in our world.

I will now post and wait to finish at a later time. I somehow feel that my efforts may be wasted. If any of you have an interest in hearing more, please reply by either posting to that effect on this thread or sending me a pm. Perhaps it would be best just to let this subject die if no one really cares.

Hey Hackenslash, I like your first definition of evil, as that which is not good, which is therefore the same as your second and third definitions in your third post, but you have completely misinterpreted Buddhism, and Nirvana.

Buddhism is just the same as Christianity, they follow the teachings of Gautama, Budhism (only one d) is the older, a sort of occult philosophy.

Budhists and Buddhists alike agree with your third definition, they only say that Good and Evil, as a duality, are actually two parts of the same thing, and all else except that one is an illusion. This maya of our present lives is 'evil' because it is so differentiated from that one source, which is absolute, and 'good' life, love, all these are merely the essence of what this absolute is. They do not believe in a personal "God" but they do believe in many apperceptive gods, Nirvana is the becoming of such a god, an aware being as part of the infinite universe (and therefore non-being, as it is infinite). I'm sure some philosophers ascribe to your first definition, but Bud(d)hists are not among them in the way you have ascribed.

Of course, all three of your definitions can be seen as true, Good and Evil as a duality of existence, and evil as the absence of good, and therefore every much a part of this reality, where evil is simply an error, a deviation from good, manifested as a mindset, as all thought have an existence of their own, and that this reality, as it contains such an abundance of this, is in itself evil, and as such is an illusion, as evil only exists as the absence of good.

Of course, I think your final description is the most definitive.

Morgoth is however, right on topic with what he says, and I couldn't agree with him (especially that quote) more than I do. You see, we are responcible for the situations around us, we create both good and evil, there is no line between ourselves and the rest of reality, but as those most aware of ourselves, we exert the greatest impact upon it.

Sure, the nature of the universe means that in the end, only good comes from an action, whether good or evil, but this does not mean that it isn't still our choice that this happens, it is just inevitable for us to eventually make this decision on our own. A lot of harm can be done in the meantime however, and this is what we should consider.

For anyone who is undecided, I suggest dying; you may not understand everything, but you will be closer to comprehending this than any of us are now.

Evil is just an oppurtunity to learn, an oppurtunity to do more (or become more) aligned to 'good', and is often done for exactly this purpose.

I apologize to all for my misinterpretation of the theology of Buddhism. My studies of Buddhism have been perfuntory at best and serve mostly to enable my mouth to get wider to accomodate more of my foot :D . I am writing this off the top of my head as I have been at work (yeah...sure I'm working) and I may have been confusing Buddhism with Confucianism or Taoism.

Anyway, Christian philoshiphical theology is a distinct offshoot from the third school of thought, and incorporates a relatively unique factor upon the power of evil in our world...the human will. That's what I'll cover next...Hey, I said I was at work!

You know, Manus, I can't help but wonder, as you and I exchange thoughts and as I incurr the animosity of anti-theists like Shura and Morgoth, if Late-Nite Thinker really just needed a hug. Later all.

You may have a point there Hacken Slash! Let's just hope that while we're all swapping rhetoric, he doesn't go and do something crazy like convert to the Church of Scientology! :eek: :p Ahh Travolta, where did you go wrong? :D

Tom Cruise, too. Part of the reason Nicole Kidman left him (hey, Manus, she's an Aussie, too isn't she?). Travolta is a little easier to swallow, I just remember him as Vinny Barbarino and don't expect much else!

Anyway, hey L-NT, what's the verdict. You started this mess, do you still want to hear the likes of Manus and I beat our heads against the wall :bang: , or just have a group hug and go out for a pint :thumb: ?

First and foremost, I would like to say my dream is to become a respected scientist. I am leading my classes (number one in bio, two in chemistry) and more than that, I have a natural affinity for the workings of Nature. Nature is easy to understand. Essentially, everything runs downhill.

From the moment of the Big Bang until this very second, Nature has moved from organization to unorganized stability. This is essentially the second law of thermodynamics.

At the moment of Creation, all of reality was perfect. All matter and all energy perfectly symmetrical and in a word...the same. Perfection of reality is God. Reality, as we know it, is the unraveling of that perfection.

Reality is a parasite living off of the decaying matter and energy of God. We are less than the perfection of God, and have no choice in the matter (pun!), as the unraveling of God was necessary for our existence. Did God have to make it this way? Could he not have defined the rules of existence to support a more eternal and less chaotic reality? I do not believe God could have, as I choose to believe God is a loving entity and would have made reality most suitable for love to exist.

I believe God made the universe, soul wrenching flaws and all, the way it is in order to support the most varied and numerous forms of life, and hence love, to exist.

What life and love lies out there among the numerous points of light that could each support a whole society uniquely clamoring for the perfection that was denied in the very moment perfection was sacrificed?

Are there any answers here? Somehow, there is for me.

I think the underlying theme of existence is each other. We are not alone. As long as I care for the person next to me, I have surpassed the underlying march towards chaos and in effect, have earned a soul. It is the very act of love, so at odds with the inevitable isolation of spread matter and energy that will one day be reality, that grants me the right to know God.

Did God die to give us life? Perfection certainly did. Either way, love does indeed exist. I thank God for that.


Edit...LOL, just read the scientology remark...
that's funny. Well, I guess I have created my own scientology. I suppose it is not so bad if I found the answer before the telling...either way, Travolta ruled in Saturday Night Fever.

Hacken Slash, evil is in percieving.

You know, Manus, I can't help but wonder, as you and I exchange thoughts and as I incurr the animosity of anti-theists like Shura and Morgoth, if Late-Nite Thinker really just needed a hug. Later all. Please speak for yourself, that I am not believing in a 'God' but me, doesn't mean I am (openly) hating the theists

[ November 01, 2003, 15:10: Message edited by: Morgoth ]

The more common response is essentially: 'God works in mysterious ways' which is I beleive what Chevalier refers to in his second post when he says we can't understand. Unfortunately, this isn't a particularly satisfying or compelling answer to someone questioning - it sounds too paternalistic.Mysterious ways is one. It may well be perceived as paternalistic by non-believers. The other is that God is a higher being, we are lower beings. Thus we can't understand Him fully, because He's beyond our cognition and understanding - the way you wouldn't expect a fly to understand humans. This works even for politheists. Where you have a single deity, omniscent and omnipotent, it becomes even more obvious, as you can for sure tell that you're not omniscent or omnipotent. With our limited cognition we can't understand a being with universal, total cognition. It's logical even if you add 'if it existed' and the existence of any gods at all is a non-fact for you.

Laches, how would God make everyone happy without removing free will? Having an innate disease or being a murder victim isn't a result of your free will, of course. But then there's other people's free will and all implications of it. There are the laws of physics, of nature etc, in short: the mechanics of the world.

Has anyone else had a loss of faith? More like shattered.

And the people call their God ununderstandable, like a fly can't understand a human.

They gave their God a name, but when did a fly ever name us?
They told me their God is good, benevolent, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, but when could they ever understand Him enough to tell me how He is like?
They say that there are two kinds of evils in this world, Evil, and stealing free will, more evil than Evil iself.

And God chose the lesser evil, Evil, but whoso is powerful enough to force God to a decision?
Evil forced God, for God had to chose one of them.

"All good people are weak: they are good because they are not strong enough to be evil" - the Latuka chieftain Comorro told Baker.

And God chose the lesser evil, Evil, but whoso is powerful enough to force God to a decision?Where would free will be then if God enforced good? God is eternal, evil isn't. God was prior to evil and evil came into existence as a result of choices made of free will.

As for names, we didn't give God a name. We refer to Him as God (essentially: the god). He doesn't need a name, he is God. Iehovah is 'I am who I am', which is God. Actually, Iahveh is more proper and Iehovah is a result of mediaeval theologists putting the vowels from adonai (Lord) into ihvh, but that's not the point ;)

Laches, how would God make everyone happy without removing free will? But that isn't the problem of evil. Here, from a quick search I like this little site:

Bad things sometimes happen. Whether they are taken to flow from the operation of the world ("natural evil"), to result from deliberate human cruelty ("moral evil"), or simply to correlate poorly with what seems to be deserved ("non-karmic evil"), such events give rise to basic questions about whether or not life is fair.

The presence of evil in the world poses a special difficulty for traditional theists, as both Epicurus and Hume pointed out. Since an omniscient god must be aware of evil, an omnipotent god could prevent evil, and a benevolent god would not tolerate evil, it should follow that there is no evil. Yet there is evil, from which atheists conclude that there is no omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent god. The most common theistic defense against the problem, propounded (in different forms) by both Augustine and Leibniz, is to deny the reality of evil by claiming that apparent cases of evil are merely parts of a larger whole that embodies greater good. More recently, some have questioned whether the traditional notions of omnipotence and omniscience are coherent.

Recommended Reading: The Problem of Evil: A Reader, ed. by Mark Larrimore (Blackwell, 2000) {at Amazon.com}; The Problem of Evil, ed. by Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert M. Adams (Clarendon, 1991) {at Amazon.com}; and Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford, 1998) {at Amazon.com}.

Manus seems to bite the bullet and deny that there is evil. Chevalier seems to be saying essentially that the world is as perfect as possible (with we can't understand God thrown in to explain why we don't realize this). The problem to me seems to be that both of these are anti-intuitive and don't correspond with our experience. Free will only explains one type of evil.

Personally, I really don't have much regard for most existentialists, particularly Nietzsche or Sartre, but I do have a certain amount of fondness for Kierkegaard who was a devout Christian and said essentially "Yeah, Christianity seems to have contradictions. That's why we have faith."

[ November 01, 2003, 17:49: Message edited by: Laches ]

Where would free will be then if God enforced good? God is eternal, evil isn't. God was prior to evil and evil came into existence as a result of choices made of free will. Uhm, isn't God omnipotent?
God can enforce good without taking our free will, if he is omnipotent that is.

[ November 01, 2003, 19:27: Message edited by: Morgoth ]

Faith - the ultimate cop-out for any theological discussion.

another cop-out:

- 'god' is not subject to human concepts of morality and 'his' actions cannot be justified by such. i.e, 'moves in mysterious ways.'

Which leads to:
'do not question 'god''.

So a being that supposedly is omnipotent and almighty actually allowed all the crap in the world to happen?

I could accept that. We are all familiar with the concepts of evil and oppressive tyrants.

If not for the fact that he's touted as a 'loving' and 'merciful' deity.

-( again this point can be countered by referring to The Revelation of St. John the Divine, the last book in the Bible.) But that's assuming that it's a 'Revelation' and not a 'Hallucination'. And here we go back into 'Faith' again. Such circular logic would be admirable if it wasn't so ridiculous. After all, they did build layer upon layer of it over more than 2000 years.

My focus here will be something else, though. It's a question that needs some leading up to.
The main query I have is: Why? Why would anyone who has any sense of respect for him/herself bow before an obvious tyrant in the form of the monotheistic deity? Must Intellectuality, Reason and Logic be subject to Fear and Subservience hidden underneath the lofty title of Faith? That is the primary thing I see amongst monotheists that drives them and I pity them indeed, be they Christians, Jews or Muslims.

Off topic: How would you answer this question, Christians?

"Why do you choose to worship Jesus?"

I mean no mockery in this query. Please tell me why, and see whether or not you are able to not make the fear of eternal damnation a large part of that answer.

Here's my viewpoint, which you can utterly disregard:
So basically we should all debase ourselves before this tyrants of tyrants and oppressor of oppressors? Not me. I choose to take the path of Lucifer if indeed, 'god' does exist. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, like Milton said. To bow before tyranny is to be subsumed by it. It is to lose your basic dignity and give up all rights to intellectuality.

Most of the evil present in the world today stems indeed from the belief and worship of this monotheistic 'god'. I tend to take an uncharacteristically optimistic viewpoint here: if humans would only stop attributing their actions to some external divine influence or divine will, they will surely regain their noble Reason and basic Honor. Why would anyone perpetrate such horrors on anybody else if his/her mind is clear?

Can any true thinking being commit an act that causes him/her to regard him/herself with disgust if he/she cannot attribute it to some 'higher' power? Surely the state of the world will be much better if people held themselves accountable for their own actions. But that's existentialist dogma and I won't get so far off the topic into that.

To LNT: the answer isn't 'up there'. Neither is it in any deity. It's in the strength of your arms and the keeness of your mind. There is 'evil' but once you start to realise that it's humans who have to fight 'evil' and stop attributing it to some deity, you'll get a much clearer perspective of things.

Humanity is not perfect. But that's what we have to work with.

Uhm, isn't God omnipotent?
God can enforce good without taking our free will, if he is omnipotent that is.From that point of view, God could make two and two five.

The focus of Christianity is not avoiding damnation, but achieving salvation. In Christianity, you're only damned if you totally refuse the love and mercy of God. Basically, this relies on seeing the evil within you as greater than God's mercy.

Then you have the problem of damnation. I don't want to go off-topic, but I'm ready to elaborate on it a bit, if there's a need.

I hope you have read my earlier posts, because this will build from there. Again, I am stating the Christian answer to the question originally raised by LNT, but while doing so I will also be providing answers to Morgoth and Shura.

We have discussed the nature of sin and also the three basic approaches that can be taken to rationalize the existence of evil in the world. With the exception of Manus’ correction of my misinterpretation of the nature of Buddhism, I am not aware of any other direct challenges to what has been said. All right, here we go…it gets a little tougher from here.

God. God is real. God exists. Volumes have been written trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, and that is not the purpose of this post. Maybe, it would be easier to remove the word “God” and simply call it a Creator Force. This Creator Force (whom Christians call “God”, by the way ;) ) can be identified with certain properties, and these properties are not refuted by further study of the God or creation. The foremost of those properties are well known, and have been already posted to this thread…omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and being of absolute goodness. God has no beginning or end, no physical entity or limitation. God has always existed, and always will.

This fundamental reality is the building block to any belief system that extends further than yourself and your immediate physical world. This knowledge of God is not based upon faith, as some detractors have already mentioned in derision…help us all if something as weak and flighty as human faith were responsible for our ability to realize the existence of God! It comes from within, without…from all around you as a shouted or whispered answer to a question. I feel sorry for those who can not know of the existence of God, but I don’t condemn you for it. I am far worse off if I claim knowledge of God and fail to live my life with the promptings of that knowledge, than someone who never knows God and lives to their conscience. I’m getting off the subject now, sorry.

So, we begin with God. God created. God created all of existence, all matter, all energy…everything. Don’t bring up objections about the Genesis creation story or evolution or any such thing…I am not proclaiming that it occurred over 6-24 hour days or that God was some sort of agent behind a Big Bang and Macroevolution…let’s just stick with the basics…God created everything. (Remember, I am giving the Christian answer to support my claim that the Christian answer satisfies the kinds of questions that LNT asks). Two key points about creation that I wish to make:

First, the mode of creation…God did not create the way a human would, say, bake a cake. God did not gather ingredients, mix, stir, bake yada yada yada, God “SPOKE” and it came into being. God began with nothing, and by speaking an intent and will, it became so. Bear in mind that God is spirit…speaking entails no physical action as it would for you and me…it would equate more to us like a “thought”. This supports the property of God’s omnipotence. It does not defy God’s omnipotence for already made creation to participate in creation…examples of this might be: matter coalescing into a planet, natural selection, Tectonic shift or even two humans joining with God in creation by having a baby.

Second, the reason for creation…God did not create for the sake of man (part of God’s creation, but we’ll get there in a minute). God was already perfect, creation in no way contributed to God’s perfection, although creation was perfect, proven by the response given in the scriptures after each phase…”God saw that it was good”. God created because it pleased God…creation was initially perfect and that perfection was a reflection and illustration of God’s own goodness, power and wisdom. Don’t connect human weakness to God and view this as some sort of ego trip, like God standing in front of mirror saying “Lookin’ Good…Pretty Damn Good…” It pleased God to see the perfection wrought from God’s will…the best comparison I can make are a mother and father looking upon their baby child…they don’t feel that the creation of the child is some sort of accomplishment, something to feel puffed up over…it is rather evidence of the love and union that they shared which has yielded the creation of new life and soul. It is not a self serving pleasure, rather a self giving pleasure. This is the closest example on an earthly outlook that we can find of the creative desire of God. In summation, God made the world not for the good of man, or any other creation, but for God’s own pleasure.

I’ll post this now and write more later…

From that point of view, God could make two and two five.
Yup, God is above logic, no?


I still don't see why taking free will is bad.

Let's take the Maryland sniper as example, let's say that a policeoffice saw the sniper aiming at his newest victim.
The officer could arrest him, but he decides otherwise.
The victim is shot, dies, and the officer is too arrested for failing his duty.

Now I want to see the look on the judge's face when the ex-cop says that he didn't want to interfere with the snipers free will.

@Hacken Slash
Why is God so hard to find? There is no proof, hardly any serious support for any of the extreme parts of the bible (like the creation, resurrection).

Doesn't the greatest thing proof its existence in the greatest way?

Shura: I worship Jesus for three main reasons. One, without Him, reality doesn't make sense.

I'm a rationalist, and what I believe has to be justified by reason and logic. And of all the possibilities I've confronted, Christianity does the best job of meshing with reality. It may sound odd, but Christianity is the most logical choice. (And no, Morgoth, God is not above logic - Christ Himself is called the "Logos" and the "Truth".)

As a cold, brittle example that is totally inadequate to Late-Night Thinker's original plea - if Christianity has the problem of evil, atheism (or Budhism, as Manus has related it) has the problem of non-evil. Manus' solution is to deny that evil is really evil - it's just a deviation, or misunderstanding, or misperception, or whatever. But that answer is totally inadequate to Late-Night Thinker's genuine concern. Evil has substance, and we know it when we confront it - in others, and in ourselves. I knew a sincere Buddhist (two ds, Manus!) at school who could not bring himself to admit that the 9/11 attacks were evil (or, alternately, that the massive CIA plot to bomb the towers was evil).

But atheism has a similar problem, because whatever humans make, humans can unmake. If there is no moral standard from an authority beyond humanity - no independent standard - then yesterday's good becomes today's evil and then tomorrow's good again. There is no way to justify any end as an end, turning life into a string of meaningless means. Shura: how can you define what is really debasement, or tyranny, or honor, or reason, independent of a divine order? Nietzsche and the existentialists had it right - you can't, so you have to make up the definitions as you go along.

Nor can atheism even define what is truly "free" in free will. We're just skinny sacks of chemical processes and flashing neurological signals. The logical result of consistent atheism is materialist determinism (or dialectical materialism, if you want to take the idealistic path). Nor even can atheism define what is truly "you" about yourself. At what point does a limb cease to be simply a limb and become merely part of an individual? And at what point is an individual separate from the mass of humanity, or even the mass of the universe? Manus takes the logical course here - all is all is all, and ultimately anything is indistinguishable from the rest.

Reality presents us with the ideas of evil, truth, logic, freedom, and individuality. Only Christianity can explain reality in its entirety.

Second, I do indeed fear God - and quite properly. We fear fire, the State, our parents, the ocean, electrical power, motor vehicles, and countless other things that are glorious, good, and powerful. It is intellectually dishonest (or naive) to say that it is somehow bad to fear God, while our very lives depend upon healthy fears of so much in our environment - don't cross the street without looking both ways! don't drink rubbing alcohol! don't jump off that building! etc. Why should it be legitimate to fear fire and not fear God?

Third, I also love God. You can clinically crunch the statistics and calculate how much money your parents pour into your education, housing, food, clothing, etc., and determine, "According to the math, my parents have demonstrated their commitment to invest in me, and therefore they are beneficial to me." It is separate - but not unconnected - to say, "I love my parents and they love me." Love for parents (and their love for their kids) is both reasonable and emotional.

But atheism has a similar problem, because whatever humans make, humans can unmake. If there is no moral standard from an authority beyond humanity - no independent standard - then yesterday's good becomes today's evil and then tomorrow's good again. One can be atheist and still have an independent standard. Various forms of utilitarianism, Kant's deontology, intuitionism etc. And relativism, while personally distasteful to me, rejects the idea of an independent standard entirely - the lack of an independent standard isn't a problem. The fact that today's evil is tomorrow's good wouldn't mean there is no evil (like Manus supposes) it would just mean the good is, well, relative. The good could also be independent and still be mutable. As an aside, some Christians believe that the good flows from God and thus is not independent either. Edit to add - I just realized it appears that you mean God provides an independent standard and that the good flows from God. Well, if the good flows from God it isn't independent and since God is prior to the good God isn't good either. On the other hand, if God is good the good must be independent of God and whatever this independent standard is there is no reason it is the exclusive province of theists.

Nor can atheism even define what is truly "free" in free will. We're just skinny sacks of chemical processes and flashing neurological signals. The logical result of consistent atheism is materialist determinism No. You're assuming atheism = reductionism. Look up Sydeny Shoemaker's talk about non-reductive materialism and from the metaphysics you may see how there are perfectly good theories that could don't require a reduction leading to determinism.

[ November 01, 2003, 23:55: Message edited by: Laches ]

Go Grey Magistrate. You seem to state so much of what I believe, but I will refrain from "high-fives" for the moment, as we still need to address the concerns of LNT, as well as the objections of Shura and Morgoth.

I will take a brief recess from the lectures that I have been giving to answer a specific objection stated by Mr. Morgoth.

@Hacken Slash
Why is God so hard to find? There is no proof, hardly any serious support for any of the extreme parts of the bible (like the creation, resurrection).
You ask two questions...I'll address the second first.
You say that the extreme parts of the Bible are unsupported by observable fact and reference the creation and resurrection as evidence. You are correct. There is little logical proof for many of the claims made in the Bible, and this is a stumbling block for those who seek a more scientific standard of faith. Please bear in mind exactly what the Bible is...it is not a treatise...it is not a history book...it is not inspirational praise...it is not a piece of prophecy...it is actually ALL of the above. The Bible is not a book, rather a collection of works of men, inspired by the hand of God, to record the world and the effect of the will of God upon that world. Whole sections have been recorded with local or native understandings or prejudice. I am not concerned that the books of Chronicles or Kings record drastically different numbers for the forces of Israel. I do not turn to the Bible for Historial accuracy, only as a Testament to understand the will and plan of God for human creation. That is why it exists, that is why it has been preserved by the Church throughout the ages. The Bible, in a remarkable way, tells the story of creation, the fall and the salvation of creation. I further believe that it is almost dangerous to try to read the Bible without this understanding. Perhaps if you adopt this mentality, and no longer look to the Bible to support secular history, you will be able better to understand exactly what it is. I will gladly address this topic more fully if you wish, simply pm me if you have questions.

Second...I never meant that God is hard to find or understand. I will parapharase, but there is a scripture that states to the effect that "the wisdom of men will be confounded by the simplicity of truth". God tells us best how to find God, and the instructions could not be more explicit, and that is to come as a "little child". Adopt humility, abandon pride, accept your limitations, acknowledge your imperfection, deny self...and God will loom before you like an inpenetrable wall...you can't miss it. If you continue to hold to the ideals of self, of humanism, then you may as well try to shove a camel through the eye of a needle.

It's the same for all of Christianity...those things that should seem easy are hard, that which is impossible...already done.

Be back to finish class later :p :p

EDIT: You know what the problem is, Morgoth? It's your avatar...that outsider scares the hell out of me! :mommy:

[ November 02, 2003, 03:16: Message edited by: Hacken Slash ]

Second...I never meant that God is hard to find or understand. I will parapharase, but there is a scripture that states to the effect that "the wisdom of men will be confounded by the simplicity of truth". God tells us best how to find God, and the instructions could not be more explicit, and that is to come as a "little child". Adopt humility, abandon pride, accept your limitations, acknowledge your imperfection, deny self...and God will loom before you like an inpenetrable wall...you can't miss it. If you continue to hold to the ideals of self, of humanism, then you may as well try to shove a camel through the eye of a needle. To become a slave? Is that how your God wants me?
I now see why Satan was needed, as the great liberator.


"God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave." While Satan is "the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds." - Bakunin Theism is not only false but it is immoral in the sense that the theist justifies judgements, practices and actions (of public and social consequence) on the basis of that which is, by definition, unaccountable, unintelligible, indefineable, immeasurable, everywhere and nowhere, and wholly, ultimately arbitrary.

I don't get your point. The attributes that help humans find God...
God tells us best how to find God, and the instructions could not be more explicit, and that is to come as a "little child". Adopt humility, abandon pride, accept your limitations, acknowledge your imperfection, deny self...and God will loom before you like an inpenetrable wall...you can't miss it. Are hardly Christian specific attributes, they are held in regard by Theists, Humanists, and Atheists alike. That does not equate itself into slavery by any definition. The next subject that I wanted to cover was the effect of free will upon creation...all those qualities that help to find God spring from free will, and where free will exists, there can be no slavery.

Based upon your personal beliefs it would equate to slavery if you were FORCED to worship a God in whom you did not believe, but then again that would be a violation of your free will. When you are free to exercise choice of will, part of the design of God's Creation, there can be no slavery. (at least to God...there is untold slavery due to the physical and moral evil in the world...but that was covered in a previous post)

Edit: I know that I haven't addressed your views of Satan here, but I will soon. My, it is easy to try to idolize Satan as a rebel, but then again, that's just what Satan wants. Perhaps in further discussions we will reveal who's will is being enslaved by whom.

Isnt it slavery if you are sent to hell for not believing and worshipping your god? Even if you dont believe in hell an unbeliever would be barred from the promised blissful paradise, isnt that a way of forced worship? "Do as I say or I will torture you for all eternity/you wont get to play in paradise".
For me that sounds like your god desires slaves, with the image of free will to skip away from responsibility.

joacqin, I was just thinking that.

Heaven, hell?

Your logic is incorrect. There can be no hell without God, the two are intrinsically linked. For someone who does not believe in God, there is no belief in hell, therefore no fear of being "sent to hell" as you have said. Further, you show a lack of understanding of the teachings of Christianity (maybe you've had dealings with Fundamentalists, who are wrong) If I know God, truly know God, as I feel I do, and know God to be Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent and All Good...if I then reject God, as an act of free will and turn away from the good that I know, then I face judgement and punishment.

For someone who truly nevers knows God and lives their life at the dictates of their conscience, there is no punishment, no banishment to hell. If you as an Agnostic never attain a knowlege of God, that is not your fault. You will be held responsible for your own actions of morality and justice, based upon whatever mores you obtain.

A close friend of mine has a habit of saying that hell will be full of Christians...the bad ones ;)

Now, on the other hand, if something inside you tells you that God is there, if you somehow inwardly believe, but deny it and serve yourself out of pride and arrogance, claiming to be an atheist, then you will likely be held accountable.

I hope that clarifies the Christian stand to those who don't believe. If you have heard otherwise from so-called Christians, they are wrong and I apologize to you on behalf of them.

Edit: You know, I just realized that I have opened myself up to another line of objections...I have now invited disagreement from Fundamental Protestant Christians over "saved by faith" or "once saved always saved" and other nonesuch...and here I was having a nice polite debate with a couple of atheists! :(

@Jocquin (sp?) & Morgoth: That is exactly the point I was trying to highlight.

Worship = Paradise

Refuse to worship = Eternal damnation

Hence, Free Will = Illusion?

That is the basic jusitification for the monotheistic faiths of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Non-believers are satanic infidels who are going to burn for eternity. Believers will ascend to paradise.

There was once this child-rapist murderer who got sentenced to death over here. Before his sentence, he converted to Christianity and there were hordes of Christians praying for him. That was many years ago. I still did not have a faith but I was studying Christianity and the bible for academic reasons with a church group.

I asked one of my fellow students who was a Christian his opinions and he said that the rapist would undoubtedly ascend to heaven and eternal paradise.

I should have left it there and then but I had to ask more: What about his victims?

The answer: Since none of them were Christians, they will burn in hell forever.

I spoke up again: So no matter how evil and twisted you are you go to heaven as long as you say 'Praise Jebus'? What about those who are virtuous and spend their whole lives helping people? Do they go to hell if they're not Christians?

The answer: Yes. It might not seem fair but it's all part of God's plan. Do not question his Will.

I ended up walking away in disgust. He was lucky I was in a relatively good mood that day or violence would surely have ensued.

His view was shared by a pastor whom I once studied under, along with the rest of the usual congregation. Only I said: " The hell with this." and threw away my bible before leaving the church for good.

Many more similar episodes with other Christians condemmned this faith in my eyes utterly. If there was such a deity who is so evidently powerful and who is so petty and malicious, I choose to side with his adversary. If Armageddon does come, expect me to stand with the forces of Hell. Satan deserves more respect from me than Jesus. At least he was honest and brave enough to rebel against a tyrant. Now, I fill in my religion as Satanism, if only to piss off every theist I come across.

Why should anyone worship 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah' besides not wanting to burn in hell?

The simple act of creation does not warrant servility, especially if 'free will' is granted.

I shall not submit to such tyranny. I shall fight it with every fiber of my being. If it means eternal torment, then so be it.

Everyone who has the basic dignity accorded to him/her by intellectuality and reason should do no less to resist the Tyrant of tyrants and Oppressor of oppressors.

Meanwhile, I live with my own codes. I rely on my own strength and mind. If there is a 'higher purpose' to existence, the way to discover it surely lies here and not in absolute servility to a monstrous deity like the Christian god.

@Shura...did you read my prior post, or are you just speaking to make yourself heard? Your assumptions of the teachings of Christianity are incorrect. I am sorry that you have had bad experiences with "Christians", but everything that you believe to be true about Christianity is WRONG! Perhaps it would be best for you to explain the tenets of Humanism, Agnosticism and Atheism and leave the interpretation of Christian beliefs to...dare I say...a Christian.

Elaborate, passionate arguments are very impressive, but if they are based upon a lie or misunderstanding, then they are no more important than a pile of dung. A recurring theme that I have seen on these threads, is that many of the posters fail to truly read what has been said before them in a mad rush to get in "their two cents".

Despite what it may seem like (I tend to have a caustic tongue), I hold yourself, Morgoth, Joaquin and others in the very highest regard. I once felt exactly the same way you do, but due to fortunate circumstance, no longer do. I am not here to try to change your way of thinking, only to cogently express the Christian viewpoint per evil, sin, suffering and God. I feel that I provided a valid and substantial rebuttal in my last post, which you in all ways refused to address.

Now, you'll excuse me, I just got back from Mass and need to remove my manacles.

I've thought a lot about Hell too, although recently, the more I've thought about it, the more appealing (not exactly the right word I'm looking for here, though) becomes the idea that Hell is not so much as God saying, "You were bad, go here," and turning up the heat, as it is distance from God (or if you prefer, contentment, joy, happiness, simplicity, etc.).

I should probably check out Brave New World from the library and read the part between John and Mustafa about God, sickness, old age, youth, death, and humanity. It really was enlightening.

Well, just my two cents. Stepping out of the way now.

[Edit: Oops - wrote these two cents while the above three posts were being written...]

Quick catch-up...

Laches: I'm not familiar with Shoemaker, so I'll take your word for it. To be honest, when it comes to philosophy, I'm more the generalist bard than the specialist mage. All my college philosophy focused on (drumroll) Marxism, so that may have tainted my appreciation for its competitors. But I'm still suspicious of the validity of these so-called independent standards - doesn't utilitarianism judge by overall satisfaction, but since no one can determine conclusively how to measure satisfaction, it must fall to individual humans to make that judgement?

As for good standing independent of God or flowing from Him - I think the two ideas flow together in this case. If we say that a woman is beautiful, is that because the woman is beautiful herself, or because something within her taps into the ideal beauty without? How much more muddled when we try to distinguish the indistinguishable, between God and good, at such an ultimate source?

Per Satan, already mentioned twice: Perversely, this is maybe the most on-topic we've been on the question of good and evil. Shura, maybe it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, but that ain't an offer you'll be presented any time soon. As Calvin and Hobbes observed, the tragic thing in life is not that people are willing to sell their souls, but how cheaply they sell them. As Robert Burns wrote:

Yet ne'er with wits profane to range
Be complaisance extended;
An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange
for Deity offended!

Check out Christopher Marlowe's play Faust for the same idea.

joacquin: But so much of life is like that! If you obey the laws, you stay free; if you break the laws, the police lock you in jail. If you exercise a healthy, nutritious lifestyle, you stay fit; if you eat junk food and lie around, you decay. If you keep fire in the fireplace, it's great; if you burn it in the hills, it's bad. Are we "slaves" to society or calories or fire because they reward good behavior and punish bad? Is oxygen tyrannical because it rewards breathers but penalizes those who refuse to breathe? Is it bad that the traffic system rewards those who cross at the crosswalk and penalizes those who play in the freeway?

What I mean is, if you accept that man's legitimate place is to praise things that are praiseworthy (friends, family, sports teams, politicians, Olympic athletes, etc.), and if you also accept that God is praiseworthy, then it really isn't that big a deal to think that there should be rewards for praising Him and penalties for cursing Him. (Just as it isn't that big a deal to accept that lovingly praising your kids is a surer ticket to family happiness than cursing them.) But instead we have an easier time praising buggy computer games (three cheers for ToEE!) than the perfect Lord God of Heaven.

Speaking of authority: What say we create a new posting before Taluntain or Blackthorne rebukes us for going off-topic?

Hacken Slash, you have a very open and appealing view of christianity, which in itself is a blow to christianity as it shows how arbitrary the faith of people is. You pick and choose what to believe and which parts of your holy scripture are true for you. How is that different from someone thinking up a philosophy from scratch and how can that be a part of anything true if everyone have their view of what is true? If the god of the bible exist and inspired the writing of the bible and everything in it is true, isnt truth something absolute? Shouldnt that mean that one interpretation should be the true one? Why then are there so many different denomination, not to mention all the individual takes on the christian faith? Isnt it kinda presumptous of you to decide who are good christians and who arent? How do you know that your take on it is more true than another? Then of course we have the problem of what there is to say that christianity itself is more true than islam, judaism, hinduism, shamanism, greek pantheon or the Moonies.

@Grey Magistrate, you seem to put your god on the same level as a tidal wave, forest fire or gravity. A force unable to think or feel or have a conscience. Is you god an unthinking force, a natural law or is it an entity capable of thought and reason?

I dont really think this is much off topic, it all entwines and you cant really discuss one aspect of religion without taking up all others.

@Shura, I pretty much share your view of the world, if the either of the christian/muslim/jewish god exists it isnt worthy of any worship or love whatsoever and I prefer to go to hell than to grovel before an entity who so obviously is, I dont like the word but here it comes anyway, evil.
But I dont think we need to fear, the existance of a god might be possible but that that any religious text concerning divinity should be more than the thoughts of men and no more divine than the words I write here is in my eyes impossible.

You will find that explaining 'evil' in terms of Christianity will be very difficult. Christianity and all other religions are MYTHOLOGIES. They have no basis in reality. Christianity's links to real-world events are as tenuous as those of Homer's "The Iliad." The Christian God is as real as the the Sumerian diety "Enlil" which he was based upon.

"Evil" is simply the product of the cause-and-effect manner in which matter and energy interact in the universe.

Why was the 14 year old girl raped? Cause and effect. She was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. The man who raped her lacked the empathy/socialization to ignore his sexual desires. God had *nothing* to do with this. The rape is satisfactorily explained as a culmination of of all events that came before.

My take is that you shouldn't even worry about God. Humans have an extremely limited perception of reality and your 4-dimensional thought process will never be able to comprehend the 11-dimensional complexities of the universe.

[ November 03, 2003, 01:42: Message edited by: InquisitorX ]

@Joacqin: I am honored by something that you have said, you said that I
“Have a very open and appealing view of Christianity”.

Thank you. That is the truth, but it is not my view… it is the view held by countless millions of Christians throughout the world. Unfortunately, the loudest are not often the most truthful when it comes to proclaiming God’s plan. You go on to cite that the sheer preponderance of different “Christian” faiths serves as a condemnation to the world, that it is arbitrary and subject to the personal interpretation of individuals all over the world. What you observe is true; it is only your interpretation on that observation that is in error.

You are correct when you observe that Christianity is in schism. At last count, there were over 14,000 denominations and sects that claimed to be Christian. This presents a very divisive presentation of the faith, especially to intellectuals like yourself, Shura, Morgoth, and InquisitorX. I am going to ask you to take a stretch for a moment…not much of one, but try nevertheless…

Imagine for a moment, you are Satan (easy Shura ;) ). You can’t stop the birth of Christ, because being part of creation you can’t stop what God has set in motion. You can’t stop the ministry of Christ; he seems illogical, fearless, even rejecting the worldly gain that you offer him. You seek to eradicate him by the Jewish templar authorities and the Roman magistrate, yet he goes to his death asking forgiveness for your human pawns. You can’t stop the resurrection of this man Christ, because he truly is the Son of God. You can not stop the message that his followers carry to a waiting world, because they die with the praise of God on their lips. Finally, the moment when you can strike has come…unable to destroy the founder or even the founding fathers, you attack the Church that was left behind to carry the message of salvation to the world. By playing on human vanity and weakness, you succeed in breaking up Christ’s church, by creating schism within it's ranks so it can never present a simple or unified message to the world. Pleased with your efforts, you sit back, realizing that 14,000 different voices are far weaker than one.

This is what has happened. This explains the status of the church in the world today. I am not seeking to blame the Pontificate, the Byzantine Elders or the Protestant revolutionaries; it is just an illustration of what is. This is why the church seems so fractured, so subject to personal interpretation…it is all part of the attack of Satan upon truth and God.

Everything that I say can be backed up by not only scripture, but history itself. Yes, I am presumptuous. I am arrogant as hell. I view myself as the worst kind of Christian in the world…but it does not mean that what I say is not true. I have this frail understanding of God’s plan for me, and continue to stumble along the way. There is a distant goal line, and we can all reach it one way or another…

@InquisitorX: you have demonstrated fully the second mode for dealing with the existence of evil in our world, thanks for sharing. Yes…Christianity is full of Mythology…but I am unaware of when mythology became synonomous with “lie”.

Well, I can see this is becoming heated, and the thing is, it is hard to have a meaningful argument based on false premises. So I'm just going to take a breath and dive right in here. Take note that this is not in responce to any post in particular, and it has taken me a while to write.

While I do not ascribe totally and solely to any of the views expressed here, even my own (yeah it's tough being me), :roll: I have come to certain conclusions, and while I respect the views of those of any particular faith, or lack thereof, as the case may be, I feel a lot of the current arguments springs from the errors all of these people have been taught to believe. This is not to take for granted the insights that these members have provided, I only speak in terms of cosmogeny.

So without analyzing the bible ( for this is what has been spoken most of) and trying to show what was originally or actually meant (in my approximation), compared to the way it is nowadays interpreted, or the way it has been abused by the church, I will just clear up a few things specifically related to the argument at hand.

The Old Testament is a hodgepodge for a start. I'll leave off the myriad of problems either by deliberate misconstuing or accidental misinterpretation, and focus on the original basis.

Jehova (or JodHauVeHau) is actually the androgynous composite of the Elohim. It's name refers to male and female (if anything it's more female) and also means I am He and also You are Me as well as I am I. I can display this by showing you the Kabbalistic Numerical values and double manings for the words but I think that would be a waste.

Genesis is actually highly esoteric, and is a slightly garbled form from another source (Chaldea, but there's was from others too, as is everyone's faith). I wont explain the first part, but the "punishment" of Adam and Eve is not really such.

The Serpent was originally a symbol of Wisdom. Here Jehova is actually the serpent, and is teaching those he has become. The Serpent represnets the decietful also becasue of the Spirit-Matter distinction. Divine Wisdom at one end, Illusion (and evil=matter) at the other. They don their clothing (their material forms) learn good from evil (become apperceptive and morally aware) and descend out of paradise to the physical world (from Rupa to Arupa, that is to form from no-form)

So, no punishment there.

The other events can also be seen in the same light, some are semi-historical tribal accounts, some are symbolic visions, some are taken out of context, some are moral laws writen the same as any other country's, a lot of the Wrathful Vengence stuff is just dogma, I don't want to get into that for now.

The idea of Hell sprang up a time after the New Testament. For one, the concept is utterly false.

The idea I believe is spoken of in terms of everyone has to meet, pay accounts for their wrong-doings. That is, the frame of mind upon death is lived for some time. A hateful man would be filled with a hateful universe until things have progressed (a relatively short period of time), as upon entering a frame of existense which is based in thought, then emotional and mental attributes would be applied to your surroundings.

After this period, then all your past events are seen in a clear light, you recognize the meanings of each. The thing is, most of these things are deliberate (again, the idea of punishment here is false) As in you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, as in people do do various wrong-deeds to each other, or suffer them, the same as they do kind things, all for learning and develpment.

There have been numerous studies that will re-inforce this if you don't want to take my word for it. The best teacher is experience. Once you know someone who remembers such a thing happening or you do yourself you will better understand what I mean. It is irrelevant really so I'll get back on track.

Also, the thing spoken of as "The Fiery Pit" was a natural geographical oddity outside Bethleham. I believe the only reference to such a thing specifically was along the lines of "Better to live a good life then to be thrown as thieves and murderers into the firery pit."

Garbage was diposed of here, and the dead bodies of criminals were as well. It was taken as an insult to your family, and to yourself, to meet such a fate. The same as it was to be publically disected was in industrial England, it was an undesireable way of being disposed of upon death.

The references to Satan have also been deliberately changed (Revelations is actually speaking of something else entirely as well, it is more about the creation then the destruction, but again, totally mis-interpretated). Satan is God, purely and simply, the dual aspect of the Absolute which was idolized by the founding fathers of the Church. The Zoastrin Hindu Devas were seen as evil, and this progressed to the word D'Evil, Devil (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel etc.) Jesus is even quoted as saying "Be ye wise as serpents" by the way, so I don't knw why people take them as a sign of evil.

While we're talking about Jesus, There is a discrepencey between Jesus and Christos, Christos was a part of the early Gnostic religion (and others before them) and is the Logos, Avalokitishvara, Brahma, Osiris, Tetragammatron (or Adam Kadmon), Ahura Mazda and Atman, among others. It is the Impersonal Principle. Jesus is merely a prophet, a wise and powerful one surely, but no more divine than the rest of us.

Lucifer, is not Satan. Lucifer is Lux, the "Bright Lord of the Morning" the "Son of the Manvantaric Dawn" and is higher/earlier than the Elohim/Jehova, he is said to be the first among the sons of the Fire, the highest of Arch-Angels. He is in this manner more akin to the common view of God than Satan or God, but not more so than other figures, and is not to be confused with the previously mentioned Logos, or the objective reflection of such, Fohat, nor the refelction of Universal Mind, and the intellectual force behind cosmic ideation, Mahat. Nor the Father/Mother/Son Trinity/Quaterity, as they speak of something else entirely. Nor would I put him as a supreme figure, as there are many that come before him.

I know this is could be taken as an affront to many of you, but when these figures are put in this light a lot becomes clearer. Feel free to disagree if you like, I only say this in the hope of bringing further understanding to those who rightfully object to the huge discrepencies between different teachings (Be they between any of the related faiths, christian, catholic, protestant, islamic, kabbalist, whatever, all those are from the same background), or within any particular one of them (the bible for example).

Perhaps this will make things clearer, perhaps not, because I think the points of both parties here are valid, and they practically seem to be saying the same thing, as far as morality is concerned, all anyone seems to dispute is the cosmogeny which I have here highlighted.

Hacken Slash, I wholeheartedly agree with your last post. We've already made the connection with so much hatred and evil as a result of monotheistic religions over the centuries.

Why else has Christianity created so many waves over the years? Why hasn't it died out and become a "mythology" like that of the ancient Greeks or Babylonians if not for larger forces at work behind it?

I must answer this question:
"Why should anyone worship 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah' besides not wanting to burn in hell?"

At age 10, your damn right I believed in God out of fear alone. But my perspective has changed as I've grown as a Christian. I want to serve God not to avoid damnation, not to gain eternal rewards, instead I want to serve Him in the meager means that I can to give back just a bit of the love He gave me when He added my sins to an already tremendously heavy burden. But it's not just a sense of I owe God, that's why I serve Him. It's mainly because I have the humility to know that God knows the answers to questions I don't. The topic of this thread being one of them. I want to learn from the greatest. I want to be a part of God's creation as He intended it. I like making things. I sympathize with God who wants to bring His creation back to perfection, but who let it stray from perfection in order that it might truly be perfect. Sound circular? To us it may, but to God it's not.

And get this. If you really want to know the answer to the question of this topic, you're only going to get it from God. God's going to be in Heaven folks, not Hell. It's like binary numbers, true and false. God and absence of God. And without God is chaos and no answers. Without God is true chaos, true suffering, true Hell. What we live in now is bad, but God is still in it to get us through if we seek Him. Hell will be infinitely worse because God won't be there.

But if you really want to know the answer, you don't have to temporarily abandon logic and reason, you just have to accept the limitations of your knowledge, you have to learn humility and have faith that there is someone up there who knows a hell of a lot more than you do. (Pun intended.) So do you spend an eternity without the answers and more evil, and more chaos, and eternal suffering? Or do you spend eternity with the answers and with the joy of knowing your faith lead you to the answers, and eternally away from the very evil you question? Your choice. Logically, the second choice makes sense.

I'm not going to put up new points or debate further until I've had more time to think.

Here is a query though:

Does creation warrant love and obedience? Do we 'owe' 'god' or our parents anything for bringing us to this world? None of us actually asked to come here anyway and we would not have known the difference if we had been aborted with a coat hanger and flushed down the toilet.

My relationship with my parents is purely a parastitical one: I feed off their money, they feed off their misplaced concepts of having a family. I don't have the slightest bit of love for them, although they do deserve some measure of respect and thanks.

'god', however, has done nothing but (assuming he exists and is omnipotent and directs every event in the world) caused me no small amount of anguish until the point where now I can hurt no longer.

If indeed, he created me (at this point I am ambivalent towards him since I do not consider the act of creation worthy of thanks) and then caused everything to be so screwed up, then it naturally figures that he owes me a whole lot of pain which I am obliged to repay.

Hence, 'god' created me? Even playing field.

'god' inflicts misery on me? I have a katana thirsting for his blood.

Why, then are any of us indebted to a creator and a tormentor, if he does exist? Where is his 'love'? Was Jesus really his son or just some deluded fraud that managed to convince a lot of people about his supernatural nature?

Of course, this comes down to 'faith' again but I simply don't consider that an adequate answer.

(Note: I am aware that there are worse things happening outside. Take this from a purely self-centered viewpoint just for the sake of illustration.)

The above was mostly directed at Grey Magistrate. As for Hacken Slash, I shall have to reread his arguments and address them later after I have had more time to think.

Hmm. Satan. That's something to aspire to though. I've just read Milton's Paradise Lost and I postively cheered when Satan won some measure of victory by corrupting Adam and Eve. :D

I would gleefully burn forever if it meant I could be in the presence of someone I have so much respect for (satan) for all eternity. Besides, I've done so much that if there truly is retribution, it's hell for me.

You are not indebted to anyone Shura. In answer to your query, you owe it to yourself. You are the one you must answer to, you are the one whom you shall judge. No-one else can do this. No-one else should. No-one else will.

I got a PM that essentially said, "what the hell are you talking about?" and I realize that I didn't really do a very good job getting across my point of view.

This is off topic perhaps so I'll keep it short. GM said atheists have the problem of people (paraphrasing) 'just being sacks of bones.' If we're just sacks of bones one could think we're just physical processes - just a bunch of chemical cause and effects. Where is the freedom in that one might wonder.

This idea is called redcutionism: taking complex statements and breaking them into simpler ones. In metaphysics/philosphy of the mind this might be something like: pain = 'c-fibres firing in the brain.'

There are two points I want to bring up: 1) being atheist =!= being reductionist, 2)theists have the same problems GM attributes to atheists.

In the interest of keeping it short, here is a link if you're interested in reductionsim/non-reductivism and the problems each pose:
http://mind-brain.com/mind/mind9.html

Non-reductive physicalism faces the problem of 'downward causation' which Jaegwon Kim best discusses (ironically, Kim may be the best place to start to find out what it is). The problem of downward causation at best leaves mental proprties as being epiphenomenal (Kim thinks, I don't). Which brings me to my second point:

2) The exact same problem of epiphenomenalism faces theists. Clasically, one can think of this as the mind/body problem. Descartes was confronted with this problem when he attempted to prove the existence of God starting with the cogito.

Basically, the problem facing both the theist and the non-theist is the same and is this: how do two separate substances interact? The non-physical soul with the physical body for the theist and non-physical mental properties with the physical body for atheists (and theists too). If they don't interact, both the theist and the atheist are left with the 'lack of freedom' concerns that GM presented.

The problem isn't unique to atheists. There are lots of purported solutions to the problem but each is a book in its own right.

As far as the beautiful woman analogy... I don't really know that it explains away the situation. Sticking with physical beauty, there does seem to be certain properties which are beautiful. These standards aren't made up by the woman, arbitrarily, she either posesses them or she does not. Please note that I don't think the good being independent of God is a problem for theists, indeed, I think they should embrace it. I simply don't think that believing in God provides the theist an independent basis for morality and denies one to the atheist.

Likewise, for an atheist moral properties could still be real properties; independent properties.

Manus, once again, you've successfully seduced me into a response! You're truly incorrigible!

You're right, Manus - "it is hard to have a meaningful argument based on false premises". But although no one can prove conclusively that what the Bible says is true, it IS possible to demonstrate that the manuscript has been consistent for millennia.

There are some 16,000 manuscript fragments of the Bible dating back thousands of years. (Compare this to, say, ten copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars, or sixty copies of the Iliad.) The way to confirm accuracy over time is to compare differently dated fragments, and compare the differences. The fragments are consistent unto themselves some 98% of the time - the differences are largely grammatical, and are marked with footnotes in any good Bible translation.

If you have a Bible handy, open to I John 5:7. This verse is doctrinally accurate, grammatically flawless, and absent from any Greek manuscript written before the sixteenth century. This "bonus verse" was slipped in by well-meaning monks to reinforce Erasmus' Trinitarianism. Similarly, the ending of Mark was tacked on sometime in the fourth century. These two huge, well-documented exceptions show just how careful translators have been to make sure that the Bible we have today is the same as when it was first written.

There are similar "bonus" books, like the Apocrophya, the Gospel of Thomas, the pseudo-Dionysius, and so forth, that might be doctrinally accurate in certain respects but do not pass the merciless tests of textual analysis. (The supposedly prophetic book of Enoch, for example, was actually written very late, so it doesn't get included in the canon. Sorry, Enoch.) Textual criticism didn't start with the German scholars, and not even with the Church councils committed to determining the canon - the ancient Hebrew scholars were meticulous to the point of obsession with making sure their manuscripts were accurate.

In the face of centuries of cold, rationalistic, contextual analysis of the texts in question, it takes a blind leap of faith to suppose that the "real" message has been misinterpreted. Regardless of whether the Bible is true or not, neither its central doctrines nor its central actors have changed.

If anything, Manus, your interpretation sounds very much like an ecelctic mix of Gnosticism, Kabbalism, and Chaldean dualism, especially given your analysis of "Lucifer" above "Elohim" (I put the names in quotes, because your use of the names is as close to the Biblical content as Blizzard's Diablo is to Revelation). It's creative but has no real historical foundation.

For example, your melding of Satan and God is unsupported by any Bible book. Job is the oldest existing manuscript, and this begins with Satan (literally, "the accuser") confronting God, and then acting personally to strike Job and his family. Perhaps the last written book, Revelation, also presents Satan as separate from God. The opening chapters of Genesis depict Satan as clearly separate from God. Similarly, your separation of Christ and Jesus is ridiculous in the face of the consistent interchangability and frequent combination of the two names - "Jesus" is His birthname, and "Christ" is a religious-political title meaning "The Annointed". It would be like reading a newspaper article and trying to distinguish between "President" and "Bush". It seems that you, like the Gnostics and dualists past, are starting with dualistic, spiritualized preconceptions and then looking to hijack Biblical analogues.

There are HUGE differences between Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Pentecostals. But they all agree on the same Bible manuscript, and interpretations differ on elements within the Scriptures, not on whether or not the words are the same today as when first written. Even Judaists, who do not accept the validity of the New Testament, can attest to the historical consistency and accuracy of their texts.

To conclude: we can argue as much as we want about whether or not the Bible is true. But it's silly to argue about whether or not the Bible really means what it says it means, or if its text is the same today as when it was first written. You don't need to be a Christian to acknowledge textual integrity.

OK, Laches, you have left me in the dust. I have never had but a simple understanding of things at best, and I find myself shamed by your depth. I still struggle, as part of you enraptured audience to try to make sense of it all (I think that pm was me :confused: ). Anyway, I'll reread again what you have said and try to order it to my thinking. It is not your fault that I am a dunce...(I flunked out of college because I spent all my time with...a girl!)

Manus, oh Manus my friend from downunder. How dare you bring Cosmogeny to this argument, sort of like bringing a knife to a gun fight! Christianity, through our Hebrew fathers, is able to effectively answer to the monkey wrench that you have dropped into our machine. We can trace the roots of our faith all the way back to creation. Sure, there are other cosmogenies, be it Babylonian, Chaldean, Sumerian, Greek or Indian. They are all shadows of truth, truth that was existing con-current and before them and influencing the mythology that they developed to explain the existence of the world we live in.

You have combined a mixture of etymology and cosmogeny in your post, but the point is that all of these cultures sought to answer the age old question..."Why are we here". Just because we have found proof of the mythologies that they espoused to answer the question, does not mean that all answers are mythological. I am aware of the Sumerian and Zoroasrian myths of creation...to my mind that does not diminish the Christian answer, rather support it. I am aware of the Chaldean mythology of a deluge...to my mind that only supports the Christian story of a great flood. From my standpoint, Cosmogeny does not weaken the Christian explanation, only support it.

I do challenge your interpretation of Hebrew philosophy...there are two distinct places of torment...Gehenna, the fiery pit that you have mentioned, and Sheoll...a more ethereal place where the soul is separated from Jehovah and thirsts for God. You do raise an interesting point about the origin of Elohim...it is truly a bisexual nomer. It is wrong to try to "genderfy" God, so many of God's attributes extend beyond gender. Regardless, it is important that we do not ignore our understanding of "God, the Father", as that is central to all Christian belief.

That whole "Jesus", "Chritos", "Logos" stuff arises from the difficulty of translating Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and his Apostles) to Greek, the language that everything was written in.

I have opened up HUGE avenues here, but we still need to address LNT's original question. I promise that I will be back soon to finish the Catechism class that I have started, and provide the Christian answer to the evil in our world.

Manus, you are great. You continue to amaze me with the depths of your thought. In fact, I thank all of you...GM, Big B, Laches, LNT, Morgoth, Shura, Joacqin, Chev, (sorry if I missed you) and others who I have already mentioned. I want you to know that I am personally going through a very difficult time in my life, and it has been very therapeutic to talk and spar with all of you.

The question:
The problem of Evil

The (attempted) answers:
Fyodor Dostevsky (1821-1881)
"Rebellion" (from The Brothers Karamazov)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
"Theodicy"

J.L Mackie (1917-1983)
"Evil and Omnipotence"

Peter Van Inwagen (He still teaches in U. of Notre Dame (http://www.nd.edu/~prinfo/endow/artsletters/endow_vaninwagen.shtml))
"The magnitude, Duration and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy"

i took philosophy last semester, "the problem of evil" was covered as part of the course. Too much to talk about. Van Inwagen had some insights but his article is too long for me to type them out. Very tired, quiz tomorrow, [insert any excuse here]. Good luck finding those articles.

GM, I see you are stalwart in your beliefs, but allow me to clarify your mistakes :)

The errors in translation are obvious, but meaningless in the face of the errors in interpretation, and it is this error that continues today.

The interpretation of the bible today is vastly different that it was two thousand years ago, I'm sure anyone would agree to this. Even as compared to 500 years ago it is changed dramatically, but the fact is that even the original New Testament was butchered by the church's founding fathers, so it matters not how consistent the texts are, as two thousand years are a blink of the eye in the times I talk of. Again, it is the way the meanings are misconstrued that make the difference.

The same applies to the Old Testament. It is similar to other older religions because it was borrowed mostly from them. The keys to the symbology contained therein does not accompany the bible, and this has led to the problems of misinterpretation.

What I speak of is the historical basis, it is the dogmatic interpretation of the bible, and the exclusion of all other evidence to the contrary, which is in error.

I did not seperate Jesus from the appellation Christ, by the way, but the figure Christos, as this refers to something else. Like many traditions of other religions existant at the time, the church used and slightly modified their own doctrines (and the church's doctrine as well for that matter)to encourage followers, and discourage deviation.

I could go into an in-depth account on all of this, but that would take volumes, and that evidence is available to those who wish to pursue it. Until then I wish you well in your faith, because I see even if the specific details have changed, your heart is still in the right place, and this is the most important thing.

I would not reccomend trusting any written source. Speak to those who remember such times and events and things will become clearer. Live the life necessary and you will attain such knowledge for yourself. Until then I see little purpose continuing this debate because you can just as likely say anything that I have said is as wrong as I say the others are, and will not accept something else as true as long as you don't want to. Hell, you could be the only person in the world who is actually right, anything is possible. Personal experience is the only way any of us can know for sure, and even then it is doubtful. If we truly understood any of this we wouldn't be here.

That is what I'm trying to say by the way. The cosmogeny of the bible (or my own for that matter, or any other philosophical doctrine, which is what a religion is) may be able to outline specifics, but in the end all we can do is follow our own heart, if that leads us astray, so be it, we will only realize what's going on after it's finished.

Edit: I thought I'd add something to try and give this responce the veil of Humility. I came to this conclusion from a position of neutral atheiism. I had a high interest in the supernatural, mythology, occultism, philosophy, archaic religions, spiritualism, and psi phenomenae, but had reserved my feelings on such. I was merely interested, I don't know, perhaps I wanted to become a wizard.

I have reached these conclusions through study and personal experience, and can testify to the fact that I have met with things that no sole composite of atheiism, organised religion, new-age frippery, nor that giant of religions, science, can properly explain. Thus I cannot agree with another on a view that only one of these is correct for I know that to be false. I have found a series sources which sort to utilize all of these things, and crossess all of the boundaries we have erected between them, for me these explanations suffice, and seem to contain knowledge which pre-dates the misconceptions of others, for the sole purpose of setting those others straight.

However, wherever I look for answers is meaningless to another, and everyone will find what it is they look for wherever they look. Thus again I say, do not look for comfort in something which gives you none. If you feel abandoned by your faith, then abandon it. But do not abandon yourself, for if you do so what will you have left? True faith supercedes belief, and to be selfless is not to be without self. Nor is to put your faith in another to lose your own faith, in your own self.

Edit: Arrgh! I've just made this even worse. This last bit was in responce to Late-Night Thinker's original statement, not as a part of any argument. What I'm trying to say is none of us can say for sure, to an absolute certainty, which interpretation of God, Evil, Fate, or Life is correct, or even if any of these things exist. All we can do is do as we think is best, what we feel is right. That is all, and to my mind, that is all that is truly required of anyone.

Edit: Well, I have read the first post again, and I feel it has still not been answered.

LNT, that path you speak of, the one which you feel is right but you fear the pain of, take it.

Anyone who has will tell you the same. Over-come your fears, abandon your vanity, there is something else to be experienced, to be lived, that is the gratest accomplishment to which any of us can aspire.

The pain may be great at first, but it pales in comparison to that which you get in return.

Take it. Do not doubt yourself any longer. It may take a life-time to discover what it is you will see as truth, but that is a life-time in which you have achieved your birth-right. A life-time which you shall not regret, save only that you did not live it sooner.

[ November 03, 2003, 07:26: Message edited by: Manus ]

if Late-Nite Thinker really just needed a hug Well, here's one *hugs LNT*

Is there such a thing as a Zen satanist?

I personally think that "evil" is what humans label anything that is alien and repulsive, things that go against their beliefs and views and the like...

Or words to that effect anyway.

When God gave us free will and the quest to use it, he himself had to step into total invisibility. Therefore we are by definition always disconnected, right? If we were connected we did not have to have faith. We would know there was a heaven and the free will would be limited to humans stuck in endless prayers for heaven and paradise. Free will would then no longer have any meaning. Therefore God has to stay hidden for all eternity not to taint our free will.

But to love someone or something perfectly, which we can never be allowed to see or hear in our mortal lives, and that we cannot graps anyway, is impossible to any rational mind. Per definition impossible to love perfectly. As with anything we cannot do it perfectly, if we do not have the complete overview. And only God has it. Thus we will have flaws.

So christianity as a religion has settled/promised us that with prayers and the love for christianity as a system of behaviour-guidelines, we will be granted a place in heaven. Jesus has suffered to give us this opportunity. Therefore do not feel sad if you are in doubt and disconnected. We all are. We all should be. That is the only way to have a free will, and thus choose.

I do not believe and never will, except if the earth gets down to one religion which all agree upon and charish. In other words. I would rather have the limited free will within the knowledge that a loving God exist, except for the horrible suffering world, we have today with the free will causing many religions to struggle and inflict vicious acts upon eachother. I am sorry if that is too much to ask. Hence I will stay disconnected even though I could plug in.

[ November 04, 2003, 00:19: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

How can there be a loving God and evil? Well, how can good be good without evil? Without the dark to compare the light to, there is no light. They co exist because they have to.

Shura, addressing your clear-cut questions is easier than wrestling with Manus' fog. I would've written earlier, but I was...uh...playing ToEE. Priorities, priorities!

You ask: "Does creation warrant love and obedience?". I know I am old-fashioned in this regard, so I don't expect agreement, but I think that creation warrants that the created act according to its identity and purpose. The same sculptor can carve an ugly ashtray and a beautiful fountain, but there is something "wrong" if we pretend the ashtray is fine art and use the fountain for cigarette butts. It sullies the creation's identity and purpose. Even the ashtray is better off used as an ashtray than set as modern-art fakery. So if you accept that man is created in the image of God - and that's a big if! - then that says a lot about man's identity and purpose. Part of that involves love and obedience, but that's because of man's exaltation, not slavery. Man is more than a conscious ashtray.

Your comments about the family follow th