by D wiltshire 79 Replies latest jw friends
Intro,
I don't mind if you email me do so any time and I will try to email you back as best I can.
But feel free to post on this thread as much as you want, but my attention span can be rather short and long explanations are hard for me to get.
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
Well okay let me put it this way.. As Jan pointed out you either have it all laid out already or not, there is either free will or not.. It occurs to me that all this is based on the idea that God is separate from humans. It's this external idea, like you and me, we're two different individuals so we both have free will, I can't raise your arm without you letting me. What if that's not the way it is? That's what I mean by distinct but not separate. So if we are actually "one with God", it's like a case of denial in a sense.. Make sense?
"Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before."
Personally, I have recently thought about the Genesis account as more of a symbolic story, for the Jews.
Many religions have some sort of story of creation and explanation about why there is wickedness in the world. There is a theory that says that if we did evolve, then as our brains became larger and more capable of abstract thought, we *needed* to form these stories regarding why things are as they are. Im not saying that this is the whole answer, just that its a consideration in the whole debate.
Some people I know who do believe the bible, seem to look at the genesis account as largely symbolic of "mans gradual alienation from God". Some say maybe the story serves to show how the groups of people on earth gradually became more independent of him.
Lets face it, the Jews were waiting for a saviour. Why? Because they thought that the reason for all of this pain and suffering was MANS fault, not GODS. So mankind needed a saviour. The whole Genesis account supports this idea that we need a saviour. How else would you prove that?
Some faiths teach that this good and bad scenario is what was intended all along. The old argument - if we never experienced "bad", how would we know what "good" was? Things in this world exist in polarity - each extreme complimenting the other. Light / Dark, Day/ Night, Good / Bad, Hot / Cold. Mankind has developed this way of looking at the world. It is argued that mankind invented the PURE LOVING GOD and the EVIL HATEFUL SATAN.
Im inclined to agree that there is no God who is 100% pure and loving. The whole "did he know" or "didnt he know" argument pales into insignificance if you accept that maybe the God portrayed in the bible is just mans idea of god or how god should be.
Sirona
Sirona,
You've touch on the Tree of Knowledge in the garden, and I have some thoughts(questions) on that.
Did God know Adam and Eve would eat this fruit, I think so.
This tree is called the "Knowlegde of Good and Bad". So was the tree totally bad? Part of it was the Knowledge of Good too.
And after they ate, God did say that Adam and Eve became just like them(God & Jesus?)knowing both good and bad(was this statement sarcasm or just fact?).
Did God set the whole thing up so that the whole human race would know good and bad?
Perhaps for them to experience both sides of the coin and then for God to rescue them from the bad. And having been delivered from the badness and death, redeemed man would never want to do bad again forever because they Now Have Knowlegde of how Bad,.. bad really is.
Just a thought is all.
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
regardless of what you think about genesis or adam or eve, this argument comes down to 2 possibilities for me. likely i am over-simplifying things but this is how i see it.
assume there is a god, i.e. a source of all things.
either the universe is deterministic or not. by deterministic i mean that given the state of the universe at some point in time, the state at any other point in time can be uniquely determined.
if the universe is deterministic, either god has the ability to uniquely determine the state of the universe at any given point or he does not.
if he does have that ability, he is directly responsible for everything in the universe.
if either he does not have that ability or the universe is not deterministic, so that the ability simply does not exist, then his knowledge is limited. he cannot foresee the outcome if choices and is not therefore the source of ultimate answers. he is imperfect.
the WT argument is a bizarre attempt to have both of situations true at the same time. he is at once capable of determining the future but not responsible for it because he chooses not to determine it. this has been compared to absolving yourself of responsibity in a murder by closing your eyes as you pulled the trigger. and anyways its pure speculation with no biblical support.
an interesting sidenote: WT also teaches that god at times chooses to use his ability for certain individuals. this is how living memebers of the remnant can speak of having a 'final sealing' as paul did and also how the great crowd can be said to have their names indelibly written in the book of life at the end of the thousand years. how he can 'see' the future of one individual without 'seeing' the future of every other individual in the system is a matter perhaps best left to schizophrenics.
mox
The myth of Adam & Eve only works if you believe it involved an actual test. Genesis is an effort to explain the big "FIRSTS". First man. First woman. First sin. First murder.
It is still a myth. I don't believe in "original" sin. I prefer to call the selfishness that enabled the first replicating string of "whatever first replicated" -- INTRINSIC SIN.
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
Ask the Queen Mother, she seems to be immortal.
I'm sure this isn't a coincidence, but this was the subject of last week's number 4 talk - and
I just happened to be the one that delivered it in our congregation.
The society has a problem. They teach that there is no predestination. After all, if tomorrow
is already set, why go from door to door? On the other hand, they also teach that God can
tell the future. But how can the future be known if it is not set?
So, they invented the idiotic concept of "selective foreknowledge", meaning that God can foretell
the future, but he chooses to switch it off as a gift to humans, allowing them freedom.
This is their idea of having their cake and eating it, too. You can't have it both ways. Either the
future is knowable, and therefore set in stone, or it is not, and God doesn't know the future.
Ah, the problems you encounter when you try to take an obvious myth and believe it literally.
well put runningman. so how did you present the talk? did u touch on the 'selective foreknowledge' concept? i dont believe i have EVER used it in a talk. i never believed it from the beginning.
mox
If God didn't know but could have known, then wasn't he negligent in not checking the consequences of his action? If he had just stopped for a second, he could have seen the millennia of misery that his course of action would have caused, and done things differently.
--
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit attrocities - Voltaire
