Give it time Nancy.
Does the Issue of Universal Sovereignty make sense to you as an explanation for evil?
by gubberningbody 233 Replies latest jw friends
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N.drew
I am never going over to the dark side.
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cyberguy
So God makes bets with the devil? Oh really? After taking another look at the book of Job, it seems that the court scene with the devil making bets with God is really a literary device. It’s like saying “what if” the reasons bad things happen to good people is because of some heavenly debates or challenges in the spirit realm. The entire book is full of “what if” conjectures. The final conclusion is that man has absolutely no knowledge or understanding about what happens outside his realm (and even inside his earthly realm he knows virtually nothing), thereby, conclusions based on faulty conjectures are futile, worthless.
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sabastious
A God that was so lonely that he couldn't tolerate another moment of aloneness that he had to drag other creatures into existence for his own amusement is not what I'd call a morally superior being.
What if he just wanted a friend? You're saying he should have stayed alone?
-Sab
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inbetween
the U.S. is a WTS spin or even nonsense.
The issue raised was simply: If A+E eat from the fruit, they never die and be like God.
Answer: They died, never were like God, question answered, case closed.
next step, independent from any U.S. according to the bible, was how God tried to fix the broken, foretelling the messiah, who died for our sins...
and then 2000 years pass, and nothing else happens .....
there are only two possible reasons: 1) the whole thing is a human fabrication from tales and myths long ago... or
2) the cursed apostate Christians were right after all, and good people go to heaven, while the earth is just left for itself....
lately I´m getting more and more used to 1)....
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tec
No it does not make sense, because it is not true. God's soveriegnty is not in question.
Besides, we're a pretty good eplanation for evil. We commit evil acts against one another; against even ourselves.
I know I wouldn't create a universe like this one. I'm not even certain there's a good argument for creating a universe at all.
You can't say what you would create. Your perspective (as it is with all of us) is very small and limited. As for a good reason... do you wish you had never been given life? Do you think all others wish that? Or do you think most people are grateful for life, messiness and all?
It's said that "God loved the world" and that's all well and good, but if the world doesn't feel it, it's useless.
Oh, some of the world feels it. So not so useless to them.
A God that was so lonely that he couldn't tolerate another moment of aloneness that he had to drag other creatures into existence for his own amusement is not what I'd call a morally superior being.
Me neither. Thankfully, that is not the case.
The best reason, imo, for people to decide to have children (to create life) is because they wish to share life and love with another. If we can feel that, then certainly God can also.
Peace,
Tammy
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sabastious
If I could create sentient life and that life challenged my decision to make it? I might feel that is has a right to that since it didn't have a hand in the decision to come to being in the first place.
That part makes sense... kinda... maybe...
But when we end up with human overlords using 3 verses from matthew 24 to subjugate millions of people... there's some holes that need filling there.
How can a corporeal human "vindicate" a non corporal being? The Bible says that the God of the Bible is the First Cause This is a designed gap between human and Jehovah and it renders the two "apples and oranges." Naturally then, for any communication between the two to take place would require some sort of "converter" or "mediator" and that could not, also by design, be human at all.
-Sab
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watson
"The Dark Side"? Drama.
Look at it for what it is, according to the Watchtower.....this whole mess is because God wants to protect his reputation. Nothing more, nothing less.
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designs
It spells- God lost control.
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gubberningbody
SOG - exactly ... that's what's called gratuitous evil. evil that happens with no reason, point or purpose at all.
N. drew
"Why do people say that the people's bad choices that result in injustice are God's bad choices?"
Because he is the prime mover. Had he left the void alone, nothing would have happened.
If the complainers took the position that God has, would you all take away free will?
You would prevent all abuse, if you were god?
If someone were to be born that caused so much suffering that he should not have been born, would you prevent the mom and dad that made him from having the sex that made him?
Would you prevent the marriage in the first place if she was only 15?
What would you do to prevent the bitchy injustice?"
YES.
Faux free will isn't distinguishable from actual free will. The fact that you feel that you have free will isn't proof that you do, and in point of fact neurological experiments as done by various split-brain studies, and other timing-conscious-choice experiments have indicated that we weave together an illusion of free will and at the very best we have free-won't whose "won't" is perhaps two tenths of a second.
See :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet
Faux free will given in the garden as the narrative goes could have allowed the pair the imagined free will to conceive of evil and act on the same when in point of fact they never actually HAD the ability to act in any evil way. This one thing in this situation, whereas it would not necessarily have eliminated gratuitous suffering of other creatures, it would have done so for the original pair. The temptation would come and go and the pair could have congratulated themselves on their morality and restraint and lived on forever.
The only party who would "know" these didn't have free will but instead apparent, or faux free will would have been Jehovah. Humanity would have been happy and satisfied.
But no. According to the narrative it didn't go down that way.
Now suppose since we don't REALLY know we have free will, and yet we and all creation is being punished as it were through direct and indirect acts of evil, suppose we in point of fact DON'T have free will and yet Jehovah is playing it out in this matter?
Is that not evil?
Why would we, besides being victims of Stockholm Syndrome (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) believe the narrative in which we HAVE free will when our current understanding is such that we have limited and illusory free will?
cyberguy - You are right and yet we choose anyway. Illusions are forced upon us whether these be illusions or not.
Sabastious - "What if he just wanted a friend? You're saying he should have stayed alone?"
Why not? Supposedly he has the ability to foreknow all things and we can easily see that if the point of experience of another is unaccounted for novelty, then what could be the point? Even if God has analogues of nerve impulses which can be stimulated by the existence of something other than self, then certainly all possible "neuronal" impulses would become so much background noise.
God can't tickle himself can he?