Posted on 05/20/2002 12:53:27 PM PDT by rpage3
Again, I don't say that God's laws must change, only that they can change. Like I said above, He could certainly choose not to change them if He so wishes. But implicit in that assertion, and the assertion that God is omnipotent, is the proposition that God could also choose to change His law if He so wishes.
Also, Jesus said that not one jot or tittle would ever be removed from the law and that he did not come to replace the law but to fulfill it.
Did he say anything about adding to the law, or otherwise leave open the possibility of further revelations?
Only a polemical skeptic would assert that God's laws could change, and I would guess that your motives are not to find truth, but to attack God and His laws. Am I right?
This is a refutation of gore3000, not a refutation of God. Either God can change His own law if He wishes, or He cannot. Either God is omnipotent, or He is not. Whichever way it is, there are inherently necessary implications of that assertion. Is plain reason somehow an attack against God?
Genesis 6:5
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.Genesis 6:6
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.Genesis 6:7
And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.exodus
32:8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.32:9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
32:10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
32:11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
32:12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
32:13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
32:14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
32:15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.
And this example of a standard of morality which is external to scripture:
psalms
19:9. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
I am refuting a particular assertion that has been made about God by gore3000 (who is suddenly curiously silent on all this). If you choose to interpret that as an attack on the existence of God, I can't help you.
Again, you're just shooting the poor messenger, here - me. If you don't like the implications of the immutability of God's laws, take it up with the fellow who asserted it in the first place. I'm perfectly willing to admit that omnipotence means that God can do anything He likes, including changing the law if He so chooses.
You can say whatever you like, but God cannot go against His own nature. God cannot and would not suddenly say, "adultery is a-okay" for example. God's laws flow from His person, from his divine nature and they directly reflect His goodness, purity, and perfection. As I just pointed out, Jesus Christ clearly stated that God's laws NEVER change. Who is right - you or Jesus Christ? That's an easy one.
Did he say anything about adding to the law, or otherwise leave open the possibility of further revelations?
You mean like adding an 11th commandment like we add amendments to the Constitution? No. God revealed exactly what is necessary for people to know. If there was more for us to know, He would have revealed it by now. Let me ask you a question: Have you broken any of the 10 commandments in your lifetime?
Either God can change His own law if He wishes, or He cannot. Either God is omnipotent, or He is not. Whichever way it is, there are inherently necessary implications of that assertion. Is plain reason somehow an attack against God?
God cannot go against His own nature. God cannot be evil for example. But this certainly is not a measure of His power. God's omnipotence is a separate issue from His immuntability. God is also omniscient and omnipresent - all separate issues. But, obviously, God is omnipotent. He spun the billions of galaxies into their orbits and He holds the universe together with his mighty power. He is a VERY BIG BOD in case you haven't noticed.
Asking reasonable questions is not in itself a bad thing. But you walk a thin line when you attempt to argue that God is not immutable or omnipotent when His Word states clearly that He is.
God can do anything that is good and logically possible.
But the assertion that God can change is contradictory and therefore meaningless. Your assertion (really a meaningless group of words) does not rise to the level of being an assertion and therefore does not logically warrant refutation.
Here is how your assertion that God can change is contradictory:
Change (motion) necessarily implies movement from potency to act. But there can be no potency in God, since He is necessarily pure act –the necessary prime mover.
Speculation about God changing is simply a category error.
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
[2cor 4:4] and
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
[1cor 2:14]
So from this perspective it doesn't make sense to state that murder is only wrong because a god decided that way as well as it doesn't make sense to say that 2+2=5 is wrong because your god says so.
However, people very often claim that a certain behaviour is wrong because their god says so but not that their god says so because it is wrong. The former implies that he also could have decided otherwise.
Further I don't think that immorality=fun. But I doubt that an eternal life can be interesting for ever, and whatever you do, be it absolutely moral or totally immoral doesn't matter - at some point your existence becomes boring.
Of course I can imagine that this doesn't happen but only as it can happen that a person with a certain kind of brain damage can watch the same movie again and again as if it were the first time. But this isn't exactly what I had in mind.
In this sense I have to agree with Mencken who said that "no show, however good, could conceivably be good forever".
And neither can I. I can only do what's within my nature - the absolute BMCDAness ;-D
Regards
Yes--he could write sentences in English; but even here, he was MUCH more interested in showing off than in pursuing truth.
RIP SJG. It is done.
It will indeed be interesting forever. You are looking at it from your limited finite mortal human point of view. We humans are so linear ( :-) ) When believers are transformed, they will be given new bodies and they will be made perfect in Christ. There will be no more tears, sorrow, pain, boredom or anything that relates to the fallen nature of this world and this mortal life.
Why should we feel at times that the world is wicked or unjust? What are we comparing this world to? You have to have a standard in order to have a departure from the standard. Evolution, on the other hand, just is. It is responsible for everything that is. How can there be a departure from it?
One of the curious aspects of morality is it's incumbency. We both know intuitively that there things they we ought to do and things we ought not to do. I'll bet if you and I made lists of moral imperatives we would agree on 95% of them. Where does our sense of incumbancy come from? Morality involves the concept of personal, propositional commands. We do not feel obliged to obey impersonal, random propositions. If you are going to work one day and you happen to see that a tornado has torn a billboard apart and various pieces have fallen together to spell "do not go.", you do not feel any obligation to obey the randomly produced "message." You would not regard this as any sort of binding command. Moral commands are propositions that are communications between Minds. They are not randomly generated. They emanate from personal sources, and not only personal sources, but authoritative sources. (I could tell you not to go to work, but you would not feel any obligation to obey my command because I have no authority over you.) The question is, why would we feel any obligation to obey moral precepts if morals really do not exist? And if morals actually exist, but are just part of the furniture of an impersonal, evolved universe, why would anyone feel obligated to obey randomly generated, non-rational, impersonal principle? In other words, here we both observe palpably observe and experience this effect (moral incumbency) and I'm asking what the necessary and sufficient cause of this effect is. You will tell me that evolution did it, but as you can see, from what I have written above, I don't see how evolution accounts for such phenomenon as 'wickedness', or our sense moral incumbency.
As much as you want to propose that a system not based on claims of universal morality would have no response to an Eichmann, I must point out that the real Eichmann rose to power with the tacit complicity of an entire population, in a world where it is generally accepted that morality exists external to ourselves. What good are claims to universal truth if nobody pays attention? What good are claims to universal truth if nobody believes them or cares about them?
The question is a great, poignant question, but I can only reply that the question itself is intelligable only if there is universal truth to begin with.
In the end, the real Eichmann did what he did in a world based on universal morality. Six million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, and where was universal truth to save them?
Surely you cannot be suggesting a post hoc propter hoc, cause-effect relationship between universal morality and what the Nazis did?
Cordially,
Alanalda or janefonda!
I know but I can live with that, so there's really no problem ;-D
Power can only do what power can do.
At least that's my conclusion of 40 years of thinking about the issue after that atheist kid Slater in the first grade asked me sarcasticly in the cloak room at Delmar-Harvard elementary school if God could do anything, could he make a rock bigger than he could lift:^)
Cordially
I find it especially amusing that people (no one in particular) who claim that truth does not exist in the ontological sense will argue to convince me of their position. In order for a relativist to even discuss the nature of truth, he must assume that there is some objective truth to be ascertained about the nature of truth. In the process, he is secretly presupposing the existence of absolute truth even as he argues against it. I love to point out this glaring contradiction and self-refutation of their position.
God cannot and would not suddenly say, "adultery is a-okay" for example.
Well, it seems to me that whether he can and whether he would are really two separate questions. I tend to think that omnipotence should be taken at face value, and that therefore He could say such a thing. However, I freely admit that there's no particular reason to believe that He would do such a thing.
You mean like adding an 11th commandment like we add amendments to the Constitution? No. God revealed exactly what is necessary for people to know. If there was more for us to know, He would have revealed it by now.
How do you know?
Asking reasonable questions is not in itself a bad thing. But you walk a thin line when you attempt to argue that God is not immutable or omnipotent when His Word states clearly that He is.
That's fine. I accept that possibility, certainly. But if He is, then gore3000's assertion that He can't do some particular thing must logically be wrong. That's really all I'm saying here...
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