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To: Cronos

Nah, he has a choice to believe or not.


1,984 posted on 01/30/2011 12:09:46 AM PST by caww
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To: caww; kosta50
He has the free will to believe or not.

as I said, it raises the question: Does it make sense talking/discussing religion or should we say "God will come and choose his own"

In a way I see it as a contrarian (almost Socratic) way of arguing FOR free will.

Let me elaborate -- if there is no free will and there is double-predestination, then talkings, discussing etc. is fruitless -- all is predetermined and we need not think to debate, argue etc. -- we might as well shut down FR's RF :)

however, if free will does exist, then us being instruments of God glorifies GOD as it is not our words that save, but God workign through us that saves.

This is basically the concept of the interventionist God.
1,987 posted on 01/30/2011 12:22:31 AM PST by Cronos
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To: caww; kosta50
There are scarier religious thoughts out there -- the strangest are the Jains.

This was founded about 900 BC by Mahavira (though he is supposed to be only the 21st in the line of Tirthankaras that stretch back to infinity. They believe that there is no creator god, that the universe has always existed and will always exist -- they argue with those who believe in a creation that it is not possible for something to be created out of nothing.

in their religious view, when you die, you get reincarnated. If you are good, you go higher. You can even become a god like Indra or Varuna, but the gods too die and reincarnate, and they can't do anything about your eventual faith, so praying to them is senseless.

But if you escape this cycle of reincarnation, you go to a higher plane (you become an Adinath). In that higher plane, the Adinath don't care or know or think or remember anything about the lower plan. But this is not heaven as the adinath cease to exist. They have vanquished death, suffering, thought, everything. The supreme point for these is oblivion.

Buddhism took this and softened it quite a bit (Hinayana Buddhism, the older form as practised in Sri Lanka) or a lot (Mahayana Buddhism with it's sub-forms Tibetan, Zen, etc.)
1,990 posted on 01/30/2011 12:28:17 AM PST by Cronos
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