Posted on 06/25/2020 12:27:52 PM PDT by JAG 5000
I have never attempted to define love. Why do you ask?
Love requires free will.
Free will cannot be limited to "perfection" or "Good" -- otherwise it isn't free.
So--since you seem to know better than God on how to create Man--how would you create Man who will love you back (given that God loves His creation)?
Here's your disconnect. God created Man for the sole purpose of loving Him and Him loving us--for that relationship.
That is why the entire universe was created--for us. The universe you see now is what He created, as He exists outside of what we see as space/time.
I do not demand that they love me.
He does not demand it either. He created us in His image--which means our souls are immortal, and He will not destroy those souls. So, we all have a choice (Free will). He can love Him, and desire to be in a relationship with Him,or we don't. At the end of our lives, we will end up at the place we have chosen--in His heaven to be with Him for eternity, or in the place He has prepared for those who do not wish that relationship.
It won't be pleasant.
“By not creating such flawed creatures in the first place. How does something perfect create such imperfection?”
Ah, see now we are getting down to motives and not simply arguing over the plausibility of the notion of God. If God is all-powerful, then it’s an axiomatic truth that He could create perfect little robots to do His bidding. In fact, it would seem to me that would probably be a simpler task than to create complicated and contradictory creatures like us.
So if it is the case that God could have created perfect obedient creatures, but instead created us, then it stands to reason that God must have freely chosen to create us as we are. That leaves us with the question: why would God want to do that?
Now, God is inscrutable, so we can’t really hope to know what His thoughts were, but we can still use our reason to guess at what might motivate him. I don’t feel like writing a dissertation, so I am just going to skip some steps here and say that, after I did that type of evaluation, the only reasonable possibility that I came up with is that you cannot create creatures that have both forced obedience and that are capable of love. It’s an impossibility, since love must be freely given. So if there was a reason for God to choose to make us, creatures capable of such dreadful errors, it seems it could only be because we are also the only kind of creature that can possibly love God, and love each other as well.
“If a perfect God had really created Man, man would be perfect.”
It’s a mistake to think that if God is perfect He could not create imperfection. If that was the case, then God would be limited, and in fact, imperfect. So that logic can’t be correct, since it is self-contradictory.
Yes, this seems to be the next step for theists. It's obvious that the whole concept is nonsensical, so now the guessing and projecting begins.
It’s a mistake to think that if God is perfect He could not create imperfection.
I never said a perfect being COULD not create imperfection. Picasso could scribble, great poets could create doggerel, anyone can operate below their level of capability. Humans are famous for it, in fact. So it's not unusual that they would invent the concept of a perfect creature who creates imperfection for the fun of it. It's just unlikely. Humans cannot conceive of perfection, so they can't imagine how perfection would really operate.
See, this is clearly something only a human would come up with. But Man created God in his own image, so there you go.
“It’s obvious that the whole concept is nonsensical...”
Obviously not, or so many humans who were more intelligent than you or I would not have spent so much time on the question.
“... so now the guessing and projecting begins.”
Well, I told you I was going to use my reason to make a guess, so pointing out what I just told you wins you no points.
“I never said a perfect being COULD not create imperfection. ... It’s just unlikely.”
Ah. Why should the likelihood matter? We aren’t discussing a roulette wheel or the chance of rain next Wednesday. We’re discussing the potential actions of an intelligent being, and the actions of intelligent beings are not ruled by probability.
I nearly forgot to take issue with this sentence. It's, as the British would say, "utter bollocks". Of course we can conceive of perfection. That's why we have a word for it, and why we have been discussing the concept in several posts now.
What we cannot do is achieve perfection. However, it's clear that we definitely have a universal, inborn (not socially transmitted) concept of perfection. That is why humans everywhere, in all times, and in all cultures, are always striving for this concept of perfection, even though we know we cannot achieve it. That's quite a stunning aspect of human nature that I wager you would find difficult to explain simply by relying on a framework of strict materialism.
We have a word for infinity too.
Faith has far more to do with emotion than intelligence. Faith meets an emotional need (that some people have.) Then intelligence is engaged to try and justify it.
...the actions of intelligent beings are not ruled by probability.
Prove it.
“I do not demand that they love me.”
You are full of horse crap!!! If that pet bit you, growled at you, bit your sons, daughters, friends, tore up your furniture, bath roomed everywhere, and ignored you, you know good and well you would separate and get rid of that “beloved” pet.
Those descriptions above are so small compared to a Holy God looking upon our disgusting sin. You are lying to yourself and thinking in small human terms and not very good at that.
Yet if that car, house, or washer you own didn’t work when and how you wanted you would either replace or fix in a heart beat. You get in your car to go to the grocery store, but car goes to the swamp you wouldn’t say that’s ok. You say to washer I need clean clothes, but washer says no I think I’ll take the year off. Be honest you are a hypocrite and use double standards and compare God to faulty logic that even you are not willing to deal with.
Matthew 5:45
Repent and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.
“Faith has far more to do with emotion than intelligence. Faith meets an emotional need (that some people have.) Then intelligence is engaged to try and justify it.”
And yet you believe that all this matter and energy of our entire universe came from nothing.
0x0=0
0+0=0
And you think that I have faith... I submit to you that your faith is way stronger than mine. You believe that all this universe came from nothingness and I believe that in the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth, but yet you think I’m reaching...
My book gives the beginning, the end, and the middle, but your book won’t give Jesus Christ credit even though He is wrote about and witnessed in the Bible and SECULAR history to the point of beyond insanity.
You my friend want to describe logic, but yet won’t nor truly accept it as proof.
Stop that pain and accept our Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and He will forgive you of all of your sins.
If they pee everywhere, they generally have a health problem and I take them to the vet. A good owner does not let health problems go unattended. A perfect, benevolent, omnipotent god wouldn't let health problems even exist.
And as for them ignoring me and shredding my furniture, they're cats. It's what they do. I love them anyway. My love for them is not dependent on their love for me. It helps, of course, but my benevolence to them is without requirement. If your God cannot even be as good a pet owner as I am, the most likely explanation is that he's a figment of someone's imagination.
And one million plus negative one million also equals zero. If you can take all the positive numbers in the world and all the negative numbers in the world, and add them up to get zero, then you can split zero apart and get all the positives and negatives in the world. And have you noticed, there is easily as much negative in the world as positive?
My book gives the beginning, the end, and the middle, but your book won’t give Jesus Christ credit even though He is wrote about and witnessed in the Bible and SECULAR history to the point of beyond insanity.
There are very few references to Jesus outside the Bible, but I'm sure he existed. He was clearly a politician who hoped to free Israel from Roman rule, and was murdered by political rivals in the Jewish community (although they got the Romans to do the actual dirty work.)
You my friend want to describe logic, but yet won’t nor truly accept it as proof.
The only logic Christians tend to offer is: someone must have made the world, so it must be God! This is not logic.
Stop that pain and accept our Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and He will forgive you of all of your sins.
I don't feel I've done much that needs forgiving.
Yes, because we can also conceive of that. We invent words to name things that we can conceive of.
“Faith has far more to do with emotion than intelligence.”
Perhaps, but while Christianity may demand faith, theism does not, and we are discussing atheism vs. theism, not atheism vs. Christianity.
“Prove it.”
I don’t need to prove it, because it’s part of the definition of intelligence. To qualify as an intelligent being, you must both acquire and apply knowledge, and if you are ruled by probability, you are not applying knowledge, therefore you cannot be deemed intelligent.
Your mind cannot truly grasp perfection or infinity. You can comprehend the basic definition, but you can't truly grasp it.
Theism does demand faith and is prompted by emotional need.
I don’t need to prove it, because it’s part of the definition of intelligence. To qualify as an intelligent being, you must both acquire and apply knowledge, and if you are ruled by probability, you are not applying knowledge, therefore you cannot be deemed intelligent
No, because everything the intelligent must deal with is ruled by probability.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.