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I'm not sure just how relevant this thread is to evolution vs. creationism, but since it's here...

The bottom line is that God is a 'gentelmen', He doesn't go where He is not invited. If you wish to exist separate from Him, you can have your wish. If you like anarchy and evil without any force to stop it, you can and will have it.

Ah, that takes me back to a heart-to-heart talk my spirit-filled Christian sister had with me, 15 years ago. She explained to me why I couldn't talk to God & have Him talk back to me as a voice inside my head like she experiences constantly: God is a gentleman.

But my problem with this argument is, God is not a gentleman. He suffers from a phobia of some kind. He won't step into our world & show Himself. He won't provide us with the kind of plain evidence that He even exists, let alone whether we should follow Him or not.

OTOH, I don't much care if most people agree with or love me, but I at least show people that I exist all the time: I go out of the house & show my physical body to everyone who's out there. I talk to people on the phone. I email & post to forums online, calling myself jennyp.

None of these acts is difficult for me. Why is it so hard for God? Why is God only willing to "step into this world" as a voice in a person's head? And then only after that person has first decided that He does in fact exist, and after that person has experienced a paroxysm of suicidal despair & begs for God to take over her life?

As I say, that's not being a gentleman. That's expressing lalophobia, scopophobia, anthropophobia, caligynephobia, pedophobia, sociophobia, opthalmophobia, haptephobia, phonophobia.

As for me, I will trust Christ to have paid for my sins, past and present. I look forward to spending eternity with someone who loves me with a love supassing my own understanding and who wishes nothing but to give me what a loving Father would give his own.

The whole bit about having his son pay for our past & future sins really is an incoherent analogy, IMO. Can you envision a justice system that lets an innocent 3rd party step in & take the real criminal's punishment? We would immediately recognize such a system as unjust and fundamentally flawed. But here it's supposed to be convincing evidence that God is wise and loving??? (Loving maybe, but certainly not wise!)

The whole bit about having his son pay for our past & future sins really is an incoherent analogy, IMO. Can you envision a justice system that lets an innocent 3rd party step in & take the real criminal's punishment? We would immediately recognize such a system as unjust and fundamentally flawed. But here it's supposed to be convincing evidence that God is wise and loving???(Loving maybe, but certainly not wise!)

Interesting comment, expected better from you.

WhiteKnight

I refer you to my lament about the Augustinian verion of Christianity. Orthodox Christianity regards separation from God (which if it becomes permanent is called "hell") as a natural result of turning away from Him (of which doctrine the Fall as described in Genesis presents as St. Gregory of Nyssa says "in the guise of a narrative.") It is not by vicarious punishment, but by Christ's reuniting of human nature with God in His own person, and by His conquest of death "[He] trampled down Death by death and as God didst reveal resurrection" as one of our prayers says. The notion of "substitutionary atonement' which you criticize is indeed incoherent and barbarous, and hardly essential to Christianity (even if essential to the doctrine of some protestant sects). Even the communion of which Anselm of Canterbury was a member has never adopted the notion as doctrine.

The whole bit about having his son pay for our past & future sins really is an incoherent analogy, IMO. Can you envision a justice system that lets an innocent 3rd party step in & take the real criminal's punishment?"

It's not about justice, it's about Love, but of course, you would never understand. It's about the kind of love a parent has towards a wayward child.