"Why? Why? WHY?!" a direct quote from Ceridwen018 and many others (Jesus, moral)

[Mr Spinkles]

Hogcaller-- Does God have the ability to create a perfect world?

If so, why did God not create a perfect world?

If your response is "because if the world was perfect it would be boring" or "because if the world was perfect we wouldn't have free will" then I refer you back to my first question.

[HOGCALLER]

You say: “Could you please post those facts, perhaps in a separate thread? I have certainly never seen them. Scientific facts say that god is unecessary.”



I say: you first! “Scientific facts say that god is unnecessary.” Really? And which “facts” are those? And don't answer with theories.



You say: “If someone does something wrong, it does not disprove that they had a father. However, if someone who has an onmiscient and perfect father does something wrong, it certainly calls into question the supposed omniscience and perfection of that father.”



I say: really? Did you read somewhere in the Bible that that God is omniscient? If not, then somebody told you that, correct? And that someone(s) may very well have told you something that is not correct and misinformed you. So let me ask you: how? Please prove the above statement.



You say: “Gos wrote the script and hired the people to act it out. If god didn't want hate, filth, pollution, and disease, he wouldn't have created them.”



I say: you are absolutely right. And he didn't! AND I say it AGAIN: “It very well may be that you will refuse to accept the facts as presented in the Bible, but God did not create Satan in the first place! Nor did he “create” evil! And your accusation claiming that he did does not make it so.” “You need to read my post again because you obviously missed the point. You are making claims or assumptions that are contrary to what the Bible says and to what I said, also.”



You say: “Let's forget about Deuteronomy for a moment, and focus on logic. IF god created things perfectly, then how is it possible for them to turn out disasterously? It's not. Something went wrong. In this instance, Deuteronomy in incoherent with basic logic and reason.”



I say: no! Let's not forget about Deuteronomy. You continue to make these very tall claims but you provide no proof. Prove Deuteronomy 32:4 is “incoherent with basic logic and reason.” Yes, something did go wrong but apparently you are so sure of what you think I'm saying and so set in your opinions and preconceived ideas that you are not able understand what I actually say and therefore you ignored what I said about it!



You say: “I'm confused. What, exactly, was god's definition of 'perfection'? Your description is no different from any normal human being. Did god mean that he created them perfectly in every physcial aspect? Wow, that's pretty shallow.”



I say: obviously you are confused! Please go read my introduction paragraph again where I forewarn you that this will most likely be ‘new’ to you. And then answer this question: where did you get your definition of perfection? Did you read it somewhere in the Bible or did someone(s) tell you? Let me repeat myself: “apparently you are so sure of what you think I'm saying and so set in your opinions and preconceived ideas that you are not able understand what I actually say!” Please slow down. Please think about what I have actually said (not what you think I said) and then let us have a discussion about the things you do not agree with—but that I did say, OK?



You say: “Does god know everything? Great, then that means that he knows the outcome of my next decision. That doesn't sound like complete free-will to me.”



I say: you are absolutely right! That is not free will! Neither is it what I said! This is what I said: “In addition, God also created humans with free will or as free moral agents, not to be controlled or guided just by instinct, as are animals, or by fate or some predestined plan, like puppets on invisible, indiscernible strings.” Freewill is the antithesis of predestination! I am talking about free will and you are trying to argue with me about predestination.



You do ask a good question: “Does god know everything?” He answers for himself in the Bible at Genesis 11:5-8 where God is described as directing his attention earthward, surveying the situation at Babel, and, at that time, determining the action to be taken to break up the unrighteous project there. After wickedness developed at Sodom and Gomorrah, God advised Abraham of his decision to investigate (by means of his angels) to “see whether they act altogether according to the outcry over it that has come to me, and, if not, I can get to know it.” (Genesis 18:20-22; 19:1) God spoke of ‘becoming acquainted with Abraham,’ or ‘I have become his intimate friend,’ and after Abraham went to the point of attempting to sacrifice Isaac, God said, “For now I do know that you are God-fearing in that you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” (Genesis 22:11, 12; compare Galatians 4:9) There are many other examples that I could cite. The point is that God's perfection means that he has perfect self-control and can exercise his foreknowledge at his discretion and without interfering with the free will of his creatures. God is omnipotent, but that does not mean that he is not able to pickup an egg without crushing it. When he wants to foreknow something he can and does, but that does not mean that he cannot control himself and must foreknow “everything”.



Predestination is an unscriptural teaching that slanders God. It confuses what he can do with what he actually does. The fact that God can foreknow events is clearly stated in the Bible. (Isaiah 46:9, 10) However, it is illogical to think that he cannot control his ability to know the future or that he is responsible for every outcome. To illustrate: suppose you had very great physical strength. Would that make you feel inclined to hug a newborn baby with all your strength? Of course not! Likewise, having the ability to know the future does not compel God to foreknow or foreordain everything. His use of foreknowledge is selective and discretionary.



You say: “Actually, if someone telling me what to do all the time meant that I was always happy and everyone else was happy to, rather than the unhappiness which stems from free-will, I would have to say that I would prefer a lack of free-will.



I say: you obviously didn't think that one through! Unhappiness does not stem from freewill but rather from the misuse of free choice. I viewed the movie ‘Matrix’ for the first time about two weeks ago. Surely you would not prefer life in the Matrix? Do you really want to be an automaton?

[HOGCALLER]

Mr_Spinkles,



You say: Hogcaller-- Does God have the ability to create a perfect world?

If so, why did God not create a perfect world?

If your response is "because if the world was perfect it would be boring" or "because if the world was perfect we wouldn't have free will" then I refer you back to my first question.



What I said, as posted above, was:



c. When a person reads the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, it becomes very clear that when God created man and woman he gave them a perfect start. He created them with perfect bodies and minds, so that sickness and death would never plague them. Their home was a lovely, parklike garden of delightful flowers, lush vegetation and fruit-bearing trees. There was no lack. To the contrary, there was abundance. Also, God set before our first parents interesting work and stimulating goals. He instructed them to extend the parklike conditions of that paradise throughout the entire earth. In time the many perfect children that they would produce would assist them in this. Thus, eventually, the human family would become a perfect race of people, inhabiting an earthly paradise, enjoying life forever, and even having the animals in loving subjection.

d. But why did things turn out so disastrously? Was it because God did not really create humans perfect in the first place? No, that is not the case, because Deuteronomy 32:4 says of God, “Perfect is his work.” However, human perfection did not mean that the first human pair knew everything, or could do everything, or could not do what is wrong. Even perfect creatures have limitations. For instance, there were physical limits. If they did not eat food, drink water and breathe air they would die. Nor could they do such things as violate the law of gravity by jumping off a very high place and not expect to get hurt. Also, they had mental limits. Obviously, Adam and Eve had a lot to learn, since they had very limited experience and knowledge. But no matter how much they learned, they could never know as much as their Creator. Hence, although perfect, they were limited by being in the human realm. Perfection simply meant that they were complete, that there was no flaw in their physical and mental makeup.

e. In addition, God also created humans with free will or as free moral agents, not to be controlled or guided just by instinct, as are animals, or by fate or some predestined plan, like puppets on invisible, indiscernible strings. And surely you appreciate such freedom. You would not want anyone dictating to you, every minute of your life, what you should do. However, that freedom was not to be absolute, that is, without limitations, but was to be relative. It had to be exercised within the boundaries of God’s laws. Those fine laws would be few and simple, designed with the greatest happiness of the entire human family in mind. His requiring that they obey his laws, since he knew that respect for those laws would bring them unending benefits, showed God’s love for humans. Disrespect for God and his laws would interfere with their happiness. It would bring nothing good. In fact, it would bring certain calamity, because God warned Adam and Eve that if they abandoned him they would “surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) So to keep living, they needed not only to eat food, drink water and breathe air, but also to be guided by God and his laws.

f. There is another very crucial reason why our first parents needed to keep depending upon God. That reason is that humans were not created to govern their affairs successfully independent of God. God did not give them the right or the ability to do that. As the Bible says: “To earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.” (Jeremiah 10:23) That is why the Bible declares: “He that is trusting in his own heart is stupid.” (Proverbs 28:26)

5. What went wrong and with what consequences?

a. With such a fine start, what went wrong? This: our first parents, Adam and Eve, used their freedom of choice wrongly. They decided to go their own way instead of submitting to God’s rule. In fact, the woman thought that they could become “like God, knowing good and bad.” (Genesis 3:5) Relying on their own self-centered thinking, they wanted to determine for themselves what was right and what was wrong. They did not foresee the unintended consequences and the vast damage that would result from such thinking. When they pulled away from God’s rulership, what resulted is, in a broad sense, like what happens when you pull out the plug of an electric fan. Cut off from its source of sustaining power, the fan slows down and eventually comes to a dead stop. Similarly, when the first human pair pulled away from the Source of life, their Creator, they eventually deteriorated and died, as God forewarned that they would.

[Ronald]

Hogcaller, I really liked your story until you used an unfortunate word,"selfcentered" this is a defect and they were perfect. Eve was the weak link , she had only Adams word of "don't eat" Seeing it looked good and having free will she simplely had two choices, resist temptation and obey God or to give in to temptation and be disobedient. She as her own moral agent chose wrong. The most awful part was that God gave them a chance to repent. Which they didn't.
The rest, as they say is history.

[Master Vigil]

The problem with all of this is... The bible is, can not, and will not, be perfect. It was written by finite imperfect beings. And even if a perfect god would write it through them, the end result would still be in itself imperfect. The only way the bible would be perfect is if god changed the humans and made them perfect. But if multiple things are perfect, than they would all be the same thing. There can not be different perfections, there can only be one perfection. So there would only be one person who wrote the bible. But even if god made a man perfect, the man would become the same things as god, and then there cannot be two perfect gods, for they would essentially become one. But there were many people who wrote the bible. They were written by imperfect beings, and thus the end product was IMPERFECT!!!

But let us assume that the bible is true. And even though you say that god did not create satan as he is now. God still created him. At the heart of everything is god, there is nothing that is not a part of god. Therefore, even though god created lucifer, lucifer is satan. And therefore god created satan. And as evil is a part of creation, god created evil.

Another thing, even though the original old testament was written long before the christian bible was ever put together. The jews still do not take the torah at face value. It is up to a "cantor" to bring out the meaning in the torah. Meanings change, and as we see throughout christianity's history. The meaning changes. So who is right? You? I think the most credibility goes to the ancient rabbi's, the ancient mystics, the ancient theologians. Scripture is not enough, interpretation of scripture is extremely necessary. The bible is not a history book, it is a story. A myth, a legend of an amazing man.

[standing_on_one_foot]

Originally Posted by Ronald

Hogcaller, I really liked your story until you used an unfortunate word,"selfcentered" this is a defect and they were perfect. Eve was the weak link , she had only Adams word of "don't eat" Seeing it looked good and having free will she simplely had two choices, resist temptation and obey God or to give in to temptation and be disobedient. She as her own moral agent chose wrong. The most awful part was that God gave them a chance to repent. Which they didn't.
The rest, as they say is history.

Back to blaming Eve...Adam ate too, you know.

Hey, a question...would Adam and Eve ever have had kids if they stayed in the Garden?

[HOGCALLER]

standing_on_one_foot,

To understand the matter of foreknowledge and foreordination as relating to God, certain factors necessarily must be recognized.

First, God’s ability to foreknow and foreordain is clearly stated in the Bible. God himself sets forth as proof of his Godship this ability to foreknow and foreordain events of salvation and deliverance, as well as acts of judgment and punishment, and then to bring such events to fulfillment. His chosen people are witnesses of these facts. (Isaiah 44:6-9; 48:3-8)

A second factor to be considered is the free will of God’s intelligent creatures. The Scriptures show that God extends to such creatures the privilege and responsibility of free choice, of exercising free moral agency (Deuteronomy 30:19, 20; Joshua 24:15), thereby making them accountable for their acts. (Genesis 2:16, 17; 3:11-19; Romans 14:10-12; Hebrews 4:13) They are thus not mere robots, or automatons. Man could not truly have been created in “God’s image” if he were not a free moral agent. Logically then, there should be no conflict between God’s foreknowledge (as well as his foreordaining) and the free moral agency of his intelligent creatures.

A third factor that must be considered, one sometimes overlooked, is that of God’s moral standards and qualities, including his justice, honesty, impartiality, love, mercy, and kindness. Any understanding of God’s use of any of his ‘omni’ qualities but especially of foreknowledge and foreordination must therefore harmonize with not only some of these factors but with all of them. Clearly, whatever God foreknows must inevitably come to pass, so that God is able to call “things that are not as though they were.” (Romans 4:17)

God has four cardinal or main qualities: love, power, wisdom and justice. Just as an artist mixes and blends primary colors to produce many shades and hues of color, God’s qualities can be mixed and blended with differing results. For example: love plus wisdom plus justice produces mercy; but mixed in different proportions they produce jealousy. God is the supreme being of the universe and as such we speak of him as being "all-powerful" (omnipotent) and “all-knowing” (omniscient) and so on. And yet, even though he is "all-powerful", each and every exercise of God's power to pass judgment and to enforce punishment does not result in the utter destruction of everything. That is because His exercise of power is blended with or offset by His love, wisdom and justice so that the result is just right (perfect) and does not violate His other qualities and attributes.

The question then arises: Does God know in advance everything that people will do? Is his exercise of foreknowledge infinite (not his ability to foreknow), without limit? Does he foresee and foreknow all future actions of all his creatures, spirit and human? And does he foreordain such actions or even predestinate what shall be the final destiny of all his creatures, even doing so before they have come into existence?

Or, is God’s exercise of foreknowledge selective and discretionary, so that whatever he chooses to foresee and foreknow, he does, but what he does not choose to foresee or foreknow, he does not? And, instead of preceding their existence, does God’s determination of his creatures’ eternal destiny await his judgment of their course of life and of their proved attitude under test? The answers to these questions must necessarily come from the Scriptures themselves and the information they provide concerning God’s actions and dealings with his creatures, including what has been revealed through his Son, Christ Jesus. (1 Corinthians 2:16)

The view I ‘hear’ being expressed here is that God’s exercise of his foreknowledge is infinite and that he does foreordain the course and destiny of all individuals and that view is known as predestinarianism. Most of its advocates reason that God’s divinity and perfection require that he be omniscient (all-knowing), not only respecting the past and present but also regarding the future. According to this concept, for him not to foreknow all matters in their minutest detail would evidence imperfection.

To be correct, this view would, of course, have to harmonize with all the factors previously mentioned, including the Scriptural presentation of God’s qualities, standards, and purposes, as well as his righteous ways in dealing with his creatures. We may properly consider, then, the implications of such a predestinarian view.

This concept would mean that, prior to creating angels or mankind, God exercised his powers of foreknowledge and foresaw and foreknew all that would result from such creation, including the rebellion of one of his spirit sons, the subsequent rebellion of the first human pair in Eden, and all the bad consequences of such rebellion down to and beyond this present day. This would necessarily mean that all the wickedness that history has recorded (the crime and immorality, oppression and resultant suffering, lying and hypocrisy, false worship and idolatry) once existed, before creation’s beginning, only in the mind of God, in the form of his foreknowledge of the future in all of its minutest details.

If the Creator of mankind had indeed exercised his power to foreknow all that history has seen since man’s creation, then the full weight of all the wickedness thereafter resulting was deliberately set in motion by God when he spoke the words: “Let us make man.” (Genesis 1:26) These facts bring into question the reasonableness and consistency of the predestinarian concept; particularly so, since the disciple James shows that disorder and other vile things do not originate from God’s heavenly presence but are “earthly, animal, demonic” in source. (James 3:14-18)

The argument that God’s not foreknowing all future events and circumstances in full detail would evidence imperfection on his part is, in reality, an arbitrary view of perfection. Perfection, correctly defined, does not demand such an absolute, all-embracing extension, inasmuch as the perfection of anything actually depends upon its measuring up completely to the standards of excellence set by one qualified to judge its merits. Ultimately, God’s own will and good pleasure, not human opinions or concepts, are the deciding factors as to whether anything is perfect. (Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel 22:31; Isaiah 46:10)

[HOGCALLER]

To illustrate this again, God’s almightiness is undeniably perfect and is infinite in capacity. (1 Chronicles 29:11, 12; Job 36:22; 37:23) Yet his perfection in strength does not require him to use his power to the full extent of his omnipotence in any or in all cases. Clearly he has not done so; if he had, not merely certain ancient cities and some nations would have been destroyed, but the earth and all in it would have been obliterated long ago by God’s executions of judgment, accompanied by mighty expressions of disapproval and wrath, as at Sodom and Gomorrah and on other occasions. (Genesis 19:23-25, 29; compare Exodus 9:13-16; Jeremiah 30:23, 24.) God’s exercise of his might is therefore not simply an unleashing of limitless power but is constantly governed by his purpose and, where merited, tempered by his mercy. (Nehemiah 9:31; Psalm 78:38, 39; Jeremiah 30:11; Lamentations 3:22; Ezekiel 20:17)

Similarly, if, in certain respects, God chooses to exercise his infinite ability of foreknowledge in a selective way and to the degree that pleases him, then assuredly no human or angel can rightly say: “What are you doing?” (Job 9:12; Isaiah 45:9; Daniel 4:35) It is therefore not a question of ability, what God can foresee, foreknow, and foreordain, for “with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26) The question is what God sees fit to foresee, foreknow, and foreordain, for “everything that he delighted to do he has done.” (Psalm 115:3)

The alternative to predestinarianism, the selective or discretionary exercise of God’s powers of foreknowledge, would have to harmonize with God’s own righteous standards and be consistent with what he reveals of himself in his Word. In contrast with the theory of predestinarianism, a number of texts point to an examination by God of a situation then current and a decision made on the basis of such examination.

Thus, at Genesis 11:5-8 where God is described as directing his attention earthward, surveying the situation at Babel, and, at that time, determining the action to be taken to break up the unrighteous project there. After wickedness developed at Sodom and Gomorrah, God advised Abraham of his decision to investigate (by means of his angels) to “see whether they act altogether according to the outcry over it that has come to me, and, if not, I can get to know it.” (Genesis 18:20-22; 19:1) God spoke of ‘becoming acquainted with Abraham,’ or ‘I have become his intimate friend,’ and after Abraham went to the point of attempting to sacrifice Isaac, God said, “For now I do know that you are God-fearing in that you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” (Genesis 22:11, 12; compare Galatians 4:9)

Selective foreknowledge means that God could choose not to foreknow indiscriminately all the future acts of his creatures. This would mean that, rather than all history from creation onward being a mere rerun of what had already been foreseen and foreordained, God could with all sincerity set before the first human pair the prospect of everlasting life in an earth free from wickedness. His instructions to his first human son and daughter to act as his perfect and sinless agents in filling the earth with their offspring and making it a paradise, as well as exercising control over the animal creation, could thus be expressed as the grant of a truly loving privilege and as his genuine desire toward them—not merely as the giving of a commission that, on their part, was foredoomed to failure. God’s arranging for a test by means of “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad” and his creation of “the tree of life” in the garden of Eden also would not be meaningless or cynical acts, made so by his foreknowing that the human pair would sin and never be able to eat of “the tree of life.”

To offer something very desirable to another person on conditions known beforehand to be unreachable is recognized as both hypocritical and cruel. The prospect of everlasting life is presented in God’s Word as a goal for all persons, one possible to attain. (John 3:16) After urging his listeners to ‘keep on asking and seeking’ good things from God, Jesus pointed out that a father does not give a stone or a serpent to his child that asks for bread or a fish. Showing his Father’s view of disappointing the legitimate hopes of a person, Jesus then said: “Therefore, if you, although being wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more so will your Father who is in the heavens give good things to those asking him?” (Matthew 7:7-11)

[HOGCALLER]

Thus, the invitations and opportunities to receive benefits and everlasting blessings set before all men by God are bona fide. (Matthew 21:22; James 1:5, 6) He can in all sincerity urge men to ‘turn back from transgression and keep living,’ as he did with the people of Israel. (Ezekiel 18:23, 30-32; compare Jeremiah 29:11, 12) Logically, he could not do this if he foreknew that they were individually destined to die in wickedness. (Compare Acts 17:30, 31; 1 Timothy 2:3, 4) As God told Israel: “Look to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:19-22)

In a similar vein, the apostle Peter writes: “Jehovah is not slow respecting his promise [of the coming day of reckoning], as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with you because he does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) If God already foreknew and foreordained millenniums in advance precisely which individuals would receive eternal salvation and which individuals would receive eternal destruction, it may well be asked how meaningful such ‘patience’ of God could be and how genuine his desire could be that ‘all attain to repentance.’ The inspired apostle John wrote that “God is love,” and the apostle Paul states that love “hopes all things.” (1 John 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13:4, 7) It is in harmony with this outstanding, divine quality that God should exercise a genuinely open, kindly attitude toward all persons, he being desirous of their gaining salvation, until they prove themselves unworthy, beyond hope. (Compare 2 Peter 3:9; Hebrews 6:4-12) Thus, the apostle Paul speaks of “the kindly quality of God [that] is trying to lead you to repentance.” (Romans 2:4-6)

Finally if, by God’s foreknowledge, the opportunity to receive the benefits of Christ Jesus’ ransom sacrifice were already irrevocably sealed off from some, perhaps for millions of individuals, even before their birth, so that such ones could never prove worthy, it could not truly be said that the ransom was made available to all men. (John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:14, 15; 1 Timothy 2:5, 6; Hebrews 2:9) The impartiality of God is clearly no mere figure of speech. “In every nation the man that fears [God] and works righteousness is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34, 35; Deuteronomy 10:17; Romans 2:11) The option is actually and genuinely open to all men “to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26, 27) There is no empty hope or hollow promise set forth, therefore, in the divine exhortation at the end of the book of Revelation inviting: “Let anyone hearing say: ‘Come!’ And let anyone thirsting come; let anyone that wishes take life’s water free.” (Revelation 22:17)

There is much, much more that could be said on this subject; hopefully this should be enough for you to correctly understand this “new to you” viewpoint.