Why did God create me?

[乳头的早餐谷物]

I wanted to debate about what I wrote in the original post.
If you don't mind for me to interrupt you in your talking about free will and morality, please make a new thread about this.

Read my post. I answered your question (actually I didn't even read most of the posts before mine, just skimmed enough to realize no one had given you a very straightforward answer, hence, my post).

I didn't find your answer at all straightforward. It doesn't do anything to explain why a god would create so many people who he knew would suffer eternal damnation for no good reason.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I just noticed that this was totally being let slide...

But He did give us a more than fair chance.

Just because we don't get the favourable outcome doesn't mean He's not perfect. Consider a court in which everyone found guilty is simply released with no punishment. Would you say that that court is working perfectly?

But the great thing about God is that you can be forgiven. There's Someone willing to pay the price for you, but He can't do it if you won't let Him. It's the balance between grace and forgiveness and justice.

This isn't a very good answer at all, because it reduces God's capabilities to that of humans. If humans could find and eliminate that element in us that makes us do criminal things, we would. If we had the power, as God does, to have our neighbors grow up in such a way that evil simply never comes to mind for them, then our courts would be useless. A court that releases everyone without punishment is only a defective court in a world where evil exists and we can't do anything to prevent the evil; it is an ideal sort court to strive for, because it would mean that no one is willfully evil.
God totally has the power to eliminate evil from the world, and Free Will has only been a decent answer to the Problem of Evil to those who are satisfied by hearing that there even is a proposed answer before turning their back and halting any further critical thinking on the subject thereafter.
If you're likening God's judgment to a human court, you should also toss in the idea that, bee-tee-dubya, the judge spent considerable effort beforehand deciding what every defendant who sets foot in his courtroom is going to be like and everything he will do in his lifetime, including committing the crimes (or not) that they are charged with. It's not at all a fair trial in such a case; the judge is simply being a dick.

[isaacx]

Genesis 1:28 - God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Everyone is going to hell, but it's not that God wants to help them, it's just he can't. He gave them complete control over their actions, same with all the fallen angels and Satan.

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—

Everything was perfect in the beginning, but then man sinned. Sin came to everyone after. That's why God sent his son, so that "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".

Isaiah 53:3 - He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Even if he was the messiah, no one wanted his life, and stayed with his/her beliefs; going to hell with them.

[Seneschal]

Genesis 1:28 - God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Everyone is going to hell, but it's not that God wants to help them, it's just he can't. He gave them complete control over their actions, same with all the fallen angels and Satan.

Of course he can help them, he's bloody omnipotent. Yet another paradox in the God argument: we can't have free will because God is omnipotent and omniscient. Omniscience means knowing everything, therefore he already knows what we're going to do, removing the possibility of free will.
Solution: God doesn't exist.

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—

Everything was perfect in the beginning, but then man sinned. Sin came to everyone after. That's why God sent his son, so that "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".

Hmm. This has always annoyed me: since God is omniscient, he knew Adam and Eve would sin, and yet said it was their fault when they did. Furthermore, he created them in the first place, so ultimately it's his fault. What kind of retard creates something, knows the consequences of what he's done, and then blames it on his creation and punishes them for all eternity?
Solution: God doesn't exist.

Isaiah 53:3 - He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Even if he was the messiah, no one wanted his life, and stayed with his/her beliefs; going to hell with them.

I don't understand how this quote is relevant.
Solution: God doesn't exist.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Everything was perfect in the beginning, but then man sinned.

it's not that God wants to help them, it's just he can't.

He's God. He knows everything and can do anything. Free will is a flawed explanation in a number of ways, but we can ignore those altogether and consider what things were like before God created man. He's omniscient and knew exactly what would happen. Surely a perfect being could have set up a world where man didn't sin? (If you disagree with either of those two preceding sentences, I wouldn't call your god a god.)

Edit: cheesemonger basically got there first.

[SlappyMcGee]

ya, y did god levae forbidn applez n bananaz ther ne wayz? wat an asshole

[yungerkid]

cheesemonger's point is most important. God created a creation in a certain way. if Adam and Eve sinned, it was because that was what was in their nature (presuming free will does not exist, which it doesn't). it was in their nature because God put it there. so God introduced sin to mankind, or at the very least was responsible for it. God stated in the Bible that the sin was Adam and Eve's fault. being omniscient, God would have known that it was not their fault. thus, God was lying. an interesting concept.

edit: and tsukatu, i already addressed that point. gee whillikers, does no-one even read my posts?

[otters~1]

(presuming free will does not exist, which it doesn't)

Wha...?

[capt_weasle]

cheesemonger's point is most important. God created a creation in a certain way. if Adam and Eve sinned, it was because that was what was in their nature (presuming free will does not exist, which it doesn't). it was in their nature because God put it there. so God introduced sin to mankind, or at the very least was responsible for it. God stated in the Bible that the sin was Adam and Eve's fault. being omniscient, God would have known that it was not their fault. thus, God was lying. an interesting concept.

edit: and tsukatu, i already addressed that point. gee whillickers, does no-one even read my posts?

God didn't cause them to sin, although it certainly didn't help that there was a whole stinking tree in the middle of Eden that tempted them. I can't be entirely at fault if my kid decides to snort some crack behind my back, but I suppose with this analogy that would mean I had left a huge pile of crack on the kitchen table.

[yungerkid]

@flagmyidol: determinism. that's the way it works.

ok, so maybe He *didn't* cause them to sin. although i think He did (by putting it in their nature to be weak at a point He knew they would be tempted at). He was nevertheless still *responsible* for their sin. and responsibility is what's at stake with whose fault it was. God said it was their fault, but it was His fault. they could not be blamed because it was in their nature, and they couldn't change their nature. so God was still lying.

[capt_weasle]

ok, so maybe He *didn't* cause them to sin ... but it was His fault.

What? No, it doesn't work like that. He may have known they were going to do it, but that doesn't imply that he caused it. As for it not being their "nature," you can still do something and be blamed for it, whether it was nature for you to do so or not.

[yungerkid]

He did know that they were going to do it. He also created them the way they were. like i said earlier, this argument presumes that nothing has free will (determinism). Adam and Eve were forced to act within their natures. and certainly that is a reasonable idea; the Bible says elsewhere that sinners cannot act outside their nature and connect with God. anyway, if God created them with a particular weakness that He knew would be exploited, He was responsible for their ultimate downfall. it's like a person with a magnet on the side of a speeding piece of metal. the person knowingly uses that magnet to direct the metal into a destructive object further down its path. that person is thus responsible for the destruction of the piece of metal, even though the person did not wreak the destruction himself. if you do something that is in your nature, then you cannot be blamed for it; the One who created your nature must be blamed for it. you might say that then God would be responsible for all sin everywhere. let us not get too far ahead of ourselves; we are discussing one specific action here. God created them in a certain way, and thus they cannot be blamed for acting in that way.

[SlappyMcGee]

Yungerkid, is that not Metaproof enough, using nothing more than common sense and the actual story of The Bible, that it's a crock of bullshit? Even if you're going to ignore science, logical, and critical thought, surely a GIANT FUCKING PARADOX/IMPOSSIBILITY in the very book you claim to warship (cooler spelling?) is something, right?

[yungerkid]

yes, slappymcgee. it is alone enough to disprove all of the religion for me. i wouldn't call it a metaproof; that is what i call logic. it does logically prove its point beyond dispute. i'm not going to recant my faith just yet, but too many more of those, and it's all over for Christianity. honestly, this is the first time i have been confident about a solid disproof of the religion.

[the_happy_taco]

religions gone all over the place now, i dont know what to believe anymore =(

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Okay, this is only going to be partly on-topic. Well, it's describing this whole exchange as well as general exchanges like this, so I guess it's more meta-on-topic.

Anyone ever notice that discussions and debates that start off with an atheist challenging a theist are basically saying, "here's an inconsistency -- I challenge you to contrive a way in which this is possible," and then we all make the theists bend over backwards farther and farther until they give us something that might actually work in a weird way or they just give up? The theists here always end up putting themselves in God's mind and describing what His personality might be like or the choices He's making such that this reality might potentially be the outcome. For one thing, it doesn't even get to a workable idea in the first place, and for another, you'd think they might see what they needed to do in order to come up with the convoluted "theory" to begin with: transparently make things up, deciding God's personality by guesswork and adjusting objective truth as they get a better understanding of what wouldn't work.
And once you even have that, which isn't to say anyone's ever gotten so far, there's the even greater undertaking of demonstrating why that explanation is even likely, let alone possible. Then they'd have to get into the failings of modern science in its attempts to solve the same problem, and demonstrate why their explanation answers any questions better.
And then, if they somehow managed to do that, to me it's still a stretch to tie all of that to a particular doctrine. It's one thing to say, "when you see a painter, you can tell that there obviously must have been a painter" (and let's assume that that's actually a valid, self-consistent argument), but that's not what Christians trying to prove a point are saying. No, they're saying, "when you see a painter, it's obvious that there was a painter who made the painting over the course of seven days in a specific order, made the red paint mix a bit with the green paint when the painter told it not to, cast out the red paint from the painting, eventually decided to say 'fuck it' and doused the painting in water, made the yellow paint wander around the canvas for forty years before coming to a part of the canvas the painter intended for the yellow paint," et cetera, fucking et cetera.

I forgot where I was going with this.
Carry on.

[the_happy_taco]

isnt that how religious wars are started

[bobaganuesh_2]

He did know that they were going to do it. He also created them the way they were. like i said earlier, this argument presumes that nothing has free will (determinism). Adam and Eve were forced to act within their natures. and certainly that is a reasonable idea; the Bible says elsewhere that sinners cannot act outside their nature and connect with God. anyway, if God created them with a particular weakness that He knew would be exploited, He was responsible for their ultimate downfall. it's like a person with a magnet on the side of a speeding piece of metal. the person knowingly uses that magnet to direct the metal into a destructive object further down its path. that person is thus responsible for the destruction of the piece of metal, even though the person did not wreak the destruction himself. if you do something that is in your nature, then you cannot be blamed for it; the One who created your nature must be blamed for it. you might say that then God would be responsible for all sin everywhere. let us not get too far ahead of ourselves; we are discussing one specific action here. God created them in a certain way, and thus they cannot be blamed for acting in that way.

jesus le poop! I suspect it all depends on the time reference you are looking at. A deterministic view deals with the future and someone's destiny, whereas free will or something like that is viewing life as a series of impulses and choice leading to other impulses or choices. You're implying that God has carved out are fates since the beginning right, and He hasforced us to sin/ I don't buy that, at all. We make our own choices in life unless God/some deity does control our actions. Then religion is just a device to praise characters/figures of holy texts and living restricted lives. Wowee! That was pro-atheist enough! So if it is said that God controls our actions, then how come I can move my finger at will? Or is God possessing me at the exact moment the finger starts moving, and his possession allows me to move my finger? (what I'm questioning is whether God controls us all, in case that wasn't clear).

Tsukatu: you are absolutely correct. I'm guessing is because we are so young and inexperienced we have not connected enough of life's dots to build a strong enough foundation to defend questions proposed such as the ones in this debate forum. But some of us accept the paradoxes and contradictions that exist in religion and have figured out the appropriate reconciliation. And these reconciliations are based purely on opinion. The paragraph opinion: the paradox that humans are given a choice to choose whichever religion/lifestyle they want, yet the theory that God controls us. I reject the latter, since it does not coincide with my values and principles. You may call that ignorant, but frankly I could give a rat's ass. That's what seperates person from person, opinions and values and principles.

Enough with the obvious!

"when you see a painter, it's obvious that there was a painter who made the painting over the course of seven days in a specific order, made the red paint mix a bit with the green paint when the painter told it not to, cast out the red paint from the painting, eventually decided to say 'fuck it' and doused the painting in water, made the yellow paint wander around the canvas for forty years before coming to a part of the canvas the painter intended for the yellow paint," et cetera, fucking et cetera.

I don't see how the latter situation is not possible, unless this question is not phrased correctly or I am high.

Slappy, you have just permanently influenced yungerkid to rethink his beleifs. I hope you are aware of the seriousness of the scenario you have created. You have just dictated his destiny.

[Seneschal]

jesus le poop! I suspect it all depends on the time reference you are looking at. A deterministic view deals with the future and someone's destiny, whereas free will or something like that is viewing life as a series of impulses and choice leading to other impulses or choices. You're implying that God has carved out are fates since the beginning right, and He hasforced us to sin/ I don't buy that, at all. We make our own choices in life unless God/some deity does control our actions. Then religion is just a device to praise characters/figures of holy texts and living restricted lives. Wowee! That was pro-atheist enough! So if it is said that God controls our actions, then how come I can move my finger at will? Or is God possessing me at the exact moment the finger starts moving, and his possession allows me to move my finger? (what I'm questioning is whether God controls us all, in case that wasn't clear).

Solution: God doesn't exist.

[capt_weasle]

jesus le poop! I suspect it all depends on the time reference you are looking at. A deterministic view deals with the future and someone's destiny, whereas free will or something like that is viewing life as a series of impulses and choice leading to other impulses or choices. You're implying that God has carved out are fates since the beginning right, and He hasforced us to sin/ I don't buy that, at all. We make our own choices in life unless God/some deity does control our actions. Then religion is just a device to praise characters/figures of holy texts and living restricted lives. Wowee! That was pro-atheist enough! So if it is said that God controls our actions, then how come I can move my finger at will? Or is God possessing me at the exact moment the finger starts moving, and his possession allows me to move my finger? (what I'm questioning is whether God controls us all, in case that wasn't clear).

Solution: God doesn't exist.

The basis of argument of the thread runs on the assumption that God exists, so what you're essentially saying is "PS3 sucks" in a "Which is the best PS3 game?" thread. Not to mention that saying "God doesn't exist" is the same as saying "God exists" because you can't really "prove" either statement.

[the_happy_taco]

If you think about it, God is our conscience. When we are going through a tough time and there is no one to be with we look up to a higher power to help yourself cope and comfort ourselfs, we make ourselfs believe to feel safe. I do believe in something after life. You could say that I'm a Universalist and believe in anything and everything and we all go somewhere. But the truth is, we won't know that till we're dead.

[SlappyMcGee]

jesus le poop! I suspect it all depends on the time reference you are looking at. A deterministic view deals with the future and someone's destiny, whereas free will or something like that is viewing life as a series of impulses and choice leading to other impulses or choices. You're implying that God has carved out are fates since the beginning right, and He hasforced us to sin/ I don't buy that, at all. We make our own choices in life unless God/some deity does control our actions. Then religion is just a device to praise characters/figures of holy texts and living restricted lives. Wowee! That was pro-atheist enough! So if it is said that God controls our actions, then how come I can move my finger at will? Or is God possessing me at the exact moment the finger starts moving, and his possession allows me to move my finger? (what I'm questioning is whether God controls us all, in case that wasn't clear).

Solution: God doesn't exist.

The basis of argument of the thread runs on the assumption that God exists, so what you're essentially saying is "PS3 sucks" in a "Which is the best PS3 game?" thread. Not to mention that saying "God doesn't exist" is the same as saying "God exists" because you can't really "prove" either statement.

Wait, wait. Saying, "God doesn't exist" can't be proven, but saying that the Christian God, or any other religious God doesn't exist, can be proven using the source material, common sense, critical thinking, science, and just a general concept of reality.

[yungerkid]

bobaga, you can't move your finger at will. your nature fully dictates your actions. and your nature is fully dictated by the laws of nature and by whatever created it. and, one of the major Christian doctrines is predestination: that God, before time, and before He created us, predestined certain numbers of us to be with Him, and certain others to be in Hell. that doesn't mean, from a perspective inside of time (our perspective), that nonbelievers cannot become saved no matter how hard they try. it just means that from a perspective outside of time. i would of course remind you that we are not the ones that initiate the relationship in the first place. but whatever.

there are two options for creation. either God created everything with such a design that would lead to all the events that have occurred hence, or He created a starting point, and controlled all events from there. obviously if He did not control all events from there, then He is either irresponsible (not willing - letting evil happen and His creation turn to chaos without His guidance) or not omnipotent (not able). and if He did merely create a careful initial design and then let it all loose to do what it was supposed to do, then how can we explain Jesus? clearly God must be controlling everything. if God controls everything, then He initiates sin on an individual level. assuming He is omnipotent, and that He does initiate sin on an individual level (as i have just shown), then God must be irresponsible. after all, if He does not control a human and cause it to sin, He is being irresponsible, isn't He...?

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

bobaga, you can't move your finger at will. your nature fully dictates your actions. and your nature is fully dictated by the laws of nature and by whatever created it. and, one of the major Christian doctrines is predestination: that God, before time, and before He created us, predestined certain numbers of us to be with Him, and certain others to be in Hell. that doesn't mean, from a perspective inside of time (our perspective), that nonbelievers cannot become saved no matter how hard they try. it just means that from a perspective outside of time. i would of course remind you that we are not the ones that initiate the relationship in the first place. but whatever.

there are two options for creation. either God created everything with such a design that would lead to all the events that have occurred hence, or He created a starting point, and controlled all events from there. obviously if He did not control all events from there, then He is either irresponsible (not willing - letting evil happen and His creation turn to chaos without His guidance) or not omnipotent (not able). and if He did merely create a careful initial design and then let it all loose to do what it was supposed to do, then how can we explain Jesus? clearly God must be controlling everything. if God controls everything, then He initiates sin on an individual level. assuming He is omnipotent, and that He does initiate sin on an individual level (as i have just shown), then God must be irresponsible. after all, if He does not control a human and cause it to sin, He is being irresponsible, isn't He...?

I could have sworn you were a Christian.
Aren't you still?

[yungerkid]

yes, i am a Christian still. i am a critical Christian, however. i am questioning various points in my faith, and attempting to disprove the religion.