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First of all, i am talking about Christianity, and not just any God, in the particular example. Because, unlikekly whith Islam, where Allah determine how humans will think ( i mean, he don't let people think by their own, "he controlls their mind" ( if he existed ) ) - that was just a mere comment to show you that we don't speak about any religion but for Christinity, the God of Christianity lets people think freely.
In the topic now, no, you are wrong, we have free will. It's us who choose what movements to do, not God. But, as God is prescient, he knows the future; but this doesn't mean that he is the one who controlls our will.
1) Muslim's do not believe Allah control's their minds, they too believe in free will.
2) We cannot have free will, and God know the future, the two are logically impossible.
If we have free will the future cannot exist, in the block-time sense, ie. you have "time" in which the past, the present, the future is all "there", and we merely have a psychological experience of it passing. If that were the case the future would exist, in a fixed tangible sense, correspondingly we would have no freedom to choose it.
Thus the only possiblilty of freewill (actually it's impossible anyway, because of physics and neurology etc, but we will ignore those for the time being) is if the future doesn't exist, all that exists is the present, a single point in time. If that is the case we can have free will because the future is not set but God cannot know the future because, it dose not exist, in the same way that God cannot know what colour the box i'm holding is, because i'm not holding a box. The best he can do is see all the different possible futures, without knowing which one will come true.
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God made us perfet humans. God made us perfect. It's, we, people who made ourselves vulnerable to death. This is a very big topic, and just a quick note: God doesn't leave us helpless here in earth, but he gives us great help, with many ways.
Also, as you know ( i hope so.. ), we, Christians, can reach the level of God.
If we were perfect, there would not be the copious amount of bloodshed we see all over the world.
Our nature was given to us, by God, we don't choose it, if you had the choice between a kick in the groin and a million dollars which would you choose? Almost everyone would choose the million dollars, that doesn't mean you don't have choice.
Correspondingly if God existed, humans would simply not choose to do horrible things to each other. It would not be a part of our nature.
Of course if you think we formed via the blind forces of evolution then our behaviour makes perfect sense.
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That's what you said in your previous post, and i answered to you that no, its we, people who made the wold as it is today, with our catastrophical choises
Right, and we make those choices because of our catastrophical nature which God gave us.
I can imagine a humanity with choice but who don't kill each other, why, if there is a benevolent all powerfull creator is that not the humanity of today?
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Well.. that;s another huge topic, and i 'll try to be as brief as possible. First of all, you should know that before the Fall, there were no diseases, no deaths.
Now, we to have diseases?. First of all, it's because of our faults and we have diseases and we "suffer".
Are you saying we are being punished for the actions of our ancestors? Does that sound reasonable to you? Do you think it would be fair to punish you if your parents did something wrong?
Would an infinitely wise, infinitely just God, so something like that? Of course not.
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Secondly, with these methods ( storms and othe catastrophics ), God challenge our faith. He is testing our faith.
Which again makes him sick, if you have children will you put them through hardships just to see if they pass? "Tom go and crawl through that glass" "Why daddy? It will hurt please don't make me" "I want to see if you can do it and still love me afterwards, CRAWL!!", yea again an infinitely wise, infinitely benevolent God would do this?
Plus once again it violates Gods omniscience, if God is capable of knowing the future then he would already know whether you would pass a test or not, correspondingly he is causing harm and pain for no reason at all.
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So, all these are something like tests.
This whole idea is absurd. What about people who have never heard about Christianity? Amazonian tribes and such, why are they tested? How can they possibly pass the test? Once again God is just causing misery and pain for kicks.
And why is it, that God tests religious and non-religious people alike? If he already knows someone doesn't believe in him what exactly is he testing? Or perhaps that's punishment, perhaps God punishes people who use the faculty to reason he supposedly gave them, by making their lives crap.
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But it could also be signs to make us come closer to him. Yes, that's another reason.
Do you think alzheimers makes people closer to God?
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However, we should not complaign to Got for our sufferings, because He never forgets us and he gives us help,
When exactly does God give us help?
Its amazing, if something good happens it gets attributed to God, if something bad happens it gets attributed to man.
Someone falls off a cliff, its mankind being stupid, a doctor saves his life via a 12 hour long operation, that must God...... right.
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Either if it had the power, either if it did not have it, it doesn't want to, and that's what counts
It doesn't want to!? Of course it wants to! How much research into evolutionary biology do you think would get done if the orthodox church could control science, how much neurological research that explains away the soul?
Precisely none.
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No it doesn't! Off course and we accept that all organisms evolved - after they were created ( science does not say that humans were created from a microorganism - probbably with one ceil ).
Science DOES say that all life evolved from a common ancestor, a lot less complex than a modern single celled organism.
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ecause Govetcheez said something about it, could you tell me what do you think that Christianity says, and what science?
Following a literal interpretation of the bible the world is about 6 thousand years old, from scientific investigation the world is about 4.5 billions years old. Slight discrepancy there no?
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When you mean struggle, you mean fight/try hard to be what Christianity says, right?
What you don't seem to grasp is that different people think have different ideas over what Christianity says is right.
My Christian lab parter who helps organise all the Christian union events, and is reasonable serious about his "faith", doesn't struggle with ethics any more than I do.
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Well, then you lose my point here, and to answer and to your question what i mean with "tue" Christian" - i though it was very obvious, these are not true Christians.
Different people have different ideas over what a "true" Christian is, and of course everyone is convinced that their version of the "true" Christian is infact the right one.
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They are typically Christians, just because they were baptized Christians. So, a "tue" Christian, is ,simply, the man who does what Christianity wants them to do.
And how do they decide what Christianity wants them to do? Literal interpretation of the bible? So true Christians advocate punishing children and grandchildren of criminals, like it says in the bible?
Because interpretation of the meaning behaind the bible varies there is no such thing as a "true" Christian.
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I am not going to to tell you now what Christianity tells you to do, go open the Bible and find out.
The question is how to interpret the bible.
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Sorry, i sed wrong word.. eeeerr..
cunning/craft/craftiness/arch/sly/didgy/wiles
I don't know which one fits better.
Can you give me an example?
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That's out of topic.
No its not, if you say Christianity is the thing that stops Christians doing bad things, then you have to account for what is stopping atheists doing them, otherwise you have no way of telling whether something entirely unrelated to Christianity is infact making Christians behave morally.
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The human laws, didn't exist that time.
Human laws have always existed, they merely had a different form.
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However, the laws of Christianity, did exist that time and from the beginning of the life.
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Christian laws presumeably were handed down to mankind via Moses, how do you explain the existance of great civilisations who followed moral codes that had nothing to do with Christianity? Like the ancient Egyptians, or the Romans, or the ancient Greeks?
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Also, what can an atheist say, is that,
since this is all we are gonna live, then let's just start killing all the people i find in my way, steel money, there is no way to worry about it. After all, we are all gonna die. What will i gain if i don't steel the food of the neighbour and be hungy?
But that doesn't happen does it? Atheists are no less ethical than theists, and the reason is because, fundamentally, ethics has nothing to do with religion.
Ethics are social rules that must exist for a society to exist, they have evolved to keep societies together, because societies benefit the individuals involved.
Social animals have social rules, we have the most complex social interaction correspondingly we have the most complex set of social rules.