According to Christian doctrine, it was God's idea in the first place to put a tree in the garden that he knew would have deadly consequences.
It was also God's idea to have a justice system where children pay for the actions of their parents.
His idea to allow his own runaway angel (Satan) to run amok and do as he liked.
His idea to punish man for being imperfect and getting duped by this far more cunning and powerful runaway angel.
His idea to create a hell or (if he didn't) allow Satan to create such a place.
His idea to fix the mess by dying to save his unfortunate human creation from HIS OWN justice system.
Christians say accepting all this is true and that God really did die to save us is a "free gift". However, it seems far more convuluted than my belief which is far simpler and dare I say.....fairer to mankind and flattering to God.
How to reconcile "free gift" with believing the vast majority of humankind are doomed anyway and God KNEW from the start?
2007-09-26 08:53:01 · 11 answers · asked by pixie_pagan 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
How do I come to terms with a God that created a whole system where BILLIONS of people will exist only to be tormented forever in hell?
And belief in a blood sacrifice within a certain time frame nullifies what seems to be God's own mistakes?
This is a purely spiritual and academic question. Please take it in that vein.
2007-09-26 08:55:44 · update #1
You make excellent points. If god is a father figure then his behavior is ... highly suspect. A human father would have his children taken away and would probably be thown in jail for what he did.
Good Question !!!
2007-09-26 08:58:51 · answer #1 · answered by Alan 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
First off, the question is flawed from its first premise. There's no evidence for a god, and free will doesn't actually exist as anything other than an illusory concept used to help society function. Your brain has actually already "decided" things a few seconds before you become consciously aware of it, and the human brain is ultimately nothing more than an organ (an awesome organ, but still an organ). It behaves in probabilistic ways, like everything else in the universe that isn't a subatomic particle. Your mind doesn't make the decisions, you just think it does after the fact. It's already decided what it will do on the basis of past experiences and conditioning. We've conditioned ourselves to behave as though free will does exist for the purpose of concepts like justice and responsibility, though, and it's working fairly well, so I'd call it an illusion worth keeping. At least until a better way of managing the situation comes along. Still, your question IS a hypothetical, so we'll address it on the assumption that there is a god who has given humans free will and go from there. This may or may not require us to throw out the principles of psychology that suggest that choices are predictable on the basis of past stimuli, but we'll set it aside for now, just in case. I would say that the ability to choose incorrectly doesn't mean you SHOULD choose incorrectly, or that choosing incorrectly is necessarily evidence of that free will (after all, it could be that you were fated to choose wrong all along). Free will doesn't constitute a license to be stupid or cruel. That said, being stupid has its own consequences, as does being cruel, so you really don't need a god to punish those actions when the existing system does fine. Being a "flawed being" doesn't mean you'll ALWAYS make the wrong choice, just that you won't always consider your choices very well. It's possible (though extremely unlikely) to skate through life making only good decisions but for completely wrong or unrelated reasons, just as it's possible to go through life constantly making decisions that are bad in hindsight but not because you didn't think it through; rather because you had limited information available with which to make that decision and you missed something critical as a result. In the first example, the person constantly uses flawed thinking, but achieves the right answers anyway. In the second example, the person keeps get the wrong answers the right way instead, just because they got unlucky. This is a fairly meaty question if you grant the premises, but like I said in my first paragraph, there's no reason anyone should grant them.
2016-05-19 02:03:14 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All that you have written has never come from the hands or voice of God, everything that has been written in any scripture or book was written by men, and man has always used God as his scapegoat and tool to blame and put fear in the hearts of men, I have been a catholic for many many years now and I simply know that most of what has been written is simply not true, and IF there really was a God mankind would have surly known the real truth by now, mankind has always been his own creator of his own destiny, and everything and I mean everything you see with your own eyes was created by man, because it is man himself that is God and he just hasn't accepted that fact yet that's all.
2007-09-26 09:21:48 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
In order to understand you need to understand God. --Think of God as one of your parents. Your Father lets say ..you disobeyed your father by listening to someone you thought you could trust. But it was the wrong thing to do. Should you get punished for what you did wrong when you knew and were warned to not do what you did?> We are the product of Adam and Eve's disobedience, they not only did what they were told not to do--they lied abouit it and tried to hide the fact and pass the blame onto each other. So what else could Daddy do? He punished them for Stealing, lieing, and deciet. And it was worse for the one who allowed Satan to use him to do this, The snake, ans well as Satan, So where were they condemned to? Earth and earthly living. No we have a choice to follow the right path and have hope in the one who did die or give up and say I don't care and suffer an eternity of suffering with Satan. personaly I would rather take the hops and not risk an eternal suffering. If I am right I win --if i am wrong I still haven't lost.
2007-09-26 09:05:11 · answer #4 · answered by Moondog2277 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Excellent question. Your points are well thought out.
I don't believe the 'free gift' idea - in order to receive this free gift you have to subjugate yourself to a controller, do as he says no matter what you think, obey a book that makes no sense, etc.etc., and then there's no guarantee that you will get the 'free gift' that the controller killed his only son for in the end!
An atheist
2007-09-26 09:08:20 · answer #5 · answered by Grotty Bodkin is not dead!!! 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Forget what you have been taught.
Just go and read the story of the Prodigal Son. That will simplify everything.
All the rest of it was mixed up by those who came along after Jesus was gone.
2007-09-26 09:01:40 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wow I don't understand it myself, but I do not think I could have been that articulate about it. We all know that the free gift is just to sucker you in anyway and it ends up costing you so much more than you thought to begin with.
2007-09-26 09:00:39 · answer #7 · answered by Penny K 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Apparently Christian doctrine was conceived by the same minds that brought us Amway.
2007-09-26 08:56:02 · answer #8 · answered by Doc Occam 7 · 5⤊ 0⤋
it's easier to control/manipulate if you convince them you can offer rewards for obediance and punishments for disobediance.
It's "the carrot and the stick." Good for training a pet, bad theology.
2007-09-26 08:58:18 · answer #9 · answered by kent_shakespear 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Sounds like entrapment to me.
2007-09-26 08:58:00 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋