Posted on 12/12/2007 9:47:32 AM PST by coffee260
The truly stunning part of this thread comes from the comments condemning the “professor”. They should have also had the professor wear a “God is dead” t-shirt, eat a newborn, and then goose-step from the room.
If the above seems offensive, kindly ignore them. I'm only interested in genuine answers to the questions above.
Two questions:
1) Why do you assume that complete perfection of the Creator must necessarily produce complete perfection on the part of creation, or that the voluntary choice to impart free will to creations necessarily entails a lack of perfection on the part of the Creator?
2) Why do you get to define what are "genuine answers to the questions above"?
“No one is allowed to speak logically to a darwinist/atheist and get a way with it.”
As demonstrated by countless posts on this website.
“Does the Bible really say that God is all-powerful?”
Yes
I think the application of the term ‘perfect’ in the purest sense, implies all that. A perfect act cannot be wrong. The repercussions of that perfect act, cannot either.
Has to mean all powerful within his own dominions. Clearly he has limited powers in our physical realm or there wouldn't be chiggers, mosquitos, biting flies, ticks, and disease vectors.
I don’t know one way or the other. I do see your point and agree with you.
it’s not enough to read. I’m sure most tenured liberal professors are much more well-read than I am, or most freepers (who are probably too busy raising kids and making a living in the real world). These professors may even have very high IQ’s. They just don’t know how to ask the right questions.
“Yeah, I think that’s what bothered me most as I read through it.”
It was certainly an argument framed by someone with a Christian paradigm and created such that only the Christian side could win. However, it was written by someone with experience in dealing with those with an atheistic paradigm. I think it sums up their arguments pretty well and exposes them and illogical.
Maybe you just don’t understand the word perfect.
That’s why you’re not god.
If you were, you’d make some robot to worship you no matter what and pat yourself on the back and say, Yay! Perfect!
But creating a being with true free will, including and especially the freedom to go against you, now there, my friend, is a perfection of creation that seems to surpasseth your limited and oh-so-imperfect understanding.
Convoluted logic and meanness on the part of people who believe in science does not excuse Christians from being kind in return nor does it it relieve us of the obligation to honestly learn about the the world - this learning is science and God wants us to learn about it.
Of course we are learning things now that Abraham and the authors of the New Testament could not yet know. They didn’t have the math to begin to understand the age of the earth just like Darwin did not have the biology and chemistry to understand genetics.
Thus both had incomplete understanding of the mechanism by which life advanced over the last 2 billion years.
That doesn’t mean we should do less than our best to understand how life evolved and how wee can improve life now with science.
Our decedents, God willing, will learn things about nature beyond our knowledge too and one day children may routinely know things that I would not understand even if were laid out for me.
It has to. If God created everything, and if God is perfect, then everything and its consequences must be perfect. If God created the plant, and the plant bore fruit, is not the fruit a creation of God, albeit indirectly? Does God lose the title of 'Creator' for such cases?
Why do you get to define what are "genuine answers to the questions above"?
Remind me where I have defined what a genuine answer is, and what is not. Those questions have somewhat specific answers. Jumbles of meaningless words thrown at it won't constitute an answer, for example.
“No one is allowed to speak logically to a darwinist/atheist and get a way with it.”
As demonstrated by countless posts on this website.
Dan Evans asked: “So I guess what you are saying is that even though He is omnipotent He chose to give us the ability to commit evil. Why do you suppose he did that?”
God has His own purposes that may or may not be comprehended by man. However, Jesus explained quite a bit using parables. Remember the one with the crop that was infested by weeds? Jesus explained the farmer intentionally planned to wait for the harvest where the grain would be separated from the weeds.
Based on my own studies, I believe God desires a certain type of person, and exposure to evil/free will is required. Like a blacksmith hardens steel, our exposure to this life, with all of its difficulties, tempers our souls. This is the explanation that makes most sense to me.
Concerning faith and reason, my reason tells me something created the universe, so I search for evidence of the creator. By faith, I trust Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God and spoke about the Creator. I study the Bible, a historical record, and I find Christ’s statements to be quite reasonable. I cannot prove Christ’s veracity, but I have faith he was truthful.
Really, it comes down to something as simple as that for me.
“If He is omnipotent, how can we have free will?”
I’m not sure if free will is a good way to describe it. I don’t think it’s in the Bible either. But what is in the Bible is God let’s us choose weather we believe Him or not. God allows sin to go on because He loves us and wants us to chose Him. Check this out.
Mat 13:24-29 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
I think the Bible says that all His works are perfect.
Thank you.
;)
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