Universe as a "Test of Faith"

No, but preventing an earthquake would mean interfering with the rules he set the planet up to operate under. Interfering.

Now, is it possible that she could have written the rules of nature and physics differently? Yes, they could have. But for a reason that I don't have the intellect to know, they set it up with things like the conservation of energy, and plate tectonics, and friction. And those things together mean that earthquakes are going to happen.

My point is that voluntarily setting limits on what you will do isn't the same thing as being unable to do those things.

You know, whenever people talk about Job, all they talk about is Job. What about his wife and kids who died? They didn't come back to life after Job passed his test. Did they not suffer? What justice is there for them who died as a means to an end? Are they not themselves moral agents rather than merely extras in a story?

True. Surely Yahweh picking off mortals like that must violate their free will, even if it's just *poof!* and they're gone.

edited 27th Feb '12 9:50:47 PM by Balmung

Exactly. As if the new children were really replacements for those who died needlessly.

To me a god that is worthy of worship is one that plays by their own rules, even if they have the power not to. If they expect people to love unconditionally, they should. And that means also not implanting their creations with a self destruct button.

Going back to my example of the woman and child being destroyed, some are attesting free will comes into play. Okay, so who gets to have their free will acknowledged? Obviously the free will of the woman and child would be to live and not be tortured. But instead of answering her cries when she calls out for help, god instead respects the free will of the murderer instead. That is not all good.

Why can't we leave the destructive forces in the world to just acts of nature? Okay, you want to test people, fine. An earthquake or a tornado isn't evil. It lacks consciousness and cannot pick victims. These are still experiences that can push humans to greater levels of courage and inspiration. We don't need children being forced to inject heroin before shooting their village as child soldiers. We don't need serial killers. We don't need cannibals. We don't need such evil in our world in order to rise to occasions.

Either god allows it, and by default created it because all things flow from god. Even in Job the devil had to ask permission; god picked out Job. Or god is too weak to prevent such things and weeps with his creation.

Free will is the ability to choose. Randomly dying is a thing that always happens.

But it's not dropping dead randomly. It's Yahweh committing murder. They have no say in the matter, it's just divine will saying "you're dead". That's ending any chance to demonstrate free will by way if intervention, rather than just normal death.

The problem with that is no death is random. Free will does not give you the ability to NOT choose death. Freewill allows you to ignore temptation and choose your path in life.

The deaths were random in the sense that they were killed independently of their actions. God was not watching them and decide "they die for this". God just went "they die", and so they did.

Would you say god kills through just natural causes and freak accidents or could he use other people to do his dirty work, like Pharoah, Judas, Joshua, etc. How is that playing fair to the free will clause?

He can't use those people, as they also have free will.

But even if he did use them directly, then the people he killed would still have freewill. Freewill is only violated when he directly takes away choice.

For the record, I'm also pretty sure it's murder, since, on a bet, he willfully ended the lives of Job's family. He deliberately and specifically killed them.

And how is it not infinging upon their will? He's imposing his will onto them, directly interfering with mortals. He says they die and they are no more. When mortals do it, it's not an issue of this scale because it's mortals acting against mortals, but Yahweh supposedly doesn't interfere in such ways. It's as much infringing upon free will as making any and all attempts and a murder and in failure if nothing else. If Yahyah's doing that, what's to say that he didn't also manipulate Job to never waver in his faith and then just not tell us?

EDIT: Fun fact: choice ends when you die. It's not the denial of a specific choice, but rather the denial of all potential future choices that would otherwise happen were it not for divine intervention. When the divine starts mucking around in the affairs of mortals, the free will issue becomes pretty muddy at best.

edited 27th Feb '12 10:35:16 PM by Balmung

Your confusing interfering with freewill and plain interfering. He interferes at his leisure. He doesn't interfer with free will. Difference.

Killing people doesn't stop freewill. Just because you don't want to die does not mean he can't kill you.

Edit: Choice always ends when you die. His interference only matters if he is specifically killing you for the choices you made then it's interference. If he kills you for unrelated reasons then it's no different then letting you die when you would have died.

edited 27th Feb '12 10:45:30 PM by TheDeadMansLife

Wrong. God "Hardened the heart of Pharoah"(or however it reads in enghlish Bible), Judas was destined to betray Jesus(Is it betraying if it was desided before hand), since Jesus knew one of them would betray him. Now, if God(and Jesus) knew that there would be betrayal, it would mean they would also know who did it. Thus, whoever would do it would have no choice, since his part is already decided.

Can't speak for Joshua, since name is not familiar to me. We used slightly different names (Jesus = Jeesus, Moses = Mooses, Mark = Markus, Paul = Paavali etc.)

edited 28th Feb '12 1:59:43 AM by Mandemo

And why won't he go "nobody will attempt to make child soliders of those people"? That's not interfering with free will if killing Jobs family wasn't.

Joshua was the general of the Israelite army. His nickname in the Talmud (which isn't considered inspired by god just to make that distinction.) was the "Hand of God" because he killed by God's orders.

Just like how god ordered all the original inhabitants of Canaan destroyed to the last man, woman, child, and animal so that it would be clean enough for the Hebrews to occupy.

That's using people to murder. Why not just ask the Canaanites to leave? Or inspire a drought where they move on and then the land is magically fertile again so the Hebrews can have it?

Elohim is pretty blood thirsty. And I wish that could change with the Gospel, but it only gets a little more crazy there.

So instead of just randomly smiting people again, god decides that even though he is preaching to love unconditionally and always turn the other cheek through Jesus (or as Jesus, depending how tight one views the Trinity) god decided the only way he's going to overlook the fundamental flaw he programmed in his creation from the very beginning was a blood sacrifice.

So god either kills his son or commits suicide (again, depending on the Trinity) so that his creation can have the option of not being tormented forever and ever for just being as they were programmed.

I don't see how an average lifespan of say 50 years merits an infinity of pain and misery. That's not mercy. That's not turning the other cheek. That's not playing by your own example.

It's an interesting bit of doublethink I've noticed in a lot of believers that they'll assert that God answers prayers, but if you propose a test for any way that you might distinguish God answering prayers from God not answering them, they'll find a way to excuse their hypothesis in advance from offering results.

God answering prayers doesn't necessarily mean wish granted. God isn't a genie.

I find our fixation with assigning God infinite and unbounded traits rather puzzling. The Muslims got it right by declaring Allah "most merciful" rather than "infinitely benevolent"—it doesn't suppress all criticisms but cuts down quite a number. To have God as merely a being with exceptional power/knowledge/and so forth doesn't render a given religion's legendarium

That way, when a planeful of children crashed into a poor orphanage and caused an enormous ball of fire, leaving only two survivors that are maimed for life, we can rightly thank God for the incompleteness of this destruction. I dare say this is the God our ancestors envisioned: He noticed an impending disaster, gathers his strength, and tries his best to avert the tragedy. He didn't quite succeed and hated himself for it, but he can compensate by granting the dead a second life and soothing the hearts of their families. We say "thank you" and it's only proper.

I think you touched it perfectly.

I am stuck here in the Bible-belt where people get hostile and emotional if you ask them to consider a god that is not all powerful, all knowing, and all good.

If anything, having a limited god, especially a god that limits himself honestly, makes them even more worthy of worship instead of making them lacking.

I much rather a god that does not have the power or the perception to halt evil than one who could and chooses not to. That would only magnify their benelovance.

Some people prefer to have a big brother with all control to try and help them feel their is some direction and purpose in their life, a security net under the tightrope of life if you will.

It also seems to help them expect anything bad in their life is an act of Satan , thereby absolving any blame from themselves for bad situations.

I don't see "He allowed so-and-so to die needlessly" as proof against the existence (or benevolence) of God. God's perspective is / would be certainly unlike our own; if the human soul is immortal, then he isn't truly ending life so much as "transferring" it elsewhere. Yes, it hurts those who stayed behind, but from God's point of view their pain can only be temporary.

And, I do like to think of myself as a scientific-minded person, for the record. I honestly don't see the idea of God as antiscientific so much as nebulous and vaguely-defined. And I never quite understood why our inability to measure something automatically means that the something isn't there. You could say I believe in human limits.

And, because I don't want to be associated with the wrong crowd, I'm not a Creationist / anti-evolutionist.

Science never argues God isnt there. it argues that since he's unmeasurable, he cant be proven, therefore shoehorning God into science is silly and makes about as much sense as bringing the laws of geology into a talk about Noah's Ark.

But if God takes an active part, wouldn't natural laws be what God set up?

But what does it mean? How do you tell an answered prayer from an unanswered one?

NVM, it was a stupid answer and I don't want to get involved in this thread.

edited 29th Feb '12 1:09:39 PM by CDRW

Dunno. Is it God answering prayer if I pray that Swedish class canceled and then it is? Or is it just coincidence that teacher got sick on that day?

Also, I think Voltaire put it best in his song Dead:

and

edited 29th Feb '12 12:21:12 PM by Mandemo