God is not omnipotent, here's the proof....?

If god created us in his image, then he allows us to go to hell when we die, is he not saying that he is not wanting his image with him, i.e he has made a mistake and is casting the mistake away for eternity?

Let's assume that god, hell and all that may not exist exists in this example please..... thanks!

I've often wondered:

If Satan is anti-God, and wishes nothing more than to vex, flummox, and otherwise irritate God, wouldn't he then make Hell a paradise for all those who had the temerity to disobey God? Why would Satan do what is ostensibly God's work of punishing sinners?

Once you enter eternity, and realize you will never see God, or experience his love, you will burn. Satan is not doing God's will, he just wants others to miss out on what he will never have.

Being an atheist that has never believed in God it doesn't quite seem to carry the threat the believer seems to want to imply. Are you suggesting that the relatively pleasant existance I am experiencing right now is Hell? I don't know God. I don't experience his/her love. And yet I am not suffering. Oh sure the occaisional headache but no soul shattering heartbreak. Maybe I am missing a point here.

I don’t know what to expect either. There are indeed many pleasures here. Is this hell? Compared to what you might have, if God exists and His love is infinite and eternal, even the best life here could be hell. We don’t have a point of reference. Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The rich enjoy many pleasures. However, compared to eternity, a hundred or so years on earth is a very short time.

I’m sure you have heard of Pascal’s Wager.

EITHER God exists or he doesn't. Which alternative will you wager on?
You can't avoid choosing one or the other; you have embarked on the wager already. A refusal to choose carries the same result as choosing that God does not exist.

What if you choose to bet that God exists?
If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing.

The risk of not believing in God, if he does exist, far outweighs the risk of believing in God if he does not exist. The gamble is between eternal damnation on one hand and philosophical misjudgment on the other. If we believe in God and are wrong we've lost little, but if we don't believe and are wrong we've lost everything. Pascal believed that reasonable men should bet on God's existence.

Its interesting that someone like him would make such a basic math error. He split the equation down to believing in god and not believing in god. But thats not really the true equation is it? There are so many gods to choose from. Even within the Abrahamic sects there is a plurality. Throw in the pagan gods and various other little sects roming around and you have a true gordian knot on your hands. And some of those gods are mighty jealous. Believe in the wrong one and you get a special bad place assigned just for you.

Turns out when you include the multiplicity of gods picking one over the other turns out to be the bad choice. Honestly expressing what you believe is probably the best course. Unless of course the only true god is Cthulhu in which case we are all boned anyway. :evilgrin:

If there are multiple gods, the wager doesn't matter. They wouldn't have a claim to your imortal soul. It only matters if there is the one.

Which one? There are a multitude of possible gods. Its not a 50%/50% bet. As soon as its not a binary bet the odds sink into the minority that you are betting on the right god. Consider the odds with only two gods on the table.

..| No God ||| God A ||| God B |
NG| No cost||| Mislead||| Mislead|
AG| Damned ||| Saved ||| Damned |
BG| Damned ||| Damned ||| Saved |

In this case the odds drop below 50% if you choose to believe in a god that you have chosen the best possible outcome. Don't believe in god and there is no god then you have the ability to live life to its fullest without the midleading rules of a religion. Believe in the wrong god and you have lived a life by the wrong rules and you get damned as well. Pick the right god and live by the right rules and you win the big prize. But thats the trick. The more gods running around out there the less likely it is you pick the right one.

I understand your examples, your math is correct, but it does not matter. We don't have the multiple, hypothetical gods you reference, who have proclaimed that unless we follow a certain set of rules we are dammed. There is only one God that we need to be concerned about, and the wager holds.

You need to talk to a few people. There are numerous active beliefs all with differing gods and claims.

Seriously you need to take a look at whats going on in the world. There are entire nations that make claims of gods beyond the god of Abraham that Pascal was considering.

Pascal’s wager has many holes. My point is that the only real Hell to fear is that of traditional Christianity.

The exact number of levels of hell in Chinese and Japanese religions differs according to the Buddhist or Taoist perception. However, most legends agree that once a soul has atoned for their deeds and repented, he or she is sent back into the world to be reborn.
Buddhism acknowledges several hells for those who commit evil actions. However, existence in hell is temporary for its inhabitants. In Hinduism, there are many hells. Not equivalent to Hell in Christian ideology but is only a purgatory where the soul gets purified of sin by sufferings.

Hell is so frightening that many sects ends up denying its reality. Unitarians, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, practitioners of Religious Science, New Agers, and Mormons all have rejected hell or have modified the doctrine so radically that it is no longer a serious threat. Adventists say the damned will be annihilated body and soul by the fires of hell. After all, including Satan are destroyed, hell will cease to exist.

And in that spirit I will continue this conversation.

Why should I allow you to posit that only the Christian notion of Hell has any claim? Yes you mentioned certain eastern practices but you missed several and gave the few short consideration.

And who says that the surviving religions are the right ones. There have been claims of gods since before we began recording such things. They have to be included in the consideration as well. The spread of religious ideas is not made effective by the truth of their notions. It is the efficacy of the means of spreading the doctrine that determines the survival of the dogma. This has nothing to do with whether they are true or not. Thus the truth may have died centuries ago.

As the number of claims for gods increases the statistical odds of picking the right one drops. Even consider the trio of gods suggested by the off shoots of the Abrahamic sects puts your odds below breaking even. There are thousands of gods proposed out there. And that assumes the true god has been proclaimed by anyone at some time.

From Pascals wager the only real thing we can determine is that someone somewhere is wrong. We just don't know who it is.

"Why should I allow you to posit that only the Christian notion of Hell has any claim?"

I discount the other “hells” for practical reasons. If I can get out of a hell after a few eons, to spend the rest of eternity in bliss, what’s the downside? It would be like the time I broke my leg as a child - a bad couple of months, but no lasting effects. The only god I need to be concerned about is one that has an influence over my immortal soul (if such a thing exists) and can send that soul to an eternal hell, with no exit. The God that created that hell needs to be eternal, all-powerful, and creator. Absent these characteristics, I don’t need to enter gods that do not meet these characteristics into my calculus. The God of Abraham is the only one I know of that meets these conditions. Are there others?

It’s like playing chess. I don’t need to prepare for all possible openings. Pa3, etc, will lose after proper development and the gain in tempo. I also need to rate potential threats during the game in terms of risk - otherwise I would run out of time and be frozen into analysis paralysis. Just as I can eliminate many moves from analysis, I can eliminate the other gods as well.

The real flaw in Pascal’s math is the assumption that there is a 50-50 chance that the God of Abraham exists.

“The spread of religious ideas is not made effective by the truth of their notions.”
I must disagree here. The Greek and Roman gods are studied for literary reasons. There are many Kool Aid drinkers out there, but these cults usually die out. Would an all powerful creator allow the truth to die out?

Many others. Not sure where you get the notion that the Abrahamic sects are the only ones with this notion. Shinto, Roman Paganism, Various sects of Native American beliefs, and a host of others include the concept of eternity.

The trouble with an all powerful creator having a religion is that it is in the hands of us humans. It lives and dies based on our penchant to distribute it. And this need not be based on the truth. There are many that suggest that Christianity was hijacked by Peter in the early days. The real religion dying out as a result. There is no direct link between the diety and the current disposition of any religion. If such a link existed we wouldn't be having this conversation. The evidence of an existing god would already be in hand. But we have no direct evidence of god therefore we have no evidence of any religion truthfully representing his word.

As to whether an all powerful creator would let the truth die out I wouldn't expect an all powerful diety to have to scrap the first model of his creation and start all over again. Talk about galatic oops.

Even if no other religion had the punishment of the Christian doctrine the multiplicity of potential gods diminishes the statistical benefit of hedging you bet in its favor. In fact it quickly becomes in one's interest to not only reject that particular teaching but perhaps looking for a way to thwart any entity that would be so viscious as to create such a punishment. Cthulhu suddenly starts to look benevalent next to such a future.

Shinto gods are nothing to fear. They don’t have hell.

According to Shinto belief, every person after death becomes a kami, a supernatural being who continues to have a part in the life of the community, nation, and family, existing in another state or dimension. Good individuals become good and beneficial kamis; the bad become pernicious ones. Being elevated to the status of a divine being is not a privilege peculiar to those with saintly qualities, for evil men also become kamis.

Shinto deities do not share the characteristics of utter transcendence and omnipotence often associated with the concept of god in the West. In the broadest sense, a kami may be anything that is extraordinary and that inspires awe or reverence. Consequently, a wide variety of kami exist in Shinto: there are kami related to natural objects and creatures -- the spirits of mountains, seas, rivers, rocks, trees, animals, and the like; there are guardian kami of particular locales and clans; also considered kami are exceptional human beings, including all but the last in Japan's long line of emperors.

The fate of those that die in the shinto faith in a negative state is not one to be sought. It results in an eternity of the suffering or negative thoughts that enbody the individual in their final moments. This is certainly comparable to the Abrahamic notions of hell.

Even so, the issue of multiplicity still derails the argument. If the wager is to return any profitable information it is dependent on high odds favoring one position over another. The multiplicity simply reduces the numbers to such a paltry level that no choice can be made.

And all this exercise is further emaciated by the simple fact that most people cannot simply change their beliefs based on a wager. Only someone that finds themself in a deep quandry with an absolute balance of opinions could possibly be swayed but such an irrational approach to determine the truth of the nature of the universe.

A reasoned approach does not advocate sitting around postulating what nature of the universe would be optimal for one's hopes and dreams. Instead you examine the nature of the universe and draw conclusions from these observations observations. Using various means of testing these observations you will over time be able to peace together an increasingly accurate view of the nature of the universe. We don't just pick the outcome we most like out of a hat.

“We don't just pick the outcome we most like out of a hat.”

But you’ve done just that! An atheist believes, with absolute certainty, that he knows enough about the nature of the universe, time, and space to know God does not exist. We do not know enough about the nature of the canopy of the Amazon rainforest to know how many species of animals exist there.

That’s the real gamble. Good luck.

I'm glad you think you know what atheists believe, but you're 100% wrong. Sorry.

Another atheist claiming 100% certainty of something that he cannot possibly know. This is too funny.

Having been an atheist once – of the Sartre/Camus existential variety – I know a little about the subject. There are many types and reasons for atheism:

Ethical Atheism or Existential Atheism (Sartre, Camus): Because life is absurd, there is no god. The idea of god is inconsistent with the idea of freedom.

Psychological Atheism (Feuerbach): Ideas of god are simply of psychological origin.

Sociological Atheism (Engels, Bakunin): Ideas of god are false because they have caused social repression.

Pragmatic Atheism: Ideas of god are not useful, therefore they must be false.

Metaphysical Atheism (d'Holbach, Marx): Since only matter exists, god - being immaterial - cannot exist.

Epistemological Atheism: Knowledge of god is impossible. There are several subcategories:
Skeptical Atheism: (based on Hume, although Hume was not atheist)
Since one cannot be certain of knowing anything, one cannot know of the existence of God.
Logical-Positive Atheism (Ayer): Any statement about a transcendent being is fundamentally meaningless.
Linguistic-Analysis Atheism: Since the term "god" cannot be defined, it cannot have meaning.
Objectivist Atheism (Ayn Rand): Proof of anything about god has never been satisfactorily given.

However they get there, they disbelieve or deny the existence of God or gods, which is what I said.

Do you need to have complete and thorough knowledge of everything in the universe to be justified in NOT believing in leprechauns?

By the way, you should credit George Smith for the text you ripped off from him.

The note referencing George Smith’s, "Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies" was in a different part of the paper. Thanks for the catch.

I guess it’s the difference between belief and certainty. I believe in God. I am not certain of His existence.

Let us be specific. I do not have a belief in god or gods. This is because I see no cause to believe in any particular god or gods. I do not have a standing denial of all god or gods. I simply do not believe in any.

Of the gods I have been informed of I have found refutations for many of them or simply not found enough evidence to accept them. Of the gods I was able to refute it is appropriate to say that I have denied their existance. But there is an infinite number of potential gods still waiting to be proposed and I have no denial of these gods. Merely a lack of belief in them.

That's an excellent definition of atheism, Az. Can I use that?

We can't own ideas.

teach them either!
(unfortunately)

the distinction you made. I believe I wrote "dis-believe or deny", not knowing your position.

I know the problems with Pascal's wager when you work the math, but the basic premise holds - Are you that certain?

We could prove Leprechans do not exist with enough effort, since they are physical. God - spirit - cannot be "proven" to exist or not exist.

I enjoyed our discourse.

I enjoyed it too, my hats of to such an exchange of ideas. This kind of debate with a mature withdrawal, makes me love the DU. I'm glad to be part of the Family.

Thanks for the perspective

We can make a difference together; the right doesn’t have a chance

God created man in His image. He doesn't want us to go to Hell. God made Hell for the devil and his angels. The thing is, God gave man free will, and He allows us to go to Hell, if we reject Him (and His Son).

To create an imperfect being.

And if God gave man free will, and he is omniscient (all knowing), and he knows people are going to hell for an eternity of torture, he's a demon and unworthy of worship.

I quit believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and God a long time ago.

Adam's sin produced man's fallen state. The original design was perfect, but man abused his freedom (through disobedience), and now man is imperfect, although still containing a form of the perfect image of God. God's plan of salvation restores mankind to its original place.

God knew is was possible for man to sin, but Man still had free will.

Perfect? If man was perfect how on earth could he have gotten things so wrong. Wouldn't you say a god that creates a human with both freewill and the wisdom not to sin is a superior god to one that can't?

What was the fruit that Adam and Eve ate of? Answer this question to see the real problem ineherant in the biblical story and the notion of original sin.

However, he was free to fall. As for your second question, the fruit of the tree I've always thought was an apple. Of course, the fruit wasn't what it was about. Adam and Eve didn't do it to for the fruit. It was about the deception of Satan, and man's disobedience.

I realize that there is a clear element of faith required here in order to believe, but that's the point.

The first questions asks which would be superior. A world with freewill and the wisdom to follow the right path or a world with freewill and without the wisdom to follow the right path?

The second question is the more important one though. Its not a question about what particular fruit it was (ie apple or orange). It is what the fruit provided to those that ate of it. It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God said that any that ate of it would be as he was and have knowledge of good and evil.

This creates a logic problem. Prior to eating the apple Adam and Eve are devoid of the ability to perceive right or wrong. They are without the knowledge of good and evil. They only know obedience to the last thing they heard. God tells them not to eat the fruit they listen and obey. The serpant tells them to eat the apple and they listen and obey. They cannot percieve which of these instructions are right or wrong. They can only comply.

It's about trust. The knowledge of good and evil is certainly something God wanted man to have, but eating of the forbidden tree was the wrong way (contrary to God's way). Beforing the fall, Adam trusted God for all things, and eating of the tree broke that trust.

WE have to assume that God gave man the rational power to discern between the two choices. Adam and Eve knew what they'd done, but they didn't know the consequences.

I still see the hole there. The thing of this is that it strikes directly to the very issue we face today in the left vs religious right issue. Namely moral relativism vs moral absolutism.

Here's the thing. In the world described by the bible there is no interpretation of right and wrong. Good and Evil are defined by God. Doing what God says is good is Good. Doing what God says is evil is Evil.

Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil imparted the knowledge of Good and Evil unto Adam and Eve and all of their descendants. That is they now could fathom right and wrong where before they had no knowledge of this. Thus we see the paradox inherant in the initiation of original sin come forward again.

If the world is one of moral relativism then surely rational thought could have figured out listening to God was the way to go rather than the serpant. But in a universe where we cannot fathom right or wrong on our own and only God can make the call such a feet would be beyond them.

but start with Gen 2:16 & 17

"16; And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17; "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die"

God CLEARLY did not want Adam to have the knowledge of good and evil.

Now....please...read Genesis chapter 3 throughout with PARTICULAR emphasis on verse 22;

"The the Lord God said "Behold, the man HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US, TO KNOW GOOD AND EVIL. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever"-

The next 2 verses tell of God sending Adam and Eve out of the garden and installing a flaming sword to guard the tree.

(Above quotes directly from the King James version`Bible in my hotel room. A Gideon Bible.) The end of verse 22, BTW is obviously an incomplete thought and sentence. It is posed as a definitive statement but no conclusion is given. "And now lest he"......lest he what? Realize he is indeed a god and push Jehovah aside?

It seems to me the ONLY way a rational person who has actually read the text could interpret the above is thus: God creates man who has no knowledge of good and evil and has immortality. Adam could have lived forever. Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge MADE ADAM AS ONE WITH THE GODS, intentionally plural, and at the same time made him mortal, A NATURAL CONTRADICTION!!!! How can man be "Like one of us" and then have death thrust upon him?

Answer?

God is a dick. He makes man, sets up a test he KNOWS man will fail and man has NO WAY OF KNOWING the consequence, allows him to take the test and fail ANYWAY and even though man is now basically a god in gods (and his apparent pals) eyes, he makes it so man cant live forever. (And, presumably, become a threat to god)

The theological concept of "The fall from grace" is such hokum it doesn't deserve serious consideration from any rational being with an ounce of sense that has spent ANY time pondering the obvious paradox that it is.

It is, of course, a cornerstone of the Christian faith, however. If the story is false, flawed or simply untrue, then there was no fall and therefore no need for redemption and therefore no need for a redeemer and therefore...........well, you get the picture.

Your statement'
"The knowledge of good and evil is certainly something God wanted man to have, but eating of the forbidden tree was the wrong way (contrary to God's way). Beforing(sic) the fall, Adam trusted God for all things, and eating of the tree broke that trust."

Is not borne out by the text.

To my knowledge and study, NOWHERE in the bible is it indicated that "The knowledge of good and evil is certainly something God wanted man to have," In fact, it is painfully clear throughout that bible that ignorance is indeed something god really kind of likes in his humans.

In order to understand the theodicy of the Fall, you have to read further in Scripture. God wants man to have the knowledge of good evil ("My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge"), but it was the way Adam got it was the problem. Knowledge, without God's discipline leads to ruin. When God said the man has become like "us," He meant that Man know has the knowledge of good and evil. The problem is, man is fallen, and because of disobedience, spiritually dead. You have to read further in order to grasp this. Read Romans 1 through 5.

You mean, by eating the fruit of a tree that God put right there in the garden, easily accessible to anyone? I guess if God didn't want it to happen that way, he couldn't have been much dumber. Say I have a Twinkie and I tell my kids, DON'T EAT THIS TWINKIE, then set it on the kitchen table and wander off. What do you think the odds are that they'll eat it? Especially if I bring a neighbor kid over who goes on to tell them, "Go ahead and eat it, it's OK!"

It doesn't matter how much "further" you read in the bible, the very concept of original sin is deeply logically flawed. The only way it can be overcome is to give up a strict literal reading of Genesis.

The original design was perfect, but man abused his freedom (through disobedience),

Well we should not be free, and allow the right to make out Democracy into their theocracy. Since we are too sinful to be free. We'll just let the church dictate what and how we should live.

Sounds like a Republican rightwing point of view.

Sorry for that, please don't take that to personnel. Maybe I misunderstood your point.

If we are god's children, and we have a 'moment of weakness' and deny god, why, if he loves us like he says he does, would he not 'turn the other cheek' instead of bashishing us for eternity? Does he not know that we are human and make mistakes?

forgiveness, and recognize we're sinners. If we really trust in Him, we go to Heaven. It's not about meeting some standard of good, or not messing up. You can't fet to Heaven by your works alone. It is Christ that makes us worthy, and even if we mess up, God can still forgive us.

Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do good. We ought to do good works, because of our faith.

No, it's not a sham.

and only Christ makes us worthy, than all non-christians go to hell, regardless of how they lived their lives?

I'm sorry, if there's a God out there who won't let me into "His Kingdom" - regardless of how I live my life - simply because I don't believe in him, then I'm not sure that's a god I want to worship anyway.

So, in other words, if in our three score and ten we reject the "right" god (or even follow the right god in the wrong way), we then burn for eternity? Sounds kind of extreme for a loving god, yes?

don't take the bait. BTW, I agree with you on the free will answer.

How can you be God and not contain the "bad" side too. You'd be less than absolute.

The truth is, Man created God in his image. And God has all the crap inside that humans do.

What is important is that people believe that we have the same shape as god (arrogance), that hell exists (good control mechanism for feudal societies), and god gives direct revelation of things (seems more like fragments we have to figure out).

IF we have god's shape, then god has to be material in some way. If hell exists, why have god's enemy act as a jailer? If god has direct revelation of things to people, where is the cure to AIDS and fundamentalism?

IMHO, being created in God's image means that he created us with freewill, and the ability to choose. This is both a blessing and curse: because inherent in that is the risk that we can choose incorrectly.

I'm a christian, but here is my somewhat unorthodox theory:

In the beginning, God was perfect, and singular. He created the universe, If only he ever existed, he could only experience it singularly yet alone. So, instead, he created beings who could also experience the universe. To make each individual experience, different, he split up portions of himself and those became our souls. We are small pieces of God.
But we are all individuals, so we all experience creation through our own unique filters. At the end, God will gather up all our souls, INCLUDING those who made bad choices, and incorporate us back into his consciousness in a way that our unique perpsectives add to that which was perfect, yet less complete because of its lack of diversity.
God did not make us all the same, did he? no, we are all different, even indentical twins are not truly identical. IMHO, our differences or our diversity is the whole point.
So, IMHO, those pieces of God will not be destroyed in the way some think. I think something of their essence will be retained, EXCEPT for their bad choices and the consequences of those.
It is kinda hard to explain this well, but I think our experiences individually enrich God, and since we are pieces of him, this explains his great love for us.

oh well, its just a thought.

Its the idea of the Divine Spark and eventual Reunion. A very humane interpretation of christianity. I think Elaine Pagels suggested that the Gospel of Thomas should be read this way, but I can't recall which of her books it was in.

its nice to know someone else wrote a book on similar concept.
Its a concept I've come up with after a long time puzzling over certain aspects of existence and involvement of God in our universe. To me, its the only thing that ties all the knots together logically, and it explains why God wanted "fellowship" with us, And why there are analogies like parts of the body, each with their own purpose, fitting together to describe the church.

I think God, like any parent, wants his children to do well, but he also wants them to be self-reliant and make the right choices on their own, so they can be mature adults someday.

I've often found that the concept of "hell" is sketchy at best in the bible, and in those few cases its really referred to, it impresses me more as allegory or analogy. It may very well be that God "destroys" souls he created...but deep down I don't see that as making as much sense as the idea of reincorporating all souls, cleansed of sin but enriched by experience, back into the God being.

Your thoughts are very close to Gnostic Christianity, except that Mystical union with God is not a matter of (only) what happens after physical death.

It is interesting that you would believe god would cause suffering and death to pieces of himself.
That is an idea that really stretches the imagination.

all versions of all the deities are as imaginary as elves, dragons, unicorns, leprechauns, fairies, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Humans certainly have great imaginations. The important thing is not to take imaginary beings as real.
Any time you, or anyone who believes in a deity, thinks you're having a conversation with a "real" deity, ask the deity my secret. Until you get the answer, keep your mind open.
Until we can get the reality of any deities settled for sure one way or another, what can we do to make this a better world for everyone on it?

Lerkfish was explaining his beliefs and asked you to do the same.
Telling him "all versions of all the deities are as imaginary as elves, dragons, unicorns, leprechauns, fairies, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny" and telling him "not to take imaginary beings as real"
is NOT a belief.
I believe his mind IS open, yours, however, appears to be shut.
IMHO of course.

I think he did sort of say what his beliefs were.
I didn't take any offense. If you look past the WAY he said it, the content is fine: he doesn't believe there is a deity. Further, he also think abandoning all thoughts of a deity would actually move the species forward.
Although I disagree on that point, I understand it and appreciate it for what it is.
I think he's sort of right that fanatacism is a backwards move for the species. That speaks more to the behaviour of the adherents than it does for the validity of their belief system.



but I appreciate your support. beam me up scottie. :hug:

I am normally not a confrontational person (hard to believe, eh?) so if I see disrespect I do tend to get my panties in a bunch.
And you're right, I probably was too quick on the trigger. My bad.
At least these skirmishes over religion have taught some of us to be more aware of how our words affect others.
(and to not enter discussions in a "pre-offended" state, of course.)

he DID assume my mind was closed, but I've made that same error in the past with others.

soooo.....

Being omnipotent and good could God not have made a universe where freewill was intact and everyone managed to make the right descisions?

Knowing everything and being the first cause he set everything in motion. Knowing the outcome he obviously had to choose which initial conditions he set in motion and he knew what the outcome of any starting point would be. He chose who would be damned and who would be saved. Even with freewill intact.

He knew.

A very important difference.

and is simply seperation from Unity, which is All There Is. People can, and sometimes do, even in this lifetime, create and live in their own hells. Doesn't make them any more real than shadows, which merely indicate the presence of Light.

Free will necessitates evil.

Committing evil, in the situation you present, would be a human mistake, not a divine one.

You said:
Free will necessitates evil.

You now have a conundrum on your hands, if you also believe the following:

1) Heaven exists.
2) We have free will in heaven.
3) Evil does not exist in heaven.

If your original statement is true, then heaven cannot logically exist as described above. So either your statement is false, or one of the three listed above is. I would be interested in knowing what you think.

You are right that to continue giving beings in heaven the same degree of free will humans have on earth would result in at least some degree of evil.

that resembles conventional thought concerning it, then yes.

Lets see here.... eternity.... plus freewill.... increasing population.... evil a possibility.... good grief.....

Heaven statistically must be an increasingly evil place over time.

Clearly this restriction of free will in heaven is not a bad thing, or else no one would want to be there. So why can't free will be restricted similarly on earth?

If it wasn't a bad thing there would be no earth, merely heaven, and if for some reason earth had to exist the moral thing to do would be to kill people.

No, I think that if there is a benevolent God and there is a Heaven, both Earth and Heaven are meant to be enjoyed in their own ways, ways I assume are quite different.

After all, free will is supposed to be so precious, so valuable, that all suffering on earth is a price we must pay just to have it. The fact that it would be restricted in some way in "paradise" seems logically contradictory.

A world where people physically could not murder/exploit/oppress would be quite preferable to the current one, I think.

Then again, I have only experienced the current one within my memory, so what do I know?

We are getting into "argument from evil" territory here, which isn't surprising, because the original question was only a slight variation on that argument. What's strange is that the argument positions have somewhat switched places.

If we CAN exist in a place with free will mostly intact, but we cannot harm each other, why did earth have to exist at all? The justification given for suffering ("evil") is that it's the price we must pay for precious free will. Heaven then exists as a blatant counterexample - it's OK to have your free will restricted a little bit, because then it alleviates all suffering.

So my question remains - why create earth at all? Why not just create us all in paradise with minor restrictions on our free will?

Because earth has a richness heaven can never have, a richness due to the difficulties that must be overcome and due to the additional freedom that is had.

And Heaven, of course, has a utopian quality Earth will probably never have. It is Paradise.

One does not have to necessarily be "better" than the other. Perhaps they are merely different.

One could extend this argument, and say the two complement each other.

Earth shows which beings/souls/whatever you want to call them are "good" and which are "evil". The good souls go to Heaven; this means that the restrictions on free will need not be extreme. Good people do good things, leading to goodness on Heaven. And the reward of Heaven offers an incentive for goodness on Earth.

(Or, as a sidepoint to the whole argument here, we could see "Heaven" and "Hell" as metaphors for what happens on earth when humans tend collectively towards good or evil. If reward and punishment are seen as collective rather than individual, a lot of the problems with it are eliminated.)

to prove themselves "good" or "evil"?

If you believe life begins at conception, what of miscarriages?

Or children who die before becoming morally self-aware?

Or the mentally disabled, those who even as adults are incapable of understanding "good" and "evil"?

If they go to heaven, and receive the gift of full mental capacity, then earth is pointless. If they go to hell, then God is a sick, mean bastard.

Perhaps they are reincarnated on Earth?

Perhaps they go to heaven, in a particularly restricted form?

You are right that if God is benevolent they would not go to hell. Any deity that would do that is a deity unworthy of worship.

Maybe before the injury they were pretty nasty, but who's to say they wouldn't have learned their lesson and become "good" later?

And when they die, do they get their full "brain" (though they won't have a brain, obviously) functions back?

Too many questions, not enough reasonable answers for me.

Mr Cage was a decent and god fearing man. Polite and kind to strangers. But then one day an accident sent a railroad spike to his head. He survived. Or rather it would be better to say that he lived.

His personality altered in the extreme. He became extremely rude and aggressive. He began exhibiting sexual depravity. He stopped attending church. All in all he was no longer the man he used to be.

So the question is. Which identity does his soul have to be judged on? Did the accident kill the man and send his soul onto judgement? Or is he doomed to die an unrepentent sinful life due to a physical injury that was not his fault?

I think you ask a good question, but it, IMHO, is dependent upon the assumption that God as judge is without discretion. In a wordly legal system, yes, a judge is bound by the law, even when the precise literal application of the law is unjust. This is because he did not write the law himself, but is restricted by the legal structure. This is the MODERN role of a judge. In past history, however, a judge was ruled by his own discretion, his ability to assess the situation and come up with a judgement that was just instead of simply legal.

But God is not bound by the law to the point of being unable to rationally assess individual situations. Since he wrote the law, he has the authority to grant release from consequence of the law as he sees fit. The christian knows this as "grace". All have sinned, therefore none would be released if the law were a legal artifice.
For example, Jesus told the thief on the cross that that day he would see him in heaven. If God (Jesus) were bound by the law, would he not have condemned the admitted sinner?
Instead, he forgives him the consequence of the law.
In many instances throughout the old and new testament God or Jesus is "breaking through" both the law and expectations of the natural world's rigid interpretation of the law.

the point of the law is not to convict to condemnation, but to bring to contrition and then through grace release from slavery to sin.

In your example, you describe a man no longer responsible for his actions due to an accident. There are also insane, and mentally challenged people who commit crimes and unspeakable acts. Do you really think that if we can understand the difference that God cannot? Is God less rational than we?

That is what identity arrives in heaven? The one prior to the accident or the one that came about afterwards. Its not a question of God's judgement. Its a question of the identity that goes to heaven.

I would say both do.
But I would only be speculating.
Do you have a speculation yourself?

created by a the ramifications of a mistaken belief system. That is I don't believe in god or heaven.

A: you merely hope to lay a logical trap to expose what you consider a mistaken belief system so that you can smugly belittle anyone who answers?

B: you are honestly attempting to understand a belief system you are unfamiliar with.

since you use the term "mistaken belief system", that sort of eliminates B.

Unless you have a C?

No trap. I honestly believe there are logical flaws with the belief system when compared to reality. I believe it is profitable for everyone to discuss such things. Perhaps I will learn something. Perhaps they will learn something. I only know that if we sit here silently staring at each other we will learn nothing.

dialog can achieve your stated goals.

Of course dialog can be had between individuals that do not agree. We learn new things every day and modify our positions accordingly. Its learning and growing. It comes about by comparing positions and ideas. Frankly I would grow tired discussing matters only with people I agreed with. What is there to learn from that?

God Creates Lucifer and the angels.

Satan Rebels, God casts he and his cohorts out, promising to destroy them someday.

God creates Man.

God tells man he is the same always, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Satan knows God is telling the truth and won't lie.

Satan lures man to sin, knowing that God is, by his own rules, limited in power.

Man falls for it, Satan thinks he has won.

God knows man never had much of a chance, and he never said who would have to perish. To balance the equation he becomes man himself, lives without sin, and dies in mans place (ie a perfect sacrifice). Thus the equation becomes balanced and all is right with the universe.

So in a sense, yes, God is limited - but by his own design.

At least, that is my take on it :)

The Garden of Eden story is quite interesting. I have given it a lot of thought. I feel that it is a man made story and a metaphor by the person that created it to explain a God that was also created by a man or men. Woman did not write the chapter of Genesis.

A tangent since this has not been brought up. If this story is real and sent telepathicaly to whoever wrote it by God then there would be a population problem if Adam had not been persuaded by Eve to take a bite of the apple which held the knowlege of good and evil. If both had not eaten the apple then they would have lived forever and so would their children if none of them ate the apples. Eventually the earth would be too populated to sustain human life.

That man was created in the image of the creator. Islam for one does not, as God is beyond our full comprehension, existing outside and beyound our understanding of our universe, and has no image or form.

Humans are flawed creatures: impatiant, weak, vain and prone to disease and mortality. If this was the "image" of God then truly God itself would be flawed.

Of couse a Christian could argue that the "image" refers to man before the "fallen" state.

I'm not sure what your point is here. If it is, as your post says, to argue that God is not omnipotent, you are handicapped by what is clearly a very poor understanding of theology and philosophy.
You could benefit from reading what has been written on the concept of free will: St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard. Plato and Aristotle write about free will as well. There is an good discussion of the concept in the Catholic Encyclopedia, that includes ancient
philosophy, as well as Catholic and Protestant writings on the subject.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm#anc

There is extensive Rabbinic literature on the conflict between free will and omniscience. Wikipedia lists some theologians: "In Rabbinic literature, there is much discussion as to the contradiction between God's omniscience and free will; the contradiction is raised formally as early as the mishnaic period by Rabbi Akiva "Everything is foreseen; and freewill is given" (Pirkei Avoth 3:15). The topic is then debated throughout the literature; see, for example, Maimonides and his critic Abraham ibn Daud (Raavad III), e.g. in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah Hilchoth Teshuva 5:5." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_and_determinism

If you're interested particularly in the nature of evil, Wikipedia also lists a number of theodicians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy

If you really think this is proof of anything, of the lack of existence of God . . . well, it's not very impressive. You don't need to believe in God's omnipotence or in God at all. That is entirely your choice. But if you think you're going to convince anyone else, it would help to know something about the issues you discuss.

Yes, we believe we are made in our Father's image, the pinnacle of His creative efforts. However, He loves us so much, He gives us free will, to love Him back, or not. We further believe, that some of His spiritual creatures, angels, rebelled and were cast-out of Heaven for eternity, to this "place" called Hell.

We can also choose to be banished to this "place" called Hell, even though we are creatures created in our Father's image. This is our mistake, not God's.

May His peace find you...