What was God’s plan behind Creation and why does he need one?

Hello Larni, Why must we conclude this? Just because God can do anything, does not dictate that He should. God created this universe to follow physical laws & us to follow moral laws. These laws (at least the moral ones) are based on Gods own character. His character may also dictate what He will & will not do with His unlimited power. How can you know with your limited knowledge, that God, who has all knowledge, has no good reason to allow suffering? How do you know this? Again, having the abilility to do something, does not mean God should, in order to satisfy your will. The Bible says 'God's will be done', not 'Larni's will be done'. Because He also made a conscious choice to submit Himself to it, in order to save us.

Because, being all powerful he can achieve his aims without suffering. It is within his ability because he is without limits or compunction.Nothing can force Yahweh to make people suffer, can it? Because nothing can force your god to do anything he does not want to we must conclude he makes people suffer because he wants us tooRemember, if Yahweh did not want us to suffer no force in the universe could thart his will.The train of thought is thus:God: No force in the universe can stand against my will. If I will it it will happen exactly as I wish it.Me: What is forcing you to make us suffer?God: Nothing.Where is the flaw in my logic? Then it is your god's will that we suffer! How nice of him.I'm fine with that as long as it is clear that suffering does not need to happen because Yahweh can have his cake and eat it. He could abolish suffering with no negative consequences. First: we only need saving because Yahweh decided we needed saving rather than forgiving Adam and Eve.Second: we should be greatful that he punishes himself as well? How much good is that?What if I beat my wife over the head with a stick and tell her to love me because I'm bludgeoning myself, too: does that make sense? Because that's exactly what you are saying.God could resolve this problem of Adam and Eve disobeying him once without all the years of individual suffering for people if he wanted to because there is no limit to his power.There are no universal conditions that demands we suffer that he cannot overide if he wanted to so we have to conclude that Yahweh wants us to suffer, even when we don't have to. He could achieve the end result of all people being saved if he abolished the need for us to be saved.

Hello Bluejay,Just getting back to some earlier posts. I don't think that we can technically say that God 'Created' good & bad. They may be derived from God's innate character, which is our yard stick for good & bad. Whatever is of God's character is good, and whatever is opposite to God's character is bad. Unless good and bad have an objective foundation, they are just subjective. For us christians, that unchanging foundation is God's character. As above, God only does what God only does. Whatever God does is what we call good & just & loving. It is who God is that defines these terms. So in that sense, God can only ever do good things. We may not consider God's justice as good, like criminals blaming a Judge for their incarceration. But like the criminal, who are we to make the rules. Not sure where you got this from?? If love is part of who God is, then 'love' could never exist as a separate entity, a created thing.

So what you and I call evil (to inflict suffering needlessly) is in fact good, by didnt of the fact Yahweh does it? People are only criminal (in this context) beacuse Yahweh decided to punish every one for 2 people'c crime. This is not the case with criminals in human courts: you are punished for what you have done, not what your great, great.....grnadfather did.Edited by Larni, : Last paragraph.

Hi MRAs promised I have started a new thread on the specific subject of morality - good and bad.I have expressed my view on how morality is a logical consequence of evolution. You may wish to consider my views and let me know your own opinion on that thread.EvC Forum: Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation

Hi, MR.Just so you know, I think you're doing well keeping up with all the stuff you have to deal with, and you're also not sloppy: these are two attributes that rarely coincide in one poster.Keep replying on your schedule. What do you mean by "they may be derived from God's innate character"?
Both good and bad derive from God’s innate character?----- This is fine for describing personality characteristics and actions. But, it doesn’t work for anything else. As an example, help me place these things on the spectrum of with/against God’s character: If these things are either neutral or of God’s character, why do we dislike them so much? Couldn’t God have made people who don’t strongly dislike neutral or good things?If these things are opposite to God’s character, why did He make them? Or, since you wrote, God can only ever do good things, how did God make these things?While answering these questions, keep this verse in mind:

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Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

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-John 1:3

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So, the options for the origin of any particular entity or object are, (1) God made them; (2) they were not made, and thus, always existed.----- We established that love is good, didn’t we? Remember the options? The options about the origin of good (and, thus, the origin of love) are (1) God made it; (2) it was not made and God somehow came to possess it.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I have always taken a more humorous, Douglas Adams approach to this question.What if this universe was the product of a high school science project. Obviously, this would have to be a student from a very advanced race, but nonetheless a high school science project. The contest rules stated that the winner would be the universe with the largest black holes and no life. Perhaps, just perhaps, our universe was a loser. We ruined the whole thing. That poor kid got an F (or whatever alphanumeric grade is used by ultra-advanced species) because we screwed it up for him.Perhaps we are looked on in the same way that we look upon mold in our shower. Food for thought.

Thank you, Taq, for this clear-headed and refreshing antidote to the all the inescapable confusion that stems from the typical guess-work about God. I see no reason to consider Douglas Adam's guesses any less likely than all the rest.Personally, for reasons I can't explain, I've always found Randy Newman's take on the question to be rather compelling as well -- so much so that I can recite it from memory (though at the moment, the name of the song escapes me; it's from his "Sail Away" album):

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Cain slew Abel. Seth knew not why.
"If the children of Israel are supposed to multiply,
Why then should any of the children die?"

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And the Lord said:
"Man means nothing. He means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower, or the humblest yucca tree.
He chases 'round this desert, because he thinks that's where I'll be.
That's why I love mankind.

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I recoil in horror at the foulness of thee,
At the squalor and the filth and the misery.
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me!
That's why I love mankind."

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The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree.
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV.
They picked their four greatest priests, and they began to speak.

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They said, "Lord, a plague is on the world! Lord, no man is free!
The temples we built to you are tumbling to the sea!
Lord, if you won't take care of us, won't you please, please let us be?"

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And the Lord said... and the Lord said:
"I burn down your cities, how blind you must be!
I take from you your children, and you say 'How blessed are we'!
You all must be crazy to put your faith in me!
That's why I love mankind.

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You really need me -- that's why I love mankind."

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(lyrics (c) by Randy Newman, from the early 1970's)

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

You have read Restaraunt at the End of the Universe, haven't you? "Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise, surprise, they eat it and he jumps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha.' It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it."

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"Why not?"

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"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."

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"What are you talking about?"

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"Never mind, eat the fruit."

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"You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden."

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"Eat the fruit."

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"Sounds quite like it, too."-- Douglas Adams

Hello Jumped up Chimpanzee,Thanks for letting me know. I have had a quick read of your post and some of the responses, and so far looks very interesting. I'll try and get over to it, but it depends on how things go here first.

Hello Larni, I think we are stuck in a loop here. You are making the assertion that Gods aims can be acheived without suffering, purely because He is all powerful. I think we have reached the limits of our understanding of what 'all powerful' actually means.If I may be a little cheeky here...My train of thought is thus:God: My will is that humans have free will.Larni: Ok then, my will is to reject you, and any help you offer.God: Alrighty then, but don't blame me for not helping when you suffer the consequences of your actions.Larni: But you can do anything. You can give me the power to reject your help and still help me as well.Can you see any problems with this?

I can see a problem right here: Many that suffer have accepted god. They still suffer, nothing is done by god to help them. See Haiti, almost all of the people there are Christians.

Hello Bluejay, Thank you. Though I feel I am at the limit of my ability to expand on these topics. So from this point on, I'm talking about things beyond my compehension, and things I say may contradict earlier posts and get messy. Yes. Good is derived from God's character, as his character is what defines good. Meaning that if things such as love, patience & kindness etc are a characteristic of God, and God also tells us that these are good things, then they are good. However bad things are that which are not of God's character, or the oposite of what God does. So in that way, God's character does determine also what is 'bad', but only by default. Admittedly this is a hard one to answer. I wonder what would have happened in the garden of Eden before the fall. If Adam cut himself whilst tending the garden would God have immediately healed it? Perhapps only if Adam asked Him to? Does God consider minor things such as skinned knees a bad thing, or simply a learning experience? If so, is there a cut off point where the level of injury is then considered bad?Anyway I found this excerpt from Why is there death and suffering? - creation.com ; So in the pre-fall world, God may have upheld everything so that skinned knees would not occur. But as they occur now, they can be considered a consequence of sin and therefore a bad thing. Almost every other point on your list could be covered by this point. That these things (perhapps barring sharp rocks & flat tyres) are the result of disobedience to God's will, which is the outworking of His character. I do not believe that God made these things directly. They are the result of our sin, rejection of doing things in line with His character. This comes back to the objections from Larni, that if God knew that these things would occur, then He is responsible for them anyway, and yes ultimately God is resposible. The answer to why a loving God created this world, knowing that bad things would happen, is admittedly one I cannot adequately answer. Only that if God thinks it a price worth paying, then it must be.

Hi, MR. It's not you... it's just the nature of the beast.I've been talking about stuff I don't understand since my first post on this thread.-----This part is off-topic, but I would like to add one more rhetorical question: I thought this was what you meant: I just wanted to be sure before I continued.In the Bible, God’s character is described, by God Himself, as vengeful (Deuteronomy 32:41; Ezekiel 25:14) and jealous (Exodus 20:5, 34:14; Deuteronomy 5:9). Doesn't this, by your definition, mean that vengeance and jealousy are good, and that forgiveness and charity are bad?So, why does God command us to forgive and not covet? Does He want us to do bad?This is an inherent weakness in defining good and bad in terms of God’s character.----- But, everything that was made was made by God, remember? That’s the verse I quoted:

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Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

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-John 1:3 (NIV)

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John, at least, thinks God made all these things.What you have added, though, is a potential reason why God made them (i.e. because of our sin).That leads us back in a circle to the main topic: why did He make us? And, why did He make us the way we are, such that we would goof up and need to be punished?I can see curiosity, boredom, or loneliness as being reasons why a being like one of us may want to create life, but these are all feelings that come from something that’s missing. I have a hard time imagining that the God described in the Bible would act out of these emotional considerations. Love goes along with those.Emotionality like that doesn’t make sense in a being like God.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hello Bluejay, Yep, I think you've got me here. This is possibly where my theory comes apart. However I want to draw a distinction between God's vengence & ours, which might just save me.God has told us to 'let vengence be mine'(Romans 12:19). My understanding is that because we do not always know the full story, that we should not take revenge on people who we perceive have harmed us, because we may punish an innocent person. As only God knows everything, then only He can truly exact righteous revenge. Revenge is a bad thing we do, in order to satisfy our desire for justice, which is a good thing . Most police officers would prefer that citizens not take the law into their own hands, but let the police do their job. In the same way, God is to be our police. Most of us do feel that justice requires some form of punishment, as does God. However our administration of Justice by our finest judges is fallible and poor, and revenge by angry citizens even worse still, and therefore bad. God's justice/revenge is perfect & righteous, and therefore good.Jealousy is somewhat harder. In context, the jealousy of God is related to the jealousy of a husband, whose wife is cheating on him. In this context, the jealous husband is justified, as his wife has broken a promise to be faithful only to him. In Exodus, God has entered into an agreement, that He will be their God and they will be His people. So in this context, God is jealous if they then worship another god, because they will be cheating on Him. This is not like a possible interpretation of the term 'jealous' as being jealous of your neigbour who is better looking, has a better car, bigger house etc, which is known as coveting and is a bad thing. As I've admitted to Larni, this is beyond our ability to know. But my guess is love, though I'm seeing many weaknesses in this argument. The other alternative 'God's glory', has more biblical support, though I'd have no hope in explaining this without making God out to be a egotist. Again, as admitted to Larni, I can only assume that God has a very good reason. I think that in order for us to be the kind of beings that could spend eternity with God, we needed to have free will. But this also means we are capable of sin. I tried earlier to portray love, as being more than just an emotion. That it is also a choice, a commitment, an action. I agree, with emotions like boredom, curiousity & loneliness. But I think love is a fair bit different.