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Author Topic:   Will I see Hitler in heaven?
CK
Member (Idle past 4128 days)
Posts: 3221
Joined: 07-04-2004


Message 61 of 99 (328705)
07-04-2006 9:24 AM
Reply to: Message 60 by Brian
07-04-2006 9:17 AM


Re: Necessities, contingencies, apologies
quote:
My friend John, who is now teaching in the USA, essentially answered your question when I enquired about the nice old grandma who helps when she can and never insults anyone, where is she going when she dies.
His reply was that she is rancid with sin until she accepts Jesus into her heart, it doesn't matter how nice you are, or how much you help others, everyone is tainted with sin until you accept Jesus' sacrifice and repent.
I worked in a CofE School for a bit and we had some Candian christians visit the school and put on a play about faith and belief. The play was about a plane crash and what would happen to the people on the plane. The Muslim went to hell, the missionaries who spent 40 years do good works in the 3rd world went to hell, the murderer who prayed to Jesus as the plane went down went to heaven.
To say the kids were unimpressed is putting it in mild terms.

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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 62 of 99 (328709)
07-04-2006 9:35 AM
Reply to: Message 59 by Omnivorous
07-03-2006 8:25 PM


Re: Necessities, contingencies, apologies
Yes, I understand the Fall thing. I just don't believe it.... I am not guilty
IMHO of course
That is the crux of it. Guilt must be measured according to the standard of the person whose Law is being broken - not according to the standard of the law breaker, if that is what you are. We should expect (for our courts tell us so) that a person admitting own guilt is not the norm. Nor are there queues forming outside our police stations consisting of people wanting to confess their crimes. Pleas of 'not guilty' are often entered by people seeking to gain some remission due to the certainty of a guilty verdict whatever it is they plead. A damage limitation exercise.
"I'm not guilty" is the cry most laughed out of the court of the prisoner population.
Although perhaps not seeing your guilt clearly, you have reasonable circumstantial evidence contained within the above argument to indicate such that self-justification may well lie at the root of your opinion. If your anything like me you would recognise employing this technique often enough. You cannot declare yourself an objective observer as regards your own guilt and declaring others innocent when you are in no position to comment on guilt or innocence is not open to you either.
You don't have to believe in the Fall Omni. You can insist on innocent-by-own-decree. But if you inserted the Fall into your ponderings you may find that the whole thing begins to stitch together quite nicely. It all begins to fit. Gods Love, Gods Wrath, Gods Justice. And a situation which allows all to be perfectly , self-coherantly and self-consistantly expressed. No loose ends
Edited by iano, : No reason given.

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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 63 of 99 (328742)
07-04-2006 12:11 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by Brian
07-04-2006 9:17 AM


Re: Necessities, contingencies, apologies
accept any pathetic apologetic (of which free will is the saddest) to keep it intact.
Liberating yourself from the suffocation of believing in God doesn't make you a bad person, but it does enable you to be a free thinker, and frees you from racist and sexist legends.
Has a free thinker the free will which is essential to free thinking. If he has, has he free will to do bad and good too? If he has, then what is pathetic about the free will apologetic?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by Brian, posted 07-04-2006 9:17 AM Brian has replied

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Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 64 of 99 (328743)
07-04-2006 12:22 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by iano
07-04-2006 12:11 PM


Free will again, surprise surprise!
Has a free thinker the free will which is essential to free thinking.
Only when they are free from the restraints of an outdated concept such as theism, or even Christianity. These ideas put limits on the believer's thoughts. For example, a young earther doesn;t have the ability to think about an ancient universe.
If he has, has he free will to do bad and good too?
What is bad and good?
If he has, then what is pathetic about the free will apologetic?
The free will defence is the last bastion of the desparate fundy, when all other apologetics get shot down they wheel out the FWD without even thinking it through.
To have true free will you need to have access to all the possibilites. Take the Eden myth, Adam and Eve didn't know what good or evil was, but if they did do you think if they knew their descendants would all be cursed by this jealous God they would have ate the fruit?
The free will defence is a joke, when the going gets tough the fundy gets the FWD.
You cannot have an all loving God that watches 6 million Jews being slaughtered and does nothing. Oh and before you say He didn;t want to invade the free will of the Nazis, there are many examples of God intervening in human history in the Old Testament. So, we know God has no problem taking sides and actually particpating in the battle against an enemy of Israel (Ai for example, where God killed more enemies than Israel did).
Brian.

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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 65 of 99 (328750)
07-04-2006 1:00 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by Brian
07-04-2006 12:22 PM


Re: Free will again, surprise surprise!
Free thinker means free will to think in whatever direction one thinks in. This can include God. It can include Christianity. "Outmoded" and "outdated" is seeking to determine the direction of free thinking by the back door.
Your thoughts on free thinking seem to preclude arrival at any destination, yec or otherwise. There is, of course, no particular basis for holding to this view (there are no absolutes is a non-sensical statement). If one does arrive at a destination and that destination precludes thinking freely any longer then so be it. The person has no need of free-thinking in any direction at all anymore. And so what: who says free thinking is some holy grail?
What is bad and good?
You used the word. You tell me.
The free will defence is the last bastion of the desparate fundy, when all other apologetics get shot down they wheel out the FWD without even thinking it through.
Free will sits at the core of the argument. It always has. Besides, I don't know about your shooting down of any apologetics. I have thought free will through and whilst not the limitless entity you seem to demand of it it is sufficient for Gods purpose. Free will within boundaries - not free will to do absolutely anything at all I like. Like, a person doesn't have free will to ignore God forever or to choose annihilation over eternal punishment - for instance. Boundaried free will
To have true free will you need to have access to all the possibilites.
As I say above
Take the Eden myth, Adam and Eve didn't know what good or evil was, but if they did do you think if they knew their descendants would all be cursed by this jealous God they would have ate the fruit?
Sure they didn't know ALL the consequences. All we know is that they had a choice between two options. I would argue that it was at this point that they had, for the first time, sufficient free will which allowed for a choice for/against God. Not sufficient? In the measure God gave them fuller revelation about the consequences of choosing against him, he would also have had to allow the temptation of the serpent to increase in like measure in order for the choice to remain a balanced one. We know were God set the line. Where do you want to draw it exactly?
You cannot have an all loving God that watches 6 million Jews being slaughtered and does nothing.
If you persist in your estimation of this gig as being about what happens here on earth then this is the conclusion you might draw. But this is not the main event. The main event comes later. And compared to that the suffering of individual is a relative pittance. Suffering is one tool used by God in order to draw all men to himself - for who would come if everything was hunky dory as it was - none I'd wager (hard for a 'rich' man to get to heaven vs blessed is the poor in spirit).
Pain is useful - next time you stick the wrong end of a cigarette in your mouth as I did last Saturday you might be thankful for the warning sign. Or you can complain about how unrighteous the whole thing is I suppose
Oh and before you say He didn;t want to invade the free will of the Nazis, there are many examples of God intervening in human history in the Old Testament. So, we know God has no problem taking sides and actually particpating in the battle against an enemy of Israel (Ai for example, where God killed more enemies than Israel did).
So. Gods sovereign choice according to his purpose. Think his overall purpose Brian. The kid can get an ice cream or it can get a slap. I don't mean to underplay suffering but see it within a larger context. God wants that none should perish but that ALL would come to repentance. If (temporal) suffering is required in order for that (eternal) goal to be better met then thank God he inflicts it
Edited by iano, : No reason given.
Edited by iano, : No reason given.
Edited by iano, : No reason given.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 66 of 99 (328759)
07-04-2006 1:26 PM
Reply to: Message 62 by iano
07-04-2006 9:35 AM


iano writes:
Guilt must be measured according to the standard of the person whose Law is being broken - not according to the standard of the law breaker....
That's your fundamental error. The law is not made for the benefit of the lawmaker - it is made for the benefit of society.
We did not inherit Adam's guilt. We inherited his knowledge of good and evil - i.e. we do know what is good and bad for our society. God's laws are only a reflection of what we already know about right and wrong.

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Replies to this message:
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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 67 of 99 (328788)
07-04-2006 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 66 by ringo
07-04-2006 1:26 PM


Surely you mean fundi-mental error
I was responding to Brians comments on the position held by such as myself - not to that held by such as yourself. My position seeks to address problems arising out of his position not yours. I don't think he would think any more of your position than he does the Bibles. But your welcome to try I'm sure. Answer him if you like
We did not inherit Adam's guilt.
For the record, I agree. We will not be convicted on the basis of Adams lawbreaking, but our own
We inherited his knowledge of good and evil - i.e. we do know what is good and bad for our society.
If you had put an eg: instead of an i.e. then I might have even wholeheartedly agree with you here too
God's laws are only a reflection of what we already know about right and wrong.
Gods laws are a reflection of his holiness. They are put there so that in our breaking them we might come to recognise what we are: sinners. What chance a sinner to sin if there was no law to break huh?

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 Message 66 by ringo, posted 07-04-2006 1:26 PM ringo has replied

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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


Message 68 of 99 (328790)
07-04-2006 2:45 PM


And the answer the thread title is....
...patently there is only one way to find out
Edited by iano, : No reason given.

  
GDR
Member
Posts: 6202
From: Sidney, BC, Canada
Joined: 05-22-2005
Member Rating: 1.9


Message 69 of 99 (328796)
07-04-2006 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by Brian
07-04-2006 12:22 PM


Re: Free will again, surprise surprise!
Brian writes:
Only when they are free from the restraints of an outdated concept such as theism, or even Christianity. These ideas put limits on the believer's thoughts. For example, a young earther doesn;t have the ability to think about an ancient universe.
The thing is Brian it is your beliefs that puts limits on your thoughts. You have limited yourself to what science can discover and can't even consider the possibility of the metaphysical.
The majority of Christians are not YEC. For the rest of us Christians we can wonder at the discoveries of science such as an ancient universe in the physical world, but we are also open to learn about the metaphysical. Even if you are right and there is no metaphysical, (which you're not ), then we still have no more limits on what we can learn than you do.

Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 70 of 99 (328800)
07-04-2006 3:23 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by iano
07-04-2006 2:43 PM


iano writes:
We inherited his knowledge of good and evil - i.e. we do know what is good and bad for our society.
If you had put an eg: instead of an i.e. then I might have even wholeheartedly agree with you here too
The "i.e." is correct. The two are equivalent - there is no example involved.
Gods laws are a reflection of his holiness.
No, they are a reflection of our needs.
Why should He care if we kill each other? We're all going to die any way - our deaths effect us, not Him.
They are put there so that in our breaking them we might come to recognise what we are: sinners.
No, they are put there to help us get along with each other.
If the law was only for purposes of entrapment, it could be any arbitrary nonsense: don't drive over 100 klicks on Tuesday afternoon when the temperature is over 20 degrees Celsius. Since the commandments make sense, it is clear that they were made to be kept, not broken.
What chance a sinner to sin if there was no law to break huh?
Sin is not the same thing as "breaking the law", as Jesus pointed out:
quote:
Mat 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
Mat 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Lust is "equivalent" to adultery because it can lead to adultery. But lust is not an enforcible - or even detectable - offense under the law.
quote:
1Jo 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
Hate is the "equivalent" of murder because it can lead to murder. But hate is not an enforcible - or even detectable - offense under the law.
So how can the law convict us of sin?
-------------
As for the OP: the chances of cavediver seeing Hitler in heaven depend on two things:
  1. Will Hitler be in heaven?
  2. Will cavediver be there to see him?

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 71 of 99 (328902)
07-05-2006 8:40 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by GDR
07-03-2006 6:35 PM


Re: Necessities, contingencies, apologies
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, GDR.
I'm hesitant to respond because you have thought about this deeply, and frankly I doubt that I can add anything that you haven't thought about previously. However it isn't easy shutting me up.
Likewise, and glad of it: we often don't know what we truly think and believe until we try to present and explain it, and a thoughtful reply is a fine gift.
And, yes, I have spent many years contemplating these questions.
To get back to your post I repeat that if we can't know sorrow we can't know joy. Are you prepared to give up knowing the joy that you feel when, for example, you hold your new born child in your arms for the first time by giving up the sorrow that you feel when you lose a parent? I would suggest that even with all the sorrow in the world there is more joy. There are relatively few that choose suicide over life.
This is a somewhat more generally philosophical line of thought rather than religious, based on the idea of a necessary dualism. The Buddhists use this line of thought to demonstrate the limitless nature of suffering.
However, in the context of your example, keep in mind that I am not objecting to human mortality. Our transience does suffuse the birth of new life with more poignant celebration, but mortality alone seems adequate to that task: it is not death that I object to but the free hand given to evil.
I do not believe that free will must, from a creator's perspective, mean the unfettered freedom to spiral down into increasingly egregious acts of depravity against others. After all, there are evils aside from predating other human beings, and a god could sort us out on some basis other than spilled human blood.
Even supposing free will, we cannot reach up and brush the moon from the sky: if sexual lust in the heart alone identifies the sinner, so must the lust for blood. The sanctity of life could be built into the universe as fundamentally as gravity, distance, and other limits on our power.
Given this, why would a benevolent God not do so? That central question brings me, again and again, to the questions of necessity I raised earlier. I see no necessary connection between free will and victimizing evil.
Nor am I persuaded by the necessary dualism argument. The experience of sorrow does highlight by contrast that of joy, but it is not clear to me that this is a necessary connection: infants and toddlers, for example, delight in the love of their parents, and the play of light and color, long before they experience heartbreak or hatred. Many children are fortunate enough to find considerable pleasures in the world before they must experience significant pain.
There aren't any easy answers but I have no doubt in my mind that my Christian God is a God of love who hates evil, and hates suffering.
I respect your faith and honesty, GDR, and the answer I hear in this sentence is the reply of mystery, and I respect that, too, though it does not satisfy me.
My central point previously was that the existence of this mystery--the apparent conflict between the nature of the world and the claimed nature of its Christian God--leads me to consider two primary options: either there is no God, or the human traditions of God's nature are far wide of the mark.
Job eventually stood up on his dung heap and questioned his fate, and God's reply boiled down to mystery. As a child, I cheered when Job stood up; I was keenly disappointed when he was shouted down.
This of course begs the question of why doesn't He end it if He is all powerful
My question is a bit different: Why create a world where evil and suffering flourish? If we must be tested, why does the test require the option to slaughter our neighbors?

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 Message 57 by GDR, posted 07-03-2006 6:35 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by GDR, posted 07-07-2006 11:41 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 72 of 99 (328906)
07-05-2006 9:09 AM
Reply to: Message 60 by Brian
07-04-2006 9:17 AM


Re: Necessities, contingencies, apologies
Brian writes:
I think the easiest way to reconcile suffering with a loving God is to realise that there is no such thing as God. The concept is very outdate now and the only real growth area for Christianity is in third world countries, or oppressed countries, or wealthy countries with home schooling.
Certainly that is the answer I have long embraced. But I try to question all my beliefs often, and it seems to me that many atheists are painted into the corner of that conclusion by the absurdities of doctrines and apologetics.
There is another option, the option of a Divine whose nature we do not know, a Creator who has been ill-served by the elaborated tribal superstitions that pass for truth. Most of our present world religions insist on an all-knowing, all-powerful, personally invoved and benevolent Creator. None of these characteristics make sense to me in light of the nature of this world. The possibilities of a Creator who could only create and not mandate, a less than all-powerful Creator who was bound by necessities we have no inkling about, or whose agenda is so vast (and we so trivial) that there is no personal interest or involvement--perhaps it will require many more millennia of evolution before we become interesting... These possibilities also merit consideration, but organized religion has by and large precluded them.
My own conceptions of intellectual honesty and open-mindedness preclude ruling out these possibilities altogether. Thus I hold onto my agnosticism despite the best efforts of believers to justify atheism.

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The Critic 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3138 days)
Posts: 12
From: conn
Joined: 07-03-2006


Message 73 of 99 (329066)
07-05-2006 7:39 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Brian
07-03-2006 3:47 PM


Re: I didn't inquire
Believe it or not, hitler was not meant ,but for the penance of jews to be excepted, your basic jew "beat to death" must be enacted. Jews may be enslaved at the will of god. Jesus is not happy with most who did not stand for him at his death. The bible shows that, the jews are the basic reason for his death. However, anyone he contacted in his travels who did not believe in him also may catch a piece of his wrath.

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CK
Member (Idle past 4128 days)
Posts: 3221
Joined: 07-04-2004


Message 74 of 99 (329069)
07-05-2006 7:44 PM
Reply to: Message 73 by The Critic
07-05-2006 7:39 PM


Total Scum
I don't care if I get banned - you are scum.

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GDR
Member
Posts: 6202
From: Sidney, BC, Canada
Joined: 05-22-2005
Member Rating: 1.9


Message 75 of 99 (329164)
07-06-2006 1:06 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by The Critic
07-05-2006 7:39 PM


Re: I didn't inquire
I never dreamt that I would see that point of view expressed here, or anywhere else for that matter. My only hope is that since you post anonymously that your post is an attempt to discredit Christianity by misrepresenting it in the way that you have.

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