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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!ihdev!rjv
From: rjv@ihdev.UUCP (ron vaughn)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: response to ken nichols - the character of god
Message-ID: <128@ihdev.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Nov-84 14:03:48 EST
Article-I.D.: ihdev.128
Posted: Wed Nov  7 14:03:48 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Nov-84 06:28:35 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 55

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i'm posting this for a friend.  please send all replies to the
net-address at the bottom.


I have been watching Ken Nichols say things that don't make sense now for
quite a while, but after seeing these quotes, I felt that I had to reply.

>                                                         Why can't you see
> it is because of God's perfect Holiness and Justice that He must condemn man
> for sin?  Why do you (everyone on the net) refuse to look at man's sin for
> what it is?  God cannot allow sin into His presence.  He has no choice in this
> matter.  His perfect attributes demand His judgement on sin.

This does not make sense.  God cannot allow sin in his presence??  I thought
he was everywhere!  Are you saying that God is not omnipotent?  Of course
there is sin in God's presence, because there is sin on this earth, and God
created this earth.  Furthermore, God had to have created sin.  If God did
not create sin, then where did it come from??  Are you willing to say that
there is another being with the power to do things against God's will???
If an inferior being (such as Satan, perhaps) created sin, then God in his
Holiness would then have to destroy the sin, according to you.  Of course if
he couldn't, then it would invalidate God's claim to omnipotence, and it
would become meaningless which diety you worshipped because they would
both be as powerful.  There are many other logical flaws in the argument that
god is opposed to sin.  I won't state them all now. I'll end with a quote-

"He who made kittens, put snakes in the grass"

> Holiness in opposed to sin.  They cannot co-habitate.

This is a very naive statement.  You must not have learned any of the
lessons that Eastern religions have taught us.  Good cannot exist without
evil.  The very term "good" has no meaning unless there also exists it
compliment "evil".  To destroy all evil is also to destroy all good, as
the definition of good would become meaningless without something to
compare it too.

Even if one does not believe in the oriental religions, there are still
valuable lessons to be learned which require a deepening of our understanding.
Simplified explanations of the battle between "good" and "evil", and ancient
Hebrew myths simply do not have much meaning in the modern world, with
the wealth of religious wisdom and knowledge we now have to draw upon.

I was once a Christian too, until I started studying religion.

"There is no god, and I am his prophet"

						Russell Spence
				replies to:	ihnp4!ihlpm!russ
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