Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jrossi@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (The Electric Sol) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Strangers in a Strange World Message-ID: Date: 15 Dec 89 06:42:11 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Jet Propelled Lab - Pasadena CA Lines: 215 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article tbvanbelle@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Terry Van Belle) writes: >>God had an "idea" or a "plan" for how the history of the world would >>go, and somehow everything that happened instead was somehow a "suprise." > >Actually what I meant was that God created the world perfect and good, but gave >man the option of operating in a way which is not perfect. When I said >have', I didn't mean the way God expected it to go, but the optimal way. This is a good pt. for discussion ... lets think about the optimal way for a minute and maybe ask ourselves what this means. We would have to, for a a minute take into consideration what would happened had Adam and Eve never chosen to disobey God in the first place? Now I'm about to make some assumptions about what this would mean, but before I do, I need to get some feedback on a fundamental question: did Adam and Eve have an erotic relationship wherein there would be children, or are sexual relations a consequence of the fall, and therefore, human life in the Garden limited to just Adam and Eve? If you answer yes to this question, then the most obvious result of the optimal way, is that you and I would never exsist. You would probably never know the joy you might know watching your child grow up. We can really branch out into a lot of things: having never sinned, we couldn't watch Rams games, go to Grateful Dead concerts, eat really good fudge, play with computers, get married, have children, go to school, go hiking at Yosemite, explore the moon, study history, experience rich, diverse cultural events, read good books, watch Johnny Carson, participate in community events, and basically enjoy and appreciate the chance to be alive. You and I would miss out on all this, because Adam and Eve decided not to take a chance, and chose to selfishly spend the rest of eternity with God, by themselves. So, to sum up, I'm not sure that things aren't already going the optimal way. Where God had two friends, now he has many. And if this is the opitmal way, I am of the faith that our loving Father has made a provision so that in this opitmal unfolding/revealation of His, there will be no uneccessary suffering. >>Of course, the classic arguement against this, if nothing is going the >>way God planned, it is certainly within His capacity to see that it does. > >And it's still within his capacity to force us all to be good. But it really >wouldn't mean much. Instead, we're promised that one day we'll have the >capacity to be good (and be close to him). What bothers me about this statement is that I believe we have the capacity to be good and close to God *now* ... To put your goodness and closeness off in the future is to reinforce the idea of a Santa Claus God, a God that rewards your faith and trust in him on an imaginary Christmas day in the future. Also, isn't bringing about repentance and goodness, by threatening to completely seperate ourselves from Him, and thus, insure our death, in a manner of speaking, coercion, or force? If I hold a gun to your head, and say Love me, or die, are you going to love me out of free will, or because I have a gun to your head. And if, in the future, there is still free will, doesn't that mean that there is a chance this will all happen all over. In order to prevent it from ever happening God would ultimately have to remove our capacity for free will, and *force* us to be good. >>Yes, we're a real credit to our Maker ;-). > >Actually, the real credit to our Maker is the fact that we had the choice. Th>rest is our doing. If I hand a child a gun, and the child kills himself, or someone else, is it a credit to me. If God gives out the chance to make a choice, knowing the choice will lead to the damnation of billions of souls, can we really say that God cares about humanity. If I had to choose between FreeWill/damnation, and NoFreeWill/Peace, take away my free will. Eternity is a long time. >>Of course God wants us >>to sin, because he wants us to learn, and you learn by making >>mistakes. Why did God create "sinners" in the first place? > >First of all, while we might learn correct behaviour, the real problem seems to >be in following what we have learned. I can't speak for others, but I find >it notoriously hard to condition myself out of a sin, even when I know it's >wrong. I agree ... and while some personal sins are real difficult, for me learning to love, accept, respect, and listen to myself and others, is getting easier, and easier. Praise God. >Secondly, I might ask why we should learn when one day we will know? Because its fun. Learning is part of the knowing. Why go to church, why read the Bible, while listen to anyone? >As for why God created sinners in the first place, he didn't in the way you're >suggesting. He created man & gave them the ability to to choose whether to >serve him or not. If we chose yes, beautiful. If we chose no, he could send >Jesus. You mean he could send himself? The interesting thing is He knew he was going to send Himself before he even created us. >>>In any case, we aren't simply beasts who are destined to operate in fixed >>>instinctual patterns. We can, and should, supress those impulses that harm >>>others. Better still would be to reach a state where damaging instincts don't >>>arise; a laudable goal, but not terribly realistic. Still, it gives something >>>to aim for. >>Who created "instincts."? > >Results of the fall? I disagree. God is the author of life, and life, by studying nature, we know is pretty much governed by a natural kind of software. Nature works in a certain way, and by suggesting this, your are essentially saying the Natural World and all the beasts, and natural wonders, and the whole system is an inadvertant creation of mankind, not God. I prefer to see it as a fall INTO the natural order, but that natural order exsits the way God created it. And what about the curiousity that prompted Adam and Eve, to taste the "fruit" of knowledge. Is this desire to learn and know various things, a trait that God himself possesses since he created us in His image? Did he give us "curiosity" or did we create it? >>I agree that we aren't simply beasts, but >>beasts with a God given consicous-awareness, a soul, if you will. Still >>the bio programming that is built into us, our nature, is not something >>we invented. That we struggle against our nature is a indication that >>we are striving for a higher order, an order that transcends the limited >>natural world. > >Sounds good to me. We realize our present sinful nature & strive to act in the >ways God wanted us to act. >But here's the problem: our 'nature' makes us act in extremely unnatural ways >when you compare us with the animal world. What other animal fouls its own >nest? Destroys others of its kind for no good reason? I realize some animals >band into groups & attack other groups, but if they had the intelligent means >to work out their difficulties and didn't, what excuse would they have? good point. I believe what you really want to say is that our nature makes us act in unGodly ways. As for your next question, a dog is another animal that fouls its own nest. A dog will s**t all over the same yard it plays in. If you really examine our reasons for acting in barbaric ways, you can see that they are the same as animals. Instincts. To survive, eat, live, reproduce, keep warm. We attempt to address, fulfill our needs, as dicated by nature. The difference between us and animals, is, we have the awareness, consciousness, sense of morality, to see that we can make choices, and do things differently. Part of us, or spiritual part is above nature, and comes from God, and can recognize that these animals are acting on lower levels, and do not have the capacity for self awareness that we do. Unfortunately for us, the dilemma is we are also bound by our nature. When one animal feels its food supply is threatened by another animal, it can kill the other animal with nary a thought or regret. It did what it had to do. When we feel our food supply threatened, we can't do as animals do, because our spirit knows its wrong, and yet at the SAME TIME, we are driven by the same needs as animals, and feel the same kind of suffering and pain that they do when these needs aren't meet, or our sources of food, and shelter are taken away by other "life forms." >>>Ironically, the Taoists seem to be the ones who have caught on to >>>this the best. >> >>Whats so ironic about that? Is this a plug for Taoism? > >My apologies. I didn't mean to offend. No offense taken. I was just wondering if you, as a Christian felt, that Taoism is a good thing. >Incidentally, I'm interested to know if Buddhism has helped you to completely >avoid sinning. If so, I'm in the wrong religion. >While anything that helps you to reduce the number of sins you commit is all >well and good, do you really think you should be relying on it totally? No more so than you're religion has helped you to competely stop sinning. But Buddhism isn't my religion, and if I relied on it totally, I wouldn't be here in this newsgroup. I'm here because I still feel I need Christ, and while I need Christ, it is up to me to resist sin in its many forms, out of love for God. By embracing paths, methods, and ideas that are found in Eastern philosophy and religious thought, I am able to focus inward on my heart, and also seek first the Kingdom. Buddhist practice is really about tearing yourself away from the world. At least in my case, I do it for God. And if I sin less because of it, like you said, it is well and good. >> >>So they saved themselves? > >No more than a book saves itself from getting wet when someone brings it insid But a book dosen't have free will. Now if the book shouted "save me" ... >>Have you ever entertained a temptation, >>but resisted it because you "feared" God? Are you certain that you >>did so only because you're grateful to God for saving you, and not >>because deep inside you feared the consequences of disobeying God. > >I can't recall ever having this problem, but it's possible. In any case, I >see it as a sin. kind of like a dirty rag, right? >I don't think your Christian friends are feeding you Biblical Christianity. >Christianity by definition is a state of being in which you don't have to worry >about Hell because Jesus has already gone in your place and won. yeah, thats fundamentalists for you. :-) Thanks for putting up with me. -- -jrossi@jato.jpl.nasa.gov "Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils -ames!elroy!jato!jrossi is still choosing evil." -Cptn. Trips **********************STANDARD DISCLAIMER******************************