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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (79656)	5/23/2000 2:07:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, it is a bit inelegant. It is a popular tale, a heroic tale, a tale of rescue and derring- do. You are, though, not quite getting the thrust. The Dragon is Death, and the Brave Prince vanquished it! ("On the third day he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father"). That is ultimately what the Good News (the gospel) is, as it says in the Mass: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!" No longer need men fear death, for he has conquered it.......

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (79656)	5/23/2000 2:09:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

One of the BIG problems with Christianity is the problem of suffering and evil. Let's take a hypothetical- A child is tortured to death by an adult- it's happened, we've all read about it. The Child has free will to resist but not the capacity, the torturer is given free will by God to choose to torture(to allow him to torture? There's a problem here if the victims lack capacity to resist what does THEIR free will matter?). NOW, if the child is NOT a believer in Christian theology where does that child's soul go? And if the torturer truly repents and accepts the love of Jesus Christ does HE get to go to heaven? Seems like maybe yes. Eeeew. Pretty pukey. I'd rather believe in nothing than believe in a God that COULD stop evil but doesn't because he wants to give US the opportunity to be perpetrators and victims. There's something wrong with a creator that wants to play that game (at least as far as the victims are concerned, there is) Ah dogma.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (79656)	5/23/2000 4:16:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I just stumbled on the edit: If man is a responsible creature, there is no problem that I can see. In fact, it is generally accepted that God has "contracted" His activity to make room for freedom of action among his creatures..... By definition, God's justice cannot be corrupted into anything. Vengeance is not wrong because it "gets someone back", but because it is disproportionate. The only "cognitive dissonance" is inescapable: as Rabbi Akivah said, everything is foreseen, and yet free- will is given. That is because God is outside of time, something we cannot imagine. Even our most abstract thoughts are based on our experience, which is inherently spatio- temporal..... Again,I find I am losing you at the end. But that is okay, these things are always tricky.......