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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (253408)	6/19/2014 11:06:34 PM
From: Alex MG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541035

no one here believes in your type of god Katelew to say that jewish holocaust victims are "blessed" because they died horrible deaths and therefore will get extra treats in heaven is not the idea of a god that i would worship... in fact i would tell that kind of god to go F himself nothing personal

To: Katelew who wrote (253408)	6/19/2014 11:53:36 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541035

<<<<<a heavenly reward system of some kind based on a balance sheet of good and not so good behaviors...>>>>> Let me preface my question with the disclosure that I am an Agnostic. Just in case. That and because I struggle with the question of where everything came from in the first place. .........So am I covered? If being an Agnostic is not good enough, then when did God give us the ability to reason - to be able to think this stuff through on our own? To think through the idea of evolution and thus dismiss creationism for instance.

To: Katelew who wrote (253408)

6/20/2014 12:53:36 PM

From: koan

Respond to of 541035

How do you know all of this stuff?

I would think a god would prefer people who wanted proof and so make his role and ideas clear to us; as opposed to leaving it up to each persons imagination.

And what about the other 10,000 religions. Where do they fit into the scheme of things? And I would think that is the problem with leaving it up to each person imagination.

Shelves of books have been written about the question of God allowing evil in the world. The short answer is simply this. God gives man free agency. He could, if he wanted, make himself visible and scare us into submission. Instead he remains invisible and remote which means we have to seek him out first. Being given free agency, we have to choose good behavior or bad behavior. Or good, better, and best behavior or bad, worse, or downright evil behavior.

You once said something like this: Why doesn't God just give me proof? I would then go to church every week and so on. It just doesn't work that way. He doesn't bonk us over the head and intimidate us into being good. Think about your own kids. Do you want them to be frightened, sniveling little neurotics or do you want them to be confident and creative companions. By inference, it seems as though God is like us in this way.

It's because of free agency that God does allow evil to happen and maybe even a Satanic supernatural entity to exist. Without that, we would be good by default. The question then becomes what is the point of this arrangement? Lots of possibilities---escape karma, escape reincarnation, a heavenly reward system of some kind based on a balance sheet of good and not so good behaviors might be some. I like to think that those individuals who had a whole lot of evil dumped on them, such as Jewish folk under Nazism, have special rewards in store.

It's because of free agency that prayers asking God to change other people won't work. Praying for those in the ME to stop killing, for example, would be pretty fruitless because all those people have free agency, too.
Similarly, asking God to "protect us from evil" may be pretty fruitless. If God were to stop a murderer from attacking me, God would be violating that murderer's free agency.

Hope this helps. :)