I'm a believer, don't get me wrong but i just want to know if god is omipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and all that why would he create us knowing what would transpire? If he knew things would happen before they happen why did he create man only to watch many end up in hell. Another question is if we have free will then why didn't he ask if we wanted to be born in the first place.
I don't expect anyone to have answers to any of these...it's just something i've actually been thinking about for a long time now.
Perhaps you're addressing the question form the wrong direction. Unless God has spoken to you personally everything you know about him is based on what you've been told. Maybe some of the things you've been told are wrong.
The problem of evil (which is basically what you're talking about) goes away very nicely if you assume that God is supremely powerful and supremely knowledgeable rather than omnipotent and omniscience. It also goes away if you assume God can make mistakes.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
Re: Why did God create us knowing we would sin?
I am LDS, here is our perspective.
We believe that this life is a preparatory period. We are here to learn to control ourselves in a physical form. The degree to which we learn this is the degree to which we are given additional power and responsibility in Heaven. We believe that learning cannot be forced and that the opportunity to sin is necessary for the learning that is needed. We believe that the fact of sin is the reason for Christ's Atonement. It allows for justice to be satisfied and mercy to be given in regards to our sins. Our sins will also inform us of what we are capable of in eternity. Sometimes the worst punishment for someone is giving them an assignment that they cannot handle.
LDS belief holds that it is extremely difficult to go to an actual hell. The only method of going to hell is to know God and willfully rebel against Him. Everyone goes to heaven, it is just a question of how close to a Christlike life one is willing to live. The closer to that type of life you live, the more power and responsibility you will be given. For some, this might be a hell, in that they would like more power but are unwilling to live the life that would allow such. We do believe that everyone will be content with their place though, so I don't know if there will be personal hells like this or not. But the lowest positions in heaven are compared to this life, so maybe.
LDS beliefs hold that we existed in heaven as spirits prior to this mortal life. We believe we were a part of a council in heaven that discussed this life and that we had the option of not coming here. We believe that Satan and his followers did not want to go through this life as it is, and they became "devils" by standing against it. If a person has existed in this life, we believe they chose to do so.
You'll have to excuse Symmetric Chaos, he's one of those people who dismiss problems rather than try to find solutions to them.
Either way. If God modeled and conditioned man to not sin then he'd rob him of his free will. The reason he put the tree in the garden in the first place was to give man the option to sin, because if there's no option to deny God's love then it would be forced, and forced love isn't love, it's rape.
If there was only good choices and guidance amongst the human race then the whole purpose of "free will" would be pointless.
The human race might as well be a race of obedient drones or a hive mind.
The question of why God would bother to create the physical plane with beings making their own choices when the inevitable happened is a good one. Especially when God is all knowing.
And I fall back onto my original comment. I see God as a source of knowledge not some babysitter.
i get that god couldn't take away the option to sin without taking away free will, and maybe giving the option guarantees that people will sin.
but my issue with this is he didn't exactly make us neutral towards sinning. if conditioning us not to sin is antithetical to free will then what is giving us a sex drive and then a commandment not to commit adultery? in that case we're almost conditioned to sin.. especially if you take the definition of adultery that jesus gave. and yet in other cases like murder most of us seem to have a strong inclination not to commit that sin. are either of these examples of people being robbed of their free will?
I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure in regards to this thread's topic being the Catholic/Christian teachings. That it outlines the difference between the level of sins.
The 10 commandments are pretty harsh. There are levels of acceptance in regards to them.
I don't believe in your God and the cultist determinations of what is right and wrong in Christianity.
I believe in one thing, sentient evolution. The emergence and transcendence of intelligent beings. Once we became self-aware we became God manifest, a collection of the quantum energy that is existence and therefore is God, able to contemplate itself and make it's will a reality by imagining a desirable probability and working backward from there with the ultimate goal of never-ending transcendence.
God created us so that He could exist.
__________________ "Compounding these trickster aspects, the Joker ethos is verbally explicated as such by his psychiatrist, who describes his madness as "super-sanity." Where "sanity" previously suggested acquiescence with cultural codes, the addition of "super" implies that this common "sanity" has been replaced by a superior form, in which perception and processing are completely ungoverned and unconstrained"
Last edited by KillaKassara on Mar 16th, 2013 at 06:15 PM
I never said it definitely wasn't a problem only that that we had to start by establishing that it was a problem. Jumping to a solution to a problem that might not exist (see that word back there "might", you can look it up if you like) is stupid because if it isn't a problem in the first place you'll just be deluding yourself no matter what you decide the answer.
Listen, son, I know being asked to think scares you, but that's okay because no one cares what you think anyway.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
IIRC, breaking any of the commandments is a mortal sin according to Catholics, while there are other grave albeit less serious sins called cardinal sins (I think eating meat on a Friday was/is one of them), and lesser, excusable sins are called venial sins, and I think that category includes minor things that are considered sinful but not done consciously or intentionally (nocturnal emissions may or may not apply). Again, this is all IIRC.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
I eat meat everyday, I fart and I burp, and I'm a selfish ******* who doesn't doing anything for anyone. That is something I'm putting and effort into changing, trying to be productive and altruistic, but to better myself and to achieve a true benign existence, not because I'm afraid of a Troll like the Trinity.
Catholics are savages for being so strict, that's too strict, take a long read of Analliese Michelle. The savages got called in by her primitve parents as she was developing sleep apnea, anemia, anorexia, her knees buckled, popped and snapped, her manic schizophrenia accelerated from the exorcism as the savages and primitives that were the Catholic Priests took her off her medication and began getting physical.
She weighed 68 pounds when she died, her last words were, "Mother, I'm scared."
I hate Christianity with a burning passion, and I recognize I'm biased and I try to hide my subconscious' analyses of religious people and their repetitive day-to-day rituals and their almost effort in building a defense against logic and reason as they close their eyes, put their hands up, and go into a pseudo-meditative state during Church lectures and singalongs. I have to bury that part some times.
__________________ "Compounding these trickster aspects, the Joker ethos is verbally explicated as such by his psychiatrist, who describes his madness as "super-sanity." Where "sanity" previously suggested acquiescence with cultural codes, the addition of "super" implies that this common "sanity" has been replaced by a superior form, in which perception and processing are completely ungoverned and unconstrained"
Last edited by KillaKassara on Mar 16th, 2013 at 07:17 PM
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