Questions for Christians

[X-Christian]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.
2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

[Bust Nak]

Free means the ability to choose without coercion between two opposites. IF we cannot choose we are not free, therefore a free will has the ability to choose evil at any time.

If you know this, then why have you insisted time and time again, that God appearing to us directly to convince us of his existence here on Earth, or giving us proof back when we were still spirits, would violate our freewill? We can still chose whether to worship him without coercion, it would just be completely obvious which is the better option out of two opposites.

You are talking about earth so I can safely say that I never ever said what you wrote, neither once nor time and time again BECAUSE I do not believe humans have a free will !!! and that I have written over and over.

No free will at all? I thought you said certain knowledge kills freewill, and no freewill means no love and that's why God couldn't just proof his words are true. You think there is freewill in heaven even when we have certain knowledge that disobeying God is a bad idea. I am saying that's contradictory.

I contend that GOD does not prove HIS existence to the world in these days because 1. the world would stop acting naturally and would mitigate their evil and (falsely) worship YHWH to hide their evil to ensure the postponement of the judgment day is not broken and 2. HE DID prove HIS divinity and power by the creation of the physical universe yet those under HIS wrath repressed that proof from their conscious minds for their love for sin as Romans 1:20+ I suppose once was enough to prove their rejection of HIM is so total they will not even believe their eyes.

But you just said here is no freewill on Earth? What good would proving his exist do in this existence?

Ummm, reassurance of what??? I am quite lost. Again.

Of God's perfection. Why couldn't God convince us of his perfection in pre-existence?

Only at the time before we settled upon the option we most desired, only before our choice was finalized, could proof destroy our ability to make THAT ONE choice by a free will decision. After the choice was finalized nothing can change our decision...it is what we decided. Those who chose for GOD kept their free will and those who rejected HIM lost it to the addicting enslavement of evil.

So stick to pre-existence. Why didn't God gave us proof about the consequence of our choices so we would not ever settle on the choice of evil, while still having the option to choose evil when we were still spirits?

Those sinful elect on earth have a will just as enslaved to sin as any demon, but by the process of our redemption and rebirth, our wills are freed from the addiction to evil and made free again. Since choices about HIS deity and power and the nature of heaven and hell are finished, proof about these things has no bearing upon the other decisions we will and do make by our free will.

I might be mistaken, I am pretty sure you said having proof destroys freewill. I am sure enough that I am willing to dig through your history to find a quote, if you deny you said it.

You seem to be thinking of free will is like a stick, once broken always broken but the only thing I know of that can destroy free will forever is to choose to become eternally enslaved by evil in which case the proof you were wrong about YHWH has no effect anyway as Romans 1 insists.

If free will is broken at point X, then how could one choose to have it repaired at a point after X?

We seem to have quite a different understanding of the pre-earth reality...

Okay, let me recap what my impression of pre-earth is from reading your post.

We existed as spirit. We had freewill. We were given a choice to make, accept or reject God. We had no certain knowledge that what we are told is the truth or lies. We had to make an uninformed decision based on our desire to trust God. Those that don't trust God, (group A) are doomed to hell. Group B trusts God but not fully, disagree with the punishment of group A. Group C trusts God fully. Group A and B are put on Earth so B could see that A deserves hell.

Looks like you are saying group B's choice is not finalised? If so then surely there is freewill on Earth, at least for B.

[arian]

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

Evolution.

God cursed the Devil into a snake, then the sucker grew legs and here he is back up again causing trouble. Just ask the New Pope, he'll tell you all about it; God creates, (or curses, it looks like) .. then evolution takes over. So don't blame God, blame Mother Nature! And it's your fault too, if you would have stayed a Christian, you would have never asked this question or you wouldn't have stayed a Christian for long.

Oh wow, .. see, I told you; X-Christian.

[arian]

[Replying to post 6 by Divine Insight]

You are exactly right. Lots of good points made. The problem I'm finding with debating Christians is how hard it is to get them to engage in a serious debate without them continually using scriptures to try to show evidence of what they believe.

Isn't that like saying: "The problem I'm finding with debating BB-Evolutionists is how hard it is to get them to engage in a serious debate without them continually using their BB-Evolution books on Cave paintings, on fossils, or like Darwin's book On the Origin of Species" to try to show evidence of what they believe."

Then when you ask them why they believe in the Bible they just say the Bible says to.

Yeah, it's a good idea to refer back to any self-help Book, especially one like the Bible.

It makes no sense. If Zeus were to come down in the flesh and show the whole world that he was actually God than Christians would still close their eyes and ears off and be too stubborn to accept it and just keep believing in Jesus

Well I don't know about others, but for me it would depend what Zeus had to say, and do throughout his stay with us, right? I mean from what I know of Zeus, I doubt I would give him a minute of my time. I'd just wait till he came out on YouTube.

I am not saying Zeus is real, I am an atheist, that was just an example that I used. I don't want Christians to start bombing me with emails and calling me stupid for believing that Zeus is real.

But Zeus IS real, as is the goddess Athena, so real matter of fact that God is jealous of them. People don't build great big Temples to things that are not real. People made them up, and it becomes real. They carry them around, they pray to them, sacrifice their children to them, and these gods just stand there, they neither hear nor speak like wood/stone statues normally do, but does that matter to them? No.

Now go to Mecca, bring a stool and a loudspeaker, and when the Muslims start their circle of walk, yell through your loudspeaker: "Can I have your attention please, .. Allah is Not Real!" and see how "real" the Arabs there think he is?

[arian]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him.

This is an extremely good point, and it goes much deeper than this.

Let me give you two examples:

1. This God is said to know what he's doing and even have a "Master Plan". However, in the story of the Great Flood the Bible proclaims that God had repented that he had ever created mankind.

This can only suggest that God was not expecting this. How could this have been part of his original plan if he was repenting that he had ever created mankind? If God has a Master Plan then when it came time to drown out the humans with a Great Flood he should have been elated. He should have screamed "Eureka! My plan is going along precisely as I had planned". But no the Bible doesn't have him doing this. Instead it has God repenting that he had ever created mankind in the first place.

Boy, God sure sounds a little like us, don't He? He gets angry, sad, happy, delighted and starts rewarding people, then when they turn against Him and start worshipping other gods he gets jealous (King Solomon) and punishes us (the flood). Then when He goes a little overboard in His punishment, He repents, .. just like us. Maybe we were created in His image??

So why try to re-create Him in our fallen state image? Why don't you see what you can learn about God instead of being so hell-bent on destroying His awesomeness, and end up blaspheming His Holy Spirit.

Man D.I., with your knowledge of the Bible, and your unique intellect that goes beyond your regular Christian religious-mentality, your understanding of the spiritual, .. brother you and I could really describe God from both observing the world around us including ourselves, and interpreting the Bible as God meant it to be interpreted where eventually no one could deny God, .. no one, not with any honesty anyways.

I mean yeah, .. people can deny anything, even the asphalt as it comes crashing towards them at 120mph after they jumped off of a high-rise.

The Bible is nothing more than very poorly thought-out superstitious fables. In fact, they clearly weren't thought-out at all.

OR, .. you're just looking at it at face value, how the religious interpret it and not looking/searching deeper into it. But hey, "do as though wilt" D.I. that's what free will is, being able to deny even the undeniable.

2. A second point on this one is that if this God had even the remotes clue about how humans might think then he should have known that I would reject the crucifixion of his demigod Son to pay for my sins before he ever came up with that immoral plan. He also should have been able to recognize precisely why I would necessarily need to reject this as being immoral.

See, that's what I mean DI, you're always trying to create God in your fallen-image. It's like: "If I could just minimize God down to my size, with my faults and weaknesses, I wouldn't look so bad in comparison." Matter of fact you outright demonize God.

His plan is good, only He could have come up with such a perfect plan, even though it grieved Him so. So it's not that you don't want to accept Him, but are you worthy of such a God who has sacrificed so much for you? That's the question!?

[liamconnor]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.
2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

Apologies. I stopped reading after the first sentence.

1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him

BEFORE time began???

"BEFORE" is a temporal description.

You picture God as standing at point a, looking across to point z, which has not happened YET. But of course, that entire situation presumes God is IN time.

Your entire OP is based on a naive philosophy of God and time.

I suggest reading about this stuff.

[Claire Evans]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.

I believe we all have a chance in death to know the truth of Jesus. If we are to believe in a fair God, shouldn't this be the case? You can't be sent to hell because you didn't know Jesus because you never heard of Him.

Yes, I believe you still have a choice. God will know beforehand if one chooses Him or not but that still doesn't mean we don't have a choice. We look at things in a linear manner because we have finite minds. I subscribe to Einsteins's theory that time is an illusion and the past, present and future are happening at the same time.

http://everythingforever.com/einstein.htm

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

The creation story is based on the creation story of the Sumerian text. It didn't really happen so it's a moot point.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/sum/sum05.htm


For argument's sake, should one believe everything literally in the OT as infallible, then you'd have very good points. It makes out that God flip flops.

[Claire Evans]

[Replying to post 3 by ttruscott]

If Adam sinned, us as well, because of free will then did God take away our Free Will in Heaven? If we have free will in heaven then we will be able to sin. And to argue that we won't want to sin in heaven means that God took away the desire of anything I have and stripped me of my free will. So the other argument is that if we don't have free will then Adam could only do what he did because he was predestined to do it. Sin is a byproduct of free will.

I believe that free will only existed because of Satan's presence which was always here. Without evil in the world, there would be no need for free will as one can't choose something that doesn't exist. Therefore how can one choose evil in heaven? Free will is not being stripped. It just doesn't exist in heaven because there is no evil.

If God was intelligent he would have sent Jesus over to China that were intelligent and could read and write at the time.

Buddhism was the Chinese religion back 2000 years ago. Buddhists don't believe in God so Jesus would not have gotten far claiming to be the Son of God.

[arian]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.

I believe we all have a chance in death to know the truth of Jesus. If we are to believe in a fair God, shouldn't this be the case? You can't be sent to hell because you didn't know Jesus because you never heard of Him.

Yes, I believe you still have a choice. God will know beforehand if one chooses Him or not but that still doesn't mean we don't have a choice. We look at things in a linear manner because we have finite minds. I subscribe to Einsteins's theory that time is an illusion and the past, present and future are happening at the same time.

http://everythingforever.com/einstein.htm

From the above web site: "What is still not quite resolved in modern physics is how to properly combine Quantum theory with Einstein's Relativity Theory. It appears evident that time is purely a direction in space but how then do we explain the uncertainty of quantum mechanics? Why does it appear that God plays dice with the world. The two theories, each having been proven by their usefulness, do of course tell the same story about this one universe, but we just haven't learned yet to hear the story right. The best modern theory going is probably the No Boundary Proposal, put fourth by Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle. This theory introduces a second reference of time which has been inappropriately named Imaginary time. Hawking, writes of the no boundary proposal, "The universe would be completely self contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.""

It's impossible to make the universe out to be God, because God is both Infinite and Eternal and the universe is finite. Every "thing" is finite, but God, and our mind is Infinite, and soon as we think up something, that becomes "finite".

I believe Einstein knew there was a problem with time, only he couldn't wrap his mind around the absolute "Infinite", .. or the actual existence of "nothing" which is a created "thing" as anything else is, a no-thing, that is what it is, something with absolutely no value, it is there, but does not add or take away from any-"thing" it is next to. It keeps "things" separate, in their original created state.

It is amazing to me how these great minds in history would limit their "infinite minds" to such small muscle as their 3 lb. finite brain!?

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

The creation story is based on the creation story of the Sumerian text. It didn't really happen so it's a moot point.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/sum/sum05.htm

For argument's sake, should one believe everything literally in the OT as infallible, then you'd have very good points. It makes out that God flip flops.

Two things, .. either the OT was written by a bunch of Joseph Smiths, or it was influenced by our Infinite, Eternal Creative Mind/Spirit God "I Am". From what I have seen, I say the latter, and I don't understand how anyone could see God "flip-flopping" in the OT, .. or the New?

Now I do see just by the evidence of the 40,000 different Christian Denominations that man tends to flip-flop. When they don't understand something in the Bible, they make something up and split from the group. One blind faction leaves the other blind faction, and instead of understanding it, they try to justify this by saying: "God flip-flops"

Well of course, it couldn't be us right? 40,000 tries, surely it's Gods fault.

[ttruscott]

Free means the ability to choose without coercion between two opposites. IF we cannot choose we are not free, therefore a free will has the ability to choose evil at any time.

If you know this, then why have you insisted time and time again, that God appearing to us directly to convince us of his existence here on Earth, or giving us proof back when we were still spirits, would violate our freewill? We can still chose whether to worship him without coercion, it would just be completely obvious which is the better option out of two opposites.

You are talking about earth so I can safely say that I never ever said what you wrote, neither once nor time and time again BECAUSE I do not believe humans have a free will !!! and that I have written over and over.

No free will at all? I thought you said certain knowledge kills freewill, and no freewill means no love and that's why God couldn't just proof his words are true. You think there is freewill in heaven even when we have certain knowledge that disobeying God is a bad idea. I am saying that's contradictory.

I contend that GOD does not prove HIS existence to the world in these days because 1. the world would stop acting naturally and would mitigate their evil and (falsely) worship YHWH to hide their evil to ensure the postponement of the judgment day is not broken and 2. HE DID prove HIS divinity and power by the creation of the physical universe yet those under HIS wrath repressed that proof from their conscious minds for their love for sin as Romans 1:20+ I suppose once was enough to prove their rejection of HIM is so total they will not even believe their eyes.

But you just said here is no freewill on Earth? What good would proving his exist do in this existence?

Wow, what a mess. Nothing said about pre-earth applies to earth or vice versa.

Pre-Earth:
We choose according to our desires. The proof of GOD's divinity ONLY destroys our free will about one question: do we want to spend eternity with YHWH as our GOD in a loving marriage or not? Free will is not a thing that can be broken; it is a situation by which our choices are forced. You can obviously therefore have a free will about a choice that is not forced at the same time you have no free will about a choice that IS being forced, because we make many choices between many things all the time.

On Earth:
We follow our desires. When we became evil by our own free will choice pre-earth, unable to fulfill the heavenly marriage, we became enslaved to sin, that is, addicted to it and that addiction sways every desire towards evil so sin is always chosen at least in part. Being addicted to sin therefore taints every moral decision we make but not the innocuous ones that have no effect upon our moral lives such as which socks do I want to wear.

Our human choices, our ordinary choices outside of our moral choices, are predetermined by our genetics, the family and cultural values we were brought up in and our personal experiences all of which force our thinking and desires into a narrow spectrum of choice such that to have a free will in this situation can only mean to conform to our human situation.

When a person becomes a believer, repents and is sanctified, his addiction to evil is cured and his free moral will is renewed even though still bound by the human situation. Thus within our conformity to our humanness, we may have a freedom to choose morally, unencumbered by an addiction to evil, and a moral will is more important to GOD than our human bondage. When we are morally holy, that is perfectly in accord with GOD's nature, then we are heaven ready because we will leave behind the encumbrance (and controlling nature) of our humanness upon our death.

[ttruscott]

Why couldn't God convince us of his perfection in pre-existence?

...Why didn't God gave us proof about the consequence of our choices so we would not ever settle on the choice of evil, while still having the option to choose evil when we were still spirits?

Again? It just doesn't stick with you does it... A will free from coercion and constraints must be able to choose either for or against each option of the choice or it is not by free will.

If convince us means to offer proof for HIS perfection or for the consequences of our choice BEFORE WE CHOSE then HE would be coercing our choice to only accept HIM and to reject the consequences of rejecting HIM but it would not be by a true choice as we were forced to go HIS way whether we wanted ot do so or not as

who could go against the proven perfections of GOD and who could go for the proven consequence of hell by rejecting HIM? At this time, in this place, making this decision about HIS deity and our marriage to HIM, the proof of HIS divinity and power and the proof of the results of our choices could not be shown or it would destroy our ability to make the decision about this matter (this matter only) by our free will as our desires would not be our own anymore but forced upon us by these proofs.