Fine tuning

@kellyjay said
Traps are for defeating lazy people.

If you are depending on a trap, you have defeated yourself.

Chess Fundamentals. There is a reason why this is the title of Capablanca's best known work.

Fundamental mastery > puny, ill-advised traps.

@suzianne said
How do you think Creation happened? In six 24 hour days by God just "poof"ing things into existence, fully formed? Or perhaps there was a creation process whereby the universe slowly built up over time, guided slowly and carefully by the hand of God?

Perhaps the more probable scenario is your guess that "the universe was slowly built up over time."

It sounds reasonable, as God had to create time first, in order to build the universe over it. I suppose time served as a foundation on which to slowly build the physical universe. Additionally, God needed some time to import all that matter and energy from other places, to put it all into our space which had absolutely nothing in it to begin with.

Therefore, as you posit, God could not have simply "poofed" everything into existence.

Do we have any reliable time estimates on how long God had already existed before He slowly and carefully decided to build for Himself a physical universe?

@suzianne said
If you are depending on a trap, you have defeated yourself.

Chess Fundamentals. There is a reason why this is the title of Capablanca's best known work.

Fundamental mastery > puny, ill-advised traps.

I don’t depend on them but I don’t mind allowing who I am playing take the bait.

@suzianne said
I never said it was unguided. This was God's tool, remember.

There has to be a mechanism whereby it appears to have happened on its own, without God. But I never said it was unguided. It certainly looks unguided, and that's the important bit.

We were given free will to believe, or not to believe. It's all on us. We're not given the answers to the test, and ...[text shortened]... ed, or blame God for not giving us the answer straight out. Free will, man. That is what faith IS.

It doesn’t look unguided it looks like a outstanding design in decay.

@kellyjay said
I don’t depend on them but I don’t mind allowing who I am playing take the bait.

Traps are the Devil's main go-to tools. A successful trap needs to be adorned with tempting objects, which will attract the victim to it. A trap also needs to be well camouflaged for the more weary ones. The ones who have been forewarned are the ones who fall for it the most, since the forewarning was part of the plan for setting up the trap all along. Everlasting life is certainly tempting, especially when offered free, for the taking.

How to GRACEfully setup a tender trap. BEWARE! When the salesman is offering the product for free there must be something "fishy" about it. It's like the charitable fisherman offering fish nice juicy worms, free for the taking. No strings attached?

YouTube

@pettytalk said
Traps are the Devil's main go-to tools. A successful trap needs to be adorned with tempting objects, which will attract the victim to it. A trap also needs to be well camouflaged for the more weary ones. The ones who have been forewarned are the ones who fall for it the most, since the forewarning was part of the plan for setting up the trap all along. Everlasting life is c ...[text shortened]... uicy worms, free for the taking. No strings attached?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_vbhEqsDM

True which is why pleasure destroys more people’s lives than pain.

@kellyjay said
True which is why pleasure destroys more people’s lives than pain.

A wise man once said that love is a mixture of pleasure and pain.

Are pleasure and pain evil?

Is not the promise of an eternal life without pain, tears, and death a most pleasurable one? And the promise is made even sweeter than honey by being offered free, through grace. Why work if you will get paid just the same as those who do? Even Jesus did not go that far, as in his parable one had to work to get paid. All the workers got paid the same, whether they had worked 8 hours or just one hour. But the point that gets overlooked is that they all had to work. Jesus did not pay (Grace) them just for standing around in the town's square.

If you want to get into the Kingdom you have to work for it, more or less. So the last will be first, and the first will be last, which will be based on more or less the work we do as detailed in the parable of Matthew 25:31-46.

Matthew 20:1-16 The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Come now, don't tell me Paul was not a good salesman of pleasure? He stopped being a pursuing hunter of new Christians, and became the greatest trapper of all time. A smooth operator which made for himself the greatest sheep costume any bad wolf could want. Free Grace is the greatest lure a wolf can use to trap sheep, and also any sheep in the making.

Yes, pleasure and pain can sometimes easily overcome common sense. Our Jimi here was one of those, where the pleasure and pressure of success and fame overwhelmed him to the point of drug addiction and overdosing to ease the pain of trying to cope with such strong emotions, prematurely destroying his physical life. And we were deprived of the pleasure of many more years of his God-given musical talent.

YouTube

@pettytalk said
A wise man once said that love is a mixture of pleasure and pain.

Are pleasure and pain evil?

Is not the promise of an eternal life without pain, tears, and death a most pleasurable one? And the promise is made even sweeter than honey by being offered free, through grace. Why work if you will get paid just the same as those who do? Even Jesus did not go that far, a ...[text shortened]... many more years of his God-given musical talent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

People do a lot of things to pleasure themselves, eating, drinking, sex, pornography, drugs, extreme experiences, and even watching or participating in the pain or pleasure others experience. The love of the world and those that love God focus is on different things, one God, the other anything else.

Focusing on God we still get the pleasures in this life properly lived out, while making anything in the world the focus we lose it all in the end.

@kellyjay said
People do a lot of things to pleasure themselves, eating, drinking, sex, pornography, drugs, extreme experiences, and even watching or participating in the pain or pleasure others experience. The love of the world and those that love God focus is on different things, one God, the other anything else.

Focusing on God we still get the pleasures in this life properly lived out, while making anything in the world the focus we lose it all in the end.

How do you focus on God? Do you know where to look, and who this God really is, provided He even exists?

I suppose you mean focusing on selling everything you own in this world and giving all the proceeds to the poor, thereby transferring your earthly treasures of pleasure and pain to God's heaven?

@pettytalk said
How do you focus on God? Do you know where to look, and who this God really is, provided He even exists?

Are you a Christian PettyTalk?

@pettytalk said
How do you focus on God? Do you know where to look, and who this God really is, provided He even exists?

I suppose you mean focusing on selling everything you own in this world and giving all the proceeds to the poor, thereby transferring your earthly treasures of pleasure and pain to God's heaven?

In the entire history of the world 🌍 one rose from the dead and remains alive. He was written about before He came so there are those historical documents. Then more history with several more books written by eye witnesses including with their disciples testimonies, also those who met the risen Lord later on.

Each leaving historical evidence pointing towards Christ, from the same time and place. They wrote about Him, in different times and places in different languages and all of those documents were copied and shared around the world making them available for comparison so no one could control the text.

Then through time His followers impact the whole world, from human morality to how we track time. All because this One’s life who should not have even been a footnote in history left a lasting impression on all humanity, was God in human form Jesus Christ.

Why should we know anything about Him? Prophets foretold of His coming, a life that one would show up, with and both a human and divine nature. The Word of God incarnate, only way to God to be redeemed, our propitiation and Savior Jesus Christ the Lord.

If you don’t know Him, then you need to.

@kellyjay said
Each leaving historical evidence pointing towards Christ, from the same time and place. They wrote about Him, in different times and places in different languages and all of those documents were copied and shared around the world making them available for comparison so no one could control the text.

Good grief kellyjay.

The texts in the bible are not “evidence”.

And they have all been “controlled” changed and modified to suit.

You really need to stop making assertions like this as it just makes you look silly. And I say this as a Christian myself.

@divegeester said
Good grief kellyjay.

The texts in the bible are not “evidence”.

And they have all been “controlled” changed and modified to suit.

You really need to stop making assertions like this as it just makes you look silly. And I say this as a Christian myself.

Liar

@kellyjay said
Liar

You do realise how ineffective a retort this is to the points I made, don’t you?

@kellyjay said
Liar

I’m not a liar; in what way do think I’m lying?