If you were God?

Originally posted by whodey
Perhaps his creation will have learned, at some point, the folly of sin and choose never to repeat such insanity.

Gotta sacrifice some ignorant people to teach the rest eh? Sounds like the kind of thing an omnipotent, loving God would do. Does that mean that Adam through no fault of his own was more likely to sin that someone born later? How come he got the shaft like that?

Originally posted by telerion
Why not teach them from the get go? Would it violate their free will to understand the folly of sin?

And if it does violate that free will, would that mean that once people learned the folly of sin as was suggested they someday might they would lose their free will in the learning process?

Originally posted by whodey
Correct, but it does not mean that everyone chooses to sin.

Sure, but at least some one must. This means then that your answer to my third question is that your free will choice to serve god is only free for you if some one elses chose to reject your god. If some one hadn't chose to reject your god, you could not have chosen to serve him. Is that what you believe?

Originally posted by whodey
Take for example communism. The US and the USSR were at odds philosophically in regards to communism. The US could have gotten into a war with the USSR and forceably prevented them from taking their own coarse and allowing them to attempt to make it work. We could then, after having stopped them, have educated them on the errors of their ways. However, th ...[text shortened]... would still have some yahoo's insisting that it could have worked had it been given a chance.

You still have plenty of people claiming that communism works. Frankly, there were many other more important considerations in the US not choosing to attack the USSR than simply trying to prove a point. Probably the most crucial of these was our uncertainty over the outcome of a nuclear war.

Your god is not like the US in the Cold War. I really don't think you analogy helps us understand anything in regards to my question.

Why don't you just answer without an analogy. Tell us why it would violate free will for your god to have made us with the condition that we understood the folly sin completely.

Originally posted by whodey
You would keep your child from being able ...

What is sometimes?

When I judged that it would do more harm than good (in a utilitarian sense) to the child to allow him to do what he wanted. For example, I think it would cause more suffering and limit pleasure more greatly if the child were allowed to jump in front of a car going 60+ mph than it would if I grabbed xym and kept xym from running on to the freeway.

Does one ever allow his child to mature and grow up?

Sure. When the kid's grown to adulthood (which would be Godhood in the analogy).

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I've always found it interesting how the pattern seems to be that all humans must sin unless they happen to also be God and human by choice instead of circumstance. Angels of course are not human.

The pattern is so amazingly pronounced; it's a mirror image of a universe in which free choice exists but no one sins. If free choice means people will s ...[text shortened]... mpossible for that human to sin because he was also God and God cannot sin by definition.

You are exactly right. Essentially what whodey must be saying is that his god willed for sin to exist. I mean it's the only logical conclusion from what he has said.

Originally posted by whodey
Correct, but it does not mean that everyone chooses to sin.

What human has ever chosen not to sin? I mean besides the one for whom it's logically impossible to be separate from God because he is God (Jesus).

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
And if it does violate that free will, would that mean that once people learned the folly of sin as was suggested they someday might they would lose their free will in the learning process?

Yes, in which case one must ask, "Is free will a necessary condition for a perfect universe?" It seems the xians would answer, "No."

Originally posted by whodey
Take for example communism. The US and the USSR were at odds philosophically in regards to communism. The US could have gotten into a war with the USSR and forceably prevented them from taking their own coarse and allowing them to attempt to make it work. We could then, after having stopped them, have educated them on the errors of their ways. However, th would still have some yahoo's insisting that it could have worked had it been given a chance.

Your analogy fails miserably. The US was never infinitely more powerful than the USSR. I bet if the US thought it could get away with it the nation would have invaded the USSR in a moment. Obviously the US felt and still feels that violence and other forms of coercion were and are perfectly acceptable ways to keep people from being Communist; look at Vietnam, Korea, the sanctions against Cuba and attempted assassinations of Castro by the US...look at how we chose to deal with Saddam, a minor dictator far from our shores, and the country he controlled: invasion followed by an attempt to force democracy on the country. We didn't invade the USSR because we didn't want to wipe out humanity in a fireball of nuclear explosions followed by biological weapons specifically designed to knock out the few survivors of the nuclear war; people who would have their immune systems suppressed due to radiation. This last was one of the USSR's little specialty tricks, though the US and her allies weren't too morally pure to refrain from making them ourselves (Great Britain made Gruinard Island in Scotland unihabitable for nearly 50 years due to biological weapons testing...no wonder the Irish, the Celtic cousins of the Scots, have always fought so hard to oppose the English when they tried their imperialistic thing on their next door neighbor). They had plans for what to do if all out nuclear war would break out; they'd hit us with smallpox and the only one of the two superpowers which would be left (though not exactly in good condition) would be them and not us, in theory anyway. Likewise we haven't invaded North Korea because Kim Jong Il is psychotic enough and well enough armed that we don't dare. Saddam was never much of a threat so we felt safe knocking out his government and giving another that we liked better to the nation he once governed. Despite his alleged attempts to manufacture WMDs his military power was fairly insignificant to the US. Being a secular dictator he didn't even have much access to that Middle Eastern military bogeyman - a united confederation of enraged Muslim zealots. His best WMDs were given to him by the US (anthrax, the bubonic plague) so we almost certainly had excellent protection against them.

Interestingly, all of the anthrax used in the 2001 mail attacks were invented in America by USAMRIID, the American military institute in charge of infectious disease.

Which is a better learning tool in regards to "proving" to all creation the fallacies regarding communism?

Given infinite power, just make sure everyone knows these fallacies directly without all the misery that comes from a Cold War and economic ruin.

If we had prevented the experiment from attempting to succeed, you would still have some yahoo's insisting that it could have worked had it been given a chance.

Communism still exists, whodey. Obviously there are still some such "yahoos" despite the US "allowing the government of the USSR to exercise it's free will" (ROFL!!!).

Originally posted by telerion
Sure, but at least some one must. This means then that your answer to my third question is that your free will choice to serve god is only free for you if some one elses chose to reject your god. If some one hadn't chose to reject your god, you could not have chosen to serve him. Is that what you believe?

All I am saying is that if you say creation truly has free will but does not exercise this freedom of choice, this freedom of choice is suspect. Regardless, I am free to choose to serve my God independent of what others do or do not do. I see that you are unable to rectify this in your mind, therefore, we will simply have to agree to disagree.

Originally posted by telerion
You are exactly right. Essentially what whodey must be saying is that his god willed for sin to exist. I mean it's the only logical conclusion from what he has said.

Incorrect. Sin is merely opposition to the will of God. Sin in and of itself, therefore, does not exist.

Originally posted by telerion
I agree and I don't know why your god didn't create the such a universe in the beginning either. I think "I don't know" is a fair response. At the same time, I think you can understand why I wouldn't find it very compelling.

Yes I can understand, but it doesn't alter anything as far as the way
things are though now does it? God allowed creation to be subjected
to this and we are going through a lot of pain and grief, much is
brought about by our own hands.
Kelly

Originally posted by telerion
Why don't you just answer without an analogy. Tell us why it would violate free will for your god to have made us with the condition that we understood the folly sin completely.[/b]

This is the lesson. Creation is finite. God is infinite. Therefore, the finite must trust in the infinite via faith. Faith is the only means in which the finite can embrace the infinite. We must trust God in matters that we do not understand or comprehend. We will never understand all matters completly. This will never change.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Your analogy fails miserably. The US was never infinitely more powerful than the USSR. I bet if the US thought it could get away with it the nation would have invaded the USSR in a moment. Obviously the US felt and still feels that violence and other forms of coercion were and are perfectly acceptable ways to keep people from being Communist; look at ...[text shortened]... e US "allowing the government of the USSR to exercise it's free will" (ROFL!!!).

Please do not pick my analogy to death. Take my analogy in the spirit for which it was given. I realize that it is not a perfect analogy. The analogy assumes the following: Communism fell because its mode of governing was and is faulty and once it was allowed to fail, no one could then argue it should remain a viable alternative. If it had not been allowed to fail, endless speculation would have persisted as to how it could have worked. This is the premise of my analogy.

Originally posted by whodey
All I am saying is that if you say creation truly has free will but does not exercise this freedom of choice, this freedom of choice is suspect. Regardless, I am free to choose to serve my God independent of what others do or do not do. I see that you are unable to rectify this in your mind, therefore, we will simply have to agree to disagree.

It's not about rectifying it in my mind; it's about a blatant contradiction in terms. The alternative universe contains only people who exercise their freedom of choice to serve you god. It is a real choice. It is no different than the choice believers make today.

If your choice to serve your god is independent of some one else's actions, then sin does not need to exist in order for people to choose your god. Therefore the alternative universe still remains viable.
Anyway, if you want to take a break from the discussion, that's cool.