religion.

Sunday 31 October 2010

A perfect God, continued Matt response.

Me
"There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible."

Matt
"While it's true that God, triune in nature, is lacking nothing in terms of community. He needs no one to fulfill Him in His perfection, and He needs no one to keep Him company. But that in no way means He cannot desire something. Do you need the albums you buy at the record store? Of course not. But you do desire them. Desire is not related to need. Need is related to need."





But isn't desire in it self a imperfection? a perfect being would not desire any thing? a perfect being would be content with what he had and would want for nothing else. so again a God that desires renders him imperfect, a Perfect God that desires is impossible. 


Me
"What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible."

Matt
"This is another false assumption. According the the Bible, evil existed before Eden. Evil was born in the heart of an angel, and that fallen angel deceived the first humans into sinning by disobeying God's commands. I believe most Christian theologians use the term "innocent" rather than "perfect" when speaking of the first humans."





If evil was born in the heart of an angle, then i have to assume that this perfect God created the angle capable of being evil, as nothing perfect can create something capable of being evil, so yet again, the idea of a perfect God is impossible. 


Me
"It does not matter how just, kind, and generous they have been with their fellow humans during their lifetime: if they do not accept the gospel of Jesus, they are condemned. No just God would ever judge a man by his beliefs rather than his actions."


Matt "The Bible teaches that the only punishment befitting the crime of sin is death. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9). Jesus came from Heaven as the only perfect sacrfice for sin. His death secured eternal forgiveness for those who would, by faith, believe so. Simply being good does not atone for sin, because sin can only be paid for through death. No sorrow, no penance can pay for sin. Only death. Our death or Christ's death. This is the clear teaching of the Bible."




But these people never had a chance, they had never even heard of the gospel? so from that logic they are dammed to eternal torment simply because they hadn't heard of the gospel? regardless of how good they have been to fellow people. this unfortunately leads me to believe that God, is just like us and is fickle and like all things has evil within him. Rendering him imperfect. 




im also introducing a new writer into the blog, his name is Jack and he will be making his own posts. 


i will mark my posts his my name- Harry and he will do the same with his. 


i look forward to your responses to these questions.  :) 


Harry 























3 comments:

  1. If a Christian was to tell a Muslim all of the faults of Islam without reading and understanding the entire Qu'ran, that Christian would be considered presumptuous and ignorant.

    If an agnostic was to tell a Christian all of the faults of Christianity without reading and understanding the entire Bible, that agnostic would be praised and intelligent.

    Now, I think you (Harry) have done an excellent job with most all of your logic, but I have seen one problem recurring throughout these posts. Excellent logic extended from a false premise will always lead to a false conclusion.

    First, you still misunderstand the concept of a desire. You seem to think that having a desire implies that there is a void within the desirer. This is always true of humans, but it is not true of the God of the Bible. His desire is very closely related to His will, His sovereign plan for His creation. God is not so foolish as to create and then ask, "Now what?"

    Furthermore, God is outside of time, so matters of sequence ("Now what?") or things such as "time before creation" cannot be fully understood by beings who are under the constraints of time.

    As far as angels go, God is their Creator as well, but the Bible tells us nothing of their creation. The Bible simply tells us that God (in three Persons) is the only eternal Being, and from that we determine that angels were created beings also. Beings in what Dawkins might describe as a parallel universe of which we are only sometimes aware.

    Back to the issue of unfairness in salvation/damnation. God's foreknowledge of the choices made by His creation is completely independent of His sovereign choice in predestination/election. Being "above" time, He does not have to make one choice and then another, a situation in which the choices will unavoidably effect each other. Instead, His decisions can be made independently, and, for our purposes, simultaneously (though that word still has a connotation of time).

    In closing, God has designed things so that He can only be found through faith. Logic can tell you there is a God, but logic and reason cannot bring you into a relationship with God. Those God knows through faith in Christ will receive His Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will then guide those into the truth. In other words, the truth of God will remain hidden to those who approach Him primarily with their heads instead of their hearts. (There is nothing wrong with learning about God. In fact, He desires that His creation would do that. But to think knowing about Him is the same as knowing Him is a mistake with eternal implications.)

    It will lead us outside the scope of what this blog is intended to cover, but I leave you with a few verses from the Bible:

    "Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become "fools" so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: 'He catches the wise in their craftiness'; [Job 5:13] and again, 'The LORD knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.' [Psalm 94:11]" (1 Corinthians 3:18-20)

    To fully understand God, and therefore to rightly discuss His perfection, you have to approach Him with your heart and not only with your mind. (Notice I did not say "without your mind." Faith is not a blind leap, but it does bridge a chasm that the mind is not equipped to cross.)

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  2. interesting debate I would love to cite you in some of my upcoming post. It will be a while before I get to that particular piece but I just wanted to let you know.

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