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But what I'm asking is why would he create the devil knowing the eventually he would turn on him. but further more, there was a great battle that took place where lucifer is cast down to earth. Well why was he cast down? Why not destroyed then and there. Was lucifer too powerful at that point for god to destroy since The devil had deceived some of the angels in heaven? Why would he throw this very serious threat to the earth with his creations knowing of his deceptive abilities?
Your question is a good one. I suggest is it just a reformulation of the problem of evil. They tell us:
1) God is good.
2) God knows everything, even the future
3) God is all, powerful.
But then they tell us that God made Lucifer...
God says His ways are past finding out so we only know in part now. We will know as we are known when we die and meet Him face to face, but I can give you what I believe having read and fully trust in every word God says. He is my Friend. I believe that God uses the enemy for His purposes and after He is finished with them, He will destroy them for hell was created for them not us. The problem is that many people don't believe anything is wrong with them personally, they think it is the "other guy" they see it in everybody else but themselves. Everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else, just watch the news for two seconds. Sin separates us from God so the first thing God needs to do is show us that we have a problem personally. Most people don't realize they have been born from their mother already tweaked because of sin. I didn't know this, I thought it was everyone else too until God showed me personally I had a problem. We see little kids fighting for toys or being mean to each other because they want that toy, adults are the same way. This is all the sin virus in us from Adam and Eve. I work with kids and when I talk to them, they rarely blame themselves, they will justify why they did what they did almost every time and this is natural messed up behavior. Those children are usually crying and miserable because the ones who are the most self focused are the most miserable. This is why I know the devil is very miserable. So I believe God is using the enemy tempt us by using our own "bug" inside of us that sways to his way of thinking so that we will do things that will cause us to see that we have a problem and not the other guy. God is very smart, the wisest man in the world begins where God's foolishness starts. We can trust our Creator but He can't help those who don't know they are sick. Jesus said, "I came seek and to save those who are lost." God uses the enemy for our good, but one day it will be over and we will see the devil and his angels thrown into the lake of fire and personally I can't wait to see it. I hate them, I love people because they are the victims of the same deceiving serpent Adam and Eve dealt with in their garden. He deceived me for YEARS and now that my eyes are open I have never been more free! I am alive and I have no fear of death. I want to stay as long as I can to let people know what God has shown me by His wonderful Holy Spirit! Jesus is real but you have to have your own encounter with Him.
Why is it that when people cause each other pain it is called sin, but when god causes people pain it is holy justice?
This seems like a double standard to me. What purpose could having a double standard possibly serve god?
Sometimes people cause each other pain and it isn't sin, and God cannot sin so if He causes pain it is for a good reason. Sin is anything that keeps us out of fellowship with God. He is Light, there is no darkness in Him at all. God is holy and just. Sin causes people pain. People can make a choice but they can't always choose the consequence. I believe that satan himself, wishes God didn't give him a free will choice especially since Jesus didn't die for his sin. I am sure he wishes he could have been created a robot.
I don't think causing pain can be reasoned. Causing another person pain is at its core an unreasonable action, regardless of who inflicts it.
Mitch, It can be reasoned if the person causing you pain is saving you from worse pain. Like immunizations, or a surgery. Or someone tells you the truth, but it hurt for the moment but gave you wisdom because of it. Sometimes the truth hurts but I would rather have a honest doctor. This is what I meant when I said it isn't always sin when a person causes someone pain.
And what about damnation to hell? Quite literally - by some depictions - burning a soul alive, for eternity. Can you think of an earthly example where burning someone alive, for all of time (if somehow that were possible), would be a rational decision? Is this justice?
With regard to clinicians, it's their duty to do their best to alleviate pain, whenever they can. And such could be the case for all of us. There can be suffering in healing; there is much suffering in life. Part of what we do as compassionate humans is do our best to alleviate suffering.
But there's something else lurking in the background of your comment here. An unspoken phrase: "It's for your own good." As though god were administering medicine, and the suffering were a simple side effect. This I could reason, were there not examples of the doctor specifically prescribing misery, and pain: the intention is vengeance. Not always salvation. Sometimes, simple wrath.
I reject the "for your own good" argument on the basis of three basic principles:
1) The statement presumes that my vision for my life can be superseded by someone else's expectations of me.
2) That it is provided, through this sentence, to reduce my expression - and thereby my humanity.
3) And also, that it is now permissible to cause me distress - or pain - against my will, to achieve someone else's goals.
Dehumanization of the person is the prerequisite to providing pain, and injury the climax of the dehumanization process. This is something I choose not to support. You could too.
"God cannot sin so if He causes pain it is for a good reason"
...and you know this with the absolute certainty that you express in your posts?
How? He told you, personally, right? Do you not see that it is your own ego you are "talking" too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j8ZMMuu7MU
Ronda - "He made us so He knows how we work but because the sin virus"
Ronda - "Lucifer was the devil's name before sin was found in him"
So if we suspend disbelief (and accept as fact that sin exists, and the stories in the bible are true); who created the 'sin virus'?
Well God did of course!
"The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." (Proverbs 16:4)
Yes, God created Lucifer and sin was found in him because he had the choice not to obey God, that is what sin is. I agree, this was why He clearly said, "If you eat of it, you will die" Also in Proverbs 16:4, I believe that God is speaking of the "wicked" being the devil and his angels because we don't wrestle against "flesh and blood". He did make all things for Himself and that is why He knows how we work perfectly and He is not willing that any should perish but all be saved. He loves you Nyarlathotep
Ronda - "He did make all things for Himself"
which includes sin and evil...God is the source of evil, according to your mythology.
Yes, God made everything. Choose life or death. Good or evil. It is a choice until we die.
Your god made everything? Prove it.
One day, He will.
You prove it. You are the one making all these fantastic assertions.
Clearly, you lack faith.
"God created Lucifer and sin was found in him because he had the choice not to obey God"
I thought it was humans who were given free will, not the angels?
Um, we should refrain from calling Satan, Lucifer, as that is not biblically correct.
Ronda is either deliberately missing the point of the arguments presented to her, or simply cannot fathom something that lies outside of her steadfast belief.
You're being presented with a dilemma that exists with the god figure that you purport to believe in. That quandary being you either have a being who is all-knowing and KNEW the outcome of everything before it occurred, and continued to do so despite this information, OR you have a being who perhaps truly cares for each of us, but had no idea what would happen and was therefore powerless to prevent it, and is then not all-knowing or all-powerful. Either of these stances counter the god character you're trying your hardest to sell us. God is omnibenevolent but not omniscient or omnipotent, or it is omniscient and omnipotent but therefore not omnibenevolent. In light of our current existence, it's readily apparent that it is impossible for it to be both.
You're forgetting we're talking about god. It's not omnibenevolent, omniscient, or omnipotent... it's all three. Or any of them, at any time. Whatever, and whenever, it chooses. It's all powerful, all merciful, all vengeful - all whatever you want it to be. The point is that it is "all", which is to say, you are to feel helpless before it, and to submit utterly unto it.
A Muslim friend once told me the Muslim equivalent of 'servant' is 'Abd' - or slave. The relationship is meant to be one of complete subjugation. So when you debate a faithful, you are not arguing reason. Rather, you are arguing someone who thinks to lose faith would result in horrible death. A sort of celestial Stockholm Syndrome.
In that sense, it is bit of an uneven argument: what do you have to fear by losing the debate? Nothing. The only problem, then, is demonstrating that they have nothing to lose either. Only, maybe, something to gain.
My suspicion is that the Devil is a convenient enemy the Abrahamic Religion founders created in order to blame problems on. He was created as a unifying force that all believer could hate, hatred being a great unifer of people.
Can't have a good bronze-age fiction story without a protagonist and antagonist.
Well if god was real and created the devil and all the suffering and allows it even though he has acknowledged he could stop it, he'd still be god. Just not an omnibenevolent god. It's like if a doctor went to a village of 1000 people, healed only 10, threw away the antidote, and watched the other 990 people die. It's sick really. If that is god, he might love us. but just as toys that worship him. I hate that. Or I would if he was real. Good thing he isn't. Or any god for that matter.
Good point.
I have asked people before, who are certain that god healed them and that's why they made it through their terminal condition: Why didn't god heal the child or children with cancer, who was laying in the rooms next door in that hospital?
How the hell can someone even presume to answer a question like that, with a straight face and not feel like the biggest hypocrite of all time?
"Well, ahem, you see... god wanted me to continue my job as a tax auditor..."
Let me put it this way why doesn't bat man just kill the joker?
i don't know and I don't care
Our Creator did not create the "devil," but created Lucifer who, through volition, opted to covet the authority and dominion of our Creator thereby introducing sin into the Eternal Realm...this is the very reason our Creator created Time, Earth, mankind, to deal w/sin by love.
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"Our Creator did not create the "devil," but created Lucifer who, through volition, opted to covet the authority and dominion of our Creator"
you believe that your stupid god is omnipotent, and omniscient right? how come he didn't foresee that lucy will opted to covet the authority and dominion of your dumb-ass creator? ..
then suddenly quasi goes to a state of....*seizure with a twist of delirium...and all kinds of muscle twitching thing..*
"then everybody did the face palm overload"
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Our? He's not my creator, as I don't believe your deity is any more real than all the rest, and that goes for the devil as well, whatever you want to call it.
Please demonstrate some objective evidence for a creator.
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