Good atheists go to heaven. Bad Christians do not.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by CygnusZ
Then you accept my arguement?! You do realize acceptance of my argument is to reject christianity.

Either now you have a God who doesn't know everything or a God who isn't all powerful, or potentially a God who isn't good.

In addition, if God still knows everything that means by default that you have no free will.

No I do not accept your argumement, for out of evil will come good.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Loinburger, I only wish I had a better Bible with a complete index. I'm 22 years old and I still have my teen Bible. Pathetic...

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Cloud9
Loinburger, I only wish I had a better Bible with a complete index. I'm 22 years old and I still have my teen Bible. Pathetic...

Wait a minute. I take that back. I do have a Bible with a complete index. Found it buried under some stuff. Duh, how could I forgotten about it.

[CygnusZ]

Cloud9: Oh I see,then in your opinon the Holocaust was good, Jeffery Dahmer was good and Satan is good. If from evil comes good, then ultimatly that which we call evil is actually good! Excellent arguement. I'm going to go run over some children and do good for the world.

[CygnusZ]

It's not that the idea of evil is problematic to God, it's just problematic to Christianity. Basic christian doctrine dictates that God has three defining characteristics. He is:

a)All Powerful
b)All Knowing
c)All Good

As for free will... the arguement against free will is so strong that it was adopted by many churches. However, I do believe that at one point Jesus himself states that man has free will. I can't find the passage with the bible search, but he says that man has free will because he can make the choice to do good or the choice to do evil. Problem is, in conjunction with what we know about god, it's clear that the choice has already been made.

[monkspider]

Ah, but Cy! The fact that you consider certain things to be evil can be considered evidence of God's existence. Without God there are no objective morals. everything would be morally indifferent or nihlist. Friedrich Nietzsche, the great atheist of the last century who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life. I think that Friedrich Nietzsche was right. But we've got to be very careful here. The question here is not, "Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives?" I'm not claiming that we must. Nor is the question, "Can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God?" I think that we can. Rather, the question is, "If God does not exist, do objective moral values exist?" just don't see any reason to think that in the absence of God, the morality evolved by homo sapiens is objective. After all, if there is no God, then what's so special about human beings? They're just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on a infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time.

On the atheistic view, some action, say, rape, may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo. But that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really wrong. On the atheistic view, if you can escape the social consequences, there's nothing really wrong with your raping someone. Thus, without God there is no absolute right and wrong which imposes itself on our conscience.

But the fact is that objective moral values do exist, and we all know it. There's no more reason to deny the objective existence of moral values than to deny the objective reality of the physical world. Actions like rape, torture, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior. They're moral abominations. Even Ruse himself admits, "The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five." Some things are really wrong. Similarly, love, equality, and brotherhood are really good.

But if objective values cannot exist without God, and objective values do exist, then it follows logically and inescapably that God exists.

[Lincoln]

I don't know about the "all Good" part. To the believer he is "all good" but to his enemies he is an enemy. In fact he did quite a few things to his own people that were not very nice.

The problem is that people have tried to define God by forming a church doctrine. Some people never know the goodness of God. Some people think that these people will know his goodness after death. Others think that they will go to hell. God clearly says in the Bible that he hates certain people. He also says that he loves the world. In the end I do agree with cloud9. Just as a woman forgets the pain of childbirth when she looks at her newborn child so is it thought that many will forget the evil that they suffered when they see the final justice and the opressor becomes the opressed.

God, if he is all powerful and all knowing must have known that Hitler would rise up. There is no escaping that conclusion. The answer is either that God wanted Hitler to do what he did for a purpose or the free will of Hitler and his minions was ordained to run its course so that God could throw the offenders into hell and avenge the innocent that suffered because of that will to do evil.

Accusing God of being evil because evil happens on earth is like accusing a policeman of being evil because he does not sit in your living room night and day to keep you from doing anything bad.

[CygnusZ]

I dunno, you seem to use the argument that morality is determined by Sentiment which is a result of divine heritage. That is to say, that we are actually born with knowlege of certain things!

Surely, even reading this thread, you can see that one of the things that people struggle with is the bible. Many parts of the bible don't seem fair at all. Should we stone homosexuals? Are women only fit to stay at home? Should we slaughter animals to show our appreciation to God? These things make us cringe but yet if you believe in christianity they are true in the absolute. How come our in-born knowlege doesn't make us embrace these concepts?

And finally, as a wise man once said, if these ideas are innate why is it that children and idiots do not possess them?

[loinburger]

Thus, without God there is no absolute right and wrong which imposes itself on our conscience.

Don't confuse "objective morality" with "absolute morality."

Objective morality is simply morality that is justifiable -- one set of morals can be objectively superior or inferior to another with or without God. This doesn't mean that one set of morals is necessarily "perfect," merely that it is possible to objectively classify sets of morals as better or worse than one another.

Absolute morality is morality that is perfect, independent of time and space (i.e. the one set of perfect moral principles never changes). I'll agree that absolute morality requires the existence of God.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Thanks Lincoln. That's something like what I wanted to say.

[CygnusZ]

Now Lincoln, how can Hitler have free will if God knows everything?

[CygnusZ]

Besides, by that reasoning you used If I went out to murder people today it would serve the greater good. When you start believing that it becomes impossible to do evil. Thusly, if I kill babies and eat them, it is a good deed.

Mind you that I never said god was evil. Just that his being good and all knowing can't work together.

[Lincoln]

How do your children have free will if you know that they will do a certain thing? Why does foreknowledge mean that someone does not have free will?

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Why? Remember that there wasn't the standard of scholarship then there is today.

Who says there wasn't the same or even a better standard back then?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by CygnusZ
Just that his being good and all knowing can't work together.

Oh it can. Read this:

"Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified." --Romans 8:30

What this means:

God not only foreknew and predestined (v. 29), He also called believers through the preaching of the gospel message (2 Thess 2:14). This, however, is not the general call of the gospel to all people. If it were we would be forced to universalism, the view that everyone will be saved. Instead, those who are called by God have been foreknown, predestined, and justified. This call refers to the internal work of the Spirit in the hearts of God's elect to bring them to belief in Christ (see Acts 16:14). Being justified means being "declared righteous." Finally, God glorified. Though glorification is in the future, it is stated here in the past tense. Everyone then who was foreknown by God in eternity past has such a certain future that the apostle speaks of their glorification as already accomplished.

Sounds like God forsees that everyone can recieve salvation. And those that do, their future is predestined.