this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Church dilemma - knowing the will of God vs affirming that God's ways are inscrutable, According to convenience

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 42 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

Reminds me of the Epicurean Paradox:

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[–] Doctor_Satan@lemmy.world 34 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

If you read the Bible with a purely objective mind and come away thinking God is the good guy in the story, I have some serious questions about your morality and ethics.

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[–] CouncilOfFriends@slrpnk.net 11 points 10 hours ago

What’s the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan?

- George Carlin

https://youtu.be/PlzbFxYy08c

[–] WereCat@lemmy.world -1 points 4 hours ago

Exactly as Aizen planned

[–] FrostBlazer@lemm.ee 15 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (4 children)

I don’t think many Christians would actually argue for that first point tbh. It’s not something Biblically portrayed as one of God’s gifts. Free will is portrayed as something that was given conditionally, but taking from the tree of knowledge and specifically eating the fruit of knowledge is known as man’s first sin in the Bible.

I think it’s a bit of a metaphor for a parent wanting to shield their child from the harshness of reality, but as the sheltered child grows older they often want to know more about the outside world and in doing so become exposed to the cruelty. This was my own experience with religion growing up. A teacher of mine one day sat us down and pleaded the above with our class, as many of us grew to see through the veil of how reality looked.

In retrospect I think some things about the world make sense to not be told about, depending on one’s age. However, I think other things should never be hidden, have been hidden, or done in other cases.

Side note: I think the idea of God’s plan is for people to hold love for one another. Lots of people lose sight of what they are called to do and how they are to act though. They’re called to love their neighbor as their self, called to love their enemy, and called to forgive others for their transgressions. I personally think people are called to do good works in conjunction with holding faith, as people are called to act righteously in this life.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 8 points 10 hours ago

Don't worry, they don't read the Bible, and especially don't read the old testament.

They believe they have god given freedom of action

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[–] BigBenis@lemmy.world 19 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

You have the freedom to choose God or face an eternity of unimaginable suffering.

[–] dontbelasagne@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

No good god would make an unlasting punishment. if you have forever, then even Hitler, Dahmer would have enough time for a finite punishment. Even the worst people in the world don't deserve a unlasting punishment.

[–] Maeve@midwest.social 3 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

The Nicean Council excluded a bunch of books, and Jesus was Jewish. In kabbalah, you learn about reincarnation, and so why did people think Jesus and John were OT prophets? So karma isn't a punishment, but a teacher, you repeat lessons, which are scaffolded, until they are mastered. Well, why don't you remember past life lessons? Why aren't crib sheets allowed in exams? Is doing the right thing only for personal gain still the right thing? Then no one should be upset with billionaires for reversing dei. And Jesus said the whole law can be summed love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Not better than, not less than. And that the kingdom of heaven is within us. Also the fall of the morning star gave "the devil" the earth as his dominion. "Be in the world, not of it," and "be wise as serpents, innocent as doves," eg be neither boot nor doormat. Love you neighbor as yourself. Ha-Satan is the prosecutor, who freely comes and goes into heaven (where is the Kingdom?) who lists every reason (sin) you don't get to be there (schism of self). And a defending angel can list one redeeming quality and you're in. You passed that particular lesson set. Now you have a new set.

Also Jesus said he teaches in parables, don't take things so literally. Why wouldn't he want every student to understand? They're not on that lesson set, yet. Someone just learning division isn't ready for trig.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 27 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Did god not have the power to give us free will without also giving us evil?

  • Had the power but opted not to: god is himself some part evil

  • Didn't have the power, did the best he could with the tools he had: god is not omnipotent.

Pick one.

[–] Maeve@midwest.social 1 points 5 hours ago

Life isn't black and white. Also, Psalm 82: 6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. (Lucifer, for example)

[–] FrostBlazer@lemm.ee 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

I think it’s a misread to say it gave us evil. The garden is portrayed as being a paradise with a tree of knowledge. The man and the women, as they self-identified themselves to be, were both allowed agency to be themselves and be blessed without the burden of knowledge, so long as they did not eat the forbidden fruit. Both the man and the woman independently made the conscious decision to break the rule given to them to not eat the fruit of knowledge. The actual sin was both the man and woman breaking their covenant with God, through the eating of the fruit. My take on this is that story is meant to show that God can help you and will help you, but if you choose to go against his will you have the face the consequences of that decision on your own. However, you can still seek forgiveness for your decisions and even be forgiven, but this doesn’t magically put everything back to the way things were before.

The story is more or less a cultural device to explain good and evil from the perspective of the early Israelite society. The story itself is rippled throughout the Bible in this way: God gives instructions, the people follow the instructions at first but then grow complacent, bad things happen because people stop following God’s instructions, and then one of the leaders of the tribe of Israel steps in to help get people back on the right path of following God’s instructions.

I’ll add that functionally Genesis is three serparate creation stories that were pulled into one book. Culturally, the early Israelites borrowed some of the elements of other creation stories of their time seen in other cultures such as the Babylonians. The first creation story is the seven days, the second is what we know as the story Adam and Eve, and the third was the story of the great flood.

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

A major problem I've always had with that story is the fact that it is predicated on the fact that Adam and Eve acted disobediently by eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. But what is disobedience? Is disobedience a form of evil? To disobey God would be evil if it was done with knowledge, correct? How could Adam and Eve have possibly known that what they were doing was evil if they had no knowledge of such? Why would God set the situation up to necessitate that Adam and Eve would eventually disobey his wishes if they had no knowledge of good and evil, and therefore no knowledge of how their actions would have an impact or how their actions would be considered wrong. If a 2 year old disobeys their parents it's easy to brush off their behavior as just being ignorant, and Adam and Eve are effectively like the cosmic 2-year-old, totally incapable of understanding consequences, or righteousness, or disobedience. Fundamentally, the God that created the Garden of Eden must be evil because what he did is akin to me putting an infant in a room with a loaded bear trap and telling them not to touch it. They don't understand the consequences, nor do they really understand what commands mean. Is it really the baby's fault for getting caught in a bear trap if I am the one with superior agency and knowledge and I was the one that set the whole thing up in the first place? Who is really the evil one here?

God is often referred to as the Father, and if he is truly a father I would say that he fails miserably in that duty by the very fact that he put his children directly In harm's way. Yes, it is the responsibility of the parent to put obstacles in the way of their children so that they can grow, but at the same time it is also the responsibility to protect them from grievous harm, and clearly he didn't do this according to Genesis.

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

the third was the story of the great flood

And don't forget the really fun part, where you can actually still see the three flood stories smashed into one if you look at the sentences.

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[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 13 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Going by the Bible, it's both. He acted with malice and proved himself to not be omnipotent many times.

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[–] Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Did Calvin write this post?

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago

It was Hobbes who said...

"But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Nor can I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it."

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 2 points 5 hours ago

Only the right half. Arminius was responsible for the left.

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