Fiona Harris wrote:
Not if your God has killed you and cancelled your free will.
Do not think of the innocent children and babies at all. You would not want to see how much of a prick your God really is.

Regards
DL

@Fiona,Is that all it means? We get to choose our attitude and nothing else? So our lives can be predetermined and we choose to be happy or angry about our lot in life?
The term 'freewill' means a lot more than that.

@DL O Liar
God allowing your tongue to spit lies doesn't mean God lies. You are not God.
Do you argue everything not written in the bible happened? The serpent said man would became as Gods and lied that is why it is written..

To Jer 4:10 & 20:7Hurts when you don't do your research and just shotgun 10 verses doesn't it? I like how andrew thanked you, clearly he didn't check the authenticity of your translation.

@Shawn,Because you show a different translation/interpretation means the other examples are faulty? What fallacy is this called?
You are right. I did not check these examples knowing there are several in the bible clearly stating God deceives. I thanked DL for his time and efforts.

If I show the original meaning and context according to the authors language and culture yes!!!
Its called the I did my homework and you didn't fallacy. DL's knowledge of scripture is next to zero I've never seen him discuss hebrew, greek, or context of ancient scipture
Well you "know" lies. Because your confusing free will meeting opportunity and deception. There aren't verses saying "God lies."
You will only find fallacious subjective arguments to this.

Andrew Gece wrote:
If you reduce it to its essence, it means exactly what it says: "the freedom to will". The fact that sometimes "the freedom to will" coincides with the "freedom to do or act in accordance with your will" is a bonus, since action is external and depends also on external circumstances. There are times when the only thing in which we have a free choice is our attitude.

Shawn wrote:
If the snake lied then so did your God as he confims it.

Have you even read Genesis?

To say that one who causes another to sin is also not guilty of sin shows how poor your morals are.
It is called being an accessory.

Regards
DL

@Shawn,
The scriptures you quote only show the inconsistencies in the bible about Gods' deceptions.
Please comment on the other verses DL quoted.

@DLNope, doesn't follow. You are asserting determinism worldview and I reject it. You can't disprove my worldview which is freewill therefore each person is responsible for their own actions.

@AndrewMy comments (on freewill and terminology in context) encompass the entire lot of verses he listed. However, it was an attempt at shotgunning. As for inconsistencies, that would only be true if they were taken out of context. So you saying they are inconstant and not giving a reason related to their actual intended context is simply a form of quote mining.

@Fiona

I do agree with this statement. However, I also think Christians are in danger of watering down the Gospel to the point where people do not understand the true gravity of sin. This was all I was saying, I disagree with using God hates the sin and loves the sinner, because it displaces the wight of guilt to the action and not the person. Someone who hears and believes this will say that God isn't mad at me just at what I did. But I know parents when their child does something wrong is not just mad at what they did, they are angry at their child and the child falls under the parents punishment and not their action.

But I wholeheartedly agree we must be careful in how we present it and that it takes the Spirit inside of you to fully grasp the depth of the cross, however we are commanded to spread the Gospel, not a watered down version. The Gospel is beautiful by itself and needs no sugar coating.

@Shawn,Please show how they are taken out of context.

@Bo

Wow completely wrong, not even close to be exact.
Let me ask you this, if someone physically assaulted you would he not receive proper punishment? Like maybe some jail time or community service?
Now lets say someone punched the president of the United States. If he didn't get killed on the spot he would spend a much much much longer time in jail than anyone who punched you or me.

Why? Because the person that he punched is higher up than you or I, he has more authority he is "superior" (only in position) to us. Now we are both finite beings and therefore the punishment that is due us is finite as well. But if we "punch" (sin against) God what is the just punishment? A slap on the wrist that we would recieve as a punishment for punching someone of low standing like myself. I think not. God is an eternal being, a holy, perfect, and righteous being and if we punch Him in the face the just punishment would necessarily have to be eternal, just as if we sin against a finite being our punishment is finite.

For God to be perfectly just there has to be a punishment, and the punishment is eternal, eternal death. But that's where Jesus comes in, He bore the sin and suffered the death. Because He was perfect and holy and righteous He was able to bear the sins of all.


As far as the OT goes, people were still under the wrath of God because Jesus had not come, it wasn't His time yet. So God displayed His wrath to those who were unfaithful, yes. But was it unjust? No of course not, to be honest He would have been perfectly just in destroying all of us, just as we would be completely just in turning in someone who physically assaulted us to the authorities. The fact that God provided a way out of this punishment is something to celebrate.

Yes God hates sin and the sinner, but God also loves the sinner. We must look at the cross, the gruesomeness of the cross displays His hatred of sin and sinners, the fact that Jesus came and died on the cross in the first place displays His love for the sinner.

God is far from sinister, he is holy. you are judging God using standards that you set forth, standars that you arrive to without grasping the implications of sin and the cross. When you make judgments about God without understanding sin and the Gospel, of course He sounds like a bad God, but when you see everything He has done and understand the implications of sin and the gospel, then you realize that your initial understanding of God was unintelligent and an unfair judgment.

DL, do you really believe atheists are more preoccupied with the suffering of the innocent than Christians? The whole Christianity centers around the problem of suffering. Its whole purpose is to bring hope and to alleviate suffering. It was Christians who created the first hospitals. It was Christian missionaries who selflessly offered their services to improve the health care, education and economical conditions of many disadvantaged countries. The statistics show that even in this day and age the financial contributions to religious charities exceed by far the contributions to other charitable organizations. All this is done in the name of Christ.

http://www.nps.gov/partnerships/fundraising_individuals_statistics.htm
Do you say that because you think God doesn't exist or because you believe He does and you are angry with Him?

@DL


Have you red Genesis? Have you read any scripture at all?

Romans 14 speaks to causing someone to stumble, and he says it is not good to do so, you should read that. (so please know scripture before you call into question the morality of it) and also James 1:13 says that God does not tempt, and in Hebrews as @Shawn has already pointed to it says that God doesn't lie.

So what you claim is uneducated. You should really read scripture more. God did not cause Satan, Adam, Eve, Me or you to sin that sir was wholly our choice.

Shawn wrote:

Ahh... the old "punching the President" analogy. Let me list all the ways this is wrong:

1) The President, nor our legal system, is, or has ever been said to be, perfectly forgiving. Which is it? is God perfectly just? Or perfectly forgiving?

2) The President is a moral man, imperfect, and subject to pain and death -- God is not. We don't punish people for saying bad things about the President -- not in this country at least. This is only in countries with dictators who thrive on the fear on the citizens.

3) God's eternity is irrelevant, the time we spend here on earth "sinning against God" does not seem to justify an eternity of suffering.
According to your belief (a literal Hell - far from most Christians), is that God created a system where about 80% of all those he claims to "love" will suffer for eternity. These were his rules, this is his game. By what standards, by what definition, can a being such as the one described be called anything but a monster?

Fiona Harris wrote:
Have a look at what all religions do with charitable donations and then tell me that churches have the poor at heart.



I hold no belief in your God thanks to how your people act.

Regards
DL

Brandon Howard wrote:
You are right. It is not good to cause someone to stumble and that is what God does. What he does is not good but evil.
To cause others to lie and thus sin. God sins.

As to your free will excuse.
God also has the free will that could go to not sinning by causing others to sin. He chooses to sin.


Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.

That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."

But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

Regards
DL

For one thing DL hasn't demonstrated to understand the context in the first place. He obviously did a search for the word "deceit" in the bible and copied and pasted the verses. He didn't even read the chapters. So how could he POSSIBLY claim to know the context. You are just charging me with random pointless tasks as a form of shotgunning. I debunked some and the rest didn't even say God lied.
Allowing someone to deceive others and telling a lie is confusing free will with lies.


Why are you trying to derail your own topic?

@DLThe bible doesn't say God forces them to lie it says he allows it. Very different. You have no understanding of the difference of allowing free will and force.

If I'm teaching someone and I allow them to make a mistake so I can teach them a lesson its not the same as me making a mistake.
Sinning is attempting to go against God's will so I don't even know if its possible for him to sin. This is illogical it assumes God is bound by the same laws as man.

Shawn wrote:
B S and you know it.

the Lord hath put a lying spirit.

Do you see allow written in that sentence or in any of the other quotes?

Regards
DL

@DL
Saying BS doesn't make what I said untrue. It just makes you seem irrational and petty.

God allowing satan into the mouths of his enemies prophets isn't the same as God lying. If God is sovereign everything that happens is allowed. You are arguing from silence.

Shawn wrote:
Again, you ignore your own word.

Nehemiah 13:18
Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city?

Jeremiah 19:15
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it,

Amo 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

You show with every post that you are out of your league with everyone that you are going against.
Learning is tough isn't it?

Regards
DL

@Bo


Ah the old, analogy isn't perfect argument. Of course no analogy is perfect when trying to explain a perfect God because nothing here is perfect, but the point of the analogy still stands. Higher authorities and higher positions require consequences that fit the crime.

And God has to be and is both perfectly just and perfectly forgiving. As perfectly just He cannot allow any sin to go unpunished, the punishment against an eternal God is an eternal death. This makes sense, just as a punishment against a man is a finite punishment. No sin goes unpunished, either it is punished on the cross or punished for eternity in separation from God. Jesus bore all of the sin of those who put their trust and faith in Him and repent from their sin and become a new creation by His saving grace. If that doesn't happen then you are not covered in the righteousness of Christ and do not fall under the perfect forgiveness of God. God's perfect forgiveness is founded in the cross, if we deny the cross God will continue to be perfectly just and our sin will be punished. The wages of sin is death.

And sure the sins on earth do not seem to justify an eternal punishment to you, but you are not holy, perfect, righteous, creator, beginning or end, etc. So the fact that it doesn't make sense to you, makes sense. God cannot be perfect and allow sin to go unpunished, its not possible. The punishment is eternal death, it is the consequence, just as the consequence for trusting in Christ alone for salvation is eternal life. God deals with eternity and is eternal, you are not nor am I so our judgment of punishment for wrongdoings is biased when not looking through the cross.

Yet again you do not understand the implications of sin and the cross, you are uninformed about what they truly mean.
The answer is He is both perfectly just and perfectly forgiving.

Yet again you throw the word Christian around to easily. Any true Christ Follower takes the Word of God as 100% truth therefore, they take the teachings of Jesus to be true, therefore they take the teachings about Hell to be true, period. Please do not associate the belief that there is no Hell with the Bible because the Bible clearly teaches that there is. And if someone denies the bible is the sovereign word of God, he is not operating wholly under the Christian belief because the perfectness of scripture is a part of it.

As far as the system goes, is it God's fault that we sin? No, therefore he is not a monster for punishing us He is just. The only way he could maintain His perfectness in His judgment was for Him to punish all sin, hence the existence of the cross and Hell. He did not have to send Jesus, but He did, He did not have to provide a way for anyone to be save, but He did. All we have to do is believe in Him, this doesn't sound like a monster to me sounds like a gracious God.

Preface: I don't mean for this to sound like a God-bashing post. What I am bashing, is the notion of the American Christian God (Blue-eyed Jesus of Love and forgiveness) with a fire and brimstone literal place of eternal torture.

Eternal death is not the same as eternal suffering as described in the NT -- gnashing of teeth, burning in flames, etc.

And don't forget the crime is important as well. A parking violation is not the same as chopping up kids. Yet apparently your god does not care if you chop up kids -- as long as you believe in his son afterwards. Then those, like Ghandi, go to Hell for their "crimes against God". We have a very different sense of justice -- let's just leave it at that.

And perfect forgiveness is pretty imperfect when it only applies to roughly 20% of the population. And personally, by my standards, forgiveness that comes with a price is not forgiveness -- it is a contract.

God wildcard. If you are going to play the God wildcard, why do you bother trying to make sense of all this? You try to explain it, then eventually get to a point where it don't even make sense to you, so you pull out the card. I am ok with a good mystery, and open to the idea that if such a god exists, we can't be expected to understand such a being, just don't try to justify the unjustifiable.

I take it you are yet another that think they have the Bible 100% figured out, and everyone else who interprets differently is wrong. There are many very smart people, very spiritual people, that don't agree with your view on Hell. Several on this board. I don't think they would appreciate your insistence that they are not really Christians.

Ultimately, yes. He created us this way. Ask yourself this, is anyone sinless (that is not also god)? How do our chances look at not being a sinner? Is this really something we have control over?