For reference, my lady, Cold Wind is a powerful nature spirit in Caldari folklore and the Way of the Winds. He’s not a creator god; that would be the Maker, but the Maker didn’t really stick around after creating the world and isn’t very relevant usually unless maybe you’re close to death (in the Tea Maker ceremony, for example, which basically asks the Maker’s opinion as to whether you should live or die).
In other words Mr. Thorne is messing with you, probably out of annoyance with being proselytized at.
Well, I have no reason to listen to someone like that anyway, I don’t know why I let him rope me into it in the first place. At least there are a few decent people here to converse with, such as yourself. Let’s get this conversation back on track.
To respond to what you said earlier, before we were so rudely interrupted, I suppose I do understand what you’re saying there. In that situation, I can see how someone would choose defiance. But that doesn’t matter all that much to me, because God truly is benevolent, and kind, and loving. He cares for his children and he wants the best for all of us. It isn’t as harsh as you describe at all, it really is as simple as allowing him into your heart.
Yeah, that’s the thing… Your God claims control of everything, claims to have created everything, and sends out prophets to deliver inerrant (if cryptic) prophecies.
So far, is any of that something you disagree with?
Ok, so working from the presumption that the claims are accurate, then we can establish:
God has control of everything.
God created everything.
God grants inerrant prophecy.
These three things are our basis, and you’re ok with them. Again, if I’m wrong about that, let me know.
So, if God grants inerrant prophecy, that means God knows what will happen. There’s no limited window indicated, so we can take it that God has always known how the entirety of time plays out. Is this still something you’d consider accurate?
And God both has perfect control over things, and created everything.
Which means when God created everything, God had perfect control over the starting conditions, and knew how everything would play out1. God knew how it would play out given the starting conditions that the universe actually had, and God also knew how it would have played out if God had decided Hydrogen would normally have 1 proton and 50 neutrons.
Still sound right?
1. Let’s sidestep the issue of what that means for Free Will, and say that even if God knew all of the choices people would make, those choices were still theirs. Also, Shoosh, Miz.
Ok. So this means that God, fully in control of the starting conditions, with perfect predictive knowledge, chose to create a universe where people would reject him.
He chose to create a universe where, according to Amarr Scripture, everyone but the Amarr escaping to Athra would reject him, and be damned for all eternity. As well as the majority of the New Eden Cluster at every point in its existence so far. Trillions upon trillions of human beings, damned for all time, many of them having lived and died without ever having the opportunity to even know about God, because they lived during the time when their worlds were cut off from the outside until they rediscovered spaceflight.
All of them damned, because God chose that.
He didn’t have to create the universe with the conditions he did. He’s got perfect control, right? So he could have created a universe where things play out just a little differently, where the majority of humanity wouldn’t choose to reject him. Where the majority of human souls wouldn’t be damned for all time.
He could have. But he didn’t.
He chose to set up the dominos so that he’d be inflicting eternal pain and suffering—incomprehensible levels of cruelty—on uncountably many trillions of souls.
I was on my sixth paragraph of a response to your thesis (dispensing with Theological aspects) because I have had similar thoughts. I’ll just shorthand it now as being that because we have power and will our beliefs can be made true or effectively true and the Universe can be made to comply with what might initially have been erroneous beliefs.
That’s not an entirely accurate summation but it will do for my purpose here.
That purpose being to say why I didn’t finish writing it. I saw an enticing chance for some intellectual pollination. However, I then thought about the subject matter and where it could lead, I thought about who did and would participate, I thought about how hard they would be willing to argue and how hard I would be.
That was when I noticed the tripwire. And I had lunch instead.
I’m not going to play pretend with you. You’re far too interesting of an IGS poster for that. Throughout the entire OP, I foresaw what the thread would hold and I went on anyway. The tripwire wasn’t the original intent of course, but I can’t pretend I didn’t know nor had a certain joyful anticipation in the darkest recesses of my heart.
Watching it unfold precisely as most realized it would is equal parts amusement and disappointment, but I will rightfully shoulder the blame for that.
I think I can imagine the gist of your six paragraphs though, as the summary rather resonates with my own lines of thought albeit in a slightly less drug-fueled way. Let us both just sit back and enjoy a fine meal and play out the discourse as it could have been, in our own little imaginary realities. It’s probably going to go better that way, as I suspect I could probably not quite keep up with you on that subject.
The Idama teach that there is another way, that the only true freedom lies in escaping the cycle of death and rebirth and the path there leads through a withdrawal from worldly concerns such as those you rage against. This path is difficult to find and follow but, then again, perhaps I have not looked hard enough.
“Even if God knew all of the choices people would make, those choices were still theirs.”
As you have already established, humans have free will and every decision they make is their own. No one is forced to deny God, especially despite overwhelming evidence in the case of Mizhara. What happens to your soul is up to you. It is your decision.
Is that love? Yes. We were given the freedom to make our own decisions, even if we make the wrong one.
But why force that decision in the first place? Why should there be a wrong decision? There doesn’t have to be. That’s up to God. There’s a school of thought that likens God and sin to parenting, that God letting Man make the wrong choice is like a parent letting their child make mistakes so they can learn.
But in the case of parenting, the punishment step, the discipline meted out as a corrective measure, is just that: a corrective measure. You get grounded, yelled at, whatever, and then effectively get told ‘do better next time’.
But there’s no ‘next time’ after eternal torment. That’s it. You screw up, you’re done. There’s no corrective value to it, because there’ll be no opportunity to do better next time. Parenting the way God handles things would mean ‘oh, you screwed up? Well, I guess you need to be executed now.’
And even the ‘you’re still free to decide’ argument doesn’t address the trillions who never had the chance to decide otherwise. Why doom them? Why should someone living on a world where there are no teachings about God, and haven’t been for centures, and won’t be for centuries to come, be damned for a rejection they never chose?
There is a wrong decision because to actively choose to deny God is a grave sin. A good person is someone who loves and respects God, and lives by His way.
As for those who don’t yet know God, that’s what the Amarr are here for. Spreading The Word to all who may listen is our burden to bare. Why else do you think I still post on the IGS, despite the overwhelming hate that gets tossed my way? My purpose is, as it always has been, to educate the lost and help them find their way.
But why? Why does one of the decisions have to be wrong? Why does God choose to condemn most of humanity to eternal torment when he doesn’t have to? He could, for example, pull them up into an afterlife, bap them on the nose, and say ‘DO BETTER’, then send them back for another go-round.
I don’t think a slap on the wrist and another lifetime is a good way of addressing repulsive acts of sin. But it’s not for us to speculate, we couldn’t even begin to understand how God makes his decisions, nor is it right for us to criticise Him. He is far greater than all of us.
