Yeah sorry there is no internal consistency here for me, I do thank you for trying in a honest way.
God created everything including free will and what it means to have it.
God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
Basically for me the buck stops with God, yet he seems to blame us if we stray, why? Is there something outside of God where evil comes from? Who created that?
Again I as programmer cannot blame the program and punish it for its emergent behavior based on the code I wrote that responds to input and makes decisions. The fault is mine especially if I also created the computer and the universe in which it runs, I either change the program or accept its behavior, punishment and blame would just be playing a silly game with myself.
Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
> Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
That is the exact opposite of what I am saying. God does follow his logic, including his logic that people remain free of his own coercion.
> God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
No one is 'blaming' you. You have internalized your own notion of the Christian God and are arguing against it.
God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Rather one is punished by his own sin. Here's an example. I am raising my children in an upper-middle class lifestyle. They will be educated well and raised to understand how to live well. If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
The same is true of God. When we reject God, by rejecting his instructions on how to live life, we punish ourselves. Should you refuse God and rebuke him, he is not going to force you into his plan for eternal life. Isn't that what this whole thing was about? Free will? Well here's the ultimate example. If you don't follow God and corrupt your own soul, you will torment yourself when you see the perfection of God. Have you read the Christmas Carol? Scrooge is not tormented by the spirits. Rather seeing his own behavior in comparison to the good behavior of those around them is enough to indict him in his own mind. So too is it on earth. There is no coercion. No spirit is going to come down and force you to behave.
You can choose joy, or you can choose death. As a Christian, I evangelize because I see what it has done in my own life. When I see others who have gone through similar sufferings as myself (not going to get into this) deal with what life has dealt them and they seem upset, I want to share with them the good news of the gospel and the joy that is to be found in conforming with God's will. No one is going to force you and no one is going to smite you down with lightning. Christianity utterly rejects the notion of karma or that an individual sin leads to individual destitution (book of Job puts this one to rest). The only person who will punish you is yourself when you don't follow the will of God, just as those who refuse to follow the rule of physics and decide they can fly off tall buildings have no one 'punishing' them but themselves. To a Christian, the rule of life prescribed by Christianity is similar to living our life in accord with the rules of physics. There is no difference, since both have the same source, and the laws regarding sin are manifest and obvious to those undertaking the study of the natural world.
>God does follow his logic, including his logic that people remain free of his own coercion.
Again this makes no sense, he created everything, the rules of the universe, how our minds operate, there is nothing free from his coercion unless you are saying there is something he didn't create?
>God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Genesis 3:13
>To the woman he said,
>“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
>Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
>To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
>“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
That sure sounds like blame and punishment to me and thats just the very beginning.
>If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
You did not design your children or the universe in which they live, God however supposedly did, there is no other place for blame to go. He's is the alpha and the omega, you as a parent are not, there are many outside influences that can be blamed including your children's choices since you did not design their brain, you are only an influence on them among many.
God created everything including free will and what it means to have it.
God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
Basically for me the buck stops with God, yet he seems to blame us if we stray, why? Is there something outside of God where evil comes from? Who created that?
Again I as programmer cannot blame the program and punish it for its emergent behavior based on the code I wrote that responds to input and makes decisions. The fault is mine especially if I also created the computer and the universe in which it runs, I either change the program or accept its behavior, punishment and blame would just be playing a silly game with myself.
Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.