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The Nature And Relationship Of God And Creation


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The logical conclusion of creation Ex Nihilo IS Determinism.  That is exactly the argument I am making.

 

I want to make some clarifications concerning the second video.  Some will watch it and say that I am making the claim that randomness is the same as free will choices.  I am not making that claim at all.  In fact, I am making the opposite claim.  I claim that our choices result from our nature. 

 

God, for example, has free will.  Yet God will always make the correct moral choices, because of God's perfect nature and God's flawless characteristics.  We on the other hand are imperfect by nature, which is why we make immoral choices.

 

The point I am making in the second video with the six-sided cube illustration is this:

 

Even IF our choices had nothing to do with our created characteristics, in the scenario or Ex Nihilo, God would still be determining outcomes.  This is true because God decides which beings to create and which beings not to create out of nothing, all while knowing the outcomes before even deciding to create each being.

 

Then I move to a second point about God creating each of us, out of His own mind, with characteristics.  Each and every one of our characteristics were determined by God, which also would determine the outcomes because we will simply do that which is according to our nature, which God himself created.

 

-Stephen

 

Which is a false conclusion. Ex Nihilo doesn't teach this. 

 

I understand that is your argument, that its the logical conclusion to you. 

 

Your assumption is that God created us imperfect by nature, this also is false. 

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I am a convert to the LDS church.  I was agnostic in my teenage years and began investigating Mormonism while in college.  I was very skeptical of organized religion.  When approached by my religious family members, I would tell them,

 

"Why would God create me, and when I turn out to be defective or insufficient, He punishes me for not being good enough?  It is nonsense for God to punish me for being who and what God created me to be."

 

Unfortunately, those who I said this to had no good answers for this logical response.  . . . [sNIP]

 

I have to wonder whom you asked about your argument. Your argument simply ignores the key principle, and reality, of free agency. It also ignores the plan of salvation and the fact that in the pre-mortal life you agreed to come to Earth.  

 

God did not create you to be spiritually defective or insufficient. God created you to give you a chance to progress and to return to him. In the pre-mortal life, you agreed to come here and to experience mortality. You were anxious to do so, in fact. No one is tempted beyond what they can resist. God forces no one to heaven, and he does not force anyone to fail either. He does all he can, consistent with the eternal laws of justice and mercy and agency, to help us return to him. If you fail to qualify to return to Heavenly Father, it will be your fault, not anyone else's.

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We have a parallel past. I was raised Catholic and became an atheist while studying philosophy but then discovered William James and the process philosophers and realized that religion is a "valid" way of ordering our lives and viewing reality.

It is not an issue that God created you "insufficient", he creates you with an invitation to BECOME more than you are, to improve and overcome your nature, to leave behind the "natural man"

God is the Ideal Man. His very existence urges us to become better. If he "exists" no where but in our minds as a model for us to improve, he would be worthy of worship. If a myth, he would be a wonderful idea to drive us to become better humans- and that is why it is essential that he be conceived to be human. As an amorphous "substance" there is nothing there to encourage us to be better humans, but conceived as an actual, tangible and "human" being, everything changes.

Let's just keep that idea for a moment- that a human God is a "myth" which simply exists as a story to make us better.

If that is the case, what better way of making God anthropomorphic would there be than to invent the story of Christ- the God/Man? Perhaps the Father conceived as anthropomorphic is taken as a vague substance- still with Christ the story makes up the difference and completes the humanistic connection

But remember we are just speaking here of the IDEA of anthropomorphism and how it functions in our lives and how it is necessary for us to strive to become the best humans we can.

But I do not believe that- I believe that God is quite real and is literally our Father. and most importantly and I have a testimony that this is the case. Once God has told you that he not only exists, but that in fact the course you have chosen is His Will, you can never deny that it has happened.

It is as Joseph has said, I know that He knows that he has revealed himself to me- to deny that would be tantamount to denying my own existence. It would be like staring into the burning sun and denying that exists.

But that is the strength of anthropomorphism in belief as it may be for some humanists. Even on the level of God being a myth to make us better humans, the alleged myth works. I think that the history of anthropomorphic gods proves that such a concept is simply part of us as humans.

It is a belief we need to have. In humanism, this belief becomes an "atheism" for the god of substance and an elevation of the human to the level of a god.

That is the way I see secular humanism- as a religion which tacitly accepts an anthropomorphic god without acknowledging the religious nature of the belief.

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-without-God-Ronald-Dworkin/dp/0674726820

http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Religion-Gianni-Vattimo/dp/0231134959

Both of these highly influential books are written by secular humanist atheists.

Both of these books affirm in some sense the religious need for humans to have a conception of the Ideal Human. Essentially one could say that even as atheists they affirm the need for a belief in an anthropomorphic "god"

The idea is not going to go away.

This was a very thoughtful post. There are a couple things I am not sure I agree with but overall it is causing me to ponder. Thank you.

Edited by Teancum
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The nature of God as we LDS believe it is pretty unique.  We believe, for example, God the Father is a physical person.  This is very groundbreaking especially since God the Father is like no other person-God we've heard of.  There's no rivalries and affairs and imbalance. It's almost unthinkable at best to conceive of a human-like, perfect being.

 

That is one of the reasons that Jesus Christ came to Earth.  He came here to reveal the true nature of Deity.

 

-stephen

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Which is a false conclusion. Ex Nihilo doesn't teach this. 

 

I understand that is your argument, that its the logical conclusion to you. 

 

Your assumption is that God created us imperfect by nature, this also is false. 

 

You don't bother do address the logical arguments, the response from your side is always "We just believe that God created us Ex Nihilo .... AND with free will".  

 

You don't even bother to understand the points being made.

 

 

And , ... is your assumption that God created man "perfect" and infallible by nature?

 

Then why was man so easily deceived?  Why was man disobedient?  Why was man discontent with the lot God had given?

 

None of what we see points to the idea that man was created "perfect".  Quite the contrary.  When God created the physical creation, God said that his physical creation was "good".  But there is more to the story than that.

 

Here is how the argumentation plays out when applied to the story of Adam and Eve.

 

 

 

 

 

And I wrap up a few things with this one:

 

 

 

I believe it was Blake Ostler who said, and I am paraphrasing:  Defenders of Ex Nihilo use the Free Will Defense, "The Free Will defense assumes that God must create morally fallible creatures in order for them to be free.  However, creating Ex Nihilo, God could have created any kind of creature that is logically possible to create, including a morally infallible creature with free will."

 

 

 

 

-Stephen

Edited by stephenpurdy
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I take no position on compatibilism but I think you will find that it does solve the problem.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#MorRes

Theologians often get caught up in their own discipline, missing some of what is going on in philosophy.

 

 

Compatibilism DOES solve the problem, but only IF you reject Ex Nihilo creation.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Sorry, on another point .... Previously, I think I forgot to provide the quote on omnipresence, from Brigham Young. 

 

Here it is:   - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - -

 

"The great architect, manager and superintendent, controller and dictator who guides this work is out of sight to our natural eyes. He lives on another world; he is in another state of existence; ... God is considered to be everywhere present at the same moment; and the Psalmist says, “Whither shall I flee from thy presence?” [Psalm 139:7]. He is present with all his creations through his influence, through his government, spirit and power, but he himself is a personage of tabernacle, and we are made after his likeness (DBY, 22- 24).

 

 

-Stephen

Edited by stephenpurdy
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This was a very thoughtful post. There are a couple things I am not sure I agree with but overall it is causing me to ponder. Thank you.

Thanks- when I was a atheist, those were my beliefs.  I believed that we had ethical responsibilities AS human beings to become the best possible human we could become.  I tried to define what that would mean, and I saw family values as being PART of what it means to be "human" as reflecting the fact that without the family and civilization, the race would have died out.  I saw it as an evolutionary imperative that we be the "most civilized" that we  could possibly be.

 

I had nearly finished my Masters in philosophy from a secular university, after finishing all the coursework.  I was at a cross roads- I did not want to teach, and after reading Wittgenstein, I was convinced that philosophy was over, in the sense that there were no "real" philosophical problems any more- that they were all the result of linguistic confusion.  THAT was what Wittgenstein was all about.  I thought he was right.  I had pretty much given up on academic philosophy.

 

I saw the "Christ myth" as a personification of the idea that we should become "Christlike" meaning the best human we could possibly imagine.

 

Christ was a myth, but the embodiment of the gentle loving, perfectly ethical human who is willing to die for his race- the human race.  I saw this as the highest evolutionary plateau that we could achieve- to make civilization MORE IMPORTANT than our own personal lives.  Civilization itself was more important than the life of any one paltry human.

 

I saw civilization as the most important value, Culture, which defined us, as in itself worthy of "worship".  Since there was no god, WE were gods.  We created worlds out of practically nothing.  From flint tools to skyscrapers, we created our world through civilization and the interplay between us as organisms and the environment changed over time, as we CREATED our own environment, our own "worlds". 

 

We could exist at the North Pole because we created our own environments- a humanized reality heated to 70 degrees, with computers and television and all the comforts of home while outside the wind howled at perhaps 50 mph and 40 degrees below zero, or more.

 

We could go to the moon and take with us our comfortable, survivable environment, our created worlds which we created out of nothing.   Well, not nothing, but raw materials.

 

So then I find a religion which teaches that God "organized" our world out of raw materials, not ex nihilo.  Our responsibility is become the best kind of human we can be - BECAUSE GOD HIMSELF HAS A HUMAN BODY AND IN SOME SENSE IS A HUMAN, and most amazing of all, we can become like him.  Like us, he creates by organizing out of matter.   Mormons are materialists, yes of course spirit exists - what I called "intuition" but in the final analysis it was all matter- even if "more refined" to use the words of an uneducated person who did not know about "plasma" or E=mc2 or quantum physics.

 

I had already known all of these ideas and saw the "Christ myth" as a manifestation of a kind of Jungian archetype of the Ideal Human, an idea that we all carried inside us.

 

We award the Congressional Medal of Honor for those who die for others.  The highest good we can imagine is "dying for our friend" and that archetype is seen in what those silly literalists, I thought, called "scripture" which is of course nothing more than mankind itself defining its own archetypes.  The fall from innocence is an individual fall, the journey through the "flood" was taking on the trials of daily life, of war, of death of injustice and all that goes with it.  Of course all educated people would see it that way.

 

But this is where I was intellectually when I found the church.   But then a funny thing happened to me.

 

Someone told me about Mormonism which held all the understandings I understood already, but these people took them LITERALLY.  For them it was not an archetype, for them it was not a myth.   They actually imagined all these ideas were "real" and historical, and "actually happened" .   How very odd!!  Can't they see these are all myths??

 

Then someone gave me a Book of Mormon.   On the front was Moroni 10:4-5.

 

IT SAID YOU COULD ASK GOD HIMSELF IF THIS WAS TRUE!?  Ridiculous!   It could not be true!!

 

Or could it?

 

Could these beliefs be falsified?  No.  Such beliefs have nothing to do with evidence- I already knew that.  Could Jesus have been a real man?  Yes it was possible.

 

Could he have been the Son of God?   Possible, I suppose but definitely far-fetched.

 

Was it falsifiable?  No.  In this strange world in which we live was it POSSIBLE that any of this is actually the case- that that was the way things "really happened"?

 

Hmmmm- possible.  Not likely, not probable, not the easiest possible explanation, but was it possible?

 

Yes, it was POSSIBLE.  Who knows for sure what is possible or not?  UFO's?   Grr, yes, possible.  Sasquatch? ridiculous, but yes..... possible I suppose.

 

BUT GOD SPEAKING TO ME AND TELLING ME THAT ALL THE STUFF I ALREADY BELIEVED ABOUT MANKIND WAS LITERALLY THE CASE???

 

What if there WAS a "god"?

 

What if he could actually communicate with people?

 

WOULD he communicate with ME??   Possible???

 

Possible.  And this book said to try it- to test it.   It was actually challenging me to actually try it.  I had spent my whole life wondering about this, and now an actual CHALLENGE? 

 

But it said I had to ask in faith, with true intent.    Did I want to know?   ARE YOU KIDDING ME???   I had spent my whole life wanting to know!!  But it was all a myth!!!

 

Wasn't it?

 

Long story short, I decided to try the challenge.  I drove for two hours randomly and ended up in a place where I had a "spiritual" experience earlier in my life, which of course I had dismissed later in life.

 

I prayed.   I can't tell you what happened because it is unspeakable.   Suffice it to say that I had an EXPERIENCE.  It was like throwing a switch and being filled with warmth and peace so deep and so profound and so personal that I KNEW that I was not manufacturing it.

 

I knew it was from an Intelligence outside me, because it was unexpected.  I did not know what it was "supposed to feel like" and I actually expected it NOT to happen.

 

But it happened, and I knew it happened, and that Intelligence knew it had happened.

 

The experience was undeniable.   I knew my life had changed.  I knew I could not nor every would not be able to deny it.   To deny it would be like denying my own existence.  It would be to deny all that I was.  It would make my life a sham and a lie if I would deny it.   All the study, all the thought, would have been for nothing if I denied it.

 

That's about it.

 

I had wanted to write that here for a while so now I thought I would.  You gave me an excuse.

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Thanks- when I was a atheist, those were my beliefs.  I believed that we had ethical responsibilities AS human beings to become the best possible human we could become.  I tried to define what that would mean, and I saw family values as being PART of what it means to be "human" as reflecting the fact that without the family and civilization, the race would have died out.  I saw it as an evolutionary imperative that we be the "most civilized" that we  could possibly be.

 

I had nearly finished my Masters in philosophy from a secular university, after finishing all the coursework. ..

 

Possible.  And this book said to try it- to test it.   It was actually challenging me to actually try it.  I had spent my whole life wondering about this, and now an actual CHALLENGE?

I prayed.   I can't tell you what happened because it is unspeakable.   Suffice it to say that I had an EXPERIENCE.  ..

 

For me, I was a hard science guy rather than a philosophy guy.  I even taught for a couple years prior to going back to school for a doctorate in optometry.  (Right now I am a glaucoma specialist in Texas; calling at church is stake sunday school pres).

 

Back then I had only a couple of years of University under my belt, but I could see the direction that secular thinking was leading my friends was bound to end up in disaster; moral relativism , etc.  I had been exposed to Christianity in my youth, but I was never deeply interested in it.  My skepticism of this God who creates out of nothing kept me at distance, as mentioned in posts earlier in the thread.  Also, I had an experience in a church (Methodist), where the teachers essentially proposed :

 

sometimes when you pray, your prayers are answered, but sometimes when you pray, your prayers aren't answered. ...so what difference does prayer make.  

 

To be honest with you, the teachers of this youth class did not answer the question that they proposed. 

 

Anyways, many years later I began to investigate Mormonism because I had some family members who were long-time active LDS who lived in another state, but a Mormon I knew from back in High School invited me one day.  After reading the "Gospel Principles" book and attending some meetings, I had some "experiences" myself.  When I was at the LDS chapel, I would get this whispering of the Spirit telling me, "this is where your Father in Heaven wants you to be."  A prayer life began to develop and a relationship with God.

 

Reading the Doctrine in Covenants, I had my question answered about Ex Nihilo, .... by essentially reading that it was not true.  I learned that a part of our being has existed from eternity past.

 

In reading Joseph Smith's teachings, I learned that "create" in the Bible does not mean "from nothing".  I investigated the Biblical text further.  Let me give you just one example. 

 

When the text says that God created "all things", it should not be assumed "all things from nothing".   Consider the Old Testament.  In Genesis 1:27 what verb is used describing God creating Adam and Eve?

I will tell you.  It is the same verb (bara) that is used in Genesis 1:1.  Yet we know that when details are given elsewhere in the text, Adam and Eve were created FROM something (the dust), therefore, we should not assume that God "creating" (bara) something means "from nothing".

 

Long story short, everything began to fall together for me, and I was converted.

 

-stephen

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A while back, I created audio / visual  presentations to help illustrate the issues being discussed here.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

-Stephen

 

I watched part of your first video. Your foundation is not a Christian foundation.

 

I had a film class once, where we watched endless hours of movies (which I like) but then had to actually say something about what we were watching in a paper (also kind of fun, but not as much).

 

Here ya go. 

Here is what you present what you believe about Christian doctrine, rather than what Christian doctrine is.

 

But first, a clarification, the Westminster Confession is a catechism of the Reformed Christian churches, and I am Roman Catholic. That being said, chapter II of the Confession is ancient Christian doctrine, unchanged by the Reformers. Just you should be aware, if you wander into other areas of the Confession, you may hit doctrinal areas where Protestants and Roman Catholics or Orthodox, are not in agreement.

 

-----

 

You state, Christian doctrine means “God is everything”, and come to that conclusion by citing a very small portion of the Westminster Confession. You also state, “God is a Spirit filling the immensity of existence”.

 

The portion of the Westminster Confession you quote is, “There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions;immutable,immense,eternal,incomprehensible"

 

Well, this says neither of what you have stated.

 

God is a Spirit filling the immensity of existence”. You will need explain what you mean by this, as it is not any doctrine I’ve ever heard or taught. To my ears, it sounds as though you believe God exists in creation. Christian doctrine is, that God exists outside of Creation.

 

“God is everything”. Also, not anything I’ve ever heard or taught, and sounds like pantheism. So maybe you need to explain what you mean by this. Do you mean you think Christians believe God is the universe? The trees? If so, then this is in direct conflict with the infinitude of God, because “everything” is not infinite. Christian doctrine is, that God is infinite, and exists outside of Creation. God is not Creation.

 

----

 

Next, you misquote the Westminster Confession regarding God’s Oneness.

 

This is how you quote it:

 

“[God] is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleases”

 

What the Westminster Confessions says is:

 

“God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleases

 

You then state, “God exists, God is alone, and doesn’t need anybody.”

 

God is not alone, and that is not what the Westminster Confession says. “Alone in and unto Himself”, means, only He “is all-sufficient and not standing in need of any creatures who He has made.” That is, God is unique, and there is no other being that is all-sufficient. Christian doctrine is very explicit that God is not alone, as you misquote. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, existing in a communion of three Persons. No aloneness there, but oneness.

 

You should just stop here! :)But you don’t. I’ll keep the rest of my points brief.

 

“God then begins to create at some point.” This is our human view. God is infinitely and eternally creative, Creator is an attribute of His being, not something that He becomes, or begins.

 

“God decides to make things or creatures that are capable of evil, out of nothing.”  No, God made creatures that are capable of love. What God created, He saw as very good. (Gen. 1:31) What God created, was capable of perfection. Which gets into, what is perfection? "God is love." The greatest commandment is "to love". Perfection is to love as God loves.

 

“The idea is that an all knowing and all powerful God conjures up….” God does not “conjure”.

 

Then you get into concepts of fated and free, and lean very heavily towards the fated side, to the exclusion of the free side. It’s ok! Others have done this before you. Pelagianism on the one end of the scale, which was a belief that we are not fated at all. The other end of the scale is Calvinism, which is a belief that we are fated entirely.

 

---

 

Good enough for now. You get the idea?

 

We are both, fated and free. I recommend for you, from Philosopher Dr. Peter Kreeft, a short lesson on “Fated and Free”. He uses as an example an author and its characters, and specifically, the “Lord of the Rings”. If you aren’t a fan, don’t let that put you off what he is presenting.  Philosophically speaking, he points out that we experience both being fated and free, which I don’t see that LDS would disagree that we do in fact, experience both. (Unless you are a nihilist. ;) )

 

http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/29_lotr_fated-free.htm

Edited by saemo
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I believe it was Blake Ostler who said, and I am paraphrasing:  Defenders of Ex Nihilo use the Free Will Defense, "The Free Will defense assumes that God must create morally fallible creatures in order for them to be free.  However, creating Ex Nihilo, God could have created any kind of creature that is logically possible to create, including a morally infallible creature with free will."

 

 

 

 

-Stephen

This is reductionism, which sadly, is a common argument especially among secularist. The reduction being, that everything about faith can be reduced to morals.

 

No, no, no and no!

 

:)

 

Christian faith is about a Person, an encounter with love itself, Jesus Christ. Morals follow. So we understand that creation itself, us, is an expression of God's love. Morals follow, and are not based on rules for the sake of rule following but the love of God, and the desire to do His will (righteousness) or defy God to follow our own will (sin).

 

God desires our love, but forcing us to love God by creating us as infallible robotons, would not be love, but a distortion of love. It reflects a human desire to control others, projected onto God. NO THANK YOU.

 

Perfection, is to love as God loves, and love does not seek to manipulate the other in order to be loved in return. God does not manipulate us into loving Him, including manipulating how we are created in order to force us to always choose to love God (righteousness). We are free to love God, with all our heart, might, mind and strength. Or not. 

 

Further, free will is gifted to us by God, in order that we may love God freely. To not love God, is an abuse of the gift that God has given us. To be Holy, means, to view defying God as not an option at all! To see sin as no choice at all, and only see one thing, and this is love for God, and live the reality of God's Love.

Edited by saemo
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I think you are missing the point.  Some people will not "lean upon the Lord".  Some people will not be "meek".  Some people will not learn from the consequences of poor decisions.  Why are some people less prideful?  Why are some people more obedient?

 

Did God create certain individuals with more inherent pride, knowing full well that that by creating them that way, they would suffer the consequences?

 

-stephen

I think the problem here is ex nihilo theology, I don't believe that God creates anything out of nothing, everything has an order and a beginning and God has a beginning, he is not this fantastically being with super-awesome power - God created us as we created our children; we have no control over their personalities or what they will like or dislike or how much meekness and obedience they will have no matter how we may teach them; there is still something in them over which we have no control, something that is beyond the x and y genes. I think that God has as much control over what we will be or become as we have over our own children - we understand our kids, we can see how their minds work and what choices they may make and why but did we create them that way? Did God? God's knowledge of someone or his understanding of who/what they are doesn't mean that he has control over why they are that way or that he can pick and choose what attributes we must or mustn't have. I think we are inflating his omniscience and trying to give him powers which he doesn't possess based on our understanding on what they mean. He accepts us as we are with all our weaknesses and idiosyncrasies - he understands our natures (yes) and his laws and guidance will work for all whether they have the capacity to understand them or not - just like us with our children, we know that one child will struggle with one thing when another will not but the rules we set in the home are suited to the weaknesses of the weak and strengths of the strong alike - imagine what a perfect parent is like and that is what God is like. Ex nihilo is the problem here.

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You don't bother do address the logical arguments, the response from your side is always "We just believe that God created us Ex Nihilo .... AND with free will".  

 

You don't even bother to understand the points being made.

As I said your points are logical, but not based on correct assumptions. Start with false assumptions, and false logical conclusions follow.

 

 

And , ... is your assumption that God created man "perfect" and infallible by nature?

 

Then why was man so easily deceived?  Why was man disobedient?  Why was man discontent with the lot God had given?

 

None of what we see points to the idea that man was created "perfect".  Quite the contrary.  When God created the physical creation, God said that his physical creation was "good".  But there is more to the story than that.

I believe that God made man perfect and in his image (meaning with a free will, ability to relate and love one another). Man wasn't deceived by sin, but tempted by it and gave into it. If he hadn't had the ability to give into sin, he wouldn't by definition have free will.

It's an interesting question, why was man disobedient? Many have speculated, but James spells it out that we all are tempted by our own lusts in our hearts, which is why Jesus changes our hearts and wills first.

 

Here is how the argumentation plays out when applied to the story of Adam and Eve.

 

And I wrap up a few things with this one:

 

 

 

I believe it was Blake Ostler who said, and I am paraphrasing:  Defenders of Ex Nihilo use the Free Will Defense, "The Free Will defense assumes that God must create morally fallible creatures in order for them to be free.  However, creating Ex Nihilo, God could have created any kind of creature that is logically possible to create, including a morally infallible creature with free will."

 

 

 

 

-Stephen

Unfortunately Blake's is statement is false. The nature of creating a free willed being means that the "Being" created (no matter shape or size) has the ability to turn from it's creator and do the morally bad thing. 

 

If it didn't, it wouldn't be free. Essentially, we are talking about a moral free will. The ability to choose right or wrong at any given moment. 

 

His statement, "morally infallible creature" is an oxymoronic statement. Similar to a infallible fallible creature, or a morally immoral creature. The very act of creating a morally free willed being means that they have the ability to choose the bad. A "morally infallible creature" is a creature without free will. 

Edited by danielwoods
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God is a Spirit filling the immensity of existence”. You will need explain what you mean by this, as it is not any doctrine I’ve ever heard or taught. To my ears, it sounds as though you believe God exists in creation. Christian doctrine is, that God exists outside of Creation.

 

I chose my words carefully.  I don't think you paid attention.  I said "prior to creation" God was the only Being in existence.

 

Do you not believe that God was the only being in existence prior to creation?  If that is the case, then prior to creation God was ALL of existence.

 

That was the point being made.  Somehow you missed the point.

 

When it comes to God being "alone", I was addressing a broad view (as accepted by muslims, Jews and Christians) in the sense that only a single Being/Substance existed prior to creation.  Later in the video series, I actually address the Trinitarian view of three persons in one substance.  However, as you will see, it does not help your position in this matter.

 

 

-stephen

Edited by stephenpurdy
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I chose my words carefully. I don't think you paid attention. I said "prior to creation" God was the only Being in existence.

Do you not believe that God was the only being in existence prior to creation?

In Ex Nihilo theology, God was the only thing that existed prior to creation. That was the point being made. Somehow you missed it.

When it comes to the Trinity (which I didn't even address in that video), I actually DO address that later in the series.

-stephen

Yes, and I said, this is our human view. Please pay attention. :P God exists outside of creation, including time. All of what you perceive as prior or future is now to God. God is omnipresent.

When you are speaking about God, the God I worship is Triune. I don't make the distinction that you are making, that God and Trinity are different subjects.

Edited by saemo
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As I said your points are logical, but not based on correct assumptions. Start with false assumptions, and false logical conclusions follow.

 

 

I believe that God made man perfect and in his image (meaning with a free will, ability to relate and love one another). Man wasn't deceived by sin, but tempted by it and gave into it. If he hadn't had the ability to give into sin, he wouldn't by definition have free will.

It's an interesting question, why was man disobedient? Many have speculated, but James spells it out that we all are tempted by our own lusts in our hearts, which is why Jesus changes our hearts and wills first.

 

Unfortunately Blake's is statement is false. The nature of creating a free willed being means that the "Being" created (no matter shape or size) has the ability to turn from it's creator and do the morally bad thing. 

 

If it didn't, it wouldn't be free. Essentially, we are talking about a moral free will. The ability to choose right or wrong at any given moment. 

 

His statement, "morally infallible creature" is an oxymoronic statement. Similar to a infallible fallible creature, or a morally immoral creature. The very act of creating a morally free willed being means that they have the ability to choose the bad. A "morally infallible creature" is a creature without free will. 

So if Adam was capable of temptation before the fall, that means that his nature was already fallen.  He already had a propensity for sin.

 

OOPS there goes the fall.

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As I said your points are logical, but not based on correct assumptions. Start with false assumptions, and false logical conclusions follow.

 

 

I believe that God made man perfect and in his image (meaning with a free will, ability to relate and love one another). Man wasn't deceived by sin, but tempted by it and gave into it. If he hadn't had the ability to give into sin, he wouldn't by definition have free will.

It's an interesting question, why was man disobedient? Many have speculated, but James spells it out that we all are tempted by our own lusts in our hearts, which is why Jesus changes our hearts and wills first.

 

Unfortunately Blake's is statement is false. The nature of creating a free willed being means that the "Being" created (no matter shape or size) has the ability to turn from it's creator and do the morally bad thing. 

 

 

Blakes statement is absolutely correct.

 

A morally infallible being of free will DOES have the ability to turn from its creator, however, being morally infallible ... he or she simply chooses consistently not to.  The being has the honor, intelligence, wisdom and character to always make the right choices.  It is still a being with free will.

 

-Stephen

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Yes, and I said, this is our human view. Please pay attention. :P God exists outside of creation, including time. All of what you perceive as prior or future is now to God. God is omnipresent.

 

 

 

God existed when time did not exist.  If, in your view, God is the only thing that is eternal, and God created time, then time space and matter is created by God and is NOT eternal.

 

If you want to make the argument that there was no "before time" ... it doesn't matter.   The video is not about that at all.

 

As for your view of a Triune God, this first video was being more broad and including the point of view of other "monotheistic religions."

 

-stephen

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God desires our love, but forcing us to love God by creating us as infallible robotons, would not be love, but a distortion of love. It reflects a human desire to control others, projected onto God. NO THANK YOU.

 

Perfection, is to love as God loves, ...

 

You can use whatever word you want.  If you want me to say "God could have created a perfectly loving being with free will", when then there you go.

 

If God is "all powerful" and creating any kind of possible being out of God's own mind, then it is logically possible to create a being that is filled with so much love, that the being would always express free will choices which reflect that perfect love.

 

If you didn't read the quotes I provided by Mark Hausam, I would encourage you to do so.  Read them carefully, and then address the actual points being made in the video, rather than these peripheral issues.

 

For starters:

 

"Even proponents of libertarian freedom will admit, although paradoxically, that the choices we make are the results of the motivations, desires, loves, values, priorities, beliefs, etc., that constitute who we are, that make up the real essence of our actual being. That is why our choices reveal who we are. If our choices were not produced from the essence of our being, they would not be our choices fundamentally and would not reveal anything about who we are."

 

Why are we who we are?   In your theology, we are exactly what God created us to be, because every single detail of our being was designed from God's own mind.  Our essence, our characteristics, EVERYTHING comes from Gods creative imagination with Ex Nihilo theology.  There is no getting around it.

 

-stephen

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“God then begins to create at some point.” This is our human view. God is infinitely and eternally creative, Creator is an attribute of His being, not something that He becomes, or begins.

 

 

So, would you say that creation has existed eternally as well?

 

If God is infinitely and eternally creative, then creation is infinite and eternal as well.

 

Welcome to Mormonism.

 

Thanks for joining us.

 

-stephen

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 Saemo wrote:  You should just stop here! :)But you don’t. I’ll keep the rest of my points brief.

 

I hate to break it to you, but you did not address the main argument of the first two videos.  You haven't even scratched the surface.

 

 

 


 

“God decides to make things or creatures that are capable of evil, out of nothing.”  No, God made creatures that are capable of love. What God created, He saw as very good. (Gen. 1:31) What God created, was capable of perfection. Which gets into, what is perfection? "God is love." The greatest commandment is "to love". Perfection is to love as God loves.

 

So.  God did not create perfection.

 

You say that God created something capable of love , sure, but also of evil. 

 

God created beings who were 1) Ignorant  2) Dissatisfied 3) Easily deceived , 4) Disobedient.

 

.... And that was before the fall.  You should watch the Adam and Eve videos.

 

-Stephen

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Saemo wrote:  Further, free will is gifted to us by God, in order that we may love God freely.

 

 

 

Again.  Arguing that we have free will in Ex Nihilo theology .... because God gave us free will ...  is a non-answer.

 

You aren't addressing the arguments provided at all.  If I knew you weren't even going to look and understand the points being made, I wouldn't have badgered you to come over to the thread ;)

 

The points made in the post that has citations from Mark Hausam's work, and the illustrations in the videos have compelling arguments.  If you really want to understand and discuss it, please take the time.  It will be worthwhile.

 

In the mean time, I will go over the 45 minute audio link that you provided.

 

 

-Stephen

Edited by stephenpurdy
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I believe that God made man perfect and in his image (meaning with a free will, ability to relate and love one another). Man wasn't deceived by sin, but tempted by it and gave into it. If he hadn't had the ability to give into sin, he wouldn't by definition have free will.

It's an interesting question, why was man disobedient? Many have speculated, but James spells it out that we all are tempted by our own lusts in our hearts, which is why Jesus changes our hearts and wills first.

 

 

Where in the Bible does it say that Adam was "perfect"?  How did Adam demonstrate "perfect love"?

 

Where in the Bible does it say that God's "image" means "free will, ability to relate and love one another"?

 

Who created the being who tempted them and why were Adam and Eve created to be so weak in terms of their inability to resist temptation?

 

Who created the "lusts in man's heart"?

 

-Stephen

Edited by stephenpurdy
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So, would you say that creation has existed eternally as well?

 

If God is infinitely and eternally creative, then creation is infinite and eternal as well.

 

Welcome to Mormonism.

 

Thanks for joining us.

 

-stephen

She is a former Mormon, and so is particularly unwilling to even find any good in the church.

 

She will never stop, never get it right, and never attempt a genuine dialog about anything.  She only repeats the Catholic position over and over without regard of whether or not it is relevant to the discussion

Edited by mfbukowski
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O.K.   I am getting into the audio that Saemo provided here:

 

http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/29_lotr_fated-free.htm

 

Because he feels that perhaps this is a sufficient refutation for the arguments that I have presented thus far.  Here we go,

 

Pertinent statements , prior to 9:20

 

He believes in "Free causality".

 

"The main reason that we believe in free will is that we experience it.... so we all know that there is free will from our experience."

 

Pertinent statements  , prior to 12:30

 

"We may not know how destiny and freedom can both be true but we know that they both must be present in true to life stories because they are present in life."

 

Pertinent statements so far , prior to 17:38

 

Here we get a little more substance, whereby Peter Kreeft provides two arguments for how both free will and predestination can both be true.  These are the two best philosophical arguments that he has found.

 

1)  Because God is love and loves all of his creatures, therefore divine grace, in dealing with anything in the realm of nature and God's creatures, always perfects nature and works through it, rather than suppressing it or bypassing it, or rivaling it.  And a good human author does exactly that with his characters.  He loves all his characters, even his villains.  He doesn't push them.  He is all powerful, but from within the characters rather than from without.  They are not pieces on the chess board.  And therefore divine predestination must preserve free will because divine predestination invented and willed free will. We are free precisely because God wills us.  Aquinas argues that we are free because God is omnipotent.  He argues that human powers sometimes get anything they want but they seldom get everything they want in the way that they wanted; they have to make compromises.  But God is so omnipotent that he not only gets everything he wants, but he gets everything He wills in the way that He wills, so that sub-human things happen unfreely and human things happen freely.  Just as in a novel, the setting is not free and the characters are." - Peter Kreeft

 

2) Since God is not in time, destiny does not mean literally "pre-destination", like pushing dominos.  ... Here is C.S. Lewis' explanation how predestination and free will fit: "Almost certainly God is not in time.  His life does not consist of moments following one another.  If a million people are praying tonight at 10:30, he may not need listen to them all in that little snippet we call 10:30.   10:30 and every other moment from the beginning of the world is always present with him.  If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity to listen to a split second prayer of a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.  Suppose I am writing a novel I write, "Mary lay down her work, the next moment there came a knock at the door."  For Mary, who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between laying down her work and hearing the knock.  But I who am Mary's inventor, do not live in that imaginary time.  Between writing that first half of the sentence and the second, I may sit down three hours and think steadily about Mary.  God is not hurried along in the time stream of this Universe anymore than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel.  It is a pretty good refutation of process theology I think. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.  He does not have to deal with us in the mass.  You are as much alone with him as if you were the only being He had ever created.  ...

 

That's from Mere Christianity.  A few pages later he adds one more point, "If God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do the.  But let us suppose that God is outside and above the timeline.  In that case, what we call tomorrow is not forseen by God but seen.  It is visible to Him in the same was as what we call today.  All the days are now for him.  He does not remember you doing things yesterday.  He simply sees you doing them.  Because though you have lost yesterday, He has not.  He does not foresee you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them because though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.  You never suppose that your actions in the present are any less free because God knows what you are doing.  Well, God knows your tomorrows actions in just the same way because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. - Peter Kreeft

 

Now.  Let's start with these.  You can know that I was paying attention, because not only did I listen to it, but I transcribed this myself.

 

I will allow you to try to explain how the first argument stands up the my first two videos. 

 

As for the second argument, IF you think that I am arguing that foreknowledge is the reason that we do not have free will with Ex Nihilo creation theology.... you have not been paying attention at all.  I never said that God's foreknowledge is the reason that we don't have free will in Ex Nihilo theology. 

 

 

-Stephen

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God existed when time did not exist. If, in your view, God is the only thing that is eternal, and God created time, then time space and matter is created by God and is NOT eternal.

If you want to make the argument that there was no "before time" ... it doesn't matter. The video is not about that at all.

As for your view of a Triune God, this first video was being more broad and including the point of view of other "monotheistic religions."

-stephen

What other monotheistic religions follow the same doctrines that are in chapter II of the Westminster Confession? The Westminster Confession you quoted and misquoted is an article of faith about the Triune God. As far as I kmow, all Trinitarians understand God is the Creator of ALL things.

Of course it matters. But as I said, these threads go nowhere and this why, You want to define what Christians believe but are not open to understanding our belief. I'm not interested in tearing down your straw men.

I'm out.

-Rebecca

Edited by saemo
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