What is God responsible for?

[Willum]

Many things were done in God's name:
But what is he responsible for?

When the Catholic Nazi Germany attempts a genocide, a man is blamed.
When Hebrews commit genocide on the Canaan, it is his will.

We have plagues, on Catholic countries, for example. The Dark Ages were committed in Yahweh's name. Were they?

Why would Yahweh plunge the civilization of Rome, with health, farming and sanitation, back into the primitive squalor of ancient Jerusalem, if so?

If not, why did he not stop such a terror? It seems to be in His purview.

How does one determine if an act is done in God's will, or men's will?
Does the Bible tell us?

Understanding that free will is a constraint - we can also understand that mob's and large numbers of people lose free will, does this fall into God's purview, then?

In short, how does one know what God is responsible for;
Any group decision?
A decision influenced by prayer?

The position is that presented by Romans 13:

Obey the rulers who have authority over you. Only God can give authority to anyone, and he puts these rulers in their places of power. 2 People who oppose the authorities are opposing what God has done, and they will be punished. 3 Rulers are a threat to evil people, not to good people. There is no need to be afraid of the authorities. Just do right, and they will praise you for it. 4 After all, they are God’s servants, and it is their duty to help you.

The position of the OP is: those atrocities committed by governments, God's will, and he is responsible for them.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 172 by Blastcat]

In more than one previous post to you, I explained that I view the fundamental building blocks of the universe as drops of experience, not passive, inert, dead matter.
When I speak of our identification with our sense organs, I mean the fact we know and accept them as our own. I know I see by the eye because I can feel my connectedness to my eyes.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 173 by Blastcat]

True, mystical experiences can be very difficult to verify and also very difficult to disprove. The mere fact you say they are difficult to verify does not automatically men they are wrong. My position is that the kinds of experiences reported in the Christian or love mystical tradition fit well within the framework of contemporary process theology, which is a rationally based metaphysic, and therefore should be taken seriously. Those who tended to debunk such experiences did so on the basis of outmoded Hellenic metaphysics.

[marco]

Consider the Drake equation, for example.

It is of passing interest but of no practical value. The margin of error in estimating some of the variables is so huge as to make the "equation" useless.

Where there is a watch, there is a watch maker, unless one assumes that the way to make a highly refined watch is to simply throw the parts off the top of the Empire State Building and hope that when they hit the ground, they will assemble themselves into a watch. The chance of that happening have a zillion zeros in front of it, and when chances have all those zeros in from t of them, you can be assured its not going to happen.

Hoghead, in finite populations what you have said is completely correct. The watch appearing in a garden can safely be assumed to be the product of a watch maker. Transfer the question to infinite populations and in fact to a universe that requires the existence of an invisible, intelligent entity and we can set aside the logic that gets us from doorstep to doorstep here. There is no reason to take our finite model as a basis for the infinite that involves a deity. We have no idea what sort of terms we are inventing.

In passing may I repeat that in statistical testing we do reject a hypothesis which requires an event to happen with a tiny probability. It depends how sophisticated we wish to be when we determine what the limits for that rejection probability would be. The expected number of occurrences is often modelled by E = np where n is the number of trials and p the probability of something favourable happening. If your p has trillions of zeros, it is sensible to suppose that it won't happen UNLESS n is very large. For example if we try 1000,000,000,000 times and the chance of something happening is 1 in a British billion then the expected number of times we would get the favoured result would be 1, not zero. How much time existed prior to the formation of our ordered system? 1,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000...........0000000

seconds, during any of which the special event could occur? Now the special event is not the creation of a complex watch, but the start of an ordered system, where the first few results lead to further ordered results, primitive at first but which have written into them, because of the freak happening, a provision for complexity. The club-wielding Neanderthal did not build a space rocket, but the process for building the rocket was set in motion by the first ape-like steps.

This is all mathematically sound, but whether things happened in this way is debateable. In any event, it is wrong to use a finite model and dismiss possibilities because, in finite terms, they are close to impossible.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 177 by marco].
And hardly having opened its mouth God immediately allows it to overcome his saints. I suppose God has got no responsibility towards those that put his faith in him or even keeping his earlier promises divinely spoken and recorded by Paul. Romans 16:20
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

From my PCE pov:
1. The sinful elect became sinful when they rebelled against GOD's call for all the elect to 'come out from among the non-elect' so the judgement could be brought against them. This rebellion in idolatry of their friends (loved ones) in the reprobate camp forced the postponement of the judgement, forcing the two groups to live together until the time of the harvest when the sinful elect has been cured of their idolatry and accept GOD's call for the judgement fully.

2. The first step in their redemption is repentance for their own sin and guilt. The second step is to learn the depth of evil in the non-elect as full and eternal so they repudiate them as friends, family and neighbours as they turn to their GOD and follow HIS call to the judgement. In this step, GOD allows non-elect (doomed) sinners to overwhelm the sinful elect to teach the sinful elect that some sinners will never change, will never repent. They can't be loved out of their sin (as Jesus showed us) nor can they be scared out of their sin (as the times of the Israelite wars proved).

3. The third step is when the sinful elect are finally all holy and righteous, acting in one accord with their GOD and standing perfectly with HIM when they crush Satan and the people called goats who fill his army as his angels, and banish them into the outer darkness.

The process of sanctification to the judgement is in two parts, one of being overcome and one of overcoming. These parts are definitely not to be seen as contradictory to each other.

[ttruscott]

Where there is a watch, there is a watch maker, unless one assumes that the way to make a highly refined watch is to simply throw the parts off the top of the Empire State Building and hope that when they hit the ground, they will assemble themselves into a watch.

When will the secular materialists ever stop categorizing Christian thought by using strawman arguments if we keep doing it about their ideas? I doubt if any evolutionist would accept this depiction of evolution in the tiniest.

[Willum]

Where there is a watch, there is a watch maker, unless one assumes that the way to make a highly refined watch is to simply throw the parts off the top of the Empire State Building and hope that when they hit the ground, they will assemble themselves into a watch.

When will the secular materialists ever stop categorizing Christian thought by using strawman arguments if we keep doing it about their ideas? I doubt if any evolutionist would accept this depiction of evolution in the tiniest.

The Moon is a "watch," the Sun is a watch. The Earths rotation is a watch. There is no need for a maker of orbital mechanics.

You arguments of extreme complexity thus spoiled:
Gravity led to the separation of elements. This led to planets, and so on. Until you have creatures for whom time is important enough to build watches, so they can watch the planets.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 183 by marco]

You may consider the Drake Equation useless, but many major scientists do not. I'll go with them, thank you.

If you can't use our finite existence as a basis to speak about the rest of teh universe, how can you sit there and use probabilities, based solely on our knowledge of finite reality, to estimate probabilities for the universe, as you seem want to do?

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 185 by ttruscott]

I'm not quite sure I follow you here. Atheistic evolutionary thinkers do argue it is all by chance.

[hoghead1]

[Replying to post 186 by Willum]

My argument for a watchmaker would be spoiled if you could show examples where randomness did produce order, if you could show examples of persons just flinging watch parts off the Empire State Building and they land on the ground and form a watch. Well, where are they? Let's see some examples.

Order, especially complex order, has no meaning apart from mentality. Why, for example, should passive, inert, dead, blind matter form any order whatsoever?

[dio9]

[Replying to post 185 by ttruscott]

I'm not quite sure I follow you here. Atheistic evolutionary thinkers do argue it is all by chance.

I don't think evolution is by chance , its rather by need to adapt for survival. If I may project , we will need to intellectually and morally evolve to rise above the bottom line of aggression and defense from aggression which seems to have driven the development of civilizations. The new ethos needs not be fear and fighting but how much good can I do to my neighbor.

The great men will not be the conquerors and exploiters and oppressors of their neighbor but something else yet to be evolved. Concerned maybe?

So what is God responsible for, evolution maybe ? Giving us a chance to evolve into something better, another layer of cerebral cortex on our brain. Something beyond that which has alienated us from God and the garden.

Does anyone deny we are alienated from God and others?