God’s Level of Effort

[Willum]

Please read entire post before answering. There is a larger context, and I don’t wish to discuss the obvious or banal.

Many claims are made about what God does and does not do.
God allows freewill, for example.
God will not force people.
God will forgive the repentant, no matter the sin.
God gave Samson strength.
God can do anything.

It is the last that this topic is concerned with. The level of effort.
With the assumption that God is all powerful, than anything it can or cannot do poses the same level of effort for it (does it?). So blackening a star would be as difficult or possible as swatting a fly (right?).

So what determines significance or what God will or won’t do?
Why does freewill rate among the billions of other things that could allow?
Why does physically stopping a rape not rate or other evils not rate?
Or stopping the Apple from being bit?

From the perspective of “God can do anything,” why does God do things like the flood, but not prevent evils?
If all powerful, then aren’t any actions or inactions.by it arbitrary? Even meaningless?
Why /why not?

[PinSeeker]

[Replying to PinSeeker in post #27]

You did not answer or contradict the conclusions.

LOL! In your opinion...

Grace and peace to you.

[brunumb]

[Replying to PinSeeker in post #30]

Extracts from The Self Glorification Book of Yahweh:

"I made this magnificent abode that I called heaven and filled it with wondrous beings called Angels. It was so wonderful that only about a third of them rebelled. Just to show them how glorious I am and who is really the boss, I made the most hideous place you could imagine and threw them in there to suffer forever. Glorious."

"I decided to make some lesser beings that would appreciate my glory and love me deeply. I made a beautiful pair and gave them a wondrous garden to live in, not as nice as heaven of course. Sadly, I made this serpent thing that was smarter than my beautiful pair and it got them to diss me. So, just to show them how glorious I am and who is really the boss, I threw them out of the garden and inflicted them with pain and disease and even death. To reinforce my glory I made sure their descendants wouldn't forget and inflicted all that misery on them as well. Glorious."

"One of my best efforts was when I wiped out just about everything on the planet in a magnificent display of power and glory. Now that really showed the survivors who was boss in a way that they could never forget. Glorious."

"Magic. That should demonstrate my glory and win over everyone. I will clone myself as a human and do wondrous things like curing blindness with dirt and spit. Walking on water should be impressive. Some magic tricks with food and drink maybe. All those things will demonstrate my glory. And if that doesn't work, no one will fail to be impressed if I come back from the dead. Glorious."


How come just about everything Yahweh tries ends up being thwarted in some way. For an omnipotent god he is really not one of the smartest deities on the block.
Grade for effort: F

[PinSeeker]

[Replying to PinSeeker in post #30]

Extracts from The Self Glorification Book of Yahweh:

"I made this magnificent abode that I called heaven and filled it with wondrous beings called Angels. It was so wonderful that only about a third of them rebelled. Just to show them how glorious I am and who is really the boss, I made the most hideous place you could imagine and threw them in there to suffer forever. Glorious."

"I decided to make some lesser beings that would appreciate my glory and love me deeply. I made a beautiful pair and gave them a wondrous garden to live in, not as nice as heaven of course. Sadly, I made this serpent thing that was smarter than my beautiful pair and it got them to diss me. So, just to show them how glorious I am and who is really the boss, I threw them out of the garden and inflicted them with pain and disease and even death. To reinforce my glory I made sure their descendants wouldn't forget and inflicted all that misery on them as well. Glorious."

"One of my best efforts was when I wiped out just about everything on the planet in a magnificent display of power and glory. Now that really showed the survivors who was boss in a way that they could never forget. Glorious."

"Magic. That should demonstrate my glory and win over everyone. I will clone myself as a human and do wondrous things like curing blindness with dirt and spit. Walking on water should be impressive. Some magic tricks with food and drink maybe. All those things will demonstrate my glory. And if that doesn't work, no one will fail to be impressed if I come back from the dead. Glorious."


How come just about everything Yahweh tries ends up being thwarted in some way. For an omnipotent god he is really not one of the smartest deities on the block.
Grade for effort: F

LOL! Surely, everything that can be know about God has clearly been seen by all, and therefore there is now -- and will be at the final Judgment -- no excuse. For anybody. Some will continue in their denial, which is borne of unrighteousness. But this too has been, is, and will be to the end... part of God's purpose. The Bible is very clear that He created some -- called "vessels of wrath" -- for this very purpose. He has "endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory..." (Romans 9) So, again, His purposes cannot and will not be thwarted. In fact, the more it seems God's purposes have been thwarted, the more they are really affirmed and upheld. Again, people fail. God does not.

Grace and peace to you.

[bluegreenearth]

LOL! Surely, everything that can be know about God has clearly been seen by all, and therefore there is now -- and will be at the final Judgment -- no excuse. For anybody. Some will continue in their denial, which is borne of unrighteousness. But this too has been, is, and will be to the end... part of God's purpose. The Bible is very clear that He created some -- called "vessels of wrath" -- for this very purpose. He has "endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory..." (Romans 9) So, again, His purposes cannot and will not be thwarted. In fact, the more it seems God's purposes have been thwarted, the more they are really affirmed and upheld. Again, people fail. God does not.

Grace and peace to you.

Outstanding... Now, how do we figure out if that explanation you have in your head exists in reality and isn't just something in your imagination?

[Clownboat]

Pain, suffering, sin, death... all man's fault.

Please show that you speak the truth.

As far as I can tell, sin is nothing more than a religious concept used to foist blame on to humans for things that take place in this world. Has sin ever been shown to be more than that? If not, you are playing pretend it would seem.

God -- despite the fact that He is in no way obligated to do anything about it and would be perfectly just in leaving it as is -- promises to rectify it all, and then does it all Himself -- on our behalf -- because of man's inability and His own amazing grace and infinite love.

This is demonstrably wrong as there are good atheists and good humans of other religions.
Perhaps you mean that Christians don't have the ability? That would be an odd claim though.

Some will continue in denial,

and others in seemingly make believe.

God's purposes cannot be thwarted.

1 Thess 2:18 For we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, more than once—and yet Satan hindered us.

[Hawkins]

From the perspective of “God can do anything,” why does God do things like the flood, but not prevent evils?
If all powerful, then aren’t any actions or inactions.by it arbitrary? Even meaningless?
Why /why not?

The first question is rather, what makes you think that you understood correctly what is said while it is clearly stated in the religion itself that you need the Holy Spirit in order to understand?

God can do anything, but in order not to do anything arbitrarily He follows laws. Earth is for evil to be fully displayed and destroyed once and for all through the only legal process known as the Final Judgment.

Why don't you just try to get the big picture before you ask those arbitrary but nonsense questions?


Noah's flood is for God to demonstrate that what Law at that point can do is to destroy humans as a whole, as the purpose of earth is for God to harvest souls (to enter Heaven legitimately through the same legal process known as the Final Judgment). So if Law says that no one is righteous in accordance to Law, then the Law also says God can now destroy the whole world with a flood. Flood itself bears the meaning of being buried in Hades (thus water baptism means buried in Hades then resurrected).

This represents a counter reset from the judgment of Law to the judgment of covenants (or the Judgment of Christ). It is so because Jesus makes (or would make) it possible that humans will be judged by covenants instead of Law (where they all die under Law). Noah and his family are thus the first lineage of humans who can be deemed righteous (i.e., saved by a covenant), after the legal/lawful judgment switched from Law (which is still valid to the angels) to covenants (which is only valid for humans but not angels as Jesus didn't die for the angel from a legal/lawful point of view).

Now back to the point, how much you can understand what is said before you asked those nonsense questions? No offense, humans wind up in hell (not the first I said so in this forum as far as I recall) possibly because they never doubt themselves but choose to rely heavily on a low and unreliable human intelligence.

[bluegreenearth]

The first question is rather, what makes you think that you understand correctly what is said while it is clearly stated in the religion itself that you need the Holy Spirit in order to understand?

I think it is an interesting and remarkable coincidence that only the Christians from one particular denomination of Christianity consistently manage to have their understanding of the scriptures confirmed by the Holy Spirit while the remaining heretical Christians from the other denominations consistently manage to mistakenly believe the Holy Spirit has confirmed their equally plausible but ultimately incorrect understanding. I wonder why you never hear about the Holy Spirit confirming a portion of one Christian denomination's Biblical understanding and confirming a different portion of another Christian denomination's Biblical understanding given the improbability of any one Christian denomination never making a mistake in at least some portion of their understanding? I wonder how an objective and unbiased outsider could distinguish between the Christians who actually had the Holy Spirit guide them to a correct understanding of the scriptures and the Christians who mistakenly believe the Holy Spirit has guided them to a correct understanding? It would certainly help if the Holy Spirit could impart that understanding to everyone and not just the Christians from one particular denomination of Christianity.

[Hawkins]

The first question is rather, what makes you think that you understand correctly what is said while it is clearly stated in the religion itself that you need the Holy Spirit in order to understand?

I think it is an interesting and remarkable coincidence that only the Christians from one particular denomination of Christianity consistently manage to have their understanding of the scriptures confirmed by the Holy Spirit while the remaining heretical Christians from the other denominations consistently manage to mistakenly believe the Holy Spirit has confirmed their equally plausible but ultimately incorrect understanding. I wonder why you never hear about the Holy Spirit confirming a portion of one Christian denomination's Biblical understanding and confirming a different portion of another Christian denomination's Biblical understanding given the improbability of any one Christian denomination never making a mistake in at least some portion of their understanding? I wonder how an objective and unbiased outsider could distinguish between the Christians who actually had the Holy Spirit guide them to a correct understanding of the scriptures and the Christians who mistakenly believe the Holy Spirit has guided them to a correct understanding? It would certainly help if the Holy Spirit could impart that understanding to everyone and not just the Christians from one particular denomination of Christianity.

To speculate so, you need to first know how close Christians can be to God in today's world.

Let's calculate this way. In 30s last century, humans can conveniently get in touch with pornography are nearly zero. In today's world, 99.99% living in a modern society, including Christians, are inevitably in touch with it. That reflect how corrupt this world became. It means Christians have the Holy Spirit thus they can comprehend more correctly especially in terms of salvation, but not necessarily capable of fully comprehend in terms of biblical knowledge (mind you, knowledge is not a necessity for salvation as salvation is made to be as simple as "believe in Jesus Christ to be saved" to humans).

[Miles]

Let's calculate this way. In 30s last century, humans can conveniently get in touch with pornography are nearly zero. In today's world, 99.99% living in a modern society, including Christians, are inevitably in touch with it. That reflect how corrupt this world became.

Asserting that pornography and it use is a reflection of how "corrupt" the world is suggests there's something inherently wrong with it. Other than frequently fostering lust (a strong sexual desire) which, for some odd reason, Christians are told is a bad thing, just what is wrong with porn?

And while you're at it you might want to explain why lust is so bad.

[bluegreenearth]

To speculate so, you need to first know how close Christians can be to God in today's world.

Let's calculate this way. In 30s last century, humans can conveniently get in touch with pornography are nearly zero. In today's world, 99.99% living in a modern society, including Christians, are inevitably in touch with it. That reflect how corrupt this world became. It means Christians have the Holy Spirit thus they can comprehend more correctly especially in terms of salvation, but not necessarily capable of fully comprehend in terms of biblical knowledge (mind you, knowledge is not a necessity for salvation as salvation is made to be as simple as "believe in Jesus Christ to be saved" to humans).

I'm having difficulty understanding how your response answers those critical thinking questions. Please clarify.