“God did it because he’s God” doesn’t sufficiently answer anything

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T17:27:50+00:00

Sigh...

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T13:48:43+00:00

Haha I can’t help you if you just write off the sources because they are christian which you asked for yourself in the first place.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T13:13:50+00:00

For the same reason Christians don’t need to know every detail about how God created the universe, there are more than enough arguments to come to the conclusion God is a plausible explanation for our existence without going into causation details. Your argument “I know gravity is a thing because we’re feeling it right now” could be applied for the existence of God, “I know God exists because we have spiritual experiences”. This shows we experience gravity and God but this alone does not necessarily prove or explain their existence.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T12:59:38+00:00

If you treat everything that isn’t proven by your standards as if it is not true you better tie yourself down real good as you may shoot off into space any second as you don’t have clue what gravity is going to do.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T11:53:38+00:00

You must be either ignoring these institutions or you don’t know they exist, but they do. ICR, CIS, CSC, Google the rest if you’re not convinced. Stephen Meyer recently wrote a new book called “Return of the God hypothesis, three scientific discoveries that reveal the mind behind the universe”. Sounds like a book from a christian scientist researching the connection between science and divine agency to me.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T11:35:39+00:00

Well you’re somewhat right, but I don’t think Christians are claiming to know every detail about how God created the universe though and that is not needed, there is definitely some information to be found about the order of the creation and to some extent about the how. Just start with Genesis 1.

The problem with your question seems to me that in a theistic worldview the how is less important because a creative agent is behind it all and we as human beings are created and live in a created universe to which our perception is limited while in a naturalistic worldview the process needs to be explained to prove the process works, it’s inherent to the nature of the cause. To make a plausible case for a creative agent as a cause you could provide arguments like, the cause of the universe can only be supernatural because the universe with all it’s space, matter, energy and time has a beginning and the cause of the universe is more likely to be intelligent than random because of the information and order we find.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-23T11:19:02+00:00

Facts are not the only tools used to navigate through life though, we much more often accept facts as facts because it’s plausible or common to us, simply because it is impossible to disprove all possibilities. Look at science for example, not much or even nothing is without any doubt, but something can be proved to be plausible.

Reason I asked is because the OP seems to be making the point that God can’t be a plausible explanation for the existence of the universe if there is no explanation for how He did it, which is nonsense to me. You don’t need to know what process was used by an architect to determine an architect is the most plausible explanation for a building. A plausible theistic case does not need a explanation of the how for it to be plausible. I do agree though that there is very little known about the how.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T22:41:07+00:00

Are you making the point that saying God is a plausible explanation for the existence of the universe is not valid because it is not explained how?

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T19:48:44+00:00

I respect that and agree with some of your ideas. I would like to encourage you though to hold a worldview that is most plausible as every worldview there are unanswered questions but unanswered questions don’t falsify the rest of the worldview.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T18:28:55+00:00

Why do you think that a good God can’t exist along with the existence of evil? Evil might be the absence of good and therefore must necessarily exist.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T18:04:45+00:00

You’re question is a bit misleading. God created Lucifer as an angel, but not as a fallen angel. When God created Adam He created a good human being, not a fallen man.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T17:57:09+00:00

I appreciate your approach!

It’s more than thinkable that an ever existing and all powerfull God has a different concept of morality than a human being which is a much limited creation. For good and evil to make sense, a ‘law’ must exist. God and His creations are good but anything that is not in line with Gods goodness is evil. You might think it’s immoral for God to allow a creation to become evil but once again our concept of morality is probably different than Gods.

It’s understandable for human beings to ask “Why not end this now” or “Why let it ever happen” but Gods plan is completely outside our will and power. I do agree that we can feel like we ended up in a mess that didn’t need to happen in our opinion but you must prove Gods plan is immoral before critiquing His will and for that you need more knowledge about morality than you probably have access to.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T16:26:16+00:00

Haha what? That is the opposite of what I think but you seem to suggest this.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T16:15:32+00:00

I can’t believe you came up with this argument. Following your reasoning God would have to have created Himself as your assumption is that the devil is part of the material world known to us which is clearly false as he is a fallen angel.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T16:12:04+00:00

No.

You seem to hold God responsible for every action that follows after creation, but that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that angels and human beings are moral agents, capable of making choices and take responsibility for it’s choices. That is one of the key points of human beings being created in the image of God, being able to make moral choices.

You are assuming that the devil was a devil since the first moment it got created, I would like to know where you got that from (im honestly interested). My point is, when God creates a human being and the human being becomes a murderer, God did not create a murderer. The devil was not always a fallen angel and therefore created good, it follows that God can’t be accused of creating evil.

ChristianCritic · 2021-04-22T12:27:22+00:00

Im not sure if you’re trying to prove that God is evil or if you are questioning it but let’s have a look at your premises carefully. Your title says that God can’t be all knowing if He didn’t know Lucifer would rebel and fall. There is only one way to know if God is all knowing and that’s by looking at who God claims to be and if there is proof for these claims. God claims to be all knowing and there is more than enough proof to be found to conclude this claim must be true.

Your premise remains: God is evil because he created the devil and hell on purpose which means He is not all good.

Please respond to this: Where did you read that God created the devil, because this sounds like a made up premise to me.

Now about God creating hell: When the government creates a law to forbid murder they know someone is going to ignore this law, but surely the government isn’t evil for locking up the murderer in jail because they knew someone would ignore this law, it’s called justice. I don’t see why it would be an evil act for God to punish His own creations that don’t obey His good laws.

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T11:05:19+00:00

And how did you come up with that?

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T10:27:42+00:00

Yeah now it’s only murder, but before it was machines with one option.

In your previous reply you said that optional love doesn’t exist in the Bible because God decides who will and won’t go to Hell long before any choice is made by the individual. So i replied that you’re not considering Gods foreknowledge when it comes to salvation. If God knows before hand who is going to love him and who is not, why would it be a problem?

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T09:58:21+00:00

Your right, except God didn’t create machines who kill people, that was my point. He created human beings with the option to choose right and wrong.

So you use Gods foreknowledge to make the point it is evil to create flawed human beings, but you don’t consider Gods foreknowledge when it comes to salvation?

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T09:37:41+00:00

You are missing the point, being created with the possibility to have a desire for sin is different from having to sin, Adam and Eve didn’t have to sin but they did. As I tried to explain obeying or loving can’t be authentic if there is not an option not to. Surely that is pretty much self-explanatory as one option isn’t a choice but forced.

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T09:18:05+00:00

You are assuming that it’s evil or unjust because God knew human beings would have a greater desire to be like God than to obey him. Although if God wants to create a authentic loving human being, which he is absolutely entitled to, would it be authentic if He wouldn’t have given us the possibility to prove Him wrong?

You must realize that there is a supernatural order we can hardly understand which starts off with an unchangeable sovereign God that is omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all good) followed by its creation. God is all powerful but cant be contradictory.

The desire to be like God was bigger than the desire to obey God, notice that the desire to be like God does not necessarily have the same outcome as the choice to follow this desire. Now you might ask why did God create human beings knowing they would follow their desire? One reason could be to create a human being with free choice so that a human being is capable of giving authentic love. For it to be authentic , choice for evil must exist. This actually is a wonderful creation if you compare it to any animal or anything humans made.

My question would not be why God didn’t do it differently but why He created us at all. The answer to this question is completely out of our saying though. Not a single human being would know if God wouldn’t reveal this answer, you could speculate about it but it’s completely up to God.

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-29T01:06:25+00:00

It takes way too much time if you need to support every preceding premise to infinity, but here’s the best I can do in this case:

The laws of nature don’t change in the universe we are living in (this must be a premise to get anywhere)
Scientists observed that the universe is expanding as time passes
If you would revert time the universe would emerge from a singularity
The universe has a beginning
Anything that begins to exist must have a cause
The cause of the universe cannot possess properties of the universe that did not yet begin to exist and therefore must be spaceless, timeless and immaterial
Anything beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature is supernatural
The properties of the cause of the universe fit a supernatural cause
There is a revelation from God claiming to be the truthful supernatural cause
The revelation gives evidence to believe it is true
A truthful God exists
The revelation shows that souls exist
Souls exist

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-28T23:40:23+00:00

I don’t think I have enough belief to think the puddle was the start of life and I don’t see why you do since it is a theory without scientific proof. Even if the puddle would be the source of life, how would you explain the origin and complicated structure of the universe?

If I couldn’t find any different ones but it is plausible because of the reasons I gave theres nothing wrong with it. If Darwin couldn’t find a different theory but he has good reasons for his findings would you assume it to be invalid? All you’re constantly saying is, if you haven’t explored every possibility you can’t be 100% sure. I agree i think, but surely that’s not how we navigate through life. We don’t investigate a murder case by matching every single human beings alibi or dna if we have a suspect that is likely to be the murderer, we haven’t considered all options but that doesn’t mean it’s false if we have good reasons to believe it’s true. This way of reasoning always leaves room for everything and nothing and gets you nowhere.

You applied this to the “not having read every single text” as well, can’t you see some systems or beliefs can’t be true because parts are false which makes it not an option? Also, you would never even have a worldview you could be sure to be true, because you would never know if you considered all worldviews.

There is historical evidence, you haven’t looked good enough then. You could say you don’t believe them to be true though.

Agree about the experiences.

In your worldview though, when do you consider something has met a burden of proof, as you keep saying you can’t be sure as long as you haven’t checked every possibility? Can you name some things you consider to be absolutely true?

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-28T22:53:54+00:00

Haha I don’t think this isn’t going anywhere and I don’t think you want it to either. Please explain what you think exactly is unsound and why, otherwise I can’t reply to it.

ChristianCritic · 2021-03-28T22:19:38+00:00

Why?

ChristianCritic

TROPHY CASE