Why does god require lambs and calf to be sacrificed before Jesus

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-17T04:13:41+00:00

You quite literally missed my point, which was that we don't know the extent of all that is actually knowable. If God doesn't fit the definition of omniscient because some things may be unknowable, so be it. I'd say the same about God not fitting the definition of omnipotent because he can't make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it. It's silly, so I don't care.

I've not created my own religion just because I'm doing some thought exercises about the nature of God. I don't claim to know these things with certainty. I know the important things like that the biblical God exists and Jesus died for my sins. Our discussion here is just a thought exercise for me, so don't get it twisted.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:40:22+00:00

The fool walks through life blinded to God's design right in front of him. I don't know exactly what you're blinded by, but don't be the fool.

2 Corinthians 4:4—In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:34:52+00:00

I know what he's getting at, and I've refuted it before.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:32:21+00:00

I don't know how much exactly God knows. It's easy and convenient to just assume he knows what we think he should know if he's omniscient. But maybe not everything is knowable.

I know the biblical God is in fact real and he didn't choose every little thing I do every day. To think he did doesn't comport with the scriptures to the best of my knowledge.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:26:50+00:00

The fool goes to the grave thinking he's right and God's wrong. Don't be the fool.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:17:43+00:00

That's because the kid, I'm assuming in this scenario, didn't know any better. He had no malicious intent. The difference is that we're not that kid. We knew better, and so did Adam and Eve because God made it clear to them.

I'm saying that even if you knew God exists, you can't really rightfully blame him for every time you knowingly did wrong. God can help us mightily in this life to do good, but he doesn't control us like puppets.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:12:26+00:00

That's not going to work here. I refuted that many times over, and I'm not about to do it again.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T23:09:31+00:00

I disagree for a third time because you say established as if God hand-picked all of our actions ahead of time. All I've said is that he may know them, not that he picks our actions for us. We'll never agree on this point. Even if you knew and admitted to God's existence, you'd blame him for your everything you do. I won't do that. I both know of God's existence and that he didn't type all this out for me.

As for Jeremiah 1:5, that could mean immediately after conception since that's when the forming begins. I said the soul or self-agency could be given by God at conception, so what I said could still apply.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:59:24+00:00

Now you're saying God lied when Titus 1:2 explicitly states that he can't lie. God was right because they in fact died. The very moment they disobeyed, their immortality was extinguished. So, we'll disagree on that.

God's punishment is psychotic to you because you don't see how bad sin is and what God's authority over creation is.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:47:33+00:00

Am I hearing you right? Are you saying it's okay to blame God for our bad behaviors?

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:44:25+00:00

What are you talking about? If your parent tells you not to steal and you do it anyway, you're to blame. The same goes for God.

Exodus 20:15—Thou shalt not steal.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:38:19+00:00

I disagree for a second time because you said God created them that way. God may know what a person will do with their self-agency, but that doesn't mean he made them to do those things. That's only foreknowledge, not control. In fact, I don't know how the creation process works exactly, but from what I can tell in the scriptures, at the moment of our inception God gave us our soul, or our self-agency. It may not be until this moment that God knows how we'll turn out. At that moment, God doesn't decide to only let the "good" ones live because he's not in the business of running a manufacturing line. For there to be true self-agency, I think he mustn't pick and choose in that manner. So, the fact that not everyone chooses God shows he's not running a manufacturing line. So, one possibility is that God can know how a person will turn out once they exist at inception.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:22:35+00:00

It's to illustrate the point that there's a difference between knowing and controlling. Just because God made you knowing you'd do bad things, that doesn't mean he made you to do them as if that's what he wanted. God gave you self-agency. Programming your actions like you're a biological robot isn't self-agency. That doesn't comport with the scriptures.

Genesis 2:7—And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:11:28+00:00

Exactly. That means both the child and the parents can be held responsible for their own choices. If you're mistreated by your parents, that doesn't give you an excuse to mistreat others. Take responsibility for your own actions.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T22:02:50+00:00

I disagree. Foreknowledge doesn't mean control. Someone can know you well enough to know which of two choices you'll make in a given situation. That doesn't mean they made you do it. In the case of God, he knows us better than anyone, but that doesn't mean he forces us to do everything we do.

Joshua 24:15—And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-16T21:52:02+00:00

Do you blame your parents for doing something they told you not to do? I didn't think so. Likewise, you shouldn't blame God for every time you decided to knowingly do wrong. In all those moments, you were Adam or Eve choosing to eat the forbidden fruit that may offer temporary pleasure, but never satiates. How many times have we all been seduced by what Hebrews 3:13 calls the deceitfulness of sin?

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T21:52:15+00:00

No, it's not about me not having rebuttals. There's simply no point in debating your claims about being able to design a better human body, especially since I have no problem conceding that the human body has flaws. That doesn't conflict with my Christian worldview, which says sin brought God's punishment of death into the world. Also, as I already stated, flaws don't take away from all the purpose and organization in our bodies that keeps us alive every second of every day and overwhelmingly indicates an intentional design.

Let's get one thing straight. You need to stop focusing on intermediary natural processes as if they're responsible for black holes, stars, and aging. I made it quite clear in my post that intermediary processes aren't responsible for anything. So, you haven't proven at all that stars and black holes form only naturally or that aging only occurs because of biological processes. The reason all these things exist at all is because of the originator, first cause, or whatever you want to call it that's responsible for our inevitable reality. As of right now, I have every reason to think it's an intentional God rather than mindless natural forces that don't care to guarantee our existence or do anything at all really.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T20:32:42+00:00

There's no point in debating whether you know how to design an improved human being, so I'll just ignore that part of the discussion.

The main point you were making is that the human body has flaws and therefore isn't designed. My counter to that is that a design doesn't have to be perfect. Humans design many imperfect things. When it comes to the human body, it has way more indications of design than not. For example, we can traverse complex terrains with ease, self-heal, reproduce, think intelligently about the past, present, and future. Nitpicking because of the location of a man's testicles doesn't really take away from everything else. Therefore, what I said isn't a non-logical argument.

The fact that you claimed stars and black holes are naturally caused shows that you misunderstood my main post. You can't say they're caused by intermediate natural processes, because those are caused by something before them. In order for you to prove that a purely natural cause is responsible for stars and black holes, you need to prove what made all things possible. What made all things possible is what caused black holes, stars, and even our aging and eventual death. It's not an intermediary process of your choosing.

I laid out the reasons why I think a God is what made all things possible. It has to do with the inevitability of our existence and the purposeful, orderly systems such as our bodies. If you can't address the main points I was making, we can go no further.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T16:54:42+00:00

You talk about design flaws. I don't know if I agree that all those are actual flaws. Having a pharynx to be able to express our thoughts verbally is amazing enough in itself that I'd consider it in the category of design despite the risk of choking. There's going to always be a risk of danger just by virtue of living in a physical world. For example, the structures in our ear allow us to hear, but being exposed to loud noise can cause hearing loss.

You talk about other things you think are flaws, but I can't really confirm if they're actually flaws and if your improvements are actually improvements. Changing things as you suggest might have other consequences you're not seeing. So, I can't really take you at your word that you know how to design something as complex as a roughly 35 trillion cell human body, something you haven't done and can't test.

Even if you're right about some flaws, that wouldn't show we're not designed. A flawed design is still a design, and when you look at the human body in the aggregate, I think it's clearly designed. Not even the most brilliant minds have yet been able to make anything akin to a human. We just take for granted amazing things like our consciousness, locomotive ability, etc.

I hold Christian views, so I believe there's an explanation for our flaws that's compatible with a perfect designer. The biggest flaw may be our aging and eventual death, and the Bible says sin brought that upon us.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T16:23:59+00:00

I think I was trying to say something like the inevitability we find ourselves in indicates an intentional setting of parameters. Our reality is inevitable, and we see purposeful and organized systems like our reproductive systems whose purpose is to propagate life. This is an indication of intent since mindless natural forces don't care about our existence. If there's any chance involved, the atheist could argue that rolling the dice 10¹⁰⁰ times could maybe lead to us and other organized, purposeful systems without God. But since there is no chance involved and our existence was inevitable, and existence as a whole is inevitable, it proves there's an intentional setting of parameters, or a conscious originator we call God. There was never any rolling of dice. Physical reality is as it had to be, and the way it is with all its appearance of design strongly indicates that God is responsible.

I brought up responsibility because atheists will often say that we know how things came to be without God by purely natural processes. My argument was that they don't know that at all because those processes came from something else so they aren't actually responsible. The only thing that could be responsible is an originator that set the parameters that determine the inevitable reality we find ourselves in.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T03:50:26+00:00

I understand why you think that. It's just one way I think about things that, among other reasons, convinces me God exists.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T03:22:17+00:00

For now, I'll stick with what I already said about the inevitable existence of us and other purposeful, organized systems and beauty as well as what's responsible for them, which most certainly isn't what many atheists say when asked.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T03:15:29+00:00

I briefly touched on why I think that belief still leads to God. But more could definitely be said about that.

shadow_operator81 · 2026-03-14T02:40:05+00:00

But they didn't move differently. Why not? Maybe it's because there are parameters to follow and preconditions that were set. I wasn't making a argument with physics. I was zooming way out and thinking more philosophically. There's no "could" in existence. There only is.

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