Lauradf36 wrote:
A wise person can read these passages and recognize that the difference was not God or morality changing, but mortal circumstances on Earth which make these otherwise wrong practices justified temporarily.
And yes. It did change! But what I understand was that it was not because of biological/scientific circumstances. I don't think Christian ethics are based on necessity.
I think your parents already set you straight on this, since in the last post you indicated some understanding of the circumstances that allowed slavery (e.g. the incivility of the enemies, and the nature of tribal warfare).
If you're still confused on this, we can discuss it more, but I'm going to assume that you no longer assume slavery and meat to be justified today given that the circumstances and needs are different from Biblical times.
I don't understand how you didn't understand it when I made the same argument (unless you aren't actually reading what I write), but whatever: as long as you understand now that the Bible can not be used to justify today laws that existed in an ancient context (whether that's slavery or about eating meat) then that's fine.
Lauradf36 wrote: Blame all the world's evils on God's inaction: must mean he wants all of this, so it's good!
Yeah but I don't see it as evil. That's the thing.
You don't see Hitler's actions in the holocaust as evil? Seriously?
If everything is God's plan, and you think no action is evil, then anybody could just run around raping and murdering -- because it's God's plan -- and that's OK by you.
Can't you understand how f***ed up that is?
Such an idea is morally revolting. It stems from your bad theodicy.
Do you know what a theodicy is? Do you even realize there are other options?
Read up, will you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
Theodicy (/θiːˈɒdɪsi/), in its most common form, attempts to answer the question why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Theodicy addresses the evidential problem of evil by attempting “to make the existence of an All-knowing, All-powerful and All-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil” or suffering in the world.[1]
The most common explanation of
evil is as a result of human free will.
E.g. the holocaust was horrible, and God didn't want it to happen, but he could not stop Hitler because to do so would be to interfere with human free will. God must allow evil people to be evil, and good people to be good, and to interfere would be against human interests because it would deny humans free will.
This is an interesting bit:
in his book The Tao is Silent, Raymond Smullyan proves that it is logically impossible to have sentient beings without allowing evil, even for God, just as it is impossible for him to create a triangle in the Euclidean plane having an angular sum other than 180°. So the capability of feeling implies free will, which in turn may produce evil, understood here as hurting other sentient beings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy#History
You can argue whether this is the best explanation, or even a good one, but it's MUCH better than your evil explanation of denying that evil exists and saying the holocaust was good and God wanted it to happen (which makes Hitler some kind of saint, right? For doing so much of God's will. Did you know he was a Christian and talked about doing God's will? He was a mistaken Christian following a corrupted form, but
HE thought it was true.).
The thing we should learn from Hitler is that Christianity, when corrupted, is capable of doing great evils. The same was arguably true in the witch trials and the inquisition.
It's important for Christians to not just assume at what God wants based on what they want to do, but use reason to understand that there are both GOOD interpretations, and EVIL interpretations that can be created from the corruption of religion to human ends.
Lauradf36 wrote:Yayyy I'm evil again! Fantastic.
And again, you're just flippant and insulting about this. Evil is nothing to laugh about and make jokes on. Ideas have power, and that can harm people, and even lead otherwise good people to do wrong because they are mistaken.
You think I'm being casual about the holocaust? I'm not. You are. You're just ignorant of what caused it. It was a corrupted ideology that created that suffering. Ideology can move the world, and an evil ideology can do great harm. It's the kind of ideology YOU have been supporting.
Lauradf36 wrote:According to my view, God did want all these things. [...]I believe in an omniscient God who both created & sustains the universe and everything in it, so nothing happens without His divine will.
If that's true, then God is not good. Do you believe in an evil God? If you believe and serve an evil god, then you are evil.
Read about theodicy, as I posted above. There are other alternatives: like that it's impossible to have free will in sentient beings without some evil occurring as a result.
Being omnipotent doesn't necessarily mean you can do impossible things. Can God violate his own nature? Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it? Of course not, those things are impossible.
God may be very powerful, but you can't expect him to be illogical and inconsistent.
If you are a good person, you should only worship a good God, and if God is good, then there's another explanation for evil: like that there wasn't a choice, because it was logically necessary, not because he wanted the evil.
Lauradf36 wrote:He has a plan bigger than my human mind can understand!
Then don't presume to speak for God and say he wanted the holocaust to happen.
Understand instead that it was the unfortunate result of human free will.
Lauradf36 wrote:Of course He is compassionate & loving & just and HATES to see His people go through suffering
You're contradicting yourself again. If he hates it, he can stop it: unless he can't stop it because it's part of human free will. You can't then say that he wants it.
Lauradf36 wrote:The last one. "God could make everyone accept Jesus and just be nice to each other" - I guess part of God's plan was to not control everyone. We have free will. We have choice. That not only allows us to experience emotions, but to have & choose a true relationship with Him - our ultimate design!
You can understand that letting people choose is necessary for free will, despite them choosing wrong not being God's will -- why do you deny that evil in the world is a consequence of free will, and not God's will?
You seem very confused.
Lauradf36 wrote:I don't think my reasoning is bad, I believe in it.
Hitler didn't think his reasoning was bad. He believed in it. Virtually nobody goes around saying "I'm going to be evil today!". Everybody thinks he or she is the good guy. But bad ideas, and evil beliefs, have consequences. People can think they're doing good by -- say, murdering all of the jews-- and actually do evil. Just as you deny you're doing evil by eating meat, or by propagating these harmful beliefs and corrupting Christianity to defend it.
I'm trying to help you open your eyes to your mistake so you can become one of the good Christians, rather than one of the bad ones.
Lauradf36 wrote:You know what? That happens sometimes in the world. Am I going to go around telling everyone they're evil? Nope!
And sometimes it results in death and suffering. People who hold and identify with evil beliefs can become evil by vice of those beliefs. It's your choice to believe the wrong interpretations of the Bible. Nobody forced you. There are good interpretations that could make you more compassionate instead of let you rationalize harmful action to others. You could believe in those instead.
Lauradf36 wrote:However, I do think understanding others have different religions & world views is important too.
I understand that, and it's important to understand, but it's also important to understand that SOME but not all of those views are harmful and dangerous. Some of the views are good, some are bad. It depends on how they affect others.
Lauradf36 wrote:And that, if I achieved, is what I call true peace.
Really? Are you going to respectfully "dialogue" with a Jihadist who is trying to blow you up? Are you going to dialogue with a pedophile who is molesting children to understand his position?
I already know these people's positions. I understand them through psychology.
The pedophile wants to do something evil, but he thinks he's a good guy, so he rationalizes how molesting Children is actually OK so he can "have his cake and eat it too", or have his morality and molest children too. He needs to be medicated and have therapy to teach him this is wrong, and help him control his urges, or he needs to be in jail to protect children from him.
The Jihadist is filled with anger and frustration stoked by religious tensions, and seeks cosmic purpose in his life which he thinks he's found through martyrdom. He's become isolated from his peers and has put himself in an echo chamber of other Jihadists who have talked themselves up and gotten angrier by trading rhetoric about their holy war. It's based on a violent and evil corruption of Islam, which needs to be stamped out by the peaceful and good interpretations.
"Dialogue" doesn't help this stuff: these people need to understand how and why their views are wrong. They need to be persuaded to change.
Dialogue is the first step to debate, because we have to understand what we're arguing against to do it effectively, but then we have to target the beliefs. Just telling somebody you believe something different and not challenging them is of little use, because it doesn't encourage change, and it lets innocent victims suffer in the meantime.
I understand you said you came here to learn, and you may have gotten more than your bargained for. But you made a claim: You said that Christianity is a defense for eating meat. That claim is subject to criticism. You followed up that claim with many more false claims.
You have been corrected.
Whether you actually came here to learn is yet to be seen. We'll see how you respond, if you respond.
And finally, I'll cover this (because you asked)
Lauradf36 wrote:
Do you really think it was wrong to eat meat in the garden, and then God just changed his mind? Is it right or wrong? Or is God just making it up as he goes? (I suggest you look into Euthyphro before you try to answer that.)
Didn't really understand the whole Euthyphro thing - do you mind trying to explain it? Something about piety and moral dilemmas?
It's the question:
Is good whatever God says? Like if God said to sodomize your children, would that be good by definition because God said it? If so, "good" has no meaning, and you can't define God as good, because that's circular logic.
E.g. "God is good and good is whatever god says/does"
I would be omnibenevolent by that definition, if I just say I'm good, and good is whatever I say and do.
That's just a form of moral relativism, it's meaningless.
OR:
Does good exist as a principle of the universe, eternal and unchanging, and logical. And God just happens to embody that principle as perfect goodness.