First of all, thanks Hortlund, Apache and Kieran for taking your time. I won't argue with your faith but will need some clarification of your position/explanations. Please don't see it as Christian-trashing or anything like that.
Hortlund, I'm not a theist. That, however, does not exclude me from the group pf people ALLOWED to have a serious discussion about it. I'm not an idiot if I critizise or praise aspects of a religion, nor am my intentions malevolent. I'd appreciate it if you gave me credit - I can assure you that if I wanted to attack religion, I'd be much more crude and direct (anyone remember when I had the Crossbuster sign in my signature with the text "Tresspassers will be shot - survivors will be shot again")? And that was for fun.
Kierkegaard is a bit overrated IMHO. Then again, so are most philosophers.
I don't buy the "Man doesn't understand God" bit. We've had clear instructions from that deity in a collection of works called the Bible. Assuming these texts are correct, we were given some mental capabilities and can deduct and understand what is in those text - amongst other things issues related to how God sees this responsibility thing.
Apache, I was under the illusion that the Christian deity was omnipresent. That is, he'll (or is it a better word?) be present everywhere in his creation. Absence of something just says that that something isn't there. I'm absent from the US for instance - it says nothing about what is there. Total absence of everything, as in a vacuum - means nothing is there - not sin. Nothing is nothing. It's a near impossible concept to twist ones mind around, nothingness - but either there is something (be it sin or God or something else) or there is nothing.
God knew exactly what was going to happen, because he'd set it up so it would happen. Who else could have?
Kieran, I'll write a lot now just from the top of my head. Answer what you think is important and ignore the rest
:
The difference between God and humans and you and your daughters is that God had a clean slate with endless possibilites. Unlimited were his choices, and all he wished to be would be.
In the case of you and your daughter you're actually under severe restraint - your biological inheritance disallows an enormous amount of things (including creating universes
), your social inheritance a lot of others and then there are a lot of laws of physics you can do little about.
You're just a wee little subroutine God has created in his Universe 0.1(b). You do NOT have perfect understanding of how *everything* that is effects everything else, nor do you have an ability to absolutely see the future, the past or the present in its entirety. You follow the limits in the program God has made.
When God knew the instant he came into be (or maybe he has always been as in Christian faiths) what you were gonna do for your entire life - even before he had started to work with Universe 0.1(b), he has to take responsibility for his creation. He knows perfectly well what is going to happen, because he's set it up so it WILL happen. You choose A or you choose B - God already knows. If he doesn't, he isn't ominiscient (which actually would make sense).
Kieran, what I am saying is that you cannot put the blame solely on God OR on people. We, as humans, live in accordance to the restrictions God has put upon us. We also live based on HIS design, not ours. His design may have included free will, but one must look at the circumstances. If you create a car that you know will rust because you've *designed* it so it will rust, you cannot say it's just the cars fault for being out in the rain once too often.
I know you're reluctant to place blame on God - but how about if we call it 'responsibility'? We may not know WHY he did it, but he DID do it, and it had some consequences he surely knew about. They were intentional from his side.
Kieran, regarding oputting you into a situation, but only one you can cope with. I take it that you include the afterlife in this. Lots of Christian missionaries have been put in circumstances way out of their control and as a result been killed. 'Coping' thus must entail something with faith and the afterlife?
Hm I gess I just don't get it.
