[Discussion] Does God have a plan?

[Punk Hazard]

Sorry about you talking out of your ass. But still, only 144,000 people going to Heaven is false, the book of revelation talks in apocalyptic writing. With most types of writing, the reader is to take statements literally unless the context demands a symbolic interpretation. In apocalyptic writing, the reader is to take things figuratively unless the context demands a literal interpretation. Therefore, in Revelation,we see Jesus as a lamb and so forth. If we were to take Revelation 7:4-8 literally, then only male virgins from the twelve tribes of Israel would be in heaven. No one believes this, which makes taking the 144,000 who were sealed literally to be completely inconsistent.

The shit literally says the righteous will live on the Earth forever dawg

You just called The Bible, the ultimate source of the Christian faith, flawed because it didn't agree with your preconceived notion of Christianity. Welp, that's my cue.

 

[Aim64C]

Whats nonsensical about an omnipotent being having no way of preventing sin without killing innocent people? A police officer can use force in certain situations, but that doesn't mean he can get off scott-free if he harms or kills an innocent person nearby. There are plenty of cases in which God has caused harm or death to innocents.

You listen to everything the devil says except the important stuff.

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" But God has said about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden:+ ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.’” 4 At this the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die.+ 5 For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.”+ 6 Consequently, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something desirable to the eyes, yes, the tree was pleasing to look at. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it.+ Afterward, she also gave some to her husband when he was with her, and he began eating it.+ 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.+

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21 And Jehovah God made long garments from skins for Adam and for his wife, to clothe them.+ 22 Jehovah God then said: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad.+ Now in order that he may not put his hand out and take fruit also from the tree of life+ and eat and live forever,*—” "

What would happen when we ate the fruit?

We would become like God, yes?

We became knowledgeable and ideological. We can conceive of the ideal - and gained the ability to assert ourselves over our surroundings - to include God.

You even take the liberty of telling God what is wrong with his way of doing things. Because, you know, if you were God - things would be so much better. You'd put all that power to much better use.

There are two fundamental ways of looking at the world around you. You can either believe the world is perfect and that you are supposed to learn from the world... or you believe that the world is broken and that it is through your ideas that you are going to perfect it.

Like the time he had an innocent man tortured horribly to death because of other people's wrongdoing.

You're going to have to elaborate.

 

[OG sama]

The shit literally says the righteous will live on the Earth forever dawg

You just called The Bible, the ultimate source of the Christian faith, flawed because it didn't agree with your preconceived notion of Christianity. Welp, that's my cue.

Thanks for not reading anything I said. Continue to act ignorant if you must. That verse was obviously not meant to be take literally but I have done my part, its up to you to believe it or not.

 

[Aim64C]

God has the power to preven it from happening, stopping a heinous and traumatizing event from taking place.

How? You keep insisting God can do all of these things, but then never propose how to go about it. God's just going to magically change reality because something inconvenient happened - and he's some kind of horrible monster for not giving you the paradise you feel you deserve.

You're saying he doesn't because he has to uphold the concept of free will. In that case, God values the free will of a murdering pedophile rapist because by not preventing it, he has chosen to uphold the free will over upholding the baby's safety.

The same free will to destroy is that of the free will to create, to love, to show compassion, etc.

You say you would prevent it from happening if you were God.

Fair enough.

When?

After he's alone in the room with the child? Before? What decision do you force him to make, otherwise, and when? At what point in the series of decisions that lead to the act do you intervene?

 

[Ash Ketchup]

I hate the word god, i think it as so limiting expression...

 

[Aim64C]

The shit literally says the righteous will live on the Earth forever dawg

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Spoiler

1After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. 2Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: 3“Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” 4Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

5From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed,

from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,

from the tribe of Gad 12,000,

6from the tribe of Asher 12,000,

from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,

from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,

7from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,

from the tribe of Levi 12,000,

from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,

8from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,

from the tribe of Joseph 12,000,

from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

9After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,

who sits on the throne,

and to the Lamb.”

11All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12saying:

“Amen!

Praise and glory

and wisdom and thanks and honor

and power and strength

be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen!”

13Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”

14I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God

and serve him day and night in his temple;

and he who sits on the throne

will shelter them with his presence.

16‘Never again will they hunger;

never again will they thirst.

The sun will not beat down on them,’a

nor any scorching heat.

17For the Lamb at the center of the throne

will be their shepherd;

‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’b

‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’c ” "

There are, quite obviously, more than the 144,000 and the descriptions of the war against the beast imply far greater numbers than that.

You just called The Bible, the ultimate source of the Christian faith, flawed because it didn't agree with your preconceived notion of Christianity. Welp, that's my cue.

The Bible is technically not the defining element of the Christian faith.

The underlying factor within the Christian faith is the belief that Jesus was the messiah as prophesied by Isaiah.

The Bible is simply an attempt to compile the scriptures as pertaining to and accounting of the story of the Jews and Jesus as the Messiah. The books following the Gospel (the accounts of Jesus' life and teachings) are largely the works of the Apostle Paul and his writings to the early churches as they were spreading. Revelations is a controversial book attributed to John - but the author of the earliest known scripts of Revelations is most probably not John (though it could have been a re-transcription, the overall pattern is different). It is simply not known who wrote it or exactly when.

It is deliberately written to make use of metaphor and symbolic statements - which is more useful for conveying ideas as opposed to laying down specific laws/ideas.

Granted, the Jehova's Witness believe that there will only be 144,000 - and I believe they will be quite incorrect about their assumption - but they are very exacting in their translation and their notes on translation, which I like (as a lot of context opens up when you begin to see more of what was actually recorded as being said).

The Bible has been a controversial book within Christian theology since attempts to compile scriptures for the first churches set out.

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" In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books that would formally become the New Testament canon,[6] and he used the word "canonized" (kanonizomena) in regards to them.[7] The first council that accepted the present Catholic canon (the Canon of Trent) may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393); the acts of this council, however, are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419.[8] These councils took place under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed.[9] Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above,[6] or if not the list is at least a 6th-century compilation[10] claiming a 4th-century imprimatur.[11] Likewise, Damasus's commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.[12] In 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. When these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new, but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the church."[13] Thus, from the 5th century onward, the Western Church was unanimous concerning the New Testament canon.[14]

The last book to be accepted universally was the Book of Revelation, though with time all the Eastern Church also agreed. Thus, by the 5th century, both the Western and Eastern churches had come into agreement on the matter of the New Testament canon.[15] The Council of Trent of 1546 reaffirmed that finalization for Roman Catholicism in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.[16] The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England and the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for English Calvinism established the official finalizations for those new branches of Christianity in light of the break with Rome. The Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 made no changes to the New Testament canon for any Orthodox, but resolved some questions about some of the minor Old Testament books for the Greek Orthodox and most other Orthodox jurisdictions (who chose to accept it). "

The thing is that the Bible is a composite work of many different scriptures that are believed by various groups to be divinely inspired.

Even within that context, divine inspiration does not directly translate to automatic divine law.

 

[Your Creepy Stalker]

You listen to everything the devil says except the important stuff.

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" But God has said about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden:+ ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.’” 4 At this the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die.+ 5 For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.”+ 6 Consequently, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something desirable to the eyes, yes, the tree was pleasing to look at. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it.+ Afterward, she also gave some to her husband when he was with her, and he began eating it.+ 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.+

.
.
.

21 And Jehovah God made long garments from skins for Adam and for his wife, to clothe them.+ 22 Jehovah God then said: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad.+ Now in order that he may not put his hand out and take fruit also from the tree of life+ and eat and live forever,*—” "

What would happen when we ate the fruit?

We would become like God, yes?

We became knowledgeable and ideological. We can conceive of the ideal - and gained the ability to assert ourselves over our surroundings - to include God.

You even take the liberty of telling God what is wrong with his way of doing things. Because, you know, if you were God - things would be so much better. You'd put all that power to much better use.

There are two fundamental ways of looking at the world around you. You can either believe the world is perfect and that you are supposed to learn from the world... or you believe that the world is broken and that it is through your ideas that you are going to perfect it.



You're going to have to elaborate.

Fun Fact: That wasn't Satan. The bible only ever calls it a Serpent. Even if you think it was Satan, then that means Satan is responsible for humans knowing right and wrong.

Oh, and the part about torturing and innocent man to death was the Jesus story.

 

[Bronze]

Any natural causes are part of God's plan, do we know why? No, but we could assume. I'll give you an example: You invent a robot - it's your creation technically - so you have plans with that robot. You can assign it to a task, you can make it appear how you want and all. The same concept applies to God and creation. God created humans; you see a human who is normal and you see a human who is not, this is God's doing and he has the right to do so, because he creates you the way he wants. Now one may not appropriate something bad happening to him as part of God's doing, which is understandable, but I'm taught that the more patient and tolerant you are in difficult times, the greatest rewards will be given to you in the afterlife and that is the big one. So if I experienced something good or bad in my life, all I'll respond with, ''Thank you, God'' and be tolerant and patient.

 

[FreakensteinAG]

So, let's say someone chooses not to eat, and to simply starve him/her self to death.

Is it God's fault for not intervening?

Likewise - if a group of people commit to a rejection of God and come into conflict with God's will - is it only natural that they be destroyed?

I mean - how crazy that God would make it so that matter can't exist in the same place at the same time. What kind of heinous being creates a world where people can be hit by cars?



There is a cult that is fanatically dedicated to abducting women to rape and breed for the purpose of increasing their ranks in a war of conquest.

You are God.

What is the moral means of dealing with this cult and putting an end to their conquest?



Well, since you're clearly the expert on God's abilities and wisdom, walk us through how a proper moral deity would have resolved such a case.

1. If someone refuses to eat, that's ultimately up to him/her. The decision is only affecting himself.

2. If each person refuses God's will, that's ultimately up to them. The decision is only affecting themselves.

3. Extreme Strawman fallacy, shame on you.

4. Help the women, take them away from the cult, make them forget the emotional and physical trauma inflicted upon them, and intervene in the cult by dismantling the cult without bloodshed or deaths. This can be done by implanting views against the cult within every member so that they do not wish to run the cult anymore. No deaths, no blood, no rapes, nothing negative. The women were helped, and no one suffered as a result of the intervention.

5. How about getting the slaves out of Egypt and directly persuading the pharaoh of Egypt to agree with the release of the slaves, the slaves getting their own slice of land they can run, Egypt's leaders no longer wishing to enslave the Hebrews? No children died, no adult suffered, no mothers mentally and emotionally scarred from losing their children.

Everyone will be all "BUT FREE WILL!", and I will just point out that there were already several instances in the Bible where free will was not part of God's plan, such as Abraham sacrificing his son, and the subsequent angel sent to stop said sacrifice. So obviously if the lack of free will was in the Bible and the result was less death than there was if free will was involved, then we can obviously have some instances of free will NOT being in the plan where everybody benefits.

Seriously, it's not that hard. "BUT MUH FREE WILL"

 

[Multiply]

Any natural causes are part of God's plan, do we know why? No, but we could assume. I'll give you an example: You invent a robot - it's your creation technically - so you have plans with that robot. You can assign it to a task, you can make it appear how you want and all. The same concept applies to God and creation. God created humans; you see a human who is normal and you see a human who is not, this is God's doing and he has the right to do so, because he creates you the way he wants. Now one may not appropriate something bad happening to him as part of God's doing, which is understandable, but I'm taught that the more patient and tolerant you are in difficult times, the greatest rewards will be given to you in the afterlife and that is the big one. So if I experienced something good or bad in my life, all I'll respond with, ''Thank you, God'' and be tolerant and patient.

Hm... Sounds broken.

 

[Bronze]

Hm... Sounds broken.

What is?

 

[Made in Heaven]

Almost every post here is about the Christian God. That's funny, given how the Gospel/Bible's been pretty butchered up by humans.

 

[Bronze]

Almost every post here is about the Christian God. That's funny, given how the Gospel/Bible's been pretty butchered up by humans.

Is there a Christian God? They say Jesus is God or Jesus is Son of God, or Holy Spirit...I don't understand the Christian God.

 

[Made in Heaven]

Is there a Christian God? They say Jesus is God or Jesus is Son of God, or Holy Spirit...I don't understand the Christian God.

There'sa trinity, but the one often refered to as God is "The Father"

 

[Stant]

a plan ?


you see his "plan" was done all long ago, and that was the bIG BANG. what remains is the shadow of that plan

 

[Karna]

Which God?

 

[Stant]

Which God?

exactly!, humans belive the "REAL" god of the actual reality will just come before them.

 

[nefraiko]

I personally am not religious(More spiritual) but I still want to pose the following questions. Does God have a plan? If there is a plan, what's the point of praying for a specific outcome if it is or isn't already in the plan? I think it's just to put people at ease for not being in control of their life(In their perspective) and making them think they have a choice.

all of these questions have already been answered if you only take the time to go to a library, these punks around here know nothing, they just talk, and their are some who are stupid, they will give you nothing, you want real aswers go read some books. lots of books, if you really want to know.

because what you're trying to find is really important.

or maybe you have already answered on your own to this question, and you're only seeking approval of others, but someone who has really found what he believes is the truth doesn't need any approval or opinions, and he doesn't need to convince anyone about it.

 

[ComplexCity]

Alright, let's start over.

We understand that humans are set with a code of laws that we are not allowed to do.

So we don't do them, thus we have some amount of morality to us, not just because we're not allowed to, but because we don't want to do them. This is what altruism is. We do good things not because it rewards us, but because we want to do them. We DON'T do bad things not just because we will be punished, but because we inherently do not want to do them.

So let's switch to God. He is Omnipotent, meaning all-powerful. He can do literally anything in the universe. We have disputes among faction members of humans. He wants the factions to live in peace and not be subject to cruel misery.

What would a moral god do?

A) Force Faction A out of Faction B's land

B) Create a system in which both Faction A and Faction B can live in harmony

C) Create a system in which both Faction A and Faction B can live in harmony, where everybody benefits

D) Faction A is allowed to live in harmony, but Faction B suffers

If you selected D, you selected the answer depicted in Exodus!

If you selected C, you selected the most moral decision of the question set! Both parties benefited, no one died, no one suffered.

What did God do? He selected answer D. Even though he had the powers to give everyone benefits, he made one faction suffer and one faction benefit, when he had the ability to make both factions benefit.

So how moral was his choice? A pretty shitty choice. He had no code of rules, which we get, but he still made an immoral decision.

Mmmkay

1. For the first thing morality is subjective so stop saying what you are in your first point as if morality is one simple, universal thing that people follow. Notice the flaw in your logic as different people/cultures/locations consider what moral and immoral to be different

2. You say as God wants peace as if he hasn't create a set of laws for us to follow. There are consequences for everything that you do, whether they be good or bad. What happens when you commit a crime? You got to jail, despite what sympathy or empathy one might have (I personally feel that someone who is hungry and steal should be exempt). You can literally use the set of laws we follow as an example. Laws are meant to keep order and are (in most cases) selected based on what is moral and immoral (collectively).


3. And then you list these examples as if God is suppose to exempt people who refuse or do not want to follow the law. So let's use this logic for humanity, do you feel like criminals should be exempt from the law? If you do (which I know you won't) then I can agree that God an unjust God.

Then you precede to demonize God for punishing the unjust. Why are people condemned to hell? Because they refuse to follow the law set for man (humanity) by God and as we already established, there is a consequence for every action. But back to my point, are criminals not thrown in jail for commting crimes? Do you think jail is not a place where one suffers? Do you think jail is a fun playground people go to to have fun? Morality as portrayed in the bible was suppose to be objective, but guess what? Because sin existed, we felt the need to question why certain things couldn't be done, formed our own conclusions and created our own morality. An example from the real word is a criminal thinking it's ok to steal from the store because 1 50cent honey bun won't drastically effect the business because the theft doesn't deem it to be harmful

Free will exist for us (biblically and wordly) for us to make our own choices from right and wrong (the laws set by God/the laws set by our government). When punishing those who commit immoral acts (sin/crime) there are consequences (death and an eternity in he'll/ jail, death penalty, etc) for those who choose this path through their free will

As I already established with Stalker about his flawed logic in regards to him saying how God is above the law and I'll quote again

God (the lawmaker) made the commandment not to kill (the law) for man (the targeted group for the law)

So let's just swap out a few words and apply the same words in the parenthesis

Congress (the lawmakers) made the law that prohibits drinking (the law) for people under 21 (the targeted group of the law)

So by this logic the law makers should not be able to drink right or anyone that enforces or carries this law (same can be said for smoking) since according to him lawmakers are not above the law. Funny how my atheist friend who believes nothing about the bible, is a man of science and asks the same exact questions found on here was able to understand such a basic comparison.

As OG stated , God does not kill for the sake of killing nor did he tell his people to kill for the sake of killing. Just as we kill and give the death penalty to the unjust, God had killed for the very same reason. Does that make it wrong? No

 

[BLAZE]

Yeah and he gave Human kinds a big middle fingers saying there is no hope for us