You don't talk about religion on Livejournal!
Isaiah 45:7
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
I just wonder why, when he creates evil we should consider him "good". From a technical standpoint it can be translated many different ways from the original Hebrew. Semantics. That's all well and good, but this is a double standard. When he kills a bunch of children it's good. When one of us do it, it's evil. He, in and of himself CANNOT be evil. Why? Because he says so. No other thing makes him good other than he says he is. He can do the most evil things ever and it doesn't matter because he says it's good, all part of the plan and his definition of good. And if he can constantly change the definition of good, isn't that relativism?
Circular reasoning is valid because of circular reasoning being valid!
One other thing that confuses me, God gives us free will so we can make choices on our own, so he can judge us if we're sinning... but he's omniscient. If he knows what we're going to do before we do it, that eliminates our choice because he knew we would do it. So what the hell is the point, if he already knows what we're going to do he could just judge us now and get this over with, or not even start it to begin with. Or start at the end. Either way it seems a little sadistic to me. If God DOESN'T know what we're going to do that means he isn't omniscient and therefor imperfect. Can we have that? I mean I could deal with an imperfect god, and that would make a lot more sense to me, but I don't know about other people.
-T
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
I just wonder why, when he creates evil we should consider him "good". From a technical standpoint it can be translated many different ways from the original Hebrew. Semantics. That's all well and good, but this is a double standard. When he kills a bunch of children it's good. When one of us do it, it's evil. He, in and of himself CANNOT be evil. Why? Because he says so. No other thing makes him good other than he says he is. He can do the most evil things ever and it doesn't matter because he says it's good, all part of the plan and his definition of good. And if he can constantly change the definition of good, isn't that relativism?
Circular reasoning is valid because of circular reasoning being valid!
One other thing that confuses me, God gives us free will so we can make choices on our own, so he can judge us if we're sinning... but he's omniscient. If he knows what we're going to do before we do it, that eliminates our choice because he knew we would do it. So what the hell is the point, if he already knows what we're going to do he could just judge us now and get this over with, or not even start it to begin with. Or start at the end. Either way it seems a little sadistic to me. If God DOESN'T know what we're going to do that means he isn't omniscient and therefor imperfect. Can we have that? I mean I could deal with an imperfect god, and that would make a lot more sense to me, but I don't know about other people.
-T