Your comment went into my spam folder for some reason. If humans were incapable of sin they would not have free will and could not genuinely love. God created us for a love relationship with himself.
We must question the story logic of a perfect being that needs to create anything.
Then we can question why a loving God would create something flawed on purpose, knowing It would have to punish some number of them later.
And then we can ask whether we are “free” in this life, all trying to get entrance to Heaven — where there is no sin — just to become un-free puppets.
The theist doesn’t claim that God needed to create anything. To the contrary, he didn’t and doesn’t need anything.
You apparently take “flawed” to mean the fact that humans can go wrong and do evil. But why is that freedom a flaw? Do you believe we have free will, and if so do you see that as a flaw?
I see that people with psychopathy and sociopathy don’t have the same access to what it means to “love your neighbour…” or “do unto others…” and thus have a different “freedom” — which is much more likely to cause harm.
I see that the empathy that Ghandi was endowed with gave him much more opportunity to be “good” than whatever it was Mugabe had… which really puts some questions to the idea of “freedom” as an excuse.
It sounds like you’re saying that God could have created humans with a greater propensity for virtue and good behavior, and a lesser propensity for evil, and still be completely free to choose good. I don’t think we can make that judgment. And maybe he did create us that way but Adam and Eve messed it up. God did promise a remedy for that way back in the Garden.
Or maybe our general propensity for disobedience is largely a consequence of our ancestry and environment. I think you’d have to admit that most of us are capable of much better behavior than we do exhibit and it is our own fault that we don’t.
Actually, questioning the story logic is good. Why wouldn’t a God who is all-powerful and all-knowing create a perfect human incapable of sin?
The question is good, because the answer lies the implication of how God got to be all-powerful and all-knowing in the first place.
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Your comment went into my spam folder for some reason. If humans were incapable of sin they would not have free will and could not genuinely love. God created us for a love relationship with himself.
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We must question the story logic of a perfect being that needs to create anything.
Then we can question why a loving God would create something flawed on purpose, knowing It would have to punish some number of them later.
And then we can ask whether we are “free” in this life, all trying to get entrance to Heaven — where there is no sin — just to become un-free puppets.
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The theist doesn’t claim that God needed to create anything. To the contrary, he didn’t and doesn’t need anything.
You apparently take “flawed” to mean the fact that humans can go wrong and do evil. But why is that freedom a flaw? Do you believe we have free will, and if so do you see that as a flaw?
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I see that the urge to do evil is a flaw.
I see that people with psychopathy and sociopathy don’t have the same access to what it means to “love your neighbour…” or “do unto others…” and thus have a different “freedom” — which is much more likely to cause harm.
I see that the empathy that Ghandi was endowed with gave him much more opportunity to be “good” than whatever it was Mugabe had… which really puts some questions to the idea of “freedom” as an excuse.
LikeLike
It sounds like you’re saying that God could have created humans with a greater propensity for virtue and good behavior, and a lesser propensity for evil, and still be completely free to choose good. I don’t think we can make that judgment. And maybe he did create us that way but Adam and Eve messed it up. God did promise a remedy for that way back in the Garden.
Or maybe our general propensity for disobedience is largely a consequence of our ancestry and environment. I think you’d have to admit that most of us are capable of much better behavior than we do exhibit and it is our own fault that we don’t.
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I do agree that our ancestry and environment influence our behaviour.
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