Today in class, we discussed the power and all knowing-ness
of God versus free will. One thing that stuck out to me was when we discussed
righteousness and free will: does man truly have free will? If there was really
such a thing as free will, God might not be omniscient. Why would god, if he
knew that man were to sin and cause the destruction of mankind as a whole,
allow evil to exist? If he were to create all things, evil being one of those
things, why would he intentionally cause something that would destroy his
greatest creations? Thus, if God created evil, is he inherently evil, as
mankind is often considered to be? As someone said earlier, “evil was created
so that good had something to strive against.” However, why would there be a
need for the creator of all things to make something that tempts, harms, and
eventually leads to destruction? Adam and Eve, the source of original sin in
humans, were perfect and still had free will. Eve CHOSE to sin against God, but
before sin she was still capable of choosing sinless actions. I personally
believe sin is what causes us as humans to be dependent on God. Without God,
our mortal sin would lead us to destruction. However, also without God, there
would be no source of sin that would cause such a downfall. This being said, I
am not questioning the justice of God – punishing those who have wrongly sinned
against him. I am, though, questioning the necessity of evil.
Literary Works Online
Art Watch - NOLA.com
clustrmap
Contributors
Blog Archive
-
▼
2015
(343)
-
▼
October
(41)
- My hell
- Garcin's essence
- No Sleep
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Christian Existentialism
- So this isn't really discussing any points or addi...
- Why you always "lion..."
- The Murderers
- Billary Lewinsky
- So I was looking up Dante's Inferno online to try ...
- What is Dante Doing?!
- Getting a bit carried away
- satan was a freakin lizard
- Sex, unconventional sex, and rape
- Blacks vs. Whites
- The Bible and Inferno
- Canto VII
- I don't understand why Dante organizes hell by spe...
- Historical Figures in Hell
- Oedipus and Medea in Circles of Hell
- Free Will?
- Se7en...WHAT'S IN THE BOX
- 7 Deadly Sins
- Dante's Influence On Hell
- Personal Perspective of Hell
- invocation of the muse
- What is God doing?
- Level 8
- Burn Baby Burn!
- humanities is suffering
- Fake It Till You Make It
- Fundamental Theorem of Humanities: PooPourri is an...
- That's So Raven and Fatalism
- Zeus's rise to power
- Beauty and the Beast
- Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic Columns
- Conflicted...
- James Franco and Seth Rogen ARE Medea (well not re...
- Greek Architecture in New Orleans
- Modern Connection in Medea
- Who's The Villain Here?
-
▼
October
(41)
6 comments:
What if Eve did not choose to sin, what if it was her fate that God put in place. If God did set her fate to sin then why, again, did God make evil exist? Maybe this is God's plan, maybe this is all a ploy by God to make himself righteous. In "Bruce all mighty", Bruce, the main character, says what if god is just a mean kid crushing ants, and Bruce, having had bad luck, is being picked on by God. God is secretly picking on the human kind, we are his toys in his game of universe. To humans God is "the good," he is the one who brings hope to our cruel world, but this could not be the case if God fated Eve to eat the apple. I personally do not believe in this scenario.
God allots free will to people in challenge acceptance into Paradise. If there is no free will, then there would be no sin. God loves us all and gives us free will. He knows that we will sin, and we know that asking for forgiveness from him amends our relationship with him. He allows us to show our love back to him, by following his teachings, living with morals, and forgiving our sin. If there was no sin, there would be eternal good amongst people in the world, and therefore all would be welcome in God's Kingdom. However in this sin free hypothetical, there would be no way to earn your way into heaven. Without free will all would make t to heaven and all souls, eternally good and evil would be forced to live a life of faith and without sin. God allows free will so that the evil people will not be forced to go against their actual nature. He allows evil to exist in the world so that those who are good are challenged to remain in line with morals. He allows those who are naturally evil to stay in their most comfortable state. He gives us free will because he loves every one of his children. Evil is no threat to God because he is all powerful.
I was just thinking about free will and bad luck. Think about karma for instance. We have free will, but maybe God punishes us if we make the wrong choice. God may put situations in our lives where we have to choose and if we make the wrong choice he punishes us. My mom always says, "I give you enough rope to hang yourself." Of course she doesn't mean literally, what she means is that she gives me enough freedom to make the right choice and if I don't then I have to suffer the consequences myself. Maybe that is what God does. He gives us the freedom to make the right decisions and if we don't we learn from it. We learn from our mistakes and when we learn from them we are one step closer to paradise.
Another thing I've thought about is how people lose their free will in hell and simply must comply with their tortures and so awful things to themselves and others. I have wondered if it's a sort of mind control situation, where they themselves are basically gone, and simply "live" to do these acts and torture themselves, or if instead their consciousness is still there and their body moves on its own accord while the whole time they are somewhere swept to the back of their consciousness trying to will themselves to stop, but they have no control. for not being able to control your body but being fully aware of it would be an ultimate torture.
I continued to wonder about this post after I had made my comment. I even discussed it with my family at dinner. My dad came up with the argument that God did not create free will, but satan did when he and the other fallen angels rebelled against God. However, if God created all the angels including lucifer, who then created original sin, wouldn't God, by the transitive property, have created sin? My dad and I actually got into a huge fight over this situation, and began a serious debate!! I still could not wrap my head around these concepts. Also, I agree with antonio's comments about justly punishing those who are evil while rewarding those who have don't nothing wrong. However, if God knows everything, then he knows who is already going to receive salvation and end up in his eternal kingdom. Is this truly righteous?
@Jac It sure is difficult to think that God did not create evil. If Lucifer (and friends) created evil and God never intended evil to exist, does that mean that the creation of evil was out of God's control? That cannot be true, since God is omnipotent. God, then, must have created evil.
But, if God created evil just so virtue and love would have something to fight against (like many people would argue), why would God fate Lucifer and his friends to eternal torment from the beginning, if he has the greatest love of all?
To answer any of this (and assuming that the person asking this is a believer), we would need to answer a more basic question: Since God is omnipotent and omniscient, does that necessarily mean that every event in the past, present, and future had already been deliberately decided by God? Since there is no way to answer this question, we can only make an assumption that we see as reasonable.
Post a Comment