Why did God Create people he can't talk to?

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TX05CCHH
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Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
codker92
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TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.


God spoke to lots of people. Noah, Moses, Ezekiel etc.
Martin Q. Blank
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TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
God doesn't have lungs, lips, tongue, or vocal cords to even talk in the first place.
kurt vonnegut
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Most believers would say that God IS able to communicate (maybe not talk in the sense that you and I can talk) with humans. Would a better question be 'why' doesn't God communicate directly with more/all people?
schmendeler
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Martin Q. Blank said:

TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
God doesn't have lungs, lips, tongue, or vocal cords to even talk in the first place.


But he's got sperm!
ramblin_ag02
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TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
Two thoughts: As already mentioned, God does talk to people. Many Christians believe the "Angel of God" in the OT was the preincarnate Son. Many Christians also believe that when the "Word of God" came to the prophets, it was literally preincarnate Jesus showing up to have conversations with them. So part of the Trinity, fully God, and communicating with people. Jesus clearly speaks to people while on Earth and afterward. So the question is a little off.

Second, God is powerful, and power can be coercive. We recognize this in many situations regarding harassment and consent. Only the powerful has harass and a large enough power discrepancy makes real consent impossible. Same is true for God but on an infinite scale. God wants us to love Him of our own free will. Too much exposure to His power would coerce us into loving Him, eclipse our free will, and make that impossible.

No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
Martin Q. Blank
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schmendeler said:

Martin Q. Blank said:

TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
God doesn't have lungs, lips, tongue, or vocal cords to even talk in the first place.


But he's got sperm!
I don't get it.
kurt vonnegut
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ramblin_ag02 said:


Too much exposure to His power would coerce us into loving Him, eclipse our free will, and make that impossible.

The above feels non sequitur to me. Did God coerce and remove free will from the people in the Bible that he spoke to (Abraham, Noah, Moses, etc.)? Would Lucifer be considered a counter example of a being choosing against God despite a high exposure to Him?
Sb1540
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ramblin_ag02 said:

TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
Two thoughts: As already mentioned, God does talk to people. Many Christians believe the "Angel of God" in the OT was the preincarnate Son. Many Christians also believe that when the "Word of God" came to the prophets, it was literally preincarnate Jesus showing up to have conversations with them. So part of the Trinity, fully God, and communicating with people. Jesus clearly speaks to people while on Earth and afterward. So the question is a little off.

Second, God is powerful, and power can be coercive. We recognize this in many situations regarding harassment and consent. Only the powerful has harass and a large enough power discrepancy makes real consent impossible. Same is true for God but on an infinite scale. God wants us to love Him of our own free will. Too much exposure to His power would coerce us into loving Him, eclipse our free will, and make that impossible.


Yes Christ spoke and was physically present to many people throughout the Old and New Testament. There are forests and volumes of literature on this historical Christ if you need something from that angle. If you're asking about God the Father then you need to read more on Trinitarian theology and the Orthodox essence/energies distinctions. It's what separates us from every other religion and allows one to understand why we can't know God the Father in his Divine Essence but how we are able to be fully united to Him through Christ by theosis / uncreated energies. This is due to the incarnation so every human will be raised because of this since Christ (who is God) took on human nature.

The time we have right now if a gift to repent and undergo transformation into something that can withstand the eternal presence of Christ's glory.
ramblin_ag02
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Quote:

The above feels non sequitur to me. Did God coerce and remove free will from the people in the Bible that he spoke to (Abraham, Noah, Moses, etc.)? Would Lucifer be considered a counter example of a being choosing against God despite a high exposure to Him?
Good questions. Most Christians believe that Abraham, Moses and the rest were talking the preincarnate Son, not God the Father. Regarding Lucifer, I don't believe that he has free will. He is a cog in the vast machine of existence that allows us to have free will by providing a tempting counterweight to choosing God.
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Adverse Event
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clearly OP never played The Sims.
TX05CCHH
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Angels can talk to God the Father and Angels can take human form. Angels have free will as many fallen angels followed Lucifer. So, why did God make humans with the inability to see him directly? I agree that the patriarchs heard God, but did not see Him.
TX05CCHH
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Maybe God wanted there to be a clear distinction between the spirit form and the human form.

Angels are spirit and can take human form. But humans can't take spirit form until they die.

Moses and Elijah appeared in human form after their death and presumably also saw God after their death in the spirit world. So, maybe it comes down to God wanting to create a race that was not able to see him, yet would eventually.
Aggrad08
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This doesn't appear a reasonable conjecture. That's like saying god is incapable of communicating in any way outside of overawed free will murdering power. I see no reason to believe this and the Bible contradicts it.

You can substitute Jesus if you like for whichever character in the OT you think is talking on god's behalf and you run into the same problem.

The silence of god is a much harder problem to get around than pointing at free will.

Also the basic premise is disproved by the notion of rebellious angles.
maroonthrunthru
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Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis ???

God speaks to me every day…. you just gotta be receptive to the way he communicates…

Prayer and humility are the first things that need to be adopted…

By the way, in case you haven't noticed… Satan speaks to a lot of people, also…

You don't need humility to hear his message… Just CNN…
mesocosm
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maroonthrunthru said:

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis ???

God speaks to me every day…. you just gotta be receptive to the way he communicates…

Prayer and humility are the first things that need to be adopted…

By the way, in case you haven't noticed… Satan speaks to a lot of people, also…

You don't need humility to hear his message… Just CNN…


I have a schizophrenic uncle who also says God talks to him. He also believes he is the crown prince of Atlantis. I don't believe him on either account. Why should anyone believe that God talks to you?
kurt vonnegut
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maroonthrunthru said:

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis ???

God speaks to me every day…. you just gotta be receptive to the way he communicates…

Prayer and humility are the first things that need to be adopted…

By the way, in case you haven't noticed… Satan speaks to a lot of people, also…

You don't need humility to hear his message… Just CNN…
A lot of people hold a similar idea that God is accessible to people that listen and are sincere.

But, in order to hold this position honestly, I believe that you have to address the fact that there are many many other Gods that communicate with their loyal followers everyday also. Many of those Gods do not corroborate the message from your God. It may be easy to simply dismiss the billions of people that speak on a daily basis to a God other than yours, but it would be lazy to do so. It could also be simpler to dismiss the word of Christians of another denomination who communicate with God and receive a message that contradicts your own. The obvious question from an outsider like myself is "Why should I believe that the most of the religious people on the planet are having conversations with themselves while you are communicating with the Creator of the universe?"


I think its worth exploring the "way He communicates" as well. . . . . Every Monday morning I send out emails to my team members at work explaining deadlines, deliverables, project statuses, etc. Then I walk over to each of their desks and talk to them face to face to see what they need to get their job done, discuss with them anything overdue, define expectations for the week, find out what they did over the weekend, and talk about how Moon Knight was severely disappointing. And then I do it all over again throughout the week as needed. It is so easy for someone to miss an email, misread an email, hear the wrong thing, or hear what they want to hear. In the current system, with sincere and devout religious people of all faith, who honestly wish to know and worship the correct God in the correct way. . . . why is it so clear that everyone just hears what they want to hear?

Put another way: God could appear through the clouds with a golden crown, a booming voice and sun beams behind Him like something from a Monty Python sketch. He could let everyone know He exists, loves us, and has purpose for us. God does not do this and the undeniable consequence is MASSIVE conflict, misunderstanding and ignorance. If God does communicate to us in 'His way', I think its correct to question why God communicates this way. What is God's goal in only communicating in a certain way?

one MEEN Ag
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kurt vonnegut said:

ramblin_ag02 said:


Too much exposure to His power would coerce us into loving Him, eclipse our free will, and make that impossible.

The above feels non sequitur to me. Did God coerce and remove free will from the people in the Bible that he spoke to (Abraham, Noah, Moses, etc.)? Would Lucifer be considered a counter example of a being choosing against God despite a high exposure to Him?
Yes and no. The term free will here is the ability to reject God, God's teachings, and run away from him to pursue our own agendas, sin, and consequences like death. So 'free will' is already a charged term in Christianity. We're not talking about free will like consciousness versus automation or free will like the ability to create and control matter, move anywhere freely like you're Dr. Manhattan. Humanity and this world wasn't created in a neutral space. God created all of it.

My belief is that Lucifer and his followers had free will to follow God and decided to seize power for themselves. God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden to continue to give humans that choice.

God promised Abraham that he would make a future people out of his generation and that he wanted to use Abraham's line to make a people set apart from the ways of the fallen world. Seems like a great honor to me. And a strong compelling reason to get your act together. Could he have rejected it? Yeah he almost did. His wife brought him to his senses though.

Noah, was picked because he was the only remaining righteous man who still revered God in those times. I would again, call that an honor to be picked to go forth for God.

Jonah is a good example of free will 'removed' as God sent levathian up to eat him. Jonah was a terrible prophet. Lazy, prideful that God chose 'his side', and disobeyed God's call for him to go preach to Jonah's enemies. So yeah, God broke 'free will' there. Jonah didn't rest in the belly for three days like he was camping. Jonah died and was sent to the abyss. God resurrected him on the shores of where he was supposed to be going and told him to get to preaching like he was supposed to as a prophet.

The bible starts with humans given free will, us screwing it up royally, making ourselves out to be gods, trying to define good and evil for ourselves. The story of Gods interaction with us is Him intervening to even give us an option to rejoin Him in the first place since we couldn't do it on our own.

Even in the old testament under King Solomon they were quick to put an idol outside of the temple and it stood for 300 years. God isn't going to stand for a 'free will to sin and bring death and destruction.'
kurt vonnegut
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one MEEN Ag said:


Yes and no. The term free will here is the ability to reject God, God's teachings, and run away from him to pursue our own agendas, sin, and consequences like death. So 'free will' is already a charged term in Christianity. We're not talking about free will like consciousness versus automation or free will like the ability to create and control matter, move anywhere freely like you're Dr. Manhattan. Humanity and this world wasn't created in a neutral space. God created all of it.

My belief is that Lucifer and his followers had free will to follow God and decided to seize power for themselves. God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden to continue to give humans that choice.

God promised Abraham that he would make a future people out of his generation and that he wanted to use Abraham's line to make a people set apart from the ways of the fallen world. Seems like a great honor to me. And a strong compelling reason to get your act together. Could he have rejected it? Yeah he almost did. His wife brought him to his senses though.

Noah, was picked because he was the only remaining righteous man who still revered God in those times. I would again, call that an honor to be picked to go forth for God.

Jonah is a good example of free will 'removed' as God sent levathian up to eat him. Jonah was a terrible prophet. Lazy, prideful that God chose 'his side', and disobeyed God's call for him to go preach to Jonah's enemies. So yeah, God broke 'free will' there. Jonah didn't rest in the belly for three days like he was camping. Jonah died and was sent to the abyss. God resurrected him on the shores of where he was supposed to be going and told him to get to preaching like he was supposed to as a prophet.

The bible starts with humans given free will, us screwing it up royally, making ourselves out to be gods, trying to define good and evil for ourselves. The story of Gods interaction with us is Him intervening to even give us an option to rejoin Him in the first place since we couldn't do it on our own.

Even in the old testament under King Solomon they were quick to put an idol outside of the temple and it stood for 300 years. God isn't going to stand for a 'free will to sin and bring death and destruction.'


From Ramblin -

Quote:

Too much exposure to His power would coerce us into loving Him, eclipse our free will, and make that impossible.
It seems counter-intuitive to me to say that exposure to God removes our free will. It seems reasonable to me that something like the opposite would be true - that the more we understand God, the more accurately we can choose to follow or not follow God. A person who fully knows God (as much as that is possible) and still chooses God has accepted God with 'eyes wider open' compared with a person who only knows a little about God and has accepted. Is that not true?

God speaking to Abraham did not remove his free will, as you suggest. He still could have rejected God. Would the same not be true for you and me? Is there something different about Abraham whereby he is able to retain his free will despite exposure to God, but you and I would not be able to retain our free will?

In short, I don't understand why being more informed about the nature of God must result in the loss of free will. That is the part that seems non-sequitur to me.
ramblin_ag02
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Aggrad08 said:

This doesn't appear a reasonable conjecture. That's like saying god is incapable of communicating in any way outside of overawed free will murdering power. I see no reason to believe this and the Bible contradicts it.

You can substitute Jesus if you like for whichever character in the OT you think is talking on god's behalf and you run into the same problem.

The silence of god is a much harder problem to get around than pointing at free will.

Also the basic premise is disproved by the notion of rebellious angles.
Not exactly. Like I said, I don't believe angels have free will. They are designed as counterweights to God's influence. To make an analogy, God is a supermassive black hole, angels are stars and humans are planets. If you are really close to a sun, it's gravity is more important that the black hole. But if the black hole is right there, then the sun is meaningless. To my thought, God put us humans where the influences of the angels, demons, and Him are all perfectly balanced. He then gives us a tiny rocket (limited free will), and that enough to move our planet closer to the black hole (God) or the sun (the devil, sin). Now if God decided to be more visible, present, and the rest, then he's basically moving the supermassive black hole closer to us. All of a sudden all the other influences, including our tiny rocket, are now meaningless. The magnitude of our tiny amount of free will becomes negligible and we are consumed by his holiness until we are no longer distinct from Him.

Christ is a bit of a different story. Christ is the interface between God and creation. In one way Christ can be said to Be Creation, Create Creation, and Interface the Father with Creation all at once. So if God the Father is the supermassive black hole, Jesus is both gravity and the person that set up all the planets and stars just right. He can interface with creation without undue influence because he is creation in total.
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PabloSerna
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"Maybe God wanted there to be a clear distinction between the spirit form and the human form."

My understanding is that: Angels were created by God to serve his creation. This is why Lucifer and his followers have a saying - Non Serviam, "I will not serve." This led to the rebellion and the fallen angels were cast out - we call these demons - they are angels.

"But humans can't take spirit form until they die."

My understanding is that: We are embodied spirits now and because sin entered the world at the fall, our bodies die, the spirit lives on until... Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead at which point we will have a new heavenly body - I like to think of as your best self - we will then go on existing as embodied spirits.

PabloSerna
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"Like I said, I don't believe angels have free will. They are designed as counterweights to God's influence."

My understanding is that: Angels have free will. Lucifer, the highest angel ever created by God, used this free will to reject the salvific plan of God for mankind. Angels were created by God to serve his creation. Aquinas writes that they may operate outside of time and space as we know it. Further, he writes and I can attest, they communicate via our imagination.
ramblin_ag02
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Ok, but how do angels have free will? When you have an omnigood, omnipotent, omniscient, involved Creator free will becomes a very difficult thing to reconcile. It's not something you can just state as fact. I just put forth an entire explanation of how humans have free will and angels are part of that mechanism. By what mechanism would angels have free will? Who tempted Lucifer away from God? How could a created thing oppose God's power of it's own volition?
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PabloSerna
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Aquinas writes (Q.59) that they have free will through their intellect. "wherever intellect is found, there is free will."

+++

In your scenario, it appears, to me, to be a sense of "balance" in order for our little rocket to choose its end. In a way, God diminishes himself in order for this "choice" to play itself out. Why then did Jesus, who is God (2nd person) - come down from heaven? Maybe you can elaborate.

Aquinas is not as clear, but it stands to reason, that the difference between man and animals is the intellect. Our ability to reason over their senses. Animals have instinct and can sometimes make the wrong decision, such as a hen not fleeing when the wolf enters the coop. This, however, is not free will as we know it.

Further, angels have no corporeal body, they are spirit beings. We share that aspect with them since we are embodied spirits. The difference is that angels are far more intelligent than we can ever be. However, they are NOT all knowing... that would be God.

For me it will come down to pride. Pride presumes you know more than God, but we don't and never could - we need God. So then angels being a higher being than humans are better - but not gods. This is the lie that Lucifer (the Devil) whispered in Eve's ear - "you will be like God, knowing good from evil"

Surprisingly, the only thing we can give God - is our will.





PabloSerna
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Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly?

+++

I see three aspects to your question:

First, Why did God create?

Second, Why did God create man?

Third, How does God communicate?

It is my understanding that God loved us first. God, by definition, is outside of time, so when I say "first" I mean that God is the original cause, the prime mover, of the universe. His action has set the universe into motion that continues into our time and has a direction that is unknowable to his creation. We call this God's will.

The little we do know about God's will, is when we love one another. Jesus, who is God (2nd person) gave us a new commandment that is an insight into the salvific plan of God to restore The Garden of Eden. This was a place where we could walk with God and approach him in a more direct way. However, because of the fall, we now journey through life struggling to overcome ourselves and to make our way back to the Father's house.

The good news is that Jesus has blazed a trail for man to find this way back to the Father. Sometimes God seems distant, even to folks that pray often, this is called spiritual dryness, even Mother Theresa experienced this in her life. For some of us, we can experience God in a very real way through the sacraments. These are not symbolic gestures - but real experiences that engage our senses. They unite us with God and for a moment, you know God is near and time/space have no meaning.

They way God communicates is through us. Me, right now, Zobel, JRico, Dermdoc.. all inspired by God to love - even when we disagree. Jesus said, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." (MT 25:31-46)

God is not some unapproachable deity that sits on a throne on Mount Olympus with thunderbolts at the ready - that is the lie that Satan wants you to believe - that God doesn't love us. Nothing could be further from the truth!



kurt vonnegut
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ramblin_ag02 said:


Not exactly. Like I said, I don't believe angels have free will. They are designed as counterweights to God's influence. To make an analogy, God is a supermassive black hole, angels are stars and humans are planets. If you are really close to a sun, it's gravity is more important that the black hole. But if the black hole is right there, then the sun is meaningless. To my thought, God put us humans where the influences of the angels, demons, and Him are all perfectly balanced. He then gives us a tiny rocket (limited free will), and that enough to move our planet closer to the black hole (God) or the sun (the devil, sin). Now if God decided to be more visible, present, and the rest, then he's basically moving the supermassive black hole closer to us. All of a sudden all the other influences, including our tiny rocket, are now meaningless. The magnitude of our tiny amount of free will becomes negligible and we are consumed by his holiness until we are no longer distinct from Him.

As an alternative to moving the supermassive black hole toward us, what if God made the existence of the black hole visible to us. Billions of people on this planet all shooting off in their tiny rocket ships thinking that they are headed toward the black hole of their God, and most are just shooting off into emptiness. Those of us not like the angels and caught inside God's event horizon have a choice. If I shoot off in a random direction without knowledge of where I will end up, I might end up heading toward God and I might end up going away from God. Either way, I have not chosen by destination. Unless there is real knowledge of where you are headed, no one chooses their destination. We end up in the right or wrong place by accident and by acting in ignorance of what is true.

On a side note - I actually like this analogy a lot. You could expand the analogy perhaps to say that just as scientific rigor has been needed to infer the existence of black holes by studying what happens near black holes, spiritual rigor is needed to infer the existence of God or the nature of God. I don't buy into the latter part, but I appreciate the analogy. I also find it funny that the analogy (perhaps without this intention) compares God with something from which light cannot escape and is literally invisible to human beings. If stars broadcast their presence to us, then a blackhole does everything in its power to not be found by us.
Rocag
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Lots and lots of people sincerely believe that God speaks directly to them. However, if you listen to what those people say you'll quickly realize that the things they believe God is telling them very frequently disagree with each other. So either God is telling people contradictory things or some (at the very least) of the people who believe God is speaking to them are wrong and God isn't speaking to them at all.

The question I would pose is how are we to know the difference? If the person's apparent sincerity isn't a trustworthy standard what is? Comparing it against some previous information (such as the Bible) only pushes the problem back because we again are faced with the question of how can we be sure God was actually speaking to them? Without some way of independently verifying what a person is claiming I see no option but to dismiss any claims of personal revelation as untrustworthy.
Athanasius
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Martin Q. Blank said:

TX05CCHH said:

Why did God create a human race that He couldn't talk to directly? He created angels that He can talk to normally and they can come to earth and heaven as they please. The winds and seas obey His commands. But the one creation that He most wants to worship Him, He can't even talk to without killing them with his Holiness.
God doesn't have lungs, lips, tongue, or vocal cords to even talk in the first place.
Jesus says 'Hi'.

(with his lungs, lips, tongue, and vocal cords)
ramblin_ag02
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Quote:

As an alternative to moving the supermassive black hole toward us, what if God made the existence of the black hole visible to us. Billions of people on this planet all shooting off in their tiny rocket ships thinking that they are headed toward the black hole of their God, and most are just shooting off into emptiness. Those of us not like the angels and caught inside God's event horizon have a choice. If I shoot off in a random direction without knowledge of where I will end up, I might end up heading toward God and I might end up going away from God. Either way, I have not chosen by destination. Unless there is real knowledge of where you are headed, no one chooses their destination. We end up in the right or wrong place by accident and by acting in ignorance of what is true.


I agree with this sentiment. However, you and I react to this in different ways. For you it's evidence against the hypothesis of a God. For me, who has already accepted that, it makes me wonder what I'm missing. That line of thought is what brought me around to the idea that goodness, as defined by Christianity, is the guidepost. Selfless love, mercy, fairness, charity, compassion and the like are close at hand to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Vengeance, hatred, greed, malice and exploitation are equally at hand and in opposition. I think everyone know that these the choices we can make day to day
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Gaw617
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Jesus said when he left this earth he would give his believers a helper; The Holy Spirit. If you listen he speaks to us everyday.
fightintxaggie10
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I've heard through DMT it's possible.
kurt vonnegut
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ramblin_ag02 said:

Quote:

As an alternative to moving the supermassive black hole toward us, what if God made the existence of the black hole visible to us. Billions of people on this planet all shooting off in their tiny rocket ships thinking that they are headed toward the black hole of their God, and most are just shooting off into emptiness. Those of us not like the angels and caught inside God's event horizon have a choice. If I shoot off in a random direction without knowledge of where I will end up, I might end up heading toward God and I might end up going away from God. Either way, I have not chosen by destination. Unless there is real knowledge of where you are headed, no one chooses their destination. We end up in the right or wrong place by accident and by acting in ignorance of what is true.


I agree with this sentiment. However, you and I react to this in different ways. For you it's evidence against the hypothesis of a God. For me, who has already accepted that, it makes me wonder what I'm missing. That line of thought is what brought me around to the idea that goodness, as defined by Christianity, is the guidepost. Selfless love, mercy, fairness, charity, compassion and the like are close at hand to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Vengeance, hatred, greed, malice and exploitation are equally at hand and in opposition. I think everyone know that these the choices we can make day to day

I would clarify that rather serving as evidence against existence of a God, it serves as an argument against the benevolence of a God that would punish or reward its creation based on their accidental ignorance.
PabloSerna
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AG
This why Jesus came into being - to bear witness to the truth of God.

It seems in the blackhole example that there is a level of ignorance, when it makes even more sense that a true God would write his laws upon the hearts of his believers who can attest to his love. Just looking at a voiceless blackhole is not enough. To preserve man's will, God lets us choose without overwhelming us with his actual presence.
kurt vonnegut
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AG
PabloSerna said:

This why Jesus came into being - to bear witness to the truth of God.

It seems in the blackhole example that there is a level of ignorance, when it makes even more sense that a true God would write his laws upon the hearts of his believers who can attest to his love. Just looking at a voiceless blackhole is not enough. To preserve man's will, God lets us choose without overwhelming us with his actual presence.
Every believer will attest to the love of their respective God. For those of us who are skeptical, I have trouble determining how/if I should value one person's subjective spiritual experience over another's.

On a continuum of level of revelation from God with 'God doing nothing' on one end and 'overwhelming us with his presence', I would argue that fantastic and impossible hearsay from ancient strangers from a time/language/culture we don't understand is a small bump off of the 'God doing nothing' extreme side of the spectrum. There are miles and miles of continuum between what has been done and 'overwhelming'.

If one begins from a position that says God is perfect, everything God does is perfect, and everything God is perfectly efficient and optimal, then I think my position seems nonsensical.
PabloSerna
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AG
So, from what I understand you are saying is that unless this "God" speaks to you personally - the word of anyone else is meaningless?

 
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