• jan teli@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      If you mean what I think you’re meaning, then yeah pretty much. Everyone has a choice, you can choose to be with God forever or be apart from God forever. Personally, I’m with Him.

        • jan teli@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          That’s about it but there’s no metaphorical dice rolling, you can make a choice and be certain that that’s the choice you’ve made.
          Jesus is always calling, He wants to be with you but He won’t force you to be Him. “‭‭Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (revelation 3:20)

          • supamanc@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            One can’t chose to believe something, you either believe it or you don’t. I don’t believe in God because there is no evidence for it, and nothing that cannot be explained without God, and no explanation involving God which isn’t made more complicated by His involvement. If God exists, and he did in fact create me, then he made me this way, incapable of belief without proof. So his choice is that I no be ‘with him’. I have no fee will.

            • jan teli@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I disagree, I think there’s plenty of evidence for God (if there weren’t, I might not be a Christian). As for balancing God’s omniscience/omnipotence with our free will, I think that’s just something you have to accept. Many people who are much smarter and wiser than me have tried to come up with a solution, but here’s what I think. I think that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but he “offloads” some of that power and decision-making to us. I’m really not sure of a metaphor that would work for this, I could say that it’s like He’s reading a book and can flick back and forth to see what happens, back that wouldn’t work because the book’s already been written. I could say He’s writing a book but that wouldn’t work because the writer has complete control over everything the characters do. I could compare Him to a human king, but kings don’t know everything that happens and they don’t care about everybody.

              • supamanc@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Nothing you’ve said there constitutes an argument against any of my points. You don’t provide any evidence, just state a belief that it exists. You don’t address exactly how I can chose to believe in something. Nor how if I was created by God, said God must have invested me with scepticism, which in turn prevents my belief in said God.

            • RIPandTERROR
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              8 months ago

              Yes. This is Pascal’s wager.

              I counter with deductive reasoning and the Epicurean Paradox. It’s not a question about is there a god. Can’t really solve that. The better question is does he deserve worship?

              [I’d answer a resounding no. In fact, he should beg for our forgiveness] (https://youtu.be/-suvkwNYSQo?si=RU3xdD2iBJZrb80p)

                • jan teli@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  tbh the vast majority of the “weird religion stuff” is just what humans have put in front of God. If you want to be with Him forever, why not be with Him now? We don’t know when He’s coming back but it doesn’t really matter. When you die that’s it for you, you’ve made your final decision
                  (still meaning “you” as in “one” but not posh)

              • jan teli@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                I disagree, I think the question of “is there a god?” can be answered near-conclusively, and yes, He is deserving of our worship. I watched the video you linked and to be honest, I’ve thought all of those things myself at times. But this world is fallen and broken. It’s not supposed to be like this. This isn’t how God made it. We were supposed to live forever with Him, but we fell and ran off with the devil. But someday soon, He’ll return and bring us back and everybody who wants to be with Him will be. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”” (Revelation 21:3-4).

                • RIPandTERROR
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                  8 months ago

                  Yeeeeeah none of this is a response to the Epicurean Paradox.

                  Thing is, goodly godly in’t so good. An omnipotent being by definition should be capable of anything. Including rewriting the rules of logic and reasoning, math, and even how free will inherently WORKS.

                  For an “all powerful” being to neglect humanity in the way they have in order to “preserve free will” they have objectively proved themselves instead as torturers.

                  Thus, a god figure in our accepted reality can either be all loving OR all powerful. Not both.

                  All loving would certainly put them on better terms, but then it would make them an untrustworthy liar as they claim to be all powerful.

                  All powerful directly implies neglect.

                  And then of course you can argue an all powerful being works “beyond our understanding” but I would then propose that it should be within that beings power to allow us to understand… Which they have chosen not to.

                  Either way, the Abraham god is a lil bitch baby who is an outright liar about being either all loving or all powerful. I chose not to respect them, and frankly they deserve both barrels and the meat hook of a super shotgun to the face.

                  • jan teli@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    But He hasn’t neglected us. That’s the beauty of what Jesus did-- He came down to us. He become a human, experienced all of the normal suffering, and then died by crucifixion, the cruelest and most barbaric method of execution ever invented. God shared in our suffering. He knows pain. He also offers an escape to a place where there’ll be no suffering, pain, hurt, death, or any of that stuff. God didn’t create evil. Evil isn’t a “thing”, it’s a natural byproduct of free will. If someone is really, truly, free to choose what they do then they can choose to disobey God and do other things. Yes satan is evil, but he isn’t the embodiment of evil, it’s something he does. And someday, God will destroy satan and the demons-- that’s what hell is originally for. Satan didn’t want to be with God, but he didn’t just do that. He wanted to be God. And when he fell he convinced a third of the angels to come with him, and he later convinced humans as well. And your right, God is largely beyond our understanding, but maybe we shouldn’t completely understand Him. It’s like we’re a bunch of three-year-olds. The three-year-olds shouldn’t know everything.

            • jan teli@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              But if you die without God then we don’t know what happens (presumably God knows but on Earth, we’re working with limited information => rolling a dice)

              We do have limited info, but God told us what happens-- you return to dust and are apart from Him, forever