King Nintendoid wrote:
God is alknowing. Therefore, he would've known that giving us free will would create evil. A loving god would not want evil to exist, and thus he should not have given us free will. The fact that he did means he's not vey nice
Considering that this argument has already been answered by Christian thinkers hundreds of times, I'm actually rather surprised you would pose this as an argument. Here's the problem: if God created man without the possibility of a fall (as stated elsewhere, I'm not entirely convinced "free will" is the final answer to that problem, but I digress), if God created man without the possibility of the fall, then there are only two possibilities:
1. create man as an automaton, a doll if you will, with no capacity to love at all.
2. not create man at all.
Neither of these options demonstrates that quality of God we call love. Remember that movie The Stepford Wives? (I remember the original, which was more horror/suspense). The point is, if the object of your love can only correspond to your ideas of perfection, can that in any way be called love? Or for a better example, there was an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent where a man was kidnapping women, then drilling holes in their heads, effectively lobotomizing them into dolls. But in the end, he realized that what he was doing was not love, nor was their mindless obedience to him anything similar to love. That's my point. If mankind were mindless automatons, could their relationship toward God be considered at all love?
The other option, to not create mankind at all, would not demonstrate love at all.
The final option, to create man with the possibility of falling into evil, I would contend, most highly demonstrates true love. In fact, God loved mankind so much that he allowed mankind to become completely unloveable, so that he could love mankind anyway. As Scripture says, "For a good man, one might dare to die, but God demonstrated his perfect love in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
So there you have it: to allow mankind to fall into evil and then to perform an act of perfect self-sacrifice in order to redeem fallen humanity. That is the love of God, not that he wouldn't allow evil to exist, but that he is patient, even with evil, in order that he might redeem rather than destroy.
And that's why the Cross is so central to my understanding of God's love. It is in the Cross that God himself endured the greatest of evils so that he might demonstrate the highest of loves ("Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay his life down for his friends.").
And it was right there in the fall - the promise of redemption. Before God even created mankind, he already had the Cross as his objective, to perform a perfect act of self-sacrifice in order to redeem.
So here's my point: (1) to create mindless automatons is not a demonstration of love , (2) to not create does not demonstrate love, and (3) to create mankind with the possibility (might I say, reality) of the fall demonstrates the highest love, because it is to show love even when that love is not returned.
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I sense certain egotistical arguments here, like "GOD ONLY LOVES US, ONLY SHOWS HIMSELF TO US AND TO NO ONE ELSE! AAAAARGH!". I find that very selfish. Why would god create those billions of other life forms without giving them a similar treatement?
I'm not sure if you're referring to aliens or animals or what here. The subject seems to be touched a little in this thread, though this really isn't the place for it. But to answer, who's to say those other creatures are in need of redemption? If there are aliens, we need not assume they are tainted with the same sin that taints our race. For a good book on that topic, read
Out of the Silent Planet.
On the other hand, if you are referring to other human beings who have not come to know Christ, then the essential problem is that, it is not that revelation has been withheld by God, but rather that it has been ignored by humanity. The Cross still stands at the center of human history, a testimony to both God's wrath and His love. "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that all who look to him might be saved."
But, just like with Upsilon before you, I suppose you expect God to reveal himself in a way that is perfectly acceptible to you. In other words, you want God to meet you on your terms rather than his. But it doesn't work that way. God paid the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross; to expect, or demand, that he choose to reveal himself differently is essentially to reject his sacrifice as not good enough. I imagine that, were that me, I'd be extremely angry with anyone who said to me, "I don't give a crap about your sacrifice."
As for the question of creating, I imagine that if you were almighty omnipotent and whatnot, and you didn't do anything with that power, you'd probably get awfully bored after an eternity or two.
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KN was trying to convert me to atheism.
