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However I am not sure that I understand the "I have actually been pretty nice and benevolent" defense. Does this mean that God takes responsibility for the killing, but considers it nice and benevolent? And what exactly are those "sins" that would justify mass murder?

This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between killing and murder, I have also noticed the common use of the two words as synonyms among people who generally are adverse to the use of Capital Punishment. Basically this line of reasoning seeks to equate killing with murder which is undoubtedly not the case. Taken to a different context this reasoning also seems to equate terrorism with the distinct purpose of killing innocents (which is murder) as opposed to targeting a hostile group with the incedental death of innocents( which would be more properly termed "killing" rather than murder.) The fundamental difference lies in the motivations behind the killer.

The earthquake which killed 60,000 or the recent tsunami which killed even more
are really very inconsequential considering the 150,000 plus people who die each day through deaths of varying kinds. The only reason why those types of concentrated events capture out attention is the sheer defined focal point of death all in one physical location of geography.

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But still if there's a being that's almighty and stuff, it would definately have predicted how we were going to turn out.


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Yeah, that's the interesting part. God, by His nature, would have had to of known about the fall, sin, and whatnot ahead of time. Yet decided to go ahead anyway. There's a lot of discussion on this in the christian community, which is something I've been meaning to catch up on.



I think the reason could be that God has limits, self-imposed limits which cause Him to act towards driving certain things from His Mind. For example in Hebrews 10:17 He states that :" ...and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

The fact that He chooses not to remember sins(after they are repented of) does not mean that He is just a very forgetful Being who cannot seem to remember things correctly. When He says that He will not remember them it means that He drives them away from His consciousness, by force of Will He drives the rememberence of them away. If He has now no recollection of our sins then He would logically have had no premonition of them. I would think it would be impossible to have a premonition of something that you would someday purposefully forget.

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God, by His nature, would have had to of known about the fall, sin, and whatnot ahead of time

I am not of the opinion that we can nail down exactly how or what God would know ahead of time,because as an eternal being, He had no beginning and there is therefore technically no such thing as "ahead of time". As an eternal being with no beginning or end, He would have already experienced the dawn and dusk of humanity before it even happened AND he would also be presently living in each moment.

Certainly there are aspects of time that He would have access to, but since HE has everlasting hope and faith(which are both time dependent virtues), He probably would not choose to know. Or perhaps His faith is actually stronger than what the future reality would be anyway. I am getting pretty deep in thought here so I will come up to the surface for air and use an example:

"Suppose we have generic man named John Doe. On the one hand God knows by premonition that John Doe will eventually be a rotten, terrible person who will worship the devil, die and go to hell.

But then suppose God's hope for John Doe is so strong and His faith for John Doe is so strong that it overides the reality of John Doe's predicted future and John Doe becomes a wonderful Christian who drives the Church bus to picnics on Sunday."

This scenario is very possible given that time and events themselves are subject to the material universe, and God Himself supercedes the material universe.

Last edited by NITRO; 01/11/07 02:35.