DID GOD CREATE THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS???

Terry

Is this the best of all possible worlds?

Had God created a world in which He invested humans with adherence to inner, God designed morality guidance--wouldn't an obedient (and far better off human race) world not have been "better" than the one we are in?

Free Will is only the freedom to screw up.

Think about this.

Everything man designs is designed to function properly. Only through error does it malfunction. The human designer tries to foresee all contingencies which would test the perfect operation of his invention.

How would God not do the same?

If GOD COULD create the BEST of all possible worlds--is this world it?

Certainly not.

Endowing humanity with the chaos based decision mechanism (we call Free Will) is not a boon to mankind's safe-keeping.

An inner guidance from morality (built in) would make man choose obedience because it is best and not because man had to weigh unknown values against known (which is what Adam did.)

Being deceived by any third party (such as the serpent in Eden) would be impossible!

The best of all possible worlds would contain humans designed with an internal guidance which exactly corresponded with what was best for humanity as programmed by the designer himself!

What flaw did Adam's guidance system have in its design? It depended entirely on blind obedience. Blind obedience is not a credit to the rational condition of human intelligence.

What am I saying?

By creating a brain for Adam that depended on rational thought---Adam's nature was to weigh skeptically his commands against his options!

Adam's decision to "be like God knowing good and bad" was a RATIONAL DECISION.

But, it was in his human nature to make this decision!

Demanding of any invention that it do what it is NOT DESIGNED TO DO is a failure of the designer.

Therefore: GOD DID NOT CREATE THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.

Arguments?

edmond dantes

Terry, you are spot on with your comments .I have discussed this with the Witnesses for years ,Adam could not have been made perfect because he made an imperfect decision by his disobedience.If you follow the cults argument about perfection the first man should have made the correct choice.

It's only a myth anyway but to counter the argument we have to play along with the Jdubs line of reasoning. If God has made the World then he must have left out some very important safeguards and that is why there must be another anwswer to the puzzle of how human life got started in the first instance.

oompa

Even a perfectly created spinning top, will finally stop and fall over. Even perfect is relative. Creating something physically perfect, and giving it the ability to make any and all choices it wants to, including poor ones, does not negate the perfection of it, if that was the intended design................oompa

edmond dantes

Hi oompa, I hear what you are saying but if one person who has choice and makes a wrong move and another person makes the right move ,I would say that the person who made the right move made the perfect choice ,therefore Adam made an imperfect move.Which begs the question , in what way was Adam perfect?

The Adam and Eve story is ridiculous anyway you look at it.

oompa

Edmond: in what way was Adam perfect?

He perfectly decided to do what he wanted to....as was his design parameter..............oompa

Sirona

The garden of eden story is mythology. The universe is still evolving.

I'm guessing that the people arguing about this would be those who take the bible literally?

I believe in divinity but this argument is moot because I don't take the Eden story literally.

Sirona

Gregor

Terry, Good post.

This is only part of the entire house of cards myth. It gets worse. Inherited sin, the pissing match between Satan and God (illustrated in the story of Job), then showing how man could not redeem himself by a perfect keeping of the Mosaic law, the shedding of animal blood and flesh, which God supposedly required and outlined in detail, not being adequate. The divine conception of a perfect, human sacrifice, and then the sacrifice being nuetralized by the resurection. (God: "Now look, I know you don't realize it but you have really stepped on my toes. You can't do anything right. I demand a token of your repentance but it has to be a perfect sacrifice so I am having delivered through imperfect Mary's vagina my perfect son who will let you sacrifice him and then I'll be satisfied". Some sacrifice. Being dead 3 days? Come on! It just gets stupider and stupider.

Open mind

Is this the best of all possible worlds?

Not even close.

The Mormons can do much better.

Just ask them.

OM

Homerovah the Almighty

Your so right Terry, if this is indeed the best that God can do he certainly needs more practice, based on all gathered evidence I would only give him a C average.

and make him repeat engineering 101 all over gain.

BurnTheShips

Free Will is only the freedom to screw up.

How so? Explain yourself.

Think about this.
Everything man designs is designed to function properly. Only through error does it malfunction. The human designer tries to foresee all contingencies which would test the perfect operation of his invention.
How would God not do the same?

You are assuming malfunction. And Man is not a machine! LOL

If GOD COULD create the BEST of all possible worlds--is this world it?
Certainly not.
Endowing humanity with the chaos based decision mechanism (we call Free Will) is not a boon to mankind's safe-keeping

To make man without Free Will, is to make him not man. It could never be a boon, because the object of that boon would not exist. It is a logical impossibility. God can do anything that is possible, but the impossible is not possible. God cannot make a square circle. To make a finite free being incapable of evil is a square circle.

An inner guidance from morality (built in) would make man choose obedience because it is best and not because man had to weigh unknown values against known (which is what Adam did.)

An inner guidance that did not allow room for dissent would not be "guidance" but a rigourous deterministic program like that which is running your computer. The computer can not choose other than what it's programming demands. Your guidance is not "guidance". Adam did not choose based on incomplete knowledge.

The best of all possible worlds would contain humans designed with an internal guidance which exactly corresponded with what was best for humanity as programmed by the designer himself!
Therefore: GOD DID NOT CREATE THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.

Part of the problem inherent with the way you pose the question is that you tend to think of goodness as the absence of suffering, while goodness is more anything with positive value. The greatest good need not be the most pleasure or least suffering. Alternative worlds would have less cumulative good, and so God made this world instead. So when you say "the best of all possible worlds" you tend to mean the world with the least suffering and evil, while looking at it the other way, it would be the world with the greatest abundance and degree of goodness

God's creative ability is infinite like Himself, and since there is always an infinite gap between finite good and the infinite God, this is a nonsensical concept--however much good God chose to create, He could always create more. God is infinite, the world is finite. God is infinitely good, the universe is finitely good.

Burn

DID GOD CREATE THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS???

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