by Perry 91 Replies latest watchtower bible
Science and religion can never be in agreement. They are fundamentally different world views. To suppose otherwise is ignorant.
Religion is about alleged REVEALED knowledge; Science is about knowledge that can be DISCOVERED.
Religion is about an elite individual or group that must be obeyed without question; Science is all about the question.
Peer review is essential to how science is done; in religions, your opinion is not wanted.
Perry _ I have lost count of how often I have asked you the following question.
You have refused to answer it every time.
Please tell us specifically which books presenting the scientific evidence FOR evolution you have read.
Perry, glad to see you back in action. you've been through too much this year. I hope things quiet down for you.
Love the pic, and it makes a statement about you It takes a lot of love to care for the large parrots, and see them so healthy!
That is the kind of thing that made me doubt religion, as a child. How could "god" allow cruelty to animals? As a lover of parrots, you know what cruel fates are dealt to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of black market birds.
How do you reconcile such horrible things, with a god of love and kindness/ I am not being sarcastic - it was one of the main reasons that, even as a child of 10 or 11 , I could not truly believe in a god of love.
So, I am curious to know, does that not give you pause?
Thanks.
Perry:
You're doing a remarkable job with those modern dinosaurs!
That is the kind of thing that made me doubt religion, as a child. How could "god" allow cruelty to animals? As a lover of parrots, you know what cruel fates are dealt to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of black market birds.
Talesin, Christians grapple with these kinds of questions all the time. It is an important question and one not easily answerable at first glance..... if for no other reason that its sheer scope.
When attempting to answer a question it is important to identity the presuppositions inherent in the question, otherwise a person can very easily find themselves in a round room looking for the corner. I'm not trying to give a lecture here, but I want to work through this question.
First your question, assumes there are laws that identify cruelty, and that implies a law-giver. This question cannot be asked unless an absolute moral law is assumed, otherwise the cruel person has just as much legitimacy as the loving person. And, an absolute law-giver - if anything proves gods existence rather than dislodges him. At the minimum, God is in the framework of the question.
Second, I think there would be widespread agreement that the supreme ethic is Love. Inherent in Love is the "will". Some wise poet once said love is something you do, not only something you feel. My point is that a necessary component of love is volition. You cannot have love without the freedom not to love, otherwise all you have is automation, conformity and compliance... all of which are in contradistinction to love. It may appear like it on the surface, but it is of vastly different texture and substance once you pop the hood and look at its mechanics.
So, if the supreme ethic in a world such as ours is love, and the freedom of will is indispensable to love, and if God must remain in the paradigm, then I would answer that God's greatest gift is the freedom of our will in order that we may love God.
But along with a "greatest gift" there must also be assumed a "greatest cost". Cruelty is the price of freedom of will.
God not only gave us the greatest gift that he could give in order for us to enjoy (not ever to fully understand) him, in all his limitless splendor, but he also suffered the greatest cruelty, in himself, to complete the possibility of the reconciliation of all things to himself, who is the personification of love.
Good is real and evil is real. We must ultimately come to some conclusion on the nature of our moral reality and make a choice. Otherwise we will live in a world where we can choose bad without consequences, or pose a show of love without heart, both of which is beneath our amazing engineering which alone in all creation was made in the image of God.
who is the personification of love.
God let his son die a long and slow excruciating death, now does that relate to the personification or the true meaning of love ?
Apparently god is going to soon kill the majority of humanity once again for not worshiping him exclusively
or participating in his earthly publishing house the WTS.
How could something so evil be described as the personification of love or the meaning of love ?
Finklestein,
Jesus was fully God:
feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood - Acts 20: 28
However, he was also fully human. Both God and the man Jesus, made a choice to go through with the crucifixion; Why?
Because the wages of sin is death. Death is a consequence of sin. That is the penalty according to the law-giver. That act paid the penalty to free up those that would choose life after they are done with sin. Choice is inherent in love, and Jesus grappled with this choice, just as you or I would, in the garden of Gethsemane. He could have chosen not to go through with it.
Jesus, the man also had in mind the scope of benefits available to him for such and act:
Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. - Hebrews 12: 2
The choice to pay the penalty of sin himself, was the greatest act of love since it potentially freed us from the penalty of sin, if we receive it.
"No greater love has man than this, that a man lay down his life on behalf of his friends" - Jesus
