@BobRyan: The model you seem to be recommending is “robots” …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@BobRyan:

The model you seem to be recommending is “robots” — your objection seems to be an objection to “free will”.

Indeed. Ron and Bill would have a very good point if God had created robots rather than free moral agents. In that case He, rather than they, would have been responsible for evil and the resulting decay, suffering and pain that we all experience in this world. However, the creation of free will removes the moral responsibility from God.

Also, the existence of God’s foreknowledge does not change this situation. If God had chosen to act differently than He otherwise would, based on His foreknowledge, that would have removed the possibility of true freedom from the universe. In other words, if God had not made Lucifer simply because He knew that Lucifer would one day rebel against Him, that would have artificially blocked what He knew would otherwise be a free moral choice that would have taken place had His foreknowledge not existed. Therefore, if He wished to create truly free moral agents, He could not use His power of foreknowledge to preemptively block the actions of free moral agents that may happen to be contrary to His will for them.

Therefore, the only responsibility that is God’s is the act of creating a free universe where free moral agents are truly free to act – even if they happen to choose to act against the will of God.

Therefore, if God has in fact succeeded in creating truly free moral agents, He is not in any way responsible for the origin of any rebellion against His own will, nor is He responsible for the natural consequences of such a rebellion – as long as no valid reason for rebellion also exists. Given such a scenario, God is only responsible for whatever good continues to exist, for the blessings that are still given, in abundance, to the rebels – to us. He is not responsible for the cancer that exists. While He is responsible for that which is still good in us, to include the Divine spark of life within each one of us, He does not create evils such as childhood leukemia and the like.

Such things are not an “act of God”, but are simply the natural result of living in a world that has separated itself from God to a certain degree. The choice to finally separate one’s self completely from God will result, of course, in eternal death. God is the source of all life. If a free moral agent deliberately chooses to leave God, despite all efforts of God to win the heart of the rebel, God is eventually left with no further option than to honor the request of the free moral agent – to give the oblivion that is requested.

It is a very strange request, is it not? Why would any free moral agent request death when life is offered? It is because death is preferable to life when one hates the very Source of Life – when one hates all that is truly Good. This is why, ultimately, sin, when deliberately and persistently engaged without ultimate surrender to God, always leads to eternal death – upon the freewill request of the rebel. Very strange… a bit scary to even think about on a personal level.

Could I ever get to such a point? Yes indeed! If I do not daily choose to walk with God, I will most certainly end up in this final state of insanity. Very sobering.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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