@Bill Sorensen: Paul affirms, “We can do nothing against the …

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

@Bill Sorensen:

Paul affirms, “We can do nothing against the gospel, only for it.”

Is this a “tongue in cheek” idea? Or, can we see the paradox? Because God can use evil to His own advantage, does this then justify evil?

For a Christian, the answer is “no”. But for an unbeliever, the answer could be “yes”. It depends on our preception, doesn’t it?

One might argue that evil may be justified by the good that God is able to bring out of it. However, this would be wrong. Sin is never justified. Just because God can bring some good results out of the rebellion doesn’t mean that the rebellion is therefore justified or that God ever desired it as a means to bring good to His universe. That’s a mistaken notion which, again, paints God as evil.

Thus, we can not blame God because He created the possibility of sin. He delegates authority to each individual in this matter, and each individual must answer for their decision. And even if God can use a negative in a positive way, it does not justify the negative in and of itself as being positive.

Do I hear an echo in the room? Again, this is what I’ve been saying all along. Why then have you been arguing with me? – just because I do not see this situation as a “paradox”?

You may fall down and skin your knee. If you learn a lesson and are more careful in the future, it is commendable that you learned a lesson. But skinning your knee is not a positive experience in and of itself.

Again, this is what I’ve been trying to explain all along…

The paradox remains.

How is learning a lesson from skinning your knee irrational or in any other way a “paradox”? How is God’s creation of the ability for freedom to exist, yet not being responsible for our rebellious actions, an inherently irrational idea or a “paradox”?

I think the only real disagreement we have here is over the understood definition of the term “paradox”…

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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