God is blameless

originally posted by: ancientthunder
Until we are able to see clearly how we with our own mind and imagination go forth and commit terrible acts, we are self condemned to suffer life without God. A healthy Human is one that is able to reflect, not one that just acts on whims and follows blindly.

What Kind of Person Do You Want to Be?

...
Even Paul saw the need to make improvements. He admitted: “When I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me.” (Rom. 7:21) Paul was certainly aware of what he himself was and what he wished to be. What about us? We too need to ask ourselves: ‘What is present with me? What kind of person am I? And what kind of person do I want to become?’

What Is “Present With Me”?

When we renovate an old house, it is not enough to paint the outside if there are rotten beams inside. Ignoring structural defects would only invite trouble later. Similarly, a veneer of uprightness is not enough. We must get to the core of our personality and recognize problems that need to be solved. Otherwise, old personality traits are bound to resurface. Self-scrutiny, then, is a must. (2 Cor. 13:5) We need to identify undesirable traits and correct them. To that end, Jehovah has provided us with help.

Paul wrote: “The word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and their marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb. 4:12) The message of God’s written Word, the Bible, can have a powerful influence on our lives. It pierces deep down within us—figuratively to the marrow in the innermost part of the bones. It reveals our thoughts and motives, exposing what we really are inside as compared to what we appear to be on the outside or what we think we are. What help God’s Word is in enabling us to recognize our problems!

When we repair an old house, it may not be enough to replace the damaged materials. Knowing the cause of the defects helps us to take measures that will prevent the recurrence of problems. Likewise, not only identifying our negative traits but also isolating what has caused or contributed to them can help us keep our weaknesses under control. Numerous factors go into shaping our personality. Among them are our social status and our economic situation, our environment, our culture, our parents, our associates, and our religious background. Even the television programs and movies we watch, as well as other forms of entertainment, leave their mark. Recognizing things that exercise negative influences on our personality places us in a better position to minimize their effect.
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Just remember that the article continues with the other questions. Also see the text under my name on the left (also from the article in my sig.).

a reply to: loNeNLI
Cain was a son of Adam, hence, using your terminology, an "Adamite". Cain chose the same path of rebellion against Jehovah God as Adam did. He just took the next step in badness cause Adam never murdered anyone.

Fate: Reasoning

When God created Adam, did he know that Adam would sin?
...

originally posted by: loNeNLI

originally posted by: ancientthunder

If you want to believe in a Christian God then I totally disagree

a reply to: mOjOm
Yes I can understand that, but on the other hand there is no Christian God or other type of God. If they do exist on some plane or another they certainly are not God!

- please explain those two lines
in relation with OP

Can I chip in?

Those who do not keep clear of false worship can be “tossed about as by waves and carried hither and thither by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning in contriving error.”—Ephesians 4:13, 14.

Source: Keep Clear of False Worship!

Titus 1:16:
They publicly declare that they know God, but they disown him by their works, because they are detestable and disobedient and not approved for good work of any sort.

The following below may seem unrelated to most people but actually it's not...
Did God Use Evolution to Create Life? Awake!—2006

SHORTLY after Charles Darwin made the theory of evolution popular, many so-called Christian denominations started looking for ways to marry their belief in God to their acceptance of the theory of evolution.

Today, most prominent “Christian” religious groups seem willing to accept that God must have used evolution in some way to create life. Some teach that God preprogrammed the universe to develop in such a way that living things inevitably evolved from lifeless chemicals and eventually produced mankind. Those who subscribe to this teaching, known as theistic evolution, do not feel that God interfered with the process once it started. Others think that, in general, God allowed evolution to produce most families of plants and animals but occasionally stepped in to move the process along.

The Marriage of Teachings—Does It Work?

Is the theory of evolution really compatible with the teachings of the Bible? If evolution were true, then the Bible’s account of the creation of the first man, Adam, would be, at best, a story meant to teach a moral lesson but not intended to be taken literally. (Genesis 1:26, 27; 2:18-24) Is that how Jesus viewed this Bible account? “Did you not read,” said Jesus, “that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart.”—Matthew 19:4-6.

Jesus was here quoting from the creation account recorded in Genesis chapter 2. If Jesus believed the first marriage to be a fictional story, would he have made reference to it to support his teaching on the sanctity of marriage? No. Jesus pointed to the Genesis account because he knew it to be true history.—John 17:17.

Jesus’ disciples likewise believed the Genesis account of creation. For example, Luke’s Gospel account traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam. (Luke 3:23-38) If Adam were a fictional character, at what point would this genealogical list have turned from fact to myth? If the rootstock of this family tree were mythological, how firm would that have made Jesus’ claim that he was the Messiah, born in the line of David? (Matthew 1:1) The Gospel writer Luke said that he had “traced all things from the start with accuracy.” Clearly, he believed the creation account in Genesis.—Luke 1:3.

The apostle Paul’s faith in Jesus was linked to Paul’s trust in the Genesis account. He wrote: “Since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21, 22) If Adam were not literally the forefather of all mankind, the one through whom “sin entered into the world and death through sin,” why would Jesus have needed to die to undo the effects of inherited sin?—Romans 5:12; 6:23.

To undermine belief in the creation account in Genesis is to undermine the very foundations of the Christian faith. Evolutionary theory and the teachings of Christ are incompatible. Any attempt to marry these beliefs can only give birth to a weak faith that is prone to being “tossed about as by waves and carried hither and thither by every wind of teaching.”—Ephesians 4:14.

Faith Based on a Solid Foundation

For centuries the Bible has endured criticism and attack. Time and again the Bible text has been vindicated. When the Bible touches on history, health, and science, its accounts have repeatedly been proved reliable. Its advice regarding human relations is trustworthy and timeless. Human philosophies and theories, like so much green grass, sprout and then wither over time, but the Word of God “will last to time indefinite.”—Isaiah 40:8.

The teaching of evolution is not limited to the realm of scientific theory. It is a human philosophy that blossomed and then flourished for decades. In recent years, however, the traditional evolutionary teaching of Darwin has itself evolved—in fact, mutated—as efforts have been made to explain away the increasing evidence for design in the natural world. We invite you to examine this topic further. You can do so by reviewing the other articles in this issue. In addition, you may also want to read the publications shown on this page and page 32.

You will likely find that after researching this subject, your trust in what the Bible says about the past will be bolstered. More important, your faith in the Bible’s promises for the future will be strengthened. (Hebrews 11:1) You may also find yourself moved to praise Jehovah, “the Maker of heaven and earth.”—Psalm 146:6.

WHAT IS EVOLUTION?

One definition of “evolution” is: “A process of change in a certain direction.” However, the term is used in several ways. For example, it is used to describe big changes in inanimate things—the development of the universe. In addition, the term is used to describe small changes in living things—the way plants and animals adapt to their environment. The word is most commonly used, though, to describe the theory that life arose from inanimate chemicals, formed into self-replicating cells, and slowly developed into more and more complex creatures, with man being the most intelligent of its productions. This third notion is what is meant by the term “evolution” as used in this article.

originally posted by: firefromabove
a reply to: ancientthunder


A person has the freedom to deny that gravity exists. But physical laws will remain the same. Since he lives in the material world, he is subject to the laws of our universe. So a gravity denier still has to face the consequences of jumping off a high rise building.

Similarly, people have the freedom to deny that God exists. But God's rules will remain the same. Since he lives in the world that God created, he is subject to the rules of God. A God denier will have to one day face the consequences of his choices.

It's been months since I've read such a reasonable logical comment about a theological* subject (*: pertaining to God). And succinct too (the major flaw in my commentary most of the time, I'm a bit of a stickler for detail). Please keep on making more comments like that. It gives me confidence that my search for reason in humanity is not in vain and that there are still people posting on ATS that are making sense to me (or at least individual comments with some substance about a particular subject involving God; not talking about just any comment about any subject, or questions that aren't rhetorical).

originally posted by: ancientthunder
first of all the bible ... we are not being told the whole story. ...rewrite history. Why would they do that?
...a few name changes here and there and boom you now have a missleading story. Where are we being misslead and for what reason?

What Does the Bible Really Teach?

Sums it up nicely including all the answers to that last question you raised regarding the bible and God.
It also answers your question in the middle there but I'd like to share some videos regarding that as well (with a focus on 1 particular change in the understanding of who God is and what he's like):

You can ignore the triangle picture below. That's just the videomaker getting a bit overexcited. The rest is important. And regarding that "snare" mentioned around 1:00 in the video above, see this video: Religion is a snare and a racket (it's about false religion/Babylon the Great).

And regarding the one that is pulling the strings of the deception described above, first a demonstration video regarding the confusion and misleading information created by this individual and spread by those who do his will (a demonstration of what's explained in the last video below, so don't think of the video below as a reliable source of information regarding your questions, they are examples; the videos below that are the reliable explanation of what's really going on regarding your questions about being misled):

Regarding 2:08 - 2:38 in the video above, I recommend reading my quotation of Ephesians 4:13,14 to loNeNLI (my 2nd comment to him). And regarding the ending above:

a reply to: ancientthunder
And if you think back for a moment to the Greek philosophers depicted in the first video of my previous response, here's how the topic of evolutionary philosophies comes back into play (and connects again to Christendom and Western as well as Eastern philosophy):


My thread "One Myth leads to another" has more details about the connections. Especially my 2nd comment there.

a reply to: ancientthunder
If there is a God, some sort of sentience all knowing entity who put all of life in motion.

Well one thing can be deduced from the eons and eons of life and the minuscule few hundred thousand years of humans being alive on this planet floating in a void. Its a dog eat dog world out there, not only that but it just may be a dog eat dog world out there in the vastness of the cosmos on all other planets.

From the micro to the macro things devour or collide or coalesce themselves into greater wholes. So if there is a God who know all this was to come about? Then things like human emotions and human feelings human life's per individual, did not quite factor into his or its equation at all. It could be that like a machine it sees everything as nothing but parts of a whole. So do you cry every time a skin flake falls, or you lose a eyelash?

For all intensive purposes if going by observational data of the whole world around us which has been going on for millennia, then if there was a God then it would have no emotion then you would for a frog dying on the side of a highway as you were driving by going 60 milles per hour on your way to work, and for that frog 60 miles per hour may as well be the light speed barrier.

So saying that, blame God, blame nature, blame whoever and whatever, it does not matter nor change the outcome. And if you do not help yourselves nobody else will. It has been made clear millennia ago when the first life seeded this ocean, that nobody other then yourself cares in this dog eat dog world. And everything that has been created so far it has been by people. Well not entirely true, but close enough.

Maybe man created god, not to sure on that it could be. Or it can also be that God created man and anything and everything in between. Who knows right? Don't know. But what I am sure of, is that man created religions, and everything that comes down from that that good and bad is solely a human doing. If it were not so then we would have some heavenly bodies coming down scolding and spanking us when we got it wrong when said higher entity wanted it to be a certain other way.

Blaming God is purely the ego and the narcissism of the whole of the human race. To think itself important, in such a grandiose way, as to think that we are something other then what you see, and more importantly what you all do. Actions speak louder then words after all.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: ancientthunder
So if there is a God who know all this was to come about?

I recommend clicking the article with an answer to the question "When God created Adam, did he know that Adam would sin?" that I linked earlier. Perhaps you can consider if anything that is said there not only relates to the topic of Adam, but also Satan, evil and suffering.

Btw, according to human society's intuitive conscience (that I would argue Adam was created with originally according to the bible, and consequently passed on to the rest of humanity) including their sense of right and wrong, or good and evil; humans eating humans is generally considered evil (and 'not-done' in a civilized society). Of course that doesn't stop everybody. Free will and all that. Dunno about dogs...but they weren't created in the image of God according to the bible. Yes, I know you were using the expression figuratively which is officially defined as "Ruthlessly competitive: “You have to look out for your own interests" (The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy) and I would remind people of the evolutionary philosophy and concept "survival of the fittest" which need not be an accurate description of a necessary reality as it is often proposed by those promoting it (especially around the time when eugenics was popular and The Nazis were killing Jews because they were the least evolved of all the human races, or at least considerably less than Aryans; and nobody in the Roman Catholic Churches, Lutheran Churches and all other organized religions in Germany, Italy, Croatia, Austria, France, well, anywhere basically where these teachings were spreading, told them about the dangers of this way of thinking apart from 1 and a few singular or individual exceptions: see video at the very end of this comment).

Oh, I almost forgot, your rhetorical question is related to a straw man argument that is in use by bible critics and critics of God. Just wanted to let you know. There's an assumption in that question (correction: more in the line of thinking or reasoning thereafter, you only follow the mental path with one optional answer to the "if...know" part of the question; this has been trained*), that assumption is questioned in the question that I brought up. If the assumption isn't true (and especially if it's implied that the bible teaches that assumption) than it becomes a straw man argument presented in the form of a rhetorical question.

*: I bolded "know" for a reason regarding this subtle multi-year training of encouraging people to be satisfied with a mere superficial view and discouraging them from seeking to get the full picture (Pr 15:14) and what the bible would refer to as "the deep things of God". Cause there's a lot more in that verb related to that question than a simple "either he does know" or "he doesn't know". You are attempting to understand how God's mind works and what he knows or doesn't know when raising that subject. I would recon it's advisable to at least put some effort into finding out what the bible says about it before going with whatever 'tickles your ears' best (see 2 Timothy 4:3,4), the direction you want to take in your thoughts about this subject. But that's just an honest suggestion with good intentions for your mental and spiritual health that is in the middle of a war you are unaware of that also has the effect of making you reluctant (resistant) to researching anything related to the bible seriously, as in taking it serious rather than dismissive (and looking for reasons to dismiss and ignore, an apathic disposition regarding God and the bible).

Here's another way to sum up the videos and links I've shared so far regarding the question raised earlier that caused me to share so many videos (so the video below will probably make more sense if having watched the other videos, and knowing a thing or 2 about the identity of Babylon the Great, which is involved with that "training" I spoke about).

The video below is very appropiate regarding what I've sad so far in relation to the thread title (but it's a follow-up on especially the link to the topic "fate" with that question I've been talking about in this comment, the key phrase regarding that is in the 2nd version of the video though at 11:29, linked below the video, you may want to hear the context):

Holocaust Survivor Simone Liebster Testimony

a reply to: ancientthunder

I don't understand how that metaphor is relevant..

This would be more relevant: I do something, I then deny responsibility for that action.

a reply to: whereislogic
I don't get it? What does Nazis, people killing each other for various reasons, and a book so grandly name as "the book" have to do with god? Most especially when it was created and written by people?


All that you posted is just what people do, have done and will likely do again. The rest of what you said is just a theory and theology a group of people have, you must be among them. It is a believe, and humans are prone to believe many things and take it as truth as long as enough of them believe the same thing. That is all.

Nature would explain most of what your getting on about, the rest is explained by time, and in time.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: whereislogic
I don't get it?

Understanding requires some effort. But the bible explains that:

A stupid person takes no pleasure in understanding;

He would rather disclose what is in his heart. (Proverbs 18:2)

Not implying that that applies to you, it is a general description of behaviour that is useful to be aware of.

a reply to: whereislogic
I am aware of that, and yes that does not apply to me. There are probably many things I have yet to understand, but this is not one of them.

Your moniker on this site is whereislogic. Well were is the logic in applying what people wrote and not only that but wrote half assed, a jumble of tales upon tales and believes all from ages past which themselves were possibly nothing more then that, even way before Christianity came to be. And applying that to all of creation and everything that exists or will exist?

What I am saying is that by all accounts and by all observable data, its just something that people tell themselves to make them feel all good and gooey inside. There is nothing wrong with that, unless of course, there is something wrong with that.

Regarding things discussed earlier in this thread.

Does anyone know of any courtcase involving someone accused of murder that contains any legal arguing about causal factors of existence* related to the parents of the one accused? After all, according to some people's logical pathways, there seems to be some disagreement as to who to say has caused the suffering then. Usually, but not always with a sense of laying blame (sometimes this is actually a distraction or later cop-out that the topic of "blame" wasn't involved in the common rhetorical questions regarding the aspect "cause"; as if one was merely evaluating a claim, or book).

*: specifically existence, not bad parenting or similar factors

Does God Cause Human Suffering? | What the Bible Says