Date: 11-24-89 07:44From: Dale MaloneTo: Brian McfaddenSubj: Re: So? What is really the truth?
DEM> Sure gets harder to identify it, all right. But why
DEM> prophecy? Why not miracles?
BMcF> Firstly, miracles are often unduplicatable. Those which
BMcF> are on many occassions can be matched with parlor tricks.
BMcF> Prophecy gives us a basis of which we know nothing about, the
BMcF> future, and when coming into the present, exposes itself to
BMcF> be true or false. It fails us now simply because of
BMcF> vagueness, inability to coordinate old-thinking with
BMcF> new-thinking, and just general "changing the words around",
BMcF> ie, BSing the prophetic script/text.
Well, you are saying that a true prophet will provide enough significant details to allow you to measure them, as to their “Godliness?”
I thought most prophecies were vague as far as when, but rich in detail as far as what.
So when someone professes to be a prophet you administer a test and ask them for a specific event at some specified time, so that you can validate them? Not sure this will work. What ever happened to faith? Are we too cynical?
DEM> States plainly in the bible that God created man in His own
DEM> image. Do you think this meant with two arms and two legs?
DEM> No, it meant with the ability to think and make
DEM> judgments. That was God's gift to mankind, not Satan's.
BMcF> God's gift to mankind? The ability to think and make
BMcF> judgements is God's gift to mankind? Well, if you say so,
BMcF> but what were Adam and Eve doing in Paradise? They weren't
BMcF> making judgements, and where they did, it was wrong.
BMcF> Absolutely wrong. So wrong, in fact, that God kicked them
BMcF> out. They wanted knowledge, God kicked us out. ....
Wait! If God did not want us to choose and think why did He give us the ability? He put Adam and Eve in the garden as caretakers. They did not know Good from Evil and were perfectly happy. But there was something else there.
Something God gave us that made us dissatisfied with being “kept” like any other creature. God gave us dominion over all and masters of all. How were we to follow His guidance and assume our dominion without knowledge?
He could have made us happy, complacent little campers, with nary a worry, and nary a care. But God gave us free-will, otherwise we would simply be animals gamboling about the Garden.
If God is so powerful, why did he allow us to throw him a curve ball? He could have fixed the game so we would never have been tempted. But freedom of choice is a lofty gift and it bears its own burden.
The burden is, you have to live with your choices.
My question is, if God was all-knowing, and all-powerful, why did He create us in His image if He did not want us to grow and learn?
BMcF> God opposes free thought, my equivalence of free thought
BMcF> lies in the quest for knowledge, and this is why the Fall
BMcF> happened.. I mean, if you don't have knowledge, how can you
BMcF> have free thought? Thought deals with knowledge, bits of
BMcF> knowledge, conforming and converging upon each other.
Well I am not too clear on all this. But maybe it is not “free thought” but the ability to choose? Do you think knowledge is evil? Explain what you mean, please.
Seems like God made us, and wanted to keep us as pets. But the pets wanted to seek knowledge so God threw us out to make it on our own.
What do you think it meant when we were “created in God's image?”
BMcF> There is no way that God could give us free thought (in
BMcF> Paradise) and yet forbid us knowledge. That contradicts,
BMcF> as I see it.
So explain to me what is meant by all this. I think we had free thought, and I think we had the ability to learn and grow. But I am not too clear on this. I have never thought about it.
BMcF> Which means, as I go, that God is completely stupid. God
BMcF> made us in his own image, and since we were not free, or we
BMcF> had no knowledge, that God is either not free or completely
BMcF> stupid. Assuming that one of God's qualities is freedom,
BMcF> he's got to be completely stupid, having no knowledge at
BMcF> all.. Well, that's how the idea goes anyway. "O Almighty
BMcF> Stupid God" Doesn't have that same ring to it, does it?
So God created us, gave us the ability to what? Choose? Decide? Measure? Observe? See? Exist? What did we have, and how did we misuse it?
Is it your intention to make the seeking of knowledge sin? You cannot get back into the garden, you have been given the bum's rush. You are out here now, what do you propose to do about it?
Written by Dale E. Malone, What
is your opinion?
The Great & Wonderful Kahuna wants to know!
Last
modified: April 26, 2009