Welcome to the site.

I’m so sorry that I’ve failed to communicate my ideas with you on this post. I hope to do better in the next one, which—hopefully—will tie the series up.

Thanks for the compliment, despite my failure to communicate. You’re very generous.

Regards!

Mel

So sorry for being absent from my own blog for such a long time. I was out of town last week. Perry and I held a seminar in a beautiful city called Baguio (check out these sites also ).

Anyway, you’ve touched on a classic paradox that has been a source of great discussions (and even disagreements and not a few quarrels, sadly ) among Christians. That is the question of God’s sovereignty vs. man’s free will.

I hope to touch a little bit on that in the next post—when I finally get around to posting something .

Thank you so much for your patience, guys—and your comments!

Warmest regards!

Mel

Not *only* faith is required. It is the kind of faith that results in obedience—the kind of obedience, conversely, which is not possible without this kind of faith.

I haven’t had much time to post, much less to respond to comments, lately. Thank you so much for your patience.

I hope to spell out this faith-obedience thing in the next post—when I finally get around to posting something .

Warmest regards!

Mel

cheers, Robbery.

THIS is the difference between Christianity and other religions or philosophies. If you analyze them closely, other religions are ultimately about what human beings can or should do in order to gain the favor of the god or gods in that religion, or to progress from one level to higher levels of existence.

This is only true of some religions. There are many philosophies and some religions (usually of more tribal nature, I think, but I am no expert) where getting to the afterlife is not important or not even considered. Material that says things to the effect of “You can lead a good life by …” or “A good person is/does …” or, in case of religions, where a certain set of rituals and customs is adopted, possibly to calm spirits or to make the life of deceased ancestors more comfortable. In the case of calming, or tricking or beguiling or whatever, spirits it is often done towards more concrete a goal than an afterlife.

Christianity does demand the faith. If only faith is required (this depends on the brand of Christianism in question, I think), there is the situation where a mass murderer and rapist will get to heaven while a person who helps others for all her life, but is, say, a strict atheist, will not get eternal reward. This, I think, erodes part of the very purpose of religion and is counterintuitive.

As an aside, I can feel the words ‘free will’ moving rapidly towards this conversation. If I’m right, there could be an interesting conversation in it, because I accept that there’s no such thing as free will… But that may be the topic for another thread. ^_^

Welcome to the site.

Please check out this post, which is part of the series: Original Sin.

Thanks, and regards!

Mel

You are right. Many people have a detached and withdrawn perception of God. They question the veracity of his divinity and even His existence. Others disrespectfully humanize him and put him at almost alongside ordinary beings and mock his deity. There are those who blatantly blaspheme him. The perception and portrayal of the tube about God is unbearably distorted and atrociously inconsistent with the Bible.

People create gods whom they can bribe and control. They abhor the unstained and unmoved holiness of the God and the Bible. They would prefer a god who would approve of their lifestyles. Or someone(thing) that can be relegated to the temple or some mystical realm utterly detached from human activity. But a god like this cannot be trusted. Only a perfectly holy God, with an eternally unscathed nature… who, because of His love, is “jealous” when His children abandon true worship, is worthy of trust.

But, as hard as it is to understand, God allows man to challenge Him. I believe that when he created sentient beings, he enabled them to defy him. However, this a priori argument does not mean to say its God’s fault, it just means that men are responsible for their actions… and definitely must face the consequence of their choices.

I commend you for your thoughts. Keep defending the faith.

God bless.

Geny

You’re quite right. I hope to address that issue in succeeding post(s).

I apologize that I did not quite touch on your previous concern in the current post, but it had already grown to be too long for a blog post and I had to cut it short.

I do hope I will be able to address your concerns in the next one. I’m sorry that I can’t post as often as I would want too, though. God has tremendously blessed our projects, which means that I’ve been quite busy lately.

Regards!

Mel

There are legitimate reasons why people might not want to blindly trust something unknown. Some people who have done so have been tricked and used as tools for whatever ends. Then there are the (rare) suicide cults.

The problem is that the statement is being used to imply opposition to evolutionary science - which it doesn’t really as all scientists a skeptical - its part of their job. (see Dissenters from Darwinism in context). The list is therefore effectively dishonest.

My analysis of this list indicates that almost all had religious, not scientific, motives for adding their names (see Who are the “dissenters from Darwinism”?).

The list is very small compared with those who support evolutionary science. For example the Project Steve list contains about 900 scientists supporting evolutionary science and named Steve. The “dissenters list” contains just 8 Steves.

Welcome to the site. Sorry for the late reply. I was teaching a summer module on the Old Testament prophets in a seminary in Davao for the last two weeks.

Anyway, as you can see just from the comments he’s posted here, the guy does seem to want to provoke hostile responses.

Well, as long as we’re not the ones who are rude and hostile (1 Peter 3:15-16).

God bless you!

Mel

You’ve raised a point which I intend to address in the third part of the series, so I do hope you won’t mind if I don’t respond to it just yet.

I’m sure you have read Judging God, and now that you’ve responded to Original Sin, I wouldn’t want to diminish your anticipation for part 3 (now is that being presumptuous or is that being presumptuous? just kidding )

However, I can do that only after two weeks. I’ll be off to the southern part of the Philippines this Saturday and I’ll be staying there ’til the 1st of May, to teach in a seminary a short summer module on the Old Testament prophets.

Hope you won’t mind the wait. ‘Til then, hang loose, friend.

Blessings!

Mel

If, on the other hand, you are not correct, the fact that I doubt and decide for myself what is good and evil is the right thing to do, as your way is be adhering to random bits of ancient literacy.

This helps me to understand why some Christians/atheists have such strong reactions to the others.