From: kevin@taronga.taronga.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Homosexuality and Christianity
Reply-To: kevin@taronga.taronga.com (Kevin Brown)
Organization: Minimal.
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 21:16:48 GMT

In article <adams.703356215@spssig> adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
>kevin@taronga.taronga.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
[...]
>>Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that.  There exists suffering
>>in the world that results from the construction of the universe.  But
>>there also exists joy in the world that results from exactly the same
>>thing.
>
>>A *lot* of Christians, and members of other religions as well, see their
>>God as being responsible for the natural good while *not* being responsible
>>for the natural evil.  This, of course, is an inconsistent stance to take.
>>You can't be the creator of the universe and be responsible for only *one*
>>natural aspect of your creation.  As the creator of the universe, you would
>>be responsible for *all* such aspects.
>
>The basic problem that Christians are confronted with is as follows:
>
>  1. God is all powerful
>  2. God is all good
>  3. Evil truly exists
>
>The explaination of this has occupied theolgians for ages!  Augustine
>developed the 'Free Will' defense of God.  

Doesn't seem like much of a problem to me.  It's always possible to
propose a set of mutually exclusive premises.

But actually, you forgot another important premise:

  4.  God created everything

If God *didn't* create everything, then one could say that God was not
responsible for the existence of evil.

However, if God *did* create everything, then you cannot avoid concluding
that evil exists only because God created things in such a way that it
*could* exist.

>>>>>As for non-believers, there are a number of views among Christian
>>>>>theologians past and present.  Some believed that God continues to work on
>>>>>souls of those who have died, so that in the end, all souls are saved.
>>>>>Ireneaus wrote along these lines.  In his theology, every single soul is
>>>>>saved.  That would include Hitler, Ted Bundy, etc.
>>>>Interesting viewpoint, that.  Quite laid back, I must say.  :-)
>>>No kidding.  Augustine basically won this arguement...Ireneaus didn't
>>>believe in `perfect' creation, either.  Humans were created imperfect, and
>>>grow to be more perfect.  This continues after physical death.  Augustine
>>>was big on original sin, etc.
>
>>...and original sin "won".  Figures.
>Based of course on taking Genesis literally.  

Except that you can't do that anymore.  What we know about the universe
now says that the order in which things arose in the universe is different
than the order described in Genesis.  Thus, you can't take Genesis
literally without being in conflict with the facts.

Now you're left with picking and choosing what you want to take literally
in Genesis, which doesn't generally wash too well...

>If Genesis is taken more as
>allegory and metaphor, then the above mentioned 'defense' of God becomes
>unnecessary.  For if we were created imprefect so that we could grow and
>learn, it is not our fault that we fail.  The problem with Ireneus is also
>that is assigns the blame for evil to God.  Not something that people do
>easily.  

You can't escape the assignment of blame for evil to God unless you
postulate that evil existed before God created the universe.

>Ireneus proposed that though we 'blamed' God, we are still to
>blame for failing to live as God asks us.  He had a concept of heaven that
>more or less defined levels of heaven - the better you did, the closer you
>were to God...but you get lots of chances, including after death...

Given an infinitely loving God, you'd get an infinite number of chances.
And given that God *wants* people to get close to him, it would be to
*his* best advantage to give people an infinite number of chances.

So...those who claim that you do *not* get an infinite number of chances
*must* conclude that God does *not* want all everyone to get close to
him.  If they assert both that God wants all people to love him and
get close to him, and that you don't get an infinite number of chances
at this, then they are asserting a logical contradiction (unless they
believe their God to be a wimp or incredibly stupid).

>>>>But it does make you wonder: if everyone is saved like that, then what's
>>>>there to worry about?  Just do your best and the rest is taken care of.
>>>Yep.  One of the reasons I think Ireneus lost the arguement - the Church
>>>would have had no authority over men....
>>Sounds about right to me.
>I'm expecting flame city from a certain segment of the t.r.m community
>here!

I'm sure you can handle it... :-)

>>>>Definitely not a philosophy that someone with a fundamentalist attitude
>>>>would agree with (it's too laid back :-)  ).
>>>Ireneus basic premise, if I recall correctly, was that a perfectly good
>>>God could never condemn a soul permanantly to Hell.
>
>>That's *not* a premise, if you ask me.  That's a logical conclusion!
>>Based, of course, on the common usage of the word "good".  Augustine
>>apparently used a twisted definition of "good" to describe his God...
>One of the problems with 'evil' is how it is defined.  Before the Holocost,
>the general concept of 'evil' was natural evil, thus the example of great
>evil was the Lisbon Earthquake.  Nature contained evil - which came about when
>Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden (Augustine).  Thus again, it was
>'Free Will' (or orignial sin) which brought it into the world.  Similiarly,
>now that the great evil is assigned to Hitler/Communits/etc, it is because
>'orignal sin' or 'free will' allowed evil into the world.

*Snicker*.  Yeah.  Strange how people have trouble realizing that *both*
things exist, and only *one* of them can in any way be attributed to the
activities of man.

If God created the universe, then God is responsible for how it operates.
If it operates in such a way as to harm people (and it *does* operate
in such a way), then God, having engineered it, is responsible for that
harm.  So...either God is not entirely responsible for how the universe
operates, or God is not entirely "good".

Of course, lots of people assert both conditions simultaneously, which
makes their belief system internally inconsistent.

I have a lot of trouble understanding how people with any amount of
intelligence can belief something that's internally inconsistent.
Maybe they don't have any intelligence...

>The question for those who hold free will to be correct is how a perfectly
>good God could create evil...for since Adam and Eve were God's creation, he
>created at least a propensity for evil....

Yup.  You got it.

>Of course, this was just covered in another thread...I have my own
>opinions, which actually fit somewhere between Ireneus and Augustine...

Could you describe them?

> -Steve

		Kevin Brown (kevin@taronga.taronga.com)