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I'm an atheist. According to the monotheistic religions, because of this, I'm going to eternally burn in Hell forever.
And God knows everything. He knew that I won't believe in Him, then why did He create me? Is the only point of my existence to burn in Hell?

Forgiveness!

God created us because god wants us to use our brain, god created, and find the answers, the true way ourselves.

That's why, in a clear explanation.

Tunco123 wrote:God created us because god wants us to use our brain, god created, and find the answers, the true way ourselves.

That's why, in a clear explanation.

Yeah, but he knew I won't use it even before he created me! (EDIT: this sentence was kinda funny)
Imagine you in position of God. You create human. You know that he won't believe. You know that you'll burn him. But why did you make it if you already know that you'll burn him!? Do you see my point now?

EdoI wrote:

Tunco123 wrote:God created us because god wants us to use our brain, god created, and find the answers, the true way ourselves.

That's why, in a clear explanation.

Yeah, but he knew I won't use it even before he created me! (EDIT: this sentence was kinda funny)
Imagine you in position of God. You create human. You know that he won't believe. You know that you'll burn him. But why did you make it if you already know that you'll burn him!? Do you see my point now?

I don't have much religion knowledge, but I'm sure that there is a quite logical explanation for this.
Otherwise, god would create us for nothing, which is something pretty stupid to think, because that would be the opposite of all what religious books says.

But He did give us a more than fair chance.

Just because we don't get the favourable outcome doesn't mean He's not perfect. Consider a court in which everyone found guilty is simply released with no punishment. Would you say that that court is working perfectly?

But the great thing about God is that you can be forgiven. There's Someone willing to pay the price for you, but He can't do it if you won't let Him. It's the balance between grace and forgiveness and justice.

Exüberance wrote:But He did give us a more than fair chance.

Just because we don't get the favourable outcome doesn't mean He's not perfect. Consider a court in which everyone found guilty is simply released with no punishment. Would you say that that court is working perfectly?

I still find my argument to be perfect.
The court, God in this case, has also created the guilty one. The court has created someone that it knew will be punished. No offense, but that's sadistic.

EDIT: By the way, why is God even mad on people for not believing in him? No matter how good perfect the person is, he'll burn forever just because he didn't believe.
I'll take that court as an example too. Imagine that you say: "I don't believe there's any court", but you still do good deeds. The "police" arrest you anyway, and you're going to prison for 99 x 10^99,999 decades. In the prison, you're being beaten heavily every day. Truly banal and might-be-stupid-example, but it kinda shows what I wanted to say.

But the great thing about God is that you can be forgiven. There's Someone willing to pay the price for you, but He can't do it if you won't let Him. It's the balance between grace and forgiveness and justice.

can't? oh my. we have incredible power if we have power over our own salvation. err, Arminianism is wrong. if you are not a member of the elect, Jesus does not want to save you. there is no evidence in the Bible that Jesus loved everyone. "the world" is used in an ethical, or national, sense. we do not have command over God or His actions or plan; that notion is simply unacceptable. salvation comes entirely from God, not at all from man. man does not initiate the transformation. God does. it is just as silly to say that a person repented as it is to say that the evangelist saved them. God forces people into His service. before His touch, we are all completely dead in sins. dead. when people are dead, they cannot reach out to God.

God created His elect to serve and praise Him. everyone else, He created because it was His will to do so. that is enough of an answer for me to move on from this problem because it gives a legitimately possible answer that we can default on if we find no other reason for His actions. we cannot say that it was or was not His will that sinners should suffer in Hell, because there is no evidence either way. so we can't say that His will was evil. we can say that He willed that all humans exist. the question of why it was His will to create people to suffer is not important because it probably involves knowledge that is beyond us and only known to God.

EdoI wrote:Before God created me, and any of us, he knew what will happen to any of us. He knew that I won't believe in him. He knew that I won't follow any of the religion. And, people like me go to hell, right? So, before he created me, he knew that I'll go hell. Why did he create me if he knew that I'll be in hell?

You're assuming a few things:
1. That God is real
2. That Hell is an actual place
3. That your actions were predetermined an indefinite amount of time before you were born.

So this prompts my query: Why are you questioning the motives of a being you don't believe in sending you to a place you don't believe in?

Manus Australis wrote:

EdoI wrote:Before God created me, and any of atheists, he knew what will happen to us. He knew that I won't believe in him. He knew that I won't follow any of the religion. And, people like me go to hell, right? So, before he created me, he knew that I'll go hell. Why did he create me if he knew that I'll be in hell?

You're assuming a few things:
1. That God is real
2. That Hell is an actual place
3. That your actions were predetermined an indefinite amount of time before you were born.

So this prompts my query: Why are you questioning the motives of a being you don't believe in sending you to a place you don't believe in?

Uh, some grammar errors fixed...
No, I'm not assuming those things... I wrote what religious studies say and finalized that all with a logical conclusion. And on the question why am I questioning God's motives although I don't believe in him, I think the best answer would be that I wanted a good debate, since religion really is an endless source of topics for debating, that's all :-)

yungerkid wrote:

But the great thing about God is that you can be forgiven. There's Someone willing to pay the price for you, but He can't do it if you won't let Him. It's the balance between grace and forgiveness and justice.

can't? oh my. we have incredible power if we have power over our own salvation. err, Arminianism is wrong. if you are not a member of the elect, Jesus does not want to save you. there is no evidence in the Bible that Jesus loved everyone. "the world" is used in an ethical, or national, sense. we do not have command over God or His actions or plan; that notion is simply unacceptable. salvation comes entirely from God, not at all from man. man does not initiate the transformation. God does. it is just as silly to say that a person repented as it is to say that the evangelist saved them. God forces people into His service. before His touch, we are all completely dead in sins. dead. when people are dead, they cannot reach out to God.

God created His elect to serve and praise Him. everyone else, He created because it was His will to do so. that is enough of an answer for me to move on from this problem because it gives a legitimately possible answer that we can default on if we find no other reason for His actions. we cannot say that it was or was not His will that sinners should suffer in Hell, because there is no evidence either way. so we can't say that His will was evil. we can say that He willed that all humans exist. the question of why it was His will to create people to suffer is not important because it probably involves knowledge that is beyond us and only known to God.

So what you're saying is this god of yours either forces you into a life of worship and tribute, or let's you burn?

I'm very glad a being with that kind of omnipotent sadism doesn't exist.

The only thing I have come up with to answer this (which was thought up just now), is that the moment God decided to bestow his future creation with free will, there popped up the trillions of peoples lives and how many of those people would follow Him versus not, much to his chagrin. Unfortunately, this proses the problem of God being omniscient, because surely he would have already seen that coming. So I suppose that God always knew that if he created a creature with free will, there would be "x" amount of these creatures that wouldn't follow him, which just furthers my idea that we were created as sort of an experiment to see what would happen if we were given free will. I mean it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch if humanity was just created and then forced to follow Him. Perhaps non-believers are just to test and push believers, but really now I'm just bouncing ideas off of myself. I don't really know.

I hate to play Jesus' Advocate, here, but perhaps God's omnipotence is in fact being above time, and to be able to perceive all things, such things would have to exist. Therefore, he created the world and the people on it in his image in order to be able to know what would happen. If it never happened, he could not be aware of it.

captain weasle, you pose a very interesting idea. perhaps indeed nonbelievers were created to further the faith of believers. however, human beings do not have free will. our actions, blah blah blah, determined by surroundings, determinism, blah blah blah. God does not have free will.

So what you're saying is this god of yours either forces you into a life of worship and tribute, or let's you burn?

I'm very glad a being with that kind of omnipotent sadism doesn't exist.

that is the Christian viewpoint. all who are truly Christians believe in that. that is what the Bible explicitly states time and time again. to sum up the whole Bible in four words, love God or burn. but how can you say that sadism is a bad thing? is it just because you don't want to feel pain yourself? where does the atheist standard of morality come from? because i understand (positive) morality to be equivalent to (the same thing as) God's will (with evil coming from its disobedience). does your morality come from your physical brain? why have morality? why is it necessary? does it just bring you joy or pleasure? because i see absolutely no reason to be moral (strictly speaking; i'm not saying i should be immoral either) if i don't have someone to force me to be moral. it doesn't seem rational to me. why is lying wrong? why is cheating wrong? it seems like a baseline attempt on everyone's part to reduce pain on the individual's part. and i don't see the rationale for that.

slappymcgee, i would think that if God has transcendent logic, He would be able to know everything that could hypothetically happen in all possible situations. and it is the Christian viewpoint (Christians in general, everywhere) that God is above/transcends time. and if it is possible to create an event, it is certainly possible to imagine it, especially for God.

yungerkid wrote:where does the atheist standard of morality come from? because i understand (positive) morality to be equivalent to (the same thing as) God's will (with evil coming from its disobedience). does your morality come from your physical brain? why have morality? why is it necessary? does it just bring you joy or pleasure? because i see absolutely no reason to be moral (strictly speaking; i'm not saying i should be immoral either) if i don't have someone to force me to be moral. it doesn't seem rational to me. why is lying wrong? why is cheating wrong? it seems like a baseline attempt on everyone's part to reduce pain on the individual's part. and i don't see the rationale for that.

Morality stems from many things. It can be a byproduct of guilt, a simple manifesto to live your life by to potentially maximize the well being of yourself those around you, something learned via experience of epiphany...

The rational is that you don't lie, cheat, and steal, so people trust in you. Having people trust in you builds relationships which can greatly improve a persons quality of life. It's not a difficult notion to grasp.

Morality isn't proof of anything but our need to be as comfortable as possible.

You know this really isn't that hard of a question to explain logically.

Have you affected anything? Helped anyone? Brought even tiny bit of joy to a single soul ever? So what if you end up in hell if at some point you helped someone else. If you must think in terms of 'why', you were put here to affect others.

/thread ?

Ok, so you're an atheist, wondering why god created you just for you to disbelieve him.

I think the answer to this question in your mind, is that God doesn't exist, and ergo, he didn't create you.

Morality stems from many things. It can be a byproduct of guilt, a simple manifesto to live your life by to potentially maximize the well being of yourself those around you, something learned via experience of epiphany...

The rational is that you don't lie, cheat, and steal, so people trust in you. Having people trust in you builds relationships which can greatly improve a persons quality of life. It's not a difficult notion to grasp.

Morality isn't proof of anything but our need to be as comfortable as possible.

so it's done for selfish reasons. to have other people trust you and to be as comfortable as possible via a group effort. but it is not the morality itself that is important. it is ultimately more important that the effect of morality, the gain for oneself, that is important. and as i see it, there are much more efficient ways to achieve goals than to follow a generalized code of what one can and cannot do, or to restrict one's behaviour at all, really. and i wasn't saying that morality is proof of God's existence.

yungerkid wrote:

Morality stems from many things. It can be a byproduct of guilt, a simple manifesto to live your life by to potentially maximize the well being of yourself those around you, something learned via experience of epiphany...

The rational is that you don't lie, cheat, and steal, so people trust in you. Having people trust in you builds relationships which can greatly improve a persons quality of life. It's not a difficult notion to grasp.

Morality isn't proof of anything but our need to be as comfortable as possible.

so it's done for selfish reasons. to have other people trust you and to be as comfortable as possible via a group effort. but it is not the morality itself that is important. it is ultimately more important that the effect of morality, the gain for oneself, that is important. and as i see it, there are much more efficient ways to achieve goals than to follow a generalized code of what one can and cannot do, or to restrict one's behaviour at all, really. and i wasn't saying that morality is proof of God's existence.

You can be moral without being selfish. For example, you can choose not to kill people, because you think it is wrong, and that is in fact quite altruist, not killing people and all.

yungerkid wrote:captain weasle, you pose a very interesting idea. perhaps indeed nonbelievers were created to further the faith of believers. however, human beings do not have free will. our actions, blah blah blah, determined by surroundings, determinism, blah blah blah. God does not have free will.

Actions aren't necessarily determined by surroundings. I could slap myself right now, and that wouldn't have been caused by anything other than my will to do so. Also, I've read once that we cannot have free will because God knows what we are going to do already, but I don't see how that follows. Just because He knows what is going to happen doesn't mean he influenced it in any way. Knowing the outcome is different than forcing it.

EDIT: Also, why wouldn't you think that God has free will??

yungerkid wrote:...there are much more efficient ways to achieve goals than to follow a generalized code of what one can and cannot do, or to restrict one's behaviour at all, really.

Morality is personal, not generalized. Morality is simply a filter. If adhered to properly, it's the most efficient kind in the context.

A generalized code of what you can and cannot do that restricts your behaviour? Kind of like following a Preacher's sermon, or live by the philosophies gleaned from a dusty old story book?

With regard to the OP, I think smartalco's theory is the best so far.

yungerkid wrote:human beings do not have free will.

I have this theory that whenever faced with a philosophical question, it is best to attempt to avoid making conclusions that are based on conclusions to other philosophical questions. Just throwing that out there, not sure if it has much merit. Of course, often it will be impossible to avoid chains of conclusions. I imagine it would be hard to debate the morality of eating the last biscuit if you first had to decide that what you were looking at was really a biscuit, or even there at all. :P

capt_weasle wrote:Actions aren't necessarily determined by surroundings. I could slap myself right now, and that wouldn't have been caused by anything other than my will to do so.

That's a nice statement, but where's the proof or logic to back it up? Nah just messin' around, free will probably needs its own thread.

capt_weasle wrote:Actions aren't necessarily determined by surroundings. I could slap myself right now, and that wouldn't have been caused by anything other than my will to do so.

Your need to demonstrate your free will would have caused you to slap yourself, in this context.

Every action can be traced back to a cause for action. While I don't believe that we'll ever be free of the control our experiences dictate, we certainly do have the capacity to realise this and try our best to overcome the negative aspects this inflicts while enhancing the positive.

Morality is personal, not generalized. Morality is simply a filter. If adhered to properly, it's the most efficient kind in the context.

well then why have it at all? why not just follow a logical approach and adapt differently to each situation?

i read over Alco's post again, and it's just a more generalized version of weasle's idea. i agree with it. so unbelievers were put here to act out parts of God's plan. that, however, means that it ultimately was just God's will that they be here, does it not? and aren't we asking why it was God's will that they be here?

I wanted to debate about what I wrote in the original post.
If you don't mind for me to interrupt you in your talking about free will and morality, please make a new thread about this.

EdoI wrote:I wanted to debate about what I wrote in the original post.
If you don't mind for me to interrupt you in your talking about free will and morality, please make a new thread about this.

Read my post. I answered your question (actually I didn't even read most of the posts before mine, just skimmed enough to realize no one had given you a very straightforward answer, hence, my post).