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Apr 13, 2009
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iam4thelamb
Recent Posts
I'm glad you enjoy my posts, and I enjoy yours as well. Always well thought out and professional. Merry Christmas to you and yours as well! (Thursday | post #94)
Sure. Hope you enjoy the holidays! I have enjoyed it as well, as I always enjoy discussion that doesn't involve name calling and useless babble. I look forward to speaking again soon. (Thursday | post #93)
Favorite Christmas or Holiday Songs--New & Old
God with Us-Todd Agnew. An original, and an awesome song written from the perspective of the wise men. (Thursday | post #39)
I agree. From a moral standpoint, you do bear some responsibility, but that has nothing to do with causality. Another interesting point would be that everyone on Earth would essentially agree about your moral liability; we all have an ingrained moral code telling us what is good and what is evil. But that's another topicNot necessarily complex. Extensive and thorough, definitely. However, one can complicate things so much that the truth is hidden in the path to get to it. (Thursday | post #88)
To be more exact: the words translated into "image" and "likeness " in the Hebrew mean two different things. Likeness refers to physical characteristics; image can refer to spiritual characteristics as well as physical. Suffice it to say that "image" means characteristics more than it means physical appearance, especially considering that God is a Spirit. As to the detailed comment, you're obviously intelligent enough to figure out what was meant. Altering how things turn out doesn't mess with our ability to make decisions; it only alters the decisions we will have to make. (Thursday | post #87)
It would be wrong for me to stand by and do nothing; however, I still didn't cause the action. That, in its truest sense, is causality, and it doesn't happen. Causing something and allowing something are two totally different things. (Thursday | post #86)
Anyone is capable of doing harm to innocent people. Under our current laws, however, your point is valid. Due to the restrictions placed on these guns, not all, but most, of the people with possession of these firearms are people who don't care what the law says. Therein lies the dilemna. You can pass a law that says it's illegal to have these guns, but that's ONLY going to remove these guns from the people who care about what the law says. This simply makes the criminal stronger and the law abiding citizen weaker. Liberal and conservative rhetoric aside, you can easily look at the crime rates for areas that have denied citizens the right to carry a concealed firearm versus the crime rates for areas that allow concealed carry and see that this is true. In colonial days, this wasn't a problem. Everybody had the same thing. If you came looking for trouble, you would very easily find it. Today, many criminals find easy targets with little fear of retribution, and this is due to well meaning laws that don't address the problem. You want to fix the problem? Make it mandatory that everyone mentally capable is required to carry a firearm. Put everyone on the same playing field. It'll be much more conceivable, and safe, than trying to take everybody's guns away. (Wednesday | post #206)
I'm not speaking ill against anything. I've been to Alive in the Spirit before and heard some great teaching there, as well as knowing some really good people who attend. However, no church, Alive in the Spirit or other, can cause God to perform on demand. I'm not sure what you're wanting him to see. I've seen some amazing things happen to people myself; stuff that a magician couldn't fake. However, that still didn't make me believe. It didn't make the people in the New Testament believe, and it won't make GID believe either. In the end, we are all presented with the same Gospel, whether we hear it from a preacher or from the universe God created. It is our choice what we decide to do with that. (Wednesday | post #82)
I'm not saying that the constraints are predetermined and cannot change. Our constraints change all the time, based on our free will to change themAgain, let's take this to a human perspective, since God's only suggesting here. If I were to suggest to you that you should go buy a gun and shoot someone, and you listened to that suggestion, then I caused your choice? You'd have to be a heck of a lawyer with a lot of payoff money to pass that in court (except maybe in California). The causality for our circumstances falls ultimately with our choicesKant's ideals of causality and reality can be two totally different things. Kant's ideals in general don't impress me a whole lot. They didn't, even when I was an atheist/agnostic/whatever I was. Most modern philosophers speaking of causality and causation take their roots from Kant's philosophy viewpoints. I prefer to keep it simple. It's much less confusing. (Wednesday | post #81)
Sure it can. Knowing what is going to happen and causing it to happen are two completely different things. (Wednesday | post #80)
The Bible teaches that man is made in God's image. That means that some of the attributes that we see in men are also seen in God. Not all, but some. A comparable example would be a replica of the Empire State Building vs. the original. Sorta looks like it, with some of the features, but not nearly as detailed. I say this to point out that God can easily have the ability to influential without creating a realm of causality without any free will. He just doesn't cause everything to happen. He has given man the ability to make his own choices. God tries to influence our choices, not with a "magic wand," but with an ingrained moral code, Scripture, advice of others, etc. This is the influence I speak ofI can't speak for how someone else approached a topic, but God is man's Creator. He fashioned us in His image. God is going to have some of the same qualities as man, but is still in a class all by Himself. Be it convenient or not, it's certainly not nonsensical. (Wednesday | post #79)
Free will cannot be defined as you define it in the first sentence above. If I, being a man, suggest something to you, you still have the complete ability to choose whether to accept that suggestion or reject it completely. God's suggestions are no different. Just because God tells us something does not mean that we are void of choices concerning that. We've proven that well for as long as we've been on this earth. A better definition of free will is the ability to make choices within the constraints of the lives that we live. God isn't "causing " us to make our decisions. He wishes that we would make many decisions that we don't (that none would perish, but all would come to repentance, for example). If you change your definition of what free will is, and allow influence without taking away the ability to go against that influence, then you can easily have both free will and God's intervention. (Monday Dec 21 | post #68)
Actually, the Big Bang theory is a huge checkmark TOWARD the theory of creationism. Before Einstein's theory of relativity, the most commonly accepted theory was that of the steady state universe. Plainly stated, the universe is the same as it always has been; it has never changed. Einstein himself struggled with the theory of relativity, attempting several times to disprove the mathematics without success. E=MC2 is able to calculate the position of objects over enormous distances with astonishing accuracy. The problem with the theory of relativity among scientists is not a scientific, but a theological one. If the universe is expanding, as the mathematics authoritatively suggest, then it must have expanded from a single point. That means there must have been a beginning, which means that evolution has a much more limited time to have occurred. It also means that the beginning needed a causative force to have occurred. Several scientists have proposed possibilities, but none that withstood scrutiny. The big bang theory is still the most plausible theory in cosmology today, and it is still in favor of intelligent design, based on the knowledge we currently have. (Monday Dec 21 | post #64)
Q & A with iam4thelamb
Headline:
only here for a little while..
Hometown:
Livingston
I Belong To:
God and my wife
When I'm Not on Topix:
I'm usually working, sleeping, riding bike, playing with my kids, eating, watching House, playing guitar, or just plain old chillin'.
Read My Forum Posts Because:
you want to....?
Read This Book:
No Perfect People Allowed by John Burke
Favorite Things:
God, family, music, EMS, pecan pie, chicken, my truck, people who make me think.
On My Mind:
Lots of things, but none in particular
I Believe In:
God, coming to earth as man, to save man from sin. I believe Jesus died, was buried, rose again on the third day, and went back to the Father, where He sent the Holy Spirit back to those who believe, in order to help them live the lives they were intended to live. I believe that even with the Holy Spirit's help, the sinfulness of the church has prevented us from fulfilling what we were supposed to do. I believe the church needs to repent and be what it was intended. I believe that truth has the power to change things for the better.
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