Satan is God's archenemy. He represents everything that is contrary to the very nature of God. He is father of lies and has led this world away from the Truth. It makes sense that Christians who love the Lord, would hate Satan, no?
Hate is a tool of the Devil, so, I think believers get around this by "hating the sin" and "loving the sinner".
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"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."
- Cynthia Heimel
<sigh> The Free will argument again...LOL
The problem is that if God knows everything that has happened and everything that will happen. Her knowledge cannot be wrong. There is nothing she hasnt been able to foresee. Given that she created the Universe the way she did, do we really have free will? Consider that when God made this Universe she could see every possible result of what she was doing. Which means: she could not create something without knowing what the results would be, and without knowing how it would affect the things around it.
Let's say that calgaryrocks has to make a choice that will save his life, to accept God or not to accept God and that final choice is to be made tomorrow. God knows already what choice he will make - God cannot be wrong therefore calgaryrocks cannot choose otherwise to what God predicted. When God created the chain of events that made calgaryrocks, it also knew that it was making calgaryrocks choice for him, and knew how the various circumstances and character would make him choose either right or wrong. calgaryrocks would go forth and make that very decision that God knew he would make, and by that virtue God knowingly set up all the factors that affected this decision, it was not up to calgaryrocks but to God to decide how calgaryrocks would fare.
It leaves us with three possible results, two of which have to be wrong.
God created everything with full knowledge and we have no free will to change it
Another twist on free will is that IF you think that god is perfect and therefore, that she CAN'T make a mistake (otherwise she ain't perfect) then she can't make any decisions and has no free will of her own.
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"WHAT HAVE WE EVER DONE TO DESERVE THIS??? WHAT IS WRONG WITH US????" -Oiler Fan
"It was a debacle of monumental proportions." -MacT
That's not always the motivation. Some people do still honestly want to believe but cannot.
Christians specifically are instructed to spread the good news, obviously it's to spread it to people who haven't heard it yet or aren't persuaded yet.
So some people bring up questions and such in the hopes of finding some now perspective or something to facilitate belief.
As to flogging it to death, it'll be a topic for all of time I'd expect.
I agree with you 100% here, photon.
__________________ There are excesses in science and there are excesses in religion. A reasonable man wouldn't be stamped by either one - Carl Sagan
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy assassins!
To me a lot of you are thinking too much. Everyone has their idea of what or who god is or what heaven is from the bible, other books, from others ideas, etc. and then proceed to tear it down. It must be the original straw man.
To me god is about feeling, that is why they say god is love, god is energy, god is light, god is music. He is to be experienced and not approached through the mind and there is a way to experience this.
To me a lot of you are thinking too much. Everyone has their idea of what or who god is or what heaven is from the bible, other books, from others ideas, etc. and then proceed to tear it down. It must be the original straw man.
To me god is about feeling, that is why they say god is love, god is energy, god is light, god is music. He is to be experienced and not approached through the mind and there is a way to experience this.
Excellent...is this written somewhere? Im sure I saw God in music one day back in the early 70's...then I thought he was light...but it was a damned Cop shining his flashlight in my eyes...its funny the energy I got out of that! Lovely!
To me a lot of you are thinking too much. Everyone has their idea of what or who god is or what heaven is from the bible, other books, from others ideas, etc. and then proceed to tear it down. It must be the original straw man.
Actually a straw man is something I create for the purposes of tearing down. If I say you say X and then tear X down, but you don't actually say X you say Y, that's a straw man.
To tear down an actual idea proposed by a book or person isn't a straw man, it's a valid logical argument.
I don't know if you could say you can overthink this issue either; according to many religious people all of eternity in damnation is at stake. Happen to get it wrong here and burn for all eternity. Those are pretty high stakes.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Can God make a burrito so hot that even He couldn't eat it?
You are confusing God and Chuck Norris....easy to do, but in future remember the existance of Chuck Norris has been proved......by Chuck himself.........
