Why is faith considered to be such a great virtue? - Page 5

fhansen · #61 May 20, '12, 6:20 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ASimon

That God ultimately chose to spare Isaac says nothing about what his intent was prior to that choice. If Abraham had refused the test outright, why couldn't God have killed him for disobeying Him?

If the point was to create an object lesson on the virtues of faith, striking down Abraham for insufficient faith could've easily done the job.

I think Gods' action spoke for His intent more eloquently than any speculation we could have on the matter.

fhansen · #62 May 20, '12, 6:25 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godmachine

Wait a sec....why would an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God have to test someone's faith this way? Why couldn't he just look into Abraham's heart/mind/whatever and see how faithful he was? Why torment the poor man the way he did? This is the same god that tells us what is "moral" and "good"? Then why does he act so immoral and evil?

God doesn't test our faith for His sake but rather for our own. It challenges and stretches us so that we'll know-along with anyone else hearing the story afterwards in this case-just how faithful we are-and just what real faith is made of. Abraham trusted God to the nth degree-believing that in spite of all odds anything He did would have good as its' ultimate purpose.

JackHandy · #63 May 20, '12, 8:36 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poseidon

I'd have to disagree with you there. You may see plenty of evidence of design, but I don't.

I would just like to share an evidence for design. Consider the motion of our solar system. Things move in a very predictable fashion and have for at the very least all of recorded history and presumably for the 4 billion years of Earths history. We are not slowing down in our orbit despite very complex gravitational interactions with all of the other celestial bodies in the system. We are simply held in one very predictable, unchanging path.

This is problematic since thermodynamics tells us that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Stated another way, all natural processes move from being ordered to being disordered. Something will invariably slow any moving object down. In this case, you have a complex web of gravitational interaction between the sun, the moons and the planets.

There must be something opposing the fundamental tendency toward disorder. Since it is above the natural law it is by definition supernatural. Either this can merely be labeled as one more in a long sequence of "happy accidents" that provides us with exactly what we need for life, or you can start to see that all of these accidents have a ridiculously small probability of being accidents.

God Bless

Jack Handy

ASimon · #64 May 20, '12, 9:58 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

God is the Creator not the Destroyer!

Um....I don't suppose you've ever read Genesis 6-7?

Godmachine · #65 May 20, '12, 12:16 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

That was not due to the Will of God but folly on the part of Jephthah.

So for Jephthah's folly, his daughter paid with her life. The fact is, God accepted Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter and no angel came to stay his hand.

**tonyrey** · #66 May 20, '12, 12:26 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godmachine

That was not due to the Will of God but folly on the part of Jephthah. So for Jephthah's folly, his daughter paid with her life. The fact is, God accepted Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter and no angel came to stay his hand.

1. God did not accept his sacrifice.

2. Jephthah was not asked to sacrifice his daughter.

3. It is unreasonable to demand that human folly is rectified by God because it would defeat the purpose of creating us as autonomous beings.

**tonyrey** · #67 May 20, '12, 12:28 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by ASimon

Um....I don't suppose you've ever read Genesis 6-7?

I'm not a fundamentalist!

ASimon · #68 May 20, '12, 12:32 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

I'm not a fundamentalist!

So, you never read the Bible. Okay, got it.

**tonyrey** · #69 May 20, '12, 12:34 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by ASimon

So, you never read the Bible. Okay, got it.

Non sequitur

ASimon · #70 May 20, '12, 12:57 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

Non sequitur

It's a non sequitur to duck the question of God's character by asserting that you're not a fundamentalist, as though that answers anything. Even if the Noah's ark story was meant to be a metaphor, you're still responsible for explaining what it's a metaphor for, and how it supports your assertion that God is never anything but a Creator.

Godmachine · #71 May 20, '12, 1:30 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

1. God did not accept his sacrifice.

2. Jephthah was not asked to sacrifice his daughter.

3. It is unreasonable to demand that human folly is rectified by God because it would defeat the purpose of creating us as autonomous beings.

Jephthah was an outcast, a man of perhaps questionable character. But he was also apparently a man of faith who made a deal with God. The deal was that if God granted him victory over the Ammonites he would sacrifice the first person that came out of his house to greet him. So Jephthah and his men slaughtered the Ammonites, men, women and children and God granted him his victory. And when Jephthah went home, his only daughter came out of the house to greet him playing a tambourine.

Now, Jephthah was not asked to sacrifice his daughter but neither did God command him not to. If God did not want the sacrifice, why did he grant Jephthah victory (another bloody affair)? And after granting the victory, why did he not command Jephthah's daughter to stay inside when he came home?

It seems to me God is as much (or more) to blame here as Jephthah.

danserr · #72 May 20, '12, 6:06 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godmachine

Jephthah was an outcast, a man of perhaps questionable character. But he was also apparently a man of faith who made a deal with God. The deal was that if God granted him victory over the Ammonites he would sacrifice the first person that came out of his house to greet him. So Jephthah and his men slaughtered the Ammonites, men, women and children and God granted him his victory. And when Jephthah went home, his only daughter came out of the house to greet him playing a tambourine.

Now, Jephthah was not asked to sacrifice his daughter but neither did God command him not to. If God did not want the sacrifice, why did he grant Jephthah victory (another bloody affair)? And after granting the victory, why did he not command Jephthah's daughter to stay inside when he came home?

It seems to me God is as much (or more) to blame here as Jephthah.

It seems like your're just asking why doesn't God stop people from doing bad things or why doesn't he prevent suffering. That's a fine question, but it's just the old problem of evil. Worth discussing, but not the topic of this thread, which was if and how faith can be reasonable and meritorious. I suppose we've answered that, but now have gotten side-tracked into the old testament and problem of evil. Maybe those would be better for a new thread.

Poseidon · #73 May 20, '12, 10:49 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by po18guy

Are you a disagreeable person?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. "Disagreeable" in this context means something very different from "disagree" as I used it.

Poseidon · #74 May 20, '12, 11:03 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Verbum Caro

Poseidon, here is the beginning of Chapter 11, Book 3, of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:

Interested in finding out where he goes with that?

VC

That book's been on my reading list for a few months now - I'll hopefully be getting around to it sometime this summer

**tonyrey** · #75 May 21, '12, 5:19 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godmachine

Jephthah was an outcast, a man of perhaps questionable character. But he was also apparently a man of faith who made a deal with God. The deal was that if God granted him victory over the Ammonites he would sacrifice the first person that came out of his house to greet him. So Jephthah and his men slaughtered the Ammonites, men, women and children and God granted him his victory. And when Jephthah went home, his only daughter came out of the house to greet him playing a tambourine.

Now, Jephthah was not asked to sacrifice his daughter but neither did God command him not to. If God did not want the sacrifice, why did he grant Jephthah victory (another bloody affair)? And after granting the victory, why did he not command Jephthah's daughter to stay inside when he came home?

It seems to me God is as much (or more) to blame here as Jephthah.

1. A man of faith doesn't make deals with God.

2. God didn't grant him the victory.

3. Jephthah imagined God granted him the victory.

4. Jephthah was to blame but there is one mitigating circumstance:

5. Jephthah had a primitive concept of God - like many other Jews of that era.

6. It is absurd to expect God to intervene whenever we make mistakes.

7. Trust in God is a virtue but it doesn't exclude folly!