Down to the Rapture

Treb,

I really appreciate the non-confrontational tone that you've taken in
your response.

You know, my thinking about the possibility of a God doesn't even
consider the idea of Satan. Quite frankly, I consider that idea to be a
red herring, an attractive, simplistic distraction. What I find reassuring
about what Polkinghorne has to say is that what is generally referred to
as evil can be understood without reference to some causality outside
of the Godhead and it's creation. If you follow the imbedded terms in
the material I cited earlier you will see how he presents this.

(That name, Polkinghorne! It's like Smucker's, "With a name like that,
you gotta' be good!")

Look, my thinking on these things goes back to a Catholic upbringing
gone sour more than 50 years ago. I'm content to keep poking along.
I'm not going to up and change my skeptical, sarcastic stripes overnight.
Nowadays, if something is going to move me its got to have some real
substance... and in my jaded, suspicious mind references to Satan are
like campfire stories about the boogie man... pure theatrics. To my
mind, the battle between good and bad is in our hearts and minds,
not out in the cosmos.

FWIW, Polkinghorne says without reference to quantum theory that
God can not know a future that has not yet occurred.
God does however know what if any response He/She/It may take to
any possible future.

So that's where I'm coming from at this point in my journey.

 

rokeby, if you have an inclination, read the book of job and let me know what you think. i find the references to satan uncanny compared with the rest of the bible.

 

bisco!!

Uncanny... No, scratch that.. Holy Cow!!!
I was in fact reading synopses of the book of Job,
even as you were writing... the Screwtape Letters as well.

I don't feel compelled to say anything right now.
Will probably PM you later in the week.

Thanks for thinking to make a suggestion.

 

10-4.

 

B, just have to ask, what made you suggest Job in this situation? Not exactly light reading. Rock on.

 

Rokeby,

I'd trying to be less confrontational as well, although I have made a couple of pointed questions recently.

_____________________________

Being transparent here: I'm one of the moderators at CleanMPG. I've mentioned a few times back around 2006 or 2007 the six-month flamewars between Windstrings over religion. Reason for that is it was heavily influential in CleanMPG choosing to avoid the highly partisan and heavily religious discussions that go way too personal. Until Fred's Political House of Politics was created, I still had to see the thread topics by a few going out of their way to be trollish. We had our own version of a young Dr. Bermann addicted to political bomb throwing until we had enough. Like Daniel (and many even a lot of us) they have an exaggerated view of the number of people that agree with them and lack the capacity to agree to disagree.

Bad news for a lot of us - most people probably disagree with our personal points of view.

As a moderator at CleanMPG, I bite my tongue on some issues because I'd be tearing that forum down - not building it. Most forums don't succeed and the ontopic issues can be decisive enough....the CleanMPG staff made a business decision to go light on religion and politics because the occasional bomb thrower is just too much trouble.

In a semi-perfect world, such discussions would be civil....there is some hope as it's gotten better the past couple of days.

 

Let us know what book your are reading... I would be interested.

 

For some odd reason I'm not often commended for my tone so thank you.

To me the whole concept of the Godhood fails without Satan. There is no one to challenge Him, no reason for a controversy and certainly no reason for evil or suffering in this world. But since your reading Job which is another weird coincidence because I was going to ask you to look at the first chapter of Job.

No one likes to have their character misrepresented, so when Satan did this to God, action had to be taken in order to save all of creation.

. . .

Within this book of the Bible we get a hint of an answer as to why we are here, why the great controversy began, the answer to it and the final outcome. I hope you don't mind these links and look forward to more non-confrontational tone's with you.