If God wanted every soul to get to Heaven eventually, why did he create Earth in the first place?

Yes, they had to choose to join Him in Heaven.

Is that what you are choosing, Tuomas?

god created free will to fuk wit us. he didn't have to, you know. maybe heaven was overcrowding.

What God wants and what God gets are two different things. As above, so below. He did get a pair of boss Nike Cortezes, which I think compensates for all the people who strayed from the straight & narrow path.

But what does Earth have to do with free will? God could still give the souls a choice to choose him or not if they were all living in Heaven, why did he need to build up this extraordinarily complex system just to serve as a backdrop for this choice?

Also, why did God give that freedom to people anyway, if there's still only one right thing to choose, and the wrong choice gets you punished for eternity? What kind of a freedom is that?

lighten up man god doesn't exist.

http://transition2008.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/the-thinker4.jpg

I know, but I've always kinda wondered how Christians answer all these questions? Surely they must've thought of them.

(x-post)

Maybe you should become a Christian and find out. I hear good things about the Trappists.

Isn't that a beer or something?

feminist studies meets a proscribed suppressing of womankind = just the situation for tuomas the inquisitive

punishment for the fall, then. original sin and all that.

apparently lucifer dropped a dirty bomb in heaven back when all was hunky dory and earth is the celestial equivalent of a wash cycle at 60 degrees.

Trappists are a silent order, I think is what Noodle means. Naughty Noodle.

http://i10.tinypic.com/2mo42uo.jpg

punishment for the fall, then. original sin and all that.

But hadn't Earth been created already before the Fall?

in the gnostic cosmology, the earth is a profane creation of the demiurge

WELL, in the Mormon church, they talked about how there was a pre-existence. Jesus agreed w/his big man Daddy-O Godb, and said, 'hells yeah, u-mans need free will; I'll dies for their sins and all so those who want to, which really should be everyone, can get back here." And Lucifer, who was God's oldest son, was like, "Yo I have seniority here; everyone else should be able to get back here. Free will would stop them from doing that, let's just make 'em all automatons." So how they settles this was by having a big old war. A third of the people agreed with Satan, and fought on his side, which ultimately lost. SO in bitterness, they're all bodiless and tempting the shit out of us in some passive-aggressive manner. Mormon church has some huge emphasis on 'bodies are good,' God has a corporeal body & all.

They have little subset bylaws explaining the further whys & wherefores. I don't know about all this, but there's one explanation.

WAR is the answer.

i keep getting it mixed up with the silmarillion, tuomas, to be honest.

I think if I seriously wanted answers to these questions I might google a bit or perhaps go to a library and check out some of the millions of books of theology that have been written since the year of our Lord. But that's just me.

Yes I have understood it the way The Real Dirty Vicar and Abbott explained it.

Christians say He wants us to want Him. God is all powerful but He created mankind to be special in just this way. He loved mankind and so he set us free.

Dude is wacky!

god hates chimps, they really piss him off. so he just invented us to make them look bad. but it backfired.

At least he made anteaters.

FTW!

After, like, two days of this, 'The Church' will have gotten boring despite all of Abbott's talents and charm. Short-termism in the extreme from the mods.

how does religion explain the existence of emos?

soory, obviously should be a separate board

fusk, honest freudian slip, promise i meant thread. promise.

I think the way Abbott explained it, Satan was right. If it means we all get to Heaven, which is like the best place ever, and if God wants us all to get there, why should be given a choice about it? What inherent worth does freedom of choice have if there's only one correct choice?

emus?

GWB meet thomas

someone should explain the existence of emus.

why not god? looking around the place, he's obviously not doing much with his time lately

Just got offed, I think you are underestimating the potential of THREAD OF DARK CONFESSIONS AND ATONEMENT.

yeah a pennance thread would be a very good idea i think

if they start that economics thread, you'll soon have a sneak preview of what purgatory is like i'd say.

"if God wants us all to get there, why should be given a choice about it? What inherent worth does freedom of choice have if there's only one correct choice?"

Tumoans in short because God values freedom over salvation, at least that was my understanding of the Catholic tradition. God ,part person, out of love wanted other creatures to share in what it means to be a person, to taste exisitence,being,freedom etc--to share in the richness of his own life, even at the cost of making the "wrong choice".

The ideas may sound abusrdly quaint and outmoded but the value of theology to me isnt really about knowing God stuff, its about understanding the part *the church* played in the formation of western culture and thought and by default perhaps the formation of ourselves.

Why couldn't God just make us think we had free will? Wait a sec...

i feel sick

tuomas asks way too many question to get into heaven, if i understood sister philomena correctly back in 1987.

Why couldn't God just make us think we had free will? Wait a sec...

:) a xtian might ask you to explain exactly what this physical process is and how it works at which point youd say I DONT HAVE A CLUE, but my hearts not in it and I think youre right-- although in a practical sense given the complexity of the biological processes involved and sheer volume of potential stimuli ( right word?) "free will" will always exisit