I don’t believe any of that.
The holy Bible is this and this alone:
“Thall shall not violate consent”
#rainbowrule
I see.
Well, thanks for explaining.
To me, taking billions of years to do something means it took a lot of
energy and that energy source is finite.
If energy source is finite, it began, but without an energy source. What non-energy source began it?
If transmutation is real,
anything can be made into anything else.
Void being transmuted into time, energy and space, over billions of years.
void cannot be transmuted unless there is an eternal substance it is co-eternally the privation of, which makes it inferior & inactive without the initiation of actual substance
The eternal substance can be a para substance, becoming any other substance with enough time.
“Actual substance” doesn’t count because it can be changed into any other substance or non substance.
but it must have will or no other being will ever come from it. stasis forever.
Dan wrote,
…as he so graciously dismisses the thoughts.
You are welcome.
Definitely - but is God actually part and parcel of that energy source, IS God that energy source, or did God just call it into being from a distance, and is it possible that that energy source will burn out when God has had His final word on things?
Come to think of it, when one considers those billions of years, that energy source does not really appear to be soooooo finite, does it?
Again…" and who has known the Mind of God."
God cannot burn out.
No, I do not see God at all as burning out, Ichthus. Ask me to explain it I cannot…
I was referring to that energy source as being separate from God - something which He created – not something which He is --as part of His, let’s say, Divine Design.
That energy source may have its limitations, its “burning out” time but can God have His? I do not see it.
I do hope that I am not around when it happens. 
Who would be able to run from it or out-run it?
Psalm 139:8
I hesitate to say more to someone who does not know the smell of skunk.
Imagine if the universe didn’t have cruelty.
What a terrible place that would be.
Insects suffer miserable fates.
Why must they suffer so?
I can accept this world,
and nurture a love for it.
But I don’t call it perfect,
or anywhere close.
A mysterious one,
to create a world so cruel.
A mysterious one,
to inflict punishment so.
If that was God’s love,
it burned very badly.
Why can’t we be loved delicately? 
‘He’ may be mysterious, but is love?
The answer is at the beginning. What kind of love allows cruelty to continue indefinitely? But what kind of love never allows choice? We are the ones choosing cruelty… we don’t like it? Stop. Or be stopped.
I began with sarcasm - I wasn’t clear [it’s the internet].
I’m an idiot human though, with idiot human values and beliefs.
Who am I to question the wisdom of things beyond me?
Perhaps I can question, why any other idiot human thinks they know.
Where is their idiot human understanding rooted in?
On what authority does their idiocy trump another’s?
If a mysterious one exists, damned if we know it at all.
The rules and principles by which it is, would be far beyond us, right?
Of what function is our babble in bridging an infinity?
Rejumbling our colored blocks as furthered achievement,
while each action feeds the chasm of our ignorance.
Don’t mind me - one more jaded soul.
I’ll continue, you needn’t reading.
[tab]Go to a child who’s being starved, abused and neglected -
death being a mercy, soon to come, for their unloved life,
and look in their eyes and speak of their choice for cruelty.
What if that’s it?
What if that’s their life?
What if there’s nothing more?
What if the cosmos callously dealt them such a hand?
That would be a very cruel world.
But we all loved, so such cruelty would never be bestowed, right?
Oh, what a life - to be loved.
And if there was no choice?
If our fates were sealed?
I dare you to change the past - be my guest.
If we’re going to will things into existence,
why stop at freedom?
There are lovelier things we could wish for.
But if we are to be condemned,
then it must be our fault,
because condemnation ain’t love, right?
Maybe, just maybe, we’re not special.
Maybe powers bigger than us, are indifferent to us.
Maybe our fates were never of interest.
Things would become a whole let less mysterious.
What are my rambling thoughts,
if not empty frustrations?
I’m off to sleep…[/tab]
If there is nothing More, then all suffering is in vain. But if there is More, then no suffering is in vain.
That we care about suffering implies there is More.
Smarty McSmartypants McGee.
That is actually my favorite psalm.
So, someone who has never even seen a skunk, - you would not even try to teach that person what a skunk looks like, smells like, warn them in advance to beware of the skunk and to not get too close?
Ichthus77
I
.
If we came to discover that there was nothing more - what would you do about it?
Would you try to make it so that no one suffered in vain as much as you could? After all, we still have this life to live.
Anyway, I am not so sure that all suffering would be in vain. We could live to be 100 and we could grow and mature and be happy. If some suffering meant that we could “come to that” be mature and happy in our life, evolve spiritually, even if there was nothing afterwards - would it not be worth it?
Of course, we would all have to stick together more than, right?
I cannot speak for all atheists, but when I was an atheist, I held contradictory beliefs similar to Nietzsche (or the edited version), who Hitler took seriously. I think that contributed to how God brought me back… the tension of the contradictions could not hold.
I imagine how I would have been able to hold those beliefs knowing what I know now… It is easier to imagine secularizing the wholeness. But that drains the blood from it. It’s like imagining your mom is a Stepford wife.
We’re persons in the image of the Persons. If you drain the life from the whole… you don’t even have parts. The whole thing glitches.
There’s a reason we want to alleviate suffering—that draws us to the whole. There’s a reason we fragment away from that when we try to live apart from the whole.
Kierkegaard’s religiousness A… on our own steam. No one can or should do that. It misses the point.
Who is mature? If no one is mature, it isn’t a real thing towards which we develop. But if perfect maturity is to be perfectly merciful, then we rest in it, and share that rest with others, and multiply it. Not a dead rest, but life-bringing, radical peace. Shalom.
Skunks are beautiful. And bigger in real life than they appear on television. Let them pass without bothering… just keep your distance.
If you avoid them like a bad smell, you forfeit the beauty.