At 05:42 PM Thursday 8/19/04, Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronn!Blankenship" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 5:07 PM Subject: Re: The Mercies of The Vatican
> At 04:03 PM Thursday 8/19/04, Dan Minette wrote: > > > >I realize that I don't have an explanation for why pain and suffering is > >required for the existence of free will. > > > > Mainly because if genuine free will is possible, it is possible for us to > exercise our free will to make wrong choices as well as right choices, and > the natural consequences of those wrong choices (ours or those of others > around us whose choices affect us) involve pain and suffering.
True, but that begs the question of why we couldn't have free will to choose between various things that are good for us.
It would not be genuine free will if we were not able to "choose the wrong" as well as to "choose the right".
I agree that things are made that way, but why must it be made that way?
"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away. And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon. And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other." (2 Nephi 2:11-16)
My guess is that there is such a thing as Divine Necessity. All Powerful is a flawed concept, the limitations of which are shown by the question "could God make a rock so big that he himself could not roll it?"
Dan M.
-- Ronn! :)
"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy
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