Christians say that God gave us free will to have a true relationship with him, and I agree that forcing someone to love you is not true love. However, christians also believe that god created everything: the universe itself, time, you name it, but that means that god created logic itself, the logic he created was that there needs to be suffering for there to be free will, so why didn't he create a logic where there can be no suffering while still having true love?

When religious arguments try to justify eternal torment or annihilation, they often appeal to "free will" responses, but this is an obfuscation on value. Free will isn't meaningful onto itself (in a vacuum). At the most fundamental, the things that are truly valuable are experiential qualities such as love, joy, peace.

An argument can be made that free will somehow enriches those values by adding novelty, but a souls nature or capacity for freedom that can result in the anthithesis of what is fundamentally valuable, is not valuable and implies an extremely flawed design.

A more specific response to the "love requires the option of refusal" is that it is an equivocation:
It is equivocating living within a context of meaningful life (love, joy, peace) with being forced to do something. A reality including a souls nature being founded on love, joy and peace is not equivalent to them being forced to do something or lacking free will.

I know that for many non-Catholic/Orrhodox Christians, and plenty of people outside the Church, Marian devotion looks like a detour. If Jesus is the one Mediator, why add anyone else? It's a fair question, and the saints I've been reading take it head-on. Montfort and St. John Eudes both argue that Mary isn't a detour around Jesus, but the road He chose to travel.

A few points I’ve written my thoughts on:

1. God chose to come through her

Montfort opens True Devotion with the pretty standard, accepted claim: "It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world."

He's also careful to add that God has no "absolute need" of her. It was God's choice, and Montfort reasons that a God who doesn't change his ways will keep working as he began. He also reports St. Augustine's view that the world was unworthy to receive the Son directly from the Father, so the Son was given to Mary for the world to receive from her.

Scripture doesn’t say much about her, and Montfort reads that as deliberate: the evangelists said only "as much as was necessary to make Jesus known." Even her appearances point away from herself. At Cana she says, "Do whatever he tells you."

2. She points away from herself

The usual worry I run into is that honoring Mary competes with honoring Christ. Montfort agrees that would be a fatal flaw. Christ must be "the ultimate end of all our other devotions," he says, or they become false.

His image for Mary is an echo: "When we say 'Mary', she re-echoes 'God'." He also compares her to a town on the road. A traveler going from Orléans to Tours by way of Amboise can say he's headed to either, but "Tours alone is his final destination."

He also addresses people who fear that exalting Mary belittles Jesus. He grants there's some truth in their concern, then answers: "we never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother."

St. John Eudes is just as direct. Mary "can do nothing except in, through and by Jesus," he writes, so "coming to the Heart of Mary means to honor Jesus."

3. We imitate Jesus' own love for her

Eudes makes the argument that since Christians are members of Christ's body, we are meant to share His attitudes, so our devotion to Mary should be "a continuation of His devotion to her." If He honored and loved her, following Him means doing the same.

He pictures the two Hearts as harps tuned so closely they sound as one. "What rejoices the Son's Heart rejoices the Heart of the Mother as well," and what pierces one wounds the other. That's the picture John gives us of Mary at the foot of the Cross.

4. She helps form Christ in us

Montfort offers an analogy I really liked. A sculptor can carve a statue by hand, which is slow and risky, since one bad strike of the chisel ruins the work. Or he can pour the material into a mold. Mary is "the great mould of God," he says, where God took human nature and where He forms people into Christ's likeness.

You don't have to accept the whole framework to see the point: holiness is something grace does to us as we let ourselves be shaped, not something we carve out of ourselves.

5. She teaches us to look at Jesus

In The Secret of the Rosary, Montfort insists the beads aren't the point, the Gospel is. A Rosary said without meditating on the mysteries would be "a body without a soul." The mysteries are "fifteen shining mirrors" for knowing Jesus and Mary.

He also notes that the Rosary's 150 Hail Marys echo the 150 Psalms. Where the Psalms look ahead to the Messiah, "the Rosary proclaims Him as having come." Praying it means walking through the life of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Resurrection, with His mother beside you.

6. She makes prayer possible for ordinary, tired people

Montfort writes for people whose minds wander. He admits you can't pray a Rosary without some distractions, and tells readers not to quit over dryness: "faith and good intentions are quite enough." In True Devotion he says a real devotee is guided "by faith in Jesus and Mary, and not by feelings."

Nor does he promise an easy life. Devotion doesn't exempt anyone from the cross, he says, but crosses become "sweetened" rather than "bitter."

7. It's not a shortcut

Montfort puts a warning on his own "secret": "Under no circumstances must you let this secret make you idle and inactive." True Devotion lists seven false devotions, including the "presumptuous," sinners who count on Mary's mercy while holding onto their sin, and the "superficial," who rattle off rosaries in haste.

Montfort's best advice isn't to argue about Mary, though, but to try the devotion for yourself. Pray one decade slowly. Stay with one scene from the Gospel. Ask for one specific virtue. Then see whether the objection still feels as strong.

If you're skeptical of Mary, what's the strongest objection you've run into?

1. God forbade Adam to eat from the tree.

2. Then God created Eve.

3. Eve ate from the tree, which was not a sin because God forbade Adam.

4. Adam eats from Eve, and not from the tree per se, so he still followed God's command to not eat from the tree.

It seems pretty clear to me that God's power is inescapable. He says a thing to be, and it is. "Let there be light." And then there was light.

We cannot escape God's commands. Therefore, the notion of sin itself is dubious. If you reread the passage when God commands Kain to kill Abel, you'll realize he was not telling Kain to not kill Abel! Yes. God commanded Kain to master his passions, and that is why Kain killed Abel. God is responsible for Abel's death.

God gets angry when we don't follow his will, but we have no choice but to follow his commands. That's how his power works, and maybe the whole tragedy in the Garden is that God didn't master his powers fully when he created us, he couldn't yet command exactly what he wills. Sort of "careful what you wish for, God" type of scenario.

If Jesus "came back" and saw everywhere the statues Christians make of him dying on a cross, he'd be terrified. It is basically a death threat, and no amount of theology can deny that if you go somewhere and everywhere there are people who wear depictions of you dying on a cross as jewelry around their necks, as decorations in their churches, as tattoos on their skin, and that they give those crucifixes to all the little children in churches at their "first communion" along with a book that describes how you suffered and died, it is nothing other than a cult devoted to Jesus's death. Christianity is a death cult. Crucifixes are a death threat.

Addendum: If I made a statue of you, and I put that statue somewhere for everyone to see, and that statue is of you dying on a cross, they will arrest me for making death threats. But if I make a statue of Jesus dying on a cross and I put it for everyone to see, they are going to exempt me from paying taxes?

By the premises that Jesus is both human and divine, Saint Paul introduces a contradiction in Christianity. There's a principle in classical logic called the explosion principle (ex falso quodlibet) and it states that if you assume a contradiction is true, you can logically prove any statement whatsoever.

Jesus-Christ's dual natures, Jesus and Christ, human and divine, are essentially the contradiction which allows for Christians to prove anything they want.

That makes Christians impervious to any criticism because no matter how valid a criticism is, a Christian can prove within his belief system a claim that invalidates the criticism.

Criticize the crucifixion to redeem all sins for being human ritual sacrifice and the Eucharist for being necromancy both of which should not be glorified to children, and Christians will prove a claim within their belief system that the crucufixion wasn't human ritual sacrifice because of the divine nature of Christ or wtv and that the Eucharist isn't necromancy because it's a miracle or wtv.

Essentially, Christians have two opposing and contradictory sets of attributes for Jesus and they can apply any subset of attributes from both sets whenever they want. Jesus is divine when it suits them. Jesus is human when it suits them. "It was not human sacrifice, because Jesus was divine." "Jesus's sacrifice redeems our sins because Jesus was human like us." Etc.

I mean, I don’t think I have to write much to prove my point, as most Christians don’t even believe the same things. Some Christians think everything in the Bible actually happened, some think it’s metaphorical. Some think He’ll is a place where nonbelievers are sent to be tortured for eternity, some think it’s just separation from god, some think it’s not even real. Some believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, some think there were a ton of humans before him, some don’t even believe in Adam and Eve, and instead believe in evolution. See my point yet?

I have studied the bigle and went to a Christian school since 3rd grade and graduated this year. Something that always bothered me was how it was stated evil exists because God wanted us to have free will.

however, God is the creator of the universe. Surely it is possible for him to give us all free will without the ability to choose evil acts. If we *need* free Will to have true love, then why does that free will have to include evil acts?

Addittionaly.. Even if that isn’t true free will, if we were never given the option to do bad things, and it was all we knew, then we would never be upset that we *couldnt* do something bad.

I also think that it’s silly for God to punish a flawed human soul for eternity because they didn’t believe in him, or because they did something that He believes immoral. If he gave us free will, why should we be punished for doing what we want just because it goes against what he deems wrong?

God is an immortal, all seeing all knowing being, with the ability to do anything he pleases and make anything exist or cease to exist. He does not have to suffer like us, yet he condemns millions of souls to eternal suffering because they had sex with someone of the same sex and didn’t say sorry.

also, I remember being told that sadness, anger, etc are all emotions caused by sin and are evil emotions. If this is the case, why does God feel them, and let them be the reason for his acts?

Theres so many things that confuse me about this but these are some of the biggest things that just make the idea of the Christian God a bit icky. It feels like “ok guys I’m immortal and never have to suffer, but I’m going to make billions of little guys that have to suffer because I made evil and I don’t like it, and they choose to do evil or dont want to be with me.”

Just because you dont like a person or he or she isnt circumcised or now not baptised or otherwise in mortal sin doesnt mean this person deserves eternal punishment. An omniscient and all powerful God wouldnt allow people to suffer for eternity. Eternity is beyond human comprehension. Its without end.

Some theories i can get behind is that God is not all powerful but this would defeat the purpose of him being God.

Why isnt solipsism or Boltzmann brain true? In that case you are both Jesus and Judas of their history is correct. Or everyone is their own Boltzmann brain and we sometimes interact.

Just 1 theory. Hinduism can be true but why should Christianity?

I dont believe its impossible for the Ressurection to happen but i also dont believe God would create hell yet he talked about it lots in the New Testament

In order for a reality design to be ethically meaningful, it has to be founded on ethical principles that secure it.

If reality is grounded in true goodness​, ultimate reality including all souls should ultimately reflect it.

Freedom does not logically require the possibility of eternal alienation, as it only requires a meaningful range of available choices coupled with a meaningful nature.

When did the practice start?

Also, when is it believed that the practice of owning slaves started?

I had to edit this a few times because I don't know the words for it. Would the Jewish during those times not feel some cognitive dissonance enslaving another people after god freed them from slavery ?

As a Catholic, there’s several problems I’ve read about sola sceiptura.

1. The Bible itself doesn’t directly state that every doctrine should come from the Bible

2. Historically, the first Christians didn’t have a Bible to rely on and had to take the apostles word for what they said.

3. Scripture states that the Corinthians had done a good job by keeping the traditions Paul had passed on to them. Additionally, Thessalonians also says something about oral and written traditions basically validating that oral tradition was also accepted back then. I might have the passages reversed but you all get what I mean. Paul is basically praising tradition not just scripture.

4. In the Old Testament, the Jews would take the word of prophets, they wouldn’t be checking the scriptures to see if what the prophets were saying was true.

5. How do you all reconcile the fact that if sola scriptura were true, why is there so much difference between each Protestant denomination? To me, this shows why there needs to be an authoratative figure such as the Catholic Church to guide its followers and interpret scripture correctly.