Religious Curiousity

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Vandalore & Grovflab;

Short answer - "GOOD" is not the best word to describe God. The word of choice is, "HOLY".

Holy means - wholly different, completely seperate from sin and crualty, and ontologically pure.

Although some of the actions that God has decreed have seemed harsh (ie floods, plauges, etc) they are actually justified responses to people who have mocked his holiness.

For example, Egypt during the time of Moses was 1) worshipping other gods; 2) enslaving God's chosen people; and 3) preventing God's people from worshipping him. It says in the book of Exodus that the plagues were "Yahweh's judgement on the gods of Egypt".

 

God has given his people much flexibility. As far as being the "ultimate" good, I can't say for I am not as well learned as Mathetais
. I've kind of said this in another post a while ago, but I'll say it again. God created the Ten Commandments and to give people guidlines of what they should and should not do. (Of course we all sin at one point or another so many people think it's kind of useless, unfortunately.) Catholisism believes that the more good they do in the world (and following the Ten Commandments) will earn them a place in Heaven.

But now I go back... as far as God being the "ultimate" good and that his people should follow him in his ways, I believe that we should follow his rules to the best of our ability; yet, I also believe that people act kindly and good just because they want to, not just because God said so. People often use Religeon as an excuse for acting kindly. I think that is fine, but I also think that people do it just because nobody gets upset that way and everyone benefits from it. If everyone is kind and fair to eachother, what is the downside? Whereas opposed to being greedy/unjust/unkind, only few benefit temporarily from it, while others get hurt.

BTW, with Mathetais on the boards... I don't even need to go to church anymore. Heh heh, just kidding.

 

Evil exists in the eyes of those who suffer. Those who cause them pain does not do it for the sake of evil. They just don't know what they are doing. Hitler thought he was doing the right thimg, and thousands obeyed him because they were too weak to resist.
Psychopaths kill because they can't see its wrong. I believe God allows such things to happen because we must learn from them.
We must learn to resist. We must learn what is wrong.
Perhaps this is his/hers way of teaching us.
God can't force goodness into our hearts.
The problem is that one thing can't exist without the opposite. And a life on a completely neutral world wouldn't be a life.

 

Vile said: BTW, with Mathetais on the boards... I don't even need to go to church anymore. Heh heh, just kidding.

Honestly, that's the biggest compliment I could recieve!

I know that I can go on and on with this stuff, and if I go overboard, please tell me and/or have Tal slap me with the Idiot of the Week!

This is my passion! I live to talk up the holiness of God. (rambling again - op self to shut-up mode)

 

I had a really long response to add, but I got mad after getting a dozen 'connection timed out' messages trying to post it a few days ago(during some server trouble, I guess from what was posted on the main site).

Anyway, now that I have the stomach to rewrite it, I'll addess Mathetais's response.

1) If something is omnipotent, it cannot be 'indirectly' responsible for anything. "All power" would, by definition, belong to it. Jehovah, being supposedly omnipotent, is therefore responsible for the actions of everyone from Pol Pot to Moses, Satan to Michael, Jay Leno to the Unabomber. Free will would be an illusion, because people are completely impotent, whether or not Jehovah makes them believe that or not(and Jehovah would be making everyone do everything...omnipotence would be draining if it weren't for...well, his being omnipotent).

A few things don't quite fit with this vision. Why would such a bizarre, alien, imcomprehensible Ultimate Being care about any person more than another? Why would he pick Moses to survive over Joe Shmoe, the grocer down the street? Because Joe Shmoe sold images of homo sapiens involved in reproductive activities out of the back of his store(one example)? Why would that tick Jehovah off? Jehovah came up with those images in the first place! He made people capable of such things as making pictures! He made people interested in such things! He came up with the idea of reproduction, he made people feel pleasure during it, he made people feel pleasure period.

This argument can go for anything anyone ever would even think of considering repugnant. Of course, at the same time, Jehovah makes those people feel repugnant.

Or so the multi-millenia-old handed down oral histories of a warlike desert tribe of nomadic shepherds teach us(apparently they are the Chosen of some omnipotent Creator). Over several thousand years, using the missionary tools of guilt and death and the promise of a nice place to go after you die, as well as some good old fashioned persecution, these beliefs have gained quite a bit of power over a great deal of the world, though this power has been in decline for some time.

Think I'm giving the missionary tactics a bad rap? The general process of Christian missionaries reads like political correctness read backwards. First, there is tolerance. The practitioners of the 'wrong' religions were nudged towards Christian beliefs. Then came the process invented and mastered by Christians, demonization. This is quite literal...pagan deities become evil spirits and demons. Baal used to be the Canaanite god of fertility, for instance. Now look at him...he's a quintessential bad guy in Diablo. And finally, persecution. If those damned infidels are comvinced by now, get rid of them. Cull the herd of the troublemakers.

2)Sin, sin, sin...Why did my crops fail? Why did my children die? Why am I blind? I can't possibly bear the thought of a god that would do this without justification...so this must be my fault. I just hope that I'm doing better now.

Then rules were made so people could avoid angering the gods/god/godess. Guess what? Following them won't help. Bad things don't happen to good people, they happen to everyone.

So why not just end it all? If there is no hope, why continue? Because, say the religions, even if you aren't good enough to avoid punishment in this life, maybe you will avoid it in the next. Suicide means you go to Hell, so go give money to poor people and try to make it through your existence without losing faith in an ambigious Overlord...cuz that ticks it off.

Ok, my friend are honking, more when I get enough time.

 

Deviant, I agree with you. Mat, you said EVERYONE has sinned. Which is true. BUT; God is responsible for the way humans act. He made it so everyone would sin. All humans. He's responsible for everything we do. He made us the way we are. Therefore, if he wants to punish people for their conduct, he should start with himself. We hold parents accountable for their children; likewise, God is responsible for us. Sad but true. If you have a problem with something, you can blame it on God. He made it the way it is. Everything can be blamed on God. He has ultimate power. With it comes ultimate responsibility. (this assumes, of course, that there is a God. Which I don't personally believe, but I respect the beliefs of others...but only to a point)

 

Can an Atheist but in here? Not meant in the least little bit disrespectfully of other posters' beliefs - but why do people have this appalling (imo) need to believe in superior beings? A person told me a short while ago that without a belief in god there was no point to life, no point in caring, no point in being 'good' no point in anything at all. But he couldn't tell me WHY - kept evading the issue by saying you HAVE to believe in god.
Now, as an atheist I I can see every point in caring, in being 'good', in life. It makes the world a nicer place to be. It helps make it a worthwhile place for children to grow up in. It makes life a delight. I don't need a belief in a god to 'make' me care........ its instinctive. Belief in god is learned.
My two cents worth....

 

I would have to call myself at least loosly as Luthran (ELCA for anyone who cares) and everyone here has made some points inportant and in all to much truth confusing. The only reason I dont realy call myself an athiest is that that means you beleve in nothing and IMO you must believe in somthing eather yourself or the sientific therums of creation. In truth for cration i lean for science with the idea that in the end everything is controlled but not done directly or immedeatly by the devine.

 

AMaster, I think you missed my point, or I did not make it well. (Probably the latter, I was definitely rambling)

You cannot follow the "God/Allah/The Devil/ etc. made me do it" logic, because it isn't logic. It's borderline madness. You cannot go out into the street, kill a woman and her child, then claim it was foreordained by "Divine Will". Well, you could, but no one would buy it.(Because Jehovah/Allah/Yahweh/Satan won't let them? It doesn't matter.)

Fljotsdale, I can't really see how atheists exist at all. I can see how religions evolved(or devolved, as the case may be). I suppose I can see a tendency to rebel from that. But many atheists claim that logic makes a deity impossible. I don't follow that supposed logic. Those with a religion have faith that there is some kind of higher order, a higher power(s). Atheists have faith that there isn't one(or any).

I hate faith. Faith makes no sense. Faith leads to blind following, to not questioning anything. That's how bad things(very bad things) can start happening. That is the way to mass suicides, persecution, and plain old ordinary grifting. Reason is the path to a better world, a better life. If everything that didn't make any sense at all was eliminated, the world would be a better place.

As far as I can figure things, logic does not tip scales of the decision of a deity one way or the other. If you have some logic that denies this, I'd honestly love to hear it.

Atheism probably translates, correct me if I am wrong as this is only what I can piece together from prefixs and such off the top of my head, into "no god." I am an agnostic(gnosis being Greek for knowledge, the good old a meaning "lack of" I believe). No knowledge.

I'll find out the score when I die...or maybe I won't. Don't get me started.

 

I think it's time for a remark. Most of the people who call themselve atheists are in realty non-conformists. That is often mistaken.
There are very few persons who really do not believe in *anything*, all others who have something to believe in, no matter how crude it might be, which does not fit into any church-view-of-life, are non-conformists.

IMHO that makes a big difference if you don't believe at all, or if you just have your very own *religion*.

Edit:
With *anything* i mean any kind of higher spirit.

[This message has been edited by BogiTheWaverer (edited July 30, 2001).]

 

TheDeviantMage & BogiTheWaverer:

Atheist =
a (no,against,anti, etc,etc)
theist (believer in god)
Therefore:
atheist = 'believes in NO god'

That's me. The word 'atheist' does not equate with lack of belief in anything else, just lack of belief in god/s.
Simple.
I'm a simple person. I use logic, reason, observation.
I'm also well-educated, widely-read, and have the experience of age and a life well lived. Yeah... I brag alot as well!
Logic can just as easily argue in FAVOUR of the existence of a god as well as AGAINST it - the universe came from .... where? Both religions and scientist believe they have answers of some sort, though neither can PROVE anything.
But mostly my atheism applies to the gods mankind has worshipped throughout our known history - they are all too darned HUMAN to deserve any sort of worship, IMNSHO!

Oh - and agnostic (no knowledge) actually means you are a 'don't know' when it comes to belief in god. So, the differences are:

Atheist = doesn't believe in any god
Agnostic = undecided
Theist = believes in a god.




[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited July 30, 2001).]

 

Time for me to jump back in.

Starting with the idea of the omnipotence of God: I believe that God is omnipotent... i.e., He has the power to do anything. This does not translate to Him being responsible for everything. In the first place, having power does not mean you are using it. In the second place, the whole idea of the human drama is that we have been placed on free moral agency. This means we have been given the authority to choose our own actions. We have power, as does Satan; but ours (and Satan's) is subject to God. If He wanted to stop it, yes, He could. So why doesn't He? Because then He would be controlling everything. It would be like playing G. I. Joe's, making the little plastic figures do whatever the heck you want them to do. That's not what He's after. He wants people who will serve Him of their own free will.

I've addressed the issue of faith vs. logic before, but here goes again. There is no such thing as pure logic. Before you can build a logical argument, you must start with a set of base assumptions. These basic assumptions (beginning, for most people, with Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum") form, whether you are aware of it or not, your belief system. There are certain things you accept on faith without even realizing it. For example, you believe the evidence of your five senses. You believe that the observations you make are true and correct interpretations of the world as it actually exists.

Incidentally, agnostics are not people who are undecided as to the existence of God. Agnostics are those who believe in a Supreme Being of some sort, but believe that by its own nature it is unknowable.

 

Deviat, I guess I misunderstood you. Stupid me . You're right, God did not force you to run out into the street and kill someone. but if you have ultimate power (and God would) you have ultimate responsibility. Whether or not God chooses to exercise his power, he still is responsible.

I'm not saying people don't have free will, but that doesn't mean God isn't responsible. We hold parents accountable for their children. Likewise, God is responsible for us.

Try this; if you had the ability to stop World War 2 and all the events involved (Holocaust, etc) and you CHOSE NOT TO, would you be responsible for all the devastation? Yes, you would. You didn't commit the evil, but you had the ability to stop it, and you didn't. that makes you partly responsible.

 

Hullo Capstone!
Very good and sensible comments on logic I agree, therefore you MUST be right, ROFL!

The dictionary definition of Agnostic: 'a person who believes that nothing is or can be known of existence of god or any but material phenomena.'
SO - my definition is closer than yours!
But thanks for making me look it up!

 

Capstone, that's incorrect about the definition of agnostics...I even showed what the word literally means, though, so there isn't much point in arguing. Some people, people I can very easily understand, believe such things, but they are not truly agnostics. I suppose "no knowledge" could be shifted to that view, I suppose, so I'll just say I don't consider them agnostics.

[EDIT: Nice, Fljuts...okay, I can't spell your name without looking at it, sorry. ]

AMaster, I'm not disagreeing with you. I just have to assume that isn't true, because if it is, there is no point in arguing about it.

Back to Capstone's faith/logic argument. It is not true that everyone makes certain assumptions about anything, and I try to make as few as possible. Wehn I open a door or look ina mirror, there is always a slight hesitation as I steel myself against the grotesque and bizarre. I never take for granted that my bathroom door still leads back into my upstairs hallway.

People who exercise this kind of thinking, taken even further, are the people who disprove your point. Nihilists. (Nihil is latin for 'nothing')

To make any large assumptions about any sort of Supreme Being, however, you would have to operate under many assumptions...such as those I started with at the beginning of this thread. It makes for interesting debate, whereas the straight-out "Prove God" vs. "Prove No God" vs. "Shut Up, The Both of Ya" gets old fast.



[This message has been edited by The Deviant Mage (edited July 30, 2001).]

 

AMaster:

YES! YES! YES! That is a point I am ALWAYS making to people who believe in 'god'!

It's like a highly skilled veterinary surgeon standing by and watching someone torture a kitten (or any animal)instead of stopping them, and then saying it doesn't matter because he can fix the damage anyway... What about the suffering? Obviously of no importance... Any vet. that acted like that would be in front of a court of Law in pretty short order!
But can you even IMAGINE a veterinary doing something like that? But that is what people are REALLY saying their god does, whether they realise it or not.
I'm with ya all the way on that point, AMaster!




[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited July 30, 2001).]

 

Not everyone would fail to acknowledge that their deity is responsible. Again, Islam preachs submission to Allah, so a good Moslem would openly attribute everything to their god.

 

I agree with Capstone. If God had stopped for example Hitler then he would also have to stop everyone else from doing any "wrong things" (and what constitutes "wrong" and right" things?) because goodness isn't doing something about a few things and then letting the rest be.
If he intervened in our world then he would be no better than a dictator.

 

The Big Green Priest's Guide to the Problem of Evil

Some of those involved in this discussion (most recently amaster) have not questioned a supreme deity's existence, per se, but you've offered that if an all-powerful being does exist, he must be a real SOB to let all this Bad Stuff happen.

You've all seen the bumper sticker:

1. God is Good
2. God is all-powerful
3. God exists

PICK TWO!!!!

The point is that given the existence of evil, God cannot be good and all powerful, or he would use his power to stop the pain and suffering we see in this world (and this forum, for that matter.)

If he is good, then he must not be able to stop the pain, the sin, or else a good being would at least try to end suffering.

So: IF God exists, then he must be one or the other. If he does not exist, well, then the bumper stick offers that your non-existent god can be both. Does you no good, though.

It's a pretty good bumper sticker. Very pithy. The writer was a pretty bad logician, though.

He commits the fallacy of False Dilemma. Theoretically, the being we are talking about (I'll call him "God" for short) could exist and yet be evil, or less than all-powerful. Our bumper-sticker writer has no way of verifying (in his universe) the events of the "spiritual" realm.

It is also a false dilemma in that it is conceivable that a being could exist that would allow pain and suffering to occur, and yet be morally good. It is not only conceivable, but it is very, very likely. I'd say downright obvious. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The Problem of Evil
I'll speak of this in context of the Christian worldview, and leave it to you smart non-Christians to derive whatever helpful principles from this you can for your system. I'm not PC enough to do this in 8 different ways. Nor smart enough.

At some point, spiritual life was all that existed. God existed, but was not physical--there was no physical. There was just God.

Now, things did exist in his mind, ideas about the "future" and how he would do such and such, and so in some sense, everything and everyone exists forever in the mind of God; but let's not go there.

God made other spiritual beings. These beings were not physical. They were "there."

But at some point, some beings were transfered from "there" to "here." The Bible says that there was a "sin", a sort of rebellion "there" and these rebellious angels and their leader were kicked out. They apparently

JOB 4:18 If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,

JOB 4:19 how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth!

and a New Testament passage--

MT 25:41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, `Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;


JUDE 1:6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.


2PE 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.....

So: Something happened. Before the Garden of Eden, before World War I, evil happened.

Back to the angels--they were not deity. As soon as something else existed, there was something less than God, non-God, in existence. They were creatures, not creators.

I will offer an assumption that whatever is not necessarely immutable is subject to change. All non-deity things change. They likely must change, but let's just say all things change except for God, who is perfect already.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Sin--

Next post. Have a good day.


bgp

 

Very nicely thought out, BGP. I applaud everything from the use of logic to your acknowledgment you were operating under the basis of Christian beliefs for the second part.

For an excellent novel about that very subject(perhaps my favorite book ever), read Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell. A great(as well as entertaining) look at the fall of the angels.