quote:

---

Originally posted by Snags:
Because people perceive the attack as on them, not God, so self-justification (and possibly fear of addressing theodicy directly) causes them to lash out. Or, in other words, their God is too small.

---

This is an unkind assessment, and it falls short.

I don't think anybody is really defending God against Stephen Fry. Everybody is defending other people against Stephen Fry. Stephen Fry can do nothing to God, or about God. But Stephen Fry certainly can mess up other people, and in particular, their approach to God.

These "other people" may indeed include oneself. It does not necessarily indicate that "one's God is too small" if one counter-attacks Stephen Fry mostly because one is concerned with one's own relationship to God. If somebody calls your wife a whore, and you spring to her defence immediately and vigorously, is that an indication that your love for your wife, and your trust in her, is too small? Typically we rather see this as a demonstration of the strength of one's devotion.

I have side-stepped theodicy in my way, I don't intend to explain this here again. But whenever I hear talk about worms eating eyeballs of children and whatnot, I mostly think "dishonesty". For sure, theodicy is the most serious problem facing the "benevolent God" believer. But in a sense that is a theoretical / intellectual problem: is it in fact logically possible that God is benevolent but the world is shit? There is also a kind of "practical theodicy", where the world has been shit to you. But that tends to express itself quite differently, much more emotionally and concrete. There's really no mistaking that, because just about the last thing you would want to discuss when faced with such personal disasters are theoretical solution of theodicy...

But this Stephen Fry stuff is basically just trying to grab your emotions while discussing the theoretical problem. It is inviting a leap to conclusions "this is so bad, nothing could possibly explain it". It's rhetorics, it's ultimately dishonest. Stephen Fry has no children whose eyeballs got eaten by worms, and the logical problem of benevolent God vs. crappy worlds doesn't require especially horrendous illustration.

What is Stephen Fry really saying? He cannot bear worms eating eyeballs, but he could tolerate say a bit of violence to children? Or how about a bit of economic injustice, like fat cat TV presenters getting lots of money for doing very little? Or whatever... The world is actually full of injustices, big and small, and no matter what size, they all pose a problem for the belief in a benevolent God.
 

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Posted by Snags (# 15351) on :
 
Actually, I think when the response is particularly strong and 'violent' (and dare one say, un-Christian) then actually my snapshot isn't unfair or desperately wide of the mark.

If someone called my wife a whore I wouldn't leap up and biff them on the nose, nor would I tear into them aggressively and destructively. I'd either refute it calmly and clearly (not hard, unless she lives an incredible double life), or ignore it as pointless showboating bluster. The depth of my devotion to my wife is not measured by the degree to which I'd trample on others in her notional 'defence', and the security of my relationship with her is such that it would barely merit a "Oh, do fuck off my good man".

So for those that pitch in all hardcore stylee, I think it does to some extent speak to them identifying it as a personal slight. Those that respond in a more measured spirit of debate/refutation (e.g. the Krish Kandiah and Pete Greig responses that seemed very popular, albeit still ducking the main point), there it doesn't apply.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
Stephen Fry is being dishonest? way to go in avoiding the issue and attacking the person, IngoB.

I think Fry is many things, and is wrong about many things, but I have no evidence that he is being dishonest about this debate. In fact, quite the opposite.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
SF is saying 'how dare you?' to God.

Simply another way of saying 'why?' - which is a very fair question imo.

My answer would be 'freedom' and 'evolution'. His would simply be 'evolution'.

Yes - he's using emotional arguments, but it's clearly something he feels strongly about.

Myself, I simply think we couldn't have the bad without the good (bacteria, weather, earthquakes, you name it) we depend on them all.

Why would God allow such a system - freedom.

He's very clever and would probably run rings round me, but I'd love a chat with him on the subject as my arguments tend to be very emotional too
 

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Posted by DOEPUBLIC (# 13042) on :
 
The scenario itself is contrived. How could SF actually have conversation with someone whose existence he believes depends on the credibility of his thought.

Whether he likes it or not for his conversation to be valid God will need to exist.

An atheist assertion would have no God to have the conversation with.

We can choose to intervene as we feel prompted, showing merely a desire for our voice to be heard, as an appropriate response.Obviously God is able to respond, in His way. We in our humanity find unanswered questions difficult to leave alone.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
The scenario itself is contrived. How could SF actually have conversation with someone whose existence he believes depends on the credibility of his thought.

Whether he likes it or not for his conversation to be valid God will need to exist.

An atheist assertion would have no God to have the conversation with.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Obviously God is able to respond, in His way. We in our humanity find unanswered questions difficult to leave alone.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Stephen Fry is being dishonest? way to go in avoiding the issue and attacking the person, IngoB. I think Fry is many things, and is wrong about many things, but I have no evidence that he is being dishonest about this debate. In fact, quite the opposite.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
He might well go on about the many pains inflicted by the world then, but I bet it would be about pains a lot closer to his own experience.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paul.:
Actually I'd go the other way. People who don't feel the need to defend God worry me because it indicates a level of comfort with an apparently capricious sadistic God that is disturbing. People who are trying to defend God are ISTM at least trying struggle with the issues, find a way to square the circle. "He may look capricious but..."

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paul.:
Actually I'd go the other way. People who don't feel the need to defend God worry me because it indicates a level of comfort with an apparently capricious sadistic God that is disturbing. People who are trying to defend God are ISTM at least trying struggle with the issues, find a way to square the circle. "He may look capricious but..."

---

There's a third option, which I hope is mine. That is to admit that he sometimes looks capricious, but (on other grounds) to trust that he is in fact not so--and to rest in that, without getting in other people's faces about it. Look, I don't have the answer. So why should I be madly scrambling to make you or anybody else believe some kludged-up pseudo-answer, as if it were better to believe nonsense than to say "I don't know"?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paul.:
Actually I'd go the other way. People who don't feel the need to defend God worry me because it indicates a level of comfort with an apparently capricious sadistic God that is disturbing. People who are trying to defend God are ISTM at least trying struggle with the issues, find a way to square the circle. "He may look capricious but..."

---

There's a third option, which I hope is mine. That is to admit that he sometimes looks capricious, but (on other grounds) to trust that he is in fact not so--and to rest in that, without getting in other people's faces about it. Look, I don't have the answer. So why should I be madly scrambling to make you or anybody else believe some kludged-up pseudo-answer, as if it were better to believe nonsense than to say "I don't know"?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Obviously God is able to respond, in His way. We in our humanity find unanswered questions difficult to leave alone.

---

That's exactly what SF was questioning.

He was saying IF God is able to respond/not create these foul things then the fact that he did (create eye eating bugs etc) was cruel and heartless in the extreme. Which it would be, of course, if that was how creation worked. Such a God could not be said to love anyone/anything.

I would say that's not how creation works. SF, of course, doesn't believe in creation in the first place - his answer was hypothetical.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paul.:
Actually I'd go the other way. People who don't feel the need to defend God worry me because it indicates a level of comfort with an apparently capricious sadistic God that is disturbing. People who are trying to defend God are ISTM at least trying struggle with the issues, find a way to square the circle. "He may look capricious but..."

---

There's a third option, which I hope is mine. That is to admit that he sometimes looks capricious, but (on other grounds) to trust that he is in fact not so--and to rest in that, without getting in other people's faces about it. Look, I don't have the answer. So why should I be madly scrambling to make you or anybody else believe some kludged-up pseudo-answer, as if it were better to believe nonsense than to say "I don't know"?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
He might well go on about the many pains inflicted by the world then, but I bet it would be about pains a lot closer to his own experience.

---

Obviously. But, just as you or I don't bare your souls on this public forum, neither does SF in a public interview. Nothing dishonest about that.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
My point when I posted was that I think Fry has a good point. He is asking God "how dare you", and that seems a reasonable question to ask God. It is one I wrestle with and struggle with.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
The problem I have is that the response is "you can't ask God that!" or "Job answers that" (or similar), rather than "That is a damn good question, and I don't yet know the answer. But I believe there is one" I think this is something I see in other places as well, its just that this was a prime example. The defensiveness of God - which I accept is often a defensiveness of their own lack of faith, or a sense of fear. Or something else. But it makes me feel that their God is not big enough. That is the message it gives to me.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
If it is obvious that Mr Fry would not actually say to God what he said, then it is obvious that Mr Fry was dishonest in claiming that he would.

---

quote:

---

Unless you are saying that Mr Fry is either stupid or lacks self-awareness. I don't think either is the case. Mr Fry fronted with atheist apologetics when asked a personal question, without indicating that he was doing so. I do not do something equivalent on the Catholic side. Rather, if I want to answer personal questions, I do, and if I don't, I don't. Mostly I don't, but there's nothing dishonest about that preference. Obviously it is easier to avoid saying something around here than in an interview. But nobody forced Mr Fry to give that interview.

---

quote:

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Theodicy is the best argument of atheists against Christians because it tries to pit two core beliefs of Christianity about God against each other: universal benevolence vs. omnipotence. If that doesn't bite for you, it means you have lost belief in one or the other. If you say that you don't know, and are satisfied with that answer, then you are simply saying that you embrace intellectual incoherence as part of your faith. In either case, the atheist will consider his work as done. And I agree with that judgement.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
You are using some spectacularly disjointed logic to suggest that you know for a fact this means he is lying.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I have no idea what you are talking about.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Excuse me for believing this is a totally unhelpful interjection into the conversation.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
Theodicy is the best argument of atheists against Christians because it tries to pit two core beliefs of Christianity about God against each other: universal benevolence vs. omnipotence. If that doesn't bite for you, it means you have lost belief in one or the other. If you say that you don't know, and are satisfied with that answer, then you are simply saying that you embrace intellectual incoherence as part of your faith. In either case, the atheist will consider his work as done. And I agree with that judgement.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
Lying is a bit strong. I would say that he tried to come up with an answer quickly, decided it was unwise to reveal anything personal, and went for some standard atheist rhetorics instead. The dishonesty is rather "technical", in essence I think he answered a different question to the one he was being asked. He answered "why do you think a Christian God is unlikely to exist?" not "what would you say to a Christian God if he did exist." But he phrased the former as if it was an answer for the latter.

---

quote:

---

As for my supposedly disjointed logic, while Boogie does not agree with my evaluation, she considered my analysis to be "obvious". I will settle for a "likely".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
This is just symptomatic of the need to have everything completely pinned down. If you don't want to clear out and destroy -- through clever theology -- all mystery from the Christian religion, then you "embrace intellectual incoherence."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
How can you possibly know that these are not the first questions Fry would ask - or the first answers that Fry at least imagines he would ask?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
I also do think that Mr Fry was being dishonest

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by leo:
I don't think so. Fry, being honest, is likely to ask/tell God that he is guilty for allowing his followers to be homophobic. Sort of "Why did you create me gay and then supposedly inspire a book to be written that encourages homophobia with its subsequent death penalty?" and that still stirs up hate crimes now.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
At least so if you are an educated, adult Christian with a brain, who has had time to think about this.

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quote:

---

Otherwise you are not providing a witness for God with all your heart and mind, much less for any Christian mysteries, but simply for the fact that people can say things like "1+1=3, it's mysterious" with a straight face.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
And I can judge that not because I know Mr Fry, but because Mr Fry rattled down some standard atheist apologetics. And it is just inherently unlikely for anybody that the thing they really want to tell God if they meet him after death is some tired apologetic rhetoric.

---

Unless of course they actually believe what YOU call "tired" apologetic rhetoric. That wouldn't be atheist rhetoric at all if some atheist, somewhere, didn't believe it at some point. Presumably some still do. They may not take YOUR definition of what's "tired" to be binding on them.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Ok, I've read the transcript, here. Shorter than I expected.

I don't really understand all the fuss. If someone's busy digging themself into deep denial of theodicy, then yeah, I can understand the upset. (No condemnation.) But Stephen said much the same as many Shipmates have wrestled with, including me. (I expect he'll get along well with Mark Twain. ) He'd probably love our classic "Calling God To Hell" thread.

Personally, I think there'll be a long line of people wanting to have A Little Talk, F2F, with God...with varying levels of bluntness and force.

God, if She exists, is good, etc., etc., can handle it.
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Ah, so everyone IS an apologist, and they must have every single apparent contradiction nailed down, or they're letting the team down. God is sitting in the owner's booth far above the cheap seats, weeping because we fumbled on the one and the other team ran it back 99 yard for a touchdown. If we don't nail down everything so tight the nails squeak, then our "witness" is dog shit with whip, sprinkles, and a cherry.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Unless of course they actually believe what YOU call "tired" apologetic rhetoric.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
I have, of course, said nothing of the sort. But let's talk about you, shall we? You are apparently qualified to be a teacher, you have a university education that supposedly included philosophy, and you have been hanging out for years on a discussion forum, where the question of theodicy comes up every couple of months or so. Do you really think that it is good enough for you to shrug your shoulders and say "Theodicy? I don't know, it's a mystery." Well, I just don't. To me that is just an affectation of naivety.

---

quote:

---

I'm sure that Mr Fry believes that bit of rhetoric he delivered. That doesn't mean that it wasn't recognisable as rhetoric, rather than as a revelation about his personal state of mind. And it is tired by frequency of use, something that a non-atheist can judge irrespective of truth value.

---

quote:

---

It's a bit difficult to construct an analogy here, given the asymmetry of the situation. But I'm pretty damned sure that if I am worried on my deathbed about there being no God and no afterlife, then I will not reel off the tired apologetics of the cosmological argument.

---

quote:

---

Horses for courses, that's just not the sort of thing that helps at that point. To repeat, I think it is entirely possible that Mr Fry would throw a "why that?" into God's face. I just don't think that the "that" there would be about "worms eating children's eyeballs". Unless Mr Fry happens to have a child whose eyeballs got eaten by worms, that is...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Leaving aside your casual indifference and superior tone of Mousethief's qualifications and experiences - you appear to be saying here that if the realities of the universe *actually are* an unfathomable mystery, it is still better to believe in something that fits the pieces together. So you are not actually interested in the truth, are you? The universe is not an unfathomable mystery because you say so. Sorry, that's not good enough.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Maybe he would have said something else on reflection. That doesn't make what he said somehow something you can judge as dishonest.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Who cares what you think Stephen Fry would do? Ridiculous.

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quote:

---

If it can be demonstrated that what you say contradicts itself, then it is false. If you were talking about your faith at the time, then your faith is false. That should worry you to the degree of your realisation that your faith is false.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Or possibly it just reflects the reality - that the thing is contradictory.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Your whole argument is spurious. I don't have to have a child whose eyeballs are eaten by worms to believe that the existence of such a thing raises serious questions to a deity should one ever have the opportunity to meet him. What are you talking about?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
nd if your first thought upon meeting a God that you thought did not exist was to confront Him with the question of human suffering, and if not your own suffering or the suffering of those close to your heart was foremost in you mind there, but rather a rare "worst case" of the type typically used in atheist apologetics, then you might indeed ask this specific question upon meeting God. But that is unlikely. Not on logical grounds, but on psychological ones.

That's a general statement about the human condition, by the way, though I did apply it to Mr Fry. A quick look at the internet shows that Mr Fry is bipolar and attempted suicide in 2012. Hence I am now even more convinced that other suffering than that of eyeball eating worms will readily spring to his mind when faced with God...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Utter drivel. Hard as it is for you to understand, some people think that their own struggles pail into insignificance compared to others. Maybe Fry is resigned to the reality of his illness but cannot understand the pointless suffering of small children.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

---

Originally posted by leo:
I don't think so. Fry, being honest, is likely to ask/tell God that he is guilty for allowing his followers to be homophobic. Sort of "Why did you create me gay and then supposedly inspire a book to be written that encourages homophobia with its subsequent death penalty?" and that still stirs up hate crimes now.

---

Thus you agree with my assessment!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paul.:
Actually I'd go the other way. People who don't feel the need to defend God worry me because it indicates a level of comfort with an apparently capricious sadistic God that is disturbing. People who are trying to defend God are ISTM at least trying struggle with the issues, find a way to square the circle. "He may look capricious but..."

---

There's a third option, which I hope is mine. That is to admit that he sometimes looks capricious, but (on other grounds) to trust that he is in fact not so--and to rest in that, without getting in other people's faces about it. Look, I don't have the answer. So why should I be madly scrambling to make you or anybody else believe some kludged-up pseudo-answer, as if it were better to believe nonsense than to say "I don't know"?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink.:
The problem with this is it comes off much like an abused spouse saying, "Well, I don't know why he's bastard sometimes but I love him anyway". Or even, "I don't know why he abuses the children sometimes, but I love him so I'll stand by him."

To which most people's reaction is frustrated rage or pity.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink.:
IngoB you appear to think you have a good answer to the question of why God permits suffering - what is it ?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink.:
The problem with this is it comes off much like an abused spouse saying, "Well, I don't know why he's bastard sometimes but I love him anyway". Or even, "I don't know why he abuses the children sometimes, but I love him so I'll stand by him."

To which most people's reaction is frustrated rage or pity.

---

True. but what makes the difference between the two scenarios--in the one you posit, the bastard IS a bastard and abusive, with no contradictory evidence (she stays with him in spite of the evidence); in the case of God, we have contradictory evidence.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink.:
How is God in your scenario functionally different from Satan ?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
I have, of course, said nothing of the sort.

---

quote:

---

But let's talk about you, shall we?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
I'm sure that Mr Fry believes that bit of rhetoric he delivered. That doesn't mean that it wasn't recognisable as rhetoric, rather than as a revelation about his personal state of mind.

---

quote:

---

And it is tired by frequency of use, something that a non-atheist can judge irrespective of truth value.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
Do you really think that it is good enough for you to shrug your shoulders and say "Theodicy? I don't know, it's a mystery." Well, I just don't. To me that is just an affectation of naivety.

---

quote:

---

1. God is not a moral agent. Morals arise when a creature has free will, and hence has a measure of control over whether it achieves the ends and goods created into its being. God is not a creature, hence has no morals whatsoever.
2. God is good not in the sense of doing moral good. For God is not bound by morals, He binds by morals. God is good in the sense of creating all good, including moral good, of being its ultimate creative source. For example, God is not good by being charitable to us, rather that there is such a thing as charity in the abstract and as a charitable act in the concrete is how God is primarily good to us.

---

This is coherent and consistent and answers the atheist claim? To posit that God is some kind of thing we have absolutely no experience of, so moral dilemmas don't stick to him? Ye gods and juleps.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Ingo--

...you went through a stage when you were trying out the entirety of RC teachings in your posts--not because you necessarily believed them (yet), but because you were trying them out. And you acted like God's angry pit bull, chewing on and tearing apart not just ideas, but people's feelings. Except you didn't tell us what you were doing, until after people bashed you over and over again, trying to get your attention. And when we pointed out what you were doing to people, you said you weren't posting for other people.

You've grown a lot since then, IMHO. I much less often about your posts.

But I'm wondering if you're doing something of the same thing, again. You're entirely entitled to your beliefs, as are the rest of us. But you're so sure that Stephen Fry couldn't possibly mean what he said, because it doesn't fit with your theology and theodicy. And he couldn't possibly mean it, because (AFAYK) it's not about his own hurts.

Maybe he really does think first of the things he mentioned. Maybe he wanted to keep his personal hurts private. I'm depressive, rather than bi-polar, and I tried to kill myself, long ago. (I'm fine, now.) If I were on TV, I sure wouldn't want to talk about that--unless I thought it might help someone else who was suffering.

The things you're saying may be life-giving for you; but, for many people, they're just the opposite. When I read your point-by-point post, I thought of Satan rather than God, just as Doublethink evidently did.

Furthermore, you're saying it on a board for people who've lost faith, are questioning, are in pain, etc. If you're trying to lead them to God, you may well have the opposite effect.

You don't have to answer this, and I'm *not* trying to harm you...but your posts sound like maybe you've got questions about your own private hurts (as we *all* do), and you're coping by plunging yourself into doctrine for dear life. And if that works for you, that's ok.

Maybe you can let other people be where *they* are, and leave some breathing room between you??

FWIW, etc.
 

---

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
To point this out adds nothing to the discussion.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
That's where we talk about individuals, rather than about what they say.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
If he believes it, then it is, in fact, by definition, a revelation about his personal state of mind.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Then all of Christian theology is tired.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
That doesn't mean everybody who is as intelligent as you are has a worked out theodicy, or accepts any of the theodicies that other people have worked out. Even with an MA in Philosophy and years of being on the Ship (which is nearly as good, apparently). Neither of those things, nor their combination, allows me to understand what God is up to. That requires revelation and that has not been vouchsafed to me. And the tired old Jesuitical arguments of theodicy have not stood up to scrutiny.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
This is coherent and consistent and answers the atheist claim? To posit that God is some kind of thing we have absolutely no experience of, so moral dilemmas don't stick to him? Ye gods and juleps.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
Maybe he really does think first of the things he mentioned. Maybe he wanted to keep his personal hurts private. I'm depressive, rather than bi-polar, and I tried to kill myself, long ago. (I'm fine, now.) If I were on TV, I sure wouldn't want to talk about that--unless I thought it might help someone else who was suffering.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
The things you're saying may be life-giving for you; but, for many people, they're just the opposite. When I read your point-by-point post, I thought of Satan rather than God, just as Doublethink evidently did.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
Furthermore, you're saying it on a board for people who've lost faith, are questioning, are in pain, etc. If you're trying to lead them to God, you may well have the opposite effect.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
5. This world is essentially a testing ground, and has been Divinely revealed as such (particularly clearly through St Paul, but so right from Adam and Eve in Genesis). While human pain and suffering is to a large extent due to human evil, this world is created as challenging. Our reactions to such challenges, including pain and suffering, determine our eternal fate in the afterlife. That's pretty much the only reason this world exists. God could have created us all as saints in heaven, but He didn't. God has deliberately given us opportunity to prove ourselves, or fail.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:

8. God did not ask us for our opinion. Neither did he promises us a pleasant life. God asked us to pick up our cross and follow Him.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:
My main objection is your meaning of life purported above. This is an ideology I grew up with in Islam and I've never agreed with it as it makes no sense. Why would God create us simply to test us to prove our obedience and love for her? It speaks of a God with an inferiority complex. And I don't believe God has an inferiority complex. That is not the God revealed in Jesus.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:
]For the redemption of the world. Not for a place in heaven. Self-interest is anathema to the Gospel.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
This is a very interesting and thought provoking post, IngoB. However the thing I wonder about when you often state that we actually have no real understanding of the Mind of God, in what way do you think it was meant that we were made in God's image. (Sorry for this tangent, non-theists. I just am very interested in IngoB's ideas about this.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
5. This world is essentially a testing ground, and has been Divinely revealed as such (particularly clearly through St Paul,...

---

Why would God create us simply to test us to prove our obedience and love for her?...There is communal mutuality inherent in God's plan for humankind.

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:

8....God asked us to pick up our cross and follow Him.

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For the redemption of the world. Not for a place in heaven. Self-interest is anathema to the Gospel.

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quote:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
So you will conflict with SF, if your vision of God differs from his.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
So you will conflict with SF, if your vision of God differs from his.

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SF?

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quote:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Stephen Fry , as you appear to have understood, earlier in the thread, responding to Boogie.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Stephen Fry , as you appear to have understood, earlier in the thread, responding to Boogie.

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Sorry, I had all but forgotten about Mr Fry, as I was talking about theodicy proper now.

I'm not sure if I understand your question though. Obviously Mr Fry and I are conflicted in our vision of God now. For one, he doesn't believe that there is one. But if we end up sharing the beatific vision in heaven, then I don't think our vision of God can be conflicting. It doesn't have to be the same, mind you, just like one can look at a statue from different angles. But that would make the visions complementary, not conflicting.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doublethink.:
IngoB you appear to think you have a good answer to the question of why God permits suffering - what is it ?

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1. God is not a moral agent. Morals arise when a creature has free will, and hence has a measure of control over whether it achieves the ends and goods created into its being. God is not a creature, hence has no morals whatsoever.
2. God is good not in the sense of doing moral good. For God is not bound by morals, He binds by morals. God is good in the sense of creating all good, including moral good, of being its ultimate creative source. For example, God is not good by being charitable to us, rather that there is such a thing as charity in the abstract and as a charitable act in the concrete is how God is primarily good to us.
3. Even if God impossibly were a moral agent, there is no reason to assume that His morals would have anything to do with ours. Morals are specific to beings. A sapient spider, for example, would not have human morals.
4. God Incarnate as human obviously did obey the morals due to the kind of being He assumed, perfectly. So 1. and 2. do not mean that we cannot see Jesus as our moral exemplar.
5. This world is essentially a testing ground, and has been Divinely revealed as such (particularly clearly through St Paul, but so right from Adam and Eve in Genesis). While human pain and suffering is to a large extent due to human evil, this world is created as challenging. Our reactions to such challenges, including pain and suffering, determine our eternal fate in the afterlife. That's pretty much the only reason this world exists. God could have created us all as saints in heaven, but He didn't. God has deliberately given us opportunity to prove ourselves, or fail.
6. God judges individual humans, but deals with humanity. Much of our confusion arises because we neglect the latter corporate aspect. In other words, individual stories of pain and suffering do not have to make sense other than as far as this particular person's state after death is concerned. God for the most part writes history in broad brushstrokes.
7. Jesus is the other side of the Divine coin shown in the dressing down of Job (the most important book in the OT, in my opinion). Unless we can hear these voices of God in harmony, we are not getting "it".
8. God did not ask us for our opinion. Neither did he promises us a pleasant life. God asked us to pick up our cross and follow Him.

In summary, in the purported theodicy dilemma, I reject the regular understanding of "benevolent". God is for the most part not benevolent in typical "human" ways. The atheists are quite correct that this conflicts with claims about omnipotence. What they do not realise is that in accusing God, in argumentatively projecting concepts of good God wrote on their hearts, i.e., they are in fact instantiating the very benevolence of God that they wish to deny.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
It's mine as well, Rachel, but IngoB's equally logically unassailable response is that what you want God to be like doesn't alter how he is.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I can't answer that question because I'm not IngoB. I couldn't love that God either, not by any definition of Love that seems vaguely connected with the normal use of the word, any way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
My main objection is your meaning of life purported above. This is an ideology I grew up with in Islam and I've never agreed with it as it makes no sense. Why would God create us simply to test us to prove our obedience and love for her? It speaks of a God with an inferiority complex. And I don't believe God has an inferiority complex. That is not the God revealed in Jesus.

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Rather, it is pretty much the only thing that has the slightest chance of making sense

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Why would God create the world then? You need to realise that God could have simply created you in heaven, as a perfectly realised holy saint. There is nothing that you personally, or humanity as a whole, can possibly gain in this world which God could not simply create directly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:


Now I fully accept that this is a God I make in an image I like as well. But the God IngoB outlines is not one I am interested in. If that is how God is, then I am lost, because that is not a God I could worship or engage with.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Chill folks. There is no reason to assume IngoB's image of God is any less made in his own image than any of your (and my) personal ones are either.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Chill folks. There is no reason to assume IngoB's image of God is any less made in his own image than any of your (and my) personal ones are either.

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quote:

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Originally posted by the famous rachel:
If I say I am looking for a logically-consistent picture, what do I do when presented with one which I can't stomach?

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quote:

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Originally posted by the famous rachel:
Having posited this logically consistent God, why do you want to worship Him? Personally, if He exists, I think I want to punch Him on the nose - except that within this logic he clearly doesn't have one.

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I would hope that there is no Christian logic that assigns a nose to God as God...

The problem here is that you are not leaving your moral reference frame when judging "my" God. As a rough definition, we venerate (dulia) what we recognise as significantly greater than us, and worship (latria) what we recognise as greatest. Now, you look at "my" God and say "but this is not morally and emotionally the greatest" and wonder why I would worship something that you consider mean and cold. That kind of being is more something to despise, i.e., to punch on the nose (metaphorically).

But really the entire point of what I have been writing is to say that the reference frame you are using there was not made for God. It wasn't even made for sapient aliens, if we should find them one day. It was made for us, human beings. I'm basically saying that you are applying a measuring tape to a ballet and declaring it to fall short artistically because you take it to be 42.3 cm long. There is nothing wrong with either your morals / emotions or God, it's just that applying one straight to the other is a category error.

Of course, there is a bit more to this. I think Jesus makes a difference, in two distinct ways. I could worship the God I have described without Jesus, indeed without any of the salvation history. That's more or less the deist position. But it would largely be a practical matter, a bit like paying income tax. It would be the proper thing to do with respect to the appropriate authority, but it wouldn't exactly fill my heart with joy. Or perhaps I could redirect the feelings of "natural awe" that one has now and then (e.g., when seeing stunning natural scenery, in my case in particular in female form ) to this God. So that would perhaps become a bit like patriotism, where you proudly pay income tax to your great nation. But Christianity is more than that.

First, in Jesus there culminates action from God towards us, and judging backward from Jesus we can see this throughout salvation history. (You could see the OT as mere human projection, but if the Jesus event is true, then it makes much more sense to say that God in fact did interact beforehand.) Clearly God is reaching out to us, somehow. It is not just a deist "hands-off" God, or this would be out of character. It is also not just a pure "threshold performance counter" God, or there would be no reason to provide a "cheat sheet" Jesus. There is more here. I think much of Christianity has gone completely overboard in interpreting what that may be, in particular nowadays. But if Jesus indeed is God, then clearly we are now dealing with some kind of relationship that goes beyond the "mechanical".

Second, from a human point of view the Jesus event provides a very much needed human proxy. I think it is a near impossible struggle to keep a "pure" view of God. While I can argue that God is non-human, and that hence the relationship and interaction with God that is on offer is ultimately on non-human terms, I cannot in fact relate and interact in a non-human way. This is more or less why those religions with a "pure" view of God always fail their own strictures. So did the Jews as recorded in scripture. The golden calf, Baal, etc. - all these are very human failure modes in the face of a non-human God. I'm not particularly informed about Islam, but I'm pretty sure one can also find these failure modes there. Possibly as de facto "god status" of their prophet, possibly as de facto idolatry concerning the Qur'an, but humans cannot really deal with the non-human. Christianity has a very neat way of providing a human proxy in Jesus, and in the end even when we worship the Father superficially, we really do it through the Son practically. Even these words "Father - Son" are really already accommodation through the Son. This is by the way a sense in which Christ is the only way to God even for other religions, even for people that have never heard of Christ. As a human approaches God, their steps will invariably falter sooner or later. When that happens, when human concerns press in, the only way this can still be the truth about God is if these human concerns are the truth about Christ.

But I don't want to conclude on this positive note, because that just leads to "business as usual". And I don't think that Christian "business as usual" cuts it.

So let me say this: I'm a father of a son. If my son was on his knees before me, sweating blood in abject fear, because I am sending him on a suicide mission that will see him killed in the most humiliating and torturous manner available, what would I do - as a human being, as a loving father? I would probably not say "sorry son, get a grip and go right ahead." That sure as heck does not seem loving, or for that matter human, to me. But, you might say, what if the fate of the world depended on this? What if all the world was doomed unless you as a father sacrificed your son. Well, first I say that I am not entirely sure that you can pull off this argument in a moral system that categorically says that evil must not be done to achieve good. Maybe you can provide a "double effect" argument to justify this, but I would want to see you do that before I comment.

However, second I say that this is futile anyway. You might be able to justify a human father this way, even declare him heroic in his sacrifice. But not God. Because God happens to be the Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-omni. God did not have to create a world in which it had to come to this. All arguments that try to claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, or that human freedom requires the possibility of such evil, etc. are destroyed by a single word: heaven. If you can imagine that there is a heaven, then you can imagine that God can create a situation with humans in it where there is none of this darkness. And if God can create something at all (if it is logically possible) then nothing can stop Him from creating it in the first place.

Furthermore, let's say that you somehow impossibly get past this, and find a way to argue that God had to create a world in which Jesus would get miserably killed. OK. So why is this significant? Jesus gets murdered. So what? Why do you actually think this matters? I mean, to you. I'll tell you why Christianity says this matters. Because in this sacrifice our sins are (at least in a principle sense) taken away somehow. Jesus is the "Lamb of God", the sin offering whose blood is painted on our doorframes so that the wrath of God may pass over us. Let us not dwell on exactly how this works, for it is contentious among Christians. What is not really contentious is that somehow this does work. But why does it work? I'll tell you why. Because God says so. It is purely and utterly arbitrary, nothing but an exercise of God's will. Jesus could have picked a flower and smelled its beautiful scent, and the Father could have declared the salvation of humanity over this act. I'm serious. There is no external agent that somehow forces God to not accept anything as making good our sins but the brutal murder of His Son. There is only God who can say this. It is His call, His choice.

So, frankly, who needs theodicy? The very core of Christianity is non-human through and through, and consequently if viewed with human morals and emotions, inhumane. If I was an atheist, I wouldn't bother with theodicy at all, for Christians. I would point at the crucifixes on their walls and the crosses around their necks and say: "I refute your God, thusly."
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
The very core of Christianity is non-human through and through, and consequently if viewed with human morals and emotions, inhumane.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Luigi:
Whilst I agree with you Hyatt, that we should keep looking, however, it seems to me that the argument you follow it with gets dangerously close to: the more shit God has made this life the better it will turn out to be in the next. It smacks of desperation to me.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:
Apologies to Schrodie and rachel for the chill comment. It was not intended to be dismissive of your faith or questions or ideas. I was simply pointing out Ingo's ideas are not Gospel Truth™ .

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Luigi:
In fact, even more importantly for me, such a God could not be trusted. A God who is so different from our understanding of good etc cannot be trusted not to mess with our heads in the next life, if this is the best he can do in this life!

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quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I quite like IngoB's notions of the arbitrary will of God, leading to the sacrifice of the Son, and his return. I find a lot of Christianity too sentimental and anthropomorphic, and this cuts through it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Luigi:
In fact, even more importantly for me, such a God could not be trusted. A God who is so different from our understanding of good etc cannot be trusted not to mess with our heads in the next life, if this is the best he can do in this life!

---

This is an important point. This God cannot be trusted to be anything like what we call "good." This God could call eternal suffering "the beatific vision" and there's nothing that we can say about it because his ways are not our ways, etc. When we posit a God that is so wholly other that none of our categories can apply to it, then there is no telling what it is about. Well sure it TELLS us it's doing thus-and-such, but it could be lying to us, and we have no recourse to even complain, because our morality is not its. WE are told not to lie. This God isn't. This God can lie its metaphorical head off, torture the metaphorical bejesus out of everyone, and say, "Nanner nanner boo boo, you can't apply your morals to me."

This is a God to terrified to death (and beyond) of.

Well, you may say, we have Jesus to point to. Jesus shows us what God is like.

Does he? Or is that part of the head game God is playing with us? Because if God is fucking with us by making Jesus look a certain way, there's nothing we can say about it because God isn't like us, and so forth.

This whole theology makes God a cipher. Maybe it's evil, maybe it's good. But neither of those apply. Maybe we're in for a grand old time in the afterlife. Maybe we're going to shriek and scream in eternal horror NO MATTER WHAT WE DO IN THIS LIFE. There is no telling. Because God simply isn't like us, and our moral categories just don't apply.

---

quote:

---

ANY consideration of the goodness of God at once threatens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God's moral judgement differs from ours so that our "black" may be His "white", we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say "God is good," while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say "God is we know not what". And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. . If He is not (in our sense) "good" we shall obey, if at all, only through fear - and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity - when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing - may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of inferior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards - a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly without a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint distaste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach - of chastity, truthfulness, and self sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as “white" what was hitherto called black.

The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but "as lords that are certainly expected". You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into society that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experiences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of "goodness" differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards: When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call "better".

Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Luigi:
But Quetzalcoatl - if God is so other as to be totally incomprehensible to all our terms of reference how on earth can we respond to him?

How on earth can we trust him?

How on earth can we pass any test he gives us? (As Ingo claims)

Wouldn't it be better if he just left us as the rest of the animal kingdom getting the most out of our day to day lives.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It still sounds anthropomorphic to me, that is, creating God in our image.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't get from it the sheer Otherness of God, which IngoB describes as non-human. Well, yes, if God isn't non-human, the whole thing is pointless, since I am looking beyond myself, in order to find a pumped up form of myself.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It still sounds anthropomorphic to me, that is, creating God in our image.

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Why does an arbitrary God appear less anthropomorphic to you?

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't get from it the sheer Otherness of God, which IngoB describes as non-human. Well, yes, if God isn't non-human, the whole thing is pointless, since I am looking beyond myself, in order to find a pumped up form of myself.

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Of course God is non-human and other. God is God, we are human. Doesn't mean the connection and the ethics are arbitrary.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Luigi:
So the gulf between what Ingo is describing and Jesus isn't that great from your point of view?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Q - thanks for the honest answer. I understand now better where you are coming from.

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Well, cheers, I wish I understood it! Still, one of my old trainers used to say that understanding takes second prize.
 

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Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :
 
Hey - I didn't say I totally understood it!
 

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Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Hey - I didn't say I totally understood it!

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:
Apologies to Schrodie and rachel for the chill comment. It was not intended to be dismissive of your faith or questions or ideas. I was simply pointing out Ingo's ideas are not Gospel Truth™ . Some people take him too seriously and as some kind of golden standard to rail against.

I for one do not find many of his images of God logical ( if that's what you're looking for) or common in my circles of faith. There are plenty of other options.

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quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
After all, you are an image of Christ.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
On the whole, the Biblical God doesn't appear to me to be the impersonal other-to-the-point-of-no-human-concepts-being-any-use-to-describe God I see in IngoB's posts.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
Whilst I agree with all your other points, I don't think this answers my original question. Now, I don't believe in Ingo's highly logical God, but if I did, I might fear him, I might hate him, I might try to escape his clutches by feats of brilliant intellect. I might even feign worship to try and avoid the threat of heaven. But I wouldn't love him, and I wouldn't worship him in spirit and truth. If Ingo's logic is a description of how God is that cannot be avoided then it provokes in me a response other than love and worship. My soul rebels against it. I'd like to know what it provokes in other people, including Ingo himself - and why.

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quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
[Well, I don't want to second guess IngoB, but I don't think he said that God is arbitrary, but that his acts of will are.

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quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, if they are not arbitrary, you must be ascribing various psychological traits to God, which sounds anthropomorphic to me. Well, the old 39 articles say that God is without body, parts or passions.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
thanksgiving and appreciation

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:
"For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." (1 Jn 5:3) And of course, indeed, don't just do it "mechanically", or as a burdensome duty, or out of sheer self-interest. As with any love, it is important that you are enthusiastic about this moving the focus away from your self-interest to the interest of another, here of God. You should enjoy this for what it is. You should be into it, should want to do it. You should, in other words, be zealous.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by IngoB:

There is, of course, an extra angle to this given the presence of Jesus. But I wanted to talk about loving God as God (or if you wish, about loving the Father specifically), and answer how I think about it, and ask you what you mean by it - practically and concretely.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
If I accept your picture of what it is to love God, denuded as it is of all the warm fuzzies, it still isn't love if I follow God's commands unwillingly, angrily and against my better judgement. My gut reaction to the God you posit is that he is a tyrant, and whilst I might knuckle under and obey the commands of tyrant through fear, that would not be love.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
What would I mean by loving God that goes beyond the unwilling obedience I describe above? Probably little more than the "zeal" or "enthusiasm" you mention, which would come from a desire to align my will with God's, a belief that God's will for me and for the universe was right and that therefore I should be bang alongside it....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
A God who created us for his own reasons, linked to his unknowable interests and not ours. A God who having done so, chooses to test us in ways which we may not be able to bear, in the full knowledge that we may not be able to bear them, because he created us in that inability. A God, who when we fall short of the tests that he created us to fail, punishes us for that failure.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
Either, this God exists, and created me with a sense of justice which cannot accept him, and I am destined to rebel come what may (at which point I may as well head down to the depths of Hell singing and dancing and making merry) or this God doesn't exist and all is well.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
Do you believe me when I say I find it impossible to love this God you posit? Genuinely, soul-wrenchingly impossible?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
If you do believe me, do you believe that God will damn me for my (God-constructed) inability to love him? If so, how do you feel about that?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by the famous rachel:
Sorry, despite editing, that comes across as unpleasantly confrontational. Although it isn't really meant to be, I know I cannot expect you to pull any punches in responding. I know you're here to argue and win arguments, and I fully expect to get torn to pieces here... but your ability to destroy my debate style won't, I suspect, affect my inability to get past this point, which is kind of the crux of the matter for me personally, and others like me.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Evensong:
I note you haven't responded to my post Ingo. Too hard?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I note you haven't responded to my post Ingo. Too hard?

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Apparently so.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I note you haven't responded to my post Ingo. Too hard?

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Apparently so.

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Please avoid being bitchy here. Debate and discussion is appropriate. Being nasty to other posters is not.

If someone has not responded appropriately, please readdress the question, or PM them.

Schroedingers Cat
Faithfree host.

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Point taken.
 

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Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :
 
I can relate to much that Rachel speaks of. Having read Ingo's posts a couple of times now I am tempted to have a go at responding. (Especially in the light of some of Ingo's recent posts which come across as much more willing to engage - a lot less dismissive).

However, if all interest in this thread has died I might not bother.

Luigi

[ 24. February 2015, 17:46: Message edited by: Luigi ]
 

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Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :
 
Whether short or whether long
I agree with Clive and Evensong.

Howe'er, this board is called "FaithFree,"
And this all seems best for Purgat'ry
So I am really not too sure
That on this thread I should say more.

. . .

Burma Shave
 

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Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 
Christianity is a wide field. If anyone is totally right, it's probably accidental, or fleeting.

Sometimes I ponder at what point do two "Christians" have a different god? As opposed to confused, immature, mistaken, taught wrong, over-stressing some minor aspects and ignoring some major ones.

What god are any of us "defending"? A God who is delighting in sending 95% of humanity to eternal torment? A purely rational "person" with no personality, incapable of pleasure or delight? A toddler or tyrant who throws tantrums at the slightest "offense"? An egomaniac who desperately needs to be admired whether or not deserved?

In the bad old days "Christians" killed each other to ensure "pure" religion, proving that Christians" were not following a God who is love. (Today in the West people mostly just argue, or define others as "not really Christian.") Historical Christianity is appalling! Yet some defend it totally!

As to "some of the best" apologetics, which god do those books "defend"? Not usually a God who is love (except by a very twisted definition). Therefore "some of the best" are among the worst. The fact that the power hungry historical church endorsed writings that supported the power orientation does not make those books true.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
{tangent}

Chast--

Nice to see one of your poems--and LOL re Burma Shave!

[ 25. February 2015, 02:34: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
 

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Posted by the famous rachel (# 1258) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Luigi:


However, if all interest in this thread has died I might not bother.

---

quote:

---

IngoB
There is nothing that you personally, or humanity as a whole, can possibly gain in this world which God could not simply create directly. No knowledge, no skill, no power, no relationships, nothing can exist that God cannot simply make be. Nothing, that is, other than precisely moral agents deciding and acting with the potential of failure.

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quote:

---

IngoB

Except, of course, there is one thing, and one thing only. It turns out that God wants you to do certain things, to behave in certain ways. He has written the moral law onto your heart. He has revealed His purposes to humans, and in particular the Jews, through history.

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quote:

---

IngoB

Our reactions to such challenges, including pain and suffering, determine our eternal fate in the afterlife.

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quote:

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IngoB

Ultimately, we will be able to think with "God-mind", and thus be God-like without literally being God. That's exactly the primary promise of heaven, the beatific vision, wherein we are elevated above our natural abilities to see God in grace. But in this world our ideas about God are mostly limited to what God has revealed to us. And to guess from our psyche, from our morals, from our mental life to God runs the risk of saying that a tiger must pay income tax, because we do.

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IngoB

Clearly God is reaching out to us, somehow.

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The only problem – not exactly small – is that when we look at the history of Homo Sapiens over say the last 70,000 years in all the different cultures that have existed over that time, your God has left enormous numbers without any sort of revelation at all, the only understanding of his will is what was written on their hearts. However, in different cultures what is understood to be right has varied enormously.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I do think the Good News in Christ really is Good News, but if there is no resonance in others, who am I to judge? I just hope they find another way to fullness of life and death.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I do think the Good News in Christ really is Good News, but if there is no resonance in others, who am I to judge? I just hope they find another way to fullness of life and death.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
In response to IngoB’s posts… As I understand it to deal with the problem of theodicy Ingo seeks to emphasise how God ‘is seriously alien to us’ and so even to think of God with our understanding is misleading.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
BR--

I read an anecdote once. An African tribesman spoke to the missionary for his village. "Sir," he said, "is it true that if someone has heard the Good News and doesn't believe it, they'll go to hell?"

"Yes."

"And if someone hasn't heard the Good News, they won't go to hell for disbelief?"

"Yes."

"Then, sir, why did you come?"

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
BR--

I read an anecdote once. An African tribesman spoke to the missionary for his village. "Sir," he said, "is it true that if someone has heard the Good News and doesn't believe it, they'll go to hell?"

"Yes."

"And if someone hasn't heard the Good News, they won't go to hell for disbelief?"

"Yes."

"Then, sir, why did you come?"

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Which is why I dislike church, so agonizing, not at all the loving laughing forgiving embracing God I engage with.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Evensong - I hope if there is a God that he is in some way reflected in my understanding of what Jesus was like.

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I think it's called Christianity (as opposed to random Deism) .

As for the old Eskimo/African joke. I started a thread on that last year.

Bingo had a response too.
 

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Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :
 
Evensong - fair enough.

My 'yes but' is that Christianity is so varied that it feels like a number of totally different religion depending on where you dig into it.
 

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Posted by DOEPUBLIC (# 13042) on :
 

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Evensong - fair enough.

My 'yes but' is that Christianity is so varied that it feels like a number of totally different religion depending on where you dig into it.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Evensong - fair enough.

My 'yes but' is that Christianity is so varied that it feels like a number of totally different religion depending on where you dig into it.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Evensong - fair enough.

My 'yes but' is that Christianity is so varied that it feels like a number of totally different religion depending on where you dig into it.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
Evensong - fair enough.

My 'yes but' is that Christianity is so varied that it feels like a number of totally different religion depending on where you dig into it.

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Originally posted by Luigi:
I
The real problem is I have yet to find a strand that really tackles (satisfactorily) the hard questions such as: the problem of suffering, heaven and hell, why is God so elusive etc.

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When you find a strand that tackles the first two questions well (suffering and heaven and hell) let me know. I'd be interested.

Difficult questions - even for the most faithful.

I do my best by reading where I can. Tried CS Lewis's "The Problem of Pain" recently and while it had some great insights I didn't agree with some of his baseline theologies. Trying God in the Dark next.

Hope you find some answers you can make peace with one day.
 

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Posted by Aravis (# 13824) on :
 
"The Problem of Pain" isn't CS Lewis at his best. "A Grief Observed" works, as he wrote it from experience, but it's more a book of reflections than answers.
I don't know whether it's still in print, but I would strongly recommend "Celebration" by Margaret Spufford. She intersperses an account of her and her daughter's severe disabilities with chapters of theological reflection. It was one of the few Christian books - in fact the only one, I think - that I was able to face reading about a year ago when we had several family crises and nothing made any sense at all. (Though I should add that some completely un-religious music was my main source of support.)
 

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Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :
 
Cheers Evensong. Appreciate the comments.

The irony is that in many ways I have been extremely lucky in terms of what life has served up. I hope this doesn't come across wrongly, but I have sometimes wondered if I'd have felt compelled to ask fewer questions if I was more desperate!
 

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