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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Defending God
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
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 ?
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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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
How is God in your scenario functionally different from Satan ?
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
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.
She stays with him cos sometimes he's lovely. (I.e. contradictory evidence.)
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
How is God in your scenario functionally different from Satan ?
Satan is one the instruments through which God is testing us. He is also a a personal entity in His own right, and through His evil intentions and actions makes this harder than it would have to be. Just as we do, too.
But other than that, I see no "functional" similarity whatsoever. (Not that it really makes sense to talk about God "functioning" in the first place. God serves no function.) Certainly Satan neither can, nor wants to, grant you eternal life in heaven.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I have, of course, said nothing of the sort.
Ah, the ol' plausible deniability. You indeed never say anything you can't retract, unless you're quoting the Vatican directly (or at least the things the Vatican says that you agree with). To point this out adds nothing to the discussion.
quote:
But let's talk about you, shall we?
Go to Hell. I mean the ship's board. That's where we talk about individuals, rather than about what they say.
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.
And you talk about ME embracing incoherence. If he believes it, then it is, in fact, by definition, a revelation about his personal state of mind. Ye gods.
quote:
And it is tired by frequency of use, something that a non-atheist can judge irrespective of truth value.
Then all of Christian theology is tired.
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.
It's not naivety. Perhaps you would be feigning naiveté to say that; because you have a worked-out theodicy. 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.
But don't tell me what my state of mind is. You're no good at it, and it's rude. Again, if you must talk about me personally, call me to Hell. You wouldn't be the first.
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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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
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 ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif) much less often about your posts. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
To point this out adds nothing to the discussion.
I'm pointing out that you are misrepresenting me. It adds to the discussion that you are attacking a bugbear of your own making.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
That's where we talk about individuals, rather than about what they say.
The only reason I was talking about you is to point out that you are the kind of person who in my opinion has intellectual duties before God.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If he believes it, then it is, in fact, by definition, a revelation about his personal state of mind.
Sure. But just because one reveals something does not mean that one reveals what one was asked to reveal.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Then all of Christian theology is tired.
Well, most of it is. Sure.
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.
I did not say that you need to have a worked out theodicy. I said that as an intelligent and educated man who has been confronted with theodicy, you must be able to answer why you still have reasonable doubt about the argument of the atheists. If you cannot but admit that they are right about this, then you cannot in intellectual honesty continue believing what you see as proven false. There's a difference between intellectual defence and offence, so to speak. I do not think that you need to be able to destroy atheist reasoning. But I do think that you need to be able to ward off their destruction of your faith. If however in your own best evaluation atheists have shown your faith to be wrong in some point, then I insist that you should stop believing in it. Once more, I do not speak against "I cannot see how this could work, but I will maintain my faith nevertheless." I speak against "I see that this cannot work, but I will maintain my faith nevertheless."
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.
Yes, I think my answer beats at least the usual formulations of theodicy, because these are clearly targeted at anthropomorphic conceptions of God. I also do not believe that God is any kind of "thing". Clearly we do have some experience about God though. For example, we have the experience that God stays true to His promises. But if we leave the realm of poetic writing and start to do theology, then we have to be very careful in assigning meaning to this. God's consistency, for example, is simply guaranteed by His eternity. God never changes at all, so obviously He will not change his mind on some promise He made.
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.
And just why does it seem so impossible to understand that I was making exactly this kind of argument about Mr Fry? Did I say anywhere that Mr Fry would not say this to God because it is wrong? Or because he doesn't believe in this atheist argument? Or anything like that? No, I sure as heck didn't. I simply pointed out that it is psychologically unlikely that Mr Fry would respond to God as he claimed he would in that interview. The one and only reference I made to the theodicy argument he reeled off is to say that it being so trite and obviously constructed for anti-theist rhetorics makes it unlikely to be the go to response if one actually meets God.
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.
I was asked a question, I answered. That's all. I really do not care at all what people find "life-giving". Not that I am somehow against what is "life-giving" to your faith. I mean, good on you, enjoy, whatever. Actually I would say one of my many failings as Christian is that other than in the most reluctant obedience to what has been commanded to me, I really care little about other people's relationship with God. I care about mine, as exclusively as I think I can get away with it. It's just that when you say "this is true about God" in some form or fashion, then you trigger a rather different part of my personality. I really care about "truth", about what is actually the case, and the more so the more it involves knowledge, logic, patterns, ... That's just me. That's why I have the sort of job that I do have. My mind is a bit like a buzzsaw, you can approach it from many directions and it will be perfectly safe. But there is one direction (well, for a buzzsaw two) in which it is not.
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.
Well, I'm not. Other than fortuitously, if they happen to have lost their faith over some falsehood I'm trying to eliminate.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
But IngoB, as I noted above, kicking back with God is alien to any frame of reference we might have. How on earth do we know what's psychologically likely in that fantastical circumstance? On what basis can we make that call?
Moreover, why, exactly, does it matter? Accepting, arguendo, that you're right, and Fry's statement is an improbable response to a meeting with the Big Man; surely the substantive issues he raises about theodicy are more important than how he'd react to God?
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
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.
I don't agree with your take on theodicy, but kudos to you for trying to articulate one. Not an easy thing to do.
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.
The God revealed in Jesus speaks of others being important. Of renewed life on earth being important. We are forgiven as we forgive others in the Lord's prayer. There is communal mutuality inherent in God's plan for humankind.
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.
For the redemption of the world. Not for a place in heaven. Self-interest is anathema to the Gospel.
[ 14. February 2015, 11:08: Message edited by: Schroedinger's cat ]
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
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.
Rather, it is pretty much the only thing that has the slightest chance of making sense (and kudos to Islam if they say something similar). 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. 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. And I do not mean simply that these moral agents accrue historical memory. Such memory, as well as - or instead - any effect it could potentially have on us, could be created directly by God without any need for an actual history. That is just another aspect of thingness, and God is Lord over all thingness. No, the only possible additional meaning of an actual history lived out by fallible beings is precisely if those concrete decisions and actions themselves are given importance by God. And of course that is exactly what Christianity traditionally teaches: that our concrete decisions and actions in this world decide whether we will go to heaven or hell.
Why God wants it to be like this? I don't really know. I just know that he wants it to be like this. Or at least I know that that is undeniably the teaching of traditional Christianity. And that it is also the teaching of scripture, which begins with humanity being tested in Genesis, ends with humanity being tested in Revelations, and in between as far as salvation history goes is really nothing but a continuously updated description of Divine testing of His chosen people. It really is completely relentless, and yes, it very much includes the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You can now say that God has inferiority complex or what have you. I find that sort of argument completely meaningless. Reality doesn't give a shit about my evaluations. What I think would be nice is no measure for what actually is. My ideas about the human psyche cannot be projected onto God. Why waste time with that sort of thing? You need to decide what to trust as Divine revelation, try to understand it, and then act on it best you can. That's the only reasonable course of action. Idle speculations about God's mental state are best delayed until one possesses the beatific vision in heaven.
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
]For the redemption of the world. Not for a place in heaven. Self-interest is anathema to the Gospel.
Nowhere does the gospel say that you should love your neighbour but not yourself. In fact, your love of neighbour derives from your love of self. If you don't do the latter, you cannot do the former. This is not to be confused with renunciation of the world or the suppression of selfish desires. You are supposed to realise that that just is truly loving yourself, that grasping for the transient goods of this world is foolish if it means forgoing the eternal good of God in heaven. This world is pretty much one huge delayed gratification test. But anyway, nowhere in the gospel is the care and love for others described as something other than your personal path to heaven.
People are selfish, for the most part. The genius of the gospel, if we just consider it as a tool for psychological manipulation and ignore its Divine aspect, is precisely that it re-aims this selfishness: away from the present worldly good, towards a future heavenly good. And it then makes the means towards the latter hope, faith and charity, and thus in an emergent sense the common good. Brilliant. It is true that as people start to get into these means, they become immersed in them and in a sense less and less bound to the original goal. But note that this very process propels them ever faster towards that goal. The way may well become the goal, but only if that means you are staying on track better and progressing faster. The way is still a way, it is supposed to lead you somewhere - at least so in Christianity. Anyway, this immersion in the means is of course intended. But it typically does not develop if you just propose it as the idealistic goal. Again, there is good psychology at work here. As the dedicated runner who is now almost addicted to running, and ask them why they initially started running. They will probably say something like "to get fit" or "to lose weight". Ask the martial artist who has trained for decades why they started it. Probably "self-defence" is the answer, even if they have never used their skills that way. Now they just love the training, but then they wanted something specific from it. People are like big round stones on a hill. Once they start rolling, they will typically keep on rolling, and pick up speed. But you need to kick them to get them started. You can't just tell them "you could be rolling, wouldn't that be great". That doesn't work. It's not what Jesus said to people. Jesus told people to follow Him it they wanted to go to heaven. People wanted to go to heaven, so they followed Him. The rest is history.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
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.)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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DOEPUBLIC
Shipmate
# 13042
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Posted
All diligently delivered IngoB, but th dilemma comes when the path purported to be the one to follow, in loving self (remaining safe)no longer resonates. See my comment on "The way I see it thread" that has no response.Waiting for .......
[ 15. February 2015, 15:53: Message edited by: DOEPUBLIC ]
Posts: 2350 | Registered: Oct 2007
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
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.)
It's not like we understand nothing of the mind of God. We understand much of the world, and thus physically realised mind of God. We also understand much about God's plan for people, or at least we are supposed to. That's after all what revelation is about. And indeed, our ability to understand is largely how we are the image and likeness of God. It does not follow however that we understand God as God, or that we understand much of His overall plan for the universe apart from His designs for us. Furthermore, while understanding something in some sense means becoming something, that sense is not literal. So if we say that the hunter knows the tiger, we can in some sense say that the hunter becomes like the tiger. The hunter might say things like "it would have looked at this opening and preferred to stay close to the treeline", thereby thinking with "tiger-mind", so to speak. But neither is the hunter going to jump on a gazelle and kill it by biting its neck, nor is the tiger going back after the hunt to a sleepy town in the UK to work in an office job.
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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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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DOEPUBLIC
Shipmate
# 13042
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Posted
So you will conflict with SF, if your vision of God differs from his.
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Thank you, IngoB.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
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.
For the redemption of the world. Not for a place in heaven. Self-interest is anathema to the Gospel.
Thank you Evensong for this post. I learned in elementary school a good teacher uses a test to teach more, not just to measure past learning, so the idea that God sends/allows trials merely to see if we can pass a test, has never made sense. That's much closer to a god looking for excuses to send us to Hell than a God of redemptive love.
But more, you have explained in a few phrases why I struggle through IngoB's long posts only to come away after twenty minutes of serious effort to figure out what he's saying, with nothing. Not even an interesting thought to ponder. It all turns to sand. (I have stopped trying to read his posts.)
You spelled out the source of the problem - Our fundamental concepts of who God is, are so unrelated IngoB and I are not talking about the same thing at all. No wonder there is no communication of graspable ideas even when some words look familiar!
This suggests the problem many of is have with church or God that causes us to give up and walk away may have less to do with who God is than with who others have told us God is, and whether their "descriptions" of God make any sense when you try to think instead of just believing what you are told to accept. (A lot of people here on Faithfree ran into trouble with God or church when they started really listening!)
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
So you will conflict with SF, if your vision of God differs from his.
SF?
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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DOEPUBLIC
Shipmate
# 13042
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
So you will conflict with SF, if your vision of God differs from his.
SF?
Stephen Fry , as you appear to have understood, earlier in the thread, responding to Boogie.
Posts: 2350 | Registered: Oct 2007
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Stephen Fry , as you appear to have understood, earlier in the thread, responding to Boogie.
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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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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DOEPUBLIC
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# 13042
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by DOEPUBLIC:
Stephen Fry , as you appear to have understood, earlier in the thread, responding to Boogie.
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.
A neater summary of your original position.Sadly, your vast number of words in response, previously, leave one conscious of how often people are not met where they are, and expected to be somewhere they are not.Women at the well comes to mind.Well rehearsed rhethoric makes fast food out of richest meals.A crumb from the table could suffice.
[ 16. February 2015, 16:12: Message edited by: DOEPUBLIC ]
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the famous rachel
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# 1258
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
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 ?
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.
Whilst I accept your logic in all this IngoB - indeed I have heard similar arguments made before and they are difficult, if not impossible to dispose of, I do still have one question:
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.
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
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.
I think a bigger objective problem is that I can't square this God with the way Jesus talked about him - Father, knows how to give good gifts to his children, wouldn't give you a snake if you asked for an egg (or was it a scorpion? I'm bad on details).
But I can't square that with reality either. There are contradictions everywhere; there's the God I want, the God I see Jesus describe, and the God IngoB describes, and none of them really map onto each other particularly well.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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the famous rachel
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# 1258
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Posted
quote:
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.
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.
Best wishes,
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
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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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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the famous rachel
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# 1258
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Posted
Ah bollocks...
the above should read ...
"avoid the threat of Hell" NOT "heaven".
An interesting Freudian slip?
R.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
quote:
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.
Fair enough. I'm interested in other people's response to the challenge of worshiping Ingo's God as well, not just his. Yours sounds similar to mine...
R.
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Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Evensong
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# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
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.
Rather, it is pretty much the only thing that has the slightest chance of making sense
You've said below in your post you don't know why you think the world is simply a testing ground. Therefore your theory still makes no sense. If you don't know why you believe something is as it is how does it make sense? It doesn't. You're simply re-stating mechanics as you see them. That's more science than theology.
quote:
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.
Totally agree. And there's the rub. There must a valid reason
why that is not answered by your theory. Because you don't know the why.
Personally I think the answer must be related to our physicality and the physicality of this world. God created human nature with physicality - not disembodied saints or angels in heaven (that may or may not go along with God's will - they too seem to have the choice of free will - interesting no? but a tangent).
Your basic theological premise seems to be all about getting in to heaven. And you believe the scriptures support this. I think you're wrong. The scriptures support heaven on earth: an alignment of the two. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A new heaven and new earth will one day become an embodied physical ( and spiritual - recall Jesus' resurrection appearances) reality. That is the hope. Not heaven, but earth transformed, humanity transformed. And I agree that our actions matter. We are participants in the Kingdom of God; God's will on earth as it is in heaven and will one day be again on earth.
I think earth matters to humankind and is an intrinsic part of what God created us to be: humanity. Genesis speaks something of the what to do rather than the why in saying we are to keep and till the earth. But I don't think the scriptures actually give us a why . You have ascertained a why based on a lot of non-why readings.
Logically and with the scriptures and with experience i think the why is that life is a gift. God did not have to create us after all. We could simply not exist but we do. And I think most of us would choose to exist in this world given the option of not existing at all.
So the why is the gift of existence.
It comes with both pain and joy. In my opinion our gift of existence is to enjoy the gift and to help others do the same.
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a theological scrapbook
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Rachael and Karl - yes, that is very much the problem I have. Some of the responses on the original Facebook thread were along the lines of "That is how God is, you don't have to like it", which I find very difficult to reconcile. I don't think that is the God I see revealed in the Bible - because there I see a God who is interested in a relationship, a God who is genuinely passionate, engaged, and with a personality.
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.
Now the image I have/have made of God is also not accurate, but it is a way I have of being able to relate to Him. My reading of the Bible indicates that this is more important to God than a completely accurate and logically valid one: not least because this is never possible.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
quote:
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.
This is one of the reasons I start to get cross with the picture of God under discussion here. If my salvation depends on worshipping this God, I still can't honestly manage it... and if it is God who made me like this, there seems to be little I can do...
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Evensong
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# 14696
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Posted
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.
[ 17. February 2015, 13:45: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
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.
But the whole point is that we are told that "this is how God is" and "you must worship Him". I don't mean that IngoB is saying this (it is not personal), but this is the message I see often.
In fact, it goes further: "This is God, you must worship Him or you are not a Christian". When the God presented is a monster, I am left with the choice of worshiping a monster or accepting that I am not a Christian (to these people).
Whereas I want to say that we need to question back. I want to say God is not like this, because this monster God has been shown so often, because I am with Fry on this - if that is God, he is a monster, and I want nothing to do with him. But I do want something to do with God, because I believe in a different God. I want to say "Stop worshiping a monster", because this monster is not attractive.
So no, I won't "chill", because my faith, my God is important, because I have not lost my passion for the faith I still believe in.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
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Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Luigi
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# 4031
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Posted
These last few posts have helped me clarify exactly why I find Ingo's apologetic unconvincing. Yes internally logical is important however as Cat, Rachel, Karl and even Evensong have pointed out nothing about this God is loveable, worthy of worship etc.
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!
Further, the whole this life is a test just makes things worse as far as I am concerned. A test with no clarity as to how we pass it (so many competing takes on who we should approach it) how we engage with it, is setting us up to fail. Just as the worst teachers do!
Posts: 752 | Registered: Feb 2003
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
quote:
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.
I'm not sure that "chilling" is really appropriate here. The Faithfree board is a place to discuss loss or rejection of faith, within an unrestful faith community. I both accept the logic of IngoB's post and reject the implications of it. (And this picture of God is not IngoB's personal creation. It's an expression of a reasonably frequently stated theology. I've met it several times before, although sometimes with more sugar coating). The tension this all creates is unrestful for me, and that's a good thing. These ideas aren't new to me, but discussing them, and challenging myself is part of why I am here on the Faithfree board. If I say I am looking for a logically-consistent picture, what do I do when presented with one which I can't stomach? If I can't stomach the logically-consistent God but am still searching for the divine, where do I go from here, given that the logically-inconsistent versions give me brain-ache?
Worthwhile questions, but not exactly chillaxing.
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Re why God would create:
There's an idea that God created us to deal with Her own loneliness. I've come across it various places: one of Andrew Greeley's novels; a little book called "In The Kingdom Of The Lonely God"; and--my favorite-- the poem "The Creation", by James Weldon Johnson. I saw a symphonic performance of it on TV, when I was a kid. The actor was God, down in the mud, making people.
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--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
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Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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W Hyatt
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# 14250
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Posted
quote:
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?
Continue to look for a different logically-consistent picture that you can stomach? The existence of one particular logically-consistent picture doesn't imply that it's impossible for there to be other logically-consistent pictures based on different concepts of God that are easier to stomach.
All that is necessary for logical consistency between a truly good God and the existence of manifestly bad things is for there to be inherently unavoidable trade-offs between different good things - a goodness "scale" if you will. If a good God does not prevent a particular bad thing (like an eye-eating worm), it could mean that the goodness of preventing that bad thing can only come at the cost of some other good thing that is more important, something higher on the goodness "scale." The evilness of an eye-eating worm can be seen as an indirect indication that God has something in store that is so good as to outweigh the evilness that is so apparent to us. It does not logically require us to give up on the concept of a good God. It also does not require us to change our concepts of what good and evil are. It might, however, require us to give up on the concept of God's omnipotence as something that makes God accountable for any hypothetical thing we can dream up as something that seems to us like it would be better than what we actually observe.
It seems to me that on the one hand, it's the nature of evil to be bad in an in-your-face way (once it's recognized for what it is). On the other hand, it seems to me that its opposite is comparatively subtle and nuanced. I have no trouble accepting the fact that it's trivially easy to identify something concrete that is purely evil and at the same time accepting that it's actually very hard to identify something concrete that is purely good. Being able to identify an eye-eating worm as something terribly evil does not convince me that it is therefore impossible for there to be anything so good that it's good enough to outweigh that evil. I may not be able to identify anything equally concrete that is clearly good enough to do that, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for God to have something good planned for us that we haven't experienced yet.
[ 18. February 2015, 05:11: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
@ the famous rachel - Dave Tomlinson has wrestled with this in his books. He's a post-evangelical - -and famously wrote a book by that name, which I haven't read, but I found Re-enchanting Christianity helpful. It tries to construct a view of God that works. I suspect he is proposing something closer to panentheism rather than deism or theism.
I probably need to read it again to see if it still works for me, or if my drifting away has lost those tethers too.
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Luigi
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# 4031
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Posted
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.
[ 18. February 2015, 07:53: Message edited by: Luigi ]
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
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.
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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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
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.
The very core of Christianity is the Incarnation.
Jesus was killed by people, people with evil intent who could not abide His agenda. And, just like any other death, God allowed it.
Human morals and emotions are at the centre of Christianity. God is not a separate 'other' being. God is with us and we are made in God's image.
We live in reality, and a real life is pretty much totally lacking in anything supernatural imo. Your words here, IngoB, read more like science fiction than reality.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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the famous rachel
Shipmate
# 1258
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Posted
Hi IngoB,
Thanks - a lot to think about there, and I am grateful that you do not dodge the hard issues. I will think on all this and try to respond when I have some time. (Which unless I decide to give up on sleep for the rest of the week may not be particularly soon). The later part of your post - after you decide not to conclude on a positive note - is (to me) pretty damning of the whole Christian picture, and I thus do still wonder why you are "in the fold" as it were.
Best wishes,
Rachel.
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A shrivelled appendix to the body of Christ.
Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
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.
[ 18. February 2015, 12:43: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
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.
I can sympathize with that, but it assumes that I believe God made the bad parts of this life (which I don't).
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
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.
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the famous rachel
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# 1258
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Posted
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™ .
Thanks Evensong.
R.
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Posts: 912 | From: In the lab. | Registered: Aug 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
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!
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.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
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.
I agree with this. I would add that the main reason I am no longer a Christian is that I agree with IngoB that "his God" is a pretty sensible interpretation of what one can read in the Bible.
And by the Bible I mean the whole book not just the parts I happen to like.
And this is what I admire about IngoB. He is not
running away from the full logical implications of his beliefs.
In my case the next step was to reject the "revealed" nature of the bible. It makes a lot
more sense to me as a product of humans trying to
find meaning and a good way to live.
But the God of the Bible? Not for me thanks.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
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!
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.
This +lots.
Also, I don't think that this does reflect the God in Scripture, OT or NT. God does not reply to Abraham regarding raining fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah by saying "Morality? Doesn't apply to me mate" when Abraham points out the moral problem. He says "Good point, I'll check there's no-one innocent there." I'm also minded of the parable of the unforgiving servant, in which the master condemns the said servant for not being forgiving in the way that he is.
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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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
I read The Problem of Pain recently by C.S. Lewis.
While he notes God is obviously bigger than us, God is not completely dissimilar ethically and agrees with what many of you have previously noted.
The following is from chapter III on Divine Goodness
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.
[ 19. February 2015, 10:06: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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