[quote=“Cumberdale, post:20, topic:542590”]
Not to mention, we primarily make our determinations by reasoning about what we do know.
Yes, The Higher Consciousness, sometimes called God loves everyone the same. God’s love is unconditional. You are loved for yourself as a conscious creation of the Higher Consciousness or God. There is nothing you have to do, believe, or have faith in, in order to receive the whole of God’s eternal Love. He does not purish nor reward any of His creation. The events perceived as punishment or reward are the direct result of the law of attraction that govern all creation.
Now having said that I know most people will object to God’s love being unconditional, why, I am not sure. All the sacred texts about God and what He does and says are written by men. Usually men with a motive for writing as they do to subject others to their will and control. God grants free will and does not restrain it for any reason.
All of us will make mistakes, find solutions in time, and correct those mistakes. Some quickly, and others after a very long time. But the end result is everyone learns to do the right thing, to grow into spiritual adulthood. The beliefs you hold and the things you do carry their own punishments and rewards. The idea is to learn to do, believe, and think on only those things that are beneficial to you and all others.
I think the way that these two concepts are intrinsically tied together is unfortunate. The modern concept of hell, as best as I can tell, is a creation of the dark ages. Personally, I don’t believe in such a place, not just because I don’t think it fits with the concept of an all loving God, but because I think such considerations are missing the point. I’ve given some cursory thought to other possibilities for what hell might be (like annihilation or separation), but I think other aspects of my beliefs are a better use of my time in learning about.
That is, people who need the reward of heaven or the fear of the punishment of hell to follow the teachings of Jesus, well, you don’t have the right motivations. As an analogy, consider a young child learns not to take toys that belong to other kids because if he does, he’ll get spanked or put in time out. When he grows older, he learns that the reason he shouldn’t do it is because it’s wrong, and if he’s only not stealing because he’s afraid of being punished, he hasn’t really learned the lesson.
Either way, I agree with your points both that a loving God doesn’t torture people and that using the argument that his reasoning is unknowable is a poor argument, but I don’t agree with your conclusion here because, well, if we remove the hell/suffering part of the equation, we’re just back to the question of whether or not God exists.
As for the OP, there’s a lot of supposed examples and a lot of proposed resolutions. With Cain, for instance, the most common one that I’ve heard is simply that offerings were supposed to be of the highest quality and with the purest heart, and Cain simply didn’t do that. It seemed to me more like a parent saying he was doing it wrong and he needed to try again, and a child who, rather than taking the words of his parents, just grew jealous of his brother who did it right the first time.
You’re explicitly disegarding the texts they are using to define God. That means that, at best, you’re talking about a different God than they are - theirs is described in the texts, and yours isn’t.
The point of your confusion is that the names are the same (which is doubtlessly your fault, since they were using the name first). To aid in your understanding, imagine that the god in the bible had a different name, like Thor or Odin. It should be clear that when people are talking about the properties of Thor or Odin, the properties you imagine your different God to have don’t have much bearing on the discussion.
In which Mr Square tells all his friends there’s a creature that can grow and shrink at will, but when they ask him to show them some evidence of this creature, he waves his hands and says “you don’t get it.”
(emphasis added)
Mr. Square cannot perceive the true nature of the sphere, but certainly he can understand it - or at least human beings can grasp concepts our sensory apparatus are ill-equipped to directly observe.
Current superstring theory suggests we Volumelanders might actually live in an 11-dimensional reality. No higher dimensional dwellers popped in to tell inform us of this. We figured it out ourselves.
No only are we capable of understanding, I presume God is capable of explaining - certainly moreso than some sphere. If the sphere can be bothered to elevate Mr. Square, why can’t God elevate the creation he loves?
No one rejects that idea. Certainly there are things beyond the human capacity for understanding. The question is if God exists why are there so many unanswered questions? Let’s focus on just one unanswered question: If God loves everyone and doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, and if the way to avoid hell is to a) acknowledge His existence and b) love Him, why does He hide himself so well?
Does anyone really suggest the answer to this question is beyond human comprehension? Is it really beyond God’s capability to explain in terms mere humans can understand? (it’s a different argument, of course, to suggest God refuses to explain).
God “set” our capacity for understanding. If his reason for creating us was for companionship, would He not have created people who could relate to him more readily? Can a human have a meaningful relationship with an ant? Reminds me of one of the first computer programs I created: 10 print “Nature’s Call is the best” / 20 goto 10 It stroked my ego for exactly 10.5 milliseconds.
Taking the apparent “understanding gap” between God and man as given, why can’t God guide us interactively so we could at least get the gist? The hallmark of a good kindergarten teacher is that she can frame the discussion of things above a child’s level of understanding in such a way that they do approach or even achieve understanding. Can’t “The Great Teacher” accomplish this? What respectible kindergarten teacher would do no more than leave book lying around in the classroom then vanish for the rest of the child’s developmental years?
God created people for companionship. He created hell to cast those who don’t want to be God’s friend.
God: Off to hell you go. I love you, but you’re the one who rejected me! So there!
Me: But God, why did you require me to understand that you even exist based solely on the say-so of my peer humans? It wasn’t you I rejected, it was their testimony. There was no corroborating evidence. There are mountains of evidence to contradict their testimony. I see now that you exist, so I was obvioulsy mistaken. Why didn’t You cut through the clouds and correct my mistake before now? Even if I did accept their testimony, they paint you to be quite the shit, what with all the genocides and stonings for minor infractions and so on. They must have been mistaken too, right?
God: There’s no way you could understand. But you WILL understand the eternity of pain… buh-bye!
Possibly. I think that the conception of hell comes from a mixture of ancient Jewish beliefs (Sheol) and Greek beliefs (Hades) with a twist of eternality (is that a word?) thrown into it…
I’m not sure that the modern conception of hell, an eternal lake of fire, can be completely divorced from what the New Testament says about the subject though. Certainly a case can be made that the Bible supports it - but I do concede that certain other passages would argue against it.
I agree with this - this is the idea that pain/punishment can be instructive. I’m not sure that it can be applied to the afterlife (at least if it’s for eternity), since there is no ‘learning’ involved.
I suppose I formed the proposition poorly. Essentially I’m arguing for the evidential argument for evil (as opposed to the logical one). What we have is a world with suffering and gratuitous harm (we call this ‘evil’). This conflicts with the notion of an omnimax God (omnipotence and omnibenevolence).
It could be the case that God exists and there is a reason for this.
It could be the case that God does not exist and that is the reason for this.
When I look at the evidence, I come to the conclusion that God, most likely, does not exist because there does not seem to be a reason.
Now, I’m aware that just because I don’t know, doesn’t mean that the conclusion is certain (similar to the idea of falsification - it could be the case that germ theory is wrong and I don’t have the data) - however, I can only make a reasonable determination based on the hand I’ve got.
I don’t think a neutral position (ie, I dunno) is really possible, since that ultimately is atheistic since you still don’t have a positive god-belief.
I’ve heard that as well and I think the primary problem with the situation is that the modern person isn’t familiar with the cultural norms and the reason isn’t explicit in the bible as to why the offering was rejected.
God IS Love.
That bad things happen because God loves us and is executing his plan we can’t comprehend is no more likely than that bad things happen because God hates us. To say otherwise assumes that God is good, which is what we are trying to determine. In fact that God either hates some of us or is indifferent is simpler to justify than that God loves us all. That there is no God at all is the easiest solution, in fact, because in this case there are no mysteries about either human or natural evil.
In this case if Mr. Sphere was interested in having the Flatlanders believe, he’d be able to return and provide evidence which may not directly prove the existence of a third dimension, is most simply explainable by one. And please, no strawmen about those who refuse to see evidence - we can include both sides in that set.
Actually, I think the typical analogy is hurting a child by taking him for a shot which helps in the long run. This fails for two reasons. First, you can explain to any child who has reached the age of rationality why the shot is necessary. You can only use this as an analogy for God’s love if you say that humanity is so irrational that God cannot even attempt to give a high level explanation. Second, while in this case the pain is done for a good reason, we might also imagine a parent who stabs a child for sadistic reasons and claims it is for the child’s own good. Again, this argument only works if you assume God is good - something which is not in evidence.
I think God has given us the capability of understanding, this is exactly why we have tools to explore these sorts of questions like science and philosophy. The thing is, answers either come directly through divinely endowing us with it, or it is revealed to us over time as we grow and learn. I think expectations of God to do the former violates his very nature.
This ties into the previous part, and I don’t really see how unanswered questions really mean anything. I like to view humanity in much the same way that I would view a child… we were once in our infancy, requiring a lot of handholding and just being told how things were because we couldn’t understand them. Now, I don’t think God is really all that hidden, but we’re more like an adolescent who is growing distant from his parent and assigns a lot of false motivations to his parents’ actions.
And, like I said above, I think hell is largely an antiquated concept from when humanity was less developed as a whole. It’s only be relatively recently that true human equality has come up. Hell, even in developed countries, thinks like racism and sexism aren’t completely gone. How far have we come so far? Certainly we can see where, at a time, like a child, fear of punishment was more or less necessary to motivate people to do the right thing. Now, more and more people are doing the right thing for better reasons.
I think that God, being an infinite being, is not absolutely knowable by a finite being like us. However, that’s not to say that he’s not understandable in the same sorts of ways that other concepts our brains can’t truly understand can be absorbed (like infinity, or higher dimensionality). Instead, I think he can and does, but I also think it’s a continuing process, and it is directly tied to our growth as a whole and to our individual perceptions. I think in many cases, it seems like some things about God are unknowable mostly because we’re asking the wrong questions or because we’re supposing things that aren’t true.
For instance, it looks like God’s love is limited when we include the old concept of hell, but when we replace that, the whole thing not only makes a whole lot more sense, but it also looks a lot simpler and more elegant too. An analogy would be like how planetary motion was incredibly complicated when they tried to solve them with geocentricism and perfect solids, but introduce concepts like heliocentrism and gravity, and it makes a whole lot more sense.
I’m not really sure that was his reason for creating us, or at least not his whole reason for creating us. I try to compare to other forms of creation we can conceptualize and see what those motivations are, and see what analogies we can draw between humanity and God. For instance, why do parents have/want kids? Why do artists create art? Surely companionship isn’t the reason they do those things. It’s still something I’m mulling over, so I don’t really have a solid sort of alternative, but I’m more or less currently pondering on creation/procreation being the very reason itself and not a means to some other end.
I, in fact, think he has done this, and I think a lot of the scripture is exactly this sort of thing. We look in the bible and we see a lot of guidelines for behavior when people may not have necessarily understood reasons why they should or shouldn’t do certain things. Similarly, lots of those sorts of stories would be interpretted very differently by the people of those times. This is much like a kindergarten teacher who may just tell rules, or give simplicistic non-realistic explanations for things to kids.
But we’re not in kindergarten anymore, those sorts of things don’t work anymore, we don’t just want to know what we should or shouldn’t do, but why. We want to understand the processes of everything that’s going on. I think we need to use our new knowledge to answer those questions and I think that ultimately this will lead us to a greater and deeper understanding of God.
If anything, I think this sort of example explains exactly why God DOESN’T just endow us with this knowledge… it’s a process of growth, a process of free will, and the process a relationship. If he does that, he’ll affect all of those in a fundamental way.
Canada Dry tastes like love.
God tastes like Canada Dry. QED
Ew…
Remind me never to drink Canada Dry…
God is an emotion-o.k.
I don’t suppose you’ve named any of the other emotions?
Just stating how God described Himself. I think all love (and anthing good) is from
God. I think maybe your (Canada Dry) idea of love and God’s definition of Love differ. Just sayin’.
Where does God ‘say this’?
The problem with this sort of defining of God is that it waters “God” down to meaningless absurdity.
God is anything good? So if I help a little old lady across the street, then I’m God for that moment? Or are you suggesting that God somehow took over my body and helped the LoL across the street?
Cite where God says he is love, please.
Did god love Neanderthal man, or did they fall out of favour for some reason?
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 1 John 4:8
Yes, I believe that helping an old lady cross the street started with the
good that comes from God. Otherwise, all would be evil and helping someone
cross the street would be unthinkable. Hatred and evil would prevail.
God doesn’t “take over your body” it’s everyones choice to be good or evil
and which they will choose.
The “God is love” line comes from 1 John 4:8
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Obviously, that’s the author of the epistle talking, not God, but those who believe the Bible is the divine word of God would necessarily believe that it’s God speaking through the human author.
And this is just it. I’ve did some reading on it several years back, evaluating scripture that seemingly supports the modern conception and some that goes against it. While I found the arguments for it ultimately unpersuasive and got away from that belief, I more or less decided that, like you indicate, it isn’t really meaningful what it’s nature is from pespective of learning, love, and moral guidance. I think some of the other possibilities I mentioned solve some of the problems,like how God can love us and send us to hell, but none give any meaningful insight into the other parts that I’m, frankly, much more interested in at this point.
To be perfectly honest, I’m utterly baffled with this. Not in that I have trouble resolving it, but in that I have trouble understanding how anyone has trouble resolving it. It seems intuitively obvious to me that positing an omnimax God necessitates “evil” and, in fact, to not have “evil” would violate those properties. So, to me, it sort of seems like when asking for a reason why “evil” exists if God exists, is sort of like asking why blue is blue.
I mean, I guess I could try to explain, but since I’m not really sure where people see a contradiction, I’m not really sure what I would need to explain about my perspective to make the contradiction go away. Is it that my understanding of what love is is somehow fundamentally different from yours? Is it that our understandings of the motivations of such a being are different? Do we even possibly understand what those properties entail are different? The only thing I think might play into that that isn’t explicitly mentioned is freewill, but I’m hardpressed to see how that makes much of a difference.
I agree with this. But I think it’s safe to say that a rejection in this case isn’t evidence that God didn’t love him, precisely because we really have no idea why it was rejected, and at least some of the possible reasons contradict the idea that it was because God didn’t love him.