I’m sorry. I asked for a verse where God said he was love, not one where someone else said it. You did say that was how God described himself.
Okay, so God is an emotion.
This is confusing - the ‘good’ that you refer to is a loving act. A God act, as it were. It does not ‘come from God’, since that is utterly incoherent as you’ve defined God as love.
I’m not sure how this follows. Just because an act is not done out of love does not mean the act is evil.
What about indifference? Or survival?
God as a separate entity does not exist, under your definition. In fact, without sentient entities, according to you, there is no “God”.
I guess I’m one of those people who believe the Holy Bible is the divine word of God.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
II Timothy 3:16,17
Fair enough. So what is your take on life after death? Do we all persist in a ‘heaven’? Do those slated for ‘hell’ cease to exist?
How does an omnimax God necessitate evil? How can an entity be omnibenevolent AND omnimalevolent?
I don’t think freewill makes a difference, in fact, I don’t think the notion of free will is coherent.
We seem to be at an impass. I see it as problematic that the notion of an all good and all powerful entity exists AND evil exists (while there might be resolutions to the logical problem, we seem to be having problems with the basic structure of the argument).
It seems to me that you are positing that evil must exist - in all possible worlds. Is that a correct appraisal of your position? That God has some evil in it or something?
Maybe.
- Which Bible? The one with a copy right of 2010 or the one written in 200 AD?
- You realize that the Timothy verse is referring to the Old Testament, don’t you? Since, the New Testament hadn’t been formalized (some hadn’t even been written).
Meatros-the first thing I will respond to is that in no way is love an emotion. It’s a verb, an
action verb. The action of love starts with God-as He Is love.
God isn’t an emotion-he is an action.
Got it.
I use the King James Version (just my personal preference) as I learned to read by reading
the KJV. I love the prose.
Okay, so God is an action verb. Hence, God starts in the brain of a person who is doing something. God does not exist at all times. There is no ‘he is love’, since that sets god apart from actions.
When I express my “God” to my wife, God exists. When I stop expressing my “God” to my wife, God ceases to exist. If I express my “God” to my wife in email form and I send it to the wrong person, does this mean I’ve created a false “God”?
The problem with comparing the “God to man” relationship to the “parent to child” relationship is this: while the child may not understand why the parent does things the child feels is “wrong,” the parent is THERE!
Consider: I have a daughter. I was there when she was born, and I love her. I have a plan for her life - at least I have an idea of the type of person I want her to become. It is my job to guide her accordingly. I told her that if ever she threw up on my shoulder, that day I would surely leave and never come back. She threw up on my shoulder, so I have to follow through. I want to hang out with her, but rules are rules. If she meets my criteria when she’s a adult, I will let her live with me. In the meantime here’s what I will do: I will never show my face to her. I will never speak to her directly. I have a system of video cameras so I can always see everything she does. But I provide guidance only by dictating a book (which I will never again update), and only by speaking to people her age - asking them to communicate the message. It is up to those other children to bring her my book and to convince my daughter what I am trying to communicate.
Of course a drawback to my plan is is when she is two years old, she may be tempted to put her hand on a hot stove. I must find another two year old, explain the dangers to him, and hope he delivers the message accurately to my daughter. I have other, more effective means of protecting my daughter from the pain of the stove but I choose not to employ them.
If she does not turn out to be the kind of person I want her to be - if she doesn’t end up loving me for who I am under these circumstances - then I will disown her as a daughter - she can’t move in with me. It is perfectly within my power to change any of these parameters. I invented this protocol for my own reasons and my own inscrutable goals. I choose not to and I will not explain myself to her.
Aside from theological quibbles (is there hell, orginal sin, etc.) isn’t this a fair analogy?
Assuming God exists there is certainly at least one unanswered question that matters:
Where is God?
The answer “He is evident in creation” or “the heavens declare the glory of God” does not satisfy. If God doesn’t want me to worship the creation or the heavens, then it doesn’t make sense He only reveal Himself through those means.
Again, assuming God exists, a necessary condition for a loving relationship is communication. I’m talking exchanging concepts via a shared language. A necessary condition of communication is knowledge of the existence of ones interlocutor. Without knowing someone is there, and without the ability to exchange ideas, hopes, dreams, bidirectionally, love cannot exist. God does not engage in bidirectional communication. God does not love us.
No, false gods are not recreated. I don’t think you understand that it is not at all
trivial. All I am saying is the spark of doing good, doing the right thing, doing loving acts come from God. God is always there, the brain of the person chooses.
I think what you are say is ultimately incoherent - it waters down the concept of God to meaninglessness.
For example: Let’s say I love someone. Let’s further say that it turns out that the person I think I love is - in reality - nothing at all like the person I think she is. Does this mean that my ‘God’ is a lie?
As to the ‘spark’ being God, does this mean that when I die, that God dies as well? Does this mean that there are multiple Gods since my ‘spark’ is different from your spark?
Suppose I love my dog. I have a certain ‘love’ for this dog - I suppose you could, in theory, confine what this specifically means. Now suppose that I take too many drugs and become brain damaged. I still love my dog, but because my brain chemistry is different, my love is necessarily different. Does this mean that I’ve altered God? That I had the power to change God?
God is love is an unsupported assertion. If we look around the world, we see much natural evil, which makes the idea that God is any sort of love any human would want hard to swallow. Canada Dry at least quenches your thirst, and seldom drowns you.
These are possibilities I’ve been entertaining. One could argue that a God who loves all of his creations would want them all to be with him in ‘heaven’. I think the annihilation possibility makes some sense too, or at least more than eternal torment. I’ve even looked at possibilities like some forms of reincarnation (not the typical new-age form that most people think of, though), or simply that there isn’t one. Unfortunately, being in a state of re-evaluation of my beliefs, I don’t really have a solid answer for you other than what I don’t believe. I have a hard time imagining that there isn’t some part of us that isn’t purely material, and so I’m inclined to believe there’s something more, so I guess that, for now, I’d lean toward the first option of, more or less, everyone getting to ‘heaven’ eventually.
I hate to use a clichéd example, but I really look at good/bad as a sort of continuum in the way the hot/cold or dark/light are. That is, an action is good or bad only relative to other possible actions in a particular scenario. This is illustrated in a parenting scenario, where the same action can be a “good” choice in one scenario, and a “bad” choice in another scenario. For instance, if you give your child a cookie before dinner, you may spoil his appetite, but in another case it might be a good reward or a sign of affection or whatever.
As such, I also think the very concept of good and bad are meaningless outside of the context of freewill. For instance, let’s imagine that we’re in a maze. If we’re in a state where turning left brings us closer to the goal, and right brings us farther away, then obviously the former is a “good” choice and the latter is a “bad” choice. However, if we’re in a state we’re unable to make a choice because there’s only one option (say we’ve reached a dead end), then describing it as a good or bad choice isn’t meaningful.
And so, an omnibenevolence, compared to the maze example, is just having that absolute goodness, whatever exactly it is, as the goal, and always making the optimal choice or most “good” choice. The problem comes from the fact that we also have freewill, but we’re not omnibenevolent too.
Of course, one could argue that God could make us only choose “good” options, but by virtue of the fact that he must have created us with freewill, then it must be part of the motivation for his creation of us and part of one of those choices he’s made toward that end, and so he has chosen to let us choose. Of course, it seems obvious to me that it’s because he wants us to grow and learn to want to make the good choices rather than being forced to do them.
And so, omnibenevolence and freewill necessitate “evil” and, in fact, the only way “evil” could be avoided is if one of those were violated.
As for whether evil must exist, I guess I can’t say that because, in all possible worlds, it would theoretically possible that in one world everyone, out of their own free will, would always choose the “good” option, but I think it really depends on how one models exactly how free will works. But I’m not really sure if modelling freewill is particularly meaningful, but I could give it a shot if you think it is.
For your last question, I think I guess that, in a way, that’s true. That is, I believe that God is capable of doing “evil” but chooses not to. In fact, he HAS to be capable of doing evil, or it violates his posited properties, because he would no longer be omnipotent if he were incapable of doing it. I also believe that that ought to be humanity’s goal as well, in that a maximization of liberties coupled with a desire to, despite being able to choose to do bad, do the most good; they actually go hand in hand, because greater liberties means more options, and more options means potentially better options than a similar scenario with fewer liberties, and so the best choices naturally would lead to future choices with more options. The only real fundamental difference is that an omnimax being would be at the extreme end of this, with infinite liberties and perfect choices.
There is, and has been only one “God.” There are web sites that describe many names that “God” is called. Hundreds of them. A name is only a symbol, a label, that people use to describe what attributes belong to God.
We are talking about the Creator of the Universe and us humans. It is all the same entity. I am not confused.
Now, just as there are hundreds of names, so are there hundreds of descriptions.
These descriptions will follow the mores, and traditions of the people who do the descriptions. We could discuss for years the descriptions and names of God, without any conclusions.
The God described in the bible is explicitly stated as hating some people, and killing some people. Has your God hated some people, and killed some people? If not, then the God you’re talking about is different than the God described in the book.
By the way, I have a styrofoam cup here next to me. I’ve just named it “God”. Is your god the same entity as my styrofoam cup? I’m only asking because I’m going to crush it later and want to know if I’m going to be committing deicide.
ETA: My styrofoam cup hates Jinx, but loves everyone else though. Not that it’s particularly capable of expressing it’s emotions or solving evil or any of that…
That’s fine, I have no beef with an honest quest.
So, you don’t believe that we are all ‘material’, there must be some immaterial piece to us. I suppose this means you’ve ruled out the deist god, correct?
Okay.
Okay - what you’ve said makes sense, however I’m not sure it justifies gratuitous evil. It also assumes ‘free will’ makes sense.
So would you say that God is not omnibenevolent then? Or that God doesn’t have freewill?
Couldn’t God have only created those of us who would consciously ‘choose’ the good?
Also, how is it that we, presumably, have a power that God does not have (ie, freewill?)?
There is also the question of how a perfect entity creates imperfect ones (ie, ones that would choose to do evil - or ‘imperfect’ actions).
If it’s possible for there to be a world where everyone always chooses the good, then why isn’t that the state of affairs?
Isn’t it evil to allow evil to exist, if it doesn’t logically have to? That is to say, if I could create an environment where my daughter never gets hurt, but is still able to learn the lessons she needs to learn, then wouldn’t it be wrong of me to create some more difficult environment?
God listens to His children, even the rotten ones, such as Pharaoh, ask and you shall receive, Pharaoh obviously didn’t want to give up the slaves though he knew the time was coming (simularal to the Civil war), and probably asked God to prolong it, which He complied, by hardening his heart, which will eventually come back to bite Pharaoh, as a hard heart is horrible to live with, eventually Pharaoh would need to repent to stop the pain of a hard heart. Pharaoh would learn a very hard lesson that He wanted God’s way all along.
Using any model you want, it can happen in ANY possible world and, in fact, MUST happen in any world with an omnimax God. God is capable of creating only people he knows will freely choose good, and if he is omnimax, he cannot create people he knows will choose evil without violating his omnibenevolence. Creating people who he knows will only choose good (and do so freely, we’re not talking about automatons) does not violate their free will.
Having said that, the notion of free will has its own logical problems (it’s not something that can actually logically exist), and it has no logical necessity for God either. Whatever God wants people to be, he can will them to be instantly. he doesn’t need a process.
Since it’s bloody well impossible to debate verses that exist only in your head, I’m going to leave this one alone.