I’m sorry, but that’s not really anything close to what I believe, at all. I understand that some Christians believe that, more or less, and that a lot of non-Christians believe that Christians believe that, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that that is the nature of God that all people who believe in him inherently believe.
I think the problem you’re seeing here is that you have certain expectations about the nature of the relationship that, at least for me, aren’t consistent with my own observations.
For instance, I’ll agree that “he is evident in creation” are unsatisfactory, but I also think that we are past the point in the relationship where the sort of demonstration that you’re looking for is meaningful. Hell, anything short of God himself coming down from heaven and performing miracles probably wouldn’t convince most atheists, and even if he did, well, maybe it’s just a super advanced alien or whatever.
The point is, we’re past the point where miracles and decrees have any hold on us, and we examine and learn about God in new ways. I, for instance, have that sort of relationship through meditation, thought processes, and all that. Sure, it’s not a “Hey God” “Hey BlaM” type of conversation, and if you’re expecting that, of course you’re going to be disappointed. My relationship with God is one where he is much more like a parent and a teacher. It’s not like a random friend where one might pick up the phone and shoot the breeze, but rather one where I want to grow and learn and he wants to help me grow and learn.
In fact, when I think about it, it really seems kind of silly to me to expect anything different. When I’m troubling through a particular question would I expect him to materialize and tell me the answer? Learning and growth is just as much, if not moreso, about the process as it is about the result. And so he guides my ponderings and, funnily enough, something that seemed so incredibly difficult at first, eventually seems so obvious, I can’t imagine how I didn’t see it that way the whole time. It really is a very bidirectional process in my experience.
You are more of an atheist than I am, since you appear to be willing to add whatever you want to a Bible story to make it fit your preconceived notions. Hardening of the heart means stopping Pharaoh from showing compassion to both the Hebrews and the Egyptians by letting the Hebrews go and stopping the misery caused by the plagues. I have no idea what you mean by the pain of a hard heart - the Bible is not a cardiology book.
God was clearly showing his power by causing Pharaoh to wait until all the plagues occurred, including the most horrible of all, and giving an incentive to the Hebrews to follow Moses by performing the miracle of the Passover. They were hard enough to motivate even after seeing this clear proof of divine will.
BTW, this is an excellent story to refute those who claim that God cannot give evidence of his existence or else there would be no faith. In these passages, God is all about giving very clear and irrefutable evidence. Even Scully would have been convinced!
Blaster, can you articulate a single way in which he’s ever proven his existence whatsoever?
I’m sorry, but hearing people talk about having a “relationship” with an invisible, magical sky god seems frankly delusional to me. It’s something that has never demonstrated its existence in any capacity at all, never communicates with people, is not necessitated as even a hypothesis by anything yet observed in the universe and which is, which would run counter to the laws of the universe if it did exist, and which has never given the slightest indication that it cares about anyone back or that it deserves any compassion from humans. How do you have a “relationship” with that?
What is the difference between having a personal, one-way telepathic relationship with God and having one with King Kong?
An omnibenevolent God must maximize good. To do this, as is the case of all optimization functions, we need an evaluation function with which to compare two actions God must choose from for their relative goodness. If for instance there is such a thing as free will, and the benefit of having it outweighs some good actions, we might have the case in which the benefits of a person freely choosing to not help a little old lady across the street outweighs the goodness of him being created so that he does so.
Thus, those who claim that God is omnibenevolent better be prepared to show us a sketch of this evaluation function, or they have no reason to make their claim. Many who make this claim seem to implicitly consider this free will stuff being so good that it outweighs the creation of serial killers, and that the unknown benefit of the tsunami outweighs the suffering it created. Hard to justify.
BTW, I learned watching a documentary on my copy of “A Clockwork Orange” that in the British version, Burgess has Alex repenting his sins, quite unlike the American and Kubrick’s version. I bring it up as one major artistic expression of this problem.
God can’t bring you Fay Wray?
Oddly, none of the people who have these chats with God ever ask him anything the answer to which can’t be found in the Self Help section of the local bookstore. I always request that they ask of P = NP, but no one has taken me up on it yet, so I still haven’t won the Field Medal.
Of the Enlightenment era type, I’ve ruled that out. I have taken a liking to some deist concepts though, more just because a direct interventionalist type seems to violate the omnimax principles.
Fair enough. I generally don’t bother to consider the possibility that free will doesn’t exist for the simple reason that if it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t exist, because any philosophy devised on that is meaningless since it won’t actually affect anything we do because, well, we don’t have a choice in the matter.
I make an important distinction here in that I believe that he is both; I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive.
Let me try a simple example to explain what I mean. Consider a game of tic-tac-toe. The statespace is relatively small, so it’s knowable what the optimal move is in a given state. As such, I am always able to make the optimal move, but the fact that I am able to do that doesn’t mean that I’m forced to do so.
Now consider a more complex game like Chess, the state space is too large to know what the optimal move is in any given state, but we have pretty good idea of what a good set of moves are in a given state based on various heuristics. Differing levels of knowledge about the game will allow one to make better choices in various states. This is comparable to humanity where different levels of growth will result in progressively better play. Obviously, a difference here is that an omnimax God actually knows all the states and all the optimal moves.
And so, as I see it, to argue that God, but virtue of being omnibenevolent, is unable to choose another option, is equivalent to saying I can’t make a sub-optimal move in tic-tac-toe. Of course, I can, I just don’t want to because I know I’ll probably lose if I do.
I think the problem here is an assumption about God’s motivation in creating us or in what his goal actually is. My personal belief is that at least part of his motivation includes the idea of growth and learning. As he didn’t choose to do that, it is logical to conclude that, if he exists, his motivations are not simply to create what would effectively be clones of himself.
Actually, the very idea of God’s motivations is exactly the topic that I’ve been considering heavily in recent months, it hasn’t quite crystalized for me, but hopefully you can at least see from sort of where I am.
I hope I answered my perspective on this with the game examples above, in that it only appears that he can’t just because he doesn’t.
This, I think, makes some assumptions about what perfect means. If my motivation is to create a cube, or a sphere, those things can be made perfectly within the contraints of a mathemtical concept of what perfect cubes and spheres look like. But what about things that aren’t rigidly defined by mathematics? If I want to create music with a particular emotion, the rhythm may vary ever so slightly, or certain keys may be slightly sharp, or any number of things, but is it imperfect? In fact, it’s those very imperfections that put “feeling” into art, and the same piece that is performed perfectly by a computer somehow feels cold and lifeless.
As such, it only contradicts God’s perfection if we assume that his motivation was to effectively create clones. Clearly, he didn’t, but there’s any number of potential other motivations that he could have had for creation, and some of them may very well be “perfect” in the very same way.
I think that’s only meaningful if we make certain assumptions about God’s motivations that I don’t think are consistent. If part of his motivation is growth and learning, as I think it is, then there would be no growth and learning in such a world and, thus, it would actually be inferior in that case to some other possible worlds that permit growth, but allow for “evil”.
I think that only follows if we assume that “evil” isn’t necessary. I don’t think it’s clear that a world with no “evil” is necessarily optimal because we don’t know exactly what God’s motivations or goals are with the creation.
I also don’t know if it’s possible to learn some lessons without some “evil”. How can I learn grief without loss? How can I learn forgiveness without harm? How can I learn peace without unrest?
I’m trying to explain my reasoning for why I think they can coexist. I’ve explained how I envision omnibenevolence working and why I think it’s only meaningful in the context of free will. I also think that assuming that God would create people who choose, out of free will, to only do good, presupposes certain motivations for God that I don’t attribute to him. In fact, I think those motivations you attribute to him directly violate the presupposed omnimax properties.
I’ve tried to explain why I consider free will is necessary, at least in the concept of good and evil. If free will doesn’t exist, good and evil don’t really make sense.
Again, willing us to be a particular way attributes some motivations that I don’t think are justifiable. For instance, if I’m working with a kid who is struggling with his arithmetic, I can easily just tell him the answers to everything on his worksheet, but what has he learned? If learning and growing is part of the reason God created us, as I believe it probably is, then simply willing us as a completed product contradicts that motivation.
What could God do that would absolutely undeniably prove to you that he exists? I bet that pretty much any scenario that could be imagined, some counter-argument could be made.
God’s existence is simply not something that can be examined in such a way. There’s plenty of arguments for why he probably exists and plenty for why he probably doesn’t. There isn’t anything that conclusively points to his existence, nor is there anything that conclusively points that he doesn’t exist.
Quite frankly, if you’re at a point where you have to see proof that he exists or doesn’t… you’re missing the point. Like I said earlier, this process for me isn’t about getting to heaven or avoiding hell; but at the same time, it wasn’t about trying to prove God exists or doesn’t exist. I began the process that I’m in now with, as honestly as I could, the existence or non-existence of God, as completely up in the air. Thus far, his existence has been much more consistent with everything than his non-existence. In either case, it is more or less irrelevant to what my initial goal was.
So, this is it? Scientific knowledge is complete? We’ve observed everything, and discovered every law? Is there no knowledge beyond what can be learned strictly through observations of the natural world? Would you be surprised if I said I completely agree with you on everything there?
I don’t think God is necessitated by any modern scientific theory of which I’m aware… but that’s the whole point. I don’t think it’s about trying to get us to belief in his existence through scientific proof. I don’t think it’s about having some sort of two-way dialogue about how my day was or whatever other ramblings I might want to talk about with a friend or family member. I think people who think they have that sort of relationship with him are probably delusional.
I don’t think God created us for companionship. I think he created us for other reasons.
I don’t have that sort of relationship with God. I tried to explain how it is and, in fact, it’s probably an experience you’ve had at times before too, except you attributed it to something else. Does it mean that I attributed something to God that was just a natural occurence? Maybe, I dunno, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not the point.
The point is that if he does exist, as I believe he does, then I don’t think it’s necessarily contradictory for evil to exist, and I do think it’s possible that he does love us all, and I in fact believe that too. I’m really not sure how any of the rest of that is particularly meaningful because, sure we can posit properties about God where the answer is no, but we can also posit ones where the answer is yes.
Convincing me wouldn’t even require evidence - I know plenty of (otherwise-)intelligent people who will believe or disbelieve anything in order to preserve their ‘faith’. All God would need to do is instill in me faith such that I would join the ranks of those who say black is white and bad is good to maintain belief, and the deal would be done.
Blaster Master it is with sincere respect that I point you to the following. I’m not attacking you, merely describing what your arguments look like to me:
When I asserted a necessary condition of a loving relationship is a bidirectional exchange of ideas, etc. using a common language, you reply…
…then later…
I didn’t say the necessary condition was a casual, informal “Hey God, Hey BlaM” dialog. I didn’t say the necessary condition was for God to materialize at my every whim to answer my every question. Those are the “similar but weaker propositions” you were refuting. You did not actually refute my original position with those comments.
You did address my point with a different comment I’ll come to in a moment.
Other examples of straw men:
When DtC asked if you can articulate a single way he’s proven his existence, you reply…
DtC wasn’t asking for absolutely undeniable proof. He wasn’t even asking for proof that would convince him. He was simply asking what proof convinced you. You did not answer him.
When DtC suggested (paraphrasing) some of the attributes of some definitions of God are contrary to how we have observed the universe to work you reply:
DtC did not say scientific knowledge is complete and there is nothing left to discover. If that’s what he did say, then your point would refute him.
Before hitting ‘submit’ I took a cement block into my backyard and dropped it. Instead of falling down, it flew upwards through the clouds. There were no strings, magnets, nor any means of propulsion - it flew upwards all by itself. Do you believe me?
Don’t rush past this point - ask yourself why you do not believe me. Do you have perfect knowledge of everything in the universe? Is such perfect knowledge required to be confident my claim is nonsense? You know enough about the universe to at least be suspicious of my claim, if not flat out disbelieve me. It is possible I know something about gravity that no one else has discovered yet and that’s why I can make cement blocks fall up. But if that’s true, it will require more than my say so to convince you, right? Would you agree that a claiming to communicate with a supernatural invisible consciousness is harder to accept than flying cement?
To come back to the point you made that did address my argument. I said a necessary condition of a loving relationship is communication. I take it you agree with that. You then said that when you are struggling with some difficulty you meditate, then sometimes God…
If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it) and IF the revelation came from God, then I would be convinced that your claim has merit. I don’t require absolute, completely unassailable proof. Proof of that nature doesn’t even exist for gravity. All I ask is how do you know the information came from God? This is an honest question, and I ask it respectfully. I ask because I too have had similar experiences. Sometimes I have to slow down and really think through a difficult challenge before I arrive at an answer. I honestly believe when that happens it is the exercise of my own intellectual capability. That is my experience, and it’s just that simple. What is different about your experience that you are convinced 1) the solution came from outside yourself and 2) the solution came from God (and not some other source)?
On re-reading it appears I may have goofed. DtC may not have been asking the question the way I interpreted it. I hope my error doesn’t detract from the essential point, though. Even if DtC wasn’t limiting his question only to what convinced you, he was asking for some proof and none was provided. His words were
What he did not ask for was for you to provide the “absolutely undeniable proof” (your words, not his), hence my labelling your reply as attacking a straw man.
I’ve never had children of my own, but I have been grandmother to my step-children’s children. And I can certainly understand what you are saying.
Also, I know that my own Dad had that kind of love for me. It is what has sustained me most of my life – even after he died.
And that’s why I don’t believe that anyone is condemned to hell. Not the most evil person who has lived. I believe that God loves that person far more than earthly parents can love.
Not for one moment have I ever felt hatred or even anger from this Source of Life.
Tonight was one of the few times in my life when I have been able to bring comfort to my mother. She is 97. On the phone she was so anxious and upset that she could not get a complete sentence out. (There is much sickness and dying in our family right now. And it weighs on her. She is not in good health either.) I’ve never heard her so broken in spirit. All of my anger at her was gone and there were only the right words of a loving God that came to me to offer her. And she became quiet and then blessed me. She has never done that before. This is the same woman who has abused me in so many ways all of my life, and for reasons I don’t understand.
As an adult, I’ve never believed that the Bible is literally true. My church doesn’t each teach that. I know that it is more convenient for some of the arguments against Christianity that all Christians believe in a God of Wrath and the fires of hell, but it isn’t true. Even Billy Graham came around on his thinking about other people besides Christians going to heaven.
Maybe all Christians look the same to some of you. Sometimes you all seen a bit smug. That’s okay. God loves smug atheists as much as he loves crabby old women who air their pain in public.
That’s a very commendable position, but might I ask what Christianity is for then. If We all went to heaven before Jesus, and we go after Jesus whether or not we accept him, what is the point? Did he come to earth to do some magic tricks and utter some nice words?
I grew up in a religion where everyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, have the same fate, and I always found that this is one place where we differed from Christianity.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
A bit of the subject, but who is this little black kid in this link’s picture?
I look at the website of the Westboro Baptist Church and find them absolutely fascinating. I have probably seen all the documentaries about them. While I do not agree with their belief system
They believe in predestination, which states that God planned you from before you were born, and knew what exactly will happen to your soul. There is no “free will”. The people that God have chosen for the afterlife will be sinners at birth, but later on in life come to the realization and acceptance of the Gospels.
To them, almost 100% of all souls will go to hell. They do not believe in any other church, and believes that all other religions are wrong, with the pastors and priests telling people lies from the pulpit and having the people love it so. The people are deluded, because God sent the delusion.
Since God is absolutely perfect and does absolutely no wrong, everything that happens here on Earth, whether it be wonderful or tragic came from God. So, when tragedy happens, like 9/11, Iraq War, Katrina, Oil Spill, in their minds it is a judgement from God to the people.
What confusing to me is that they say that people’s souls are predestined for heaven and hell, but on the other hand feel that they have to warn the World of the coming doom. They love being hated and the more they are hated, the more they believe that they are on the right track with God.
Jesus Christ came to this Earth to save the elect and that is not everyone, but only a tiny amount of people. Westboro has been on record saying on the one hand that they are the only people who love the rest of humanity because they warn them everyday, but on the other hand state that they do not care about your soul and it will go wherever it goes, which will be hell unless you join us and make jackasses of yourselves with signs pissing people off.
Funny thing though, I have never once seen them pray.
They rail against homosexuality because they believe that it is the one grevious sin that has been accepted in this society. They believe that the United States is doomed because of homosexuals. They claim that God are killing troops overseas because of it.
The picketing thing started back in 1991 in Topeka. There is a park called Gage Park that was a cruising spot for homosexual men. Westboro/Phelps family started the protest from there. They claim that there were no other churches that would support their public protest and that the city are doing nothing about it, and by doing nothing about it makes them complicit with the perverts themselves. ( someone seeking anonymous sex in a public park at midnight is a pervert.) The picket thing just exploded after that.
One thing I don’t know and understand is, where in the hell do these people get this money to go travelling all over the country doing this?
Lastly, I recently saw the 20/20 episode with a non Phelps family member named Steve Drain. I have seen him before in documentaries and he is a total prick. He kicked out and shunned his oldest daughter for questioning the church. She’s 24 and a nurse. (and quite pretty too.) Steve states that his daughter is going to hell and that he will break off all contact with any of his children if they do the same, with his stupid, braindead wife nodding in agreement. The wives don’t disagree with the husbands in Phelpsland, they get a belt about the face.
I could go on and on about Phelps. I would one day love to see his home in Topeka or meet them in a picket. Just for the morbid fascination of it all.
Paul’s defination of love, contradicts that,if put to the test! Starting with love is not self seeking:according to what Sunday school teachers taught we were created to Know, love, and serve God, so we could be happy with Him in the next!
According to the Gospel writer; Jesus spoke in parables (lest the ones he spoke of should understand and be saved). So not all humans were to be saved, yet the religion teaches that Jesus came to save all men. Isn’t that a contradiction?
You have free will, God will not do anything to you, good or bad. It is your responsibility to seek the truth whatever it may be. If you are waiting for God to do something like reveal Himself, speak to you, or make your life wonderful, you will wait forever. You have been given the tools to find your own “salvation.” It is up to you and you alone to better yourself and your life. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
An individual does not exist in the center of the world, the world exists in the individual.
Fair enough to the first part. I ask that you explain the second part. Perhaps it’s because it’s early, but I’m not seeing a direct link to direct interventionalist God and a violation of the omnimax principles.
I would say that human beings act as though free will exists - as though we have a choice in what we do. I don’t think this is really the case. I think that our decisions are an amalgam of our histories, our biologies, and our current physiologies. I don’t see anything ‘free’ about it. To me, what is commonly considered ‘libertarian free will’ simply doesn’t make sense. In fact, it seems contradictory in that it assumes that we are able to make decisions without them being based on any of the prior things that I brought up. This seems chaotic and random to me and, more importantly, out of our control.
As to the importance of free will - it’s not important in the every day actions of human beings. The illusion of free will might be, we could argue, but not actual free will. Where the importance lay is with a resolution to the argument from evil. You take free will off the plate and you take a proposed theodicy away.
Yes, this is true, but I’m not sure that it saves the concept…
Well, yes, you can - but here is what I consider the important distinction - you are not perfect. God, on the other hand, is. God could not make an imperfect (or sub-optimal) move because to do so would violate his perfection.
You can say that God is omnipotent and therefore he can do anything (logically possible, anyway), but when we scratch a little bit, it seems to me that God can do certain things only if he compromises other qualities he has. In short, God could make a sub-optimal move - but in doing so, he negates his perfection.
This is one of my beefs with the creation story in the bible. A perfect being creates imperfect entities. How is that possible? One could argue free will, but I don’t think that gets the problem off the hook because, as has been brought up, God could have created beings that only choose to do the good.
Now, I realize that one problem (or I should say, ‘potential’ problem) is that such beings wouldn’t know what evil was, since they are never able to act on it (due to their choice). There are two problems with this:
I can envision a state of affairs where evil is known on a conceptual level - or even an experiential level (with regard to non sentient organisms).
If knowledge of the actual action of evil is necessary then that places God’s omniscience in jeopardy since it creates a state of affairs where I (a lowly ignorant human) have knowledge that God does not. How can God be called omniscient if he does not have all available knowledge?
I might go 1/2 way here. I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue in motivation on God’s part, since the problem - as it seems to me - is how to reconcile God’s actions with his nature.
On the other hand what you are arguing is that evil is necessary for ‘soul making’ which is interesting, but ultimately I think it doesn’t resolve the initial problem. It also brings up some thorny issues with heaven, miscarriages, and the like.
As to God’s motivations, I’m not sure that a perfect being can “do” something since it seems to conflict with the idea of perfection. I’ll table that though since it doesn’t quite seem relevant to the discussion.
You gave an interesting response, but I’m not sure that it completely rescues the idea.
Perhaps there is an issue with what ‘perfect’ means. It does seem very subjective.
With regard to the issue I bring up - I am “Christianizing” it to the best of my ability, since I find the Christian origin story very problematic with the notion of ‘fallen’ man. It could be the case that this is not what you believe and if so, obviously my aim is very off.
In any event, if we find that suffering/evil is an imperfection (which I think it is), then the problem springs up with the idea of God - a perfect being - being responsible for suffering and evil. If God can create entities that will only choose the good, then what is responsible for those entities that choose evil? How does God - a pure good being - create entities that choose evil? What is the basis for the choices that those entities make? Biological, historical, environmental? Those cases can be directly attributed to God’s initial creation.
If it’s not one of those, then what is it?
The soul making theodicy is a very interesting one, but I’m not sure it is sufficient for the reasons I’ve brought up earlier. In addition, if suffering and evil make souls ‘greater’ then there is a very substantial problem with morality.
Namely, why help anyone at all? If souls are made greater through suffering, then don’t we owe our fellow man the harshest cruelties we can imagine? Or if we do not, then doesn’t this inhibit us from helping others? From stopping wanton brutalities?
I’m not sure evil is necessary. Is there evil in heaven? Was there evil prior to the creation of the universe?
As to learning - that is an interesting point - however through those lessons, aren’t you learning something that God cannot learn? I could also turn this around and ask how you can truly know evil without committing evil? How can you learn the horror of brutality without committing it?
In any event, I appreciate the discussion so far, so thank you for engaging in it in a reasonable fashion (which doesn’t always happen on the 'net).
