Only after the ‘sacrifice’ of his son - and even then there are lots of qualifiers on it, including suffering while ‘alive’ to futher his plan (its all part of his plan).
Being merciful would put an end to the suffering - as soon as faith was declared (or whatever action ‘saves’ you) but instead it seems to be that suffering and remaining faithful ‘unto the end’ is what is required and expected.
In any event -
[QUOTE=Human Action]
This is the heart of the matter.
If one accepts the idea of a benevolent, omnipotent, omnicient God, whose nature is imperfectly captured in the Bible, then one can explain away most any perceived shortcoming of that God. I have tried to do that in this thread, to illustrate this. I think I’ve been modestly successful.
That said, the acceptance of such a God is not based on logic or rationality. Instead, it is an irrational, emotional belief, and one that can not be advocated for using logic and reason, because it does not originate from those sources.
Theists should understand that this basic belief in a God cannot be argued about with reason.
Atheists should understand that criticism of aspects of a particular conception of a God, is of limited value in addressing this underlying belief.
[/QUOTE]
I would agree with this - and am reffering to the God as depicted in the “bible”, not the ‘God’ you may ultimately wish to believe in. Since we have clear examples of the Bible God being malevolent, jealous and quite often petty in his dealings with his imperfect creation - he did, after all, create more than just his “chosen people” right? and since he “chose” the group that survived the flood - shouldn’t ALL be his chosen people by extension?
But, if people realized that declaring faith meant they faced no further suffering in their Earthly lives, it would cease to be faith, and become certainty.
Yeah, the chosen people idea doesn’t square very well with the New Testament; it’s one of many areas the two testaments are very different.
But if you’ve chosen to believe in a benevolent God, you can explain it all to your satisfaction: they’re the chosen because they were morally superior; every people had the same opportunity but only the Israelites were worthy.
I’m not sure how far removed the various peoples of Exodus are from Noah, might be worth looking into.
and that is why he is a sadist and is about as far from a ‘merciful’ god as you can get.
He uses suffering (aka ‘pain’) to force his followers to be ‘faithful’ for the ultimate ‘gift’ of ‘no more pain’. He clearly wants ‘all’ to be saved (he killed his son to prove it).
Something he could have given all along, but instead holds it out like a carrot on a stick so that they can ‘prove’ themselves worthy of it by enduring more pain.
While God is vastly beyond humanity, God is not truly all-powerful. There are rules that even God must obey, and the need for faith is one of them.
We don’t know what’s good for us, only God does. Like a child who can’t understand that a painful injection is to help them, humans lack the perfect understanding to question God. You’ve spoken of pain, and the gift of no pain, in physical terms. But if man has immortal souls, perhaps God is looking out for our spiritual selves, even if a consequence is physical and mental suffering. We understand our spiritual selves much less than our physical and mental selves, but the spiritual is the most important, and God acts accordingly.
While we may not know what is good for us, we do know what is bad, short term pain/suffering does not breed 'immortal spirits of a good nature" - none of #2 explains cancer in infants, etc - “strengthening thru suffering” is not an admirable excuse.
God doesn’t need humans at all. Whether we have faith in him or not is immaterial to God; it provides no sustenance.
He created us as a kindness, for existing is better than not existing, but due to rules that transcend God, an eternal Paradise could only exist for those who displayed faith. To instill this faith, and to grant as many people as possible admission to Heaven, God created the world as we know it today.
You can make a case for God’s omnipotence being limited. For instance, it may be that this omnipotence is limited by God’s other attributes.
God is impeccable, meaning he cannot sin. Is this not a limit to omnipotence? C.S. Lewis writes that “His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible.”
Eternal Paradise, or eternal life, without faith may be intrinsically impossible.
But that which is bad, may lead to that which is good. The pain of a surgery, for instance.
I don’t mean that individual suffering is necessary for our spiritual selves, but rather the capability of suffering, as a species. How much suffering depends on chance, and the free will of ourselves and others. No one will have no suffering, and no one will have nothing but suffering. God knows that this is good for us, we just can’t understand it because we aren’t God.
Sounds like something I would say to justify torturing captives for information - and something no one would accept - "We wouldn’t have to torture him if he would just tell us what we need to know - and we need to know it to protect the country from some thing I can’t tell you about because you wont understand "
Its an excuse - plain and simple - God seems like he ‘should’ be capable of helping us to understand this - but he doesn’t - he expects blind faith - yet the bible teaches to "verify everything, throw out the bad’ - its a contradiction in the least.
But we can understand the motives and knowledge and such of a fellow human. We can’t understand God.
The Bible also says “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”, and “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The first is a platitude, the second a definition.
The ‘directives’ Christ gave to his followers in Luke 21 and Paul gave to the Thesolonians to check everything - especially in the context that “many would come in my name, don’t be deceived” - trump the blind faith requirement.
Perhaps it isn’t a failing, but a mercy. We may benefit from our limitations. For one, we have free will to a degree that God doesn’t, in that God is innately holy, immutable, impeccable, omnibenevolent, and so on.
Luke 21:8 And he said, Take heed that ye be not led astray: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am [he]; and, The time is at hand: go ye not after them.
So, God expects faith, but not blind faith. We must trust God to accompany Christ’s return with sufficient evidence to convince the righteous, while still requiring faith. Evidence, but not proof, perhaps, and the evidence may be of a spiritual nature.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll repeat C.S. Lewis: “His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible.”
Omnipotence should be understood thusly, and therefore there are limits to God’s power.
Would one of these limits be the inability to make children under the age of six immune to intentional harm or death from others? How about making men inable to acheive erection in the case of rape? How about stoping direct sunlight from causing cancer?
It should be noted that creating a universe without cancer isn’t impossible in the sense that squaring a circle or making a rock too big to lift is. So presumably God chose to have cancer. And parasites that make children blind.
That undercuts your claim of omnibenevolence, I think.
Couple things: we only have this world, we have no basis for comparison. This could be the best of all possible worlds that could exist under whatever constraints God is under.
Also, the existence of suffering in the material world, in all its myriad forms, may well be justified by the nature of the spiritual world. If the capacity for suffering in a brief worldy life is necessary for Heaven in the eternity afterlife, or for souls to exist, or to make faith possible, or any number of spiritual factors which we are unaware of, then surely it’s a fair deal for mankind.
If so, then it’s omnibenevolent in the long view, which God’s view likely would be, as God is timeless and all that.
Or, and this is merely a though experiment, all those who suffer from things seemingly outside their control (cancer, random violence, what have you) deserve this suffering, due to a free choice for spiritual evil that we humans cannot perceive. This would allow God to inflict suffering while still being benevolent, i.e. disposed to do good.
In other words, what we humans perceive as justice and injustice may be a product of our limited understanding, and God may impose a true justice in life as well as the afterlife.
If can’t be proven, that’s why it still requires faith. It would have to stem from spiritual experiences: visions, feelings, communion with God, and so forth.
So, if a fellow claimed to be Christ returned but wasn’t, the charlatan should be unable to produce such spiritual evidence, while the risen Christ could. This is what the faithful must be on guard for, per Luke 21:8.