Is it wise to assume God is benevolent?

I was thinking about Pascal’s wager the other day and came up with a more interesting version - suppose we assume that God, Heaven and Hell all exist and God can be anything from a complete pansy who lets everyone into Heaven to a sadistic bastard who creates people just to watch them descend to Hell with no hope of salvation. It seems to me that the more wrathful you assume God to be, the more “good” you will be to maximise your chances of getting into Heaven. But if it turns out that you were wrong and you were living a lot more carefully than you really needed to, hey, no big loss, your life might have sucked a little more than most but you still get an eternity in paradise! So is it really a good idea for people to talk about the infinite love of God since it may not in fact be so and every infraction brings them closer to the land of fire and pitchforks?

I am on holiday and might not be able to reply for a while. But it doesn’t mean I’m ignoring you :3

God? Is that you?

A God who’s a sadistic bastard might very well put all the Christians in Hell and the unbelievers in Heaven, just for laughs.

And the hardcore athiests, too. Just to make sure everyone with a strong viewpoint on the matter gets a raw deal. Plus the agnostics, for doubting his existence entirely.

I suppose it depends on what kind of sadist he is. A straightforward one would just toss everybody into Hell; one with a nasty humor might toss in just the Christians, just so he can laugh in their faces for believing he was a good guy.

Or - he might start out that way, let the atheists enjoy Heaven for a while and then say “Well, I send all believers to Hell - you believe in me now - so it’s off to Hell you go ! Hah !” :smiley:

As an atheist I actually have my own version of Pascal’s wager. I don’t think there’s a God, but if I happen to be wrong I think it’s entirely possible that He will turn out to value reason and critical thinking over mindless obedience. (After all, why would He have created us with these faculties if we weren’t expected to use them?)

In my version of Pascal’s wager the safest way to Heaven is to follow the evidence wherever it leads you, even if it leads you to atheism. After all, God is supposedly infinitely powerful. He could easily make his existence obvious. The fact that He doesn’t suggests that he has some reason for remaining hidden. Perhaps He wants to see how we live our lives without him looking over our shoulder.

In that case, perhaps Heaven is mostly filled with atheists. I can imagine all us former non-believers hanging out, chatting with God:

“Wow, God, you really had us snowed!”

"Well my children, to be fair you never really had a chance to figure out the Truth. I was very careful to cover my tracks!"

“Too bad about all those fundamentalist Christians in Hell … .”

"Perhaps a few hundred years in the Pit will teach them not to value words in a book ahead of the evidence of their own eyes!"

“God, you big kidder!”

"Thank you, my child. Anybody up for a game of Risk? I call the black pieces!"

no, just Bosda

The price of claiming that a being is beyond all human comprehension, outside of time, answerable to nothing, and other such grandiose claims (which I suspect came about in religion via a sort of school yard “oh yeah, well my god has a million bagizillion retainers!” “oh yeah, well my God is infinity + 6 awesome!” theological one-upmanship over time) is that the idea of trusting or judging its motives becomes nonsensical. It’s motives could be anything. The divine absolute, perfect purpose of the universe, for all we know, could be God’s careful managed sense of creating the highest irony and tragedy. There is no reason and little problem with imagining such a being doing everything the Christian God is said to have done just to better pull the rug out from underneath people’s feet later on for a few chuckles. In fact, the “later revealed true purposes and plans of God” is central to the Christian narrative: God’s plan appeared to be one thing for millenia, and then there was, well a retcon of the whole thing revealing God’s TRUE purpose. What would prevent a being like God from diong that a second time? A third? How can we possibly judge the motives or actions or intentions of something we are told we cannot understand or predict in any way relevant to our experience?

Indeed, this is the problem with the idea that there are beings powerful enough, even if they are not absolutely powerful or as powerful as God. If there exists a being such Satan is very powerful beyond all human understanding, then such a being can convince any human of anything it wanted. Such a being could create all the wonderful feelings that convince people that they are speaking with God and not Satan. There would be no way to see through the ruse, since, having supernatural powers, all aspects of the human being are open to full manipulation.

Heck, humanity may within only a few decades have exactly that sort of power over HIMSELF (as we better learn how to manipulate the mind: we can already create, artificially, experiences of deep spiritual connections, and even if they are distinct in CAUSE and INTENTION from the “authentic” ones supposedly caused by God, the people who they are done to would not be able to tell the difference.

Before you change the subject from goodness to power, Apos, I’d like to get clarifcation on why you believe artificial spiritual stimulations have any bearing on the point you’re making? Why is God any weaker if man has discovered how to be Godly? And if the facilitation of goodness is God’s own essence, then isn’t it a show of His power that He has empowered man to do the same as He? Recall Jesus’s observation: “You will do even greater things than I.”

It’s simply an extension of the Satan issue, which itself is an illustration of the problems raised when any inexplicable being with powers far beyond the human mind is introduced to the picture. Because they demonstrate the problems we get into when any being, including ourselves, is powerful enough to have total control over the human mind. It completely undercuts any rationale for believing anything, no matter how amazing or transcendent it seems. As with Satan, were there a being not as powerful as God that was nevertheless powerful enough to have total control over the rather simple and easy-to-manipulate human mind, Satan could perfectly reproduce a spiritual experience with malicious inetnt. The example is the same as if human beings are behind it.

You might believe that God would act to stop such third-party attempts from ever happening, in which case I suppose you could be sure that all transmissions were authentic. But then, that might just be exactly what Satan wants you think God does.

Well first of all, assume there is a God, and assume this technology has the power to alter human minds and experiences in any way one wishes. Suddenly, there is nothing that God do, from the perspective of the human being, that couldn’t have simply been done by another person, acting maliciously or otherwise.

There is only a finite amount of control needed to have TOTAL control over a human being. Once humans reach this level, distinguishing their machinations from Gods becomes impossible, especially in the scenario we have in the current world where God doesn’t seem to consistently intervene to stop evil manipulations by humans or reveal how one person has tricked another.

This problem goes hand in hand with the problem of God’s ultimate motives and intentions being just as 100% inscrutable as who is pulling our strings at any given moment if there exist beings powerful enough to pull our strings so expertly.

How can anyone ever have even a tiny amount of confidence that this is the case when we are dealing with a being beyond understanding, to whom our short amounts of experience with any sort of behavior are infinately tiny and thus infinitely mistaken about the bigger picture?

In other words, is it wise to assume that we can understand and accurately personify God?

that’s not what the op is asking? it’s about one possible aspect of the nature of god

Ah, no, that’s not what I was referring to…

In other words, is it wise to assume that we can understand and accurately personify God?

…is it wise to assume God is benevolent? I don’t think it’s wise to assume much about God. Then again, who’s God are we talking about? Could you not believe in the existence of a malevolent God? If we are referring to the Christian God, do we not, already, have an answer?

No, it really doesn’t. What theologian of significance has claimed that God can do metaphysically impossible things?

Why should I give a rat’s ass what Satan thinks? I don’t understand how God can have the powers you assign to Him — including, apparently, the power to make contradictions true — while being impotent to foil the impishness of His less powerful nemesis. But if God is evil (that is, if He obstructs goodness), then an important philosophical question arises: namely, why has goodness not compelled the existence of an agent to facilitate it? If it has failed in this regard, then it isn’t very good after all.

I still don’t understand your point. There must be a table top full of premises that you’re not declaring here. Why the presumption that human malevolence is tied somehow to God’s benevolence? Why the presumption that God treats human beings as puppets? Why the presumption that humans are excluded from acting as agents of God? Why the presumption that a human ability to do a thing metastasizes God’s own abilities? Is a father loving his child somehow indicative that God doesn’t love us because the father has usurped God’s power? Why then is God impugned because man has induced a spiritual peace in another man?

Wait a minute, is it your premise that God cannot be understood at all or merely the traditional idea that God cannot be understood in toto? Because, if God has made Himself entirely incomprehensible, then He has made Himself entirely unrecognizable. And no theologian, for that obvious reason, has ever made such a claim. My cat doesn’t understand everything about me and my life, but he understands enough to be standing at the bowl each day around six o’clock.

Is it necessarily a contradiction that goodness is not good enough if it fails to summon forth God?

Is goodness not a human concept?

Am I to understand that God is a function of goodness?

I’m just a bit confused here, not sniping.

Depends on definitions, I suppose, all of which I’ve provided in appropriate threads on the topic. But since you might not have participated in those, I’ll cover some of them here. I define goodness as that aesthetic which edifies. I define God as the facilitator of goodness. I define love as the facilitation of goodness. Therefore, God is love. I define sin as the opposite of love; i.e., the obstruction of goodness. Naturally, if goodness edifies, then if there is existence, it will compel the existence of a facilitator. So yes, goodness summons forth God. Goodness is the aesthetic most valued by God.

[QUOTE=Apos]
In fact, the “later revealed true purposes and plans of God” is central to the Christian narrative: God’s plan appeared to be one thing for millenia, and then there was, well a retcon of the whole thing revealing God’s TRUE purpose. What would prevent a being like God from diong that a second time? A third?

[QUOTE]

In fact he did just that! Its a trilogy or havent you heard about Islam?

I love using that on crazies “Yes I’ve heard the good news about Jesus, now you should hear the good news about Muhammed!”

That…really doesn’t make any sense. Especially the bolded part. An abstract concept can’t compel anything to appear from nothing.

Also, where did you get the idea that love is inherently good ? It can be quite destructive.

A *really * sick bastard of a God might just throw everyone in hell.
In the OP’s wager, he would have led an sucky life on earth and still have to spend Eternity in hell.

I defined both goodness and love, but you are ignoring those definitions. Either that, or you don’t know what you’re talking about.