Dream or nightmare, makes little to no difference. Neither is real.
My stuffed monkey does the same thing. That doesn’t make it a deity.
My goodness, I’ve read everything single thing you’ve written about your bad dream, both here and elsewhere.
There’s only 2 types of god I would follow:
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A completely benevolent god that fixes everything in the universe and eliminates all suffering
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A god that is benevolent and tries to fix everything, but doesn’t have the power to do it
I would not follow an uncaring, unknowable, hands-off god. Why bother? He doesn’t care about you and I won’t care about it. I would not follow a god who is only kind of benevolent and has the power to eliminate suffering. As long as he has the power, he should cure all suffering, otherwise, he’s a sadist. There is absolutely no reason why, if one has the power, one shouldn’t eliminate suffering somehow, and do so immediately. Any thing that allows the amount of suffering to go on, any amount, is sadistic
Last I read, Jesus is in the bible, so it is contradictory for you to report on his love…
Do you apply this same standard to humanity? If so, almost all humans are sadists. If not, why don’t you?
No cost that I know of, and He’s been around forever as far as I know.
Have you shared the story of your NDE, lekatt? I’d love to read about it.
Of course, I went to a heart doctor for 18 months on a regular basis, didn’t need to go anymore because I was healed.
A very good point. We have free will to do as we please, if all humans treated each other with respect there would not be so much suffering.
My NDE is in my books and on my website. I am not allowed to post links to my material. My pen name is Ken Katin.
God is a religious concept. You might as well say “this thread isn’t about food, it’s about hamburgers”.
That sounds like a family dog or an artificial intelligence for a defense system, not a god.
I think it’s possible to walk that tightrope.
If god is immortal, and can just poof things into happening, that’s very different from a human needing to using some of their short lifespan to toil to make things better, with always uncertain outcomes.
So the level of obligation is very different.
Also note that this limits us to doing one thing at a time. If a human could wiggle their nose and every blind person would see then I would consider them morally obliged to do that.
But in the real world, the closest a human can do is enter the field of optometry, and I do not consider every human to be obliged to do that.
Seems to me that the level of obligation only matters if you accept that there’s a duty both God and man have to actively work to reduce suffering.
And if God and man are so different that different moral obligations exist for each, does that not suggest they should not be held to the same, human-conceived, moral standards? What are man’s ethics to God? What are God’s ethics to man?
I wouldn’t, for what that’s worth.
Are they obliged to reduce suffering in some way?
“God” is singular-“Mankind” is not. If all of Mankind were of a single mind with a single purpose it could accomplish wondrous things…but it isn’t, and it doesn’t, and it probably won’t.
What is the line between “failing an obligation” and sadism? I’d say a being who could cure all the blindness of everyone in the world by an eye blink and at no cost to itself, and refuses to do so is a sadist.
And that goes double for a being that creates such imperfect species, has the power and knowledge to fix them, and won’t.
Yes, and different people can have different moral views. The point is, there is nothing hypocritical or inconsistent about believing that a god is morally obliged to feed the hungry, say, yet a human is not obliged to spend all of their life doing that.
Most people’s morality does include some notion of how much sacrifice is involved compared to the good that is done. If cutting off my hand is the only way I can reduce your suffering of a papercut, most people would not consider me obliged to do that.
Conversely, if I can save someone’s life just by dialling 911, most people would consider me morally obliged to do so.
In the case of a god, in most variants nothing god does requires any sacrifice on his part at all. And he has the power to do tremendous good. So the obligation is much stronger even than for the 911 dialler.
FWIW I’m an atheist so this is all a “angels on the head of a pin” to me anyway.
I can easily imagine reasons for doing that don’t involve obtaining pleasure from the pain of others: indifference, a refusal to meddle in the lives of others, a refusal to expose supernatural power through such an act, or a belief that the struggle against misfortune is beneficial to humanity.
Sort of a side-issue; if a God did create humanity, is it morally responsible for human failings? I say no, whatever our origins, humans have free will.
Oh, absolutely.
I didn’t mention spending all of their life, I meant obliged to do it at all.
Consequentialist ethics, my old nemesis.
The scale at which God operates means that a sort of “rule zero” might apply to it, meaning that such power makes God responsible for the human race (or all of creation) as a whole, rather than individuals. Only God would be in a position to judge what’s good or bad for humanity (or all of creation).
Same here.
God is typically portrayed as omniscient & omnipotent, which means every single flaw of humanity is his fault because he put them there knowingly and on purpose in the first place. Every misdeed, every error, every sickness, every bad thought was part of God’s plan from the beginning. Nothing in all the universe happens except that God intended it to happen. That’s a direct consequence of a creator having omnipotence and omniscience, “free will” or not.