God, what's the nature of... ?

Patriarch, I was more referring to the point that if God is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, then he KNOWS what every result of his actions in creating us will be. He KNEW that Adam and Eve would eat the apple. He KNEW Jesus' "sacrifice" would be ignored by a large proportion of the world. He KNEW that Satan would fall from heaven and be cast down.

What you seem to be saying is that we're either puppets, or we do evil. I reject that. I believe that we could have been created by God (hypothetically, because I don't believe in him/her) in a manner which would have made us more inclined to do good than to do evil, which is what the problem is. It is much easier to be evil than good.

You can have free will and still be consistently good.

Oh, and about the concept of Justice, then it's hardly justice if you're the one who made the person commit the crime in the first place. You made him/her like that, and you have a plan for their life. You know exactly what is going to happen to them, but you let them commit the crime and get locked up anyway. Would it be so hard to just say "Hey, don't do that man; you'll get arrested"?

Written by: Patriarch

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God allowed man the ability to become a sinner

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Written by: Patriarch

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accepting man even though he is a sinner

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God MADE us that way. How is it then any kind of achievement to say "Hey, I still love you... because you're functioning in exactly the way I designed you!" ?? That's like me beating a lion and starving it every day, then after walking into it's cage and getting my arm torn off saying "I still love you". It's your own damned fault the lion bit your arm off!!

FireTom: You look around and see a world of abundance and joy? Are you living on the same planet?? Just look at how consistently we are up this planet. Just look at how much evil outweighs good on a daily basis. Not a day goes by without me reading about another murder, another lewd affair, another bombing, another child abuse case. The world is up, and you need to be a to get anywhere in it. In my opinion.

To me 'God' is whatever or whoever you want it to be. To take the Christian example 'God' could be some all powerful being that sees all and is everywhere but then it could be the sub-atomic particle that started the creation of the universe. They could also be one and the same thing or anything else for that matter. We don't know who or what 'God' is and probably will never know.

Sethis: I agree when you say that the world is messed up but in my view the small acts of kindness that never get talked about are just as important as the evil acts. In my view 'good' and 'evil' are linked in a circle where neither is more important or less active than the other. Besides, the media thrives on negativity, the reason why we see and hear about so much evil is that the media deliberatly put it there. And yes, I am a conspiricy theorist. The media now controls more of the world than the politicians do.

Sethis, your post blends free will and predestination too much for me to give a real reply. You seem to suggest that God could have made us free to choose, but made us always choose to do good. While it may be true that God can do something such as create a triangle that is also not a triangle, I think this is beyond our ability to comprehend and discuss.

However, an issue we can adress is by what standard you are judging things to be "good" and "evil." By what standard are you deciding that suffering is "evil?" Is it not possible to see this world as being all "good?" If you've read much C.S. Lewis, you might have an idea where I'm going with this.

@ Loki: no, never heard that saying, but get the idea of what it means...

@ Spork: Hmmm, I kinda was asking what you perceive "god" to be... But I follow up on what you said to Sethis. Just because "bad" is all over the papers, doesn't mean that "good" is on holiday...

@ Sethis: Unless this connection ends in a parallel - universe, we sure share the same planet. Just you are in the UK right now and I am in India... I think that good and evil pretty much balance each other, but also follow up on what you said to Patriarch. If one is omnipotent AND perfect, one KNOWS what is going to happen when putting a tree somewhere in the garden and say "you can do whatever you like but keep away from these fruits." I am sure that every parent (no matter how nice the childrens are) is asking for trouble by just making this statement.

@ jeff: well, but how do you actually measure "bad" if there is nothing to compare it with? i.e. how can a shadow be casted, if there's no light? And if it's the same god everybody is talking about (and I reckon they do) - how comes they see him very different? Is the result of observation depending on the observer? But certainly I oppose your statement that "desires are not linked by their genders"... generally they are...

@ jo: I like what you're saying. Basically even if I'd loose everything I'd gain the experience how that feels like... Hence one has to DO something in order to sustain oneself... (nobody is bringing the groceries for free - unfortunately). I've heard that concept (of god wanting to experience himself) before - not sure about boredom as a motif though, but curiosity would be fair enough for me... "Ultimate love" - I perceive LOVE to be one of the greatest misunderstandings of wo/mankind and consisting of as many definitions like, for say the word "set" (464 that is)... WHICH love are YOU referring to?

and Mr Majestik: do you want to imply that the FSM created mankind, taking into account, or even hoping that we (one day) will be "better" FSM's than he is?

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you're fast guys.... are you ignoring me, patriarch?
@jeff: well your question is completely hypothetical and fictuous... but maybe at least ONE of those two will be surprised that the universe decided to take the highest possible conscious force (after OWD maybe) and to smite it with an ordinary truck... and question himself for a split second whether it was conscious to cross that road without looking right and left...

yeah I know jo.....FireTom didnt get it and asked for an explanation thats why I quoted him ....you know.....its kinda right above what I said

Oh god....

Well I'm not a free-will person... I think it follows from Aristotle's Prime Mover argument if you accept that sort of thing, maybe with a little Leibniz PSR thrown in: namely "Everything has a cause, and this can't go on ad finitum so there had to be a first cause that is itself uncaused". Which seems to completely negate itself by saying everything has a cause... EXCEPT for this thing, which is just passing the buck to God as I call it. On top of that, if you have God as a necessary being, and everything else as contingent beings, you have the whole issue of whether or not a necessary being CAN make a contingent being as logically he could only make more necessary beings, himself being necessary and thus everything he does being necessary because of its parent element's necessariness (I just made a new word!).

Then there's the argument from Myth: that being that every myth mirrors every other one, ie we usually have the sky father in a sacred marriage with the earth mother (or the two combined into one monotheistic creator God) who have a divine child who then goes on to overthrow the father (IE Christianity to Judaism, Zeus to Chronos, Odin to... well you get the picture). Theres the similarity between linguistic elements that point to similar origins (for instance, in the Flood story of Greek Mythology the father of the lone surviving human was named Iebetros, and Noah's pops name was Jebeth I believe... which translated are the same name)... There's just too much overlap between Myth and religion for me to believe any of it objectively.

Any the tri-omni definition... well that's just self-negating too. Like the "Can God make a stone so heavy he can't lift it" question, or "Can God be Evil", etc. etc. So I throw that idea out categorically. And then theres the whole "If God is unchanging then how did he create, as this seems to imply changing from one state to another (not creating to creating)". Unless he is continuously creating, creating being his only REAL function and thus lowering your God to a point of "being" and ONLY "being", which in turn again makes everything necessary and fixed.

I think God is a nice etymology (simple explanation, like Santa Clause). Science is a nicer etymology now a days and explains more, though it is still based on reasoning backwards from what we can measure now.

So for me, I don't think the anthropomorphic God makes sense. I've heard lots of theories and definitions and still havn't found one a think makes sense. Which is why I'm agnostic. Because an atheist position is only just as plausable. One thing I am sure about IMO is that God ain't anything like me. Im more inclined to think of him as a "force" just like gravity, etc. at the moment.

If he was like me, I'd kick him in the nads for the problem of evil. Just my 2 cents. I'd rather be free of him completely (a dead God as Nietzche would have it) than be religious and devoted and thankful to him. That's part of a parent's obligation to the next generation: to eventually step aside and die so that they might live.

Wahay! I second more or less everything i8beefy2 just said!

Well done that man. Have a piece of cheese.

@ majestic: it might have been coming across sarcastic, but "the flying spagetti monster" to me is as valid as the "ultimate love"...

@ beefy: the religious definition of "god" requires you to be thankful and worship - this is temple-dogma... who, besides them tell you that you have to go to church/ worship him/ be thankful of anything? I follow your generation-argument... would just not be so easy if you're immortal...

Old Jewish proverb:

"If God lived on Earth, people would break his windows"

written by Jeff(fake)

Written by:

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As to the subject of Badness, I think that it is always going to suck to bang your toe. The strange thing about human existance is that we can all agree largely on what is good and bad. It's hardwired into us. It could have been completely different, but it wasn't.

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Its a question of subjectivity, and a massive part of it is cultural conditioning, which itself is constantly changing.

A few hundred years ago it was considered morally acceptable to have slaves, and summarily shoot them - blacks were considered subhuman savages. In todays society this view is no longer considered to be morally reasonable (though traces of old views still filter through - we aren't at a stage of racial tolerance in the West - but things have gotten a lot better)

oops, Sorry Loki!

I really do reccommend reading Conversations with God, its fantastic

I cannot possibly read this all right now. Will later. I loved the can of worms tho...

My own opinion: God is simply any being who exists naturally with four spatial dimensions or higher. As such there could be many gods, or one, or none. Why would any being existing in four spatial dimensions be god? Because our time (The 4th dimension) would be perceived by them as solid, and, as such, they would know everything that happens in our lives in one of their instants. Feel free to pick it apart I like refining it.

Another totally different take worth looking at if no one has brought it up...

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" She remembered WIggan telling her what gods would be like. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them. Why would he say such a thing? How could he know what a god would be?

Somebody who wants to teach you how to know everything that they do and do everything that they know- what he was really describing was parents, not gods.

Only there were plenty of parents who didn't do that.....

So what Wiggan was describing wasn't parents, really. He was describing good parents. He wasn't telling her what gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness.

What were gods. then? They would want everyone else to know and have and be all good things. They would teach and share and train, but never force."

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-Xenocide, 432-433.

There's a lot to consider there... and a lot of implicit assumptions, but also a lot that rings true in terms of society and how we see things at least in the western world....

nice one Kyrian - I like it... conversations with god I haven't read - heard the background came across like very christian...

Small interview with god...

Different people have different perceprions or ideas about what god is and what god means to them - not only by culture and religious background - I am certain that within any society, every individual has it's own understanding and picture of who or what god actually is.

This is one step from "what it actually means"...

@jeff:

Written by: jeff(fake)

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As to the subject of Badness, I think that it is always going to suck to bang your toe. The strange thing about human existance is that we can all agree largely on what is good and bad. It's hardwired into us. It could have been completely different, but it wasn't.

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And this I really do want to oppose... It's not hardwired in(to) us... I see pictures of children-soldiers, I hear stories about the holocaust, about atrocities in Australia, Africa, Asia, the Americas and all over Europe. Good and Bad is nothing that is hardwired anywhere in the human soul... it's the reality that makes the morality... eventually

Key word: Spatial.

Reread. Sorry, quoting takes me awhile....

I think EXISTING in higher than four planes is redundent. Assuming that the matrice-style of explanation of forces as different dimensions is accurate (field theory), then everything in existence exists on every plane. It is simply a matter of what dimensions the being functions on at that point, ie we function on the spatial / time planes, however we are still affected by the electro-magnetic, gravitational, weak and strong nuclear forces, etc. etc.

That seems to be the line of thinking Kryian is using... There was a book a while ago that tried to debunk this idea that there can BE conscious beings such as these (ie, when this theory came out, eveyone started saying ghosts just existed on a different plane, thus could walk through walls, fly, etc. but were doing nothing wierd on their own plane). For instance, if someone could rotate along one of these other planes, it would appear that you suddenly blinked out of existence (like taking a sheet of paper that is strictly 2-dimensional and turning it sideways through the 3rd dimension). I havn't read it. But supposedly it is good...

But technically speaking, we ALL exist on all possible planes. To even begin to try and talk about something that DOESN'T is meaningless because you have the entire issue of interaction (if they don't share a plane / existential being, then there can be no interaction thus to speak of them as "gods" to us is pointless since they can't, necessarily, interact or do anything on our planes). Strictly speaking, any extra-dimensional beings then are simply other beings, not "gods".

But you can call em that I guess.