God is evil, or likes it, or enjoys it whatever

[dastardly stem]

Stem, I do not think the primary problem is ignorant people but the aspects of ourselves which can be intentionally selfish, uncaring and even destructive.

Thanks, huckelberry. I' pointed out how believing in Christianity results in selfishness. What do you think of that case? We're all selfish in a sense. So I mean no offense. It appears to me God endorses a selfish life, given Christianity. I wonder if that's a good thing.

I think you have a point observing that people have a sense of good and an ability to do good which we share with each other. I think you are correct to observe that we would not have any awareness of good and evil without some real good in ourselves. There is a penchant in some lines of theology to speak as though there is no ability to do real good in humans.I view that idea as a dangerous exaggeration. It emphasizes the need for people to change which I can see. It misses large pieces of our access to how to change in a positive way. I think that is what you are pointing out.
///
Huckelberry's belief: Humans have a sense and desire for good which is part of who we are and how biologically we live. I think that being faithful to that dimension of ourselves is being faithful to our creator, God. So faith is not believing this or that religious doctrine it is real response to our potential for good. Faith is possible for people of all sorts of beliefs or skepticism about beliefs. Religious story and ideas can call us to faith, call us to look more clearly at our unfaith call us to accept renewal and forgiveness.

On the proposition that faith is a real response to our potential for good. Great. I don't think we need a God belief for that at all. If that's what we mean by religion or belief, I'd be on board.

About that I never knew you scripture, I cannot force you to read it differently than you are doing. I do not think the scripture is very clear, I do not read it at all like you are . I remember some Calvinists might see it as you are using it but I feel no obligation to agree.

How do you take the scripture? What does the Lord mean when he says "he never knew you"? Or what does he mean overall? It feels pretty clear to me.

[huckelberry]

Stem, I do not think the primary problem is ignorant people but the aspects of ourselves which can be intentionally selfish, uncaring and even destructive.

Thanks, huckelberry. I' pointed out how believing in Christianity results in selfishness. What do you think of that case? We're all selfish in a sense. So I mean no offense. It appears to me God endorses a selfish life, given Christianity. I wonder if that's a good thing.



On the proposition that faith is a real response to our potential for good. Great. I don't think we need a God belief for that at all. If that's what we mean by religion or belief, I'd be on board.

About that I never knew you scripture, I cannot force you to read it differently than you are doing. I do not think the scripture is very clear, I do not read it at all like you are . I remember some Calvinists might see it as you are using it but I feel no obligation to agree.

How do you take the scripture? What does the Lord mean when he says "he never knew you"? Or what does he mean overall? It feels pretty clear to me.

Stem, thinking of selfish Christianity i can imagine some people may only find opportunity to feel better than other people. Perhaps a worse case version of the problem you mentioned in the opening post.,You said:
"But if he's really good, isn't it better to work for good now, then to hope for a reward later? The latter feels like a selfish move, the former not so much."
I think your point here makes sense.

I think the cases of people who do not help others due their own personal sense of superiority and excelling virtue and piety are the individuals Jesus warns they will be told I never knew you. I gather you read this as Jesus not knowing them to be the primary cause yet Jesus specifically said seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened. I am inclined to interpret the odd statement in the context of other things Jesus said. Considering Jesus usual meaning I hear the scripture you mention as an abbreviation of the picture of judgement where people who helped other are accepted even though they were unsure why and people who expected to be promoted were not because they did not help.(Matt 25:31-46)

/// I am making an addition here.

I found myself thinking that that piece of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is not used to my memory to support peoples doctrine of predestination though I gather Stem, that you are reading it that way. Out of curiosity I checked google for lists of scriptures people see as the Bible teaching predestination. I reviewed a couple of lists of 25 selections and a list of 60 selections. None included Matthew 7:23. My guess why would be it is that it is to closely linked with actions people chose not to do.

[sock puppet]

I'd suppose if there were a God as often defined by people of faith in our western world, he'd have to enjoy pain and suffering that we mortals go through. And I suppose as poorly defined as he often is--a description of nothing and yet everything all at once--he may also enjoy some of the joys some people get to experience as well. After all if we take the God who is worshipped by the many millions, the guy in the Bible, he's not only a God who forgives sin for at least some, he's also the one who commands and inspires war, including the murder and rape of many. He's the pissy guy who ignores many believers for being the type that "builds their house on sand" and yet he is also the guy who condemns those who think it good practice to steer clear of prostitutes and sinners. He's the kind one who wants to fix a few, but he's also the infinitely angry one whose always ready to condemn anyone who doesn't believe.

These days though, believers prefer the God who loves everyone and in discussing his possibility they ignore the teachings in the Bible or the traditional beliefs about him. As it turns out the best way to convince another of him is to get others to picture the best thing ever and imagine he's the only possible source of the good things in your mind. But this newer description of God makes me wonder what it is we must imagine. After all people still suffer. I suppose we must conclude if there is a great and magnificent one, better than all else, loving and kind to the nth degree, he doesn't care much if people suffer mortally. He may or may not bless them later. And to him, our little existence here must not mean much. It's a mere blip on the radar of our eternal existences. ANd yet, somehow we've convinced ourselves we must believe in him. We must do what he wants now, else he'll ruin us forever.

Doesn't an imagined God, assumed by most, suggest a level of selfishness or narcissism? I don't mean to be condemning per se, but it was the type of thought that sent me reeling on the matter. I don't see why the idea is a good one. I suppose if there is a God and he continues to go to extensive effort to hide himself from us, then it feels better to me to live in the mindset he's not really there. I suppose in a pascal wager type of way, as looney as that reasoning is, it may condemn us eternally. But if he's really good, isn't it better to work for good now, then to hope for a reward later? The latter feels like a selfish move, the former not so much.

Mormons seem to have taken the lyrics of a Joan Osborne song a bit too much to heart:

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?

[Doctor Steuss]

I am almost 100% sure that if a creator God exists there is an afterlife.

lol. Yes. I suppose if there is a creator God there may be an afterlife. Putting that probability at 100% seems silly, but whatever. The probability of God is low enough it kind of makes this proposition worthless.

This triggered me to think of my own actions when I create things..

When I make something, I don't feel the need to create a secondary thing to keep the thing that I made when it eventually breaks. I make a piece of furniture, or build a computer, or design a vivarium -- when they break, or die, I have never felt compelled to make a separate space to put them in for them to exist in perpetuity.

So... either creator gods are de facto hoarders, or an afterlife isn't necessarily a certainty.

Naturally, I'm not comparing my tinkerings to the creation of a human; but, when one views a deity who creates universes... the creation of humans is pretty much menial tinkering.



[This Space Reserved For "His Ways, Our Ways"]

[MG 2.0]

lol. Yes. I suppose if there is a creator God there may be an afterlife. Putting that probability at 100% seems silly, but whatever. The probability of God is low enough it kind of makes this proposition worthless.

This triggered me to think of my own actions when I create things..

When I make something, I don't feel the need to create a secondary thing to keep the thing that I made when it eventually breaks. I make a piece of furniture, or build a computer, or design a vivarium -- when they break, or die, I have never felt compelled to make a separate space to put them in for them to exist in perpetuity.

So... either creator gods are de facto hoarders, or an afterlife isn't necessarily a certainty.

Naturally, I'm not comparing my tinkerings to the creation of a human; but, when one views a deity who creates universes... the creation of humans is pretty much menial tinkering.



[This Space Reserved For "His Ways, Our Ways"]

Mormonism has a different twist on ‘creation’. And that is, we are coeternal with God. God didn’t create us ex nihilo. If the elements from which we came are subject to the same eternal conditions as those of God we would co exist into eternity by default. I remember a scripture something to the effect that ‘God stood in the midst of them all’ back in the pre planning stages for mortality on this earth. We were with Him.

Of course, this is all LDS thinking/doctrine, but I have a difficult time imagining a God living alone in whatever sort of habitation it is that He hangs out in. Seems as though he’d want some company. And not only company, but folks He can actually talk and chill out with and do whatever eternal beings do and accomplish together.

I can’t really visualize of a God who would creat sentient beings capable of progress and then dispense with them at some point.

That’s why I think that if there is a God, we’re eternal in some respect right along with Him. The nuts and bolts of how all that is put together and looks are hard to wrap my mind around, but there it is, nonetheless.

Beats total nihilism.

DS would like me to somehow prove God’s existence as if the ‘greats’ haven’t been working with the ‘god problem’ for millennia. I mentioned to him that believing in God becomes a matter of choice. But if I’m going to make that choice I’m hard pressed not to think that I also fit in with a grander scheme of things than simply snuffing out when I die.

As a side note, there’s a LOT of literature out there that seems to point towards some type of existence after death. Sure, all these folks could be deluded in one way or another. But I’d like to give them some credence or benefit of a doubt. A lot of those folks are educated and intelligent people.

Regards,
MG

[Rivendale]

As a side note, there’s a LOT of literature out there that seems to point towards some type of existence after death. Sure, all these folks could be deluded in one way or another. But I’d like to give them some credence or benefit of a doubt. A lot of those folks are educated and intelligent people.

Regards,
MG

Susan Blackmore has researched this also.

It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.

Notice that almost all of the accounts of the people that have these experiences do so in their own cultural milieu. And even worse I have never heard of any information brought back that was useful or testable. Seeing your long dead uncle in the cloths he drowned in does little for us trapped in the mortal coil. Really like the way Gemli puts it.

Almost all religions make proclamations of the existence of beings, afterlives, rewards, punishments and scores of other things that are by definition impossible to examine, because, like, uh, they don't exist. It's not the beings that do the heavy lifting: it's the other people who drum such things in into our dear little ears, because we've got to be carefully taught.

And furthermore...

It is theists who are making the claims that cannot be supported with evidence. They are making a positive claim of the existence of supernatural beings that cannot be shown to exist in the real world. There have been scores of such claims for centuries, all of which are different, except for the underlying theme of attributing unknown phenomena to an invisible conscious agent. All of the gods, ghosts, demons, specters, sprites, shades or the other uncounted number of invisible agents do not exist, and have never existed. They are created in the imaginations of humans who rely on them as things that can be appealed to for special favors, such as living eternally. gemli does not want to die, but neither does he want to demean or diminish the reality of his own existence by begging the invisible for the impossible.

[Xenophon]

This triggered me to think of my own actions when I create things..

When I make something, I don't feel the need to create a secondary thing to keep the thing that I made when it eventually breaks. I make a piece of furniture, or build a computer, or design a vivarium -- when they break, or die, I have never felt compelled to make a separate space to put them in for them to exist in perpetuity.

So... either creator gods are de facto hoarders, or an afterlife isn't necessarily a certainty.

Naturally, I'm not comparing my tinkerings to the creation of a human; but, when one views a deity who creates universes... the creation of humans is pretty much menial tinkering.



[This Space Reserved For "His Ways, Our Ways"]

How would your answer change if your example was about your son versus an inanimate object? Not trying to hit you with a "gotcha" here but I think if one's perspective on god(s) are that they are loving creators that regard us more as children then the equation changes quite a bit. I know that our time is fleeting and I do many things to preserve and extend the time I share with loved ones.

For me, if you start with the assumption of "Loving Creator God in the Image of Parents" and all of the power that would come with then an afterlife is a fairly logical conclusion. Sure there are further arguments about whether creating an afterlife is a power that naturally flows from the creation of life (it certainly isn't for us) but I can easily see the steps behind MG's thinking.

ETA: I think this is why humans being created in God's image is a fairly important bit of Mormon thinking. It allows for the superimposing of our understanding of life creation and the family back onto God (obviously they view the sequence of events as reverse of that). It prevents the framing of our creation as "menial tinkering" and instead it paints us as the most important thing in this universe, God literally created everything just for us so what's an eternal afterlife on top of that?

[Doctor Steuss]

How would your answer change if your example was about your son versus an inanimate object? Not trying to hit you with a "gotcha" here but I think if one's perspective on god(s) are that they are loving creators that regard us more as children then the equation changes quite a bit. I know that our time is fleeting and I do many things to preserve and extend the time I share with loved ones.

For me, if you start with the assumption of "Loving Creator God in the Image of Parents" and all of the power that would come with then an afterlife is a fairly logical conclusion. Sure there are further arguments about whether creating an afterlife is a power that naturally flows from the creation of life (it certainly isn't for us) but I can easily see the steps behind MG's thinking.

ETA: I think this is why humans being created in God's image is a fairly important bit of Mormon thinking. It allows for the superimposing of our understanding of life creation and the family back onto God (obviously they view the sequence of events as reverse of that). It prevents the framing of our creation as "menial tinkering" and instead it paints us as the most important thing in this universe, God literally created everything just for us so what's an eternal afterlife on top of that?

I guess (currently, at least) I see it as a kind of hubris to assume that if there were a creator God, that we would be the thing that's in its image. Don't get me wrong, I can't even comprehend how much humans are absolutely mind-blowing. But, why not assume stars are the creation that God made in its own image, since they themselves create the very building blocks of just about everything? Why not the universe itself, as it is constantly expanding, creating, growing? Looking around at the vastness of everything (biological and not), and humans just seem so silly.

It's an excellent question Xeno, and if one approaches it as a loving creator God that looks at humans (and possibly all living things) as children of sorts, then the the creation of an eternal existence of peace and happiness would most definitely be the default position in my opinion. However, circling back to the ole problem of evil; we'd then be left with either acknowledging the limitations in ability and power that said creator God has, or acknowledging that the absolute horrors and trauma some are inflicted to are purposefully allowed to happen, despite the ability to intervene. The latter almost seems necessary as the former would mean that a Being capable of loading the quantum dice of creation is simultaneously unable to have a child rapist trip over something in a moment, throwing the timing enough for them to never find the opportunity with their victim. Or, maybe God is able to, and has done it regularly, and then we are faced with why It then lets it happen to some and not others? With each layer, or question regarding a Parental Deity, it just opens up another wound masked as a question.

[Xenophon]

I guess (currently, at least) I see it as a kind of hubris to assume that if there were a creator God, that we would be the thing that's in its image. Don't get me wrong, I can't even comprehend how much humans are absolutely mind-blowing. But, why not assume stars are the creation that God made in its own image, since they themselves create the very building blocks of just about everything? Why not the universe itself, as it is constantly expanding, creating, growing? Looking around at the vastness of everything (biological and not), and humans just seem so silly.

It's an excellent question Xeno, and if one approaches it as a loving creator God that looks at humans (and possibly all living things) as children of sorts, then the the creation of an eternal existence of peace and happiness would most definitely be the default position in my opinion. However, circling back to the ole problem of evil; we'd then be left with either acknowledging the limitations in ability and power that said creator God has, or acknowledging that the absolute horrors and trauma some are inflicted to are purposefully allowed to happen, despite the ability to intervene. The latter almost seems necessary as the former would mean that a Being capable of loading the quantum dice of creation is simultaneously unable to have a child rapist trip over something in a moment, throwing the timing enough for them to never find the opportunity with their victim. Or, maybe God is able to, and has done it regularly, and then we are faced with why It then lets it happen to some and not others? With each layer, or question regarding a Parental Deity, it just opens up another wound masked as a question.

Oof, I just vaporized a long reply to the void somehow ("Is that you God?!?). Allow me to summate. You and I are very closely aligned here Steuss and I'm glad I prodded for more. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[MG 2.0]

The latter almost seems necessary as the former would mean that a Being capable of loading the quantum dice of creation is simultaneously unable to have a child rapist trip over something in a moment, throwing the timing enough for them to never find the opportunity with their victim. Or, maybe God is able to, and has done it regularly, and then we are faced with why It then lets it happen to some and not others? With each layer, or question regarding a Parental Deity, it just opens up another wound masked as a question.

A Hitler. A Laban. A Pol Pot, under who’s leadership Cambodia experienced mass killings of perceived government opponents, coupled with malnutrition and poor medical care, and the deaths of between 1.5 and 2 million people, approximately a quarter of Cambodia's population; a process later termed the Cambodian genocide.

The question is where does God draw the line in intervening with the evil that exists on smaller vs. larger number scales. I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know that anyone does.

For me, it comes down to…if I’m going to believe in a loving God…to trust Him. And also have a certain degree of confidence that through the Atonement of Christ things will all be made right. Granted, that’s a HUGE leap of hope and faith.

If I start with the assumption of a loving creator God, however, then the trust issues that I may have are lessened. But if I look at the problem of evil as being my primary concern then I too could find reason to doubt the existence of a loving creator God. In my mind all I and others CAN do is try to find ways to alleviate the pain and suffering we see around us at home and abroad and act as ‘God’s hands’ whenever and wherever we can.

I think God would be and is happy when we do so and some of the tears that He weeps for mankind in their fallen condition are lessened. I would also refer to the doctrine of the LDS Church in regards to opposition in ALL things. The world seems to apparently be rigged up to function/operate in this manner. The reasons for such are partially known to us but fully known to God.

At least I hope so.

Regards,
MG