God the merciful

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dantana
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God the merciful

Post by dantana »

I've always been a bit fascinated with trying to imagine the actual logistics of how things in a deity based existence theory could work. Take for instance the merit/reward and punishment aspect. How can it work?

For it to work, it is going to have to be absolutely fair, un-biased and extremely precise. First off, god himself really isn't doing any judging. I mean, it's not like god is similar to a municipal court judge, who listens to the evidence and then makes a ruling. Facts are facts. Everything has been recorded. There is no guesswork.

In my estimation, the only way it can work is if every act, non-act, thought, whatever - of every millisecond of a persons entire life is recorded and rated and assigned a value. An extremely complex algorithm is written by god. It is so complex the machine to run it takes up an entire spirit-land stake center gymnasium. The last part though is the easy part. A machine spits out a number for every conceivable thing it thinks needs a value assigned, then anyone with a calculator does the tally.

Examples: Little Jay, who is 8 years and one day old steals a pack of gum from the local Dairy Mart. -2 values. Little John, Jay's identical twin, separated at birth, raised by a family of thieves, steals a pack of gum. -1. Jean, another twin, steals a pack, gets caught, lies about it convincedly, later feels guilty and returns it. -2, -3.5, +2. Jack, twin, raised by Mormons, steals a pack. - Value pending -. See, this is where it gets sticky. God, knowing the little fellow has been subjected to - god's gonna destroy you - talk his entire life has to wait on this one. He can't know for sure yet if the kid is bad and will prob. need destroyed, or if the kid did it in an act of defiance. Contrary to popular belief god wrote into his algo. a reward for righteous defiance.

So, eventually we come to the finish line and are waiting to see if we made the cut. It's a very precise cut. It has nothing to do with mercy or austerity, only absolute fairness and a person could miss the cut by a billionth of a billionth of a percentage point. Mercy and austerity are relative. One god might have the cut line at +70. A merciful god might then have it at +69 point something. Anyway -

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huckelberry
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Re: God the merciful

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This sounds like the cartoon of Mormon belief some Christians tell of. Well I suppose the cartoon has some purchase in all sorts of religious beliefs. I tend to believe there is a more fundamental break between those who accept God, not as a doctrine but a principal of life, and those who reject it. Gods injection of mercy is the catalyst for the separation.
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dantana
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Re: God the merciful

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I am not familiar with that cartoon Huck.

At some point, if one takes up the belief of some form of the Abrahamic religions there is the reality that some souls will receive eternal reward and some eternal punishment's. How that will be sorted out has always been fuzzy. It works best to not try to over analyze it I guess, and just go with the - god will sort it out in the end. God will look into their hearts.

But, even looking into hearts will have the same challenges. One would think that every heart is different, to the billionth of a billionth of a decimal place. And, there has to be a un-alterable, absolute cut line.
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Re: God the merciful

Post by Philo Sofee »

dantana
if one takes up the belief of some form of the Abrahamic religions there is the reality that some souls will receive eternal reward and some eternal punishment's.
And since this is a mere limited human interpretation, I no longer have any problem whatsoever in simply saying no, I just don't believe this particular interpretation. No fighting, no argument, just no. It truly is, amazingly and delightfully enough how singularly powerful a simple no is. So, No.
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Re: God the merciful

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Philo Sofee wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:54 am
dantana
if one takes up the belief of some form of the Abrahamic religions there is the reality that some souls will receive eternal reward and some eternal punishment's.
And since this is a mere limited human interpretation, I no longer have any problem whatsoever in simply saying no, I just don't believe this particular interpretation. No fighting, no argument, just no. It truly is, amazingly and delightfully enough how singularly powerful a simple no is. So, No.

Philo, are you saying that you incline toward some type of deity based existence thoughts, just without the testing, rating and sorting part?
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Re: God the merciful

Post by huckelberry »

dantana wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:51 am
I am not familiar with that cartoon Huck.

At some point, if one takes up the belief of some form of the Abrahamic religions there is the reality that some souls will receive eternal reward and some eternal punishment's. How that will be sorted out has always been fuzzy. It works best to not try to over analyze it I guess, and just go with the - god will sort it out in the end. God will look into their hearts.

But, even looking into hearts will have the same challenges. One would think that every heart is different, to the billionth of a billionth of a decimal place. And, there has to be a un-alterable, absolute cut line.
Some Christians comment that it appears Mormons are working their way to heaven. They have to complete enough necessary works. The contrasting view is , Mercy means ALL of your sins are forgiven . No adding up involved.
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Re: God the merciful

Post by Physics Guy »

I imagine that whatever is required to be saved is something like a phase transition. Am I solid or liquid, burning or not? It’s not quite a sharp distinction, and I don’t know what God might do about the thin transition zone, but it’s not an arbitrary threshold. Dramatic things really change pretty suddenly.

My guess is that divine mercy means something like God peering carefully into us for even small saveable grains, little sparks of fire. A smoldering wick he will not put out.
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Re: God the merciful

Post by dantana »

huckelberry wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 9:09 pm
dantana wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:51 am
I am not familiar with that cartoon Huck.

At some point, if one takes up the belief of some form of the Abrahamic religions there is the reality that some souls will receive eternal reward and some eternal punishment's. How that will be sorted out has always been fuzzy. It works best to not try to over analyze it I guess, and just go with the - god will sort it out in the end. God will look into their hearts.

But, even looking into hearts will have the same challenges. One would think that every heart is different, to the billionth of a billionth of a decimal place. And, there has to be a un-alterable, absolute cut line.
Some Christians comment that it appears Mormons are working their way to heaven. They have to complete enough necessary works. The contrasting view is , Mercy means ALL of your sins are forgiven . No adding up involved.
I left the church and also belief in Christianity just a few years after my mission, so I just really don't have much knowledge or memory of ecclesiastical studies. - Saved by grace, not by works - is a phrase we are all familiar with. Falling back on my mission days thinking when hearing that phrase - yes, we are saved by grace, but you still gotta do the work. You still have to be a decent human.

I do get it though, when someone excepts Jesus into their heart and is born again, they automatically are compelled to do good things. I still want to challenge though that every one of these people that become born again, do so at different levels of faith, or conviction. Everyone, and I do mean everyone is going to have some level of doubt, since no one actually knows for scientific certainty what happens to the consciousness when we die.

And so, someone, god, is going to have to make some tough calls as to what level of born again conviction makes the cut.
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dantana
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Re: God the merciful

Post by dantana »

Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 9:50 pm
I imagine that whatever is required to be saved is something like a phase transition. Am I solid or liquid, burning or not? It’s not quite a sharp distinction, and I don’t know what God might do about the thin transition zone, but it’s not an arbitrary threshold. Dramatic things really change pretty suddenly.

My guess is that divine mercy means something like God peering carefully into us for even small saveable grains, little sparks of fire. A smoldering wick he will not put out.
Saying that brings up another aspect, or subset of this topic. That is, what the holy heck even is a soul, where did it come from and why does it need sorted.

When, where and how did souls acquire the undesirable personality traits that require they be tested, rated and sorted. If god is making souls from scratch, putting them in bodies and sending them off to trials, wouldn't he make them all identical and perfect? Why would he then need to examine them by putting them through such un-equal, cluttered up, low quality trials? It appears to me it's more like he is just testing bodies.

The Mormons, with their pre-land and pre-pre-land have just simply added a couple of steps to the game. There is simply no way, place or function for a blank slate soul to self serve itself bad habits.
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever. - Lee Marvin/Monte Walsh
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Re: God the merciful

Post by Gadianton »

dantana wrote:In my estimation, the only way it can work is if every act, non-act, thought, whatever - of every millisecond of a persons entire life is recorded and rated and assigned a value.
In the Mormon version this is definitely true. It's a good question actually, as it's an extremely reductive worldview, and I wonder how DCP deals with that. Even the Book of Mormon emphasizes the ledger-like precision of justice. It's tempting to say "mercy" softens things up a little, but not so, as "Mercy can't rob justice" even a tiny bit, according to DCP's 15th century source.

"Mercy" in Mormonism is sort of like a well-designed User Interface (UI) the hides all the dirty mechanics, but the dirty mechanics are still there. Ultimately, some complex representation in fuzzy set theory will place everyone in exactly the kingdom that they earned "according to their works" per DCP -- assuming he promotes the views of the Book of Mormon.
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