At some point if enough things are attributed to chance, natural forces, physics, willful actions of humans, etc. then there is not much of a reason to believe this God exists.
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Hey god: Why do you test us if the outcome is known?
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Before "Why". How about the answer that did he in the first place
If I created the universe and that's why I'm ceo then yes of course why wouldn't it be
Or atleast no reason to believe that we are his personal pinball balls.
So that means that evil has been with god forever since god's own conception?
You may be a deist.
True, though my point is more along the lines of the idea of God existing being little more than a hunch if this God doesn't actually do anything.
Depends on how you define evil. In a biblical sense evil is basically anything that goes against God's will.
In that case, we had to have evil along god forever. So maybe god was never alone ;p
As he states. Cant have one without the other.
This is where I found it, though admittedly his statement is a bit on the vague side towards his beliefs so I could be mistaken.
The ol' "God works in mysterious ways". This is a ridiculous analogy when God has human-like qualities in the Bible, and his intention for many things in the Bible is quite clear. Your answer is the only answer when there isn't anything else convenient to say.
Yeah I saw that. I saw some other stuff too. I couldn't find anything abou him explicitly saying he believed or not. I think it's safe to say he'd think himself agnostic or spiritual but not religious.
Should people be glad they get to suffer for god's enjoyment?
You can't be all knowing and all powerful. Those two things are mutually exclusive.
For example: if you are all powerful you can make yourself forget something. But if you forget something you aren't all knowing anymore.
OrlanisWorks
Banned
That's the thing. A god can do that. It's amazing.
That actually is the conclusion of Torah studies. There is the Godhead, totally separated unreachable at a high point all its own, and an equal amount of "nothingness" , darkness, or negalight at the opposite end. But its all a part of the manifestation of God. I think that's the tree of life, right?
Because we are simple beings easily entertained. I'm supposed to refrain from criticizing the more questionable decisions and events attributed to god because his intellect is so superior that his decisions are indistinguishable from absurdity but at the same time justify them by comparing him to us and our most mundane emotions. Boy the religious sure know how to have their cake and eat it too.
I feel like this sort of defense relies on anthropomorphizing God in ways that don't actually make any sense. I mean, let's talk about why the CEO isn't accountable.
You said it was a large company, which makes me think that the CEO can't possibly be expected to have a close personal relationship with every employee such that he might not even know that a worker was having a bad day or that a worker was the sort of person likely to take that on his wife. Obviously that doesn't work for God - God trivially knows who's having a bad day and who's likely to turn violent after having a bad day, and possibly even knows who's going to have a bad day well in advance and possibly knows for sure that someone will turn violent.
The example is clearly relying on the CEO's human limitations. When you change it so that the employee clearly communicates to the CEO that he intends to go home and beat his wife, leaving his address and all that, and later the CEO is chatting on the phone with his police officer friend who happens to be patrolling near the employee's house, and still the CEO takes no action to try to help the wife, my intuition is that the CEO does bear some responsibility when the wife gets hurt.
We can raise the stakes as high as we like, and it still seems to be something that God has to deal with. If I'm out on my porch and someone walks by with an assault rifle and mentions that they're on their way to shoot up the local coffee shop, surely everyone agrees that I have at least some obligation to call the police.
A defense that runs like "we don't expect humans to take this kind of responsibility for other humans" is necessarily a bit weak, since God isn't human, but it doesn't even make sense, because we do expect humans to take this kind of responsibility for other humans given some conditions that trivially hold for God. A defense of God for these cases absolutely has to say that we can't hold God to as high of a moral standard as we can hold humans, even though he's much more able to act.
That's exactly why "mysterious ways" is the standard defense. We need to not be able to judge God - we need to lack information or something which God has access to which justifies God's inaction. It's possible to sort of gesture at what this might look like - there's the Leibnizian view that all the evil in the world is the minimum amount necessary to create an even greater amount of good, and/or one could argue that there's so much value in the simplicity and regularity of physical laws that it outweighs lots of people preventibly suffering, etc., but obviously this is all speculative piggybacking on an initial judgment that there are some mysterious ways that we need to make sense of.
RuinerPrime
Member
Lmao thought the same thing.
Mysterious ways is the perfect way to defend one's concept of god and the customs you create and laws you pass in his name.
Blacks shouldn't marry whites, god separated the races for a reason.
Homosexuals shouldn't marry, god only intends for men and women to marry.
Sodomy must be outlawed, we decree that homosexuality is a choice, because otherwise this puts gods design prowess in question, and so anal and oral sex are unnatural.
Women who are not virgins at the time of marriage should be stoned.
Slavery is A-OK in god's book.
Etc etc
don't question it, what would you know. Don't make me stone you.
Blacks shouldn't marry whites, god separated the races for a reason.
Homosexuals shouldn't marry, god only intends for men and women to marry.
Sodomy must be outlawed, we decree that homosexuality is a choice, because otherwise this puts gods design prowess in question, and so anal and oral sex are unnatural.
Women who are not virgins at the time of marriage should be stoned.
Slavery is A-OK in god's book.
Etc etc
don't question it, what would you know. Don't make me stone you.
abstract alien
Member
Really enjoyed this
These couple of points I'm going to bring are my personal beliefs from studying the bible and from life experiences. I'm just bringing this here to provide another look at this matter. I also didn't read the whole thread, so if I'm repeating stuff, I'm sorry. I ask that you be open minded and think about it honestly. Also, English isn't my main language so sorry if there's any mistake
1. There's a couple ways that "all knowing" can be interpreted. You could say that God just know everything, that He knows everything you are going to be tomorrow, every choice you will make, every thought you will think and every felling you will feel. I don't think it's like that, because then you reach problems like what is being asked about in the OP. In my view, God knows every possibility. Like, if you come to a fork in a road, he know what will happen if go left, if you go right, if you go back, if you just stand there, if you suddenly started dancing, if you kill yourself, if you sleep, etc. He knows the possibles moves that every particle in the universe can make, what what will result from them.
The thing is that you can see the universe and it's laws as a system. He made the system to work for him (And obviously can interfere with everything, so if he wants one of the various possibilities to happen he can make that happen). For example, let's say I have a bunch of MP3 on my computer and I want to pass them to my phone. I can go to the folder and copy the MP3 and them paste on the phone, or drag and drop, whatever. But being a programmer I can make a code that every time I connect my phone on the PC, it grabs every file that has been modified since the last time I plugged my phone and copy them to the phone. Similarly, God created systems that work for him. Why make a bunch of planet by yourself when you can make a system that generate them randomly? You could ask "God could just snap his fingers and every planed appears on their location, fully functioning. Why would he make a system to do that?". If you think about, for example, photosynthesis, it is a system that maintains plants living, instead of God doing that. (And I feel I'm really not explaining this well, so just imagine a system that would completely substitute God manually doing it.)
That way we have free will. We have choices. The world is the way it is, because we made choices that lead to this. The systems are working on their own. People die in natural disasters because the system works, and it's just doing what it's programmed to do. It reads the variables we altered and just output the results. Now, where does Christianity fit into this? God gives as a choice of turning to him and to make a relationship with him. And since he has an ideal of what a person should be and do, he works in us to make us more like that, because we chose. He knows the outcomes and he can instruct and help you reach the ideal outcome. And ANYONE can receive it was well, they just have to want it and commit to it.
2. Now, to the question itself, you can say is both "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "There's three types of people: The ones who learn with the mistakes of others, the ones who makes an mistake and learn with it, and the ones who keep repeating the same mistake over and over". For the first one, the troubles you might face even if you're following God it's about molding you, making you stronger. Sometimes (and depending on the people) having you experience something first hand is the best way to make someone grow. For example, I am an introvert so I'm attached to very few people and I don't view death as something extraordinary. I don't feel the need to mourn or to feel sad that someone died as it's something that happens naturally. Everyone will die someday (Of course have your life taken against your will is another story). I experienced 2 deaths in my family, both grandfathers who I wasn't close with. But one day, I might lose someone very important and that might change my views on death. Or maybe not. But it's definitively something that only going trough it could change me.
For the second one, the first type, that learns with others mistakes, that's what the Bible is for. the bible is NOT a manual, a Life 101. It's there to provide experiences, to make you think. There are many types of people in the world, with different needs, different abilities, different problems. So the bible is not direct (The only things it IS direct, it's when it's universal, like "Don't kill people") because of this. You have to interpret and see what applies most to you and work with that (That's not "pick what you want"). For example I struggle most with pride, and due to my introversion I really don't have much problems going against social norms. I don't drink and never felt compelled to. It's pretty easy for me to not abuse that (at least right now), so I can disregard most of stuff about this because it comes naturally, but the things that I do have trouble, like I said, pride, that's is what I should focus on. And someone might have the complete opposite of me, so the stuff that would be useful to me in the Bible, might not be useful at all to them. The second type of person, is the "makes you stronger" I mentioned earlier, The last type, is why Christians want to share their world view. To us, some stuff you might be doing can be considered as an mistake, and we don't want to see you repeating that.
This is too long already so I'm going to cut it here. I could keep going, and be more detailed, explaining some nuances and whatnot, but I'm not in the mood. I hope I could shed some light on this for you guys, and I sincerely hope that this might've changed your views on Christianity. I see a lot of people assuming stuff about it and they all talk like they know everything about it while in reality they don't. These stuff you only understand by studying and living trough these lenses.
1. There's a couple ways that "all knowing" can be interpreted. You could say that God just know everything, that He knows everything you are going to be tomorrow, every choice you will make, every thought you will think and every felling you will feel. I don't think it's like that, because then you reach problems like what is being asked about in the OP. In my view, God knows every possibility. Like, if you come to a fork in a road, he know what will happen if go left, if you go right, if you go back, if you just stand there, if you suddenly started dancing, if you kill yourself, if you sleep, etc. He knows the possibles moves that every particle in the universe can make, what what will result from them.
The thing is that you can see the universe and it's laws as a system. He made the system to work for him (And obviously can interfere with everything, so if he wants one of the various possibilities to happen he can make that happen). For example, let's say I have a bunch of MP3 on my computer and I want to pass them to my phone. I can go to the folder and copy the MP3 and them paste on the phone, or drag and drop, whatever. But being a programmer I can make a code that every time I connect my phone on the PC, it grabs every file that has been modified since the last time I plugged my phone and copy them to the phone. Similarly, God created systems that work for him. Why make a bunch of planet by yourself when you can make a system that generate them randomly? You could ask "God could just snap his fingers and every planed appears on their location, fully functioning. Why would he make a system to do that?". If you think about, for example, photosynthesis, it is a system that maintains plants living, instead of God doing that. (And I feel I'm really not explaining this well, so just imagine a system that would completely substitute God manually doing it.)
That way we have free will. We have choices. The world is the way it is, because we made choices that lead to this. The systems are working on their own. People die in natural disasters because the system works, and it's just doing what it's programmed to do. It reads the variables we altered and just output the results. Now, where does Christianity fit into this? God gives as a choice of turning to him and to make a relationship with him. And since he has an ideal of what a person should be and do, he works in us to make us more like that, because we chose. He knows the outcomes and he can instruct and help you reach the ideal outcome. And ANYONE can receive it was well, they just have to want it and commit to it.
2. Now, to the question itself, you can say is both "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "There's three types of people: The ones who learn with the mistakes of others, the ones who makes an mistake and learn with it, and the ones who keep repeating the same mistake over and over". For the first one, the troubles you might face even if you're following God it's about molding you, making you stronger. Sometimes (and depending on the people) having you experience something first hand is the best way to make someone grow. For example, I am an introvert so I'm attached to very few people and I don't view death as something extraordinary. I don't feel the need to mourn or to feel sad that someone died as it's something that happens naturally. Everyone will die someday (Of course have your life taken against your will is another story). I experienced 2 deaths in my family, both grandfathers who I wasn't close with. But one day, I might lose someone very important and that might change my views on death. Or maybe not. But it's definitively something that only going trough it could change me.
For the second one, the first type, that learns with others mistakes, that's what the Bible is for. the bible is NOT a manual, a Life 101. It's there to provide experiences, to make you think. There are many types of people in the world, with different needs, different abilities, different problems. So the bible is not direct (The only things it IS direct, it's when it's universal, like "Don't kill people") because of this. You have to interpret and see what applies most to you and work with that (That's not "pick what you want"). For example I struggle most with pride, and due to my introversion I really don't have much problems going against social norms. I don't drink and never felt compelled to. It's pretty easy for me to not abuse that (at least right now), so I can disregard most of stuff about this because it comes naturally, but the things that I do have trouble, like I said, pride, that's is what I should focus on. And someone might have the complete opposite of me, so the stuff that would be useful to me in the Bible, might not be useful at all to them. The second type of person, is the "makes you stronger" I mentioned earlier, The last type, is why Christians want to share their world view. To us, some stuff you might be doing can be considered as an mistake, and we don't want to see you repeating that.
This is too long already so I'm going to cut it here. I could keep going, and be more detailed, explaining some nuances and whatnot, but I'm not in the mood. I hope I could shed some light on this for you guys, and I sincerely hope that this might've changed your views on Christianity. I see a lot of people assuming stuff about it and they all talk like they know everything about it while in reality they don't. These stuff you only understand by studying and living trough these lenses.
User Name Here
Member
He said not to take anything personal and that he was just testing stuff out. You should see what he is doing in the other versions of reality he set up. What you see going here is nothing! The other stuff would really screw with your head.
Winterfang
Banned
Fedora jokes are banned now? Dark times ahead of us.
not psycho
Member
Suppose that in order to reach some higher state of enlightenment, it is necessary to live in a world of evil and pain first. Then God isn't testing anybody, nor is he planning on punishing anybody. Rather he is helping people reach a higher state.
So why not create people already in the higher state? Maybe he did. Remember that God cannot do anything which is logically impossible. It might be logically impossible to exist in a "higher state" with no knowledge of evil or pain. But why actually have to live it? Why not just implant memories? Well, who's to say that what we currently are isn't just the implanted memories of a higher being?
So why not create people already in the higher state? Maybe he did. Remember that God cannot do anything which is logically impossible. It might be logically impossible to exist in a "higher state" with no knowledge of evil or pain. But why actually have to live it? Why not just implant memories? Well, who's to say that what we currently are isn't just the implanted memories of a higher being?
hhhnnnnnggghhhh nostalgia.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I tidied my point up a little, edited the OP slightly. It wasn't getting across what I meant well, a busy work day and being a bit giddy from the crazy heat (what has gotten into you, England!) probably wasn't the best environment for attempting to articulate a succinct point.
Oops! Carry on! :3
Oops! Carry on! :3
QuantumDerp
Member
My response is this, beware, this answer may make no sense at all. But I spoiler tagged it just in case...
You are god, you created this world to be your playing game, it is a rpg that you created, yes inception, in order to cull your boredom. SO basically, you are god, i am god, every one on this thread is god, however we are not all in the same timeline. You will ask, but i should know I am god, but you, god put a seal of his memory until judgement day, or until he experience every single life he created. Which means he played the last of us, the amount it sold and it was a new experience each time. Which is why he created this universe.
Every single sentence here is either an assumption or a supposition. It boils down to "if what I say is true, then it's true!"
As long as the suffering goes to the uneducated and impoverished, works for me.
And the issue here is that some suffering doesn't make us stronger or benefit us in any way. For example, a woman and child get mugged and killed on the street shows absolutely no signs of beneficial suffering.
And if you actually posit this idea, then it stands to reason that humans have no reason to stop the suffering of others. After all, it's supposed to help them in the end as you claim, right? But this black and white view is not how it really works in practice.
What's the point of trillions of stars/planets and a constantly expanding universe? Assuming God mainly cares for humans, the scale of the universe makes no sense. Humans aren't even a blip. It's like a mother making excess food for ten families, even though she only plans to feed one.
Second, there's no reason natural disasters had to have to been programmed, unless you posit that God's design doesn't work without tons of negative factors. In which case it's simply bad design and unbecoming of an omnipotent being.
The issue here is that some people may not receive the chance to make moral choices at all, such as if you have a baby dying in young age due to factors out of its control. So this baby never develops in life and thus never develops for the afterlife, and is screwed on both sides. What is God's judgment then?
You're the only one positing black and white views.
Really? So can you explain what benefit is gained from the example I made up? You can't possibly make the excuse that all suffering is beneficial.
That's a loaded question. You're asking me to say why the death of a mother and her child could be beneficial. You know that's setting me up to look like a shithead, right?
The woman and child. Even if you assume that suffering is necessary for growth, it's too easy to get robbed of your life before you have an opportunity to truly be (morally?) great and set for the afterlife. In which case, how does God judge in this case? How many people die and become truly great? Is this really an efficient system?
If you realize that a potential answer to the idea that suffering is necessary for growth can make you look like as shithead, it outlines the problem with the argument. Because you have to excuse a lot to get the argument to be reasonable.
CornBurrito
Member
How do we know a god can do that?
How do you know this? And why couldn't god make us a species capable of learning without directly suffering?
I read your post before the edit, damn man, cold blooded lol
God judges us by our choices, so if you were to die as a child before you can make your own informed and conscious decisions, I imagine you'd get a free pass to heaven.
Just because making an argument would make me look like an asshole doesn't mean the argument is unreasonable. I know plenty of reasonable assholes.
I believe God wants us to be great and not just merely happy because I have faith that he does. There are certainly things you can learn without knowing misfortune. But there are also certain things you can only understand by having suffered. Again, I am arguing against the assumption that suffering is intrinsically bad. Indeed, when I picture a nonloving God, I imagine a world where happiness is this neutral always-on state of being. Pain enriches life and thus a world where everyone is always happy is meaningless.
CharminUltra
Member
WOW.
I knew I had walked into a trap there, so I edited
While you might get a free pass to heaven, you don't get a chance to grow spiritually before you go there. You're going to be at a spiritual disadvantage in a place where you're nothing but a spirit. Though at the same time, at least you're not at risk of going to hell like you may be later in life. But either way someone loses something important.
Now, if simply getting to heaven is the ultimate goal, and growing spiritually is ideal but a secondary goal, our life on Earth for the sole purpose of spiritual growth doesn't seem like it's...everything.
Anyway I'm not saying that pain may not enrich life, I'm just saying that all pain isn't equal, and many people are going to get screwed over.
I wouldn't consider getting to heaven a goal per se, so much as I consider it an inevitability for anyone for anyone who cares for and respects their fellow man. It's hard for me to consider that a "goal" that you actively work towards in your daily life.
I feel like there's some tension here, because the system is denying that child the opportunity to be great, and making people great was the whole point of allowing all this suffering. It's very valuable to get to heaven after a full life on Earth, right? And the child is denied that, and very unfairly so. At the very least, this is horribly disrespectful of the child as a person - you're saying that God set up a system that makes children suffer and die in order to give other people (but not those children) an opportunity to have the best sort of afterlife. This seems really, really hard to square with the idea that God loves every individual personally. You can't just dismiss this with "the child is no longer suffering", especially if the child did suffer quite a bit. The child is a person too.
And I think this is the sort of thing you have to argue about, because this is the obvious sort of case that makes your theory look implausible. You don't get to say "well, endorsing the implications of my theory would make me look like an asshole, so I won't consider that" when your theory is supposed to be about the system that an infinitely good and wise being would set up. It's a pretty big problem if God's plan sounds like something only an asshole would endorse.
I'm confused. It's not like there are different levels of heaven and babies get sent to a lower level and adults who've lived full lives get sent to a nicer heaven. Like when you say "It's very valuable to get to heaven after a full life on Earth, right?" I'm tempted to just answer "uh, no?" I mean I don't consider it any more valuable than going to heaven after dying as a baby.
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