Perhaps the response to this conundrum is "God moves in mysterious ways" but frankly, that doesn't cut it.
Genisis, in particular the whole "Tree of Knowledge" bit.
First of all, God doesn't want anything to bother the tree, right? He doesn't want any animals to eat of the tree and get free will, so he... just tells them not to eat from it?
Then, he just walks (floats or whatever) away, without so much as leaving a reminder note.
Now remember, nobody has free will here, as that sort of came from the 'tree' event, so it can't be a test or anything.
Here God is either incredibly gullible or just devious, because anyone who's dealt with humans before will know that telling them not to do something and leaving is the most effective way of getting them to do it. we'll get back to this.
Now, Satan shows up. God can make the heavens and earth, knows and sees all, ect., ect., but he can't hire a bouncer? I mean, god, by definition, knows that Satan is there, tempting people to eat apples that He doesn't want eaten, but God doesn't do anything about it.
Why Evil?Why not eternal happiness? Because happiness can't exist without sadness. There is no such thing as good or benevolent without bad or evil. I've heard this so many times before, I'm surprised no-one else here has mentioned it but reality as it exists is based on duality and contrast. Elementary philosophy.
God is an asshole.Remember in the Bible when it says "Man created in God's image"? Most people interpret that as man with some essence of God, but sometimes I think the opposite makes more sense.
The idea of an all-powerful schizophrenic jackass terrifies me.It's kind of funny. While you refuse to believe in a God because of this, a number of people find this as motivation to do the opposite. You think he doesn't deserve your respect, so you don't give it. Problem is with that in my opinion, if you try that kind of thing in real life, it always ends with someone kicking down your front door.
It's not from the Tree of Knowledge.So what was "The Knowledge"? That we can refuse him?
So what was "The Knowledge"? That we can refuse him?
QuoteWhy Evil?Why not eternal happiness? Because happiness can't exist without sadness. There is no such thing as good or benevolent without bad or evil. I've heard this so many times before, I'm surprised no-one else here has mentioned it but reality as it exists is based on duality and contrast. Elementary philosophy.
QuoteThe idea of an all-powerful schizophrenic jackass terrifies me.It's kind of funny. While you refuse to believe in a God because of this, a number of people find this as motivation to do the opposite. You think he doesn't deserve your respect, so you don't give it. Problem is with that in my opinion, if you try that kind of thing in real life, it always ends with someone kicking down your front door.
QuoteIt's not from the Tree of Knowledge.So what was "The Knowledge"? That we can refuse him?
Wow, sounds exactly like me when I used to hang out on a religious forum. I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who had gigantic problems with the Garden of Eden story.
So God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. He makes Man, makes a fruit that will give Man the power to doubt, and tells him to never ever eat the fruit, then nothing. Either God is short-sighted in a way completely outside of human perspective, or he set up his own creation to an impossible standard.
An entire eternity of Judgment and suffering is the result. In the Old Testament, there's a story of a man who tried to conduct a census of all the kingdoms in Israel. God decreed that no one shall number the Chosen People, so he sent a plague to kill 70000 people, so the census would be wrong.
I have my own answer for this. I like how you mention the way God is expected to be benevolent and loving. I don't subscribe to this, and for most of human history no one else did. The idea that God loves everyone and allowed to exist for some bizare purpose of testing our faith in him a relatively modern invention, mostly from just the Protestant reformation. The question "why do bad things happen to good people" didn't bother ancient people. And Christianity and Islam are the only religions that really have any problem reconciling that.
Why? Because virtually all ancient religions, including Christianity until just a couple centuries ago had a good all purpose answer - God is an asshole. Why is there evil in the world? Because God wanted there to be evil. Why aren't all our prayers answered? Because God doesn't love us. Believing that God and the universe are inherently cruel solves pretty much everything.
Some people ask me why I refuse to believe in God (invariably the modern Christian interpretation of God). Because if you take all the strife of the world, all the stories of mind-blowing atrocity in the Bible, and all the powers of omniscience and omnipotence attributed to God, and then try to reconcile that against the idea that God is all-loving, the only logical answer is that it's all wrong. That God, if extant, is an asshole is the only rational explanation. I hope for all our sakes' that the God presented in modern Judeo-Christian philosophy doesn't exist, because the idea of an all-powerful schizophrenic jackass terrifies me.
Not that it's god's fault, I mean, who in their right mind could consider that their creation could ever have any independent significance...
If you already possess absolute knowledge, you do not need tests.
All this only makes sense if you assume that the mind of God works in human terms ... humans are ... incapable of understanding any but the most immediate and local aspects of the universe, it's absurd to suppose that the being which created/runs the universe would behave in ways that make sense to us.
...But that if god does exist that the world is to god much like imagination is to humans, and that an all powerful being is likely to be curious about limitations, so we struggle because god doesn't...Interesting... If I understand you correctly, then "God" in one form or annother, is a singular, unlimited, and immaterial entity. This entity, bored, is imagining what it would be like to be a multiple, limited, material entity- i.e., mankind. So we are really all part of the thought processes- if we can call it that- of God, and God's mind is the universe.
All this only makes sense if you assume that the mind of God works in human terms ... humans are ... incapable of understanding any but the most immediate and local aspects of the universe, it's absurd to suppose that the being which created/runs the universe would behave in ways that make sense to us.
Why? If god's actions are perfectly rational, they would be self-evidently rational; in the same way that the most perfect machine will be so clearly labeled and mechanically elegant that anyone could understand it, the perfect thought process would be clearly understandable to anyone.
And isn't it the whole purpose of religion to explain the actions of god(s)? What kind of explanation is "Well, we can't know"?I don't know! I'm just pointing out why it's ridiculous to hold a being like God to human standards of behavior and motivation.
So there are a number of people (http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page) who take the Bible literally.I would like to point out a lot of this confusion can be solved by not using this particular restraint.
Humans are not the center of the Universe, God is.Actually, we are, as the center of the universe is where the observer is and because space-time curves in such a way that traveling infinately in one direction brings you full circle, I think.
Humans are not the center of the Universe, God is.Actually, we are, as the center of the universe is where the observer is and because space-time curves in such a way that traveling infinately in one direction brings you full circle, I think.
But I'm more bothered about why God even wants worshipers: what difference does it make if people believe in him or not? Why should he care enough about it to send those who don't believe in him to hell for eternaty?
Why is everyone reffering to Adam? Everybody knows that Eve was mankinds liberator ;D
And I don't believe in omnipotence and omniscience. Those things aren't possible, but you can get close to that.
I wonder when HawkFrost will show up
Or are the universe.Why is everyone reffering to Adam? Everybody knows that Eve was mankinds liberator ;D
And I don't believe in omnipotence and omniscience. Those things aren't possible, but you can get close to that.
I wonder when HawkFrost will show up
Those things are possible, if you CONTAIN the universe.
And have infinite mass as a result (from the perspective of the observers, us)
Or are the universe.Why is everyone reffering to Adam? Everybody knows that Eve was mankinds liberator ;D
And I don't believe in omnipotence and omniscience. Those things aren't possible, but you can get close to that.
I wonder when HawkFrost will show up
Those things are possible, if you CONTAIN the universe.
And have infinite mass as a result (from the perspective of the observers, us)
Ants should worship us because we can destroy them with A-bombs...Or would want to. Blasting is very violent and rough solution that is generally not a solution at all. Makes more sense to have a more gentle approach. No need to eat dynamite and blow it up to sure your HIV problem.
I don't think that by being a lump of animal cells we can vaporise bacteria within our body freely, or AIDS for that matter.
We have no control of what is within us, and I don't think that entity known as god could blast our planet with no effort.
QuoteWhy Evil?Why not eternal happiness? Because happiness can't exist without sadness. There is no such thing as good or benevolent without bad or evil. I've heard this so many times before, I'm surprised no-one else here has mentioned it but reality as it exists is based on duality and contrast. Elementary philosophy.
Elementary is exactly the word. There's plenty of ways to interpret reality, and something being without needed anything to compare it to is just as valid. That we say "there can be no good without evil" is just a simple of reconciling that the universe has bad things in it with the assumption that bad things are bad.
About the "kicked-out-of-the-garden-of-Eden-conundrum", I have a simple hypothesis: assuming what happened is true and that there was such a God, and the fruit had whatever free-will-superpower-granting properties, my observation was that Mr. God wanted to give people free will (assuming they were nothing but deterministic machines before that, that would always act in the same specific way whenever they were given some input, and free will adds some kind of randomness to the process), BUT, he still wanted everyone to feel guilty about it so he could still control them after the little experiment.Or they were not meant to have it yet, but eventually they were.
@Servant Corps: But God already knows the results of the tests, so he never needs to run them in the first place. Yes, perhaps these "tests" are learning experiences, but in this particular case, what did Adam and Eve learn, considering that before eating of the tree, they would be unable to learn at all, or even make the choices that god would be testing?
And, you are dealing with a person who is not a Chrisitan and is very ignorant of Chrisitan religion. In fact, according to my religion, God created mankind with the distniction of having free will, causing the angels to remark why God has given free will to mankind, when mankind will only make mischief. In response, God told the angels that he gave mankind "free will" for a reason, and then taught mankind knowledge as well.
The fruit is meaningless, it was just a test. It had no special properties. It did not impart knowledge or free will. It's just an fruit. I don't understand how this is hard to compherend, it's just a fruit.
How divine powers that god uses work?Imagine you are two dimensional. Imagine I am three dimensional. I can manipulate you in ways that you can't even comprehend and seemingly break the laws of your two dimensions by moving in higher dimensions.
That good can't exist without evil is just arguing semantics.So why not allow less evil than there is anyway? Then again, why not more?
The fruit is meaningless, it was just a test. It had no special properties. It did not impart knowledge or free will. It's just an fruit. I don't understand how this is hard to compherend, it's just a fruit.If I were a god, I would totally test my creation's ability to act independently like that. Except it would involve strippers instead of fruit.
Your points are respectable, but I personally see a fatal flaw in them:
"Humans have free will."
In relation to theism, this is in direct contrast to "god created us". If god created us, he made us precisely as we are. It's not like god threw a 1d6 to determine whether we would eat that apple or not. He knew exactly what we were going to do, and being omniscient (notice I use that a lot?), he knew precisely how he would make us. In fact, since he knows EVERYTHING, he even knew how long it would be before he would make us, and he decided a long time before that, precisely what the history of earth and humans would be. God knew an infinite sequence of time ago, precisely what his own actions would be.
And therefore that he would make humans...
And HOW he would make them...
And how we would act once we ate the apple...
And that he had an infinite sequence, or larger (he's god, he can totally pass inifinity), of other things he could do to influence our universe in such a way as to not make us kill and destroy and inflict pain as we do today.
He would also realize that, by not revealing himself to us for the past 4000~ish years, he's caused a LOT of stress and confusion, and I think he's a jerk for that. If he exists, which I doubt.
Yeah, unlike the Christians, we does not believe that the fruit is SIGNIFICANT in shaping free will.
Humans have free will since the first time they are created (from clays (I think)) and they also have knowledge, given to them by God, so they will be higher than angels (which was created from God's lights(Their arabic name means messenger)) and Djinns (which are created from smokeless fire, their name means 'invinsible').
There are some remarks by the angels that hints on the possibility of a sapient species before man, that destroyed Earth (Earth has existed already, and unlike the Christians, again, we believe that the '7 days' is just a metaphor, and that each days IS NOT equivalent to earth days. It may be Universe or Omniverse days, that is 1/355 of Uni/Omniverse years. (Please note that Jews (I think) and Arabs used moon years.))
The Devil is a djinn, that was hold highly by God, so he joint the angels in 'serving' (the term is 'ibadah', but I'm not sure what the translation is) God. Anyway, he refuses to prostrate (sujud) to Adam when God told him to. For this, he was banished from Heaven. Before so, he asked to God for immortality, until the end of times, to seek revenge on Adam's childrens. God granted his wish.
Satans are Devil (Iblis) childrens. Iblis is a djinn, so of course he can reproduce.
...
I'll continue when I have time. I'm very tired.
@Shoruke: How about the Many-worlds interpration? Since there are infinite worlds, that means that there are the few that's like us, a not too good and not too evil world.
Argh, my head's spinning.
In a nutshell, what it seems you are saying, is, If God exists, then its all Gods fault. It would stand to reason then, that its also our parents fault.
Having free will and being created are not mutually exclusive. When I role a d6, i KNOW every possible outcome, but I do NOT know which outcome it will be until the event happens. God knows that: if person A makes decision A then X will happen but if person A makes Decision B then Y will happen. He knows how the outcomes will come to pass, just not which one we will choose. There is no singular pre-ordained path (imho - cuz thats a whole other box of rocks in theology that I disagree with), but intstead many with inifinite outcomes, all of which God knows ahead of time, while he waits to see what we choose.
Problem: God is omniscient. Omni meaning everything. EVERY. SINGLE. THING.
There is not a single fact in the universe which god is not aware of. He knows, to the nearest infinity-eth of the diameter of a nothingth of a quark, the makeup of your brain and how it works. He knows how electrons flow, and how everything is affected by gravity. He knew several thousand years ago, that today you would post on a forum trying to prove that he exists.
Hence, no free will, because he saw it coming. Because he knows everything.
If this isn't clear yet, do some thinking about the definitions of everything and omnipotent.
Yeah.
I don't know, maybe He's playing games with himself. with us, humans, as pawns.
I REALLY don't know.
Also, isn't paradox caused by human minds' limitation?
@Servant Corps: Go back and read Genesis again: Adam named the animals, or gave them 'human names' anyway.
-God created us exactly as we are
-because god is so totally haxor, he knew precisely what we would and will do.
-therefore, relative to god, we have no free will, because he knows what we are going to do. Not only that, we do it because he set it up so that we would do it.
"The point is, that god would save us a LOT of negative emotion if..."2. ...is not necessarily true. There is still the problem of faith, and of the principle of 'bad things happen to both good and bad people.' So God shows up every five years. You're still gonna feel horrible if your wife is raped and then murdered, your kids run away, the government hounds you at every corner, your friends rub salt in your wounds (metaphorically), and to top it all off, you've got a raging cold, a high fever, and a runny nose. You're still gonna feel bad if, despite these glorious appearances and the feverish faith running rampant through the cities of this world, you still don't believe in God for whatever reason. You're still gonna feel bad if you belong to a differant belief group. You're still gonna feel bad if your land and possessions are taken away (against your own will), by God's ordinance, and given to somebody else.
@Gorjo: "yeah, i think I was thinking a little more abstractly than I was typing, or maybe vice-versa."
I understand completely.
Umm. I'm going to contend with you on this point: "He quit doing that..." God is as involved today as he was 2000 years ago, maybe more so. And, indeed, God has no trouble getting directly involved.
-(e)EP
Predetermination and free will are mutually exclusive.Thank you Serius!
Of course I can see someone saying "well you can't understand God because you're just mortal and not omniscient.I'm omniscient. Check this out:
"The point is, that god would save us a LOT of negative emotion if..."Anyone read what Gorjo first contributed?
Sergius: I said in my original post ( i think, maybe 1 after) about how I am not an adherent to predestination. But also, predestination and free will are anything but simple logic.
Also, "not even a God could" is a strange statement. If He is omnipotent, He very well could do anything. You cant define "G O D" as you do with only omniscience without omnipotence. They are part and parcel.
If a person goes with a ham sandwich over turkey for lunch, and someone knew he would, does he still choose his own sandwich?
Perhaps it is best, before you ask what is right, and what is wrong, to first ask if the debate itself is wise and profitable.Too late and there's nothing else to do here.