265 replies to this topic

[HavocWing]

zenfahr, on 01 November 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

Wow that really makes God sound egocentrical.  Its like a teacher not teaching kids because they want to pass on knowledge, but teaching so that they can be in control, and loved.  I have met teachers like that too.

Like a narcissist.

[Seeker79]

Without suffering there can be no heroism, compassion, nor stimulation for acomplishment.

Without sin, there can be no morality, no good over bad, and no choices.

Without scarcity pleasure, comfort, fun, love, and life have no real meanings.

There would be no way to define ones self, no thing to stand for. Why create a universe full of meat sack robots?

We are concious within the margins. Our conciousness is a differential entity. The law of diminishing marginal utility can not be circumvented even by a creator god. There are inevitable consequences of thinking, choosing beings with free will.

I would ask can anyone think of a more perfect existence. Human beings have the choice to create a near paradise on earth, it's not outside of our grasp. We simply have to choose it collectively.

I personally would choose to live here and take some risks than in some universe without campassion, heroism, accomplishment, revelation, and growth.  My guess is so would god.

Edited by Seeker79, 01 November 2012 - 05:45 PM.

[Ligia Cabus]

Hasina, on 01 November 2012 - 12:07 AM, said:

Something to do with his time?

Curious you say it. It's a one the most traditional and ancient of hindu cosmogenesis.

The creation of the world is considered, in Brahmanical books, as Lila (Lyla, Lilá), the pleasure, hobby, recreation of the Supreme Creator. (BLAVATSKY, Secret Doctrine  I, p 142. São Paulo: Pensamento)

[Alienated Being]

HavocWing, on 01 November 2012 - 04:12 PM, said:

masochistic is one thing that "god" isn't, he would be sadistic.  He enjoys giving pain.

That, too; but that is not what I had meant when I said "masochistic". "God" is masochistic in the sense that it appears as if this "god" character enjoys being verbally degraded for its actions, as it continues to subject this planet to horrible atrocities even after it has been verbally degraded and denigrated time and time again...

So, masochistic would appear to be something it is.

[Pupp3t]

Technically, the only reason WHY this world suffers atrocities is pretty much human nature and the forces of nature itself.
AHHH, NO! TORNADO! GOD HATES US, LET'S DESTROY THE PEACE! No, silly human, that's just winds of different temperatures randomly colliding with each other.
AHHH, NO! BURGLAR STOLE MY PLASMA-SCREEN TV! GOD DIDN"T PUNISH HIM! No, silly human, that'sjust a man who is commiting a human-law-based crime, but not a God-based sin. Maybe he had his reasons to steal it. Maybe you can buy another one, so why the silly hassle?
We usually tend to blame God for all things bad that occur in this world, when really, it's just either US (not the States), or the Earth's wrath at how we treat it. Or just Mother Nature in general.

[scowl]

Bling, on 31 October 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

Why would God create humans knowing that a vast number of them would suffer in this life?

Lots of theories! You could argue that God didn't know this would happen. This requires you to reject the "God knows everything" view of God and accept the "God screwed up sometimes" view of God that many Jewish people have. I think it makes more sense. After all, after the Flood, God admits it was a mistake which proves He's not perfect.

And in the early parts of the Bible, who is suffering? Most people seemed to be living a pretty good life at least when God wasn't killing them off with plagues and diseases.

Quote

Does eternity really make up for a life of war, fear, hunger, or _______ (insert issue here). The typical response to this question is, “People could have lived in perfection as God created it, but they chose sin.” But that doesn’t answer the question. God would have known that people would sin. So why start the whole mess at all, even with the promise of a messiah?

Again, if you take the Christian view that God knows everything past and future and can do anything (even things that make other things impossible to do) then this makes no sense at all. If you take the view the God is not perfect and the creation of the universe and people was some kind of experiment, it makes much more sense. Many argue that the imperfect model of God is very much supported in the Old Testament and the perfect God is a fiction that Christians made up through ignorance.

[Bling]

Seeker79, on 01 November 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

Without suffering there can be no heroism, compassion, nor stimulation for acomplishment.

Without sin, there can be no morality, no good over bad, and no choices.

Without scarcity pleasure, comfort, fun, love, and life have no real meanings.

There would be no way to define ones self, no thing to stand for. Why create a universe full of meat sack robots?

We are concious within the margins. Our conciousness is a differential entity. The law of diminishing marginal utility can not be circumvented even by a creator god. There are inevitable consequences of thinking, choosing beings with free will.

I would ask can anyone think of a more perfect existence. Human beings have the choice to create a near paradise on earth, it's not outside of our grasp. We simply have to choose it collectively.

I personally would choose to live here and take some risks than in some universe without campassion, heroism, accomplishment, revelation, and growth.  My guess is so would god.

I can't agree with you totally....why make the bad things in the first place, when his ultimate plan for us is to eventually live in a perfect heaven where all pain and tears are washed away? He could have created us but not created disease and pain - he chose to do that to us! I do not think the suffering in the world deserves to happen, not everyone learns a lesson from it, not everyone can cope with it, not everyone feels martyrdom when they suffer - they feel pain and despair and don't understand why it's happening. Ultimately God allowed things to mess up, and continues to do so, until he gets bored enough and wants another change in his game.
Surely any intelligent person can see that just isn't a God worth following? I believed it for years, so I understand the comfort religion can give....but at what price? To rejoice that the world is messed up because God will ultimately fix it when he sees fit and in the mean time children die....and all the other atrocities. I refuse to be a puppet in his game anymore. I refuse to believe in this evil game...but remember I did, so I can see why people turn to God. I hate the religion not the followers!

[Bling]

Artaxerxes, on 01 November 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

This Earth life is a school and we are here to learn lessons.

Pain  and Suffering

Maybe God didn't have a choice?

There are people in Malaysia who stick metal rods through the skin of their face, lips, cheeks, etc.   In the Philipines people intentionally re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus.   In the United States little high school girls intentionally take knives and cut themselves.   People go and pay money to have other people "pierce" their bodies.   American Indians have this ritual where they hang themselves from hooks through the skin of their chest and backs.  

In the Middle Ages religious fanatics took whips and flaggelated their own backs till they were bloody raw. Kids today go and get painful tatoos all over their bodies (and body piercings)?   All over the world people intentionally eat hot peppers in their food,   and for some people the hotter the better.  Those peppers burn their lips, tongues, the inside of the mouths, and sometimes they burn as much coming out the other end as when they went in.  

What possesses people to intentionally do very painful things to themselves?   What if maybe it's not the person themselves that are doing those things but the soul directing the person to do those things to themselves? Now the question is... WHY?  

Just imagine that you are a soul that comes from a place where time and space don't exist, where nothing exists unless it is first thought of, and you haven't got any idea what it feels like to be inside a body, and you don't know what a body even is, or how to direct it, or the parameters of that body and you have a very limited amount of time to learn about the body, and to make "pixels" or bits of information, enough to re-create a body if you need to, and in fact enough information to share with ever soul that has ever lived or will ever live?   What if you have been given the commission of coming to this physical reality and were told by the Creator that He wanted you to make as many bits of information or pixels of information about the shape of the body?   And you only have a very limited amount of time to do it in?

Sort of like a sculptor that has been told to chisel out a body out of marble and all you have been given is a hammer and a chisel.   So you hammer away, and pretty soon this beautiful sculpture emerges from the marble and you did it all with a hammer and a chisel.
  
I am a believer in this life being a school, and we are here to learn a few simple lessons, what time and space look and feel like, what it feels like to inhabit a body, and make memories of what it was like to direct that body, like a driver driving a car, and memories of what it was like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe.  And you will use this information after you cross back over into Heaven to conjure up your own reality. In Mark H's NDE he said "I thought of a mountain and one appeared."   The atheist A.J. Ayer's said "it was very strange, my thoughts became persons."   Mark Horton said, "I merely had to think of a time and place and I was there experiencing everything about that time and place."  

We are gatherers of information, and the more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates.  The soul uses the body like we use a suit of clothes, and when it is finished it will toss off this suit of clothes like an old worn out suit, with barely a backward glance.   With as much emotion as we might reserve for an old worn out pair of tennis shoes.   We are simply spiritual beings having a physical experience.

Why would an omnipotent God not have a choice?

And...I am well able to learn lessons and evolve into a good happy person without being disabled and experiencing difficult events in my life. 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' OR 'Create a child and give him a loving, stable life forever' I know which I'd chose for the world!

[Bling]

blind pew, on 01 November 2012 - 03:40 AM, said:

Let me ask you something, if you built something lets say a car and after you completed it it didn't run, would you get mad at it and destroy it? You made it so there must be something wrong with you not the car.

Exactly!!!

[Kazoo]

If were incapable of sinning then not sinning would mean nothing.

[Bling]

Kazoo, on 02 November 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:

If were incapable of sinning then not sinning would mean nothing.

Why need sin in the first place? We didn't know what sin was until we were told? We are born innocent.

[Seeker79]

Bling, on 02 November 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

I can't agree with you totally....why make the bad things in the first place, when his ultimate plan for us is to eventually live in a perfect heaven where all pain and tears are washed away? He could have created us but not created disease and pain - he chose to do that to us! I do not think the suffering in the world deserves to happen, not everyone learns a lesson from it, not everyone can cope with it, not everyone feels martyrdom when they suffer - they feel pain and despair and don't understand why it's happening. Ultimately God allowed things to mess up, and continues to do so, until he gets bored enough and wants another change in his game.
Surely any intelligent person can see that just isn't a God worth following? I believed it for years, so I understand the comfort religion can give....but at what price? To rejoice that the world is messed up because God will ultimately fix it when he sees fit and in the mean time children die....and all the other atrocities. I refuse to be a puppet in his game anymore. I refuse to believe in this evil game...but remember I did, so I can see why people turn to God. I hate the religion not the followers!

You are still looking at it from the abrahamic tradition. In most others god is not omnipotent. In this scenario a creator god would be powerless to stop Somone with free will.

It's like haveing a kid. You could lock that kid away in a basement or hover over her every second of her life and fix her mistakes. But ultimately you are not going to do that. Even if you know this child might become a psycopathic murderer and then suffer torture in a prison in some pit of a dungeon. ( I'm not talking about hell in talking about a real prison somewhere) , you cannot stop these choices or stop the pain your child will cause itself and others unless you choose to imprison your child, take away her free will, or not even have one. That's the risk of free will one cannot exist without the other. I don't think god is omnipotent and I think it's just as stressed about our mistakes as we are. I think if his is a creator god, then it knew these consequences but chose to have children inspite of the possible and certain consequences. I have three children...., with each new one the odds of seeing one of mine suffer or cause suffering increases. It scares me do death. That dosnt mean that I deni them the opertunity.  I know for a fact they will suffer, but I hope that they will live a fulfilling life, but at some point I have to let go if the leesh. I think you are wrong. A creator god would have no choice but to let bad things exist unless it was to not create.

Edited by Seeker79, 02 November 2012 - 08:30 PM.

[Jor-el]

Bling, on 31 October 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

Why would God create humans knowing that a vast number of them would suffer in this life? Does eternity really make up for a life of war, fear, hunger, or _______ (insert issue here). The typical response to this question is, “People could have lived in perfection as God created it, but they chose sin.” But that doesn’t answer the question. God would have known that people would sin. So why start the whole mess at all, even with the promise of a messiah?

I believe that God when he created us did not create us perfect, by the very nature of the thing he used to create us, imperfection was part of the process. Since mankind was created using matter as its constituent foundation (as is the rest of the universe), it is by nature imbued with all the properties that are common to matter. In essence it will die, just as the universe itself will one day die.

Mankind was created from this matter and matter changes its state, it degrades and over time it moves toward maximum entropy. It is mankinds responsability to fight entropy, we being the agent that fights it or helps it along, depending on the choices we make.

God doesn't want fans, God doesn't want marionetes, God created mankind so that we can a ) be his agents, his ambassadores, his representatives in this universe (his image) and b ) to impart to a deterministic universe, the element of choice and free-will.

To put it simply, when you bake bread you use flour of one kind or another... you are limited to the material at hand and its nature., otherwise you would not be making bread but something else.

Edited by Jor-el, 02 November 2012 - 08:32 PM.

[Mr Walker]

Bling, on 31 October 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

Why would God create humans knowing that a vast number of them would suffer in this life? Does eternity really make up for a life of war, fear, hunger, or _______ (insert issue here). The typical response to this question is, “People could have lived in perfection as God created it, but they chose sin.” But that doesn’t answer the question. God would have known that people would sin. So why start the whole mess at all, even with the promise of a messiah?

The simple answer is that god knew people could sin but not that they would.
It is impossible for any being to know a future which does not exist yet, and which has a multitude of potential variations. Did god do the wrong thing in the story creatingi ntellient life? Only you can judge for youself it is not a black and white scenario.. I do not think he did anything wrong, in the context of the story line.

I am a good person who lives a good life by; choice, discipine, effort and training. ALL humans can live this way if they choose to.  Evil destructiveness harm; call it what you will, is not inherent or inevitable in humans as individuals or as a species.

It is always a choice individuals make in their lives. So I am thankful that (in the story) god created us  In doing so, he gave me a chance. As an evolutionist I dont see god's hand in this, but the choice remains the same. For all the evil and pain in the world, the love, the good and the  incredible and unlimited potential of humanity outweighs it by many times.

In my life god helps me, educates me, and mentors me to help me make better choices and to increase my abilities and achieve more of my potential. If he'd never given me choices  he wouldn't have to do this. But as an evolved animal with sapient self awareness, I will take all the advice and help I can get on how to live my life. One basic problem with humanity is that many people will not  take advice from anyone else..

Humans are free willed creatures. There is no singular future for any one of us, or for humanity as a whole. We create the future by our choices in the present.

And so, like parents giving birth to a child, god knew our potential but did not know how we would turn out. He had hope and love, and he gave rules and guidance. But ultimately our choice is ours to make And we know the consequences of every choice we make because we ARE sapient self aware beings. That is the one recurring story of the bible, but it also just reflects any logical form of human philosophy or theology and is entirely understandable by an atheist, as a humanist viewpoint.

Humans know good from evil. because we can forsee and predict consequences . We can consciously choose, ALWAYS, good or evil. Thus the responsibilty for the condition of mankind (whether god exists or not) is ours alone. To an atheist of course this is clear as crystal. One thing about being an atheist is that we have only ourselvesto blame, (and credit) (unless we try to escape into mechanistic determinism as an excuse for our behaviour) But to many religious people it is equally clear. It is the nature of humanity and of the world.

Edited by Mr Walker, 02 November 2012 - 11:13 PM.

[Bling]

Several members have mentioned about freewill and how God isn't perfect....my opinions are:

Having freewill is great, I'm all for freewill, but why does there have to be bad consequences if we make a decision? - God could have given us options and a life which only contains good, healthy stuff....after all isn't that what a loving parent does for his children? If a human parent gave their child a choice of fatty sugary food or healthy low fat food, it's not the childs fault for choosing the unhealthy food which will ultimately be of detriment to their health - it's the parents fault for giving them the bad choice in the first place.
If bad wasn't created in the first place....if it wasn't an option....then we'd be ok - and willing servants and children of a loving God. Also the argument that it was Satan who created the evil....well God created him too didn't he? Basically God messed up by creating the bad things and now doesn't haven't have a clue how to make it better other than play the 'God' card and destroy those who question him. " Do as I say not as I do"

If God isn't perfect?.....why would you want to follow him then? How is he any better than mankind? Doesn't that contradict the notion of him being omnipotent?