Steelmage99
New Member
thenexttodie said:
Just answer the question from your point of view, with whatever standards you wish to apply, using whatever metric you like.
How is your god good?
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Why ought I follow?
- Thread starter MarsCydonia
- Start date
Just answer the question from your point of view, with whatever standards you wish to apply, using whatever metric you like.
How is your god good?
thenexttodie
New Member
Steelmage99 said:
I believe God is good, mostly because of these 3 things.
1 What God says in the Bible.
2 What He did.
3 Life experience.
I can go into greater detail if you like. I hope Mars will now answer my question
God is good because the Bible says so? :roll:
What about the bashing in babies heads and murdering all the population except virgin girls?
Oh right, it's good because God did it.
You're treating 'god' and 'good' as if they're the same thing, the same shared reference, so really you should say it's simply definitional and save yourself the bother of contriving other nonsense to cover it over.
My question for you is can god be bad?
If you say no, I think there'll be no other questions - statements, yes - but no more questions.
What about the bashing in babies heads and murdering all the population except virgin girls?
Oh right, it's good because God did it.
You're treating 'god' and 'good' as if they're the same thing, the same shared reference, so really you should say it's simply definitional and save yourself the bother of contriving other nonsense to cover it over.
My question for you is can god be bad?
If you say no, I think there'll be no other questions - statements, yes - but no more questions.
thenexttodie
New Member
Sparhafoc said:
1# refers to what God says in the Bible, not what the Bible says about God. Learn to read.
thenexttodie said:
:lol:
Did you come up with that yourself, or did you get on the phone to Deepak Chopra?
It's a silly deepity, thenextodie - it means nothing coherent except exactly what I already amusedly pointed at.
What God purportedly says IS what is written in the Bible, ergo by definition, it's the Bible that says what God says.
And the circular reasoning continues unabated by logic, reason, functioning brains etc.
Further, as I obviously consider this Yahweh to be a purely fictional character created in ignorance and fear of shadows by Bronze Age pastoralists, then I don't actually think any gods had a role in saying anything contained in the Bible any more than when I write a screenplay and type in the words I want a fictional character to say.
But sorry, back to your circular reasoning. So how do you know God said it in the Bible?
Oh and incidentally, todie, have you ever played poker?
I haven't because I've never been into gambling.
However, there's an interesting concept in the metagame of poker: the tic
When someone is feeling passionate and emotional, their body signals this involuntarily, and other poker players can read that tic and begin to put together a pattern, a model of when it happens, and thereby start to posit what is happening under the surface.
I am not a poker player, but I can find my way round an argument in the dark.
So when you write stupid shit like this:
And given that you seem to write stupid shit like this to everyone whenever you are pressured on whatever idea it is you're supposedly substantiating (and routinely failing to so do), I feel there's a pattern there suggesting that something's happening under the surface.
My proposal is that it's basically lashing out with words you think can hurt because you lack the discursive competence to explain your ideas coherently. It's frustrating for you for others not to 'get it'.
Supposing this is accurate, for the sake of the conclusion, then there are two primary results: 1) you can't hurt people like that, you can only damage your own argument or exhibit poor argumentative skills which suggests that the problem may not lie in your interlocutor's alleged failings and 2) Others do 'get it' - they might very well 'get it' more than you do because they might have heard it all before and have addressed the same arguments ad nauseum. The real question is whether you 'get it', because if you are unable to coherently formulate your ideas, then perhaps those ideas are not coherent internally either, and perhaps they're not worthy of holding onto.
I haven't because I've never been into gambling.
However, there's an interesting concept in the metagame of poker: the tic
When someone is feeling passionate and emotional, their body signals this involuntarily, and other poker players can read that tic and begin to put together a pattern, a model of when it happens, and thereby start to posit what is happening under the surface.
I am not a poker player, but I can find my way round an argument in the dark.
So when you write stupid shit like this:
And given that you seem to write stupid shit like this to everyone whenever you are pressured on whatever idea it is you're supposedly substantiating (and routinely failing to so do), I feel there's a pattern there suggesting that something's happening under the surface.
My proposal is that it's basically lashing out with words you think can hurt because you lack the discursive competence to explain your ideas coherently. It's frustrating for you for others not to 'get it'.
Supposing this is accurate, for the sake of the conclusion, then there are two primary results: 1) you can't hurt people like that, you can only damage your own argument or exhibit poor argumentative skills which suggests that the problem may not lie in your interlocutor's alleged failings and 2) Others do 'get it' - they might very well 'get it' more than you do because they might have heard it all before and have addressed the same arguments ad nauseum. The real question is whether you 'get it', because if you are unable to coherently formulate your ideas, then perhaps those ideas are not coherent internally either, and perhaps they're not worthy of holding onto.
thenexttodie
New Member
:|
Still waiting for MarsCydonia to answer my question. Or you can answer it, if you like.
Still waiting for MarsCydonia to answer my question. Or you can answer it, if you like.
MarsCydonia
New Member
What a comment without substance. People can believe god is evil because of these 3 things:thenexttodie said:
1. What god is said to have in the bible.
2. What people imagine he said.
3. Jonny life's experience.
No thinking person would think this is an answer of any kind. Trolls would.
If your rambling and ranting "question" was if I consider human morality to be concerned with human well-being, of course I do. If morality has nothing to with well-being, there is no point to it.thenexttodie said:
I'm still waiting for one of the christians to answer this topic without trolling. We don't get everything we want, do we?
thenexttodie said:
Not sure you can be waiting for someone to answer a question which was used to evade answering a previous question, but ne'ermind.
I'd be happy to answer your question - only, I can't find one that makes any sense.
You did some bizarre semblance of a question here:
Well, it has a question mark at the end.
The question appears to be a series of statements you've just cobbled together then tacked a question mark on.
Not sure how anyone can really answer that to any satisfactory degree because the question's too opaque.
But go on, I will show willing...
You might, you might, certainly not, some may. Is it correct? Well, it's like asking whether such notions can exist in the universe, rather than asking whether someone holds those positions. Whatever the case, there's nothing coherent in there thematically to understand your drift.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter as it's all a red herring. We are not talking about the diversity of human values, you are proposing that God is good, and as you haven't qualified it in any way, one must assume you mean the age old canard of maximally good.
So we come back to the questions already asked as to whether it can ever be good to swing a baby by the ankles and bash their brains in against a wall, whether it can ever be good to kill all the men, women, male children, all the livestock of a village, then take the virginal pre-pubescent girls as spoils of conquest.
There is no way you can equivocate your way out of this. You can't argue it's good, nor can you argue that it is morally neutral - it's despicable behavior, yet it is not only in your holy book, but it is an action commanded by the very god you claim as being all good. How can you hold these contradictory notions in your brain at the same time? Try cognitive dissonance.
Please do try to answer this: It's a conundrum that has plagued religionists for all history - how can god be good and yet in its creation, there can be so much evil? Don't blame Satan or other wooist bollocks, because your god supposedly made them too. Even the arch-Bish of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Church, admits it makes him question the existence of God. Either it does the same to you, or you lack something necessary to examine morality.
thenexttodie
New Member
Sparhafoc said:
That's a good question.
I am probably not the most qualified person in the world for you to ask, but I will try to answer. Probably some of my answer will be wrong, partly because I am uneducated and partly because it envolves things bordering the limits of human understanding. But since everyone already thinks I am a fucking moron I guess it doesn't matter anyway.
Here goes.
We are bound by physical laws. God is not. It seems to me God exists in a Trinity; God, God the son, and the Holy Spirit. God is God and God the son is Jesus who for sometime existed as a man and also existed before he was a man. I am not sure exactly what the Holy Spirit is. The trinity is held together because any 2 parts can testify that the 3rd part is good.
I cannot finish this post now but I will leave it here anyway so you know I am not ignoring your question and if you have time maybe you can reply to part of it if you want and I can finish this probably later tonight. I hope you do not reply until I finish.
Steelmage99 said:
Just answer the question from your point of view, with whatever standards you wish to apply, using whatever metric you like.
How is your god good?[/quote]
That is like asking, how do you know that a Meter is worth 100cm?
God is good by definition, ether God doesn't exist or he is good.
but sure this is just an assumption, I don't claim to have evidence for it
Well God can be bad according to your own personal metrics and standards, God can certainly do something that you personally would consider bad.
but if you grant that there is some transcendent standard for good and bad, then by definition God would be the paradigm of good, anything different from God, would by definition be something less than perfectly good. just like anything different form 100cm would be different form 1M
thenexttodie said:
Honestly, in my opinion there is no one in the world qualified to answer. The thing that sets you apart, thenexttodie, is that you don't pretend to be.
Regardless of whether you care what I think or not, you gained some credibility by acknowledging that loud and clear. In my experience, Christians and other theists who feel compelled to go and argue with non-theists tend to believe that anything they say is, by fiat, the word, beliefs, feelings, and deeply held convictions of the creator of the fucking universe.
thenexttodie said:
And again, I will honestly say that the fool who knows they're a fool is in a vastly superior position to a wise man who thinks they already have the answers.
thenexttodie said:
While I honestly and genuinely respect your preface, I think there's one more piece of information I'd like to know ahead of whatever it is you're about to say.
Is the following just what you think, reasoned from your beliefs and experiences over the years, - your personal and unique take on life... or is it something someone else told you, or was written in some pamphlet, or is derived from some form of apologetics you read, heard, or otherwise observed?
If it's the former, you might be surprised that I am not a complete asshat. If the latter, it might be hard to detect!
thenexttodie said:
To be honest, this answers nothing at all for me. It's basically just an expression of dogma that I already know and which has no real bearing on whether god can be bad or not.
Of course, it also makes me want to point out the absurdity of the post-2nd Century Christian orthodoxy seriously affirming the trinity status of god which is illogical, contrived, and frankly utterly bizarre. It's almost as if someone devised as nonsensical a position of faith as possible reasoning that if a believer can accept this, they'll accept anything. But I won't be distracted by diversions into nonsensical trinities.
Instead...
thenexttodie said:
I... er... what? I am seriously scratching my head here.
How is any of the first paragraph after 'here goes' anything to do with answering the question? I thought you were prefacing before producing an actual argument.
Sorry to be that guy again, but your argument actually reads (once the random babble is stripped away) that God is good because God says God is good.
Would you not agree that is circular reasoning?
Again, to spell it out: you said God is comprised of three parts, all of which are god. God, in 3 parts which is one, testifies that God is good.
So you are a Catholic then? I am surprised. Haven't you read Thomas Aquinas?
thenexttodie
New Member
Sparhafoc said:
Sorry, the G20 riots here were a bit worse than what I had expected.
We are bound by physical laws. God is not. It seems to me God exists in a Trinity; God, God the son, and the Holy Spirit. God is God and God the son is Jesus who for sometime existed as a man and also existed before he was a man. I am not sure exactly what the Holy Spirit is. The trinity is held together because any 2 parts can testify that the 3rd part is good.
Getting back to your exact question "Can God be bad"; to make things easier for me I am going to answer this the same way I would If someone asked me Can God do something that is evil (I think it was bad that I had to cut my vacation 2 days short, but I wouldn't say it was evil).
Yes, I think that God has the freewill to chose to do evil. I think that when Satan tempted the Christ to worship him, that the temptation was real. And if part of the trinity actually did do evil than it seems to me that God would no longer exist in a trinity. I think God would still exist, but without 2 other equal outside reference point to testify whether or not He is Good. I am not sure what woud happen then.
thenexttodie
New Member
Sparhafoc said:
That would be circular reasoning.
Sparhafoc said:
No, I am not a Catholic. Catholics are not by far the only ones who believe God exists in a trinity. I knew a bit of what Aquinas wrote but never considered it to be signifigant.
thenexttodie said:
How do you know that?
From my perspective, I learned a lot about Christianity as a teenager, so I know most scripture. Generally, when someone is claiming that Yahweh is outside of physical laws, the scripture they can cite is barely even coherent, let alone relevant to the claim.
For example, some of the most used scriptural justification for this is:
Isiah 57:15
For this is what the high and exalted One says
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
John 4:24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
Hebrews 11:3
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
But none of them actually justify any claim that Yahweh is not subject to any physical laws. It's a faith position about a faith position. Faith squared.
If you were to read the Bible without the tradition of interpretation foisted off onto you by your relevant pastor, then you would not come to this interpretation by yourself on scripture alone. Instead, you are repeating an argument made by other Christians - typically, apologists who retrofit their Yahweh ontology based on expanding human knowledge. God was carefully shuffled off outside of mere material observation when telescopes became more powerful.
Regardless of all this apologetic analysis, as I don't believe your god exists, I find it odd you telling me (as if it were fact) complex metaphysical claims that simply cannot stand to reason when the entity supposedly possessing these characteristics is, itself, not evident. To me, this is nothing more than wish-crafting.
thenexttodie said:
I think, if you have children, there's a more apt metaphor. Is there anything your child could do that would result in a severe punishment from you? Would that punishment last for eternity? If not, why is there no crime you can imagine your child doing that would result in you punishing them forever? According to you and yours, God is vastly greater than an adult is over their child, so why can't God muster the same level of compassion, justice, and mercy that a 'broken' human can? Why would your god need such a stick to punish those who fail to jump his hoops?
Or do you not believe in Hell?
thenexttodie said:
Ok, and can you be absolutely certain that Yahweh has never chosen to do evil before? Are there any component actions in the Bible which you would consider to be morally reprehensible? Or do you allow apologetics to explain away any apparent vile behavior or deeds Yahweh apparently commits? For clarity, I am talking about examples such as 'testing' whether a father would murder their son, condoning slavery, and commanding 'his' followers to bash in babies' heads and take pre-pubescent sex slaves as spoils of war.
If those aren't 'evil' when God does them, but they are evil when humans do them, how can there be any serious conversation about what God wants, or what God is? If any label we would use for any and all other circumstances simply isn't allowed to apply to God, then why do you apply all the typical positive human behavior and thoughts?
There's a problem here that few Christians manage to process, let alone assimilate.
thenexttodie said:
But nonsensical, because Satan was actually tempting God, the all powerful, all knowing, all everything who also created Satan. How does that work then? How is it a real temptation? To me, it goes along with all the other fake things that happened to Jesus which would have been a tribulation if he were a human, but clearly not so if you are unbounded by the physical laws. Why the song and dance about Jesus' death when you believe he didn't even die?
Christianity is full of these warped holdovers from ancient apologetics.
thenexttodie said:
Not sure how that follows at all.
thenexttodie said:
Well, nothing apparently. Unless you are proposing yet more metaphysical mechanisms that are not scripturally, or even logically based.
If God is all three, then any one of them committing X means all of them commit X. You can't hold Jesus both as God and as not God, so any act Jesus performs is an act performed by God. Thus, when Yahweh commanded the smashing in of babies' heads, both Jesus and the Holy Ghost (which is a bizarre and contrived concept in itself) must needs have simultaneously commanded the smashing in of babies' heads because they are all one entity.
Regardless, I think it apposite to point out how much mental gymnastics you're obliged to engage - almost as if these bizarre metaphysics were designed specifically to muddy the waters, obfuscate, create deepities with no substance, and all could be summarized as smoke and mirrors.
You can't answer the question for several reasons. The first and most important is because you don't know anything about Yahweh - only what you've been told, and what interpretation of ancient dogma you've been told is the correct and acceptable interpretation - you don't have independent access to plumb Yahweh's intent, design, and motivations, so you could say exactly the opposite of what you have and there'd similarly be no independent way to verify any of it. Secondly, eons of apologetics has made the entire topic too gnarly to hack through and expose to the sunlight - many of these apologetic instances have themselves become articles of faith even though lacking any scriptural substantiation. Finally, the entire notion is a charade, a non-entity contrived by people thousands of years ago in their ignorance of the world and the workings of the universe. They had some ideas, and they expressed those ideas through the symbols of their culture and heritage, emulating their own society but placing it in the sky. To understand this question, you'd need to go back to basics, and elide the centuries of bullshit which have been piled up to obscure the point.
Regardless, if Yahweh did exist, I would have no hesitation whatsoever in considering it the epitome of evil - a vile, bloated, bipolar, egotistical maniac who seems to have simply disappeared from the places everyone was sure he inhabited the very moment we developed the tools to look there, but was rampant in his hatred and abuse of the peons when he was involved with them.
Every component characteristic of Yahweh is either absurd or evil. It goes right back to the start when he sets up a temptation in the 'garden of Eden' for the naive, uneducated, innocent human beings he'd created, and had specifically created them naive, uneducated, and innocent... specifically lets Satan lead them astray while he's 'not looking' - somehow, his omnipresence is forgotten in the story, and it's phrased like he pops back to look at the garden after a quick nap or a trip down the shops. From this temptation he clearly set up, he then uses their 'failure' as a justification for allowing into his creation pain, starvation, torture, depredation, disease, death etc. etc., and then many millennia later, sends himself as his son via impregnating an unsuspecting virgin only so he can die in order to save the peons from the death geas he'd laid on them.
If these are the actions of a 'good' God, then clearly you and I have a very different notion of the word 'good'.
thenexttodie said:
Indeed. Care to expand on that and explain how my simplification of your argument exposing that circular reasoning isn't relevant, is inaccurate, or doesn't do justice to your argument?
thenexttodie said:
Yes, I am aware of that... there's that little 4th century sordid tale of all the non-trinitarian Arianism being squashed by the 'proper' Trinitarians which then went on to persecute this vile 'heresy' wherever it appeared.
Part of the Reformation was tied up with rejection of the Trinity.
However, my point wasn't that espousing Trinitarian dogma means you are Catholic, but rather it's much more common for Catholics to appeal to the Trinity in the way you did as if it explains something rather than obfuscates it.
thenexttodie said:
Not significant to the entire basis of modern Christianity?
Half the apologetic arguments you would employ were first recorded by him.thenexttodie
New Member
thenexttodie said:
Sparhafoc said:
What about when the Bible talks about an invisible realm and things unseen? What about all of the miracles?
Sparhafoc said:
Well, as I said, I could be wrong. I'm no expert. Are the rest of the questions in this post meant to be rhetorical?