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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: lostclimate]
#105027
01/10/07 22:19
01/10/07 22:19
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX
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Quote:
Honestly if one of my creations turn out as bad as we did, I would destroy it.
Okey, but what if we are exactly the way this 'God' wanted us to be?
I do not believe in God at all, but the most common reply to thoughts like yours is either 'God has a plan and that's the way it's going to be' or 'God probably wanted it to happen like this'. Those aren't even arguments off course, nor can we ever prove them and you could say similar things about practically anything.
But still if there's a being that's almighty and stuff, it would definately have predicted how we were going to turn out. Still, it makes me wonder about God's nature and 'alignment'.
Cheers
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: PHeMoX]
#105028
01/10/07 23:39
01/10/07 23:39
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer
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Quote:
I don't quite understand this line, because a.) we should take responsibility for our own sins and most of the time people will regret them anyways (= hence they will feel the full consequences of their sins) ánd b.) wé are the ones ignoring or 'hiding' our sins, there's no intervention of God needed for that.
Infact, these kind of ideological points of view make religious people hide behind the bible if they've done something wrong. Together with the whole 'confession' thing in churches. Some might not understand my point of view, but I actually think confessing in all anonimity is a bad thing, because it doesn't solve or change anything. Confessing publically would be better, thát's when you take full responsibility for your sins. Confession is something strange anyways, since you can sort of wave away your sins, anyways I'm going off topic I guess.
I don't think I was communicating very clearly here.
I was referring to the suffering of this world being a consequence of sin. What I'm saying is that God might be preventing it from becoming worse than it is right now, even if we justly deserve otherwise.
I guess, confession is kind of unrelated to what I meant, but I'll refrain from commenting further on that because I'm not very fond of catholicism.
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I don't quite understand this line, because a.) we should take responsibility for our own sins and most of the time people will regret them anyways (= hence they will feel the full consequences of their sins) ánd b.) wé are the ones ignoring or 'hiding' our sins, there's no intervention of God needed for that.
Infact, these kind of ideological points of view make religious people hide behind the bible if they've done something wrong. Together with the whole 'confession' thing in churches. Some might not understand my point of view, but I actually think confessing in all anonimity is a bad thing, because it doesn't solve or change anything. Confessing publically would be better, thát's when you take full responsibility for your sins. Confession is something strange anyways, since you can sort of wave away your sins, anyways I'm going off topic I guess.
Well...in a case like this where the guilt is clear cut, and people like him need to made an example of, I think the death penalty is justified. I don't like it, but I can't really say that it was the wrong thing to do.
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However I am not sure that I understand the "I have actually been pretty nice and benevolent" defense. Does this mean that God takes responsibility for the killing, but considers it nice and benevolent? And what exactly are those "sins" that would justify mass murder? As the ICC is located in Europe, the judges are not likely to be impressed by justifying killing with religious reasons.
Let me try and state it another way (similar to how I put it above). Let's say that disasters, suffering, disease, death and so forth are a consequence of our sins. If so, they're all basically our fault when you break it down. Now there are two possibilities, perhaps more. One, God doesn't directly cause the disasters, but allows them to happen because we rebel against Him. Or, He does purposely cause the disasters, but with the (ultimately benevolent) intention of allowing us to understand what our sin does to us. That would be benevolent in the sense that allowing us to simply destroy our eternal souls is worse in the long run; letting us taste a bit of suffering in order to understand the greater good is for the best (similar to allowing your child to suffer through a vaccination because...well you know why). In other words, the destruction in this world serves as a powerful reminder of the destruction reserved for unrepentant people so that ultimately they might know that they need to be saved.
Based on what I've been studying lately in the bible, it seems to be the former rather than the latter. I could be wrong, and I'd be willing to admit as much but it seems more like God gives His blessing for those who don't 'turn away' from Him, and then simply allows suffering when people don't take the much more obvious good path, if you will.
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Okey, but what if we are exactly the way this 'God' wanted us to be?
Then we can be pretty sure that it wouldn't be the Judeo-Christian God.
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'God has a plan and that's the way it's going to be'
I think that's kind of a shallow answer. I hope I've provided, for better or worse, an answer that has a bit more depth to it.
I think God does use bad things for the greater good, but that sort of an answer used to explain the origin of suffering kind of takes sin (and our responsibility) out of the picture and just makes it seem like its in God's nature to make us suffer.
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But still if there's a being that's almighty and stuff, it would definately have predicted how we were going to turn out.
Yeah, that's the interesting part. God, by His nature, would have had to of known about the fall, sin, and whatnot ahead of time. Yet decided to go ahead anyway. There's a lot of discussion on this in the christian community, which is something I've been meaning to catch up on.
Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 01/10/07 23:43.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: jcl]
#105029
01/11/07 02:07
01/11/07 02:07
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 3,010
analysis paralysis
NITRO777
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Quote:
However I am not sure that I understand the "I have actually been pretty nice and benevolent" defense. Does this mean that God takes responsibility for the killing, but considers it nice and benevolent? And what exactly are those "sins" that would justify mass murder?
This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between killing and murder, I have also noticed the common use of the two words as synonyms among people who generally are adverse to the use of Capital Punishment. Basically this line of reasoning seeks to equate killing with murder which is undoubtedly not the case. Taken to a different context this reasoning also seems to equate terrorism with the distinct purpose of killing innocents (which is murder) as opposed to targeting a hostile group with the incedental death of innocents( which would be more properly termed "killing" rather than murder.) The fundamental difference lies in the motivations behind the killer.
The earthquake which killed 60,000 or the recent tsunami which killed even more
are really very inconsequential considering the 150,000 plus people who die each day through deaths of varying kinds. The only reason why those types of concentrated events capture out attention is the sheer defined focal point of death all in one physical location of geography.
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But still if there's a being that's almighty and stuff, it would definately have predicted how we were going to turn out.
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Yeah, that's the interesting part. God, by His nature, would have had to of known about the fall, sin, and whatnot ahead of time. Yet decided to go ahead anyway. There's a lot of discussion on this in the christian community, which is something I've been meaning to catch up on.
I think the reason could be that God has limits, self-imposed limits which cause Him to act towards driving certain things from His Mind. For example in Hebrews 10:17 He states that :" ...and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."
The fact that He chooses not to remember sins(after they are repented of) does not mean that He is just a very forgetful Being who cannot seem to remember things correctly. When He says that He will not remember them it means that He drives them away from His consciousness, by force of Will He drives the rememberence of them away. If He has now no recollection of our sins then He would logically have had no premonition of them. I would think it would be impossible to have a premonition of something that you would someday purposefully forget.
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God, by His nature, would have had to of known about the fall, sin, and whatnot ahead of time
I am not of the opinion that we can nail down exactly how or what God would know ahead of time,because as an eternal being, He had no beginning and there is therefore technically no such thing as "ahead of time". As an eternal being with no beginning or end, He would have already experienced the dawn and dusk of humanity before it even happened AND he would also be presently living in each moment.
Certainly there are aspects of time that He would have access to, but since HE has everlasting hope and faith(which are both time dependent virtues), He probably would not choose to know. Or perhaps His faith is actually stronger than what the future reality would be anyway. I am getting pretty deep in thought here so I will come up to the surface for air and use an example:
"Suppose we have generic man named John Doe. On the one hand God knows by premonition that John Doe will eventually be a rotten, terrible person who will worship the devil, die and go to hell.
But then suppose God's hope for John Doe is so strong and His faith for John Doe is so strong that it overides the reality of John Doe's predicted future and John Doe becomes a wonderful Christian who drives the Church bus to picnics on Sunday."
This scenario is very possible given that time and events themselves are subject to the material universe, and God Himself supercedes the material universe.
Last edited by NITRO; 01/11/07 02:35.
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: NITRO777]
#105030
01/11/07 02:46
01/11/07 02:46
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Netherlands
PHeMoX
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Some interesting explanations there Nitro.  Quote:
This scenario is very possible given that time and events themselves are subject to the material universe, and God Himself supercedes the material universe.
If God is time-less and supercedes the material universe, then would he have influence on multi-dimensional universes? If there's no dimension in which God's influence is visible, then how can we know he exists? It's either 'We can't' or 'he doesn't exist'.
I still can't quite comprehend why something that's totally 'out' of our world can become known about in the first place. Now you might start about Jesus, but that's 2000+ years ago and there's no proof that all the things that are said to have happened, happened.
Besides the fact that there's no such thing as a birth without a father (trust me, this is easy to proof, only requires some time), nor do I personally believe Jesus was God's son and performed all those miracles and speeches, something the bible claims but doesn't proof.
The problem lies in the fact that these kind of things require development and since we all know that 'the Bible' consists of many different books and writings, I can't stop thinking it can never be accurate or unchanged from it's 'original content', whatever that may have been.
Especially when it's in the human nature to exagerate wonderful, powerful or seemingly meaningful things, texts like in the Bible loose their credibility. Like I've mentioned before, in Asian religious literature 'exagerations' like we find in the bible, are all over the place in texts. People turning into Mythic creatures, stories about Gods who came to earth, Kings with thousands of castles, flying horses, things like that. Why o why give so much more credibility to the Bible than to those texts? For me it's quite clear that water can't be turned into wine just by snapping some fingers, just like flying horses and dragons did not ever exist.
Cheers
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: PHeMoX]
#105031
01/11/07 10:58
01/11/07 10:58
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,986
Frankfurt
jcl
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Frankfurt
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I think whether God exists, whether its influence is visible in the world, and in which way he differs from a nonexistent God are interesting questions, but in this case we have just assumed that he exists and has influence in our 4 (or 11) dimensions. Otherwise he could not be put before a court.
A human court can not physically punish an omnipotent god, but can judge him morally, and can thus in some sense very well inflict the ultimate punishment on him. Besides, rumors are that a god dies as soon as all his believers are died out.
I must also mention, to avoid misunderstandings, that this God before the ICC is not the Christian god. The usual Christian god, as believed by the majority of Christians, has not inflicted death upon Adam nor allowed the earth quake of Lisboa. He has not directly created man and has no direct influence on earth, so he's not responsible for natural death and disasters. Thus you can't catch him red-handed and drag him before a court.
However the God before the ICC is the US-fundamentalist God. As I've learned, fundamentalists believe their God has inflicted death and suffering as a revenge for Adam's disobedience, called the original "sin". Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here. As the fundamentalist God can cause or prevent disasters at will, the question the court has to decide is not whether God is responsible or not. The question is indeed, as Nitro pointed out, whether the killing was murder or not.
Killing is not murder in case of a 'just cause', like self-defense, a war, or a just law. But war or law can not always excuse killing people, as we know at least since the Nuremberg trials. Saddam also killed his victims by declaring war on them, or by law, or as a punishment for rebellion and disobedience, but this didn't help him before the court.
So the question is whether God had a 'just cause' for his killings. It not, it was murder, it's as simple as that. If he just says: "They died because of their disobedience to me", then he must also explain why the court should show more mercy to him than to a Hitler or Saddam who killed people for the same reason.
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: jcl]
#105032
01/11/07 21:46
01/11/07 21:46
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 3,010
analysis paralysis
NITRO777
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Quote:
So the question is whether God had a 'just cause' for his killings. It not, it was murder, it's as simple as that. If he just says: "They died because of their disobedience to me", then he must also explain why the court should show more mercy to him than to a Hitler or Saddam who killed people for the same reason.
Saddam and Hitler denied their victims of the one supreme human quality, namely choice. By stripping their victims from their choice love is turned into rape, and capital punishment is turned into murder. Hitler never allowed his victims to repent and even if he did there would be nothing to repent from for how does someone repent from being a Jew? Or how does someone say sorry about being a Kurd? Hitler and Saddam were not chosen by the people, perhaps they had their own nations under fearful subjection, but they tried to rob other nations of choice and therefore liberty. Choice = Liberty.
God has given everyone the freedom of choice, and He has no desire to see anyone choose death for themselves, but He has given us all the opportunity to choose life and death. I personally cannot fathom why anyone would choose death, but it happens probably out of ignorance.
Going back to the question of "just cause", I dont believe anyone born on earth is truly innocent. We are a flawed, tainted species which will undoubtedly destroy ourselves eventually with or without God's judgemental intervention. The fact that we can be "born again" and therefore recycled is the greatest hope of humanity.
All other religions, cults, psychologies, and self-help programs offer only improvement upon our old selves. Christianity offers a completely new "model" of psyche for replacement.
So it would not have mattered one bit if a Christian had died in the earthquake because a Christian has an immortal soul which makes death meaningless for him. Therefore you should perhaps adjust the high court proceedings with a new docket of evidence, namely "exhibit A" which would contain all the names of all the Christians who seemingly perished in the quake. Those numbers would have to be subtracted from the total deathcount. 
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: NITRO777]
#105033
01/11/07 23:10
01/11/07 23:10
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX
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Saddam and Hitler did give a choice, quite literally, you were either against or with them. I think considering the privileges Christianity seems to offer (wether or not those privileges must be 'earned' is irrelevant, it's about the socalled 'choice'), it's really not thát different. (remember that non-believers are generally thought to go to hell no matter what). I think God would have a relatively hard time to justify his actions. Because I'm sure éven those Christians who died in that earthquake did not choose to die like that or fór whatever reason God would state. I'd say it's murder indeed, instead of killings. If infact God was the force who set the earthquake in motion, then God was like a finger pulling the trigger of a gun. Motive would be secondary of importance, there's no 'acted out of self-defense' argument when it comes to devasting disasters like earthquakes if you ask me. Just like we can't morally justify setting off a nuclear bomb 'out of self-defense' or 'precaution'. (More or less OT:) Yes, eventhough the bible says nothing about our soul being immortal yes or no, but okey, if that's what 'Christian fundamentalists' believe. (I guess all christians believe this, right?) Quote:
We are a flawed
Perhaps, but who is the only one who can do something about that? A little hint: not God.
Personally I would definately see humans like Stalin or Saddam or Hitler as 'flawed' persons, no doubt about that. Still, since humanity seems to have a hard time learning from it's past, I don't really see how rebirth of our souls is our only hope. The problem is there are so many of us, so many of us could screw up (again?). There's seemingly no process of selection of any kind, otherwise one could argue that 2000 years would be more than enough to recycle souls and result in a better humanity as a whole.
Cheers
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Re: God's Defense Strategy
[Re: PHeMoX]
#105034
01/12/07 00:05
01/12/07 00:05
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 3,010
analysis paralysis
NITRO777
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Quote:
Perhaps, but who is the only one who can do something about that?
Obviously we haven't done anything yet, although I admire your hopeful optimism I am too much a profound skeptic of human nature to agree. I certainly dont see anything in history which makes even a small resistance against the massive force of man's self-destruction.
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There's seemingly no process of selection of any kind, otherwise one could argue that 2000 years would be more than enough to recycle souls and result in a better humanity as a whole.
Its not a better humanity, its a replaced humanity. With the advent of Christ 2000 years ago there is now two seperate species of humanity on earth. This is why Christ referred to Himself as the Son of God, and the "first begotten from the dead". The reason why this "new creation" has not affected the earth in the way you would expect is because it (the Christian Purpose) is not directed to interfere with the continuum of "old Adamic's creation" downward spiral. Christ's Kingdom was always, and always shall be a subtle, non-physical Kingdom. We, as the body of Christ, do not stand to inherit this earth, but are promised a new heaven and earth. So obviously our purposes(as directed by God) would not stand in the way. There are indeed great changes we make through our efforts down through history, but none of those changes will ever become an obstacle to mankind's apocalyptic finale. God has already judged Adam with death from the garden, the strength of that condemnation is impervious,inevitable and irreconcilably resolute, so much so that the earth quakes, hurricane's rage, famine spreads, floods overcome, waves sweep, men war with each other, radiation seeps through the ozone and thousands die every day. There is no way that the course of such events will ever turn, because they are linked by the eternal counsels of the Godhead.
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