Question for Believers: How can God be PERFECT?

by kid-A 31 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  kid-A

  Several weeks ago the issue of God's 'perfect nature' came up on a thread. The concept of "Perfection" is a persistent in vitually all faith traditions and theological constructs.

  JWs in particular, have an obsession with the concept of perfection and use it regularly in their propaganda: "Live forever in a perfect paradise earth"; "Live forever in perfect health"; "Humans and animals will live together in perfect harmony", etc etc.....

  The point was raised about the possibility or impossibility of God being perfect.

  If we begin with the basic Judaeo-Christian tenet that God created the Universe from nothingness, then he is the designer and creator of every single entity, sentient or non-sentient, and object within reality. This begs the question: Where did evil come from? Where did "imperfection" come from? For the sake of argument, we can use the Judaeo-Christian standards of good and evil when considering them as actions, events or objects....(e.g. 10 commandments, etc)

  The usual response is: God did not CREATE evil, but gave all beings the "Free-Will" to CHOOSE to do evil, or good.

  The logical problem with this premise is that God would STILL by necessity, have to be the architect of Evil, if for no other reason that "man was created in his image"....Indeed, if God did not "create" evil as a behavioural and moral "Option", then NEITHER man, NOR the devil would have had the CHOICE to do evil.....

  The point is, if ALL within the universal reality came from God, then God, by logical necessity MUST contain evil...Even if he does not "contain" evil as a "personal trait", he at the very least must be capable of evil, and therefore, IMPERFECT.....

  Assuming the definition of "perfection" to be: "The state of being without a flaw of defect"....How can "imperfection" derive from "perfection"? It is a logical contradiction.

  There is another option....that God had absolutely nothing to do with "Evil" and it existed BEFORE God created the universe. However, again, this by logical extension demonstrates that God is not responsible for the contents of the universe, or at the very least, chose not to do anything about "imperfection" and "evil" as constructs within the Universe. Indeed, the universe and at least certain components of it, existed BEFORE God.....thus implying that God, is finite.

  Yet another option: Gods "evil" is "perfect".....since it derives from a "perfect being"?

  Are there any rational, theological alternatives to these conclusions?
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  Madame Quixote

  That's so weird . . . I feel asleep reading about this last night.

  I believe the reason god is perfect, according to St.Anselm, is because we can conceive of something more perfect than ourselves, and therefore, what we think about god is a fact, especially since we're so imperfect. How couldn't there be a god? My oh my. nananeebooboo. God is real because we thought of him.

  I guess that reasoning applies just as well to the tooth fairy and santa and garden fairies.
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  Wafe

  I find that logic is useless in virtually every argument known to humans for one simple reason.

  Something can be contradictory and still be true. Logic can only be effective under the following conditions.

  A. There must be an either/or situation. IE God must be imperfect or perfect.

  B. You must know every aspect of the question at hand. This is almost never the case with life.

  C. The information must be absoulute which it never is.

  D. Logic works well with numbers and on paper-that's about it.

  Take for example the following reasoning.

  The strong replaces the weak. Murders are stronger than thier victims. Therefore it is logical to conclude that muderers are more fit for survival and have a right to live. This of course is absurd because morally murder is horrific. In this case the logic is flawed. Logic also cannot explain why people like beauty, art, music as there is no rational reason for any of this.

  The point is that if your attempt is to disprove God's existance with logic there is really no point because God is love and love is not logical.
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  Madame Quixote

  Nice post, Kid-A. You ask,"Are there any rational, theological alternatives to these conclusions?"

  And you concluded quite a few blasphemous things there.

  Rationaltheology? Are you kidding? I believe that's an oxymoron; but, I'm sure there is some other rational religious person who can come up with more than a question to answer your question.
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  Madame Quixote

  Wafe said:

  I find that logic is useless in virtually every argument known to humans for one simple reason.

  Something can be contradictory and still be true. Logic can only be effective under the following conditions.

  A. There must be an either/or situation. IE God must be imperfect or perfect.

  B. You must know every aspect of the question at hand. This is almost never the case with life.

  C. The information must be absoulute which it never is.

  D. Logic works well with numbers and on paper-that's about it.

  Take for example the following reasoning.

  The strong replaces the weak. Murders are stronger than thier victims. Therefore it is logical to conclude that muderers are more fit for survival and have a right to live. This of course is absurd because morally murder is horrific. In this case the logic is flawed. Logic also cannot explain why people like beauty, art, music as there is no rational reason for any of this.

  The point is that if your attempt is to disprove God's existance with logic there is really no point because God is love and love is not logical."

  Prove those points logically, hun, without the assumptions.

  Okay, do we get extra points for pointing out the fallacious logics of this post?
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  Seeker4

  Wafe wrote: "...with logic there is really no point because God is love and love is not logical."

  Logic aside, there is absolutely no evidence either for the existence of a god, or for that god being 'love.' We humans say that there are numerous gods, and that some of those gods are loving in the way they act towards humans.

  It's simply an incredible delusion that humans generate based on our fear of death. In fact, almost everyone of our humanly-created "loving" gods is a monster capable of the foulest crimes towards humanity - perhaps most frequently genocide. The gods of the Bible, especially Jehovah and even Jesus, are particularly guilty of this. Their answer to most problems is mass slaughter, whether it's Jehovah killing off either his less than obedient "chosen" people, or their enemies, in the Old Testament, or the slaughtering Jesus of Revelation, complete with this sword in his mouth! How apt a description!

  S4
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  gumb

  Look, its obvious. If you are God you can set your own supreme standard of what is perfect or 'fit for purpose', according to your omniscience. Those who try too hard to work out the mind of God are in danger self-combustion. But then if you are limiting yourself to the Judeo-Christian interpretation of God, it does create some very interesting contradictions.
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  LittleToe

  This is what I call the "bigger and better theory".

  If we start our hypothesis with the assumption that there is a God (for every experiment contains certain assumptions, and without this one the whole hypothesis is moot), then we need to decide what to attribute to this "God", even if it is only to be the mathematical/philosophical placeholder of a "god of the gaps". Usually this is at least "first cause".

  Theology has debated this one throughout history. Perhaps the Gnostic idea of a radical dualism is the most balanced, but it doesn't satisfy our innate desire that the good guy ultimately wins, while acknowledging that we tend to make mistakes. Hence mitigated dualism would perhaps take account of our deficiencies, leading to the acceptance of a correspondingly "bigger and better" deity.

  You'll understand that I'm merely arguing this from a mathematical perspective.

  Experientially "believers" are unanimous in attributing their deity to being somehow "bigger and better" than themselves. It still doesn't negate the "little green man" hypothesis, though, albeit "tall grey alien" might fit the mold better
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  Narkissos

  JW's obsession with the dubious notion of "im/perfection" (instead of the classical "sin/less") imo has more to do with the 19th-century Zeitgeist, in the wake of the industrial revolution and the growing importance of technology, than to earlier Christian tradition or the Bible itself.

  But, leaving that particularity aside, any praise of the monotheistic "God" is aporetic -- logically problematic.

  "God is good" is either a meaningless tautology (if God defines the "good" and he is necessarily "good" because he is God) or falls short of monotheism (there is a standard of "good" which is independent of, and transcendent to, God, so that I can meaningfully compare him to).
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  Qcmbr

  There are some things you can be perfect in by simply achieving -
  If you pay an exact tax you could be considered perfect at tax paying.
  There are some things you can be perfect in by avoiding -
  If you don't have sex you are perfectly celibate.
  There are some things you can be perfect in because there are no flaws in the result -
  You can shoot a perfect basket in basketball because you score.
  You can be perfect in knowledge -
  You are older than your children (I'm looking for something obvious that some smart arse can't pick holes in.)
  
  but all these things miss the core of what I think makes God - or the idea of God - perfect. Love.
  
  If you love all people equally, if you love them enough to allow your son to pay for all their mistakes, if you love them enough to allow their mistakes, if you love them enough to order a world for them then I think you can qualify for the description of perfection.