How do you defend your god's inaction?

by AlmostAtheist 105 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  AlmostAtheist

  Right, but I guess to me that is a loop, yes the universe is here, but we are back to how did it get here, it either always was or something had to cause it to be, so I could argue that fact that there is a universe is as strong an arguement that God exists as anything.

  Before we understood what caused thunder and lightning, it was assumed that a god did that, too. I don't think this fact is an argument against there being a god, but it does say that humanity tends to point at things it can't explain and blame it on god. Then knowledge accumulates and we admit that no, god didn't do this. But we don't know where THAT came from, so that must be from god. And so on. I don't know if man will ever run out of things he can't explain, I guess I doubt it. There's just too much we don't know.

  Dave
• 

  funkyderek

  Because they're better. Western ideas of individual rights for all are demonstrably superior to any system that devalues human life.

  That's kinda bigoted, and I wonder what the Australian Aborigines would make of it

  I don't know, but I would consider any Australian Aborigines who do not repect individual rights to be morally inferior to me.

  but I'll pass on from that and ask; do you hold the same standard for all life, or just human life?

  All sentient life.

  If not then kindly explain why "God", who allegedly isn't a human, should work any differently (seeing as we obviously intend to anthromorphise this to the hilt).

  Because he made the whole kit and caboodle. If the god you're talking about is one who hardly even notices us, any more than we notice a line of ants we step on, then of course there's no reason for him to step in. But we didn't make ants, we have no real responsibility to them.

  And of course, I'm anthropomorphising God. This is the god in whose image we were made, no? I mean, if you're talking about an alien of some sort who is nothing like us, and doesn't care about us, and may or may not have had some hand in starting the universe, then why call it "God"?

  In my view, you're not obliged to help at all. Whether you should help would depend on the level of danger...If you were Superman, what would you do? I would still argue that you have no obligation to step in, but I would think a lot less of you for not doing so than if you were a mere mortal.

  So there's absolutely no obligation whatsoever, however there remains some moral obligation which isn't actually obligation, but rather is some nice little nuance of non-supernatural thinking that exists but isn't named? Did I get that right?

  Not quite. I didn't think the nuance was that subtle. In my opinion, the only obligation we have towards others is not to initiate force or fraud against them. Anything else is fine. However, nice people usually do more. I'd throw a life ring to someone who was drowning, I might even jump in even though I'm not obliged to. I would have a fairly poor opinion of someone who wouldn't at least throw the life ring, but they should have the freedom not to do so.
• 

  Big Dog

  Dave, I get the thunder and lightning analogy, but I guess I see it as we have advanced a fair bit scientifically and while I am in no way science saavy but I like to read and I know of no theory based on scientfic principals that even would begin to explain matter from nothing, that in a vacuum canister energy/matter would suddenly spring into existence. By our own scientific theories that just isn't going to happen.

  But, ultimately I agree, there is just too much we don't know, too much to dogmatically argue for or against there being a God. I lean towards there being a God for reasons of my own which I foist upon no one, nor do I feel the need to defend, like my love for my daughter those feelings just exist.
• 

  OldSoul

  Big Dog,

  Love of your daughter is a perfect analogy. You know you do, you know you have basis. Can you explain it to someone who has never had children in such a way they can fully understand? No way.

  Some aspects of reality are real whether we can prove their existence or not. Some apsects of existence we have to experience to comprehend and language can't be used to explain it. Despite what some may believe, it is possible to conceive of things we cannot explain with language. It is impossible to explain a concept to someone else if the language cannot accomplish the explanation.

  Respectfully,
  OldSoul
• 

  Big Dog

  Old Soul, what you said is so true, language has limitations, hell, its my understanding that even math has limitations, there are somethings just beyond the ability for language to capture or adequately describe, thus the job of a poet is much more difficult than people ever imagine.
• 

  trevor

  AlmostAthiest said

  Which leads to the question, "What is god?"

  This is a beginning to understanding.

  Once we stop thinking of god as a person, an individual, in human terms and stop calling the force of life a him, we can become aware that each of us contains this force which has manifest itself through physical matter on this planet. This is just one manifestation of this force, one that we can relate to easily.

  The problem arises when we start to form moral judgements and conditions, specific to our perceived needs, that we then blame of thank a male deity for. We are then creating an image of a god which we then refer to as The God.

  At this point we have lost touch with what is really happening throughout this universe and millions of others.

  Who among us decided that there were any rules in the first place?

  t
• 

  OldSoul

  Nice points, trevor!

  I would add, the question equally well be phrased: "What is truth?"
• 

  Finally-Free

  Forgive me if this has been covered - I'm at work and haven't had time to read the entire thread, but felt I needed to add my 2 cents.

  Supposedly Adam and Eve were created perfect. They sinned by performing a simple act of eating fruit from the "tree of knowledge", and as a result all their descendants are born in sin, even though they did not yet exist when this act of "rebellion" took place. Regardless of what this "fruit" represented, the injustice of allowing billions of people to suffer the consequences of the act is obvious. They were not alive to even witness the act, let alone take part in it.

  History is filled with atrocities that "God" supposedly had the power to prevent - World wars, the holocaust, the Balkans, Rwanda - there are too many to mention. Yet I suppose that should not surprise me - the God of the Old Testament was himself such a sadistic butcher that he made Adolph Hitler look like a wuss.

  I could not defend, worship, or respect such a "God" and still respect myself.

  W
• 

  LittleToe

  Dave:If you can answer my question, perhaps you'll be half way there

  Derek:

  All sentient life.

  Seems a little limiting, given that there's plenty of non-sentient life that can experience pain. You've set distinctions, then, based on your own ethical model. You also accept that there are ethical models other than your own. Why do you assume that God works to yours, and why do you assume that yours is best?

  In my opinion, the only obligation we have towards others is not to initiate force or fraud against them.

  That works part-way well with my own ethos, too, however you still seem to have a dodgy definition for the word "obliged".
• 

  seattleniceguy

  OldSoul,

  It works very much like predetermining what reality is limited to. If you start from that perspective, you are bound to arrive at conclusions that establish your initial assumption because you are predestined to exclude anything that would lead outside your paradigm.

  I don't think this is the case with me. For one thing, I don't believe in God at all, so I don't have any presuppositions of what he/she/it/they/blob might be like. However, I do have a faculty for abstract thinking which allows me to entertain other people's concepts of God and think about the implications based on their definitions of him. So, as a ludicrous example, if you were to explicitly define God to be all-loving but also all-slaughtering, I would say that your concept demands an explanation for how both can be true. (There are many ways one could explain this. For example, one could say that slaughter is actually an aspect of love, etc, etc.) This would not be me cubbyholing God into a box, but rather trying to make sense of the definition that you yourself have put forth.

  The same is true of the perpetuated concept that God is like something we know of. If we restrict God to a paradigm of our creation and invention, we will bind "Him" to our own concepts of morality. That would indeed be creating God in our image. However, LittleToe and some others here have dispensed with that starting point. You don't understand why God "hasn't acted" because you are only looking at it from one predetermined and unwavering vantage point.

  I'm not trying to bind God to any concept of morality, as I pointed out before. I merely trying to take your definitions and make sense of them. If you tell me A = B, and B = C, then logically, by your definition of the items, A must equal C (regardless of whether I believe in A, B, or C). Now if suddenly you claim that in this particular case A does not equal C, then you should have a good explanation for why. Your explanation could be as simple as "A, B, and C are not part of a logically coherent system, so your conclusion is invalid." But an explanation is required.

  The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm perfectly willing to entertain other definitions of God that are logically coherent. In fact, it would be nice to hear one. In LT's last post, he says that humans are "shards" of God (sounds a bit like the book God's Debris). If this is the position, then it changes the implications entirely, because we no longer have a disinterested third-party watching, supposedly with power and love, but total inaction, from the sidelines. In the LT definition (if I have understood it correctly), there is no third-party at all. To my mind, this explanation successfully and logically deals with why God does not act, by removing God as a separate individual from the equation. (And incidentally, it doesn't seem very different from the non-theist's point of view.)

  LT,

  Japan is great. I'm studying up a storm here. One of my main goals here is to become more fluently literate, so I'm reading the newspaper, etc, for at least a couple hours a day. Tomorrow I'm going to an art museum and a science museum in downown Tokyo!

  SNG