MeDeFe wrote:Anyway, taking a definition that says god is good, and from that concluding that god (should this being exist) is good, is circular reasoning at its finest.
So, bk, I'm not buying it.
My point is that a supreme being, i.e. one who created everything would define reality seeing that He creates it. For us, the creations, to attempt to contradict His definition of good and evil would be rather stupid and certainly arrogant. If a parent tells a child that it is wrong/bad to hit his siblings and the child refuses to accept such, the child is punished.
Take the human body for example. What if the white corpuscles suddenly decided that it was bad to fight diseases? What if they deemed the harmful bacteria good? For the creation to argue with the creator is madness. In short, the creator has power over His creation - whatever is good for the creator is good and whatever is bad for the creator is bad. If the creation becomes bad for its creator, simple logic would dictate that He would destroy the creation and start over. The Scriptures use the example of a potter (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:4, Romans 9:21), who would naturally have power over the pots that he creates. What the potter desires in a pot is good and what he desires not is bad. The pots are created or destroyed according to his will. So yeah, in such a reality you could definitely say that God is omnibenevolent. Circular logic?
But surely that argument would logically allow a parent the right to kill their children if they were disobedient? Pots are one thing, a living being another.
I can understand that you hold God to a different standard, but the analogy is flawed. A parent has certain rights to punish their own child, but killing them isn't one of them.
Actually under the Mosaic law a child that was incorrigible was to be put to death (Exodus 21:15 & 17).
MeDeFe wrote:Anyway, taking a definition that says god is good, and from that concluding that god (should this being exist) is good, is circular reasoning at its finest.
So, bk, I'm not buying it.
My point is that a supreme being, i.e. one who created everything would define reality seeing that He creates it. For us, the creations, to attempt to contradict His definition of good and evil would be rather stupid and certainly arrogant. If a parent tells a child that it is wrong/bad to hit his siblings and the child refuses to accept such, the child is punished.
Take the human body for example. What if the white corpuscles suddenly decided that it was bad to fight diseases? What if they deemed the harmful bacteria good? For the creation to argue with the creator is madness. In short, the creator has power over His creation - whatever is good for the creator is good and whatever is bad for the creator is bad. If the creation becomes bad for its creator, simple logic would dictate that He would destroy the creation and start over. The Scriptures use the example of a potter (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:4, Romans 9:21), who would naturally have power over the pots that he creates. What the potter desires in a pot is good and what he desires not is bad. The pots are created or destroyed according to his will. So yeah, in such a reality you could definitely say that God is omnibenevolent. Circular logic?
So let's say what god wants out of creation is a good laugh, and god thinks it's funny when sentient and self-aware beings with free will (e.g. humans) suffer. Of course bad things can't happen quite all the time because then we'd just die off and god would have to make new ones (and that would be a chore and a waste of a universe), so there have to be a few good and neutral things for us as well, but on the whole something bad is always going on and god can always laugh at someone's misery.
None of this contradicts what you wrote. God still has power over creation, god decides what's good and what's bad. But if what I wrote is true it's a crappy world and god is a jerk. Sure, it may all still be good by definition, but that doesn't change that god can legitimately be called a jerk in those circumstances.
saxitoxin wrote:Your position is more complex than the federal tax code. As soon as I think I understand it, I find another index of cross-references, exceptions and amendments I have to apply.
Timminz wrote:Yo mama is so classless, she could be a Marxist utopia.
2dimes wrote:Again this over simplifies things but is the direction I'm suggesting.
Army of GOD wrote:Good and evil are relative
I'm not thinking relative, I'm thinking more we can't see everything involved in running the universe so we think something is evil because we can't know the whole purpose behind it.
Like rehab, it can be really horrible to take away the substance a person is addicted to yet they must in order to save the person's life because they are being poisoned.
Surely the same argument can be applied in the other direction equally, Assuming that a God or gods exist, they could equally be pure evil and we merely don't see their purpose. I'm not making that argument here, but do thing it's a bit weak as a justification for arguing that God is good. It could equally work for an argument that God is evil, ambivalent, or whatever else.
The only evidence we have, further assuming that he is omnipotent and omniscient, is how He acts.
True. However, God's mind is infinite and ours is finite. To argue with what God says is good or bad is like trying to beat an opponent at chess when he can clearly see every possible variation for the next hundred moves, and that's an understatement. There is no way that we with our finite minds can possibly comprehend the purpose of an infinite God. We live in a finite reality. God's dwellingplace is in eternity where everything happens at once. Jesus is referred to as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8), so before man was created Jesus had already been crucified for man's shortcomings.
We cannot possibly comprehend God's purpose (Romans 11:33 & 34). That is where faith comes in, which in essence is simply assuming that God, being God, knows what He's doing and therefore we must trust and obey Him. I argued with Him/questioned Him once. I came out of the service in 1970 a mental and emotional wreck and He put me back together and gave me a new life. After following Him for 14 years i became totally disillusioned by the corruption of the church (no not just the one i was going to). I told God i couldn't understand why the hell He allowed His church to become such a mess and walked away from the ministry. He wouldn't let me walk away and so i ran - not a real bright idea. I became the antithesis of what i knew to be the truth and lived as a madman for years. I can't question the goodness and love of God because after i rejected and betrayed Him He still has given me another chance. That's the "evidence" that i go by.
This I can agree on, even as an atheist. Faith is something I have a lot of respect and time for, and that's the part of religion that I sometimes miss. I don't have a huge amount of time for people who argue that their beliefs are based on facts, or a reasoned set of philosophical arguments. Mostly those can be easily refuted, and at their core will be faith.
I've always been a literature student, so perhaps the best analogy I can come up with for my point of view would be loving a poem or a novel. There can be truth and beauty in them without them being facts, or even having to accept them as factual truths.
the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein
MeDeFe wrote:Anyway, taking a definition that says god is good, and from that concluding that god (should this being exist) is good, is circular reasoning at its finest.
So, bk, I'm not buying it.
My point is that a supreme being, i.e. one who created everything would define reality seeing that He creates it. For us, the creations, to attempt to contradict His definition of good and evil would be rather stupid and certainly arrogant. If a parent tells a child that it is wrong/bad to hit his siblings and the child refuses to accept such, the child is punished.
Take the human body for example. What if the white corpuscles suddenly decided that it was bad to fight diseases? What if they deemed the harmful bacteria good? For the creation to argue with the creator is madness. In short, the creator has power over His creation - whatever is good for the creator is good and whatever is bad for the creator is bad. If the creation becomes bad for its creator, simple logic would dictate that He would destroy the creation and start over. The Scriptures use the example of a potter (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:4, Romans 9:21), who would naturally have power over the pots that he creates. What the potter desires in a pot is good and what he desires not is bad. The pots are created or destroyed according to his will. So yeah, in such a reality you could definitely say that God is omnibenevolent. Circular logic?
So let's say what god wants out of creation is a good laugh, and god thinks it's funny when sentient and self-aware beings with free will (e.g. humans) suffer. Of course bad things can't happen quite all the time because then we'd just die off and god would have to make new ones (and that would be a chore and a waste of a universe), so there have to be a few good and neutral things for us as well, but on the whole something bad is always going on and god can always laugh at someone's misery.
None of this contradicts what you wrote. God still has power over creation, god decides what's good and what's bad. But if what I wrote is true it's a crappy world and god is a jerk. Sure, it may all still be good by definition, but that doesn't change that god can legitimately be called a jerk in those circumstances.
He could be, but it would be as irrational as calling him good, and let's be fair, BK is arguing that any of those human definitions are necessarily inadequate. That calling him "Good" is still calling him "Good" on a level of far below that of omniscience.
the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein
MeDeFe wrote:Anyway, taking a definition that says god is good, and from that concluding that god (should this being exist) is good, is circular reasoning at its finest.
So, bk, I'm not buying it.
My point is that a supreme being, i.e. one who created everything would define reality seeing that He creates it. For us, the creations, to attempt to contradict His definition of good and evil would be rather stupid and certainly arrogant. If a parent tells a child that it is wrong/bad to hit his siblings and the child refuses to accept such, the child is punished.
Take the human body for example. What if the white corpuscles suddenly decided that it was bad to fight diseases? What if they deemed the harmful bacteria good? For the creation to argue with the creator is madness. In short, the creator has power over His creation - whatever is good for the creator is good and whatever is bad for the creator is bad. If the creation becomes bad for its creator, simple logic would dictate that He would destroy the creation and start over. The Scriptures use the example of a potter (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:4, Romans 9:21), who would naturally have power over the pots that he creates. What the potter desires in a pot is good and what he desires not is bad. The pots are created or destroyed according to his will. So yeah, in such a reality you could definitely say that God is omnibenevolent. Circular logic?
So let's say what god wants out of creation is a good laugh, and god thinks it's funny when sentient and self-aware beings with free will (e.g. humans) suffer. Of course bad things can't happen quite all the time because then we'd just die off and god would have to make new ones (and that would be a chore and a waste of a universe), so there have to be a few good and neutral things for us as well, but on the whole something bad is always going on and god can always laugh at someone's misery.
None of this contradicts what you wrote. God still has power over creation, god decides what's good and what's bad. But if what I wrote is true it's a crappy world and god is a jerk. Sure, it may all still be good by definition, but that doesn't change that god can legitimately be called a jerk in those circumstances.
Suffering is relative. When i was 4 years old a skinned knee was a traumatic injury. The suffering of this world - even a life seemingly filled with nothing but suffering - is not even a nanosecond in the afterlife. When my son was 3 years old it seemed to me that i was spanking him every day for something. At one point i cried out to God that it was too much - i shouldn't have to be hitting my son every freakin day. This went on for the better part of a year - the little bugger had a hard head (don't know where he got that from). I held to the Scriptural principles of corporal punishment however and outlasted him. After that year i still had to spank him occasionally but nowhere near as much. The last time i had to spank him was when he was 12 - one time and that was a fakeout. I never had to put a curfew on him in high school and he teaches school now in Austin.
I'm sixty years old. I have inflammatory arthritis from massive injuries sustained in a bike wreck in 93. I live in a camper out in the woods. My vehicle died and i have no money for another one. I could go on and on and feel sorry for myself, but what would be the point? Read the book of Job if you want to understand suffering - here's a guy who did nothing to deserve his suffering and yet his faith held out. All that he suffered was just for God to make a point to Satan - now that's the most blatant reason to call God a jerk that i know of - at one point Job's wife told him to "just curse God and die". Job however believed that God had His reasons for doing those things and he didn't have the arrogance to question Him.
God has a purpose, and we cannot possibly comprehend it fully. I have seen and experienced enough to know that He is real and that He is indeed the supreme being. That's enough for me. I see in His Word that we "through much tribulation shall enter the kingdom of heaven" (Acts 14:22) and so i know what to expect. There's no way i can convince you or anyone else of what i know to be true. If you seek Him you'll find Him, but if you choose to call Him a jerk and go your own way you won't find anything of lasting value.
