juvenissun
... and God saw that it was good.
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God is not the absolute
- Thread starter razeontherock
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You bet. Transplanted it from there to here, to get different input. (Folks here wouldn't see it there)
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I'm not sure about Buddhism, other then they require to let go of all distractions, thoughts are distractions too. I believe that is the way to achieve Nirvana.
Gnostics did share some similarities tho not too much. They insist GOD the FIRST PRINCIPAL or CAUSE is unreachable and can never be understood. So HE created other Principals in order for HIM to communicate with the creation. In fact The First Principal did not even create life, life was created by the God of this world, and that is where Gnostics really lose it, they attribute Lucifer the creator of this world.
All that mumbo jumbo aside, they do make a few valid points by realizing there is a First Cause or Principal that is unreachable. (No one can come to the Father except thru me). They also make the bold claim and this is also valid, any attempts to describe the First Principal will fail. The closet thing we can use to describe the First Principal with any level of accuracy is IT is NOTHING.
So the concept of nothingness is certainly not unique with atheists, Buddhist or early pagan religions. It was also echoed thru the gnostics.
I look at it this way. What can GOD be? Any thing we can imagine, or any attributes we can think of would have to fail, as they would in effect put a limit on GOD as they are created ideas and attributes. GOD is beyond any of that. So underneath all that mumbo jumbo there are some valid points, which are shared in other religions and none religions.
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I find it challenging too. Some resident philosophers here may take a while to see this ...
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So if you look at current ideas re: quantum mechanics, that the big bang could have come out from nothing, maybe they're on the same wave length here?
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JoeyArnold
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Not sure. I believe it is the concept of nothingness and God, and or the relationship of that. Your certainly welcome to chime in any way u see fit
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JoeyArnold
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Not sure. I believe it is the concept of nothingness and God, and or the relationship of that. Your certainly welcome to chime in any way u see fit
Some people think God either has to be Absolute or humanistic, but I say both.
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Faithful Skeptic
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I think that my post in a thread on an Orthodox Facebook group earlier today actually touches on this topic, though, I think a little differently. The thread also had a sub-theme that carried over from another on the page which was dealing with paradoxes in general (both religious and secular).
In response to this question:
"Why did God create Adam with the potential for that which would give rise to use being born with 'sinful passions' which draw us to sin and which God judges us by? And how is this fair? How is it fair that I am already placed at a disadvantage given I am born with the 'sinful passions?'"
My initial response was, "How is it fair to be born without being able to choose whether we want to follow God or not by ourselves? You'd rather just be a God-loving robot? Also, what [the person above me] said." (which I think is largely irrelevant to this thread). I then followed up with this (which I think is directly related to the OP):
"I'd also like to say, respectfully, that the question itself is borderline scholastic. To answer the question, we have to assume that we are capable of understanding fairness as it applies to God using reason alone, and, in order to do that, we have to apply a humanistic understanding of God. At that point, we've reduced this aspect of divinity to humanity and aren't even talking about the real, Biblical God anymore. Instead, we're talking about some philosophical godly possibility that could be earnestly understood using imperfect processes (our own). Imperfection, by itself, cannot make sense of the perfect, so whatever we're talking about would also have to be imperfect--again, we wouldn't be talking about God.
I'm not saying that the question isn't interesting. What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't hope to find some sort of rational, perfect answer to this question--not without prayer, at least. That Perfect Thing that we are trying to talk about has to let us know what the answer is."
In response to this question:
"Why did God create Adam with the potential for that which would give rise to use being born with 'sinful passions' which draw us to sin and which God judges us by? And how is this fair? How is it fair that I am already placed at a disadvantage given I am born with the 'sinful passions?'"
My initial response was, "How is it fair to be born without being able to choose whether we want to follow God or not by ourselves? You'd rather just be a God-loving robot? Also, what [the person above me] said." (which I think is largely irrelevant to this thread). I then followed up with this (which I think is directly related to the OP):
"I'd also like to say, respectfully, that the question itself is borderline scholastic. To answer the question, we have to assume that we are capable of understanding fairness as it applies to God using reason alone, and, in order to do that, we have to apply a humanistic understanding of God. At that point, we've reduced this aspect of divinity to humanity and aren't even talking about the real, Biblical God anymore. Instead, we're talking about some philosophical godly possibility that could be earnestly understood using imperfect processes (our own). Imperfection, by itself, cannot make sense of the perfect, so whatever we're talking about would also have to be imperfect--again, we wouldn't be talking about God.
I'm not saying that the question isn't interesting. What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't hope to find some sort of rational, perfect answer to this question--not without prayer, at least. That Perfect Thing that we are trying to talk about has to let us know what the answer is."
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