God is POWER, Thus Spoke Calvinuthra

[Jeremy E Walker]

Received, a man who holds that God is the one who has caused us to have a sense of justice because God Himself is just and has created us in His image as beings capable of being just or unjust, cannot at the same time judge God as being unjust for judging people for their sins.

I think we both agree that God is the one who determines what is just or unjust. If you hold that He is the One who determines what is just then it necessarily follows that you as a mere man, cannot judge God as being unjust without making your views the standard by which God is judged. But God is judged by none.

That is the point being made.

 

[lesliedellow]

I spoke of the third way, and you haven't made a response to it, much less even brought it up.

Proposition A: X is outside of God.

Proposition B: X is not outside of God.

In any system of logic whatsoever, a proposition and its negation are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. So which is it?

 

[Paradoxum]

Yep. God is asking impossible things, therefore God isn't at work here.

That's one of things, Paradoxum, yes.

To my understanding, Jesus' command to go and make disciples of the nations, to preach the Good News to the poor, in the Calvinist view isn't to give people hope and to do so for the sake of getting people saved, because it was already decided by God Himself (not because of foreknowledge but literal presetination) at the beginning of time, thus to the Calvinist they should preach the Gospel just as an act of obedience to Jesus, that's it. Even though in reality when preaching the Good News they are really preaching "Good News for a precious few of you in the audience, but very, very bad news to the rest."

It does if you can read. It wasn't only Calvin who thought so. So did Luther and Thomas Aquinas.

Well good for them.

 

[Tree of Life]

Goodness and God are identical. Within a Biblical worldview it can be no other way.

If goodness is some impersonal criteria that even God is evaluated by then God is not truly divine. He himself submits to some uncreated standard that's not himself.

But goodness is neither arbitrary such that it could change with God's slightest whim. Because goodness is personal and derived from God himself it cannot change.

 

[CaDan]

Christianity is the result of trying to hold beliefs in both an all-powerful and all-loving God in one's mind at the same time.

 

[lesliedellow]

Well good for them.

For an atheist, you seem to have some pretty definite ideas about the attributes of a non existent God.

 

[Paradoxum]

For an atheist, you seem to have some pretty definite ideas about the attributes of a non existent God.

I used to be a Christian, and most Christians say that God is good and loving.

(And there's nothing strange about having specific ideas about fictional characters.)

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

I used to be a Christian, and most Christians say that God is good and loving.

God is good, loving and perfectly just. We've all been lied to about God because it is profitable to man.

 

[Received]

Proposition A: X is outside of God.

Proposition B: X is not outside of God.

In any system of logic whatsoever, a proposition and its negation are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. So which is it?

Received, a man who holds that God is the one who has caused us to have a sense of justice because God Himself is just and has created us in His image as beings capable of being just or unjust, cannot at the same time judge God as being unjust for judging people for their sins.

I think we both agree that God is the one who determines what is just or unjust. If you hold that He is the One who determines what is just then it necessarily follows that you as a mere man, cannot judge God as being unjust without making your views the standard by which God is judged. But God is judged by none.

That is the point being made.

God may determine what's just or unjust, but he doesn't do it at the flip of a switch: "that's just, that's not." Something about justice is inherent in the very physical and metaphysical makeup of things. God is just in the sense that he always and at all times follows through with the good at all times. How do we get to determine what is good and what isn't? Well, the good is about perfection, about something being the end or telos of what it should be. Justice goes with this, as does every other virtue.

If we take this, it's the case that God's standard of goodness is neither what he does (which, again, means that there is no standard of goodness) nor outside him, but is identical with his actions. "Well, who determines the standard of goodness of his actions?" He does by creating things in such a way that there are prototypes or end goals for each activity. Goodness isn't a quality so much as it is a state, an activity, or the general character involved with a certain tendency to act.

Hence it's fair to say "both/and" to the question of God and standards of goodness. He both creates the standard indirectly by creating the world and therefore the nature of things physically and metaphysically, and must fulfill this standard by acting in good ways according to this arrangement.

Finito.

 

[Received]

For an atheist, you seem to have some pretty definite ideas about the attributes of a non existent God.

And you might make a complicated argument that, if we assume that God exists and is accessible to everyone in a preconscious sort of way (see Romans 1 for example), people like Paradoxum have more faith than people who claim to have faith but really hold highly a conception of God that's bad. When you reject the bad you have a sense of goodness. Let's call that "really God".

 

[lesliedellow]

I used to be a Christian, and most Christians say that God is good and loving.

Try reading psalm 136, especially from verse 10. I doubt if the Egyptians et al would altogether go along with the refrain.

 

[lesliedellow]

God may determine what's just or unjust, but he doesn't do it at the flip of a switch: "that's just, that's not."

No. He will have his own good reasons for deciding upon what is just and unjust, but he is still the source of morality, and subject to nothing beyond himself. Least of all your ideas about what would be appropriate behaviour for him.

Something about justice is inherent in the very physical and metaphysical makeup of things.

How wonderfully vague. It is impossible to contradict it, because it doesn't actually say anything.

 

[bhsmte]

God is good, loving and perfectly just. We've all been lied to about God because it is profitable to man.

Who lied about God, the many theists who describe him differently, or the people who don't believe he exists?

And, how can you prove anything was a lie?

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Try reading psalm 136, especially from verse 10. I doubt if the Egyptians et al would altogether go along with the refrain.

Why do you say that?

 

[lesliedellow]

Why do you say that?

Have you read it?

 

[Received]

No. He will have his own good reasons for deciding upon what is just and unjust, but he is still the source of morality, and subject to nothing beyond himself. Least of all your ideas about what would be appropriate behaviour for him.

Reasons presupposes a standard. Therefore you're either at a standard outside himself or the both/and perspective.

How wonderfully vague. It is impossible to contradict it, because it doesn't actually say anything.

Yeah, stuff is really vague if you rip it from its context. Example:

How

How what? Goodness, what a pointless thought.

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Who lied about God, the many theists who describe him differently, or the people who don't believe he exists?

And, how can you prove anything was a lie?

Jerome's invention of Lucifer.

The mistranslations of "age-long pruning" into "eternal punishment".

"lying pen of the scribes"


That's a start.


We are all victims of thousands of years of the telephone game. You have to work to reveal what has been hidden by both man and God.

 

[Received]

Look, I'm not saying God isn't the source of morality. I'm just saying that it isn't the case that whatever God does is good just because he does it, but rather that his goodness implies some type of standard that he in a sense created by creating the universe (and therefore a sense of the good because of a telos with each action), or more complicatedly that this standard is inherent to his very nature but not necessarily his will.

And your stance of "God does it, therefore it's right" makes the case not that God's will is the standard, but that there is no standard at all, because a standard implies formula, generalization -- if I follow this standard, then I can become like another person who follows it. But if God commits mass genocide and dashes the brains of children on rocks and another person copies this thinking it's a standard, God is somehow good and the person copying is somehow Hitler. That's the absurdity of "if God did it, it's by necessity good," and I haven't even gotten to how this becomes dangerous given that it's never "God did it," but always, "I think or believe God did it..."

ETA: do you think God would be good if he took the form of an angel and sexually abused a child?

 

[lesliedellow]

How what? Goodness, what a pointless thought.

Are you being your normal dishonest self again? Having just glanced through all my posts on this thread, I can find none with the single word "How".

 

[Received]

Are you being your normal dishonest self again? Having just glanced through all my posts on this thread, I can find none with the single word "How".

You're totally not getting the point, dude.