God Without Omnipotence

[Received]

I heard a story last week that will stay with me forever, whether or not I think it's true. This person was sexually or physically abused four major times in her life. Her deepest emotional scar is an existential one: why would God allow this to happen? We talk. Then she brings up a past occurrence where she was at the dentist's office a few weeks after her most recent incident. The dental hygienist, taking quite a risk of losing her job, suddenly tells her, "God is telling me that you've had a hard time. That you've been sexually abused. But He's telling me that He was there, He cares, and things will get better." This person then said she has a vision where she sees herself on stage in front of others, telling them about her struggles, about evil in the world, about overcoming it. Of course, she doesn't know the dental hygienist at all, and the details this person is saying to her are details she has never told anyone before.

That's a big summary. But we make sure to emphasize how this doesn't mean her sufferings are part of a bigger plan, that somehow God allowed them as part of a plan for better things. Quite the opposite: I emphasize how I hear her saying that God caring, even if He was unable to change things, is the most important thing. I couldn't is infinitely more relieving than I wouldn't.

And like that she has the meaning she was searching for just half an hour previously. The meaning is that God was there, is there, still cares, but for some reason was unable to prevent the evil that others voluntarily inflicted on her.

Let's assume for a moment this story is true, and that it says something true about the nature of the universe. Let's assume, then, that God isn't omnipotent, but that He gives a damn and will somehow make things better in a future life.

To make it even more interesting, let's not even put this to a question of whether God could or couldn't exist given these qualifications. Let's say that He does exist, and this vague way of doing things is really how things are when it comes to evil in the world. With this in mind, I feel the urge to (for the second time in a week) quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

Imagine yourself as Ivan Karamazov, who openly tells his religious brother Alyosha that he would openly reject God's "ticket" to paradise because of a world where children have to suffer in any type of way.

Would you be like Ivan here?

 

[Paradoxum]

And like that she has the meaning she was searching for just half an hour previously. The meaning is that God was there, is there, still cares, but for some reason was unable to prevent the evil that others voluntarily inflicted on her.

Is the relief and meaning good if it is false? Is it good to tell someone that one day daddy will return to love you and make it all better, if it will never actually happen?

If you are going to throw out omnipotence then what is the essence of the idea of God? Just to make people feel better?

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower." ~ Marx

Let's assume for a moment this story is true, and that it says something true about the nature of the universe. Let's assume, then, that God isn't omnipotent, but that He gives a damn and will somehow make things better in a future life.

To make it even more interesting, let's not even put this to a question of whether God could or couldn't exist given these qualifications. Let's say that He does exist, and this vague way of doing things is really how things are when it comes to evil in the world. With this in mind, I feel the urge to (for the second time in a week) quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

Imagine yourself as Ivan Karamazov, who openly tells his religious brother Alyosha that he would openly reject God's "ticket" to paradise because of a world where children have to suffer in any type of way.

Would you be like Ivan here?

Why would you reject paradise? It especially makes no sense to reject it if the suffering wasn't God's fault.

 

[quatona]

I heard a story last week that will stay with me forever, whether or not I think it's true. This person was sexually or physically abused four major times in her life. Her deepest emotional scar is an existential one: why would God allow this to happen? We talk. Then she brings up a past occurrence where she was at the dentist's office a few weeks after her most recent incident. The dental hygienist, taking quite a risk of losing her job, suddenly tells her, "God is telling me that you've had a hard time. That you've been sexually abused. But He's telling me that He was there, He cares, and things will get better." This person then said she has a vision where she sees herself on stage in front of others, telling them about her struggles, about evil in the world, about overcoming it. Of course, she doesn't know the dental hygienist at all, and the details this person is saying to her are details she has never told anyone before.

That's a big summary. But we make sure to emphasize how this doesn't mean her sufferings are part of a bigger plan, that somehow God allowed them as part of a plan for better things. Quite the opposite: I emphasize how I hear her saying that God caring, even if He was unable to change things, is the most important thing. I couldn't is infinitely more relieving than I wouldn't.

And like that she has the meaning she was searching for just half an hour previously. The meaning is that God was there, is there, still cares, but for some reason was unable to prevent the evil that others voluntarily inflicted on her.

Let's assume for a moment this story is true, and that it says something true about the nature of the universe. Let's assume, then, that God isn't omnipotent, but that He gives a damn and will somehow make things better in a future life.

To make it even more interesting, let's not even put this to a question of whether God could or couldn't exist given these qualifications. Let's say that He does exist, and this vague way of doing things is really how things are when it comes to evil in the world. With this in mind, I feel the urge to (for the second time in a week) quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

Imagine yourself as Ivan Karamazov, who openly tells his religious brother Alyosha that he would openly reject God's "ticket" to paradise because of a world where children have to suffer in any type of way.

Would you be like Ivan here?

I guess God isn´t omniscient then, either - or else he would have known that stuff would go the wrong way.
With most of these "updates" of traditional god concepts I have the same problem: God appears to be more of an ordinary, incompetent guy who does not really know what he´s doing. More or less one of us.
Considering this, I would not downright reject his "ticket to paradise", but I would take such "too good to be true" promises with the same grain of salt that I would take them with from the next guy. I mean, I might trust him to try to the best of his abilities, but...oh well, that´s what I am doing too - with less than impressive results.

Anyway, God´s helplessness would certainly earn him some of my empathy and solidarity (and the disappointment that this God is not anywhere close to the god concept I have been brought up with shouldn´t be blamed on God but on the people who triggered my unrealistic expectations).

 

[Received]

Is the relief and meaning good if it is false? Is it good to tell someone that one day daddy will return to love you and make it all better, if it will never actually happen?

Well, that's the rub, speaking epistemologically: you can't technically *know* if God exists or not, whether or not there is a heaven or not; all you have are personal experiences. (That's what I think my experience with this person unveiled: the potential for contradiction between personal experience -- God being there -- and reason in terms of the problem of evil.) So I don't think your question can be answered, given that it can't be denied or approved in any rigorous epistemic sense.

If you are going to throw out omnipotence then what is the essence of the idea of God? Just to make people feel better?

Two possibilities:

1) What we consider God's lack of omnipotence is really our lack of understanding how the universe works according to (for lack of a better word) natural and spiritual laws. You know, if God says He can't tell a lie, His not telling a lie isn't a negation of his omnipotence; analogously, there might be something like this sense in place metaphysically that wouldn't mean omnipotence isn't in place, just that God can't do something from necessity given the spiritual law in place.

2) God isn't omnipotent, and so what? How is the inability to do absolutely everything a killer of God as a possible entity? Maybe he's 90% "potent". Well then.

Why would you reject paradise? It especially makes no sense to reject it if the suffering wasn't God's fault.

But that's the point Ivan isn't making. He sees a world where everything, including all the evil in the world, works together teleologically for some better good, so that the evil things are a needed ingredient in the cosmic recipe of universal salvation. Some would say (and I'm partly among them) that this makes God into a sort of evil dude. That's the problem I have with extreme answers to the problem of evil along the lines of "everything bad is really good in the long run."

 

[Elioenai26]

I heard a story last week that will stay with me forever, whether or not I think it's true. This person was sexually or physically abused four major times in her life. Her deepest emotional scar is an existential one: why would God allow this to happen? We talk. Then she brings up a past occurrence where she was at the dentist's office a few weeks after her most recent incident. The dental hygienist, taking quite a risk of losing her job, suddenly tells her, "God is telling me that you've had a hard time. That you've been sexually abused. But He's telling me that He was there, He cares, and things will get better." This person then said she has a vision where she sees herself on stage in front of others, telling them about her struggles, about evil in the world, about overcoming it. Of course, she doesn't know the dental hygienist at all, and the details this person is saying to her are details she has never told anyone before.

That's a big summary. But we make sure to emphasize how this doesn't mean her sufferings are part of a bigger plan, that somehow God allowed them as part of a plan for better things. Quite the opposite: I emphasize how I hear her saying that God caring, even if He was unable to change things, is the most important thing. I couldn't is infinitely more relieving than I wouldn't.

And like that she has the meaning she was searching for just half an hour previously. The meaning is that God was there, is there, still cares, but for some reason was unable to prevent the evil that others voluntarily inflicted on her.

Let's assume for a moment this story is true, and that it says something true about the nature of the universe. Let's assume, then, that God isn't omnipotent, but that He gives a damn and will somehow make things better in a future life.

To make it even more interesting, let's not even put this to a question of whether God could or couldn't exist given these qualifications. Let's say that He does exist, and this vague way of doing things is really how things are when it comes to evil in the world. With this in mind, I feel the urge to (for the second time in a week) quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

Imagine yourself as Ivan Karamazov, who openly tells his religious brother Alyosha that he would openly reject God's "ticket" to paradise because of a world where children have to suffer in any type of way.

Would you be like Ivan here?

This is a very excellent thread and subject which merits great thought and consideration as well as humility.

We can start with what we know.

Any talk of God by us as humans (this is assuming that God exists by the way), is going to necessarily be incomplete and imperfect. I am sure we all understand why.

God, being the Greatest Conceivable being and therefore the Summum Bonum or Highest good by definition, is going to be omnipotent. Without omnipotence, God would not be God.

Omnipotence is generally misunderstood, even by those in academic circles and especially in layman's circles as is evidenced by the misinterpretations of various people in the most recent thread on omnipotence entitled: A rock so big, it can't be moved by Hitchslap. When philosophers and theologians speak about God being omnipotent, it simply means that God as the Greatest Conceivable being is capable of bringing about any state of affairs that is logically possible. So it is not true that God can do literally anything. For example, God cannot make Himself cease to exist, He cannot make a rock to heavy that He cannot lift it, He cannot make a round square or a square circle etc. etc. All of the above would entail a logical impossibility.

So we know God can do anything that is logically possible and that as the Summum Bonum, He is the Highest Good or the very paradigm or locus of Good. We could analogously say He is morally perfect and can do no evil thing. Here we go back again, to the idea of omnipotence. God cannot lie or commit sin because it would entail a logical impossibility.

One good thing God could do would be to create something or to make something. He could create these things called humans that would represent Him and have dominion and authority over the world He made for them. If we stop here and examine the work of God thus far, it cannot be argued that God has done anything evil. We have humans on earth, created in the image of God who are to rule and have authority over the animals and the earth itself.

Then we take the humans themselves. What are they like? They are physical beings composed of two distinct but complimentary aspects, spirit/soul, and body. They are physical and spiritual beings simultaneously, a marvelous reflection of the majesty of God. They have the capacity to think, to communicate, to feel, to love, and to have desires. All of this is good. Nothing here is bad or evil. Nor is there any logical contradiction in what God has done in creating humans this way. They have the ability to have a personal relationship with their creator unlike the animals which makes them the most special part of all that God made.

But since they have the ability to reason, and make decisions and choices then one of those choices is to enter into a loving relationship with their Creator. They also have the ability to reject this loving relationship. Why? because love by definition is a choice of action. It is a choice one makes to love or to not love. It is a decision made by a person with the capacity to choose to love or to choose to reject this love. This choice can never be compulsory or else it is not a choice. Choice implies the ability to choose between two or more options. So the possibility of humans having the capacity of choosing to love or not to love their Creator is a good thing. We all value our freedom of choice do we not? When we marry our spouse, we want them to marry us because it is their choice to marry us, not because they are doing so out of compulsion. When we make love with our wives, we want them to do so freely, with joy, not out of compulsion, for this would be akin to rape. So the ability to choose to love is good. The ability entails necessarily the choice to also reject this love.

Well, now, what would happen if humans chose to reject and chose not to love God who is the Highest Good? We all know actions have consequences. This is undeniable of course. So what would happen if humans freely chose to reject the morally perfect, Highest Good, loving Creator who made them and chose something else to love?

It seems unthinkable at this point to even believe that humans could do such a thing, I mean here they are, in WiccanChild's sweet dream, marshmallowy, no suffering, no evil, perfect world. Every need and desire is immediately met. There is work, but no toil, pleasure and no pain. There is not even the concept of evil in their minds. Humans do not even know what evil is. But lets say that there was a way that they could know what evil was. And lets say that God, being so good and so loving as He must be, warns them not to commit a certain act because He knows that if they do, they will not only come to know evil with all of its horror, but that they will also die. Let us also say that God has a reason for giving humans this choice i.e. the choice to love and obey Him, or the choice to not love and not obey Him. Being God, His reason must be a good reason. It must be good because God is by definition, the Highest Good. Once again, having choices is good. It is not bad. Having the choice to do good or to to evil is a good thing. It is good because it gives us the chance to be good and to do the right thing.

Lets say that humans chose not to obey and love God, but to reject Him and to disobey Him. Should we expect for the results of this decision to be good? Of course not! If you reject the Highest good for anything less than the Highest good, you do not get what is best. That is undeniable. What you do get is a whole slew of evils that are diametrically opposed to what is good. In place of sweet fruitful labor, you now have toil, instead of joy and pleasure in child birth, you now have sorrow, and bitter pain. Instead of living forever in our physical bodies, we experience age, disease, deformity, aches, pain, and eventually death. Instead of men loving their neighbors, they kill them for sordid gain. Instead of men marrying the women they love and providing for them, they use them for sex and then leave them like a piece of meat. Instead of people being selfless and self sacrificing, they are greedy for gain, and covetous and ambitious for honor and fame. Instead of adults caring for children and loving them and protecting them, you now have adults who prey upon them to abuse them.

God is able to anything that is logically possible. It is not logically possible for God to force someone to love Him and obey Him. It is not logically possible because of the very definition of what love is. So, when the woman in your story was sexually abused, we see now that she was sexually abused, apparently by a man, and this man, whoever he was, chose to sexually abuse her because he cared more about pleasing himself than about caring for and protecting the woman who he saw as being nothing more than a piece of meat. He saw her as a piece of meat good for using and then discarding because he was selfish, greedy, unloving, uncaring, brutal, hard-hearted, and disturbed. He was all of these things because at some point in his life, he rejected the Highest Good as his ancestors did and chose to live according to the desires of his sinful nature rather than chosing to live in a close, loving relationship with God. And if this was his choice, then God is going to let him have what he wants. Remember, God cannot force this rapist to love Him no more than any man here can force a woman to love them. Not even God can do this because as I have said before, it is a logical impossibility.

So where does this leave us? God has made a world in which it is possible for women to be raped. This is the simple truth. Could God have stopped the rapist from committing the abuse? Well, theoretically, sure. He could have caused him to be paralyzed the moment the thought popped into his head. God could also theoretically paralyze the millions of other people in the world who at the same moment were thinking of doing or were preparing to do some sort of evil act. But God in His wisdom has chosen not to deal with humans that way. I mean heck, who wouldnt want God to step in every time something bad was about to go down and squash it. I do not think anyone would have a problem with that. Just because we want the world to be a certain way and its not, does not necessarily mean that God is evil. It simply means that our perception of the world and of God needs to be changed.

We also know that God must know how we feel about all of this and what we desire of Him. If He did not, He would not be God. God was there when the woman was raped. He saw every bit of it, felt every bit of sorrow, pain, and anguish. He was there when millions of Jews were sent wholesale into gas chambers. He knew the exact number of hairs on each of their heads.

Most importantly, God was there when His only Son was beaten beyond recognition, stripped of all his clothes and hung naked on a cross after having been nailed to it.

If Christ had not endured what He did, then maybe our complaints about the suffering in the world would have more weight to them. But when I see God in the flesh, on a cross, nailed to it bleeding to death, something within me tells me that there is nothing that any human in this world can endure, that God has not already endured.

Christ was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. In love, He laid aside His glory and came down among men to walk among them and to show them the way.

If this is not true omnipotence, then I know not what is.

 

[Paradoxum]

Well, that's the rub, speaking epistemologically: you can't technically *know* if God exists or not, whether or not there is a heaven or not; all you have are personal experiences. (That's what I think my experience with this person unveiled: the potential for contradiction between personal experience -- God being there -- and reason in terms of the problem of evil.) So I don't think your question can be answered, given that it can't be denied or approved in any rigorous epistemic sense.

We can't 'know' anything. I'm not asking for certainty, just what can be thought to be true for practical purposes.

If we can't know God is real for practical concerns (how to live), then why believe? To disbelieve you don't need to prove there is no God, just that there is not enough evidence to believe.

If the personal reasons don't justify belief, then the belief shouldn't be believed. Not simply for truth, but also so that false beliefs don't lead to immoral and unjust action.

Two possibilities:

1) What we consider God's lack of omnipotence is really our lack of understanding how the universe works according to (for lack of a better word) natural and spiritual laws. You know, if God says He can't tell a lie, His not telling a lie isn't a negation of his omnipotence; analogously, there might be something like this sense in place metaphysically that wouldn't mean omnipotence isn't in place, just that God can't do something from necessity given the spiritual law in place.

That could be the case, though I'm not sure what a spiritual law is. Do you mean some basic non-arbitrary law of reality that even God has to follow? What would these spiritual laws be, and why are they such as they are?

If you say that you don't know then why suppose that these laws exist instead of considering that maybe there just isn't a God?

How could God raise Jesus from the dead, yet not have the ability to save a starving child? How could he have the ability to reveal himself to the minimal extent that apparently he does, yet not have the ability to reveal himself to an abused woman who need help, or at least comfort.

2) God isn't omnipotent, and so what? How is the inability to do absolutely everything a killer of God as a possible entity? Maybe he's 90% "potent". Well then.

No, but omnipotence was considered to be a major attribute of God. If you will get rid of that then what else about God is negotiable. What is the core of what we mean when we say God? Why did we believe God was omnipotent to begin with? Did we just make it up? What else about God is made up?

It it reasonable to say there are spiritual laws, but I don't think it is that reasonable to say that God is only 90% potent. Such arbitrary limits are the limits of a created being, not a creator. It only makes sense to me that an ultimate being could have attributes that are either all or nothing, not in between (eg: omnipotence, or timelessness. Not 'Very powerful' or eternal).

But that's the point Ivan isn't making. He sees a world where everything, including all the evil in the world, works together teleologically for some better good, so that the evil things are a needed ingredient in the cosmic recipe of universal salvation. Some would say (and I'm partly among them) that this makes God into a sort of evil dude. That's the problem I have with extreme answers to the problem of evil along the lines of "everything bad is really good in the long run."

If God made the world that way and he didn't have to then it would seem to make him a much greater devil than the devil himself.

I quite like the book 'Candid' by Voltaire as a reply to Leibniz's theodicy that 'we live in the best of all possible worlds'. When we consider all the natural and human evil in the world, it makes it rather absurd to call this the best of all possible worlds.

 

[Gottservant]

There is agony in Heaven too, but it is a sublime agony.

 

[Davian]

There is agony in Heaven too, but it is a sublime agony.

How do you know this?

 

[Received]

We can't 'know' anything. I'm not asking for certainty, just what can be thought to be true for practical purposes.

If we can't know God is real for practical concerns (how to live), then why believe? To disbelieve you don't need to prove there is no God, just that there is not enough evidence to believe.

If the personal reasons don't justify belief, then the belief shouldn't be believed. Not simply for truth, but also so that false beliefs don't lead to immoral and unjust action.

I'd say the practical purposes are like the telos practicality in general has for us: God works, i.e., he makes us happier if we believe in him. That's the practical payoff -- and often the opposite is true, sure.

That could be the case, though I'm not sure what a spiritual law is. Do you mean some basic non-arbitrary law of reality that even God has to follow? What would these spiritual laws be, and why are they such as they are?

I think so. And I don't think I need to know the laws for the point I'm making, which is that there might be some set of rules that God (perhaps self-imposes, like saying he can't lie) that, by being followed, don't technically kiss away omnipotence.

How could God raise Jesus from the dead, yet not have the ability to save a starving child? How could he have the ability to reveal himself to the minimal extent that apparently he does, yet not have the ability to reveal himself to an abused woman who need help, or at least comfort.

I struggle with this. Maybe a spiritual law prevents him whereas a natural one (physics) doesn't. Maybe he even reveals himself to such a minimal extent because of a type of spiritual law -- like, say, a law that says you've got to be looking intentionally for me before I reveal myself, in addition to any other laws.

No, but omnipotence was considered to be a major attribute of God. If you will get rid of that then what else about God is negotiable.

I think that technically the concept of God -- like the concept of science, or pretty much any other concept (seriously) -- is negotiable. Finite theologians (mistakenly?) tagged God with omnipotence (understood in the vague and machismo way of "being able to do absolutely anything"), just like other finite theologians have questioned the label.

But God as a concept is essentially no different than any other concept (science, religion, the self -- dear heavens, especially that last one), except that God is a a little more slippery because the referent for God isn't physical -- we can't see it and say "there that is, so let's try to figure out how to conceptualize that."

It it reasonable to say there are spiritual laws, but I don't think it is that reasonable to say that God is only 90% potent. Such arbitrary limits are the limits of a created being, not a creator. It only makes sense to me that an ultimate being could have attributes that are either all or nothing, not in between (eg: omnipotence, or timelessness. Not 'Very powerful' or eternal).

I think the limits are going to by definition appear arbitrary given our finitude. It's like if an ant were able to quantify how much stronger a human being is compared to it. He might say "well, he's about 935 times stronger than I am," and another ant says, "sorry, that won't do, too arbitrary." You might say that attempts like this -- pinpointing something metaphysical, but also anything in general -- involves approximation, and so appears arbitrary as a given.

If God made the world that way and he didn't have to then it would seem to make him a much greater devil than the devil himself.

Maybe. But if we add something like:

1) God can do all sorts of things, but only when a creation is made complete.
2) The creation isn't complete, because of negative spiritual forces (human freedom, even demons, etc.) which act according to spiritual laws that God is constrained by, given that He created spirit -- or maybe He didn't, maybe spirit has its own laws like physical stuff does, and God is constrained by them too.
3) Therefore, God can't do all sorts of things, just only a limited number of them -- until we all get to heaven, and heaven -- because it's infinitely long and a nice place to be -- minimizes any evil you can imagine on this temporal and finite earth, and so in a sense "justifies" evil and the relative free sway of evil activity on earth.

I quite like the book 'Candid' by Voltaire as a reply to Leibniz's theodicy that 'we live in the best of all possible worlds'. When we consider all the natural and human evil in the world, it makes it rather absurd to call this the best of all possible worlds.

Yeah man, great passage. But Candide did get the crap end of the stick there. Technically his "possible world" is different than every other person's possible world. Like Nabokov in interviews when asked existential questions like "is the world a good place?" or "is life worth living?" would immediately respond, "whose world? whose life?"

 

[Paradoxum]

I'd say the practical purposes are like the telos practicality in general has for us: God works, i.e., he makes us happier if we believe in him. That's the practical payoff -- and often the opposite is true, sure.

I didn't mean a practical emotional reason to believe, I meant it makes sense to act as it is true because there is enough evidence to believe it is so, even if it isn't conclusive. Eg: I can't be certain that water will quench my thirst this time, but it is fair to think that water will always have the effect. I can't be certain that the earth goes round the sun, but there is enough evidence to say it is true.

I think so. And I don't think I need to know the laws for the point I'm making, which is that there might be some set of rules that God (perhaps self-imposes, like saying he can't lie) that, by being followed, don't technically kiss away omnipotence.

That could be the case. I mean, the fact that God the Father can't swim doesn't make him non-omnipotent.

I struggle with this. Maybe a spiritual law prevents him whereas a natural one (physics) doesn't. Maybe he even reveals himself to such a minimal extent because of a type of spiritual law -- like, say, a law that says you've got to be looking intentionally for me before I reveal myself, in addition to any other laws.

Why would someone look for God if there is no evidence? And why would God not reveal himself to someone like me who tried to hold on to faith for so long. I am just human and I act human, a supreme being like God should understand that. We are weak, fallible and highly influenced by events beyond our control.

I think that technically the concept of God -- like the concept of science, or pretty much any other concept (seriously) -- is negotiable. Finite theologians (mistakenly?) tagged God with omnipotence (understood in the vague and machismo way of "being able to do absolutely anything"), just like other finite theologians have questioned the label.

But God as a concept is essentially no different than any other concept (science, religion, the self -- dear heavens, especially that last one), except that God is a a little more slippery because the referent for God isn't physical -- we can't see it and say "there that is, so let's try to figure out how to conceptualize that."

Science and religion are just concepts. God and the Self are supposed to be real existent beings. We believe in the Self because we have personal and constant experience of the Self. Even then, idea of the Self as the 'I who controls my thoughts and actions' is false.

Considering that we don't even have experience of God we should doubt this too. If there is evidence for God then shouldn't this evidence tell us what God is like? But we don't have strict evidence for God, so why did humans first believe?

Why do you believe? Why do you think people should believe in God?

I hope you don't mind me asking this stuff. You seem like a very reasonable person.

I think the limits are going to by definition appear arbitrary given our finitude. It's like if an ant were able to quantify how much stronger a human being is compared to it. He might say "well, he's about 935 times stronger than I am," and another ant says, "sorry, that won't do, too arbitrary." You might say that attempts like this -- pinpointing something metaphysical, but also anything in general -- involves approximation, and so appears arbitrary as a given.

But a human is only a limited creature, so will only be stronger by some random amount. I don't see why an ultimate being would be constrained in any, expect the most fundamental and basic, way.

Maybe. But if we add something like:

1) God can do all sorts of things, but only when a creation is made complete.
2) The creation isn't complete, because of negative spiritual forces (human freedom, even demons, etc.) which act according to spiritual laws that God is constrained by, given that He created spirit -- or maybe He didn't, maybe spirit has its own laws like physical stuff does, and God is constrained by them too.
3) Therefore, God can't do all sorts of things, just only a limited number of them -- until we all get to heaven, and heaven -- because it's infinitely long and a nice place to be -- minimizes any evil you can imagine on this temporal and finite earth, and so in a sense "justifies" evil and the relative free sway of evil activity on earth.

It could perhaps be correct, but why would (1) be true?

Yeah man, great passage. But Candide did get the crap end of the stick there. Technically his "possible world" is different than every other person's possible world. Like Nabokov in interviews when asked existential questions like "is the world a good place?" or "is life worth living?" would immediately respond, "whose world? whose life?"

Well you can say that if you are willing to disregard the experience of others. But generally people aren't asking whether their individual experience is good, but rather if the world as a whole is. I mean, if you ask "Is it good to kill this person?" and I reply "Well if it is good for you then it is good" isn't a very good reply. At least, not a moral reply.

 

[Received]

I didn't mean a practical emotional reason to believe, I meant it makes sense to act as it is true because there is enough evidence to believe it is so, even if it isn't conclusive. Eg: I can't be certain that water will quench my thirst this time, but it is fair to think that water will always have the effect. I can't be certain that the earth goes round the sun, but there is enough evidence to say it is true.

So you're talking about evidence as a reason to believe? "Evidence" smacks of science, but metaphysics and science are incommensurable; the former is beyond the latter, therefore asking for evidence is a moot question. Unless you mean evidence in a non-scientific, more personal sort of way (like that annoying but powerful question I ask clients who make big statements about themselves or their lives: what evidence do you have for that?). Maybe I'm saying that, at least in part, a practical reason to believe in God is good enough to believe in him, given the epistemic constraints (can't know or not know) regarding the question of his existence. But that's only in part. The other things (for me) are:

1) God is a good solution to the problem of an infinite regress. Briefly, a universe with an infinite number of previous causes wouldn't allow for the present moment; therefore a beginning is needed, which means either the universe causes itself or is caused by something else. 2) Personal experience: i.e., events that are intuitively ascertained (assumed) to be too much for coincidence. (Which I think is the most important determinant in a person's belief.) 3) God is simply more aesthetically and theoretically fitting for me. All three of these (and there are likely more) must be placed in the context of the epistemic limitations I talked about previously: that we can't know or not know, so that loosens up the freedom to "choose" to believe in either way without needing something like absolute proof (whatever that is).

Why would someone look for God if there is no evidence? And why would God not reveal himself to someone like me who tried to hold on to faith for so long. I am just human and I act human, a supreme being like God should understand that. We are weak, fallible and highly influenced by events beyond our control.

I don't think a person should believe in God unless they have some sort of experience that could constitute evidence. I might even go farther and say it's ethically better not to believe than to fake it, because fanaticism seems more fitting with faking than honestly believing. Once you get past naive God's-gonna-getcha Heaven or Hell thinking, I think the possibility that he allows nonbelievers to have good lives and thrive on this side of the grave is reasonable. And after all, "belief" or "faith" in biblical terms isn't cognitive like we often think it is. Hence Martin Buber's statement: “The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”

Science and religion are just concepts. God and the Self are supposed to be real existent beings. We believe in the Self because we have personal and constant experience of the Self. Even then, idea of the Self as the 'I who controls my thoughts and actions' is false.

Considering that we don't even have experience of God we should doubt this too. If there is evidence for God then shouldn't this evidence tell us what God is like? But we don't have strict evidence for God, so why did humans first believe?

Yeah, we believe in the self, but that doesn't mean we're able to appropriately conceptualize it. The problem isn't with believing in something, or positing that it exists, but defining it, understanding it. Hence the appeal to omnipotence as a supposed essential quality of God goes with this problem of conceptualization: it's not bad, or takes the God out of God, to redefine omnipotence from machismo He-can-do-absolutely-anything (which really is a vague conceptualization anyways) to something like "freedom within spiritual constraints," or something like that.

Why do you believe? Why do you think people should believe in God?

I hope you don't mind me asking this stuff. You seem like a very reasonable person.

Tell that to my wife.

See above for my reasons.

But a human is only a limited creature, so will only be stronger by some random amount. I don't see why an ultimate being would be constrained in any, expect the most fundamental and basic, way.

Yeah, I think agree, but the problem really isn't with being constrained as an objective thing, but constraint as we understand it. Like with omnipotence, if we believe that this word means the ability to do absolutely anything, we're going to run into more problems than if we say something like "power over all," which could include not being able to do certain things, like swim or break a promise -- i.e., spiritual laws. I doubt that, given God is supposedly an "infinitely" intelligent being, that our conceptualizations are even capable of fully grasping him, precisely because our *very language* is limited in grasping. Like the negative theologians say, you can understand God better by articulating what he *isn't* than by saying what he is -- because if you say what he is, you're in a sense anthropomorphising, given that all language (given in large part because of the metaphoric nature of language) is in a sense anthropomorphic, a standard we have that works quite well for us, but that by its very nature can't capture what really exists out there, be that a rock, a universe, or God.

It could perhaps be correct, but why would (1) be true?

Dunno. That's the place for revelation, personal experience. All premises, actually, can't technically be sound without an "assumption" of their veracity, otherwise they're valid. You know, even our very basic premises, like "the world is round," involve very basic metaphysical assumptions, such as there being an external world, or that the images and video given to us by authorities that reveal the world as round are authentic and people aren't screwing with us, or that our mathematical representations unveiling the world's roundness can be trusted. Stuff like that.

Well you can say that if you are willing to disregard the experience of others. But generally people aren't asking whether their individual experience is good, but rather if the world as a whole is. I mean, if you ask "Is it good to kill this person?" and I reply "Well if it is good for you then it is good" isn't a very good reply. At least, not a moral reply.

Does it really make sense to speak of the world as a whole in contradistinction to the world of an individual? That's my critique of Candide. I don't think this means moral relativism, though.

 

[Gadarene]

Let's assume for a moment this story is true, and that it says something true about the nature of the universe. Let's assume, then, that God isn't omnipotent, but that He gives a damn and will somehow make things better in a future life.

To make it even more interesting, let's not even put this to a question of whether God could or couldn't exist given these qualifications. Let's say that He does exist, and this vague way of doing things is really how things are when it comes to evil in the world. With this in mind, I feel the urge to (for the second time in a week) quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

Imagine yourself as Ivan Karamazov, who openly tells his religious brother Alyosha that he would openly reject God's "ticket" to paradise because of a world where children have to suffer in any type of way.

Would you be like Ivan here?

Ineptitude is an improvement on malice, but not that much.

Such ineptitude begs the question of why bother to create, if you cannot govern properly, and the bulk of your subjects end up tortured forever.

Why also should such a being merit worship?

I'm not sure how much you've altered the typical god-concept here. If there is no hell and heaven is a place where everyone just gets to live contented and in peace and the mistakes of the past (on both sides) are left in the past, then fine.

I'd argue he's still done a pretty crappy job of communicating this if this is a case.

 

[Received]

Being tortured forever is worth rejecting.

And maybe this being's lack of omnipotence works with its creatures' freedom to worship it or not. Who says you have to worship such a being?

 

[Gadarene]

Being tortured forever is worth rejecting.

And maybe this being's lack of omnipotence works with its creatures' freedom to worship it or not. Who says you have to worship such a being?

So basically, what if god was just a reasonable guy?

That would be a first.

There's still the issue of "should this incompetent be creating in the first place", but I think an eternity of worship for those that want to, and peace for those that don't is better (and we draw a line under whatever both sides did during this slightly wonky Earth experiment). Still all wishful thinking as far as I'm concerned, heaven/hell concepts are only useful to me inasmuch as they give me an insight into the moral standards of the Christian holding them (and I suspect given yours that you are in fact a nice person)

I think the Karamazov objection is about one's integrity, iirc - even if God makes an exception for you - what good is it if the system is lousy for everyone else who suffers within it? Someone with integrity would and indeed should reject such an offer.

 

[Gadarene]

In fact, the Karamazov objection is partly why I rejected Christianity in the first place.

It didn't matter anymore that I was saved. It did matter that there were plenty of people who were sincere seekers and good people that were not.

Even if God does exist, and our eternal existence is under threat, then he doesn't care enough to save everyone.

 

[super animator]

In fact, the Karamazov objection is partly why I rejected Christianity in the first place.

It didn't matter anymore that I was saved. It did matter that there were plenty of people who were sincere seekers and good people that were not.

Even if God does exist, and our eternal existence is under threat, then he doesn't care enough to save everyone.

I remember reading (can't remember where) that the early form of christian belive that everyone will be eventually saved.

 

[Gadarene]

I remember reading (can't remember where) that the early form of christian belive that everyone will be eventually saved.

Depends which early form you're referring to really. The concept of hellfire as punishment certainly crops up in (admittedly non canonical) books like Peter's Apocalypse.

 

[Received]

Ineptitude is an improvement on malice, but not that much.

Such ineptitude begs the question of why bother to create, if you cannot govern properly, and the bulk of your subjects end up tortured forever.

I don't see how not being omnipotent = ineptitude.

Why also should such a being merit worship?

In much the same way an animal "worships" human beings: we're bigger, stronger (usually), smarter, and we give a damn. You might say something about worship belongs to being smaller and appreciative toward a higher power for creating you.

I'm not sure how much you've altered the typical god-concept here. If there is no hell and heaven is a place where everyone just gets to live contented and in peace and the mistakes of the past (on both sides) are left in the past, then fine.

I'd argue he's still done a pretty crappy job of communicating this if this is a case.

If his intention -- or ability -- was to directly communicate things, face-in-the-heavens-like, sure. But who's to say this is better, or even possible? A thousand years ago you would scare the heck out of someone who saw God speaking in the clouds; today we would label ourselves insane. That's reducing the complexity of this idea, but you get my point.

There's still the issue of "should this incompetent be creating in the first place", but I think an eternity of worship for those that want to, and peace for those that don't is better (and we draw a line under whatever both sides did during this slightly wonky Earth experiment). Still all wishful thinking as far as I'm concerned, heaven/hell concepts are only useful to me inasmuch as they give me an insight into the moral standards of the Christian holding them (and I suspect given yours that you are in fact a nice person)

Well, I don't quite believe in what lots of people do regarding heaven and hell, and I happen to do this by meticulously looking at the Bible, incidentally. So heaven isn't "that place you go where you die." Heaven is better placed in the plural, heavens, and refers not to a physical place for human beings so much as, well, space, the sky, the physical and spiritual abode of God; so when we're speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven/God (same thing theologically), we're speaking of the kingdom of God's spiritual reign -- hence "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven(s)". Salvation is eternal life, but not understood as an endless quantitative set of moments, but as a different quality of life.

So no, it's not about heaven and hell in the popular sense that pushes me morally. I'm an Aristotelean (who flirts with moral realism), so I believe that morality and happiness are tied together, and that to be a good and ethical person means flourishing in a certain way, becoming the type of person who is ideal -- which I understand as Christ. Heaven and Hell are beside the point morally, except to refer to a proper place, likely metaphorically, for a person who aims for the good or aims for evil.

I think the Karamazov objection is about one's integrity, iirc - even if God makes an exception for you - what good is it if the system is lousy for everyone else who suffers within it? Someone with integrity would and indeed should reject such an offer.

Why should someone with integrity reject such an offer? Especially if we're talking about limitations God might have. Or, keep the old-school omni-everything view: what if an everlasting state of bliss made any type of suffering infinitely small given its temporal place on this side of the grave? What if, further, God even apologized and gave a good (but that doesn't mean palatable) reason as to why evil was allowed or couldn't be controlled?

 

[Received]

Let's make it more interesting.

What if God's "reasons" for allowing suffering are analogous to something in physics only being understood by another dimension that we can't comprehend? That is, it's not that we have good or bad reasons for the problem of evil, but that at some point the reason for evil is incomprehensible because the explanation is possible only as if it were from another dimension that we can't understand?

 

[quatona]

Let's make it more interesting.

What if God's "reasons" for allowing suffering are analogous to something in physics only being understood by another dimension that we can't comprehend? That is, it's not that we have good or bad reasons for the problem of evil, but that at some point the reason for evil is incomprehensible because the explanation is possible only as if it were from another dimension that we can't understand?

Well, what if Satan´s "reason" for his destructive behaviour is actually serving a greater good beyond our comprehension, and God is actually the evil guy?

Yes, what to all "what if´s" which declare the "explanation" to be beyond our comprehension? How am I supposed to handle them?