God's Nature

[Morphane]

We are taught that God is love, and my heart confirms it, but something troubles me about the notion.

If evil lies at one end of a spectrum, and love at the other, it doesn't seem balanced to me that God inhabits only one end.

I'm finding this harder to express than I thought I would. I realise I could be attacked for drawing upon subjective speculation, but it seems to me that everything, even evil, flows from God. It also strikes me that God loves balance, and has made it a law of nature in physics and the way gases behave and such.

Thus it makes much more sense to me that God should be neutral, and have a capacity for hatred as much as love. But I don't believe this for one minute.

I wonder about God, and how He decided that love was best. Did He move to the love end of the spectrum without any experimenting with evil? Did God allow evil existence in the fallen angels and on Earth, because this dark side of nature had to be expressed in some manner other than the Godhead?

I have no problem with evil and suffering existing on Earth. It highlights the superiority of love and compassion, and it compels us out of a lethargy that might otherwise be soul destroying.

But evil existed before creation, if only as a bubble of possibility in the mind and thoughts of God. I would be very interested in hearing of other people's opinion, especially if it is their own thoughts, and perhaps the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rather than the hollow clanging of various quotations.

 

[The Nihilist]

Fortunately for you, some jerk invented NeoPlatonism. Goodness is a quality, and evilness is the absence of that quality. To be good is to be like god, and to be evil is to be unlike god, relatively speaking.

 

[Morphane]

Fortunately for you, some jerk invented NeoPlatonism. Goodness is a quality, and evilness is the absence of that quality. To be good is to be like god, and to be evil is to be unlike god, relatively speaking.

No, I don't buy that argument for a minute. I sincerely hope there are no responses suggesting as such.

Attributes that are of a default kind, like darkness merely being the absence of light, connote the creation of something apart from God's will, or a quality outside God's substance. That doesn't make sense to me.

God is everything.

Maybe a better question is what distinguishes the Godhead from Everything. This might be heading into Hinduistic thought, but if God is everything, and everything includes evil, then did the Godhead somehow separate and decide love was the best?

 

[The Nihilist]

Attributes that are an absence of another thing aren't a default attribute, they're an absence of a positive attribute. If you conceive of goodness as an ordering according to god's will, then evil is a sort of disorder.
To answer your question, though, christianity does not conceive of its god as everything.

 

[lisah]

How about...

God is not love, but is experienced as love.
The absence of that love is experienced as evil.

???????????

In other words, God does not inhabit either.

 

[The Nihilist]

Then the original argument would still stand. It would mean that god would have elements that make you feel love, but it does not have elements that make you experience evil, and so would not be everything.

 

[lisah]

Possibly, Nihilist.

However, I do not see how the spectrum of those elements define what God is. It seems to me that it is too limited.

So, I suppose I agree with you, in that these things are not "everything" then. But are elements that help us create some sense of relationship between the finite and the infinite.

Maybe?

 

[The Nihilist]

I think Morphane wants a god to be both a part of the finite and the infinite. I think he wants an impossibility of dichotomy, and this is obviously at odds with christian concepts

 

[-Vincent-]

The Jews have answered these kinds of questions, very well. Kabbalah is for people who think philosophically.

God resides in an infinite light, of infinite power and extent. Before the universe was created there was only his light. In the beginning he formed a contraction within the light which became infinite. The contraction was a darken in of the light. At the center of the darkness he caused a point to blast into existence, our universe.

The scriptures do say the God has created the darkness and the light, and also good and evil.

God is in everything and also beyond our universe within the unending light. He is at the very ground of being, everywhere, all seeing and all powerful.

God means mercy and loving kindness, and John has said he is love. However, God has many other names...

 

[The Nihilist]

That's not philosophy, that is mysticism. They are in no way related.

 

[bob135]

I wonder about God, and how He decided that love was best. Did He move to the love end of the spectrum without any experimenting with evil? Did God allow evil existence in the fallen angels and on Earth, because this dark side of nature had to be expressed in some manner other than the Godhead?

In some sense the statement "God is good" is trivially true. Whatever he does is good by definition. Since he's God there cannot be definitions of good that restrict him and are prior to his actions or beliefs. If we think he does something evil, we would be wrong, since he's god and we're lowly humans.

I have no problem with evil and suffering existing on Earth. It highlights the superiority of love and compassion, and it compels us out of a lethargy that might otherwise be soul destroying.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just be born with a natural inclination to recognize the superiority of love and compassion (as God already does), and also have a natural inclination to avoid soul-destroying lethargy? You could still have free will, but instead of being encouraged to recognize the superiority of love by observing terrible evil, you would be encouraged to recognize its superiority by your natural inclinations.

 

[-Vincent-]

That's not philosophy, that is mysticism. They are in no way related.

Metaphysics is one of the three great divisions of philosophy. Metaphysics is generally divided into cosmology and ontology, and Kabbalah has much to say about both of these. Kabbalah is theosophical in its methodology.

Western philosophy has failed. It is an empty mind game with no applications.

What are your complaints about mysticism? The greatest saints have all been mystics. Jesus lead a mystical life, and called everyone to do the same.

 

[The Nihilist]

Western philosophy has hardly failed. Every existing field of serious inquiry has philosophy as its progenitor. More importantly, though, if you think that western philosophy has failed, then you don't understand western philosophy. Since its inception, it has been more about what is unknown that what is known, for if Thales fathered philosophy, then Socrates, who knew nothing, is the one who raised it. It is from the Socratic tradition that philosophy has developed a profound drive for intellectual honesty. This is why whenever an idea has arisen from a philosopher, other philosophers have endeavoured to smash it to pieces. In this way, false ideas, which are much more pernicious than total ignorance, have had only a relatively short lifespan.
Mysticism is in violation of the rules of philosophy. It appeals to secret knowledge and to authority. Philosophy recognizes nothing sacred; it has no great saints, and it doesn't care for Jesus. Even Socrates has been denounced by philosophy. The claims of a philosopher must stand apart from her, and if they do not, then they are trash. Mysticism comes from untamed ignorance, from a mind that does not know that it does not know. Mysticism is a waste of time, and has no part in serious, legitimate philosophy.

 

[-Vincent-]

Mysticism is in violation of the rules of philosophy. It appeals to secret knowledge and to authority. Philosophy recognizes nothing sacred; it has no great saints, and it doesn't care for Jesus. Even Socrates has been denounced by philosophy. The claims of a philosopher must stand apart from her, and if they do not, then they are trash. Mysticism comes from untamed ignorance, from a mind that does not know that it does not know. Mysticism is a waste of time, and has no part in serious, legitimate philosophy.

This whole paragraph is pure nosense, for which you have no justifications whatsoever. Your politics is despotic.

 

[The Nihilist]

Come now, handle this like a philosopher, rather than a theologian. Argue specifics. Am I wrong that mysticism appeals to secret knowledge and to authority? Am I wrong that these are philosophically illegitimate? Am I wrong that a philosopher's claims must not take into consideration the stature of the philosopher? What issue to you think merits critique?

 

[-Vincent-]

"Am I wrong that mysticism appeals to secret knowledge and to authority?"

You are simply pointing out the trivial nature of western philosophy. It is completely superficial and has no authority. Philosophers are litterary critics of philosophy books.

One does not gain ideas from books. True ideas must be gained in experiences.

I really do not like your implication that all knowledge can be superfically accquired, through reading. It is not so much that threre is secret knowledge, it is more a problem human limitations, which philosophers tend to ignore.

 

[The Nihilist]

You're throwing all kinds of stuff at me that you're not explaining. At the very least, philosophy has provided the foundation for rule of law in a democratic society. Karl Marx was a philosopher, and his works, whether correctly understood or not, spawned the Soviet Union. I'm not sure most people would call these things trivial.
But knowledge certainly can be gained from books. That might even be why people read them. What human limitation do you imagine keeps us from learning from books?

 

[-Vincent-]

You're throwing all kinds of stuff at me that you're not explaining. At the very least, philosophy has provided the foundation for rule of law in a democratic society. Karl Marx was a philosopher, and his works, whether correctly understood or not, spawned the Soviet Union. I'm not sure most people would call these things trivial.
But knowledge certainly can be gained from books. That might even be why people read them. What human limitation do you imagine keeps us from learning from books?

Sorry for my being so terse in my oppinions, but I am not an educator. I would hope that you read a book entitled "The Mathematical Experience" By Paul Davis and Ruben Hersch. It is for the most part written with ideas that most laymen already know so you will understand most of what you read. There is a section of the book that deals with the problem that mathematical ideas are written about in math texts, but it is imossible to get the ideas from the text without initiation into the ideas from a math teacher. It is based on sound research, and seems valid in my experience.

I have only taken a few university level philosophy courses, and I am not a skeptic. I believe that eclecticism must be the general solution to philosophical argumentation. Not that eclecticism is a philosophy in a complete sense, since eclecticism holds that all philosophies are incomplete...

Best regards,

Vincent

 

[The Nihilist]

Sorry for my being so terse in my oppinions, but I am not an educator. I would hope that you read a book entitled "The Mathematical Experience" By Paul Davis and Ruben Hersch. It is for the most part written with ideas that most laymen already know so you will understand most of what you read. There is a section of the book that deals with the problem that mathematical ideas are written about in math texts, but it is imossible to get the ideas from the text without initiation into the ideas from a math teacher. It is based on sound research, and seems valid in my experience.

I have only taken a few university level philosophy courses, and I am not a skeptic. I believe that eclecticism must be the general solution to philosophical argumentation. Not that eclecticism is a philosophy in a complete sense, since eclecticism holds that all philosophies are incomplete...

Best regards,

Vincent

That seems completely unrelated to the discussion we've been having so far. Are you even talking to me?

 

[Shane Roach]

That seems completely unrelated to the discussion we've been having so far. Are you even talking to me?

Basically, you have been arguing the primacy of a mathematically "logical" philosophy. -Vincent- appears to be trying to introduce you to a few facts about philosophy, such as the fact that logic is only one facet of the study, and that when one really gets to looking into the details of all that we have researched and recorded, there does not seem to be any place for a solution based solely on formal logic. There's simply too much out there to be weighed and sifted for your arguments to hold water, as if everything has more or less been done and now we can simply place the chips in the machine and watch them pop out automatically into their prescribed places. It simply does not seem to be turning out that way.

That's my take anyhow.