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Author | Topic: How do we know God is "Good"? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Christians claim God is good, principally because the Bible says so.
Non-Christians claim that the Christian God is far from good, as evidenced by the nature of the evil in the world that he created and allows free rein, and also evdenced by the Bible, which depicts a petty, jealous, vidictive, perverse and dispicable entity. The Christian counter is that niether the world, nor the Bible are evidence contrary to his "goodness" because we do not know the context or the greater plan. God is somehow working on a level beyond our capabilites of analysis. In other words, despite that fact that an objective appraisal of the Christian God as derived from the world around us, and the Bible depicts an un-good God, this is negated because we can't see the bigger picture. What basis do Christians then have to claim that he is "Good"? They use the same sources: the Bible and in some cases testomony from aspects of the world. Can it not be countered that they also have no idea of the bigger picture and have no capability to analyse the nature of their God? What conviction do Christians have for believing that God is "good", and not simply just taking the piss at all of our expense? (Suggested forum: faith and belief?) This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 10-28-2004 10:25 PM
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Just to re-iterate:
If we can't know or conclude that God IS NOT good, then for the same reasons we can't know or conclude that God IS good. You can't just say that God is good because one part of the Bible is quite categorical about that point, when you have other parts of the Bible painting a very different picture. That reminds me of my father when he prefixes incredibly racist statements with "I'm not racist, but...."
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Hello Lam,
I know the point you are making, I have seen you post it before and I agree with it. More sophisticated Christians will attempt to break out of that circular reasoning and attempt to evidence the Bible's validity with prophecy, inerrancy, possibly Bible Numerics/Code, and personal experience of Bible claims. Those are other issues. My real issue in this thread is to analyse that new Christian coverall for all situations where they cannot justify or explain their God's actions or nature. Normally when their God seems despicable in the Bible or in his inaction in the real world, they appeal to the "we cannot know God's way" cop out. If that's the case, all good and well, then we cannot know anything about God, positive or negative. The evidence indicates that the Christian God is not only logically incomprehensible (another topic) but also not "good" at all. They can't counter that evidence without countering the basis upon which they claim to know God is "good". Either we can know about God or we can't. They can't have it both ways.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Hello Jar,
I don't like debating you! Nevertheless, you are a Christians that I could learn from. Jar wrote:There is yet another record that many of us believe GOD left for us. It's the universe around us. It is amazing, awesome, wonderous. Certainly something good in all. Hmmm. Yea there is some good: mainly what us humans call pleasure and the happiness we derive from it. But there is just as much displeasure. Both of these things are of course subjective human assesments of a cold, random and indifferent universe and the physical laws that govern it. I don't really see much sign of God or good in it. Where do you see God's good in the universe? The bible aside, is the universe the only evidence of God's goodness? Can we even know about God's goodness or potential lack of?
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Lam wrote:
That's part of my point. My other point is that if you dip a lemon into chocolate pudding, put sugar on it, and put some M&M on it you will still have a sour lemon in the inside. I've seen WT write 200 posts that is the equivilent of putting 200 M&M onto the lemon. I have seen the rat dip the lemon into a big puddle of chocolate pudding. After several hundred M&M and pounds of sugar later, people generally forget that there's still a sour lemon there. Actually, I'm just amazed at how much sugar coating people like the rat and buz can put on the circular reasoning that only took me 4 sentences to say.
Brilliant.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Jar wrote:
You really that emphatic about that? I certainly don't mean to make anyone feel that way. Well you're not about spreading ignorance, superstition and religious intolerance. You greatly contribute to humanity and I don't like to impress my atheistic beliefs on someone who holds alternate healthy, productive and positive beliefs. My issues lie with those theists who seek to drag humanity back to the dark ages. Hope I expressed that clearly. Jar wrote:
If we look at the world, as you describe it "a cold, random and indifferent universe and the physical laws that govern it" we are different than any of the other critters out there. When the rains fail in the Serengetti, the herbivores die. For a while the carnivores have an easy time, but soon they too die. That is the cold, random and indifferent universe. But GOD has given us the ability to both see what is happening and to actually have the capability to do something about it. We can feed the starving, heal the sick, comfort those suffering. What is so significant about our elevated intellect? Why would any advanced deity or lifeform looking down on our universe and planet see anything particularly fascinating about the humans species which are merely just a product of the "a cold, random and indifferent universe and the physical laws that govern it". Yea, we can alter the planet and life on it using our intellect, but then so can other non-intellegent causes like virus's, volcanos and asteroids. Why is there more example of God's "goodness" (or God's "anything" for that matter) in one present day evolutionary peak as opposed to another (insert name of any other dominant species here)? Everything you identify in the universe is quite capable of just being so, without a God or his "goodness".
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Jar wrote:
I don't believe that I have said at anytime that there is anything significant about our intellect or that GOD particularly favors humans or that we hold some special place in his being. What I did say is that we we are the sole creature capable of making a change for something other than simple random chance and for the benefit of others than ourselves.
But that's not true. You are looking at things from the human perspective. Take a very big step up and try to explain why an independent universe observer would see any evidence to suggest that human's were not acting within random chance and not unique in any way other than intellect.
You mentioned virus's, volcanos and asteroids. There is also drought, famine, El Nino, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and a long list of other such change generators. But they are significantly different than the acts of man. I made a reference to life also: virus's. Think about other earth shattering chnages that have been brought about by life other than man: mosquitos, for instance often working in cooperation with virus's have killed more life than humans have over the last thousand years. But irregardless, how does such an event differ from dramatic earth base changes caused by non-life? Life is still subject to random chance, be it human or mosquito. Jar wrote
While we certainly also generate unintended changes, we also can make directed changes, selective changes. There are other critters that make directed changes, ants that grow gardens, termites that build airconditioned homes, beavers that damn streams and flood lands, but they are limited in both scope and extent. But our scope and extent is only vast because we are intelligent, so we are talking about intellect afterall. Once again how does that fact that man (life), which is subject to and a product of "a cold, random and indifferent universe and the physical laws that govern it" just like volcanos and asteroids, which also greatly affect earth bound changes, evidence a good God? Jar wrote:
We do have the capability of making things better. IMHO that is both a charge, and a gift, from GOD. This is the essence of it. Agreeance with that point is our common ground, between theist and atheist. We can and we should try to make things better, but IMO we don't need religion or stupid arguments about Gods to do it. Edited to add: Oops, I just realised that virus aren't consdered life, are they, because they can't reproduce on their own? This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 10-29-2004 01:00 AM
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
It goes beyond scope and extent, and includes intent as well. The mosquito does not set out to give folk malaria. That is not its intent. All it wants to do is eat and breed, in that order. Humans can make changes by intent. They can decide to intervene and feed the starving that result from those random chance events. No other critter does that.
But is not intent merely a higher cognitive function resulting from intellect?
But as I have also said in other threads, I see the good GOD in beauty, in the joy we get from song, in love, in flavor, in the subtle emotions we get from smell, in the symmetry and beauty of the most basic forces and in the universe itself Ok.
If everyone, aethist and theist alike simply lived up to the second of the Two Great Commandments, and I hope we are moving towards that, then this will one day be a great world. Amen. I don't feel like I am living up to that commandment when I debate with you Jar.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Hello Arachnophilia
good and evil are things that apply to humans, not gods. god defines good and evil but is above both. god creates good and evil. god has attributes that if we judged with human morality would be good, and some attributes that would be evil. Fine. God isn't all good. In terms of human morality the Christian God appears to be sometimes good and sometimes evil. So he may actually be just taking the piss afterall. Maybe God defines good as "being in the state of piss taking".
this is a very traditional dualistic interpretation of god. at some point, it became bad to say that god was evil in some respect, and another entity was elevated to level of opposing god: satan. this probably happened around the time the writings of samuel and chronicles. there's a section is samuel that describes god leading israel to do something the book sees as evil. when chronicles plaigarizes this passage, it changes god to satan. Doesn't really change much if an omnipotent, omnipresent God created and tolerates the existence of this non-good entity then, does it? So God is still not good. Also fine.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
So the Garden of Eden story is allegory for the point in time when hominids developed enough intellect to form "intent".
Interesting.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Mike wrote:
Our claim is what Christ said - only one is good - God. You cannot define the word "good" as meaning "God". We are talking about human concepts here, defining the word good as God is about as useful as saying the God is God, or God is "wubble". Likewise it is of no use to define "evil" as being "satan". Humans are capable of being good, as we humans define it, just as they are of being evil. Yes, we are trying to make a value judgement of God, and this is the intention of Christians when they claim God is good. If not, they are being very misleading and are talking no-sense. Good is defined in terms such as: Being positive or desirable in nature, Worthy of respect; honorable, Of moral excellence, Benevolent; kind, etc, etc. Mother Teresa and Gandhi were often "good". So now we can stop the usual Christian game of let's make up new definitions for existing words.
So - it is irrelevant what any human's judge God as. Why? Because our morals (humans) change every day. So they're based on nothing anyway if they are atheistic. Immoral yesterday - would be moral today. Hanging people yesterday - giving them widescreen TVs today This is a daft attempt to demean the fact that morality derives from humans themselves. Yes, morality does change, even the morality people claim comes from God (just study the history of the Christian church). But some elements of morality have been fairly static: the killing of innocent children for the purported infractions of their ancestors is probably always going to be not-good. We can apply even our slowly evolving concept of morality to any entity. So is God good, in any way us human's presently define it? How do you know?
Lam is right - we say what God is by looking at the bible - and looking at God with us - Jesus Christ - his actions. The Bible merely says God is good, but then it paints a very unpleasant picture of him just about everywhere else. Likewise God or Jesus deals out good no more through the lives of Christians than non-Christians. Christians still experience a sizeable amount of non-good.
As for your strawman fallacy concerning us; 1. We say God is good - not the universe or the world - Christ overcame it - and cast out "indifferent" diseases, like he still does. Therefore - replacing our position A with your own position B, and refuting B - is strawman fallacy. Refuting B won't refute A.
Position B is the propoisition God is "Being positive or desirable in nature, Worthy of respect; honorable, Of moral excellence, Benevolent; kind, etc, etc". That's the point you do not wish to defend. Your position A, is merely God is "wubble". If you don't actually want to make a qualitative assessment of the nature of your God, then so be it. Stop using the word good and make up another one, because your God of the Bible and the world is far from good in the way us human's define it.
IF you assume our God, you also have to assume the rest - which you haven't. We believe in heaven, hell and satan - which you conveniently do not include. But that's invalid - we can argue satan and hell and heaven because we also believe in those things And how does adding "Satan" is not "wubble" assist? Are humans capable of evil, or are you defining evil as satan?
You can't just attribute bad things to the God of the bible if the God of the bible talks of satan and hell, I mean - do you honestly think christians do not heed Christ's warnings about satan? If you were talking about any possible deity - fair enough - but you're not - you're targeting ours. Baggage time.
This is incomprehensible bollocks. As stated with Arachnophilia above, your omnipotent, imnipresent God cannot escape culpability for evil because of your claims of the existence of satan. Who killed the innocent children in the OT? Who caused the flood? Once again, do you claim that the Christian God is "good", as we human's define it? If so, please evidence it.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Hello Jar. Hope you had a good weekend.
IMHO, intent is one of the major defining features of Humans. A second major feature is expanded empathy. It would be hard to argue that either of these characteristics do not appear in advanced, if not most, animals to some extent. As far as empathy is concerned, have you ever tried making crying sounds around a pet dog? They'll nuzzle you to death with licks and sometimes howl along with you.
Humans are different. We can have campaigns to save the whales, dolphin or gorilla. We can have conservation. We can feed those starving even if they are a continent away. We can feel sorry for the suffering of those who are not even part of our species, much less family, clan or pack. We can plan for the future, not just the immediate future as in time to move from high to lower pastures, but for decades and millenia ahead. Intent and Empathy.
But we differ in those qualities only to the extent of our superior intellect. They aren't supernatural qualities. A lot of religious arguments are founded on the emotionally appealing idea that we humans are somehow special or gifted. I don't find them very compelling. Have you read anything by Australian author Paul Davies?
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Hello grace2u. Things have gotten a little quiter around here, but otherwise many of the familiar names are still about.
We know God is good for a couple reasons. 1) He says He is. This doesn't really cut it. First you have to establish the Bible as a valid source of his words, secondly you have to deal with the fact that his actions (and the Bible) negate these words. You can't declare yourself good (as we human's define good) and then proceed to slaughter innocent children. That's not good as we human's define it; that is something very different.
2) The only way we can define something as "good" is if God does exist and He is good in the absolute sense. Most accept that the concept of "good" exists. We don't debate this - not too often at least. We only question whether or not the Christian God is good. This provides evidence of our rebellious nature toward the most holy. Ultimately you and I both want to be God. We deny His very goodness in an attempt to make ourselves god -some even deny His existance. Why do we need are God to exist to determine if something or someone is "Being positive or desirable in nature, Worthy of respect; honorable, Of moral excellence, Benevolent; kind, etc, etc"? Apply those terms to anyone you know, and presto, you have just attempted to define someone as good. Good doesn't exist in an objective sense. I don't dig a hole and find good. Something is good if we interpret it as good. An entity that kills innocent children is not good. If you insist your God is good nevertheless you are either appealing to a completely uncommon definition of good or you are making up another meaning for the word.
God is good because He says He is good and because in order for you to even define "good" you must borrow from the Christian worldview. If you killed innocent children, I'd confidently wager that everyone on this forum would define you as not good. God is that sort of not-good.
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Jar wrote:
Ah, but that is why I include extent. Humans are different in the magnitude when it comes to empathy, intent, scope and extent. By a magnitude proportionate to greater cognitive function. We can out-empathy dogs by some order of magnitude. Alternately dogs can out-sniff us by some ridiculous amount.
Again, that would make for a great thread. There are hints of it in some of the things we're learning about learning. While we are learning more and more about the HOWs of thought, that does not answer the whole question. Maybe someday we'll understand all of the mechanisms involved in color, math, even art. Maybe we will be able to show that certain areas of the brain light up under each and every known stimulus. Maybe we'll someday understand all the mechanics. But will that answer all the questions? Will that explain love, or beauty, honor or sorrow? Even if we know exactly what happens, will that explain the why or the reality of love?
We are doing a pretty dam good job of understand this stuff already. Just because we comprehend some of the mechanisms behind what is the human experience it doesn't make it any less compelling. I know that love is merely an evolutionary compulsion and a product of the chemical state of my brain. Scientist claim that intense love really only lasts about 3 years, and this just happens to conincide with the most common time it takes for relationships to disolve. Doesn't mean I don't want to feel love, that I don't actively seek and that I'm knocked off my feet when I feel it. Back to the topic: So God's goodness is evidenced by some human traits, which you, as a person who subscribes to the evolutionary explanation of life, accept have come about through the natural processes of this universe? So then God's goodness is evidenced by the initial act of creating the universe containing these processes? I don't want to put words in you mouth, so please correct me if I am wrong. At least such a distant and impersonal God is not intertwined with the very non-good acts of human history. Such a God could possess just about any qualities, but indifference would have to be one of them. This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 10-31-2004 10:59 PM
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Gilgamesh Inactive Member |
Define good. I attempted to: "Being positive or desirable in nature, Worthy of respect; honorable, Of moral excellence, Benevolent; kind, etc, etc" These are relevant extracts from dictionary.com.
It really is no argument for you to say that the Christian God does not fit in or appeal to your humanistic definition of good. It's the entire argument. I'm not arguing anything else.
If man is the standard of all things - then No God can meet up to this standard unless it is the person creating the standard (you). Of course he could. Some humans have lived up to the standrad that the majority of us define us good. Your God should unambiguously too.
You can't produce some subjective-humanistic definition of good - and then expect God to submit to this definition. If your question is "Is the Christian God good - in terms of a humanistic definition of good - then the answer is NO. God is not good if good is defined in this manner. If you ask "is God good in accordance to the Christian definition of good?", then yes, He is. He is the standard of good , consistent with 2000 years of Christian theology- we measure all other actions in light of this standard. Well like I said, then it's not good that we are talking about. Christians have to find another word. Why don't you just say "God is God" and exclude the value judgements? We are pretty much done with this right here. The Christian God is not good, in the way human's define and apply the word good. I already knew it, and you've just said it. Yours and Christianity's continued use of the word good in describing your idea of God is then grossly misleading and untrue. Chose another word. God is wubble?
Why would you expect the creator of the universe, the great I AM, the omniscient soveriegn one - to submit to some faulty defintion of good in order to be good? Of course he doesn't have to submit, but it would be nice if he at least demonstrated qualities that might endear us to him. But you guys have just made this stuff up anyhow, and this is just example numer 756 of the deficiency of your theology.
Reading your comments it doesn't even seem that you think anything can be objectively good and so why even ask the question? I would argue that it's because deep down you know that there are objective standards such as "goodness", and that you are trying to deny that the one who gave you this standard is in fact good - the fallen rebellious nature that we all have drives us all to search for this conclusion. Goodness is a subjective term, but I subscribe to humanity and society that defines it. It is still a worthy means of assessment irregardless of it's subjectivity or not. I don't buy concepts such as objective goodness or morality. Flick through the numerous moriality threads that have run here recently and witness your breathren being bankrupted on the issue.
The question of children always comes up in these examples. For one, noone is innocent - even children. That sentence alone, is not good, because you are assigning some sort of culpability of our ancestors to our guiltless children. When you were at school how did you feel when the whole class was punished for the errant behaviour of one? It wasn't good, was it? Well this is much, much worse.
You look at some entity killing another creature as being perhaps one of the most haneous crimes or at least Not Good. Why? What is the rational basis you have for concluding that this is wrong? What is being wrong anyway? The problem you must deal with, is that without this God, you have no basis to claim ANY act is wrong or good - except for some meaningless humanistic relative standard (which has no true epistemological purpose or meaning). This is the bullshit argument from morality. Grace, visit the other threads on this issue. Morality can be rationalised independent of a deity, and such arguments are considerably more compelling.
The unspoken (maybe it is spoken) argument is this "Come ON, its obvious this God can't exist. look at what He has done in the past to the children!" It is more like, look at theological deficiency number 756, your God looks like nothing more than the desparate machinations of the human mind.
In your worldview, why is this wrong? Who cares if some flesh kills some other flesh? But more importantly, why do you think its wrong for a God to do this - christian or otherwise? I wont enter into a debate on the origins of morality on this thread. My brethen have dealt with it well elsewhere.
Can't God do as he pleases - as long as it doesn't violate His own nature? I don't know. You are the guys that speculate plenty about this unknowable entity, then shout "it is beyond our intellect to know of his ways" as soon as the absurdity of this God concept is pointed out. Are there any Christians out there who actually believe that God is good; not just wubble? This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 11-01-2004 01:39 AM
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