How do we know God is "Good"?

This is against my better judgement to respond, but... And this has what to do with the topic? If you want a psychoanalytic thread, start one. You can also join a number of human origin threads.

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Neither. It is something that was created for (1) profit and (2) convienience. It can be both good and evil. What's your point?

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

This question highlights for me one of the fundamental limitations of near eastern religion. Buzsaw, speaking for I don't know how many fundamentalist, dismisses Buddhism as created by demons, but the eastern spiritual insight surpasses the naive basis of Judeo-Christian-Islamic etc. thought in realizing that there are no permanent objects/entities.While we can make sense of good and evil there are no good or evil things because there are no things. What appear to be things are local subprocesses which are part of the entire universe.The ancient Chinese focused on the notion of balance and out of balance.
You can't have one side of a coin without the other side. You can't have good without evil. They are the different sides or ends of the same coin/stick. Only philosophical naive thinking can assert the mental trick of splitting good from evil and imagining they are separate. If you break a stick in two you have two sticks each having two ends.To say "a car is good" or "a car is evil" is to say an incomplete sentences that implies that there is an entity that exists and that as part of it's being possesses some discreet property such as good or evil. Good and evil arise in relationship. They are functions. A car for example could be used to rush an injured child to a hospital and that would be something we perceive as a good function. But what if that child later grew up to be for example Osama bin Laden? Well, depends on which political group you are in doesn't it?The source of good and evil is beyond good and evil. It is neither good nor evil, those are evaluations we pass on manifestations in terms of our local experiences of them.If you wish to use the word God to refer to the source of the universe then that source is neither good, nor evil, and if it is the source of being it also neither is, nor is not, nor is and is not, nor neither is nor is not.If your religion is a cultural institution to support the functioning of a society or a large number of people then you have a religion created by humans to maintain their goals of survival. These groups will judge things good or evil depending on how they impact the goals of survival. Survival is such a strong value that religions often claim to be able to influence survival after death. The concept of god these religions put forth is good and the things these religions deem inimical to their survival are bad, hence other religions are the spawn of the evil one as the priest class works to maintain a monopoly of the power and wealth of their religions. This viewpoint is very functional in human social psychology. God as good is a positive cultural survival value.I offer this formula as semantically better formed:The function of the God concept in religion is deemed good by members of that religion as they perceive it as being the source of their survival.lfen

Duplicate post.I got a screen that said "Internal Server Error, blah blah blah",
but apparently the post had gone through. I've gotten the Internal Server Error message 3 or 4 times this morning.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 11-05-2004 12:44 PM

Jar,"be bad"? I would prefer to say "do bad".The verb "to be" can lead to very odd sentences. I have not acquired facility with E-prime though I respect it. So much of the literature I love loses it's beauty for me however much it gains in logical rigor. "To be or not to be..." just sounds better to me that "to continue to live for a little while or chose to end my life shortly".Still the verb "to be" is the source of much semantic inaccuracy and confusion. The challenge for me is how would I characterize someone like Ted Bundy who killed for sexual pleasure and as a sociopathic character had no sense of other people deserving respect. He was not insane but his function was defective. His brain lacked certain empathetic functions. Ted worked on a suicide hotline and presumably might have been helpful to some people. Some sociopaths have been physicians and saved some lives. Yet the failures of their functions lead them to do very destructive things in one case murdering their own child for insurance money. I would accept the term evil for these people. I would even say they ARE evil but I'm still not sure what exactly I mean when I say that. There functioning is certainly defective in ways highly dangerous to other members of society.Buddy Miller has written a song about the land mine problem in the world. These hiddens weapons of destruction can maim and kill children years, decades after the war is over. I would call the curren use of land mines evil. But the land mine is something that is put together. Not until all the components are assembled is it dangerous and it can be disassemble or harmlessly exploded. So it is a an arising of factors that can result in suffering. We regard that suffering as evil and the agent the created it as evil. Is the manufacture of land mines evil? Are those who sell, buy, order their use, actually bury them evil?My understanding of the eastern nondual view is that morality and suffering occur in the universe of samsara, birth/death , coming into being, going out of being. Here in samsara is good and evil. But the source of samsara is neither good nor evil but rather creative. Was Shakespeare good or evil, noble or ignoble because his plays contained accounts of good and evil?lfen

Yes, I agree with that, but you labeled the Universe as being good. That is why I asked you that.

Correct. Is it the makers of the car's fault if it is involved in an act of evil?

So, to you the definition of good and evil is a relative term.We might see Osam'a killings as evil, and he would see them as good.
But I believe that all of humanity in their heart believes that killing is bad, or what we call a necessary evil. Such as God's punishment to mankind.Were we screw ourselves is when we decide to carry out God's judgment for God, instead of putting all our faith in him to justify the righteous. Ok you lost me. Or maybe it is.

I think it likely that Osama would see himself acting in the same way as Joshua did. Is Josuha's killing okay and Osama's not? And what about killing animals especially intelligent social animals like elephans and whales? And we are all killed sooner or later i.e. we die.lfen

probably should have omitted that. That is an eastern philosophical formula for going beyond concept.
1. Assert something as true.
2. Deny the assertion.
3. Assert the proposition and it's denial
4. Deny the proposition and it's denial.It's gone, gone beyond, gone beyond gone beyond.But I was going beyond my argument for that.Better might have been the story about a man who's son caught a wild horse. The neighbors said that that was good luck. The guy says, "we shall see".
The boy in trying to break the horse falls off and breaks his leg. Neighbors say "oh misfortune". The guys says, "perhaps". The emperors army recruiters come and impress young men into the army but leave the farmer's son with the broken legs... and it can go on and on.Jar's discussion of the importance of intent has a close parallel with Buddhism's notion of intention. In Buddhist thought intention has significant consequences. Cause and effect being called the law of karma. But I'm not sure what intention is or how it comes about it.Karma is impersonal in the same sense that laws of physics are impersonal. They don't have independent existence. It's the goal that determines their value. If your goal is to be a good Christian then certain things are good and others bad as far as they further or hinder that goal. Same with awakening and freedom from suffering.To be a good Jew and to be a good Christian, or Buddhist, or Muslim or Hindu have many values in common but differ in others. The goal is the determining factor.lfenedited typoThis message has been edited by lfen, 11-05-2004 03:44 PM

Wait a minute, didn't you say that all of god's creations are all good? You used a false analogy. Car makers didn't make everything, including free will and all of that. According to you, god did. It's like trying to ask "would an ant type up a 6 page paper on Hegel?"

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Well, a poorly designed car that harms its occupants in ways that were or could have been forseen is not only evil, it means legal culpability for its designers. This has happened a number of times, where the designers of automobiles were held liable for deaths occuring as a result of their design.It's a very well-established legal principle that if you had forknowledge of the commission of a crime or injury to a person and the power or position to intervene, but did not, then you're culpable. Do you deny that God has both the forknowledge of injury and the capacity to intervene?

Well, Hamlet might wonder but I suppose that people can actually be bad as well as do bad. While such people are in the minority, we hope, they often cause suffering way beyond proportion.The discussion on land mines is moving way, way off topic, but I do think it interesting and one of importance. If you propose a topic on that I'll see about getting it promoted.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yes, I did label the Universe as good, and I thought I outlined why in Message 49? Is there something in that you don't understand or would like me to expand on?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It is not a bad analogy. The car doesn't become anything until it is an extension of mans choice of what to do with it.So it is strictly mans choice that determines whether something is good or evil, not God's