Freethought & Rationalism Archive

creature · 06-23-2006, 12:09 PM

It seems to me that there are 3 possible versions of God:

1) God created us with libertarian free will and God does not know the future. In this version, it is possible or seemingly possible that some persons will be eternally lost, by an unending rejection of God or their ceasing to exist. The problem with this one is that, in order to believe it, one must reject Exodus 4:21, Genesis 50:20, Prov 21:1, Romans 9, Ephesians 1 and all the other passages which teach that God knows the future and the passages which teach that God has predestined us. In fact, one would have to assume that large portions of the Bible (whole chapters, in fact, at times) result from some quite bad guesswork on the part of the Bible writer.

2) God knows the future; He has predestined; and a bunch of humans are tormented forever in hell. This is the Biblical version and it is the Calvinist version. However if this version is the true one, God would be unworthy of worship by those of seemingly enlightened sensibility. For God creates those whom He knows with certainty to spend eternity in eternal torment in hell. The smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever. Of them, we may say that God hated them, and we may also say that, it could just as well have been us or anyone or all the rest of humanity that God hated. Each person does his assigned task, a task assigned to him involuntarily, and for some very large number of these people, they and their task comes to a very bad end: eternal frustration, grief, torment, pain and misery. The universe could not have been made by God--supposedly on this version--without leaving, in the wake of creation, the eternal sound of the cries of the damned. And, God created anyway, to satisfy some personal need of his, or to make happy those in heaven, or both. But God's happiness and the happiness of those in heaven is purchased at the price of the collateral damage of creation: the eternal misery of billions in eternal torment in hell. And the creator, in this version of god, calls himself God!

The Bible says of some that it would have been better for them not to have been born. If it is true of any given individual that "It would have been better for him not to have been born," then, God, in creating him, has acted contrary to the best interests of that individual, and God did so, in the Calvinist version of God, with perfect foreknowledge that that individual would have been better off not being born.

If God has acted contrary to the interests of indivdual X (by creating him knowing that he would be better off not having been created) then God might also be acting contrary to my interests. And, perhaps God acts sometimes in my interest and at others times, not in my interests? And, in fact, even if God were not directly acting contrary to my interests, the fact that He has acted contrary to the interests of another undermine his claims to be "no respector of persons," "good," "just," "loving," and "merciful." Would any soundly thinking person wish to worship such a god after seeing how he treats others? Would he not revolt in horror at learning that a monster has created the universe?

3) The Julian of Norwich and Hannah Whitall Smith version of God. God saves all and God compensates all for all they have suffered. The mystery that remains is how God could possibly compensate a person such as Hitler for his wicked task, in such a way that, when all is said and done, Hitler--and others like him--are happy to have been created and given their lives, given the light of God's existence and character. But Julian and Smith say that God is able and God does so make all such things right. God's doing such miracles is difficult to believe, at least for me. It is perhaps not impossibly hard to believe, if God can heal cataracts. In this version, however, we must recognize certain passages in the Bible as errors, chiefly those passages which teach either eternal torment, or that it would have been better for any given individual not to have been born. We attribute such errors to man's imperfect understanding and his anger at those who have sinned. And their presence in the Bible can only be the result of allowing the Bible to say some things which are or seem to be "true" from a very limited human perspective, such as the sun rises and the sun sets.

In the words of Smith:

"I had been used to hearing a great deal about the awfulness of our sins against God, but now I asked myself, what about the awfulness of our fate in having been made sinners? Would I not infinitely rather that a sin should be committed against myself, than that I should I commit a sin against anyone else? Was it not a far more dreadful thing to be made a sinner than to be merely sinned against? And I began to see that, since God had premitted sin to enter into the world, it must necessarily be that He would be compelled, in common fairness, to provide a remedy that would be equal to the disease. I remembered some mothers I had known, with children suffering from inherited diseases, who were only too thankful to lay down their lives in self-sacrifice for their children, if so they might, in any way, be able to undo the harm they had done in bringing them into the world under such disastrous conditions; and I asked myself, Could God do less? I saw that, when weighed in a balance of wrong done, we, who had been created sinners, had infinelty more to forgive than any one against whom we might have sinned.
In every human face I saw, there seemed to be unveiled before me the story of the misery and anguish caused by the entrance of sin into the world. I knew that God must see this with far clearer eyes than mine, and therefore I felt sure that the sufferings of this sight to Him must be infinitely beyond what it was to me, almost unbearable as that seemed. And I began to understand how it was that the least He could do would be to embrace with untold gladness anything that would help to deliver the being He had created for such awful misery."

It should be noted that the Smith version of God makes God liable for creating us as sinners, but she does not seem to me to be perfectly consistent. For in her essay, "Is God in everything?" (Chapter 8 of a Christian's Secret to a Happy Life) she says:

"God does not order the wrong thing, but He uses it for our blessing; just as He used the cruelty of Joseph's wicked brethren, and the false accusations of Pharaoh's wife."

If God did not order the wrong thing, then it seems it would not be correct to say that God sent Joseph to Egypt, nor that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, nor that the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord and the Lord directs it whereever he wishes, Pr 21:1. Perhaps Smith would make a distinction between order and ordain. In any case, Julian seems more consistent, as she says that whatever is done, God does.

"Because of the great, infinite love which God has for all humankind, he makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the lowliest of the souls that are to be saved . . ." JoN

"And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God." JoN

"God does everything no matter how small," JoN

"God does all that is done." JoN

"they [our sins] will be rewarded with various joys in heaven according to how much pain and grief they caused the soul on earth . . . the place [heaven] so full of glory that God's goodness never allows any soul that is to come there to sin [on earth] unless the sin is rewarded [in heaven];" JoN

However, to continue quoting Hannah Whitall Smith in her more consistent moments:

I wish it were only possible to make every Christian see this truth as plainly as I see it; for I am convinced it is the only clue to a completely restful life. Nothing else will enable a soul to live only in the present moment, as we are commanded to do, and to take no thought for the morrow. Nothing else will take all the risks and "supposes" out of a Christian's heart, and enable him to say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Abiding in God's presence, we run no risks; and such a soul can triumphantly say, --

"I know not what it is to doubt,
My heart is alway gay;
I run no risks, for, come what will,
God alway has His way." . .

. . .

Nothing else but this seeing God in everything will make us loving and patient with those who annoy and trouble us. They will be to us then only the instruments for accomplishing His tender and wise purposes towards us, and we shall even find ourselves at last inwardly thanking them for the blessings they bring us. . .

It had been undoubtedly a grievous sin in his brethren, but, [for Joseph] it [was, my editing for the sake of consistency] God's will for him, and was in truth, though at first it did not look so, the greatest blessing of his whole life. And thus we see how the Lord can make even the wrath of man to praise Him, and how all things, even the sins of others, shall work together for good to them that love Him.

creature · 06-25-2006, 02:16 PM

***

I personally don't know which of these versions of God in which to believe. I "believe" in God and when I pray, I have been asking God what He is like and in which version of those listed above I should believe. Or rather, I pray to know which version of God of those above, if any, is true and correct. I suppose it would be easy to "just believe the Bible version," but given the millions of souls in hell in that version, all created with perfect foreknowledge that they would end up there, and given that of at least one of them the Bible says, "It would be better for him if he had not been born," Mark 14:21, it is very hard to believe in the morality of God who creates all those who are and will be lost. At least, I, who presumably was trained in Christian morality, would not create and cause to be born those for whom it would not be better than they be born! Does "God" forget his morality when He is in need of accomplishing His purposes? Are some "godly" purposes [like the redemption of humanity] just too big for God to handle without resort to immoral conduct?

By the way, I know that some Christians will attempt to respond with another version of God--that God knows the future with infallible certainty and that man [Pharaoh for one, Hitler for another, and Judas for a third] has or had libertarian free will. While the versions of God described above each have one major problem (two of them [1 and 3] are unbiblical, and one [the Calvinist version] describes a monster), this one advocated by some has two large problems. It is both unbiblical when we examine Ex 4:21, Pr 21:1 and the other passages, and it is logically impossible that God know the future and that man have the power by his free will to do otherwise. So, in this horse race, that version of God doesn't get out of the gate. And, it is pretty clear, when we ask the "Christian" advocates of this version to read Ex 4:21 and to tell us if Pharaoh could have done otherwise, that they are in serious trouble.

In which version of God should one believe? None? Is man a toy in the hands of the creator and the Bible some bad guesswork?

Julian · 06-25-2006, 06:08 PM

[MOD]
This will get much more play in EOG although they may boot it to GRD.

Punt!

Julian
Moderator BC&H
[/MOD]

one allegiance · 06-25-2006, 08:10 PM

I thought you started a thread already identical to this one. Anyway, I posted in that one. But just to clear something up, with the Armenian belief, it is believed that you can actually LOSE your salvation...It is commonly confused with nonreformation...just for the sake of argument..

EthnAlln · 06-26-2006, 01:21 PM

I recommend The Mind of the Bible Believer by Edmund Cohen, if you can stand wading through all the Feuerbach/Jung psychobabble that he encrusts his basically eloquent prose in. He did an actual count and found that parables and verses in the New Testament with a Calvinist message far outnumber those with an Arminian message. I have to admit, I disagreed with some interpretations. For example, he counts the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 as Calvinist, whereas it seems to me to be pure Arminian. He seems to think you have no choice whether to be a "sheep" or a "goat," whereas it seems to me that the whole point of the parable is to contradict what all the fundies say about salvation by faith. This parable makes salvation very much a matter of works.

06-23-2006, 12:09 PM	#1
creature Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Seattle Posts: 30	3 versions of God: Arminian, Calvinist, Pantheistic It seems to me that there are 3 possible versions of God: 1) God created us with libertarian free will and God does not know the future. In this version, it is possible or seemingly possible that some persons will be eternally lost, by an unending rejection of God or their ceasing to exist. The problem with this one is that, in order to believe it, one must reject Exodus 4:21, Genesis 50:20, Prov 21:1, Romans 9, Ephesians 1 and all the other passages which teach that God knows the future and the passages which teach that God has predestined us. In fact, one would have to assume that large portions of the Bible (whole chapters, in fact, at times) result from some quite bad guesswork on the part of the Bible writer. 2) God knows the future; He has predestined; and a bunch of humans are tormented forever in hell. This is the Biblical version and it is the Calvinist version. However if this version is the true one, God would be unworthy of worship by those of seemingly enlightened sensibility. For God creates those whom He knows with certainty to spend eternity in eternal torment in hell. The smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever. Of them, we may say that God hated them, and we may also say that, it could just as well have been us or anyone or all the rest of humanity that God hated. Each person does his assigned task, a task assigned to him involuntarily, and for some very large number of these people, they and their task comes to a very bad end: eternal frustration, grief, torment, pain and misery. The universe could not have been made by God--supposedly on this version--without leaving, in the wake of creation, the eternal sound of the cries of the damned. And, God created anyway, to satisfy some personal need of his, or to make happy those in heaven, or both. But God's happiness and the happiness of those in heaven is purchased at the price of the collateral damage of creation: the eternal misery of billions in eternal torment in hell. And the creator, in this version of god, calls himself God! The Bible says of some that it would have been better for them not to have been born. If it is true of any given individual that "It would have been better for him not to have been born," then, God, in creating him, has acted contrary to the best interests of that individual, and God did so, in the Calvinist version of God, with perfect foreknowledge that that individual would have been better off not being born. If God has acted contrary to the interests of indivdual X (by creating him knowing that he would be better off not having been created) then God might also be acting contrary to my interests. And, perhaps God acts sometimes in my interest and at others times, not in my interests? And, in fact, even if God were not directly acting contrary to my interests, the fact that He has acted contrary to the interests of another undermine his claims to be "no respector of persons," "good," "just," "loving," and "merciful." Would any soundly thinking person wish to worship such a god after seeing how he treats others? Would he not revolt in horror at learning that a monster has created the universe? 3) The Julian of Norwich and Hannah Whitall Smith version of God. God saves all and God compensates all for all they have suffered. The mystery that remains is how God could possibly compensate a person such as Hitler for his wicked task, in such a way that, when all is said and done, Hitler--and others like him--are happy to have been created and given their lives, given the light of God's existence and character. But Julian and Smith say that God is able and God does so make all such things right. God's doing such miracles is difficult to believe, at least for me. It is perhaps not impossibly hard to believe, if God can heal cataracts. In this version, however, we must recognize certain passages in the Bible as errors, chiefly those passages which teach either eternal torment, or that it would have been better for any given individual not to have been born. We attribute such errors to man's imperfect understanding and his anger at those who have sinned. And their presence in the Bible can only be the result of allowing the Bible to say some things which are or seem to be "true" from a very limited human perspective, such as the sun rises and the sun sets. In the words of Smith: "I had been used to hearing a great deal about the awfulness of our sins against God, but now I asked myself, what about the awfulness of our fate in having been made sinners? Would I not infinitely rather that a sin should be committed against myself, than that I should I commit a sin against anyone else? Was it not a far more dreadful thing to be made a sinner than to be merely sinned against? And I began to see that, since God had premitted sin to enter into the world, it must necessarily be that He would be compelled, in common fairness, to provide a remedy that would be equal to the disease. I remembered some mothers I had known, with children suffering from inherited diseases, who were only too thankful to lay down their lives in self-sacrifice for their children, if so they might, in any way, be able to undo the harm they had done in bringing them into the world under such disastrous conditions; and I asked myself, Could God do less? I saw that, when weighed in a balance of wrong done, we, who had been created sinners, had infinelty more to forgive than any one against whom we might have sinned. In every human face I saw, there seemed to be unveiled before me the story of the misery and anguish caused by the entrance of sin into the world. I knew that God must see this with far clearer eyes than mine, and therefore I felt sure that the sufferings of this sight to Him must be infinitely beyond what it was to me, almost unbearable as that seemed. And I began to understand how it was that the least He could do would be to embrace with untold gladness anything that would help to deliver the being He had created for such awful misery." It should be noted that the Smith version of God makes God liable for creating us as sinners, but she does not seem to me to be perfectly consistent. For in her essay, "Is God in everything?" (Chapter 8 of a Christian's Secret to a Happy Life) she says: "God does not order the wrong thing, but He uses it for our blessing; just as He used the cruelty of Joseph's wicked brethren, and the false accusations of Pharaoh's wife." If God did not order the wrong thing, then it seems it would not be correct to say that God sent Joseph to Egypt, nor that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, nor that the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord and the Lord directs it whereever he wishes, Pr 21:1. Perhaps Smith would make a distinction between order and ordain. In any case, Julian seems more consistent, as she says that whatever is done, God does. "Because of the great, infinite love which God has for all humankind, he makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the lowliest of the souls that are to be saved . . ." JoN "And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God." JoN "God does everything no matter how small," JoN "God does all that is done." JoN "they [our sins] will be rewarded with various joys in heaven according to how much pain and grief they caused the soul on earth . . . the place [heaven] so full of glory that God's goodness never allows any soul that is to come there to sin [on earth] unless the sin is rewarded [in heaven];" JoN However, to continue quoting Hannah Whitall Smith in her more consistent moments: I wish it were only possible to make every Christian see this truth as plainly as I see it; for I am convinced it is the only clue to a completely restful life. Nothing else will enable a soul to live only in the present moment, as we are commanded to do, and to take no thought for the morrow. Nothing else will take all the risks and "supposes" out of a Christian's heart, and enable him to say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Abiding in God's presence, we run no risks; and such a soul can triumphantly say, -- "I know not what it is to doubt, My heart is alway gay; I run no risks, for, come what will, God alway has His way." . . . . . Nothing else but this seeing God in everything will make us loving and patient with those who annoy and trouble us. They will be to us then only the instruments for accomplishing His tender and wise purposes towards us, and we shall even find ourselves at last inwardly thanking them for the blessings they bring us. . . It had been undoubtedly a grievous sin in his brethren, but, [for Joseph] it [was, my editing for the sake of consistency] God's will for him, and was in truth, though at first it did not look so, the greatest blessing of his whole life. And thus we see how the Lord can make even the wrath of man to praise Him, and how all things, even the sins of others, shall work together for good to them that love Him.

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06-25-2006, 02:16 PM	#2
creature Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Seattle Posts: 30	*** I personally don't know which of these versions of God in which to believe. I "believe" in God and when I pray, I have been asking God what He is like and in which version of those listed above I should believe. Or rather, I pray to know which version of God of those above, if any, is true and correct. I suppose it would be easy to "just believe the Bible version," but given the millions of souls in hell in that version, all created with perfect foreknowledge that they would end up there, and given that of at least one of them the Bible says, "It would be better for him if he had not been born," Mark 14:21, it is very hard to believe in the morality of God who creates all those who are and will be lost. At least, I, who presumably was trained in Christian morality, would not create and cause to be born those for whom it would not be better than they be born! Does "God" forget his morality when He is in need of accomplishing His purposes? Are some "godly" purposes [like the redemption of humanity] just too big for God to handle without resort to immoral conduct? By the way, I know that some Christians will attempt to respond with another version of God--that God knows the future with infallible certainty and that man [Pharaoh for one, Hitler for another, and Judas for a third] has or had libertarian free will. While the versions of God described above each have one major problem (two of them [1 and 3] are unbiblical, and one [the Calvinist version] describes a monster), this one advocated by some has two large problems. It is both unbiblical when we examine Ex 4:21, Pr 21:1 and the other passages, and it is logically impossible that God know the future and that man have the power by his free will to do otherwise. So, in this horse race, that version of God doesn't get out of the gate. And, it is pretty clear, when we ask the "Christian" advocates of this version to read Ex 4:21 and to tell us if Pharaoh could have done otherwise, that they are in serious trouble. In which version of God should one believe? None? Is man a toy in the hands of the creator and the Bible some bad guesswork?

06-25-2006, 06:08 PM	#3
Julian Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Washington, DC (formerly Denmark) Posts: 3,789	[MOD] This will get much more play in EOG although they may boot it to GRD. Punt! Julian Moderator BC&H [/MOD]

06-25-2006, 08:10 PM	#4
one allegiance Regular Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Texas Posts: 400	I thought you started a thread already identical to this one. Anyway, I posted in that one. But just to clear something up, with the Armenian belief, it is believed that you can actually LOSE your salvation...It is commonly confused with nonreformation...just for the sake of argument..

06-26-2006, 01:21 PM	#5
EthnAlln Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Burlington, Vermont Posts: 5,179	I recommend The Mind of the Bible Believer by Edmund Cohen, if you can stand wading through all the Feuerbach/Jung psychobabble that he encrusts his basically eloquent prose in. He did an actual count and found that parables and verses in the New Testament with a Calvinist message far outnumber those with an Arminian message. I have to admit, I disagreed with some interpretations. For example, he counts the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 as Calvinist, whereas it seems to me to be pure Arminian. He seems to think you have no choice whether to be a "sheep" or a "goat," whereas it seems to me that the whole point of the parable is to contradict what all the fundies say about salvation by faith. This parable makes salvation very much a matter of works.

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