Mageth

Imagine a fenced dog who has been trained to bite only intruders...So it is with God.

The God as fierce dog analogy. Novel, I must admit. God is dog spelled backwards, after all, so I guess it fits.

But it's not a very compelling argument for why I should be interested in serving, respecting, worshipping or loving such a beast.

Mageth

It is the same way with my heavenly Father. I love him too much to do anything that will break his heart.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that anything I, a finite being, can do could possibly have any effect on the Christian definition of god. For one thing, he supposedly already knows what I'm going to do before I do it. How could what I do possibly break his heart?

mike_decock

It was a good thing to do, but you did it for the wrong reasons. You should have done it because you care about yourself and want to be able to take care of others, not because "it'll break my mother's heart".

Emotional bribery is when your mother says to you "If you love me, you'll stop dipping snuff".

-Mike...

spurly

Mike, my mom never said that. As a matter of fact, she never knew about my habit. I made up my mind on my own because I loved her.

Kevin

beastmaster

I have several questions.

(1) I'd like to better understand what we are talking about by "circumstances."

Specifically, when you say that there are "circumstances" that god enacts that cause humans to fear god, what set of circumstances are you talking about?

You mention punishment as one such circumstance. Are there any circumstances attributable to god *besides* punishment that cause humans to fear god? Or are we strictly talking about fear of punishment here?

(2) To the extent we are talking about punishment, I think your argument fairly boils down to:

"It is legitimate for god to cause us to fear his punishment only insofar as god punishes us justly."

Is that a fair statement?

IOW, if god punishes unjustly, then not only is the punishment unjust, but the fear caused thereby is also unjust.
Thus, to understand if fear of god is legitimate, we must understand if and how god punishes us.

(3) Lemme ask you then, since you brought up punishment: How does god punish humans?

Are you talking about hell?

What kind of hell are you talking about? Are you talking about an eternal infinitely-horrible hell? If so, that does not sound like the "intuitively" justified "proportionate" punishment you assume. Are you talking about hell as mere separation from god? How is that a "proportionate" response to evil? Or are you talking about a hell with calibrated punishment? If so, how do we know how much punishment we will get?

Or are you talking about a temporal punishment?

The Bible manifests that god often subjects humans to patently unjust temporal punishment. Two obvious Biblical examples: (1) God punished Job, not for lack of faith, but to *test* Job's abundant faith; (2) God caused his only son, Jesus, to be punished unjustly as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. (Whether Jesus is human or divine is of no consequence -- God has plainly shown through the most important moment in human history -- save, perhaps, the fall of Adam and Eve -- that retributive justice is not primary in God's moral sense). There are many many many many other examples where god temporally punishes humans with utter disregard for the retributive justice you claim that god *must* obey.

But get your nose out of the Bible and look around you: if god punishes us temporally, it is *obvious* that he does so with utter contempt for any ordinary sense of justice.

(4) If god does punish humans, what criteria does he apply to justify punishment?

There is a certain theology that holds that god punishes us *not* for our evils directly, but for our insufficiency of faith.

Do you reject that theology? If you accept it, does god punish the good heathen worse than the faithful sinner? How does that comport with retributive punishment? How much faith is needed to avoid punishment? Is punishment calibrated according to one's degree of faith? How do we know how much faith is required of us? If we cannot know the criteria of punishment, god has given us no choice but to live in fear, no matter how faithful and good we are.

(5) It seems to me that a major incitement of fear of god among Xns is the *uncertainty* of whether or not a particular thought or action is subject to punishment. Since god causes his criteria for punishment to remain hopelessly obscure, he has created a circumstance inspiring fear that is utterly unjust.

IOW, even if fear is generally justified because the punishment is justified, god could still *reduce* the amount of unnecessary fear by clarifying what the grounds are for punishment. Yet Xns to this day have absolutely no consensus on what god's criteria are for punishment.

(6) Is god merciful? Is it just for god to refuse to punish, even where punishment is justified, purely out of mercy? Does he do so?

If god is able mercifully abstain from punishing in any given instance, why does he punish *anyone* at all? And if mercy is allowed, the arbitrary denial of mercy is tantamount to arbitrary punishment.

mike_decock

I never meant to imply that she did, my apologies for that.

I'm saying that the statement "If you love me, you will keep my commandments", is emotional bribery. If your mother had asked you to break your habit because you love her, it would illustrate what I mean by emotional bribery.

Even so, I'm glad you kicked a bad habit. I still say you did it for the wrong reason.

-Mike...

Queen of Swords

It is the same way with my heavenly Father. I love him too much to do anything that will break his heart.

God's heart must've been broken a billion times over by now. You'd think he'd be used to it.

DoubleDutchy

That would be true if it would have no effect whatsoever in preventing harmful behaviour and/or repairing the damage it causes. That's not the case, at least not always; police patroling does prevent looting.
Of course its not always easy to strike a balance between negative and positive effects in practice; I would call that 'social engineering'. It takes a lot of hard work and quite some intelligence; metaphysics offer no help whatsoever.

I am aware of that , there are lots of other differences as well. However as it comes to influencing the behaviour of either of the two I would rather resort to a method that works and has a minimum of undesired side effects, than to one that just makes me, intuitively or otherwise, feel good .

Asking for fear is ineffective social engineering. A perfect God being a bad engineer is not conceivable. That's not a condemnation of God, it is a refutation as was to be expected from a wholehearted atheïst.

Irishbrutha

Then you've missed the point of the argument. Rather than repeat my own argument though I'll ask you to refute the particular premise that states the opposite of your above claim.

Oh to beastmaster, sorry I don't have time right now to respond to your post I'm in the middle of a ridiculous amount of papers and the finals. I will respond though at a later time, probably through pm.

-Shaun