emur

Hi Albert,

In another thread you asked what questions atheists had about God that had not been answered to their satisfaction.

Well, even though I am an agnostic theist (if there is such a thing other than me ), I have several questions you can take a shot at.

1) God's supposed miracles seem very arbitrary to me. While we have claims of miracles from people like Radorth (tongues, healings), there are other examples where individuals suffer with painful diseases, torture by enemies, etc. Looks to me that the supposed interventions of God are just as arbitrary as nature itself. And please, I don't buy the "God works in mysterious ways" or "God just does what he wants, so who are you to question his wisdom" lines. This is why I reject any notion of an interventionist God.

2) God as loving father. In my experience, God allows things that are in no way loving (assuming of course that God allows anything). One of my huge problems with an interventionist God is that such an entity allows his children to abuse, mistreat, and even kill others of his children and doesn't do anything to intervene (just for the sake of argument, assume his children = Christians). I look at it this way, no loving father would allow his children to do evil to his children and do nothing. No father on earth would do so and be considered loving. The free will argument is bunk for me. Either God intervenes or he does not. If he does, then in those cases free will is compromised.

Thanks Albert. I am heading off to work and will hopefully be back to look at any responses later today or this evening.

Mel

Vinnie

I reject the interventionist God of supernatural theism as well.

Agnostic theist? If that the same thing as a functional theist? You believe in God but you are not sure God exists?

Vinnie

emur

By agnostic theist, I mean that I think some sort of God exists but I don't know what such a being is like. I, like you, am a fan of Marcus Borg and believe that his views generally represent a theism that I find acceptable. But there are many questions.

Mel

long winded fool

I'm not Albert, but I thought I'd take a crack:

This only follows if the interventions are specifically designed to physically help people. The Bible makes clear that the "help" which miracles provide is entirely incidental. (Indeed, many miracles turn out to be quite harmful.) The purpose of divine miracles seems to fundamentally be to convince non-believers. People ask for a sign, God provides a sign, (which may help or even harm) then the people say they want another sign. This is why Jesus often gets impatient with those who demand to see His miracles for proof of His identity in the Gospels. There are more than enough signs. Either you accept the Truth and worship Him, or you lie to yourself and worship your personal desires.

Pain and suffering are not bad things. They are things which show us the wrong way to go. If God eliminated them, we'd be more lost than if He allowed them. How can your parents love you if they punish you for doing wrong? I think that the presence of punishment is reflective of just how much they love you. When my parents used to take away my priveleges for things I thought were minor offenses, I used to think that they were just mean. As an adult, it has become clear to me that if you truly love someone who is currently incapable of understanding the way reality truly works, acting solely on instinctual desire and not thinking critically, punishment for doing wrong is the only loving way to treat them. If humans are ignorant of the way things work and tend to follow instinctual desires over reason, "bad things" are really learning opportunities. The only truly "bad thing" is being away from God. (Hell.) Everything else is good by default.

Since God's goal for humans is not physical life, it is not rational to assume this as a goal and then point out things which contradict it. Therefore "how can God let little kids be abused and murdered and still be a loving God?" is not a rational question. He can and does and this does not contradict His love. In fact, it shows just how much He does love us. Our bodies mean nothing in comparison to our souls. The Bible says that Jesus would abandon His entire flock (to the wolves, I presume) to save one lost sheep. How can this be? If it takes the horrible abuse and murder of thousands of innocent Christian children to show one single non-christian man the error of his ways, this is more than a fair trade. The Christian children will go to Heaven when they die. The man will not. As difficult as this is to grasp, physical life being by far the most important thing to most humans, it is logical. God is absolutely loving because He loves who we are spiritually. The health of our soul is infinitely more important than the health of our body. Just like His sacrifice of His own body, He'd sacrifice the bodies of every one of His followers if it would cause one who doesn't follow to see the light.

If you find this an unloving way to treat His creation, you obviously are in love with the physical and not the spiritual. The people closest to God are most often the ones in the most physical discomfort and poverty. The more in love you are with the material, the harder it is to get into Heaven, according to Jesus. There's nothing at all wrong with the physical world. There is something wrong with loving it more than God.

lpetrich

long winded fool:
This only follows if the interventions are specifically designed to physically help people. The Bible makes clear that the "help" which miracles provide is entirely incidental. (Indeed, many miracles turn out to be quite harmful.)

I don't know what LWF has in mind; most of the miracles of the Bible help "worthy" people.

* The Burning Bush -- God talks to Moses.

* The Ten Plagues of Egypt -- Israelites helped by the Egyptians' suffering those plagues.

* Stick-Snake vs. Stick-Snake -- Moses and Aaron's sticks-to-snakes win; they eat those produced by the Egyptian sorcerers.

* The Parting of the Red Sea -- Israelites escape, Egyptians drown.

* Manna from Heaven -- yum yum.

* Joshua's Sun Miracle -- he gets some help in fighting some of his battles.

* Elisha Cursing the Mischievous Boys -- he's no longer teased about his baldness.

* Elisha's Bones Raising the Dead -- 'Nuff said.

* Elijah vs. Baal's Priests -- Elijah wins, by the Biblical God showing himself to be more powerful than Baal.

* The Assyrian Army Struck Dead -- King Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem could breathe a little easier.

* Jesus Christ Curing People and Raising the Dead -- 'Nuff said.

* Jesus Christ and the Bread and Fish -- that much more for everybody to eat.

The purpose of divine miracles seems to fundamentally be to convince non-believers. ...

See above about the miracles of the Bible. I marvel at the way that many people who claim to believe in the Bible do not seem to have read it, let alone study it very carefully.

Pain and suffering are not bad things. They are things which show us the wrong way to go. If God eliminated them, we'd be more lost than if He allowed them.

If that is the case, then could Heaven possibly exist?

Also, an omnipotent being could program us to do the "right" thing every time.

How can your parents love you if they punish you for doing wrong? I think that the presence of punishment is reflective of just how much they love you.

Except that one's parents are far from omnipotent, and for that reason, they have to resort to that expedient.

Since God's goal for humans is not physical life, it is not rational to assume this as a goal and then point out things which contradict it. Therefore "how can God let little kids be abused and murdered and still be a loving God?" is not a rational question. He can and does and this does not contradict His love. In fact, it shows just how much He does love us. Our bodies mean nothing in comparison to our souls.

I wonder what LWF would say about a human parent who tortures his/her kids for that reason.

Also, if one's body is so unimportant, then why not dispose of it once and for all?

If it takes the horrible abuse and murder of thousands of innocent Christian children to show one single non-christian man the error of his ways, this is more than a fair trade. The Christian children will go to Heaven when they die. The man will not.

"It's necessary to break eggs in order to make an omelet."

If you find this an unloving way to treat His creation, you obviously are in love with the physical and not the spiritual. The people closest to God are most often the ones in the most physical discomfort and poverty. The more in love you are with the material, the harder it is to get into Heaven, according to Jesus. There's nothing at all wrong with the physical world. There is something wrong with loving it more than God.

I wonder if LWF has practiced what he preached and decided to live like a bum.

emur

Thank you long winded fool for your reply. My problem with your response is that you are describing a realm distinctly apart from the reality that I live in. In your "spiritual" realm, suffering is good, the soul is everything, and love means something different from the love that I know in the real world.

With all that you have said, God's interventions (if they do occur) are still merely random. And his love? It's not love by my understanding of the word.

The views you describe belong in some other universe as far as I am concerned. I have to live in and experience this one. Thus I do not accept views of spirituality that are in direct conflict with the reality that I experience.

Mel

long winded fool

Your welcome. I don't see how any human can fully accept the things I've said. That seems to be part of the doctrine. "No one can see the face of God and live." It is impossible to fully understand, but that is no reason to give up trying. The more you try, the more you understand. Suffering isn't necessarily "good" in the sense that you might take it. Nobody needs to suffer to make their soul better, but suffering "keeps your eye on the prize." Like the discipline of a father, it is to always be avoided, but it is not bad and it does not contradict his love. Being disciplined means you've done something wrong. Doing something wrong is bad. Discipline is good. It just feels bad.

Imagine that your son is playing a sport. You root for him and want him to win. Now imagine that his head gets too big. Imagine that he thinks he's unbeatable and that he is the only member of the team worth anything. Now you want him to lose. Why? Because you love him. Because he needs to lose in order to attain a more realistic and humble perspective. If the game is everything to him, if it is his "universe," he could not imagine how his supposedly loving father could want him to lose the game. It would be a devastating blow to his ego, which is all he loves and all he cares about just like all of his buddies. They might even rebel and claim "No good coach could ever want his team to lose! Therefore he's not a good coach!" But they would all come back a little more grounded and a little more focused on reality.

Losing is suffering. Yet you allow it for the good of your son. He doesn't understand now, but one day he will. Or maybe he won't, but you still must do what is best for your son. Arguing how child abuse could possibly be "what's best" is analogous to the son arguing how losing could possibly accomplish anything at all. If the goal is to win and go to the championships, then how could his own dad want him to lose?? Because despite the universe he lives in, that's not the goal of sports. That's not what really counts, even if he thinks it is. The 'physical realm' is all about winning. The 'spiritual realm' is about teamwork, cooperation, and becoming a better person. The game is not relevant in itself, as any wise coach will preach, (even if his actions are hypocritical.) The value in sports is physical and mental health, learning about human relationships, and instilling values of teamwork and cooperation in young men and women. As pretty as they are, gold trophies are no match for spiritual trophies. It's far better to lose every game and collect all of the spiritual trophies you can than to win every game, collecting all of the gold trophies and missing all the spiritual ones.

lpetrich

Except that an omnipotent being could easily imprint "good character" onto one. It would be like doing a software upgrade.

long winded fool

And we have the free will vs predestination paradox. I don't know how we could have free will if God is omnimax. The Bible says we do. I was assuming the op was granting the Biblical God for the sake of argument and then going from there.

emur

Long winded fool, I take it then that you don't fully accept the things you said either, assuming that you are human of course.

In the world in which I live, the physical world is also about teamwork, cooperation, and learning from losing. It is not just about winning.

I'm an avid tennis player. Pretty good too. But there is one guy that I haven't defeated in several years. He's a defensive player who gets everything back. First serves, hard hit shots from the baseline, balls at his feet, everything. So I have had to try to learn a new approach to the game of tennis. Instead of playing him from the baseline, I am coming to the net often. And more importantly, I have learned not to let the errors I make upset me. I've been known to throw my racquet (into the grass), grab the fence and try to pull it out of the ground, kick the bench, and utter many explicatives. But when that happens, the game is lost. So I decided this winter that when I play, that isn't going to happen anymore. I just decided it, and I am doing it. The results are better. The last two times I have played this opponent, I have tied him, and I haven't lost my cool once, even though I have made my share of errors. For me, all of that is the physical world. Mind, body, attitude. It's not about an interventionist God, and it's not that I suddenly became "spiritual".

But back to my original points. The randomness of God's supposed interventions look just like nature to me. Such randomness is a very strong argument against an interventionist God.

And you haven't addressed the loving father allowing his children to harm his children and how such a thing can be loving. You can speak in "spiritual" terms all you desire. But people know that a father that permits such things is not loving.

Mel