luvluv

I'm guessing you're Catholic, the cave?

bgponder

To All Defending The Judeo-Christian God as "Good":

Has God ever broken any of His own commandments?

Let us discuss it!

Sincerely, BarryG

Albert Cipriani

Yeah, Barry,
God broke His own commandment against human sacrifice when He tempted Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his only son and when He tempted Himself by sending us His only Son in the form of the God-Man Jesus to be slaughtered. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Albert's Rants

bgponder

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:


Dear Brother Albert,

Indeed, God murdered himself in the first degree. And the human Jesus was the victim. (We shall not consider here the concepts of martyrdom/suicide.)

Why is the "goodness" of such a God not gobbledegook?

Sincerely, BarryG :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Albert Cipriani

Dear Barry,
You ask,
Because goodness does not necessarily conform to keeping or breaking commandments. Likewise the law, even good and just law, does not necessarily conform to good and just actions. This principal is known in the Catholic Church as Epikeia. That is, the law is the servant of man; man is not the servant of the law. The law is always provisional.

Commandments exist for our good, they are not good in and of themselves. Thus, for example, Jesus violated the Jewish Sabbath rules, for the rules are not superior to the ruler. Rules, laws, commandments, they all exist as a kind of shorthand for expressing in concrete terms the abstraction of the Golden Rule. Commandments may be written in stone, but it is through their real flesh and blood expression in the situational ethics of the moment that keeping them or breaking them demonstrates goodness. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic
Albert's Rants

Magus55

Since God created the laws, including morality and ethics - hes quite entitled to break them if he so chooses. He gave the laws to us so we know what he asks of us - He's perfect in his sovereignty and doesn't need a law to control himself - he does what needs to be done - whether you think its right or not.

Albert Cipriani

Magus
Not so fast. Since I created my children, I have the right to break them? There's no "since" to it. I agree with your conclusion, but not your rationale for getting to your conclusion. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Fiach

Crikey! That means that in your view, it is alright to attack a city, killing men, women, children, babies (bashing their heads against stones), and keeping virgin girls as sex slaves. In your view it was alright to mercilessly torture Job to try to induce him into disobedience. In your view it was OK to have Samaritan women with child ripped open (sword abortions.) In your view it was OK to have bears rip apart children for making fun of a daffy old prophet. God is loving for killing millions of babies in the alleged Noah's Flood along with billions of non-human animals for reasons that don't make sense to me.

God is 100% loving for sending Moses to free the Jews from Egypt but each time "hardening Pharoah's Heart" so that Pharoah resisted. This gave your loving God another excuse to send another plague, and repeats it 6 times ending with murdering the first born of every Egyptian, again including first born non-human animals.

Your 100% loving God "designed" a world in which 98% of wild animals die by being ripped apart, slashed by canine fangs, devoured from inside by rapacious parasites.

Your 100% loving God invented childhood brain tumours, many of which are inoperable. Those children may live several years ultimately dying, but suffering headaches, partial to complete paralysis, vertigo, vomiting, double vision, then finally lapsing into coma. Why does this loving god enjoy childhood suffering?

Your 100% loving God invented infectious bacteria, viruses, infectious protozoa, parasitic worms. He in his love invented crocodiles that snatch children from African river banks, doing the croc roll to tear the child's body apart, then holding them under water to die from bleeding to death or drowning. Wow, what love!

Your loving God created a world of pain and suffering, deliberately I suppose. And that is being 100% loving. I can't imagine how horrible the world would be if your God was only 80% loving.

Fiach

Wiploc

Is he entitled to be bad if he wants?



If he does what we think is bad, then why should we think he is good?
crc

the_cave

Uh, well, sort of. Nowadays I like to describe myself as a Bad Catholic. At any rate, I was raised Catholic, yes, and identify with is more than anything else. But I'm not here to promulgate Catholic (or even Christian) doctrine. I'm here merely to see if there is _any_ rationally meaningful way to discuss terms like "God".

I mean, there is, for example, a meaningful way to discuss things like unicorns (W. V. O. Quine even wrote a paper on it), or Frodo Baggins, or mermaids, or Emma Bovary. Or the wine-dark sea, for that matter. So why not God?

But beyond that, it seems to me that there are aspects of our existence, and of reality, that can be fairly described using God-langauge--especially because it helps capture our personal connection with it. I'm confused as to why does any of this have to do with Biblical accounts of bashing out the brains of Babylonian children? (About which I might add, it would not be surprising if this had in fact been something that the _Babylonians_ did to _Hebrew_ children. Grief and horror can often give way to the language of hatred and retribution, as you may know quite well.)

To try and contribute to the subject of this particular board, I'm going to ask: what is it, then, that we _can_ describe as good? In other words, what is goodness?

(And further, if goodness exists, why can't we call it, under certain circumstances, God?)