Here is some food for thought from my pen over the years:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/4252/1.ashx
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/4277/1.ashx
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/6243/1.ashx
Farkel
Question for Believers: How can God be PERFECT?
by kid-A 31 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Wafe
Yes you do get points for pointing out flaws in logic which reinfoces the point that it is useless ;)
What I do find amusing though is this.
There is no proof of God.
But if there is a book about God and it does not fit my criteria of perfection, it must be fake.
Anyone who tells me that the book is what it claims must be stupid, delusional, or have no knowledge of the facts.
If I were to say the above, I could disprove anything too.
Exactly what is the criteria for being perfect? How do you determine this as an imperfect being? I mean is there a test that someone takes or is it something that a person is born with?
The fact is that not everyone basis for perfection is the same. Take my belief about the Bible.
The Bible says that it is inspired of God but it does not say HOW it is inspired of God. Tell me where the in the Bible does the word infallible appear? Where does it say that this is the criteria in which to measure it?
The fact is that nowhere does the Bible say that it is infallible. That is something that people assume. What the Bible DOES say is that there are a great cloud of witnesses that confirm over and over again and again of how these events took place (Hebrews Chapter 12). As a result, I look at the Bible as a newspaper that reported the events (good and bad) in which almost every event is confirmed by at least one other separate person in the Bible. Jeremiah confirms Isaiah. Ezra confirms Jeremiah. Jesus is confirmed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who are confirmed by others in the letters. The existence of Moses is confirmed by Joshua who is confirmed by several others in the Bible. No other religious book neither the Koran nor the Book of Mormon has this amount of interlinking testimony.
But none of this requires the Bible to be perfect. Nor does the Bible itself say this. That again is something that people assume and you know what happens when people assume
It makes an ASS out of U and ME. ;)
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LittleToe
The Bible says that it is inspired of God but it does not say HOW it is inspired of God.
Errm, to be a little more precise, Paul makes a comment to this effect but appears to be talking about the OT. One writer doth not a representative of the whole canon make.
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moggy lover
I guess one of the problems we have is our use of language and its application to certain philosohical concepts. The limitations of this creates certain conundrums that can be exploited to justify any contravening idea one wishes to express. In this case the idea of God being simultaneously the creator of good and "evil".
God of course, being Ulitimate Holiness, did not create evil, because in a sense "evil" actually cannot be created. It is the natural consequence of the removal of that which is created, good. This is where semantics breaks down and philosophical concepts become muddied.
But lets take an example from physics. It is well known that "cold" is a term we use to describe a condition that exists. But that which exits is not "cold", it is only the word we use to describe this phenomenon. The thing that actually does exist is HEAT. Now, being an energy, we have learned to manipulate heat for our benefit. By reducing heat, we "create" a condition that is a natural consequence of a loss of heat. We use a word to describe this - Cold. But remember we have not created cold, because "cold" is not an independantly created condition, but what we have done is we have actually manipulated a thing that is created, heat. To arrive at a point where heat no longer exists, we need to reduce the temperature to -273.16C [-459.69F] At this point all we have is cold. But "cold" as a phenonenon on its own cannot be created. To arrive at this point, Absolute Zero, there is nothing we can do to cold, as if we can "add" to it. What we have to do is constantly keep removing heat, till no more heat exists.
May I then suggest that "evil" is the same idea. You cannot create "evil" but what you can do, because of the divine gift of free will, is manipulate "good" - the thing which is really created. The more you remove good, the more "evil" is manifested. The absence of "good" is what we call "evil" but remember that "evil" is the semantical way we have to describe a condition for which we are, in reality referring to the absence of good.
"Evil" which is a condition that describes the "removal of good" does exist, just as "cold" does. The Bible injects a moral precept into the lifeblood of the human psyche. Just as "cold" ultimately brings death, so, the Bible warns, the removal of good, brings a worse kind of death.
Cheers
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LittleToe
Moggy:
Good points."Cold" is relative to whatever baseline you set to it, and I know from experience that it changes from Scotland to Texas
What baseline are we setting to permit a definition of "evil"?
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Madame Quixote
I must apologize for insinuating my non-believing opinions into this thread, Kid-A. I just realized you were addressing believers, not unbelievers.
Qcmbr - I must also confess that this is one of the most bizarre and truly disturbing, (if not imperfect), arguments for god's perfection that I have ever come across, albeit a commonly held one:
"If you love all people equally, if you love them enough to allow your son to pay for all their mistakes, if you love them enough to allow their mistakes, if you love them enough to order a world for them then I think you can qualify for the description of perfection."
Yes, in this best of all possible worlds, no doubt allowing one's child to suffer torture - (at a cross or stake or whatever you believe must happen) - to atone for everyone else's mistakes is about the most perfectly pathological behaviour known to man.
That is merelyusing the child as the poison container for all of the flaws of a supposedly perfectly ordered world. Would it not be perfect and remain perfect if the creator of it was also perfectand all-knowing and all powerful?
It begs the question, how did a perfect god "order a world" that needs atonement by human sacrifice?
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RAF
It's not God which is perfect (essence of everything) regarding the bible it is its Christ means it's maturity, so perfection is the higher state.
The higher spiritual state is to allow every spirit (in the whole essence) to grew up as a whole (as it have to be connected spiritually to be totally satisfied)
The bible actuallly talks about evolution of the spirit in human kind state (not far from boudhism view)
For instance : There was a time which you couldn't have tell a man that his wife was equal to him (by force they wouldn't even allow their wife and daughters to hear about that news) So the job is to take things from where it can be taken - and evoluate with the time ...
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Madame Quixote
Wafe said:
"The fact is that not everyone's basis for perfection is the same. Take my belief about the Bible.
The Bible says that it is inspired of God but it does not say HOW it is inspired of God. Tell me where the in the Bible does the word infallible appear? Where does it say that this is the criteria in which to measure it?"
"the criteria by which to measure it"?
I will be the first to admit that I am not a bible scholar. Nor do I care to be, for the very reason you give here:
"not everyone's basis for perfection is the same"
Take your belief in the bible . . .On a number of points, we can agree. That the bible is a very subjective and flawed document is one of them. You suggested, saying in one breath it is inspired of god, but then you seem to say the bible is imperfect and not infallible. So, if the bible is in fact inspired of god, are you suggesting that god is imperfect, too? Why would a perfect god publish an imperfect book and why would I bow to anyone making the kind of claims that people (in the bible and outside of it make about this god) if he is in fact less than perfect?
For purposes of staying on topic, (as the original question of this thread is, how can god be perfect?), I can only say that my knowledge of the bible and of its writers shows that the bible alsofrequently contradicts itself while its authors wrote various stories and interpretations of stories, often long after the original stories took place.
In other words, the bible writers were often transmitting an oral tradition of stories - some of which are factual and some of which are skewed.
On this point I also partially agree with you Wafe: that "the bible is a newspaper." I see it however as a bunch of newspapers though, a number of which are tabloids like the National Enquirer and such; it consists of newspapers with more than one editor, that have had many different runs over the millennia, and which eventually got put together in the format most of us recognize it in today.
By your own admission, the bible you "believe in" is flawed. Why wouldn't its main protagonist and/or author also be equally flawed?
I think that is the point of kidA's question, don't you?
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Madame Quixote
Another question Wafe:
Does not the bible you believe in say that god is objective and all knowing and all-loving, and such?
If he is so objective and loving, why would he have published (or allowed to be published) such a subjective, flawed, confusing, violent, sexist, sexually explicit, and contradictory account of himself in that book?
I think god would have to ba a lot smarter than that; and if he were perfect, he would also be perfectly loving and would not point us to a book that causes so much argumentation, confusion, violence, oppression, and repression among his potential followers.
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knock knock
Well that's just great! Now my brain hurts.