Athiest or Agnostic?

by real one 168 Replies latest jw friends

hillary_step

Deputy,
I don't have a problem saying "I don't know". I guess "I don't know" what you are asking! What would you expect to see that you're not seeing?
I would expect to be seeing an answer to my question. Which you repeatedly avoided answering.
I suspect that you might have difficulty keeping a track of your own posts, so let me recap.
You suggested that I was confusing the word 'character', with 'nature' when it came to grasping the meaning of Romans 1:20. Since then, I have asked more often than I needed to what you have assumed the 'nature' of God to be, and how this is different from 'character' and wether any sense of personality was involved in this term.
I note your question below which led to my asking this question:
Are you confusing God's nature, with God's character?
My replies:
I would be interested to read your observations as what one can actually tell about God from the 'creation' as outlined in Romans 1:20 as you seem to be suggesting that personal characteristics, like 'love' for example, are excluded from the 'nature' and 'eternal godship' mentioned in the scripture that are easily observable by all people.
Though Romans 1:20 discusses two aspects of God's 'qualities' - His/Her eternal power and divine nature, it would be disengenous to say the least that you were not suggesting that his/her 'character' was not also enmeshed in this issue. I will quote your own posts as evidence:
This is a further statement which need to be validated as it seems to suggest that character is involved in this statement that ;God is evident within them'.
Romans 1:19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. Everyone knows about God.
I them asked AGAIN:
Perhaps you might clarify what you mean by the 'nature' of God?
I would be interested to read your observations as what one can actually tell about God from the 'creation' as outlined in Romans 1:20 as you seem to be suggesting that personal characteristics, like 'love' for example, are excluded from the 'nature' and 'eternal godship' mentioned in the scripture that are easily observable by all people.
I then asked AGAIN:
Does Romans 1:20 suggest Godly attributes are 'readable' from nature or not?
I am not sure how many ways I can ask this question, but let me try again.
IS God's personality evident in his 'creation'? IF SO, how does this gel with what we catually see in nature as outlined in my original post.
I find it very hard to accept that you are too dense to understand what I am asking for, though of course this is a possibilty. I do understand why you are pretending that my questions are confusing you however.
HS
hillary_step

Burn,
Paul is saying that we can deduce God's invisible qualities from that which has been made. Specifically, the invisible qualities the "made things" reveal about God are his eternal power and divine nature. Paul then goes on in the verse and in v 21 to say that these leave those that do not worship God without excuse.
My questions are still unanswered and again I would rather believe that you are being deliberately obtuse rather than accidently stupid! WHAT QUALITIES ARE REVEALED BY GODS ETERNAL POWER AND DIVINE NATURE? What is readable, if anything, about God from Nature? What do you understand the word 'nature' to be, and the phrase 'eternal Godship to mean?' It is very important to know what these 'qualities' are, as according to Romans 1:20 those who do not see these 'qualities' are judged worthy of adverse judgement. HS
Deputy Dog

HS
IS God's personality evident in his 'creation'?
The obvious answer is yes
"This passage (Romans 1:20) is dealing with God's nature as Creator."
I would be interested to read your observations as what one can actually tell about God from the 'creation' as outlined in Romans 1:20 as you seem to be suggesting that personal characteristics, like 'love' for example, are excluded from the 'nature' and 'eternal godship' mentioned in the scripture that are easily observable by all people.
"Have you ever loved?"
"Have you ever been loved?"
"Have you ever seen someone love someone else?"
trevor

According to the Bible, God created spirit creatures in his own image long before he created man. Even some of these creatures failed, in time, to meet the requirements of God.
Why would a God of love create a planet of base material creatures that survive by ripping each other to pieces and then place a man and woman among them? Then give them rules that he would have fore-known were impossible to keep?
This is not an act of love. God then allegedly felt regret that he had created man and presumably woman.
How could he then claim to love his failed, corrupted attempt at producing material creatures that shared his attributes, and at the same time sentence them to death?
Deputy Dog fails to answer Hillary Steps question but instead asks:

"Have you ever loved?"
"Have you ever been loved?"
"Have you ever seen someone love someone else?"

This is an attempt to show that Gods attribute of love is expressed throughout creation and in man. Unfortunately if God is responsible for creating man then he has failed to demonstrate love in his dealings with man.
Man has failed to show perfect love which would have to include obedience to God.
There is no evidence of perfect love at work in Gods failed creation.
Men and women attach emotion to those that they value and protect them. This is more than God has proved himself capable of doing. It would seem logical to conclude that there is no controlling God who equates punishment with love.
Perhaps mankind is the pinnacle of morality in the universe and love exists to the degree that we demonstrate it.
Trevor
BurnTheShips

WHAT QUALITIES ARE REVEALED BY GODS ETERNAL POWER AND DIVINE NATURE
The text says that "eternal power" (aidios dunamis) and "divine nature" or divinity, (theiotes) ARE the qualities (aoratos, "invisible things") percieved, understood with the mind.
What is readable, if anything, about God from Nature?
According to the text, the eternal power, and divine nature of God.
What do you understand the word 'nature' to be, and the phrase 'eternal Godship to mean?'
If you mean Nature (kosmos), it is all that has been made; the world, the Universe. If you mean the nature of God, we mean His essence, his constitution, that which He is. As for "eternal Godship", it is not in the text.
It is very important to know what these 'qualities' are, as according to Romans 1:20 those who do not see these 'qualities' are judged worthy of adverse judgement.
These "qualities" or "invisible things" that Paul mentions are divinity and eternal power. Even a Universe that seems full of evil evidences this, so the text says it is unexcusable to deny them. God's other qualities are enmeshed in these of course but are not perceived so easily, as a fallen Creation does not reflect God perfectly any longer.
BTS
BurnTheShips

IS God's personality evident in his 'creation'?
The obvious answer is yes
If you already know the Christian God, it seems to me, then you can read it in.
BTS
Narkissos

From a purely theological standpoint, the notion of revelation (special revelation in Calvinistic jargon)implies some logical tension (which may be construed as contradiction, apory, paradox or dialectics depending on your philosophical inclinations) -- what "God" reveals about himself through revelation could not be grasped without revelation, and is, to an extent, antithetical to what could be gathered without revelation... (although some final "synthesis" is possible, if only as a form of coincidentia oppositorum).
This tension was eventually resolved in two opposite ways in early Christianity -- either the Father of Jesus Christ, the "God of Love," is not the creator of the kosmos (Gnostic take), or the extant kosmos (not only mankind) is not the original kosmos but utterly "perverted" by sin ("Orthodox" take). In the former case it is solved through a purely mythical, supra-human drama (the "fall" of the demiurge), in the latter case through a partly mythical, partly "historical" drama (the fall of Adam, mysteriously perverting "nature" -- of course paleontology makes the "Orthodox" solution a little more difficult to "swallow" to the modern average-educated believer). In both cases the cognitive consequences are basically the same: "God" cannot be truly known through the extant state of "creation" and "reason," but through a basically counter-intuitive "revelation".
This of course had to be detailed and nuanced in many ways, as it effectively was in the history of theology. For instance, is the revelation of God in Christ absolute or relative -- Christus totus deus, sed non totum dei (wholly God, not the whole of God)? The terrible, unknown, obscure deus nudus, or the "left hand of God" in Luther also point to the same relative direction.
It's interesting also to see how the early Kierkegaardian Karl Barth, a resolute adversary of "natural theology," dealt with Romans 1, reducing its actual cognitive possibilities to zero, and making it wholly unsuitable for apologetics...
real one

Trevor says:
Why would a God of love create a planet of base material creatures that survive by ripping each other to pieces and then place a man and woman among them? Then give them rules that he would have fore-known were impossible to keep?
Why is man always trying to determine what God does as far as his creation as to whether he is loving towards them or not? If you were God how would you do it? Oh, I see you are not God so stop trying to establish his love. Your brain does not have the capabilities. You need to be worried about your salvation so that if you are saved you can ask God questions one day.
There are many things about God that we don't understand. Do you know everything about anything?
hillary_step

Deputy,
IS God's personality evident in his 'creation'?
The obvious answer is yes
Finally, you answered my question.
Now, perhaps you might explain why, when I suggested that what the creation 'evidenced' about 'God', was that he has a violent, amoral, deceitful personality and gave reasons for this reasoning, you countered by suggesting that I was confusing 'nature' with 'character', using Romans 1:20 to try to prove this.
As I have already noted, and as you now agree, the 'nature' of God and the 'personality' of God are enmeshed from the viewpoint of Romans 1:20. Subsequently, my original point then stands and has yet to be attended to, so let me try again.
Everything in this universe lives by the death of others. In order for the most minute creature to the largest to live; deceit, amorality, violence and sociopathy are the order of the hour.
I do not expect evolution to have a personality, but what exactly does this teach you about God's personality? Burn recognized the dilemma but chose the common creatonists opt-out route by suggesting that nature as we know it, is not nature as God designed, hence the 'groaning' notation in Romans. As he is not a Creatonist, his logic eludes me, but that is another issue altogether.
HS
BurnTheShips

Everything in this universe lives by the death of others. In order for the most minute creature to the largest to live; deceit, amorality, violence and sociopathy are the order of the hour.
Strictly speaking, this is not correct, examples are too obvious to bother innumerating. Also, you are attaching moral agency to amoral nonagents. You might was well call a dislodged stone that brains a snow leopard below amoral, violent, and sociopathic.
It's a stone. If you want to insist on personifying it, I know what to get you next Christmas.
BTS

Athiest or Agnostic?

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