Extinguishing evil and pain (page 2)

greendawn

I was thinking about giving everyone an opportunity to be morally sound but under conditions unlike the ones in our present time I mean remove any bad environmental conditions (coersion and ignorance) as well as genetic and see what happens, and after a while nuke any humans that go astray under these conditions as there are no more valid excuses of imperfection, coersion, and ignorance. Reward the rest with eternal life.

jaffacake

Daunt,
Thanks for the feedback, you've got me thinking, again. I don't claim that my muddled understanding is better than the next persons, but my beliefs have developed from the JW/fundie type I had in my teens as an adventist, to something closer to what serious Biblical scholars/interpreters discern.
What you describe as a subjective description of God is derived from my efforts to apply the six principles of Biblical interpretation. I suppose this brings my understanding of God closer to some other non-Christian religions in some ways, but farther away from JWs.
I don't think the process of evolution is God, but could God have set off a creative process, part of which was evolution, that would lead to free beings evolving with good and bad possibilities (& everything in between) There are scriptures that suggest creativity and negativity are interconnected. (I'll refrain from quoting scriptures).
These are not my ideas but those of respected theologians. The negative aspects, or necessary evils, of evolution include competition, survival of the fittest, etc that manifest themselves as being hurtful to others, lust, etc. Are these the means by which God achieves a greater good. If atoms did not decay, then complex life forms like us would not be possible. Humanity could not become like Christ, ultimately, without having gone through millions of years of evolution.
I am so bad at explaining what I mean perhaps I should refer you to someone more eloquent to make such points lol.
p.s. I agree, I do not believe in a God that could make mistakes and/or blame other entities. Hope that is not what you thought I was implying.

wanderlustguy

I'd probably start by making it pretty obvious I was real.

Daunt

That was a very good post jaffacake, you got me thinking also. You have every right to believe in your interpretation of God and quite frankly it sounds a crapload better than all of the christian denominations I've heard. However, there's too much could. There really isn't nothing but words holding all this together. God could have started evolution to spark human free will and whatnot, he could have not. He could exist he could not. Many people hold this could be or could not be God higher than scientific evidence and from looking at the JW's or looking across at the terrorists we can see that this is an unstable way of doing things. It is could be and could not be made into absolute truth that everybody should follow. Just from my experience alone, this formula mixed in with forced servitude causes many problems, yet it's based on could be and could not be. But it all comes down to faith again, really it's hard to debate faith. I can't make an experiment and prove faith wrong or right. So I usually just let the person be if they have faith yet are still sensible.

Terry

Ideas for extinguishing evil

2. Make creatures that feel extreme physical disability temporarily when they contemplate committing an act of nonperfection. This is a methadone approach. When you take methadone and then try to inject Heroin, you become so nauseous the physical reaction conditions you away from dependancy.

3.Make people age ONLY when they do something unethical. When you do a bad act you grow uglier slightly.

4.Make people who shrink in size when they dishonor others or God. The more acts of disloyalty, the more insignificant they become.

5.Make it possible for humans to dialogue with their creator at any time they are stumped for reasons why they should/shouldn't do something. This on-call attorney/client service would have certainly made it unnecessary for Eve or Adam to blunder into death for all their offspring on the silly assertion of a talking serpent!

6.Have guardian angels handy who appear at the scene of any potentially harmful incident and advise humans of the consequences (which would be rendered on the spot.) Justice delayed is justice denied.

7.Give humans the ability to synthesize energy from sunlight so they don't have to urinate, poop or kill plants and animals for food. Let the pleasure of taste come from saying nice things instead.

The above are just a few. I'm available for the office of Godship should anyone want to place my name on the ballot. :)

T.

jaffacake

Thanks Daunt,

Yes its all 'could'. My favourite theologian once said something like: "Imagine if a Christian said to a Jew, well, actually I don't know much about God, and everything I say is so inadequate as to be virtually false." and the Jew responded "Its funny you should say that, but I don't know much about God either." How could they argue? Perhaps the winner would be the one who proved he knew less about God than his opponent.

My words don't hold anything together. How can I summarise in a post what the world's leading Bible commentators and theologians have discerned from the Bible using scholarly interpretaion methodology. These interpretations accord with all generally accepted science.

I think the error of many religions is they want to eradicate all the 'could' and claim they know some or all the answers. The bible teaches that we cannot ever know much at all, until this universe ends. But if you don't accept the Bible has any relevance at all, then any interpretation of it becomes meaningless.

Like JWs I could find something in the Bible to support any doctrine at all - even that of terroists - but only if I refuse to follow interpretation principles. If I do follow proper principles, it narrows, rather than broadens the possible teachings. Too mant have beliefs first and try to fit the texts into them, rather than vice versa.

I think it is easier to see what the Bible teaches than you suggest, if we use the proper principles. But what's the point if we don't accept the Bible at all. Suggested reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0281056803/qid=1122750651/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/202-9610847-2603032

Daunt

Thanks for explaining it for me jaffacake. Me personally, I have had enough of God for one life-time lol. Plus, the explainations proposed by theologians do accord with science, but that doesn't mean it's right. I can make a story that perfectly accords with science yet it doesn't make it anymore than a story. It's still in the realm of could, and as I said before this could be attitude isn't all that productive towards human kind. Ima look into that book though. I could never get anything non JW and religious through these doors but ill do some research about the book.

Terry

This pre-supposes that God can do anything, but I don't think that is what the Bible teaches. There seems scriptural evidence that God allows things without intending them. They are necessary evils to achieve a greater purpose. God is love, and love cannot exist unless it expresses itself in relation to an 'other'. As for good and evil, evil follows from rejecting love-ly ways through free will. But without such free will, unless we could choose to reject, then acceptance of love would mean nothing at all. If your partner had no choice but to return your love, then that love would be worthless.

Allowing things without intending them doesn't wash when you have foreknowledge. What is responsibility anyway? If the most powerful being in the universe isn't responsible why should anybody else be?

A "necessary evil" is a construct of inferior minds when they cannot achieve a good purpose without destruction.

The whole point in there being a God in the first place is the free exercise of power unlimited with a genius for accomplishing the will without haste or waste. The God you describe is a neurotic who makes up silly games like "step on a crack and you break your mother's back."

Love is a value placed on someone or something. The value lies in the estimation of the one loving which is related to its intrinsic function. The rate of exchange of the value is one's time or life. God is timeless and cannot lose life; therefore he cannot exchange anything for anything. There is no currency for God like there is for humanity. The scripture that says "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son...blah blah blah" is meaningless because God got his son back in 3 days. Big F-ing deal. Some loss. It is silly. God lost nothing and gained nothing.

You say, "If your partner had no choice but to return your love then that love would be worthless". Does not compute. Do you think we humans actually have a say in what we love? No way. I cannot help who I am attracted to or what qualities stimulate my ardor and get my motor running any more than I could choose how tall I am or the color of my eyes. Each human is born with a built-in nature. That nature has a script. We follow the script and are powerless to thwart it. Oh, true---we can fight it and be miserable. We can be like monks who lashed themselves and wore hair shirts to stifle their natural desires. But, what use is a bloody monk to anybody? Least of all themselves?

No, I'm afraid non of this will wash. God is Love is a meaningless statement that contains no data.

Love is a value placed on a person or object (as I said before). God is not a value. God is a mental projection of our selves and amplified to the extreme and stripped of all negative value. When we pray we are talking to the best part of ourselves. That is why our prayers never get answered unless we are the ones doing the answering by our own efforts.

What our universe always has is what works at the moment. What works is always ad hoc. If that ad hoc is durable it remains. Remember, the dinosaurs were around billions of years. We have hardly been around at all compared to them. The best guide to evaluating any ideas about God is to compare those ideas to the existence of dinosaurs and ask "What the hell does God have to do with dinosaurs?"

t.

prophecor

Lethal Injection

jaffacake

If the most powerful being in the universe isn't responsible why should anybody else be?

I don't think of God as a being that makes decisions.

A "necessary evil" is a construct of inferior minds when they cannot achieve a good purpose without destruction.

I was referring evolution, the negative aspects of human nature that were/are necessary to produce what we are now, and what we may become. We have evolved to the point where we can choose not to follow 'animal' instincts that got us to where we are today.

The scripture that says "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son...blah blah blah" is meaningless because God got his son back in 3 days. Big F-ing deal. Some loss. It is silly. God lost nothing and gained nothing.

But that all sounds like you think I believe scriptures to be much more than metaphor.

"If your partner had no choice but to return your love then that love would be worthless". Does not compute.

Your point about love made me think, not so sure that free will has no part to play in love at all. You would have to apply the same argument to hate, and say hateful people have no control over their feelings. Do we have control, or free will over anything?

Why pick on the dinosaurs, lol, there are lots of things in a few billion years of earth's history, and on a billion other planets, which to you or I might seem irrelevant with reference to God. I think you're imagining a JW type description of God. Maybe you and I don't actually disagree that much, but just use different terms for similar thoughts.

cheers

Extinguishing evil and pain

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