Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Telgin]

That's hard to argue with.

He's certainly not perfect from my point of view and definition of perfect, but that's as meaningless as any other definition in the grand scheme of things.

I was going to make some claims about how He was pretty clearly either not omniscient, omnipotent or omnibenevolent, but in the end I suspect even those claims could be deconstructed as being without substance in exactly the same way.

That... and I'm reasonably sure that has been touched on already in the thread.

[LordBucket]

Christians believe the ultimate source of morality and truth and the authority of their religion is god.  Yet they
have fairly simple evidence that many aspects of their religion were defined by men, not god. 

Yes, but for that evidence to be relevant they would have to:

1) Be aware of it
2) Believe it

In my experience, generally neither is the case. Yes, a good case could be made for what you're saying, but...as a third party observer who is not a Christian, my observation of Christians has been that generally, the "Christian Perspective" is:

"The Bible is the word of God. Jesus Christ is my savior. I attend church regularly, and read the Bible occasionally, but only the New Testament because that's the part that talks about Jesus and it's a really big book with lots of words and since my salvation is through Jesus, that's the relevant part."

If "the Bible" is the penultimate source, and if "the Bible" is defined as "the New Testament, as written in English" then immediately the vast majority of everything you're talking about becomes irrelevant. Trying to convince the "average Christian" that their version of the Bible is materially altered from its original form is much like someone trying to convince you that dinosaurs never existed, that science just made it up. You would immediately object to that and make all sorts of claims that there's "evidence" that dinosaurs were real. Even though you've probably never actually seen any of that evidence. You've just been told about it in school and grew up believing it. And even if I were to give you specific examples, for example, of fossil evidence having been faked...you would immediately dismiss them as isolated cases, and go right on believing in dinosaurs.

Christians are the same. They grew up being told about something and believing it. The Bible, as they know it, is just as real to them as dinosaurs are to you. Consequently it's trivial for them to dismiss all the evidence you're talking about, just like you'd dismiss an example of faked fossils.

the reformation

Ok, but so far as I can tell the "average Christian" perceives the Reformation roughly like this: "Catholics priests were getting caught up in earthly rather than spiritual pursuits. They were charging money for salvation, and this is both bad and incorrect. It's basically the same thing the Jews in the Temple were doing in the days of Jesus. So Luther brought us back to what Jesus intended."

Or the transition from Judaism to Christianity.  As others have pointed
out, there was no hell in the Jewish religion.

...ok, but again...for this to matter, Christians would have to, again:

1) Be aware of this
2) Believe it

Go ahead and ask any Christian you'd like if Jews believe in an eternity in Hell for the damned. I'm guessing that most will will say yes. While you're at it ask them if there are any significant differences in the Jewish vs Christian perspective of Satan. That's a far more interesting distinction.

Now...to be fair, this probably isn't universal. I'm making broad, sweeping claims. For example, I have actually had a conversation with one Christian friend in particular who explained that he wasn't totally convinced that there was any validity to the fire and brimstone routine, and that he thought a good case could be made for the idea that "hell" was simply a way of describing an eternity in the state of lack of union with God.

So yes, individual views might tend to vary. But my impression is that the "average Christian" simply is not aware of the distinctions between Judaism and Protestantism that you're describing. And if you ever get the chance, ask a Jew about it. It can be a lot of fun watching them shake their heads and say things like "yeah, I really have no idea where they came up with some of this stuff. That's really not what the Torah says at all."


I think we can save a lot of time, by doing the following: next time you talk to the "average Christian" in real life without the benefit of consulting google, ask him the following questions:

 * What language was the Bible originally written in?
 * Have you ever read the Bible?
 * To clarify...when you said just now that yes you've read the Bible...by that do you mean you've read the whole thing, or have you only read John and Matthews?
 * What's the difference between the Old and New Testament?
 * Who is John Calvin?
 * What's the significance of the council of Nicea?
 * Who wrote the Bible?
 * When was the Bible written?

Yes, there are a couple trick questions in there. But go ahead and ask those questions and see what answers you get.

it seems clear to me that a lot of modern Christianity was created by humans. 

Only because you don't see things through the eyes of the "Christian Perspective."

[GlyphGryph]

He's certainly not perfect from my point of view and definition of perfect, but that's as meaningless as any other definition in the grand scheme of things.

Any view where god is not perfect is the sort view that finds a perfect circle lacking, because it would be more stable with corners. Perfect always requires an ideal to compare it to.

It is a property of the observer, not of the thing that is observed. Thus, obtaining a perfect god is trivial - one simply needs to set him as his own ideal. For unique beings, this is honestly the only fair sort of comparison anyway.

He's not a perfect "hypothetical human-as-a-god ideal", obviously. But he's not a human-as-a-god at all, so that's not really a bid deal.

The omnis suffer from their own problems, but I don't actually think this is one of them. They still require context and framing to be meaningful, but at least once those are set, meeting the definitions isn't dependent solely upon the observer and nothing else.

[LordBucket]

He's certainly not perfect from my point of view and definition of perfect, but that's as meaningless as any other definition in the grand scheme of things.

Any view where god is not perfect is the sort view that finds a perfect circle lacking, because it would be more stable with corners. Perfect always requires an ideal to compare it to.

It is a property of the observer, not of the thing that is observed. Thus, obtaining a perfect god is trivial - one simply needs to set him as his own ideal. For unique beings, this is honestly the only fair sort of comparison anyway.

He's not a perfect "hypothetical human-as-a-god ideal", obviously. But he's not a human-as-a-god at all, so that's not really a bid deal.

It's funny that you mention observers. Allow me to offer an alternate perspective: consider "perfect" in the sense of "containing no flaws." For example, the number 1 is a perfect integer. There is no decimal value, and nothing could be done to the number 1 to make it "more" of an integer.

Now, imagine God as being the sum total of all possibilities. The waveform in uncollapsed state. That would be both "omniscience" and "omnipotence" wouldn't it? And such a thing would be "perfect" in the sense that there would be no way to make it "more" ...anything, really. Imagine "all possible realities" both real-ized and un real-ized as a singular conscious entity.

But if you were an ascended spirit manifesting to a bunch of goat herders on earth a couple thousand years ago to "help the humans" how realistic would it be to think you'd be able to successfully convey that concept to them?

[RedKing]

I'd been avoiding this thread, assuming that it had instantly degenerated into a flaming morass of FAIL. I am pleasantly surprised.

For my part, I was raised Lutheran-Missouri Synod (the hard right of the Lutheran spectrum). I took religion very seriously. Which is not to say that I was a Bible-thumper, but rather that I thought carefully about what I heard in the sermons and internalized the ideals of the faith. It was in so doing that I became incredibly disenchanted with organized religion, because at the same time that I heard a message of "Don't be distracted by the petty things of this world", I saw the pastor, the elders and my own peers constantly distracted with petty squabbles. There was also a knee-jerk avoidance of considering any possibility that other faiths could be right. The odd thing is, I was actually trying to disprove other religions to myself by starting with the premise that they were true, then following the chain of ideas until I hit a point where it was demonstrably false. But saying something like, "Okay, but what if the Norse were right and Heaven is actually like Valhalla?" in Sunday School does not go over well, I discovered.

Despite that, I stuck with the church until I was about 16 or 17. Which meant I went through Confirmation. Confirmation in other Lutheran churches, I later discovered, is sort of a crash course in theology that lasts about 6 weeks. Ours was TWO YEARS. Three hours every Sunday night for two years. It might as well be an Associate's Degree in Theology.

Ok, but so far as I can tell the "average Christian" perceives the Reformation roughly like this: "Catholics priests were getting caught up in earthly rather than spiritual pursuits. They were charging money for salvation, and this is both bad and incorrect. It's basically the same thing the Jews in the Temple were doing in the days of Jesus. So Luther brought us back to what Jesus intended."

We actually spent a fair bit of time on this, and it had far less to do with indulgences than it did the basic idea of intermediation. In the Catholic model, priests exist for the same reason that they do in "classical" religions: to be the intermediator between you and the divine. This is why Masses were conducted in Latin regardless of the local tongue, and why the lay congregation wasn't encouraged to read the Bible and/or why the Bible wasn't printed in local languages. Translating the Bible was a HUGE deal, because it essentially "democratized" Christianity and threatened to break the monopoly on salvation that the Church held. To put it in rather cartoonish terms, the Church was powerful for a thousand years after its founding because only they had the training and knew the necessary rituals and magic spells to keep you from going to Hell.

The most radical part of Lutheranism was the notion that God listens to all people, not just to the priests. Despite that, Luther saw value in the structure and hierarchy of the Church (he was a Catholic priest himself, after all), which is why he wanted to reform the Church, not destroy it. John Calvin was the one to take it a step further and say that we don't need priests and that the structure of the Church was itself corrupt and needed to be discarded. It was an idea as far-reaching and radical as the Declaration of Independence (and indeed, the latter was often referred to in the context of the former) -- if men could bypass priests and secure their own salvation, could they not also bypass kings and rule themselves?

The unintended consequence of Calvinism (and this is more my own opinion rather than anything we were taught) is that good theology is not easy. It takes a great deal of learning and reading and consideration and meticulous thought. In the absence of rigorous , intellectually honest training and education (i.e. seminary) it's rather easy to come up with your own crazy-ass interpretation of the Bible, which is how you get from Point A to Westboro Baptist. (in much the same way that good governance is hard, but any jackass with enough money can get himself elected and make bad laws). To me, Calvinism's enduring legacy is turning Christianity into a Rohrschach blot of a religion where everyone can project whatever ideological values they want into it and then claim divine mandate for it.

Now, imagine God as being the sum total of all possibilities. The waveform in uncollapsed state. That would be both "omniscience" and "omnipotence" wouldn't it? And such a thing would be "perfect" in the sense that there would be no way to make it "more" ...anything, really. Imagine "all possible realities" both real-ized and un real-ized as a singular conscious entity.

But if you were an ascended spirit manifesting to a bunch of goat herders on earth a couple thousand years ago to "help the humans" how realistic would it be to think you'd be able to successfully convey that concept to them?

You mean, "I am the Alpha and the Omega?" (okay, that part wasn't so much to the goatherders as to the toga-wearing folks who followed them)

Or from Exodus, when Moses asks for the name of God, and is told "I AM THAT I AM" (or in the original Hebrew, ehyeh asher ehyeh, which can also be translated as "I Will Be What I Will Be").

[GlyphGryph]

It's funny that you mention observers. Allow me to offer an alternate perspective: consider "perfect" in the sense of "containing no flaws."

This is a completely observer dependent property, though. It doesn't describe anything about the actual state of the object, only about how the object is viewed.

For example, the number 1 is a perfect integer. There is no decimal value, and nothing could be done to the number 1 to make it "more" of an integer.

But it's a downright terrible even number. It's perfection comes solely from you setting an ideal to which to compare it, and describes nothing more than how you view it. If you decide that it is flawed because it is also not even, and that it would be more perfect if it was an even integer, rather than just an integer, you can do that, and suddenly, without the object having changed at all, it is no longer even close to perfect.

Perfect is like "tall", "large", "heavy" - they are terms dependent on the comparison arbitrarily decided on by the observer. The are not properties of the object, they are properties of the relationship the observer creates between the object and another object (perhaps a hypothetical one).

For example, you can tell quite a bit about me by the fact that I have trouble seeing how a waveform in an uncollapsed state would make a perfect god - after all, it's not conscious, and that seems to be a decently sized flaw.

Also, RedKing, thanks for sharing the experience.

[kaijyuu]

You have to qualify what's "perfect," is what Glyph's saying. So using his example, you can have a "perfect" circle, or a "perfect" square, but a perfect circle is an imperfect square.

You have to say what objective quality is perfect. Just saying "God is perfect" doesn't specify how. Even if we're still talking morally perfect, you still would have to specify his morals and show how he goes through with them perfectly.

[RedKing]

For example, you can tell quite a bit about me by the fact that I have trouble seeing how a waveform in an uncollapsed state would make a perfect god - after all, it's not conscious, and that seems to be a decently sized flaw.

Heh...and yet, that's more or less exactly what Taoists worship on the macro level -- the inner workings of the universe itself as a divine "thing", but one devoid of consciousness. Consciousness itself is a flaw, because thought leads to differentiation. Differentiation leads to desire. Desire leads to loss. Loss leads to negative emotions, which lead to pain.[/yoda]

Buddhism is very similar in the idea that Nirvana entails total annhilation of the ego and active consciousness.

[LordBucket]

I have offered an alternate perspective. That perspective appears to have been rejected.

*shrug*

Ok.

[RedKing]

One other subject that I thought should be touched on is the notion of a loving God seemingly being incompatible with the idea of damnation. Or to put it another way, "If God is Love, how come he's going to make me burn in Hell for <insert sin here>?"

What I was taught is that God is not the dispenser of the punishment, but rather that the punishment is a "natural" consequence of the sin. By analogy, I will tell my children tonight not to eat too much candy, lest they get a stomachache. If they don't pay heed, I can see them laying there thinking, "But why did Daddy give me a stomachache? I thought he loved me!"

Another analogy I'm aware of is being in the dark and choosing to follow your flashlight, or turn the flashlight off and throw it away. Once you've done the latter, finding the flashlight again may be all but impossible. Not because the flashlight is punishing you for rejecting it, but as a natural consequence of your action.

[Leafsnail]

That doesn't really work if God is an all powerful creator, he'd have to set up those interactions.

[Bohandas]

What I was taught is that God is not the dispenser of the punishment, but rather that the punishment is a "natural" consequence of the sin. By analogy, I will tell my children tonight not to eat too much candy, lest they get a stomachache. If they don't pay heed, I can see them laying there thinking, "But why did Daddy give me a stomachache? I thought he loved me!"

That doesn't really work if God is an all powerful creator, he'd have to set up those interactions.

It doesn't even work 100% for the example given. Pepto for all!

[RedKing]

Not necessarily, if you use something along the "Watchmaker God" conception of God. God sets up physics (and metaphysics). Sees actions that He knows will play out badly based on the framework He set up. Has decided to give free will, so He won't *make* people not make poor decisions. But he can try to encourage them.

In the same way that you can try to keep your dwarves away from that !!pig tail sock!!, but unless you specifically forbid it (i.e. override free will), chances are somebody's going to !!FUN!!. (Thus leading to the Gospel of Urist, wherein it is written "If thy sock offends thee, cast it off and go barefoot. For it better to have cold feet than to wear strange socks and risk the fires of Hell.")

Granted, you can argue that God is a dick for not overriding free will to save people, or for setting up a framework that allows people to injure themselves physically and/or spiritually. But I think Nietzsche touched on that in Also sprach Zarathustra:

Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. ... Fellow creators, Zarathustra seeks, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants: what are herds and shepherds and corpses to him?

Now, you can argue (and I think someone did earlier) that a God who is lonely and makes sentient beings for companionship is therefore lacking something and not perfect. I'm not sure there's anywhere in the Bible where God stated that He is perfect (or even omnipotent or omniscient). I think these are qualities that have been assigned by His followers. In part as a defensive mechanism, because an imperfect God leaves room for criticism and doubt.

[Telgin]

Well, assuming that God is directly responsible for all of history (which most Christians would say He is), then it's His fault that there is a burning sock there in the first place.  In the case of DF, you can try to prevent this as it unfolds, and even predict such things will happen, but you don't know that in 47 hours 13 seconds that Urist McStupid is going to go grab a !!sock!! because you (assuming you are God) set up the circumstances for said sock to burst into flame.  If God was all powerful, all knowing and all loving, He'd change the unfolding of history to prevent this, under the human notions of these concepts.

Similarly, the stomach ache thing would be like you were responsible for creating stomach aches as a whole, but you're not.

Really though, as you mention in your last paragraph, if God isn't all knowing, all powerful or all loving, then all of this dissolves.  I know it's stated in the Bible that He can do all things for example, but whether He says that I don't recall.

[GlyphGryph]

And as has been amply demonstrated, it's apparently impossible to have discussion about all-powerful, since people immediately start arguing based on super-omnipotence that goes way, way further.

Maybe god is all of those things, but also kind of lazy. He CAN do it that way, and he WANTS to do it, and he knows HOW to do it, but despite all that... he'd really just rather take Sunday off for a rest.