Amusingly, a lot of that kind of "strange" motivation from God could be explained if Many Worlds is true, and "God" is a constant, omnipresent observer.
Then, it becomes simultaneously
"I warned them; they acted right and pulled through"
"I warned them; they ignored it, and suffered the consequences."
In such a circumstance, "god" would be in a position to see what the absolute most ideal outcome would be, from among the literally infinite number of causal relationships in an aged universe like ours. This being would also be aware that every choice has a weight value attached.
The act of giving the warning may itself have had effects to alter the outcome distribution. EG, even though in some of the universes where the warning was given, the humans ignored it completely, more of them in total took the proper path, and more universes were guided toward the ideal outcome as a result of the warning.
Much of the kinds of argument against an omniscient and omnipotent god stem from the "problem of evil", as was previously cited. If a god is all knowing, then why does he allow "bad things" to happen?
I don't ascribe that that school of thought. I view a god, should it exist, as a more "it might know everything, and be all powerful, but is not the kind of directed actor that our kind of intelligence is" angle instead. If "god" is a timeless being, outside of time, space, and the causal universe as we understand it, then that kind of "If this, then that" decision matrix is absurd to attempt to apply. "god" would be better described as a non-living, non-sentient, but all encompasing phenomenon. A kind of static, never changing, but all encompassing "whole", in which all possibilities exist.
Thought experiment:
Consider-- 1) Many worlds is true. 2) All possible "yous" are flattened into a single superimposed "super-you." The super-you is all at once, able to (and to have done) everything you are capable of doing, and also to have abstained from doing, and has perfect knowledge of all consequences of all those outcomes. It exists as a static superposition of all the states you have ever been in. It does not change. It has no real mind of its own, and does not choose anything. It is a consequence of the individual instances following out their natural progressions; It is the superposition of all possibilities.
A 'god' could exist as such a phenomenon. It would be all powerful, and all knowing. It would also not prevent evil. It may also have a net preference for good. (the majority of its constituent parts favor 'good').
The "problem with evil" in such a circumstance is bullshit-- It's a human level view that the super-being should act in a specific way. It presumes to dictate how such a being should be, rather than simply it being. The evil is produced by the choices of the human-level actors, not this super-being.
I mention this kind of thought experiment, because of the whimsical language used to describe the abrahamic god-- "Knows all things", "Can do all things", "Hates sin", "Can be found in all things", "The origin/foundation of all things."
It has parallels to the navel-gazing false-god of gnosticism (the demi-urge), which creates a bubble of faulted creation about itself as a result of its attempt at self-understanding. It cogitates all possibilities (and in so doing, all possibilities are manifest), but these tracks are held apart through mental isolation. (Thus producing the effect of non-interacting parallel universes, each with their own causality chain of events, all stemming from a single origin.) In such a circumstance, the argument against evil is that the 'god' should not be imagining the consequences of evil, because "supposed to be good". It's reckless anthropization of an alien and probably unintelligible form of intelligence. (if intelligence is even the right word.)
I am an agnostic, who is a hard agnostic.
I view that our current understanding of our universe holds that an all powerful being cannot exist inside it, for the following reasons:
1) Infinite potential is equal to infinite potential energy.
2) Potential energy has an actual mass in our universe.
3) A being with infinite potential energy would have infinite mass.
4) Our universe has a finite value allowed for mass within a specific volume (Shwartzchild radius)
5) Ergo, an all powerful god would either have to *BE* then universe, OR-- must exist OUTSIDE the universe, or they would destroy it through infinite collapse of spacetime, just by existing inside it.
In the case of the god BEING the universe, the action of that agency would literally *BE* what we consider random chance, or natural phenomena. Attempting to define it as supernatural is a nonsequitor.
In the case of the god being OUTSIDE the universe, the reasoning and thought processes of that agency become too alien to contemplate.
In terms of worthiness of worship, the first case, where the god *IS* the universe, makes about as much sense as worshiping nature in general does. It does what it does regardless of our input or actions. It responds to our actions as direct consequences of our actions, such that those actions are literally just causing the phenomena we expect to happen, and nothing else. It is pointless to worship this being because such worship has no bearing on its behavior vs not worshiping it.
In the second case, the being is too alien to ascribe meaningful causal relations to any action we might undertake, or to how it might view any observation it has of our universe before acting upon it.
This leaves us with 2 results:
1) God is not worth worshiping, and probably could not really be called a 'god' as we consider the concept.
2) God is a being that is literally beyond the bounds of our universe, let alone our comprehension.
In either case, attempting to claim (special) knowledge of that being is meaningless, and cannot realistically be claimed by anyone.
Hence, my position as a hard agnostic. I know nothing about god, and further, assert that I *CANNOT* know about such a being.
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Topic: Ex-Christian Thread (Read 12732 times)