Abrahamic religions make a lot more sense if God isn't omniscient and he's using our reality to understand suffering in a way that an all-powerful being can't
No, I got that. There's just no way to have this definition of God within the Abrahamic context. Literally, God said to Abraham, "I am the one true God, and I can do anything. Including making your barren wife bear a child. And now you all need to cut off your foreskin to show that you believe me. And that will be our covenant."
This why these religions are so prone to fascism and general hate. Anyone who isn't with our god is against us.
ETA: And by "our god" in the last sentence, I mean the very specific definition these very specific groups have decided to use for ole foreskin-wanting dude.
It varies wildly depending on the author. Sometimes he controls all of reality and other times he doesn't even know what's happening in the next town over.
Honestly it seems like thats what they were getting at in the very old texts, but then it gets lost in translation on purpose. imo. into this all powerful all knowing being for power or greed
. if you look into the older occult side like Christian mysticism, the kabbala, and other major religious mystic writings is what I mean
With the way things are going, maybe we should stop letting god plan things. He kinda sucks at it. In fact, letting god plan anything seems to be as bad as not planning at all.
If there were a God, I'm convinced he doesn't have a plan for each of us. "A plan" directly contradicts free will, which is absolutely confirmed in all versions of the Bible and necessary for Faith.
So: the plan would have been: set up the initial conditions, ensure uncertainty and randomness, and let the simulation run. Omniscience can be constrained to awareness of the current state of everything (although, even God would be constrained by Heisenberg's principle), yet still not know the future. And the ability to knowing the state of everything still doesn't imply the intelligence and ability to calculate, simulate, and project the future state of anything - which, with randomness, becomes increasingly difficult with each second into the future you project, even if you have a good clipping algorithm to ignore things unlikely to impact Nick.
No, God would merely be a voyeur. Since he's omnipotent, he can affect change, so he could help Nick... but that would violate Nick's free will and the premise on which Faith depends. And the Christian God is strangely dependent on Faith; Faith is given an unreasonably high importance.
In any case, there's no plan other than maybe some tweaks here or there to nudge things in a certain direction. They're all macro changes, too. Not something as trivial or personal as preventing the soccer mom from running over 6 y/o Luna's beloved cat that Luna grew up with. With chaos and entropy given free reign, Luna could develop a brain tumor in the next couple of years and die young; why bother save her from the trauma. If she's been good enough, she's just going to end up in heaven, lobotomized and permanently blissed out, and forced to spend the rest of eternity singing praises to God, anyway.
According to the Bible. If you're a practicing Christian, feel free to explain where I'm wrong about any of this. Extra points if you can avoid resorting to the fundamental inscrutability of God's purpose.
she's just going to end up in heaven, lobotomized and permanently blissed out, and forced to spend the rest of eternity singing praises to God, anyway.
This always scared the shit out of me. I don't want to do that. I'll gladly take the embrace of the void any day.
Because if you don’t have faith, the entire house of cards would fall down. Some people would have to contend with justifying why they deserve to have authority or power, and others would have to justify their thoughts and actions without being intellectually lazy. Cave ab homine Deus libri.
Remember kids, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and created EVERYTHING; including evil and suffering.
This means that God created evil, knowing full well what that meant for us humans. He knew Adam was going to eat the apple, and lie to him about it, but still got angry that he was lied to; so angry that he damned the rest of humanity as punishment.
So if God created evil, and knew what that would do for all of humanity, and it was a part of his great plan to do so, then God must also be evil.
You can’t have it both ways. He can’t be good and not evil if he created evil. He also lets it happen. He can’t be good and not evil if he knows every mistake we will make, and knowing the impact of our mistakes (i.e., the other people it affects). This makes God culpable for our sins, yet he is not held accountable for his inaction.
Honestly, anyone who says god is all powerful and all knowing clearly hasn't read the Bible. There is a clear character arc there, and that's absolutely incompatible with those two assumptions.
I man, look at the whole Jesus thing! He makes himself human to see why the humans can't be good, he does retain at least some of his godly powers in human form tho. Even as God made human he has outbursts of rage and is at least at one time incredibly inconsiderate to his parents. Clear character faults if you ask me. At the end he is like "shit was hard man, goddamn!" and changes toe policy for going to heaven completely.
Don’t forget how he raped a child to impregnate her, thus also committing adultery and breaking one of his own commandments at the same time, just so he could send his “only begotten son” to die, just to effectively give up and never return.
Rape means no consent, has nothing to do with the unconventional way of conception. The entire passage is so imprecisely written, that I don't think you can for sure say it would have been rape.
First of all, not all powerful. That is what my first comment was all about. Second, I wouldn't categorically say no, unlikely, but not impossible. Thirdly, why do so many people feel like debating the finer points of a fictional event with me? You guys are almost as bad as harry potter nerds, except you hate the book you are talking about.
uh wow, I thought we were just chatting, not debating. Why are you acting like this? I also never specified my beliefs so it's weird to jump to all these conclusions.
This isn’t the gotcha you think it is, because the Bible literally says as much in Isaiah 45:7:
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
However, it’s not valid to conclude from the fact that God created evil that He must therefore be evil, because He created good as well. At best you could say He is neutral.
In fact, it is you who is evil because you ignore all the good that He does and focus only on the evil.
…it’s not valid to conclude from the fact that God created evil that He must therefore be evil, because He created good as well. At best you could say He is neutral.
I hate splitting hairs, but in this case I do feel it’s an important distinction to point out that I said he must “also be evil”; in the sense of being in addition to good, he is also evil. So he is both things, and not just one or the other.
In my personal experiences with Cristians, I have often heard how “God is good” because of all the good things (more often in reference to things other people have done to solve a problem; e.g., doctors, nurses, and firefighters), and that anything considered bad or evil is the work of Satan. At the same time, Christians that I have known are all too happy to acknowledge that God created everything, yet thy conveniently fail to acknowledge that evil is one of those things having been created too.
And for what it’s worth: while my focus here in this conversation has been on the negatives I see in life, that does not mean I do not acknowledge and rejoice in the positives when they present themselves. Mind you, I do suffer from depression and suicidal ideation, so I will acknowledge that it can be difficult from time to time to remember the positives when I feel like I’m drowning in the negatives.
Do with that as you will. I do thank you for the opportunity for discussion. 😊
Thanks for your response, and please accept my apology for misinterpreting what you said. I think my mistake came from the fact that “also” in this context could mean both “consequently” and “as well”.
I do agree that a lot of Christians seem to be struggling with this idea, but let’s be honest, it IS a tough pill to swallow. While I think there is value in overemphasizing the goodness of God in order not to get depressed by the sometimes overwhelming amount of evil that may present itself, it’s a mistake to lose sight of it, because that’s how it continues to fester and grow.
I think the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30) is a helpful metaphor in this regard: to an extent, we have to accept the presence of evil even while focusing on growing the good, but that’s okay as long as we don’t let it get out of hand and we have a plan for dealing with it eventually.
My parents, bless their hearts, were unfortunately not very good at this. My dad in particular focused so much on getting rid of all of my evils that he destroyed pretty much all hope of ever being good enough in eyes, which of course did not exactly motivate me to try to do better. But as much as I’d like to be angry about that, I know it’s of no use because I’ll be the one paying the price for it by becoming bitter and resentful, so all I can do is take it as a lesson learned in what not to do, and try to figure out a way to do better.
I hope that was helpful and I wish you all the best. Depression is an awful condition and it takes a lot of courage and willpower not to give in to that. Keep fighting the good fight!
