Figuring Out Religion

[Greg]

https://carm.org/questions/about-god/wh ... ll-go-hell

Interesting viewpoint on why God creates some that go to Hell.

[iwealth]

7.) God is saddened by those that disobey him, even though he knows they will (same as watching your favorite movie over and over again, you know the story already, but still enjoy watching it)

Predetermined freewill, I just can't wrap my head around it.

It's not just my watching my favorite movie over and over again, it's writing my own movie and watching it over and over again. In the context of the movie, the characters use freewill to make their own choices which leads to some conclusion. But since I wrote the movie, I'm really the one who made those choices.

Am I on the right track here?

[Pointedstick]

https://carm.org/questions/about-god/wh ... ll-go-hell

Interesting viewpoint on why God creates some that go to Hell.

Hmm. From the article:

So, according to the Bible it seems that God patiently endured the "bad" people, so that He could express His great riches upon the people who go to heaven.  These evil people freely choose to be evil; and if God were to stop them from existing, then He would have to, in effect, stop people from being born who would never hear the Gospel and who would reject the Gospel.

If God loved those evil people despite creating them with the foreknowledge that they would be sent to Hell to burn in torment forever, then there must be some method by which sending someone Hell is an expression of love. This I do not understand and wish that someone would help me understand it.

[doodle]

3.God knows every single person that will accept him and his son and go to heaven, based on humans freewill (which God knows)
4.) Many people will go to hell based on their freewill (which God knows)

Why does he care so much about whether I believe in him that if I don't I burn for all eternity? I can't wrap my God-given logic around that. I don't think I have enough hate in my soul to condemn another human who killed my dog, stole everything I owned, and burned my house down to eternal hellfire.....nevermind him just not "liking" me.

[moda0306]

3.God knows every single person that will accept him and his son and go to heaven, based on humans freewill (which God knows)
4.) Many people will go to hell based on their freewill (which God knows)

Why does he care so much about whether I believe in him that if I don't I burn for all eternity? I can't wrap my God-given logic around that. I don't think I have enough hate in my soul to condemn another human who killed my dog, stole everything I owned, and burned my house down to eternal hellfire.....nevermind him just not "liking" me.

No. It has nothing to do with liking.

It's whether you accept Jesus as your savior or not, based on the limited evidence that he rose and the Bible.

Essentially, there's nothing to like or not like if you don't even know God's nature, and to the extent we doubt very shaky evidence, we are punished with eternal hellfire.

That's even worse.

[Pointedstick]

Really the thing that is baffling to me is not all the violence and brutality and wrath and judgement in the Bible; it's the self-contradictory assertions, chief among them that God loves all humans despite the fact that the Bible contains endless stories in which God murders large numbers of them in a flippant manner and condemns most of them to eternal torture.

I feel like everything would make so much more sense if people didn't constantly try to claim that God loved us. I could completely fathom a religion centered around an angry and wrathful God who created us humans as playthings and wanted belief and worship and reverence from us or else he would kill us or torture us forever or both. That makes sense to me. I might not want to follow that religion, but I could understand it. What doesn't make sense to me is the claim that this same God is actually a loving father despite admittedly killing and torturing people's souls forever.

Where is the love in that!?!

[doodle]

3.God knows every single person that will accept him and his son and go to heaven, based on humans freewill (which God knows)
4.) Many people will go to hell based on their freewill (which God knows)

Why does he care so much about whether I believe in him that if I don't I burn for all eternity? I can't wrap my God-given logic around that. I don't think I have enough hate in my soul to condemn another human who killed my dog, stole everything I owned, and burned my house down to eternal hellfire.....nevermind him just not "liking" me.

No. It has nothing to do with liking.

It's whether you accept Jesus as your savior or not, based on the limited evidence that he rose and the Bible.

Essentially, there's nothing to like or not like if you don't even know God's nature, and to the extent we doubt very shaky evidence, we are punished with eternal hellfire.

That's even worse.

What if there is like a 1% nagging doubt in the back of my head as to whether this whole thing is legit or not? Does this require a 100% belief? What if you spent a lifetime believing but on your deathbed you were consumed by some "irrational" fear that perhaps the story wasn't legit.....but you still wanted to believe and said you did when anyone asked you.

[Greg]

Really the thing that is baffling to me is not all the violence and brutality and wrath and judgement in the Bible; it's the self-contradictory assertions, chief among them that God loves all humans despite the fact that the Bible contains endless stories in which God murders large numbers of them in a flippant manner and condemns most of them to eternal torture.

I feel like everything would make so much more sense if people didn't constantly try to claim that God loved us. I could completely fathom a religion centered around an angry and wrathful God who created us humans as playthings and wanted belief and worship and reverence from us or else he would kill us or torture us forever or both. That makes sense to me. I might not want to follow that religion, but I could understand it. What doesn't make sense to me is the claim that this same God is actually a loving father despite admittedly killing and torturing people's souls forever.

Where is the love in that!?!

1.) God didn't create robots. We have freewill.
2.) Based on freewill, we decide to sin
3.) God punishes those that sin
4.) God has predestined some to hell, but during their lifetimes, they still make their own choices, even if God knows what those choices will be. We may be predisposed to arriving at certain decisions, but still we can make a change if we want. This is also that whole freewill/determinism thread that we have.
5.) I think Love is multifaceted. Love involves discipline to mold something into what it is supposed to be. It can also lead to laying down one's life for another (such as Jesus). There are many views to it and not just the pleasant ones.

Also on a random note, the show Futurama had an episode called Godfellas that got good reviews (you can normally find it streaming online or on netflix) http://theinfosphere.org/Godfellas. It had an interesting spin on a binary God that I liked. God works through his people to accomplish his mission. Various people have different parts to play but they are all for him in one way or another.

[doodle]

1.) God didn't create robots. We have freewill.
2.) Based on freewill, we decide to sin

Do we??? I suggest watching Sam Harris' speech linked in the thread below. It's quite a convincing argument to the contrary

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... terminism/

[Pointedstick]

1.) God didn't create robots. We have freewill.
2.) Based on freewill, we decide to sin
3.) God punishes those that sin

But we've already established that God knows everything and controls everything. Is it fair for God to punish people for things that he KNOWS they will do because he DESIGNED them with a propensity for doing them? If I wrote an intentionally buggy AI computer program, should I blame the program, or myself when it malfunctioned?

5.) I think Love is multifaceted. Love involves discipline to mold something into what it is supposed to be. It can also lead to laying down one's life for another (such as Jesus). There are many views to it and not just the pleasant ones.

When God kills someone and his soul is tortured forever, how does that mold him into what God wants? Unless what God wants is for his soul to be eternally tortured, in which case… that seems pretty fucked up to me.

There's discipline, and there's murder or eternal torture, and those seem like very different things to me. Perhaps my problem is that I'm not sure I can conceive of a definition of love that includes murder and eternal torture. Can someone help me understand this?

this is not the christian understanding obviously.... but if you throw out the anthropomorphized version of god it gets easier to grock (IMHO), god is not a person, god is not something that you can create in your own image and understand as you would a person, god does not love - god is love, god does not exist as something separate from people and torment them like a big bearded magnifying glass welding ant melting kid in the sky, god is us and creation and everything else all at once, the view of those things (us and god and everything else) as being separate is a fun little illusion we all engage in for our own amusement, separating our-self from love/loving separates us from our nature, or from god... that is what they meant by sin and suffering... hell is a duality of our own creation and nobody knows what happens if you are still caught up in that duality illusion when you die (sorry Christians but regardless of what you interpret a book to be saying nobody knows for sure but dead people)

See, this could work for me. But, like you said, it is not Christianity as commonly defined.

definitely not Christianity as commonly defined. Christianity likes its religion faith based, and explained using a god that is a (sometimes angry) daddy - father figure, and discussed in humanistic terms.. no matter how many cognitive glitches and logical problems it creates.. to a faith based believer these sort of issues don't matter.. just stop thinking that way accept god (let him be revealed) and have faith... problems solved

[Greg]

When God kills someone and his soul is tortured forever, how does that mold him into what God wants? Unless what God wants is for his soul to be eternally tortured, in which case… that seems pretty fucked up to me.

There's discipline, and there's murder or eternal torture, and those seem like very different things to me. Perhaps my problem is that I'm not sure I can conceive of a definition of love that includes murder and eternal torture. Can someone help me understand this?

1.) God knows who is going to hell, we don’t. That’s an important point.
2.) Everyone that is on Earth today will in some way or another, be exposed to the gospel, I do not know how.
3.) Based on the information you learn, people will make a decision on whether to accept it or deny it. I do not know currently what force allows someone to choose on this. Whether a divine or human-oriented force. This seems to be the main point we’re arguing with on this thread. Someone shows Christian apologetics stuff, others poke holes in it. More Christian apologetic stuff to address the holes, cycle continues. Not sure if humans really choose this via logic, emotion, or revelation. Logic seems like it is what we're trying to dig into but haven't gotten to consensus yet. We'll see how long this thread gets.
4.) Because of our decisions, we choose out outcomes. God knows it, but we choose it.

[Greg]

For God's existence from Futurama:

http://theinfosphere.org/Godfellas

The Shrimpkins and their world are destroyed, and Bender laments their extinction. As he drifts through space weeping, he notices a galaxy signalling in binary code, and he signals back. The Galaxy picks up contact with him, and it turns out that it may possibly be God. Meanwhile, Fry and Leela reach the monastery. They try to persuade the monks to let them use the telescope, which they learn acts as a strong transmitter, to search for Bender. The monks refuse, but as they are at a strict non-violence policy, Leela locks them in the laundry room and they use the telescope anyway. Bender and the Galaxy have a deep exchange about being God, and the Galaxy teaches Bender that being God is not easy at all, as he could plainly see during his time with the Shrimpkins. If you do too much, people depend on you, and if you do nothing, they lose hope explains the Galaxy. The right approach is a light touch, so that people won't even know you have done anything at all. Bender asks to be sent back to Earth, but the Galaxy cannot do this as he does not know where Earth is. Bender is equally helpless in finding Earth, so he settles into the realization that he will be spending eternity with the Galaxy. After 3 straight days of searching, Fry decides to give up. In his last futile turn of the telescope, it points toward the Galaxy and transmits Fry's last words as he walks away 'I wish I had Bender back'. The Galaxy receives this transmission, straps a parachute onto Bender's back and flings him in the direction of the message. Bender lands just in front of Fry and Leela, who are leaving the monastery, which Leela says is the "least likely thing that has ever happened". Just then, they realize that they left the monks locked in the laundry room, and Fry wonders if they have to let them out. After all, their God might let them out...or at least give them more shoes to eat. Bender tells them that you can't count on God for anything, and that they will have to do it themselves if they want it done. The Galaxy chuckles and says to itself 'When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.'

[Pointedstick]

1.) God knows who is going to hell, we don’t. That’s an important point.
2.) Everyone that is on Earth today will in some way or another, be exposed to the gospel, I do not know how.
3.) Based on the information you learn, people will make a decision on whether to accept it or deny it. I do not know currently what force allows someone to choose on this. Whether a divine or human-oriented force. This seems to be the main point we’re arguing with on this thread. Someone shows Christian apologetics stuff, others poke holes in it. More Christian apologetic stuff to address the holes, cycle continues. Not sure if humans really choose this via logic, emotion, or revelation. Logic seems like it is what we're trying to dig into but haven't gotten to consensus yet. We'll see how long this thread gets.
4.) Because of our decisions, we choose out outcomes. God knows it, but we choose it.

That's all about free will, not love. If we know that we have the free will to choose a path that will lead to eternal torment, and we know that God implicitly allows it by being the creator of everything, including the metaphysical rules that govern Heaven and Hell… again, how is that consistent with a normal human definition of "love?"

[Greg]

1.) God knows who is going to hell, we don’t. That’s an important point.
2.) Everyone that is on Earth today will in some way or another, be exposed to the gospel, I do not know how.
3.) Based on the information you learn, people will make a decision on whether to accept it or deny it. I do not know currently what force allows someone to choose on this. Whether a divine or human-oriented force. This seems to be the main point we’re arguing with on this thread. Someone shows Christian apologetics stuff, others poke holes in it. More Christian apologetic stuff to address the holes, cycle continues. Not sure if humans really choose this via logic, emotion, or revelation. Logic seems like it is what we're trying to dig into but haven't gotten to consensus yet. We'll see how long this thread gets.
4.) Because of our decisions, we choose out outcomes. God knows it, but we choose it.

That's all about free will, not love. If we know that we have the free will to choose a path that will lead to eternal torment, and we know that God implicitly allows it by being the creator of everything, including the metaphysical rules that govern Heaven and Hell… again, how is that consistent with a normal human definition of "love?"

We can not love God unless we have the freewill to do so. God always loves us but he will let us go if we choose to not love him and want a relationship with him.

[Pointedstick]

We can not love God unless we have the freewill to do so. God always loves us but he will let us go if we choose to not love him and want a relationship with him.

Ah, so God does not love everyone after all?

[doodle]

We can not love God unless we have the freewill to do so. God always loves us but he will let us go if we choose to not love him and want a relationship with him.

Ah, so God does not love everyone after all?

And the  evidence against freewill is quite convincing? The God of Abraham will soon find himself shelved next to Zeus and Jupiter.

[Mountaineer]

1.) God knows who is going to hell, we don’t. That’s an important point.
2.) Everyone that is on Earth today will in some way or another, be exposed to the gospel, I do not know how.
3.) Based on the information you learn, people will make a decision on whether to accept it or deny it. I do not know currently what force allows someone to choose on this. Whether a divine or human-oriented force. This seems to be the main point we’re arguing with on this thread. Someone shows Christian apologetics stuff, others poke holes in it. More Christian apologetic stuff to address the holes, cycle continues. Not sure if humans really choose this via logic, emotion, or revelation. Logic seems like it is what we're trying to dig into but haven't gotten to consensus yet. We'll see how long this thread gets.
4.) Because of our decisions, we choose out outcomes. God knows it, but we choose it.

That's all about free will, not love. If we know that we have the free will to choose a path that will lead to eternal torment, and we know that God implicitly allows it by being the creator of everything, including the metaphysical rules that govern Heaven and Hell… again, how is that consistent with a normal human definition of "love?"

Hypothetical story:

I have a teanage son.  I tell him, go party with your friends all you want, but do not under any circumstances do heroin as it will kill you and once you start, it is very difficult to stop without external help.  He does heroin.  I tell him stop, believe me!  Again.  I tell him stop, believe me, I love you, I want no harm to come to you!  He thinks he knows best.  He does heroin yet again.  Again.  Again.  I love him to the very end and am holding his hand in the bed when he takes his last breath.  He dies at age 17. 

My other son never does heroin.  He lives a long fruitful life but is killed in a car wreck at age 65 while coming to my 90th birthday party.  I loved him his entire life. 

Did I love either son more than the other?  Was I disappointed in my first son?  Yes.  Was my heart broken he chose not to listen to my very clear words?  Yes.  I gave him the freedom to go to that party because I had told him the rules required for life - he refused my advice.  Should I have kept him in a bubble his entire life because I knew he might go down a path I did not want him to go? 

The metaphor breaks down though as all metaphors do, I'm not God and cannot see the future with absolute clarity. 

... Mountaineer 

[Pointedstick]

Mountaineer, does the hypothetical change if you sent the heroin to the party in the first place? Or how about if you had the ability to alter your son's mind processes and had foreknowledge that your first son would die if allowed to make his own choices and you did not intervene? And how about if instead of death, heroin was a drug that would, upon overdose, paralyze you, keep you alive, and play Hillary Clinton porn in your mind forever?

[Greg]

Mountaineer, does the hypothetical change if you sent the heroin to the party in the first place? Or how about if you had the ability to alter your son's mind processes and had foreknowledge that your first son would die if allowed to make his own choices and you did not intervene? And how about if instead of death, heroin was a drug that would, upon overdose, paralyze you, keep you alive, and play Hillary Clinton porn in your mind forever?

Again now you are making the son into a robot/puppet versus being able to make their own choices. The heroin God didn't invent. Heroin is the absence of God. The further away you are, the more you want to do it.

Hilary is the consequence of not following God. <-- I feel like this will somehow become a Republican buzz-phrase

[Mountaineer]

Mountaineer, does the hypothetical change if you sent the heroin to the party in the first place? Or how about if you had the ability to alter your son's mind processes and had foreknowledge that your first son would die if allowed to make his own choices and you did not intervene? And how about if instead of death, heroin was a drug that would, upon overdose, paralyze you, keep you alive, and play Hillary Clinton porn in your mind forever?

As I said, all metaphors break down.  They are not the real story.  I am an sinful person, God is not.  That Hillary porn part though is really scary.  Now I will need absolution for my destructive thoughts and a big dose of Jesus to get me back on track - thanks for the brainworm. 

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

I do not know if this will help to better explain God or not.  Anyway, it might, and perhaps it may help with other questions that have been posed.

Following is from The Theology of Martin Luther, by Paul Althaus, Chapter 4 “God in himself and God as he reveals himself”.

… Mountaineer

For Luther, there is a contrast between man’s attempt to find and know God on his own and the knowledge and encounter which God gives through His word, and this contrast is of decisive importance.  This theme runs through Luther’s entire theology, in all phases of its development, and Luther repeatedly discusses it.  Philosophical and scholastic theological speculation about God also belongs to the category of man’s autonomous search for God.  Such speculation seeks to know God in himself, in his majesty - as he is in heaven.  The corrupted nature of sinful man cannot, however, achieve this. For if man does achieve it, what he confronts is absolute majesty, naked and unveiled.  Sinful man however is not capable of dealing with this divinity.  Whoever thus tries to fly directly to heaven with his own thoughts “fall, overpowered by that majesty which he sought to grasp in its nakedness.”  God cannot meet us when he is clothed in his majesty.  If he came thus, we could not grasp him and we would find the brilliance of his glory too terrible to bear.  Man and God in his majesty are enemies.  Prior to eternity, we shall not see God face to face as he is in his deity, majesty, and glory.  In this life God neither wants to meet us in that way nor does he want us to try to approach him thus.  Therefore he does not present himself to us uncovered, but covers and clothes himself with a mask so that we may bear him and grasp him.  God thus comes to us hidden by “fog and shadows” that he has made for our benefit.  This also means that he concretizes, humanizes, and incarnates himself for us.  He does not permit us to find him wherever we may happen to want to seek him.  He is not a vagabond and wandering God but has definitely limited and bound himself to a specific place; for Israel, it was the tabernacle, the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant, the temple, and Jerusalem.  And he directs men to seek and find him not in heaven but in this place.  The infinite creator and Lord of heaven and earth accepts limitations.  He confronts Israel in a specific history of real acts and signs, in his prophets, and in promises so specific that one may experience their fulfillment.  All these are the clothes which he has put on, his masks and disguises.

We Christians, unlike the men of the Old Testament, are no longer directed to a geographical location.  What Jerusalem and the temple once were for them, Christ now is for us.  His humanity is the place to which God summons us.  Christ alone is the sanctuary and the mercy seat of the New Testament.  Only here is God now present with men; and it is here that we must speak with him, for he will hear us only here.  If we seek God outside of Christ, we will not find him even if we look for him in heaven.

Christ himself is present to us in a very earthly way.  Everywhere in the history of revelation God embodies himself for us.  His Spirit came in the form of a dove and of the fiery tongues of Pentecost.  And God still embodies himself for us.  The Holy Spirit comes to us and brings Christ to us through the external, physical, sensible means of the word, of the human voice, and of the sacraments.  All these words and sacraments are his veils and clothing, his masks and disguises with which he covers himself so that we may bear and comprehend him.  Only in eternity will this ministry of the Spirit these coverings and external means become unnecessary.

Luther asserts this in opposition not only to man’s speculation about God but also to all of man’s attempts to take the initiative in finding God.  It is thus directed also against the other religions and beyond that, against every attempt by Christians autonomously to construct a picture of God on the basis of their own thoughts.  In this connection , he often places the Jews, the Moslems, and the papists in the same category.  In all of them, he finds only that human self-reliance and arbitrariness which insists on dealing with God on the basis of man’s own ideas rather than obediently meeting him at the place which he has appointed.  It is not enough to say that we can find god only in some specific place and not in others.  Luther was very serious about this.  He could say that whoever seeks God outside of Jesus finds the devil.  This means that such autonomous attempts can, in every case, result only in something completely contrary to God and produced by the devil.  Thus if a man experiences anxiety of conscience and does not seek God in Christ, he ends in despair; and if the same man commits himself to a religion that is meaningless because it is Christless, he may find peace in it but he becomes proud - and both pride and despair are the work of the devil.  “Anyone who has a god, but does not have his word, has no god at all.”

[Pointedstick]

My basic problem: why would God create something that he hates? He hates sin, but he gave us free will to sin. Why would he do that? It doesn't make any sense to me. If he really hates sin, why not simply not create sin, nor not create the opportunity to sin? Yes, I understand that this would make humans automatons; but why not? God can do anything. Why would God create sin and the opportunity to sin if he hates sin?

[Mountaineer]

We can not love God unless we have the freewill to do so. God always loves us but he will let us go if we choose to not love him and want a relationship with him.

Ah, so God does not love everyone after all?

I am simultaneously saint and sinner.  God is simultaneously wrathful and loving but not sinful.  God wants all but some are not chosen.  Some do what God says, some refuse the gift.  How is that possible, or even worse, logical?  Does not make sense, at least to me, from a rational perspective so I have to put on my hat that enables me to stay focused on the revealed God, Jesus, and not the hidden one - all those attributes that we want so badly to better understand (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, wrath, etc.) tend to be on the hidden side.  God has revealed what he wants us to know - we sinful humans are always wanting more (Can't you hear you kid screaming and wanting more ice cream even though you are trying to prevent him from having a stomach ache?  Can't you hear Eve saying give me a bite of that fruit even though the whole garden other than that one tree was provided for her? ).

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

I'm reading up on Islam lately. Any thoughts from people as to why it is right or wrong? It seems to be very dry reading but just trying to learn more.

I think there's even less proof Mohammed was a prophet than that Jesus was the son of God.  But if you want to compare behavior of a Direct-Line-To-God-Mouthpiece, Mohammed takes the cake for being truly evil.

[moda0306]

I'm reading up on Islam lately. Any thoughts from people as to why it is right or wrong? It seems to be very dry reading but just trying to learn more.

I think there's even less proof Mohammed was a prophet than that Jesus was the son of God.  But if you want to compare behavior of a Direct-Line-To-God-Mouthpiece, Mohammed takes the cake for being truly evil.

How do you measure that?  Just because God said so (if so, where did he say that)?  I thought God was the one who decided who was good and evil...