Can we judge God's actions or lack thereof by any but our human standards?

[oldcelt]

As is usual for these types of conversations, the power of omniscience attributed to the Christian God is being overlooked. Since this God posses all knowledge, past, present and future, nothing is a surprise. When you combine this with the creative will and omnipotence, there is really no escaping culpability.
The world that I observe indicates a creator who has, since the laying of the foundation of the universe, left things to follow their own course. I neither blame the creator for the evil, nor praise it for the good. We make our own world, IMHO.

John

 

[ffg]

So the question again - what’s the source of good?

Can’t be from ‘man’ as we see in the first post with the ability, desire and action for ‘bad’.

Thus, I do agree - God would be an illogical target to complain to for events of ‘evil’.

Now if we can just figure out the source of good.

Take care,

Mike

 

[oldcelt]

So the question again - what’s the source of good?

Can’t be from ‘man’ as we see in the first post with the ability, desire and action for ‘bad’.

Thus, I do agree - God would be an illogical target to complain to for events of ‘evil’.

Now if we can just figure out the source of good.

Take care,

Mike

I think that we, as humans, are the source for both:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

Of course, Hamlet was speaking with no little bit of sarcasm.

John

 

[Cathoholic]

laocmo. You asked:

QUOTE:
Can we judge God’s actions or lack thereof by any but our human standards?

No.

Your point in a nutshell seems to be:

If we are given free will, we can commit sin and harm.

(Your world view seems to have built into the question you seeing evil as stronger than good instead of the absence of good. Let me know if I am seeing something here that your not thinking so I can correct my assessment of your world view)

But my point is:

If we are not given free will, we cannot freely love.

This is all tied to the mystery of good and evil.

Can MAN draw a greater good out of all this sin and its consequences? No.

Can GOD draw a greater good out of all this sin and its consequences? Yes.

Hope this helps.

God bless.

Cathoholic

 

[Della]

As is usual for these types of conversations, the power of omniscience attributed to the Christian God is being overlooked. Since this God posses all knowledge, past, present and future, nothing is a surprise. When you combine this with the creative will and omnipotence, there is really no escaping culpability.
The world that I observe indicates a creator who has, since the laying of the foundation of the universe, left things to follow their own course. I neither blame the creator for the evil, nor praise it for the good. We make our own world, IMHO.

John

Not quite, John. None of God’s attributes means he absolutely controls everything. You sound more like a Calvinist than a Celt.

God is the source of all good. He simply is–good, love, truth, beauty, etc. He can be nothing other than what he is because he is eternally himself. He is simple in that. He does not change, and yet he is every living. He does not breed and yet he constantly gives life. He cannot change and yet his love ever grows. His will is fixed and yet he choices to care for us when we, in time and space, repent and seek him. If he could change his nature and be us, he wouldn’t be God, he’d be his creation. Of course, he took on flesh, but his divine nature wasn’t affected at all, and yet in his humanity he wept for his people. He does allow things to follow their course, but he also enters into human history to reveal himself in his Son, and to reveal his love. It’s up to us to respond, not tell him what he, as God, ought to be doing. We answer to him, not he to us.

 

[pianistclare]

Not really a fair assessment there of the OP. Please read the book of Job.

Done that.
His OP sounds really angry. What other reason is there for this?
He claims to be catholic.
This is not a Catholic understanding of God.
He’s also not living in Old Testament times either.
God has revealed Himself and His intentions quite well.

 

[pianistclare]

Not quite, John. None of God’s attributes means he absolutely controls everything. You sound more like a Calvinist than a Celt.

God is the source of all good. He simply is–good, love, truth, beauty, etc. He can be nothing other than what he is because he is eternally himself. He is simple in that. He does not change, and yet he is every living. He does not breed and yet he constantly gives life. He cannot change and yet his love ever grows. His will is fixed and yet he choices to care for us when we, in time and space, repent and seek him. If he could change his nature and be us, he wouldn’t be God, he’d be his creation. Of course, he took on flesh, but his divine nature wasn’t affected at all, and yet in his humanity he wept for his people. He does allow things to follow their course, but he also enters into human history to reveal himself in his Son, and to reveal his love. It’s up to us to respond, not tell him what he, as God, ought to be doing. We answer to him, not he to us.

\

Well stated Della. Once again you get the true Catholic teaching out there.

 

[Lucretius]

A good parent would never let his children kill each other in endless wars throughout the centuries. He would find a way to correct that situation.

God has been working on this problem for centuries. Be patient; we are in a time between God making His promise to rid the world of evil, and God fulfilling said promise.

A good parent would never let half his children starve to death by placing them in drought and disease infested regions of the world like Northern Africa.

I don’t know the specifics as to why He would allow this, but He does so because He can bring good even out of evil. That is the only reason evil is ever tolerated.

A good parent would have a loving intimate real time relationship with his children. He would not separate himself from them for centuries to the point that a good many of them would even doubt his existence.

He doesn’t separate Himself from us. He has been present in the Church since the beginning. He even has given signs throughout the age of the Church (the sign at Fatima, for example).

Most who doubt God’s existence are riding a fad and accepting based on academic authority, which is why they don’t actually give any reflective reasons for their atheism.

A good parent would not make a list of his children’s natural tendencies, faults, and weaknesses, then make a list of things they must never do involving those weaknesses. Things like their sexual drive, the instinct of self preservation, etc.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. It sounds like you are attacking morals and ethics more than God here.

In my opinion God fails on all the marks of a good parent as accepted by us humans. To justify this we are told we cannot judge him by human standards. We are humans. We must judge everything and everybody by the only standards that we have, That is human standards.

What you are attacking is pretty much correct though. God isn’t human, so we don’t judge Him based on human standards. We do the same thing with every other kind of thing. Chocolate is good for humans and bad for dogs. It would be foolish to think that since chocolate was good for humans, it would be good for dogs.

In fact, God basically rebukes Job this way, asking Job how he knows about how he could possibly understand the Divine Morality.

We are told he loves us. What’s the proof?

The biggest proof of God’s love is that He says He does. It’s not odd either: what certain proof does a husband have that his wife loves him? We should trust God as a Husband trusts his wife. Remember what happens to the husband who tries to trick his wife into commiting adultery in order to prove she is faithful?

It is certainly not in the way he allows us to interact with each other.

Would tolerating evil so that more people can be added to the communion of saints count as loving? What about God tolerating our evil so that we have more time to repent? In my case, thank God He has been willing to put up with my **** for this long!

He sent his son to die for our sins? That seems to be a rather bronze age barbaric idea. What kind of sick mind would find satisfaction in seeing its son suffer terrible pains just to satisfy its need to erase human sins.

Ignoring the chronological snobbery*, this is a misunderstanding of Christ’s death.

Continued below…

*By the way, Jesus lived in a time long after the bronze age

 

[Lucretius]

He could have done that with a simple mental decision, or a wave of his hand.

He could have, but He didn’t. Some of those reasons why:

He decided to die is so that He can prove that He loves us so much that He is willing to give up even His own life.

Sin has real consequences (that is, these consequences are based in the nature of sin itself, rather than being a punishment arbritrarily assigned by God to certain actions), and He didn’t want us to suffer them fully (and thus be lost).

If a person wrongs another person, than the only way to save the relationship is for the person to repent, and the other person to forgive. God has shown us that He will forgive, but will we repent? When you do evil, you start a downward cycle in which you continue to do more and more evil exponentially. How can we refuse to stop sliding down this slope? We can’t change our own hearts. But, God, the author of man’s heart, can. Like a teacher who holds a child’s hand to teach him how to write, God, by becoming man, holds out hands to teach us how to repent.

He was trying to give us a perfect example of how we should act.

We are foolish, and would take God’s kindness for granted, if He saved us by fiat alone. We wouldn’t understand how valuable His Grace is if He hadn’t suffered.

He wants to be present in our suffering and show us He understands it, and what better way to prove that by suffering horribly like us?

He wants to share His very Life. Jesus gave us all 10 pints of His blood (blood beimg basically the essence of a person’s life). Why? Because He could. Because He wants to give us everything He has.

So, there are many reasons God would act as He did and does, even though He could simply save us by fiat.

To me it is becoming more and more plausible that such a creature as our commonly accepted God does not even exist. There may be some kind of a God that exists out there. But, with the help of centuries of theologians, we have created one in our minds that defies all logic.

As I have shown above, the goodness of God doesn’t contradict the facts of evil and suffering, and that Christianity is not illogical. In fact, many of my points show that God understands us better than we understand ourselves

Try this thought experiment sometime. Pretend that your God really does not exist. Then ask yourself if the world around you with all the eons of its turmoil and problems might make more sense with him out of the picture.

It wouldn’t, because without God, nothing would make sense. Suffering wouldnt make sense even. I’ve all ready completed your thought experiment personally, and have come to the conclusion that all Roads lead to Rome. But this also means that all Roads lead away from Rome. So, ultimately all we can do is travel to Rome and be safe, or travel away from Rome and die in the wilderness, slain by beast or by highwaymen. We have one choice: Christ or nothing.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[jaimeleglise]

God sent Himself to die for our sins.

If God doesn’t exist who created us?

 

[AnneElizabeth]

A good parent knows their child’s heart. Each decision a good parent makes considers each child and their ability to absorb the consequences of said decision. Alas, God doesn’t make mistakes but even the best parents do.

Yeah, I was agreeing with you, but just trying to cover another side of the possibilities of your example you gave, that’s all.

 

[Bradski]

God has been working on this problem for centuries.

For someone who could create the universe in 6 days, He seems to be dragging His feet somewhat in this regard. Does He need a little more time to work it out?

What an incredibly odd concept.

 

[Lucretius]

For someone who could create the universe in 6 days, He seems to be dragging His feet somewhat in this regard. Does He need a little more time to work it out?

What an incredibly odd concept.

He’s giving more people time to repent, which is why He’s tolerating the current state of affairs. He doesn’t need to (He can cast evil from the earth when ever He wants), but He wants too for the sake of His lost sheep

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Bradski]

He’s giving more people time to repent, which is why He’s tolerating the current state of affairs. He doesn’t need to (He can cast evil from the earth when ever He wants), but He wants too for the sake of His lost sheep.

So He’s not working on the problem. Killing each other, raping, massacres, death and destruction is part of the plan. Just biding his time until we repent.

By the way, who is meant to repent? The vast majority of people who have caused misery and death over the centuries are themselves dead.

Have you repented? Do we all need to do that? Because I’m pretty certain that ain’t going to happen. So it looks like there’s a way to go yet.

Good plan, eh?

I think you are on safer ground if you simply say: ‘Who can know the mind of God’, and we can all nod sagely.

 

[Lucretius]

So He’s not working on the problem. Killing each other, raping, massacres, death and destruction is part of the plan. Just biding his time until we repent.

The soul is greater than the body.

By the way, who is meant to repent? The vast majority of people who have caused misery and death over the centuries are themselves dead.

Everyone who is alive, and will be alive. I don’t see your point, honestly

Have you repented? Do we all need to do that? Because I’m pretty certain that ain’t going to happen. So it looks like there’s a way to go yet.

It’s not right to say He is waiting for everyone, since He exists outside time and see who will repent or who will not. It’s hard to explain, because I don’t fully understand it either.

I think you are on safer ground if you simply say: ‘Who can know the mind of God’, and we can all nod sagely.

Who can? When you realize that we are talking about Being Who is outside time, then what I’m saying might make more sense (and yet also be more confusing ). To tell timeless Being to hurry up is a poor attempt to understand Him in a human context. God is not man.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[oldcelt]

Not quite, John. None of God’s attributes means he absolutely controls everything. You sound more like a Calvinist than a Celt.

God is the source of all good. He simply is–good, love, truth, beauty, etc. He can be nothing other than what he is because he is eternally himself. He is simple in that. He does not change, and yet he is every living. He does not breed and yet he constantly gives life. He cannot change and yet his love ever grows. His will is fixed and yet he choices to care for us when we, in time and space, repent and seek him. If he could change his nature and be us, he wouldn’t be God, he’d be his creation. Of course, he took on flesh, but his divine nature wasn’t affected at all, and yet in his humanity he wept for his people. He does allow things to follow their course, but he also enters into human history to reveal himself in his Son, and to reveal his love. It’s up to us to respond, not tell him what he, as God, ought to be doing. We answer to him, not he to us.

Out of curiosity, how do I sound like a Calvinist, when I reject predestination and so on. I believe in absolute free will, a non-interventionist God (out of respect for the board), etc., etc. Jean Cauvin, preached a belief that we are destined to this or that with no chance of change. Catholicism is close, except that the Church ascribes everything to a “mystery.”

Be well,

John

 

[Cathoholic]

Bradski. You said:

QUOTE:
So He’s not working on the problem. Killing each other, raping, massacres, death and destruction is part of the plan.

Bradski. You asked about evil (“Killing each other, raping, massacres” . . .)

I have given you the answer to this.

We don’t know all of the “whys” etc. (that’s a portion of the “Mystery” part).

We DO know SOME of the “whys”, etc.

But in the final analysis, God ALLOWS this, so He can draw out a greater good.

People can see bad things happen with a greater good drawn out from them on a NATURAL LEVEL.

A car accident is a bad thing.

A young person involved in this car accident may end up with a chest X ray.

The Dr. sees a lump, it gets taken out . . . and now he’s cured of a lung cancer.

This is a happy ending despite mayhem.

Yes it is on a natural level.

But WHAT evidence do YOU have that good could not be brought out of bad on a supernatural level too?

Your statement on “Killing each other, raping, massacres . . .” is not a “Shazaam!” moment for Theists. We Theists understand the gravity of such occurrences.

But there is MORE in this world, and there is MUCH MORE, in the next.

---

Incidentally. I have a question for YOU.

WHY do you think: “Killing each other, raping, massacres” etc. is a bad thing?

After all, if this is the result of mere random atomic juxtaposition and some quasi-Brownian motion, WHATS the problem with killing each other, raping, massacres, etc.?

(Don’t get me wrong. I think there IS something wrong with this. But I almost certainly don’t agree with WHY you think its wrong.)

So why not explain what your problem is with “Killing each other, raping, massacres” etc.

WHY do you think this is wrong?