I am baffled, please explain

[Kurisu35712]

Since God is inscrutable and unknowable, you have no more information about his “internal workings” than I do. We can only make assumptions based upon what we can see. We see no signs of caring or loving (here and now), so that takes care of “because God loved the world so much…”. There is no reason to assume that God “loves” us - at all.

I have to disagree. I see God’s love present in the love I have for the people around me, and in the love they have for me. I understand the blessings I have, despite the hardships I face personally, and despite the hardships people I’ll never even meet in this life face every day. Can I truly understand the pain of, say, the mother who lost her child when a tsunami flooded their village? No. Perhaps one day I will, hopefully I won’t. But I can empathize with them. In my own life, I can try to bring the love I have for humanity to those who can’t find any in their own lives. How much could that mean to them? I may never find out. Possibly nothing. Possibly everything. While there is no seeming evidence in my life that there is some eternal entity up there that cares about me, there is ample evidence that the people I share this life with do. I was raised with the understanding that God loves us even more than our parents, our best friends, our pets, and more importantly, that the love those individuals have for us finds its source in God. As a result, the love our parents/friends/spouse whoever show towards us are God’s love manifest in our lives. We don’t usually see it that way, because they aren’t God, they’re our mom or our best friend, yet they are the medium through which God expresses His love for us.

What I know of God is what He has revealed through the Church, but also what he has revealed through my friends, my parents, my siblings.

All we can do is apply reason and logic. Take a creator (an intelligent and purposeful creator), who wishes to create something. He knows how to do it, he has the tools to do it, and the knowledge of how to do it. If he does not do it, rather he does something that he does not want, then he is an idiot.

He wished to create beings who could love him freely. Not beings who love Him by design. That wouldn’t be love, it would simply be servants. Robots, as others have said. Beings programmed to perform a function. He had the ability and knowledge of how to create robots who would obey Him without question. He wanted beings who would choose to love Him as He chooses to love them. If we were created perfectly obedient, we would not be free to be disobedient. We were made to have complete control over ourselves and our own choices, with no interference. No predestination, no pushing, no programming. We have complete authority over our own will and our own choices. Even if our choices do not reflect those God wants us to make.

Obviously we cannot assume that God is an idiot, so the only logical conclusion is that he WANTED us to fail… Why? Who cares? The logical answer is inescapable.

The other logical conclusion you haven’t addressed is the possibility that He does not want us to fail, but rather wants us to succeed, yet will not impinge our authority over ourselves to bring us to Him.

If so, then why didn’t he do just that? He could have created us directly into heaven, and bypass this world. Since he did not do it, the only logical and rational conclusion is that he did NOT want us to be with him.

The alternate logical and rational conclusion we can draw is that we did not want to be with Him.

 

[oldcelt]

I have read many convoluted explanations for what should be a very simple question: Does the Christian God know all or not? Isn’t that the definition of omniscience?

John

 

[Peter_Plato]

I have read many convoluted explanations for what should be a very simple question: Does the Christian God know all or not? Isn’t that the definition of omniscience?

John

How do you know it should be a “very simple question?”

I would venture a guess that you have no idea how YOU come to know anything at all even stuff that you are absolutely certain about, so why should it be a simple matter to figure out how and whether “God knows all or not?” How do you know that you know anything, let alone everything?

 

[oldcelt]

How do you know it should be a “very simple question?”

I would venture a guess that you have no idea how YOU come to know anything at all even stuff that you are absolutely certain about, so why should it be a simple matter to figure out how and whether “God knows all or not?” How do you know that you know anything, let alone everything?

It is a simple question, Peter…you are IMO choosing not to answer. Further, my knowledge is irrelevant…I an referring to a deity, not a human.
John

 

[Peter_Plato]

It is a simple question, Peter…you are IMO choosing not to answer. Further, my knowledge is irrelevant…I an referring to a deity, not a human.
John

Do you know how you come to know anything or how anything comes to be “known” in the first place? So how can I answer that which is predicated upon my knowing what it takes to know anything at all.

You are asking me whether God knows everything or not. How do you want me to respond? Yes, I have done a complete survey of what God knows based upon my own paltry knowledge and have concluded that God knows everything. Wouldn’t I need to know everything (by inventory) in order to “confirm” (in the sense you require) that God, indeed, does know everything?

God’s omniscience is a metaphysical question that follows from a metaphysical argument. In a sense, it is a formal claim, not a flushed out one based upon epistemological surveys or checklists. What is included in “everything” to be known is an open question even if we offer compelling proof that he does.

And your knowledge is relevant since how could you evaluate the claim that God knows everything with no sense of what everything entails or what it would take to know everything to begin with.

 

[Bradski]

You are asking me whether God knows everything or not. How do you want me to respond?

In the way any Catholic would. In the affirmative. If He doesn’t, then some things will come as a surprise to him. He would answer ‘I don’t know’ to some questions. He’d say: ‘Well, I never saw THAT coming’.

Omniscience is one of the attributes of God. If He doesn’t posses it then He is not the greatest thing that can be imagined and it all collapses like a house of cards.

And talking of cards, this has the ring of a get-oiut-of-jail card.

 

[tonyrey]

What is your answer, as an atheist, to your children who ask, “Why is there a man like Martin Bryant who kills dozens of people? What happens to him when he dies? Is there any justice for the people who died horribly?”

A more fundamental question - never answered by an atheist - is why attach so much importance to justice? If only matter exists nothing matters. In a Godless universe it is nothing but a human fantasy…

 

[PRmerger]

It’s in our nature.

Because “guano” happens.

Why?

 

[PRmerger]

Of course not. If heaven would exist, it would be nice. But hell - a place of eternal torture - could be invented by an infinitely evil psychopath.

Or it could be invented by Someone So Loving who won’t force Himself on someone who finds His Love so odious she refuses to accept it…forever.

 

[Bradski]

Why?

We’re animals. Quite intelligent, rather civilised most of the time, but not long out of the trees. Read Lord of the Flies.

Either that or it’s God’s plan.

I guess you go with Option 2

 

[Bradski]

If only matter exists nothing matters.

You keep repeating this, Tony. Do you know anyone who believes it? Do you mix with a lot of nihilists? Must be depressing.

 

[PRmerger]

We’re animals. Quite intelligent, rather civilised most of the time, but not long out of the trees.

We are* rational* animals. Able to choose.

Why do we choose evil?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Or it could be invented by Someone So Loving who won’t force Himself on someone who finds His Love so odious she refuses to accept it…forever.

If he would wish us to accept his “love”, then he should manifest this “love” so we could know about it. Manifest it in observable ways, so there can be no misunderstanding. And the refusal of “love” should not equate eternal torture and suffering. By the way, only believers can “refuse” that love, non-believers do not refuse anything.

If you say that the absence of this “love” is what we perceive as torture, then think again. We are separated from God in this existence, we do not experience God in any way, no beatific vision, no vision at all, and it is not too bad. Moreover, a “merciful” way to deal with those who adamantly and knowingly refuse to accept that “love” is to give them an option to be annihilated, rather than being tortured.

 

[Bradski]

We are* rational* animals. Able to choose.

Why do we choose evil?

Because we are not all rational all the time. Some people enjoy Adam Sandler films. They choose to watch them.

Or it’s God’s plan.

I still think you’re going for Option 2.

 

[Peter_Plato]

In the way any Catholic would. In the affirmative. If He doesn’t, then some things will come as a surprise to him. He would answer ‘I don’t know’ to some questions. He’d say: ‘Well, I never saw THAT coming’.

Omniscience is one of the attributes of God. If He doesn’t posses it then He is not the greatest thing that can be imagined and it all collapses like a house of cards.

And talking of cards, this has the ring of a get-oiut-of-jail card.

If you read my post, I did answer in the affirmative. I said omniscience is a logically necessary attribute of God, but that does not mean we can fathom what precisely omniscience entails, which is what oldcelt was looking for - an accounting of what the content of omniscience would involve.

This is not without precedent. Gravity can be known in the sense that we know it has to be behind the manner in which physical objects behave, that does not mean we can fully explain why or how it works with a complete accounting.

Sure, God is omniscient, but what that means for human free will and autonomy is not self-evident and requires a different kind of understanding of omniscience - one from behind the curtain, so to speak - one which we are not privy to precisely because it is the way in which we are known at the ground of existence. If that perspective on ourselves were available now, in the sense of we know ourselves the way that God knows us, we couldn’t be on the journey towards him, we would be at the destination. It would be heaven or hell for us depending upon how we existentially respond to that knowledge.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Not in the least. Rather, you fail to address my assertion.

Well, I wasted a lot of time to give you a detailed analysis in post #156 forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13068662&postcount=156 and you did not reflect of it. Maybe you missed it.

If the ‘game’ is exercising the opportunity to try, aside from the success of the attempt, then a results-oriented approach (like yours), fails to have any explicative value.

You put the word “game” into quotes, and that is the crucial point. Only in a game it is true that the effort and the attempt is valued, even if it is not successful. Only in a game do we say: “the aim is not to win, but to participate and give your best effort”. And in a game the “prize” of failure is not eternal torment and torturing. In a game you can start over again, while in real life it is “one strike and you are out”. Just ONE unrepented mortal sin, and off you go into hell. And that is what you call a “loving” God?

 

[Peter_Plato]

If he would wish us to accept his “love”, then he should manifest this “love” so we could know about it. Manifest it in observable ways, so there can be no misunderstanding. And the refusal of “love” should not equate eternal torture and suffering. By the way, only believers can “refuse” that love, non-believers do not refuse anything.

If you say that the absence of this “love” is what we perceive as torture, then think again. We are separated from God in this existence, we do not experience God in any way, no beatific vision, no vision at all, and it is not too bad.

Not “too bad” in the sense that our eyes accustom themselves to the dark and we see "not too badly in that dark. In a reality where some light exists, we are capable of seeing “not too badly.” However, when the bright lights come on, and the intensity of God’s love is fully realized, the “not too bad” can quickly become agonizingly bright. This means those who have more fully immersed themselves in the dark and acclimated to it will find the light much more intolerable when it does come on full.

The question then will be, can a person just “get used” to the intensity or will the time for doing so have passed and the blindness become endemic and irreversible.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

The alternate logical and rational conclusion we can draw is that we did not want to be with Him.

I never heard of anyone who would KNOWINGLY refuse heaven and choose hell instead. Who would KNOWINGLY choose to be tortured forever. Give everyone a guided tour of heaven and hell, and then ask them: “which one will you choose”? Then tell them explicitly and in full detail what are the requirements of getting into heaven and what kind of actions will throw you into hell. Moreover a third option should be presented: “none of the above! I wish to stop existing.” Is that too much for an omnipotent God to perform?

Now that would be a fair and decent way to present the options.

 

[tonyrey]

What…?

Bryant’s victims would have undoubtedly had descendants. He killed young children. We know that people would have existed if he hadn’t killed.

We know for a certainty that Bryant has not and will not have any descendants. So if Bryant had existed or not, there would be no Bryant descendants.

So taking Bryant out of the equation, the only ‘potential descendants’ that are affected are those of his victims.

If Bryant already has children or is likely to have children, then your very weak argument stands. As that is not the case, it doesn’t.
Bryant’s victims would have undoubtedly had descendants. He killed young children. We know that people would have existed if he hadn’t killed.

We know for a certainty that Bryant has not and will not have any descendants. So if Bryant had existed or not, there would be no Bryant descendants.

So taking Bryant out of the equation, the only ‘potential descendants’ that are affected are those of his victims.

If Bryant already has children or is likely to have children, then your very weak argument stands. As that is not the case, it doesn’t.

I’m delighted you agree, Brad! You accept the fundamental principle that** everyone’s **potential descendants have to be taken into account - regardless of whether their ancestors have committed atrocities. Your objection amounts to demanding that **all murderers **should be prevented from being born. Doesn’t that strike you as rather a bizarre remedy? Can you imagine the consequences of such a scientific discovery? It would be headline news! What could possibly be the physical cause of this inexplicable phenomenon - that members of one particular species can never be killed malevolently for any reason whatsoever even though they indulge in other forms of violence?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

I haven’t read his assertion, so I cannot comment whether you correctly understand him – or if you misunderstand or are lampooning his comment. However, that doesn’t seem accurate. “Creating and then killing” is not identical to “not creating”. Can you point me to his post, so that I might respond to it?

Sure. His stuff is right here in this thread. There is one right above this, and you can follow the thread backwards. Yeah, 12 pages… but that cannot be helped.