Is God selfish and a bad parent?

[SonOfMan]

As an example, we CAFers often disagree with the idea of gay parenting because the needs of the child are not put first. Rather, the gay parents’ happiness is what comes first because they are willing to give a child a less than optimal environment to grow up in for the sake of their fulfillment.

Doesn’t God do just this very thing, though? God created us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him. However, he knew our environment would become corrupt and that we would all have to endure earthly suffering. As if that werent enough of a negative, he also knew that many would endure eternal spiritual suffering (Hell). Yet, with all this in mind, he created us anyway for us to serve him and for the sake of his own enjoyment and satisfaction.

Doesn’t that make him selfish and a bad parent, since he values his satisfaction even at the cost of our misery and suffering by putting his needs above the needs of his children?

 

[dshix]

As an example, we CAFers often disagree with the idea of gay parenting because the needs of the child are not put first. Rather, the gay parents’ happiness is what comes first because they are willing to give a child a less than optimal environment to grow up in for the sake of their fulfillment.

Doesn’t God do just this very thing, though? God created us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him. However, he knew our environment would become corrupt and that we would all have to endure earthly suffering. As if that werent enough of a negative, he also knew that many would endure eternal spiritual suffering (Hell). Yet, with all this in mind, he created us anyway for us to serve him and for the sake of his own enjoyment and satisfaction.

Doesn’t that make him selfish and a bad parent, since he values his satisfaction even at the cost of our misery and suffering by putting his needs above the needs of his children?

It’s a false analogy. God is all perfect and all loving, and so he is worthy of infinite praise and honor. He did not create us because he needed us to fulfill some need of his, but because he knew, in his omniscience, that by creating us he could bring good into existence and joy to his creatures.

To compare a human person’s reasons or motivations for raising a child to God’s decision to create sentient beings such as ourselves is utterly ludicrous. Not only is this apples and oranges, but it’s the difference between matter and spirit. Also, dropping the problem of evil into this is somewhat of a red herring. Which subject would you like to focus on?

 

[meltzerboy]

As an example, we CAFers often disagree with the idea of gay parenting because the needs of the child are not put first. Rather, the gay parents’ happiness is what comes first because they are willing to give a child a less than optimal environment to grow up in for the sake of their fulfillment.

Doesn’t God do just this very thing, though? God created us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him. However, he knew our environment would become corrupt and that we would all have to endure earthly suffering. As if that werent enough of a negative, he also knew that many would endure eternal spiritual suffering (Hell). Yet, with all this in mind, he created us anyway for us to serve him and for the sake of his own enjoyment and satisfaction.

Doesn’t that make him selfish and a bad parent, since he values his satisfaction even at the cost of our misery and suffering by putting his needs above the needs of his children?

No, I think the premise of your argument is faulty. G-d did NOT “create(d) us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him.” The reverse is true: He created us in His image and likeness due to His desire to bestow goodness and love on us and within us.

 

[SonOfMan]

No, I think the premise of your argument is faulty. G-d did NOT “create(d) us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him.” The reverse is true: He created us in His image and likeness due to **His desire **to bestow goodness and love on us and within us.

Precisely. His desire. And so he created humanity anyway despite all the immense sufferings we would endure, because his desire mattered more.

However, even examining your reverse in the best possible light, that makes God irresponsible at best. If I knew I had a condition that would deform and hurt every child I conceived, I would never opt to have children. That would not only be sensible and responsible, but merciful and self-sacrificing as well.

God is either irresponsible or selfish, but given the fact that he still allows people to perish as a result of his allowance of deformity, is he also merciless?

 

[SonOfMan]

It’s a false analogy. God is all perfect and all loving, and so he is worthy of infinite praise and honor.

Im not sure you and I would be able to have a meaningful conversation because you operate backwards. You have come to your conclusion and are looking to make things fit that conclusion.

He did not create us because he needed us to fulfill some need of his, but because he knew, in his omniscience, that by creating us he could bring good into existence and joy to his creatures.

Of course he didnt *need *us, which I think highlights the selfishness in a clearer manner. God just wanted what he wanted, at the expense of everyone’s (possibly eternal) suffering.

 

[Christianus_Dei]

I’m sorry, if you knew your children might possibly be addicted to drugs someday by their own choice, would you still have them? Even though that could happen to all people…

You could respond with the fact that God knows they would, but he exists outside of time. Bad things happening in the future isn’t a perspective he has.

All humans suffer. All humans choose to suffer by their own actions. That doesn’t make one a bad parent because you’ve brought them into the world. It makes you a bad parent if you don’t teach them right from wrong, which he did.

God made us for our own sakes. Your complaint about it all being for his “desire” goes kind of like this:

Husband: I make you cake because I wanted you to be happy.
Wife: Why is it always about what you want?

 

[SonOfMan]

I’m sorry, if you knew your children might possibly be addicted to drugs someday by their own choice, would you still have them? Even though that could happen to all people…

Personally, no I would not. I choose mercy by not bringing anymore life into such a horrific world.

All humans suffer. All humans choose to suffer by their own actions.

Totally false. Newborns and infants dont choose to suffer. They dont even make decisions. And yet, a newborn is still subject to the same world of suffering as anybody else.

Furthermore, I never made any decisions when Adam and Eve chose to suffer by their own actions, I wasnt even created! What an absurd statement.

God made us for our own sakes. Your complaint about it all being for his “desire” goes kind of like this:

Husband: I make you cake because I wanted you to be happy.
Wife: Why is it always about what you want?

Not quite. If the wife chooses not to eat the cake, nobody is going to sentence her to death or to eternal damnation. And in this analogy there is a choice to be made. Not one creature on this earth chose to be created.

Now, if the husband makes cake for his wife and knows she will have a heart attack on the spot or allows someone to put poison in the cake mix, but wants his wife to eat it anyway so she can be happy and ultimately reciprocate that happinness back to him, he is either A) Irresponsible or B) Selfish, since he only cares that his wife reciprocates happinness, even at the expense of her death and suffering.

Or in a less extreme scenario, if a husband only does good things for his wife in return for, say, unlimited sex or happinness along those lines, then it really is all about him.

 

[captainrick]

Precisely. His desire. And so he created humanity anyway despite all the immense sufferings we would endure, because his desire mattered more.

However, even examining your reverse in the best possible light, that makes God irresponsible at best. If I knew I had a condition that would deform and hurt every child I conceived, I would never opt to have children. That would not only be sensible and responsible, but merciful and self-sacrificing as well.

God is either irresponsible or selfish, but given the fact that he still allows people to perish as a result of his allowance of deformity, is he also merciless?

Here’s what God is, in my opinion: The creator of the universe, not a superhero with human attributes and thought processes.

 

[Cake_or_Death]

There is a very long sophisticated theological explanation to this analogy that I’ve heard several Catholics espouse. It’s fairly reminiscent of Evangelical Dominionism theology but it essentially boils down to this

“I’m God, I do whatever I want. If I say it’s good it’s good because I said so. If I say beating your wife is good, beating your wife is good. End of”

It clearly owes quite a lot to the concept of absolute monarchy but that’s it. God is King and the King always gets his own way otherwise you’re going to have a bad time. The King can be generous and very giving to those who please him, but he’ll ruin those who don’t.

This concept, more commonly known as divine command theory is just that. God is all Good, therefore everything that is Good is not Good for some innate cause, but Good because God said it was so. Works in reverse for evil too, it’s not evil because it’s evil, it’s evil because God said it is.

 

[SonOfMan]

There is a very long sophisticated theological explanation to this analogy that I’ve heard several Catholics espouse. It’s fairly reminiscent of Evangelical Dominionism theology but it essentially boils down to this

“I’m God, I do whatever I want. If I say it’s good it’s good because I said so. If I say beating your wife is good, beating your wife is good. End of”

It clearly owes quite a lot to the concept of absolute monarchy but that’s it. God is King and the King always gets his own way otherwise you’re going to have a bad time. The King can be generous and very giving to those who please him, but he’ll ruin those who don’t.

This concept, more commonly known as divine command theory is just that. God is all Good, therefore everything that is Good is not Good for some innate cause, but Good because God said it was so. Works in reverse for evil too, it’s not evil because it’s evil, it’s evil because God said it is.

So basically if anyone else had done what God did we would label them as irresponsible and selfish, but since it was God who did it, its good just because God says so?

 

[Cake_or_Death]

So basically, if anyone else had done what God did we would label them as irresponsible and selfish, but since it was God who did it, its good just because God says so?

It would depend.

If they had done it prior to God doing it, and there was an absence of anything which could be inferred as implying a judgement on it (say the way the story of Onan is used against condoms by Catholics) it would be morally neutral.

It is only if God has commented upon an action or preformed one it takes on a moral nature in this view. A small niggle does arise when we get a contradiction between what God does and what he orders (i.e: “Don’t kill” vs “Kill the heretics Moses”) but that can be explained by morality changing by successive orders, now it’s good, now it’s bad, now it’s good only in circumstance xyz…Now it’s always bad etc. Polygamy is a good example of this one; the Bible has many examples of Jewish leaders with many wives and several hundred concubines being perfectly moral at one point in time whereas were they to do it today they would be in grave sin.

I never said it was sane, but it is popular in certain circles You’ve got the jist though. When you’re the boss the rules can be whatever you want for any reason.

 

[meltzerboy]

There is a very long sophisticated theological explanation to this analogy that I’ve heard several Catholics espouse. It’s fairly reminiscent of Evangelical Dominionism theology but it essentially boils down to this

“I’m God, I do whatever I want. If I say it’s good it’s good because I said so. If I say beating your wife is good, beating your wife is good. End of”

It clearly owes quite a lot to the concept of absolute monarchy but that’s it. God is King and the King always gets his own way otherwise you’re going to have a bad time. The King can be generous and very giving to those who please him, but he’ll ruin those who don’t.

This concept, more commonly known as divine command theory is just that. God is all Good, therefore everything that is Good is not Good for some innate cause, but Good because God said it was so. Works in reverse for evil too, it’s not evil because it’s evil, it’s evil because God said it is.

Actually the divine command theory, one side of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, is incomplete according to both Christian (Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas) and Jewish thought. That is, it is not so much a question of whether everything that is good is so because G-d says it is (divine command theory), or, according to the other side of the dilemma, G-d says it is good because He is conforming to the natural moral order of the universe. Neither side is correct. Rather, stepping outside the debate, G-d neither invents nor conforms to the moral order or standard, but rather personifies it by His very nature.

 

[SonOfMan]

It would depend.

If they had done it prior to God doing it, and there was an absence of anything which could be inferred as implying a judgement on it (say the way the story of Onan is used against condoms by Catholics) it would be morally neutral.

It is only if God has commented upon an action or preformed one it takes on a moral nature in this view. A small niggle does arise when we get a contradiction between what God does and what he orders (i.e: “Don’t kill” vs “Kill the heretics Moses”) but that can be explained by morality changing by successive orders, now it’s good, now it’s bad, now it’s good only in circumstance xyz…Now it’s always bad etc. Polygamy is a good example of this one; the Bible has many examples of Jewish leaders with many wives and several hundred concubines being perfectly moral at one point in time whereas were they to do it today they would be in grave sin.

I never said it was sane, but it is popular in certain circles You’ve got the jist though. When you’re the boss the rules can be whatever you want for any reason.

Which makes one wonder in addition to selfishness, is God also an extortionist? We are taught that we are born broken and only God has the remedy that can fix us and if we dont take it, we’re headed for the incinerator. Why does this whole scenario feel like a manufactured dilemna concocted by a mob boss (or at best, a pushy sales person)?

 

[Flopfoot]

Can we really say it is better to never exist than to exist but suffer? You personally believe so, but that’s not convincing to me.

We can’t make a perfect human analogy. Referring to gay couples adopting or the guy from the Saw movies is talking about doing negative things to people who already exist. Referring to the idea that “you shouldn’t have a child if you’re not willing to care for it” is not exactly the same thing as “you shouldn’t bring a sapient species into existence if you’re not willing to care for it”.

 

[SonOfMan]

Can we really say it is better to never exist than to exist but suffer? You personally believe so, but that’s not convincing to me.

We all face the possibility of eternal damnation, that includes our mothers and fathers and everyone else we love. We dont know what eternal damnation entails, but its everything from being tortured by demons, burning in lakes of fire, and an unquenchable depression of the worst possible kind. Is any of that a risk at the expense of a temporal reality with simple joys? Might I add, some of those simple joys landing you right in hell, too. Its a game of Russian Roulette for us, with more obstacles involved.

 

[Flopfoot]

We all face the possibility of eternal damnation, that includes our mothers and fathers and everyone else we love. We dont know what eternal damnation entails, but its everything from being tortured by demons, burning in lakes of fire, and an unquenchable depression of the worst possible kind. Is any of that a risk at the expense of a temporal reality with simple joys? Might I add, some of those simple joys landing you right in hell, too. Its a game of Russian Roulette for us, with more obstacles involved.

You can’t prove that hell is even real, so let’s leave that out of it. If all we assume is that we were created by a God, and all we know for sure is that due to being created we experience joys and sufferings here on earth, how do we know that the suffering we experience is not worth the joy?

 

[Cake_or_Death]

We all face the possibility of eternal damnation, that includes our mothers and fathers and everyone else we love. We dont know what eternal damnation entails, but its everything from being tortured by demons, burning in lakes of fire, and an unquenchable depression of the worst possible kind. Is any of that a risk at the expense of a temporal reality with simple joys? Might I add, some of those simple joys landing you right in hell, too. Its a game of Russian Roulette for us, with more obstacles involved.

In regards to the suffering of the damned this isn’t actually a big issue from the Catholic perspective. Once one has achieved heaven and partakes in the “beatific vision” ones will and that of God will become one and the same. You won’t care if your twelve year old child is roasting in hell because if God believes he/she deserves it, you too will feel he/she rightfully and justly deserves it. After all, a soul that has been freed of sin cannot possibly disagree with anything God does, that and the capacity of free will to make ones own decisions supposedly ends after death.

For the life of me I cannot remember the source of that last sentence although I know for sure it is genuine accepted Catholic theology.

 

[SonOfMan]

In regards to the suffering of the damned this isn’t actually a big issue from the Catholic perspective. Once one has achieved heaven and partakes in the “beatific vision” ones will and that of God will become one and the same. You won’t care if your twelve year old child is roasting in hell because if God believes he/she deserves it, you too will feel he/she rightfully and justly deserves it. After all, a soul that has been freed of sin cannot possibly disagree with anything God does, that and the capacity of free will to make ones own decisions supposedly ends after death.

For the life of me I cannot remember the source of that last sentence although I know for sure it is genuine accepted Catholic theology.

We all are aware of that possibility now though, according to Catholic teaching. Given that there is even a possibility of that, it would be better not to have been made at all. In fact, Jesus would probably even agree with me in some ironic sense, since he said the very thing about Judas; Woe to the one who betrays the Son of Man, for it would be better had he not existed.

 

[SonOfMan]

You can’t prove that hell is even real, so let’s leave that out of it.

Uh, by the same token you cant prove that God exists.

But I am fairly certain that Catholic teaching includes Hell and that many people are headed for it. We are talking about Catholic teaching here, aren’t we?

 

[Flopfoot]

No, we’re talking philosophically. If you want to start by assuming everything the church teaches is true then you are already assuming that God is good.