Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Peter_Plato]

I didn’t claim to be able to think (or have a soul), and I don’t feel any particular need to. Instead I will only claim to be a bag of chemicals implementing an algorithm just like a computer. If I felt like defending my ability to think (or have a soul) I would wait until after my existence-as-chemicals had been demonstrated. In the same way, I wouldn’t care if you thought you were a bag-of-chemicals-plus-a-soul. If you proved you existed as a bag of chemicals I’d be satisfied, we could argue about the “plus a soul” part later.

Just as I have no “particular need to” accept that your definition of “good” adequately describes any expectations that I would have of God’s goodness. Nor do I feel compelled to necessarily defend a definition of “evil” (or “good” for that matter) that you might subscribe to - leaving aside the fact that you haven’t even attempted to provide one. I would assume your definition of “evil” entails something like “causes unnecessary human suffering” I find no need to accept that as an adequate or unqualified definition of “evil” and, therefore, feel no compulsion to accept that OT accounts of God’s actions necessarily entail that he committed anything that could be considered an “evil” act.

Unfortunately, for you, it is not possible to argue the “what is evil” part later, it is integral to your claim that the God of the OT committed “evil” in contradiction to the “goodness” of the God of the NT.

 

[Aloysium]

Why are you people disgussing God in such an intellectual manner on a Catholic message board,
neither one of you have any knowledge or show any respect for A Holy God?
What on earth are you doing?

Shocking isn’t it.
People come here for a number of reasons. I believe most come for fellowship and to grow in their faith.
Most on this sub-forum are interested in ideas, and I would say, want to further their relationship with God.
I do not think it is any worse here than most Christian sites. However, some are more strict as what you can say about scripture and the Lord.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I didn’t claim to be able to think (or have a soul), and I don’t feel any particular need to. Instead I will only claim to be a bag of chemicals implementing an algorithm just like a computer.

I cannot figure this out.

A computer only implements an algorithm because it has been intelligently designed by humans to do so.

Are you saying a bag of chemicals (called a human) implements an algorithm because it has been intelligently designed to do so?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Just as I have no “particular need to” accept that your definition of “good” adequately describes any expectations that I would have of God’s goodness. Nor do I feel compelled to necessarily defend a definition of “evil” (or “good” for that matter) that you might subscribe to - leaving aside the fact that you haven’t even attempted to provide one. I would assume your definition of “evil” entails something like “causes unnecessary human suffering” I find no need to accept that as an adequate or unqualified definition of “evil” and, therefore, feel no compulsion to accept that OT accounts of God’s actions necessarily entail that he committed anything that could be considered an “evil” act.

Unfortunately, for you, it is not possible to argue the “what is evil” part later, it is integral to your claim that the God of the OT committed “evil” in contradiction to the “goodness” of the God of the NT.

It’s true, you could argue that it is rational to believe in a God without appealing to that God’s goodness. Basically you would be arguing that a god’s goodness or lack thereof has no influence on the rationality of that God (i.e. the definition of goodness doesn’t matter.) However, the definition of what is good and what is wrong is a major component of the conflict between the different conceptions of God. If you want to offer a definition of good and evil that allows us to rectify the different conceptions of God, go ahead. If you want to simply take the position that it is possible for such a definition of good and evil to exist, go ahead.

What I proposed is simply equivalent to arguing for the rationality of one conception at a time, then attempt to rectify them later. You could do that, and I wouldn’t object at all; what I object to is exactly the pragmatic switching between conceptions.

The last bit is such an obviously clumsy dodge that I’ve never understood why religious people attempt it, but attempt it they do. My criticism works this way: I’ve assumed aspects of certain beliefs are true, and claimed that they appear contradictory (e.g. the new testament God’s description of right and wrong is incompatible with the old testament God’s actions towards humanity.) What Buddhists or Humanists think about right and wrong is irrelevant to the internal consistency of Christianity. I’m not using Buddhist or Humanist definitions of right and wrong, I am arguing that God’s actions violate his own religion’s teachings.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Why are you people disgussing God in such an intellectual manner on a Catholic message board,
neither one of you have any knowledge or show any respect for A Holy God?
What on earth are you doing?

Are you saying all discussion about God should come to a screeching halt and everyone simply remain silent on the topic?

How would you know, with certainty, that neither one of us has “ANY knowledge” of God without implying that you do? It would be assumed that YOU are claiming to possess knowledge in order to insist that anyone one else has none, no?

There is a difference, by the way, between knowing something ABOUT God and knowing God as he is in himself. Our discussion on this thread has not encroached on the intimate knowledge implied by the second.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I’m not using Buddhist or Humanist definitions of right and wrong, I am arguing that God’s actions violate his own religion’s teachings.

If you are saying God is evil, come right out and say it.

But neither the OT nor the NT allows this. What both allow is that God’s ways are not our ways. We are subject to the law. God is not, because the law was created by God, and therefore he cannot be subject to it. Everything God does is good, because God by definition is good. What displeases you about God’s actions in the OT is not relevant to whether God is good or evil. In fact, if the Christian God was really evil, you might, by not believing in him, be in a lot more horrible situation than you might presently be in.

 

[Jerbear]

I do not personally believe in a God, but I can easily understand why people do. I think both positions can be rationally held.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I do not personally believe in a God, but I can easily understand why people do. I think both positions can be rationally held.

Yet there is no proof whatever that God does not exist, while there are some indications that the universe was designed and created in time.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If you are saying God is evil, come right out and say it.

But neither the OT nor the NT allows this. What both allow is that God’s ways are not our ways. We are subject to the law. God is not, because the law was created by God, and therefore he cannot be subject to it. Everything God does is good, because God by definition is good. What displeases you about God’s actions in the OT is not relevant to whether God is good or evil. In fact, if the Christian God was really evil, you might, by not believing in him, be in a lot more horrible situation than you might presently be in.

I think there are several definitions of goodness which allow you to make a compelling case that the Christian God is not good.

Also, it seems to me that you are saying that morality is only objective for humans. Something that is wrong for me to do is not wrong for someone else to do, so long as I am human and the someone else is God.

It is fine to define God as goodness itself, but like PeterPlato, unless you can subsequently reason about what rules God’s goodness has, you are essentially declaring yourself ignorant of what goodness is.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It is fine to define God as goodness itself, but like PeterPlato, unless you can subsequently reason about what rules God’s goodness has, you are essentially declaring yourself ignorant of what goodness is.

Goodness is expressed by God’s will. Whatever he wills is good.

Not so for us. We must choose to will good or evil.

When God’s will seems to us ill will, it is because we are not God. With God there is always justice and mercy. We know not what comes beyond the wall of death. We know that something comes, and what comes is either better or worse than we have already seen.

It behooves everyone to be ready for it and not defiant toward the Father who prepares a place for us.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Goodness is expressed by God’s will. Whatever he wills is good.

Not so for us. We must choose to will good or evil.

When God’s will seems to us ill will, it is because we are not God. With God there is always justice and mercy. We know not what comes beyond the wall of death. We know that something comes, and what comes is either better or worse than we have already seen.

It behooves everyone to be ready for it and not defiant toward the Father who prepares a place for us.

Careful with your words or you’ll walk into the Euthyphro dilemma.

I am well aware of how defining God as goodness works. He is also defined to be justice and mercy, so it’s pretty tautological to say that those things are always with him. The point is that unless you have some other way to reason about God, you basically have to admit you know nothing about “goodness.” If God told you to kill your son, you would have to do it because God’s will takes precedence over any conception of goodness your conscience might have.

Actions don’t become morally better just because we’ll be rewarded for them.
“Should I kill my grandma?”
“Should I kill my grandma if someone will pay me $1,000,000 to do so?”
“Should I kill my grandma if -]someone/-] God will pay me with heaven if I do so?”

The morality of the original question is unaffected by the potential rewards.

 

[Peter_Plato]

…I am arguing that God’s actions violate his own religion’s teachings.

You didn’t “argue” that position at all. What you did “assert” was that believing in the God of the New Testament is “self-evidently” “another thing” from believing in the God of the Old Testament.

That doesn’t amount to an argument, unfortunately.

I think that too many people whitewash the bible. Its one thing to believe in the God of the old testament, its another thing to believe in the God of the new testament, and yet another to believe in the God of the philosophers. Those Gods are not somehow self evidently isomorphic, even though people frequently treat them as though they are.

You did claim that God made a child suffer for seven days in an OT narrative, but to be an argument, that requires an equivalence between evil and human suffering, i.e., that causing a human being to suffer is, by definition, what evil is. Such an “argument,” however, requires a demonstration that they are equivalent, but that doesn’t bear out logically, and has been repeatedly debunked by philosophers, despite the fact that it is a commonly held view in modern western culture.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It is fine to define God as goodness itself, but like PeterPlato, unless you can subsequently reason about what rules God’s goodness has, you are essentially declaring yourself ignorant of what goodness is.

To make a statement that evil does not equate to suffering is not the same as “declaring yourself ignorant of what goodness is.” In fact, there is a very solid understanding within classical theology / classic theism that equates goodness with being. Being and goodness are essentially transferable. Things are good to the extent that they exist and evil to the extent that being is deprived or removed from that which does exist.

Pain and suffering, are indicators of deprivation, injury or harm inflicted on beings which exist. Pain is sensory awareness of physical injury or harm; suffering or anguish is awareness of mental or personal harm or injury.

Evil, then, is a deprivation or removal of some aspect of being from that which rightly ought to have it. We physically harm or injure someone when by our actions we make them less than they would have been otherwise. That is what doing “evil” to them essentially means. They may suffer, experience pain or anguish as a result, but the evil is not in the suffering, but, rather, in the deprivation. We have ontologically reduced them in some way - physically, psychologically or spiritually

Here is the “sticky” point: If God is Being Itself, the Creator of all that exists, then bringing things into existence or taking them out of existence is fully within his control. He and he alone would have the moral prerogative to decide what rightfully ought to exist or not exist. That determination cannot be questioned simply because there is no being outside of God who could possibly be in a better position to make a more competent determination. That would be the privilege of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence.

Pain and suffering would then be the normal (God ordained) mechanisms by which we, as moral agents, are aware that we are undergoing some ontological change for the worse. If the change is physical, we feel pain; if psychological or spiritual, we suffer.

If pain or suffering are mechanisms by which harm is signaled, then merely causing someone to suffer pain or anguish, in and of themselves, is not necessarily evil unless the indicators were accompanied by actual ontological privation (harm.)

However, if God has the power to create “from nothing” he, likewise, has the power to restore or ameliorate all that was taken, immediately and without restriction.

We may not like or appreciate the fact that suffering and pain are an aspect of human life, but God is not guilty of perpetrating evil merely because he allows us to suffer. It would be evil of God to unjustly take away what we justly merited to have, but then it would need to be argued that what we did possess (contingent on God’s goodness to begin with) was taken from us and that removal was done so unjustly, in order that such deprivation could rightfully be called “evil.”

It might be wrong for one human being to cause another to suffer unjustly, but that is because the suffering we inflict is typically a signal that unwarranted harm is being perpetrated by the infliction of suffering. It is the harm, however, and not the suffering, per se, that is the evil.

This is clear from the cases where pain or suffering may be present but due to an attempt to bring about some good - vaccinating a child, for example. It is not evil to inflict pain or suffering on a child or patient if these are byproducts of good being done to them or where no good is being deprived (except to spare them greater loss.)

 

[Oreoracle]

JapaneseKappa,

In my experience, Christians tend to try to evade the Euthyphro Dilemma by professing Divine Command Theory (anything God wills is good by definition) while using God’s immutability to argue that he wouldn’t just command that children be slaughtered on a whim.

However, I think a case can still be made against this model of morality, because, as you say, Christians already have a clear conception of goodness in mind even before (supposedly) knowing God’s will. So basically, they say that they’re just following whatever the boss may happen to tell them to do, but they already have a conception in their mind of what the boss wants, so they know they’ll agree beforehand with whatever they are asked to do.

That is the advantage of being able to dream up one’s own boss. One gets to make all of the rules with none of the responsibility.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

No its not irrelevant because what I am asking for is an account from you for how a bag of chemicals could possibly think. You haven’t provided THAT account, but your inability to explain a reality does not, as you admit, prove that the reality cannot exist.

There is no denying that I already have evidence that “thinking” and “chemicals” are not fundamentally incompatible in my own existence, however, my point is that merely having “evidence for” does not serve as an “account of.” You cannot account for how a bag of chemicals could possibly think, but that inability, in itself, does not prove bags of chemicals CAN’T think. Obviously they can.

Right, because we have evidence in the form of actual thinking bags of chemicals, such as yourself.

Similarly, we have evidence that God causes human suffering (OT) and that God unconditionally loves human beings (NT). Both are true of God.
What you are claiming is that because human beings can’t explain how both could be true that inability to “rationally account for” makes one or the other false.

Right, because the evidence for the existence and sameness of the OT and NT God is flimsy to nonexistent compared to the evidence for thinking bags of chemicals.

That can’t be true, because neither can human beings explain how chemicals can think or intend, but that simple inability, in itself, is not sufficient to prove chemicals can’t think or intend.

Except we have a reason to believe that chemicals can think: we can observe thinking chemicals. The only “evidence” we have for suspecting the OT God and the NT God are one and the same is that some religions say it is so.

Ditto, our inability to explain how God could BOTH cause human suffering AND love human beings unconditionally does not, by itself, falsify that both could be true about God.
Things are not contradictory until they are positively shown to be contradictory. It is rational to allow that chemicals can think until it is proved otherwise despite our superficial objections. It remains rational to think God may cause or permit human suffering and still love human beings unconditionally, until it is proved incontrovertibly that doing both is contradictory, as far as God goes.

So now you are taking the position that it is possible for there to exist some definitions of “love” and “suffering” which make the the two conceptions of God compatible. Good! That is a legitimate response to my objection which merely asserted that they seem contradictory.

In response, I will simply point out that this possibility-based argument is a sort of abdication of knowledge about good and evil. By relying on possibility, we are implicitly saying that we don’t actually have a working description of God’s goodness. It is just as meaningful as saying that God is by definition “oogey.”

 

[JapaneseKappa]

You didn’t “argue” that position at all. What you did “assert” was that believing in the God of the New Testament is “self-evidently” “another thing” from believing in the God of the Old Testament.

That doesn’t amount to an argument, unfortunately.

You’re right, I misrepresented my position. I should have said that they appear contradictory.

You did claim that God made a child suffer for seven days in an OT narrative, but to be an argument, that requires an equivalence between evil and human suffering, i.e., that causing a human being to suffer is, by definition, what evil is. Such an “argument,” however, requires a demonstration that they are equivalent, but that doesn’t bear out logically, and has been repeatedly debunked by philosophers, despite the fact that it is a commonly held view in modern western culture.

There is no such thing as a moral-ometer so I don’t know how someone could “demonstrate” that causing human suffering is somehow an invalid definition of evil.

I won’t stop you from taking the position that causing human suffering is a moral good or a-moral, but I suspect you’ll be at odds with more people than you think.

 

[madera]

Shocking isn’t it.
People come here for a number of reasons. I believe most come for fellowship and to grow in their faith.
Most on this sub-forum are interested in ideas, and I would say, want to further their relationship with God.
I do not think it is any worse here than most Christian sites. However, some are more strict as what you can say about scripture and the Lord.

Well, all I have to say is if they continue they will only strengthen their
Relationship with satan.
I think God is beginning to put His foot down because He sees the hell on earth , causing earthquakes to shake the hell back where it belongs.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You’re right, I misrepresented my position. I should have said that they appear contradictory.

There is no such thing as a moral-ometer so I don’t know how someone could “demonstrate” that causing human suffering is somehow an invalid definition of evil.

I won’t stop you from taking the position that causing human suffering is a moral good or a-moral, but I suspect you’ll be at odds with more people than you think.

How would one cause human suffering without causing actual ontological harm? That would be the question. The point being that I am not assuming the position that causing human suffering is morally good or amoral, rather that causing suffering is not necessarily morally evil.

There is a difference between what I claimed and what you infer I claimed. One does not entail the other. I suspect you know that, but are trying to clutch at straws.

The fact that suffering and evil are distinguishable does not mean it is, in practice, always possible to separate them.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

If God told you to kill your son, you would have to do it because God’s will takes precedence over any conception of goodness your conscience might have.

Exactly. This is the point of the story of Abraham and Isaac. In that story God is asserting himself as having the authority to decide what is good and what is evil. Abraham is baffled and grieved by the order of God to slay his son, but he agrees that God decides what is good and what is bad. God, seeing Abraham’s trust in the judgment of the Lord, stays Abraham’s hand from the execution of the order. It is because Abraham trusts the absolute authority of God that Abraham is chosen to found a lineage that would proceed to deliver God’s own Son to the sacrificial altar, because Jesus, like Isaac, will accept the will of his Father to be slain. Only this time the Son is slain so that others may live forever.

When the plague of Egypt kills the children of Egypt, that is for atheists evidence of a cruel God. For Jews and Christians it is evidence of the way by which the Jews are to freed from slavery and the House of David is to be founded from which will spring the Messiah. For the atheist God is cruel to kill the children because the atheist believes that killing the children means taking their lives away. But the souls of children are not annihilated when they die. The children live on. We may believe they do not live in hell, where possibly some of their parents may reside. But the subject of limbo is for another thread.

God had through Moses given the Pharaoh abundant opportunities to let his people free. Pharaoh chose not to and sent his soldiers after the Jews to destroy them. The soldiers were destroyed. The atheist will argue again that God was cruel. But actions have consequences. To disobey God is not smart. It is no smarter than to defy our human God-given nature, which the folks at Sodom and Gomorrah also found out.

And that, it seems to me, is what it always comes down to when people complain of the Old Testament stories as tales about a savage God. These complainers never understand that when God has spoken, he should be obeyed.

Actions have consequences.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That is the advantage of being able to dream up one’s own boss. One gets to make all of the rules with none of the responsibility.

This is one of the common fallacies called begging the question.

There is no evidence that the Judeo-Christian tradition was dreamed up.

You can believe it, but you cannot produce the evidence that it’s true.