Is the God of the Bible Good?

[Charlemagne_III]

But there is no mandate to take any of those steps in the first place. You’re saying that the first line of reasoning is better… because the rest of the steps are mandatory? But it was the first line of reasoning that led to things like the slaughter of Amalek. Gott Mit Uns.

No. What I’m saying is that if you say there is no God, there is no mandate to be good.

One is free to be bad as one likes to be if one can get away with it. No consequence in this life or in the next since you don’t believe in a next.

And yes, if there is a God, he is with us whether or not he is for us.

 

[Achilles6129]

.No. If he wanted me to do something like that, he should have given me neither a conscience nor the ability to think for myself.

You are an independent creature. God can’t force you to obey or disobey his commands, so he has to give you the ability to make an independent choice for yourself.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

No. What I’m saying is that if you say there is no God, there is no mandate to be good.

One is free to be bad as one likes to be if one can get away with it. No consequence in this life or in the next since you don’t believe in a next.

And yes, if there is a God, he is with us whether or not he is for us.

So you’re saying that good is defined as “things you will be rewarded for” and evil is “what you will be punished for.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So you’re saying that good is defined as “things you will be rewarded for” and evil is “what you will be punished for.”

Good is the providential plan of God for our blessedness and salvation.

Evil is whatever opposes God’s plan for our salvation.

Being in heaven or hell is the consequence of our choice to submit to God or defy him.

God has made good and evil abundantly clear through his prophets and Jesus Christ and the natural law. We are free to ignore this at our peril.

Actions have consequences, which God has made clear to us. It’s a dreadful freedom, as the atheist Sartre put it, and Sartre himself finally resigned his dreadful freedom to the will of God before he died.

Other atheists have done the same.

Neither the Christian noir the atheist ever dies cursing God.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Good is the providential plan of God for our blessedness and salvation.

So this post is asking “Is the God of the bible the providential plan of God for our blessedness and salvation?”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So this post is asking “Is the God of the bible the providential plan of God for our blessedness and salvation?”

Yes!

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Yes!

So: Is God his own plan? Does God approve of God?

 

[Abba]

Paul is the most powerful Bishop I have encountered. Through his writings he has guided me and I am very grateful and love and respect him as a spiritual father.

There is one way in which it could be said we part ways a little. Paul considers the fact that death is not the end to be a most excellent thing, but, I think the fact that God is Love is even better.

To be honest, if I was given a choice of resurrecting or having the God that we have - I would choose our God in lieu of resurrection. Fortunately, we don’t have to make that choice because we have both.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Paul considers the fact that death is not the end to be a most excellent thing, but, I think the fact that God is Love is even better.

To be honest, if I was given a choice of resurrecting or having the God that we have - I would choose our God in lieu of resurrection. Fortunately, we don’t have to make that choice because we have both.

I would say that Paul makes that point in the oft quoted:

Corinthians: 13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,** but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.**

Actually I share your feeling. At one point in when I was much younger, I realized God is Love. From that time on I felt I could die in peace. It is only in recent years that I have considered and affirmed a belief in our resurrection, because it is logical given who and what we are.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

In m y salad days when I was not a believer, I think I also was not a lover. I think only after starting to believe did I begin to love in the full sense of the word. I think it is possible to love without faith, but I think it has to be a loved mired more in the self than in the other. When we start to love God, we begin to see the power that his love has over us to inspire love in us for others, not just those nearest to us, but even those farthest away.

 

[tonyrey]

You’ve provided a start, but it seems weird to me that you would invoke an a-religious basis for morality given your earlier position.

You seem to be saying that the correct way of doing morality is:
Faith in God => God provides value to our lives => Human life is valuable => It is evil to destroy life.

Why not skip the first step? We could just have faith in the value of human life directly:
Faith in the value of human life => Human life is valuable => It is evil to destroy life

The second way has fewer places for error. I.e. there is no chance that we are mistaken about the existence, nature, or intentions of God.

I have regularly pointed out that in an **amoral **universe there is no rational basis for morality. To attempt to derive the value of human life from a neutral, purposeless and meaningless mass of atomic particles is a hopelessly absurd enterprise.An even more fundamental question is how can rational beings possibly be produced by mindless forces?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I have regularly pointed out that in an **amoral **universe there is no rational basis for morality. To attempt to derive the value of human life from a neutral, purposeless and meaningless mass of atomic particles is a hopelessly absurd enterprise.An even more fundamental question is how can rational beings possibly be produced by mindless forces?

If the case is as open and shut as you seem to think, I wonder why philosophers have been studying the issue for such a long time.

For a decent conversation about the issue, you can see this:
youtube.com/watch?v=SiJnCQuPiuo

 

[francisca]

Since this appears to be a central issue in debates on theology/philosophy I thought I’d start a thread and begin discussion. So is the God of the Bible good? What are everyone’s thoughts?

Yes, God of the bible is good, because He has a grand plan of “Salvation through the forgiveness of Sins”

Other gods can’t forgive sins.

Example:

in the concept of reincarnation, one must pay their sins from their previous life. If he can’t do that now (in the present life), he will have to pay it in the next life to come.

In all religions other than Christianity, perfection & heaven has to be acheived through pure human effort.

 

[tonyrey]

I have regularly pointed out that in an **amoral **

You need to give your own reasons for believing why and how purposeless molecules became purposeful by themselves. The fact that it has not happened for billions of years suggests that it never happened. Why doesn’t it ever happen now? It seems there is a total lack of evidence - as with the hypothesis that the power of reason has also been produced by mindless molecules. They both infringe the principle of adequate explanation and amount to getting something for nothing. The achievements of modern science are incontestable evidence of the astonishing power and transcendence of the mind. How can molecules control, be aware or make plans for the future?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

You need to give your own reasons for believing why and how purposeless molecules became purposeful by themselves. The fact that it has not happened for billions of years suggests that it never happened. Why doesn’t it ever happen now? It seems there is a total lack of evidence - as with the hypothesis that the power of reason has also been produced by mindless molecules. They both infringe the principle of adequate explanation and amount to getting something for nothing. The achievements of modern science are incontestable evidence of the astonishing power and transcendence of the mind. How can molecules control, be aware or make plans for the future?

Aha! I think I understand what the problem is. I have a direct experience with a independently-purposeful life (i.e. my own) while you do not. Your only experience with purpose and meaning is when they are dictated to you by others; thus you can not imagine what it is like to make them for yourself.

We have meaning precisely because we are capable reflecting on our actions and circumstances and ascribing meanings and purposes to them, while other forms of matter cannot.

I will ask you this, therefore:
If you think that we can not create purpose on our own because we are formed from purposeless things, then what is God’s own ? I expect a direct answer to this question. After all, if God himself has no purpose, then your assertion that we can’t have a purpose if the things that form us lack a purpose cuts both ways.

Make sure you think through your answer to the above. It would be a shame if you ascribed some incompleteness to God by saying something like “God’s purpose is to be loved.” Something like that would put God’s purpose in our hands! We could cause God to fail in his purpose!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Make sure you think through your answer to the above. It would be a shame if you ascribed some incompleteness to God by saying something like “God’s purpose is to be loved.” Something like that would put God’s purpose in our hands! We could cause God to fail in his purpose!

Things that have a purpose are directed by another to that purpose. God is not directed by another to a purpose, therefore God has no purpose for his own existence. When we say of God that he has a purpose in doing anything, it is because he directs other things to their purpose. In the case of humans God gives us the purpose of getting to know him and loved him through all eternity. We cannot give ourselves that purpose. The universe of matter cannot, without god’s intervention, give us that purpose.

So the question remains, what purpose have you been directed to fulfill?

If you are an atheist, you have not been directed top fulfill any purpose. Your life is an purposeless accident of nature.

Why you would not rebel against this idea with every fiber of your being is the question you might try to answer.

 

[francisca]

Make sure you think through your answer to the above. It would be a shame if you ascribed some incompleteness to God by saying something like “God’s purpose is to be loved.” Something like that would put God’s purpose in our hands! We could cause God to fail in his purpose!

God’s purpose is to teach us how to love, because God is love.

1 John 4
7.* Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8.* The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9.* By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
10.* In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11.* Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

[tonyrey]

You need to give your own reasons for believing why and how purposeless molecules became purposeful by themselves. The fact that it has not happened for billions of years suggests that it never happened. Why doesn’t it ever happen now? It seems there is a total lack of evidence - as with the hypothesis that the power of reason has also been produced by mindless molecules. They both infringe the principle of adequate explanation and amount to getting something for nothing. The achievements of modern science are incontestable evidence of the astonishing power and transcendence of the mind. How can molecules control, be aware or make plans for the future?

You have not answered the question or refuted any of my statements!

Aha! I think I understand what the problem is. I have a direct experience with a independently-purposeful life (i.e. my own) while you do not. Your only experience with purpose and meaning is when they are dictated to you by others; thus you can not imagine what it is like to make them for yourself.

You are mistaken. I lived for seven years without religion and made my decisions without considering doctrines of any description. Of my own free will I came to the conclusion that it is more rational to believe in Design than Chance.

We have meaning precisely because we are capable reflecting on our actions and circumstances and ascribing meanings and purposes to them, while other forms of matter cannot.

.

You have not explained** how **we are capable reflecting on our actions and circumstances and ascribing meanings and purposes to them.

I will ask you this, therefore:
If you think that we can not create purpose on our own because we are formed from purposeless things, then what is God’s own ? I expect a direct answer to this question. After all, if God himself has no purpose, then your assertion that we can’t have a purpose if the things that form us lack a purpose cuts both ways.

God’s fundamental purpose is love which is more important than anything else in the entire universe. He is the Source of all creative activity, beauty, joy and fulfilment of which mindless molecules are incapable. If only matter existed our belief in purpose would be a fantasy because purpose implies the power of hindsight, insight and foresight which only rational beings possess.

Make sure you think through your answer to the above. It would be a shame if you ascribed some incompleteness to God by saying something like “God’s purpose is to be loved.” Something like that would put God’s purpose in our hands! We could cause God to fail in his purpose!

We can and do cause God to fail in some of His purposes! That is why there is evil in the world. He has given us the power to reject His love and live for ourselves because without free will we would be incapable of love and self-determination.

 

[tonyrey]

God’s purpose is to teach us how to love, because God is love.

1 John 4
7.* Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8.* The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9.* By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
10.* In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11.* Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Without love life is meaningless…

 

[tonyrey]

If the case is as open and shut as you seem to think, I wonder why philosophers have been studying the issue for such a long time.

For a decent conversation about the issue, you can see this:
youtube.com/watch?v=SiJnCQuPiuo

A conversation is not an explanation!