The Measure of God

[Black_Rose]

Here is a scene from* Stargate*.

Watch the video here:

Gerak (Louis Gossett Jr.): You were not the one who was chosen. You did not witness the wonders I beheld.
Teal’c (Christopher Judge): Did they raise the dead? Heal the sick and wounded? Destroy their enemy with but a wave of their hand?

Gerak : The Goa’uld deceived us. The Ori’s powers are pure.
Teal’c: And what is the measure of a god, Gerak? Is it the scope of their power, or how they choose to wield that power? Would a god who is prepared to lead us on the path of enlightenment so contradict this divine benevolence by destroying all those who refuse to believe in him?

Gerak: Those who refuse to believe must die.
Teal’c: I understand how difficult this must be for you, Gerak. Nearing your final years, you so desperately long for the enlightenment we all seek. This is not the way to save yourself.

Gerak: I only wanted to avoid bloodshed.
Teal’c: Stay this course, and you will have no choice but to spill the blood of your brothers. And you may start with me. For if I have a choice between resistance or returning to a life of slavery, then I choose to die free.

I haven’t watched *Stargate *since the defeat of System Lord Anubis. But I found the dialogue quite interesting. The Goa’uld deceived their Jaffa into thinking that they are God’s because they had stolen technology, but it could be easily demonstrated that they are not God’s when one can killed them or figure out their technology. However, the same argument cannot be used against the Ori because they are ascended beings.

I posted something similar before:

…I do not believe that a “just” god, in the context of the aforementioned Legalistic definition, is worth worshiping even if one is able to prove such a deity’s existence through logical and scientific inquiry. If such a god does exist, then the worship of such a deity would be driven by fearful self-interest devoid of any love in an attempt to evade the punishment of God, not of a relationship borne from the benefits of reciprocal love. In contrast to being an autocratic tyrant, God must balance his justice with the virtues of mercy, compassion, humility, and empathy in order to form a loving relationship with his creation (his subjects). Since such love requires God to actively engage his creation, a god who is detached and unconcerned with his sentient creation would be impersonal and “deistic”.

While God might not play a prominent role in natural history, science does not encroach on God’s role in salvation history. A literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account, of course, would be at odds with the orthodox scientific views of human origins, endangering the doctrine of original sin and the subsequent need for a savior. In salvation history, God cannot play a passive laissez-faire role since he must interact with his creation, apprising them of his identity and relationship to his creation and interacting with them spiritually, if not materially to forge a meaningful partnership and fellowship with them. In this context, God’s identity would not be tied to his role as a creator, but with other attributes such as benevolence and mercy. Unlike the definition of God in the Enlightenment’s intellectual culture, the contemporary concept of God is inextricably linked a merciful, benevolent, and personal natural with the definition of God. A negation of these characteristics would then be the negation of the concept of God itself.

A common and simple argument against the existence of a personal God involves the incompatibility of one’s observations of the world and God’s attributes. It would seem that God’s omnibenevolence and omnipotence are incongruent with the ubiquitous, immense suffering prevalent in the human condition. This latter refers to the Epicurean paradox, a deductive argument demonstrating the impossibility of a benevolent and omnipotent deity who permits suffering, because it is assumed that suffering cannot co-exist with a benevolent, omnipotent deity, since its benevolence would compel its omnipotence to ameliorate suffering. The person invoking the “problem of evil” argument could then interpret the existence of evil as the absence of God’s mercy and a contradiction of his benevolent nature.