Why is God so mean?

[jkiernan56]

Thank you for your reply. I have to respectfully disagree with you that my reference to “I AM” is subjective truth. Yes, all the we experience is subjective. But what I experienced subjectively was the very essence of Objective Truth - God IS … “I AM WHO AM” … In was in light of this reality that I experienced Grace … .that God who IS has no need of anything or anyone. He did not have to create anything as if there was something lacking in God. The reference to " I AM" I know in my bones is the very essence of Objective Truth. And if you read the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is standing before the High Priest … who questions Him … “are you the Son of the Most High … the Blessed One” … Christ answers … " I AM" …

 

[jkiernan56]

As you can see, we share a lot of the same understanding. Beyond those words, though, you’ve cloaked your writing in belief, and that’s where we part ways a bit

My subjective experience came in touch with Absolute Truth and Reality. Just as in the movie The Wizard of Oz where the curtain lifts and we can see “the man” behind the curtain … God allowed me to see Him and experience Him directly … from concept to direct knowledge … all of Theology can be summed up in those two words " I AM" … and when you stand before this Absolute Truth … you see yourself in relationship … and it devastates you … to realize that you shouldn’t even exist … and that God is holding you in the palm of His hand … that He wants you … that it is He that has willed you into being … God allowed me to experience Him as " I AM" to the degree that I was able to in my humaness … but I also know that only God can know God as He is in Himself … and that you and I will never exhaust the infinite riches of God … and to know that you deserve nothing … and to know that God wants to give you ALL … as His adopted child … to call God my Father … “Abba” … “Daddy” … the kind of relationship that God wants to have with you and me … is beyond words to fully express

 

[jkiernan56]

But, your personal experience does not make it an objective truth. It’s true for you, and is part of your personal experience.

You are right … I will aquiese … but it is my firm conviction in my subjective experience to declare that what I experienced for myself … is true for everyone … that it is Absolute Objective Truth … and that God is intensely in love with each of us … in a very personal way. God’s love overwhelms me at times …

 

[jkiernan56]

I was once told by C.J. Date (the father of relational databases) that when examining entity relationships, we look to their attributes in order to distinguish one entity from another. This “blue” ball is clearly different from this “red” ball, and thus we can distinguish one from another. But, when examining these things, if you cannot determine a single difference between one thing and another, then by definition you are talking about the same thing.

You have no idea how much I enjoyed this … I understand relational databases … I know Oracle, SQL, PL/SQL … and absolutely love logic … it’s actually fun … dealing with Boolean logic …

You make me pause to gaze at the Holy Trinity. Of all doctrines, this is my personal absolute favorite. It doesn’t get any better than the Holy Trinity … I could spend my whole life just dwelling on this alone … and never get tired … or bored …

The nature of God is shared by three distinct personalities/persons. In terms of object oriented programming … One Object … that 3 distinct persons all share the same properties and methods … it makes me pause … what then makes each Person in the Holy Trinity unique … that almost seems like a contradiction in terms … but I know that is not true … Dear St. Augustine and Aquinas … pray for us … that knowing the love of God … we may in turn and in response love God with all our hearts … and love one another as God is calling us to … knowing the great dignity He has gifted to us unworthy sinners …

 

[PJM]

I’m sure that references might have been necessarily different as needed, PJM, but essentially, no.

BD, FZPC

Correct!

 

[One]

You have no idea how much I enjoyed this …

Well, then that makes it a great day, doesn’t it?

(I was involved in rDB pretty much from the beginning when Codd and Date began developing the idea. I left that arena before I learned much about OOP, though.)

I’ll leave you with this quote regarding our experiences:

“I have no reason to argue notions of spirit or otherwise try to invalidate them. Everyone who has deeply felt the unifying embrace of spiritual experience knows that any perceived differences in these matters are ultimately of little importance, and that “behind the veil”, the intense light of our essential oneness blasts away the shadows of our separation.” – *Steven McIntosh, in Integral Consciousness. *

Thanks.

 

[One]

You are right … I will aquiese … but it is my firm conviction in my subjective experience to declare that what I experienced for myself … is true for everyone … that it is Absolute Objective Truth … and that God is intensely in love with each of us … in a very personal way. God’s love overwhelms me at times …

That is your truth, and I honor and hugely respect that truth.

That realization is what has driven all of the great sages, clerics, saints, teachers, buddhas, bhodissatvas, shamans, and everyday people touched by grace since the beginning of time. At the heart of each persons’ individual, subjective experience of realization is that Absolute Truth, and all were overwhelmed, as you were.

 

[Detales]

Amen.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Detales

*And please scientifically support your claim that the world has never been without religion. Do you mean without your thought god? or without Catholicism? *

I mean without some religion or another, some of them poor excuses for a religion to be sure. But when ever you see the attempt to stamp out religion, as in Russia and China, you find that religion persists. Those countries that have tried to stamp out religion have not been known to show much compassion toward their people, if we take Stalin and Mao as examples. I don’t think it can be documented that at any time in history religions have not existed, and the archeological evidence that they have existed all through history is too abundant to be recorded here. James Frazier’s *The Golden Bough *might be a good place to begin.

The question of being compassionate has been raised. The compassion that all Catholics have for all atheists is that they fear they may lose their souls if they persist in the sin angainst the Holy Spirit, which Scriptures tell us is the only unforgivable sin, because it signals up to one’s last breath of life the desire to want nothing to do with God.

This is an apologetics forum, a debate forum. Ideas should be exchanged, but when the ideas are not pleasant to hear, they should not result in *ad hominems *clearly directed at other members. My thought experiment was not directed at anone here. It was directed at the imaginary person any of us becomes when we enter the thought experiment.

If that was taken by anyone here personally, I regret having been the source of their pain.

 

[tonyrey]

So are you saying that god was unable to create a universe that did not contain natural disasters?

No. God can create any universe that is internally consistent if it is to sustain life. Any set of natural laws has to be consistent and in a system as immense as the universe will give rise to a certain percentage of harmful coincidences. Can you describe a system in which this is not the case?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

EvilAtheist

Without evidence that there is a good chance that the Catholic conception of God is correct, living your life as if the Catholic conception of God is correct is no more logical than living your life as if one of these other two conceptions of God is correct.

How would you know that if you had not lived the Catholic conception of God? And lived it truly?

There certainly may be benefits to Catholicism, even if it’s false. I was merely responding to your statement about salvation. Without evidence, I don’t think that living as a Catholic is any more logical if your goal is gaining salvation.

*I obviously don’t agree that the Catholic God came to earth to show us the way. The world seems exactly like it would if there were no God. *

How would you know for a certainty that the world would be the same without religion as with it? The world has never been without religion. So you have not made a very scientific observation, have you?

I think you’re wrong on a number of counts. First of all, I recognize, and have said repeatedly, that I know pretty much nothing with absolute certainty. But here I am not even claiming a fairly high degree of certainty; I merely said it ‘seems’ that way. Also, I was not talking about a world without religion; I was talking about a world without God. I was not claiming to make a scientific observation, and I was not claiming that this was my reason for disbelief. I don’t believe because I don’t think that there are good reasons to believe. However, one reason that I think the Catholic God is even less likely to exist is that this world does not seem like it is being run by an omnibenevolent God. But I cannot prove that God is not maximizing the good, just like I cannot prove that God did not set up the world to maximize evil; however, based on what I’ve seen of the world, it seems much closer to what I’d expect if it was run by a morally indifferent God.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

No. God can create any universe that is internally consistent if it is to sustain life. Any set of natural laws has to be consistent and in a system as immense as the universe will give rise to a certain percentage of harmful coincidences. Can you describe a system in which this is not the case?

I see you never responded to this post of mine:

You didn’t really explain why it would cause harmful coincidences, you merely asserted it. I assume that you think that God was able to part the waters without causing a natural disaster. He could similarly establish a perpetual miracle or additional natural law that keeps hurricanes and other things from happening. This would obviously contradict our existing natural laws, but we would create a new law/theory to correct for this discrepancy in the data, as we have done with dark matter. And any God that was able to create the Garden of Eden is able to create a world with less natural evil.

I thought I made some valid points and would like to know why you disagree. I agree with you that any system of natural laws created by someone who is not omniscient and omnipotent will have bad things happen, but an omnipotent being could avoid these problems.

Here’s a question for you: could God create a computer program that would always work correctly and never give any error messages? Of course he could. He would foresee all future problems and write additional lines of code to fix those problems. Now of course pretty much all large programs written by humans have errors, but God could avoid these. Just like God could have added additional lines of code to handle a small number of cases where the rest of the code wouldn’t work, God could have created additional natural laws to handle those times that the other laws would have led to unnecessary suffering.

 

[tonyrey]

I see you never responded to this post of mine:

My apologies. If you see the number of long responses I’ve had to deal with on the ID question you’ll understand why - and your post is now buried under a pile of other posts. I’m glad you’ve replied because I don’t have to search for it.

I thought I made some valid points and would like to know why you disagree. I agree with you that any system of natural laws created by someone who is not omniscient and omnipotent will have bad things happen, but an omnipotent being could avoid these problems.

That is where we disagree because I maintain in a vast and immensely complex system there will be coincidences that interfere with Design - such as destructive collisions between objects and living organisms. I pointed out that a spate of miracles would lead to disorder and confusion.

Here’s a question for you: could God create a computer program that would always work correctly and never give any error messages? Of course he could. He would foresee all future problems and write additional lines of code to fix those problems. Now of course pretty much all large programs written by humans have errors, but God could avoid these.

I’m convinced no computer program could ever rival the vastness and complexity of the universe or even the biosphere. We can see how piecemeal “improvements” by human beings have practically wrecked this planet. But the only way to resolve the issue decisively is to provide the blueprint I requested. It is a tall order but there is no other scientific method of falsification.

Just like God could have added additional lines of code to handle a small number of cases where the rest of the code wouldn’t work, God could have created additional natural laws to handle those times that the other laws would have led to unnecessary suffering.

The more laws you create the more coincidences there will be. There must be an optimum number of laws to minimize undesirable coincidences. And how would you deal with the problem of collisions, for example?
We can imagine thousands of better worlds but whether they are feasible is another matter…

 

[jkiernan56]

Well, then that makes it a great day, doesn’t it?

(I was involved in rDB pretty much from the beginning when Codd and Date began developing the idea. I left that arena before I learned much about OOP, though.)

I’ll leave you with this quote regarding our experiences:

“I have no reason to argue notions of spirit or otherwise try to invalidate them. Everyone who has deeply felt the unifying embrace of spiritual experience knows that any perceived differences in these matters are ultimately of little importance, and that “behind the veil”, the intense light of our essential oneness blasts away the shadows of our separation.” – *Steven McIntosh, in Integral Consciousness. *

Thanks.

Awesome!!!
Thank you so much for sharing this.
I feel very honored to be able to converse with someone so distinguised.

 

[jkiernan56]

The compassion that all Catholics have for all atheists is that they fear they may lose their souls if they persist in the sin angainst the Holy Spirit, which Scriptures tell us is the only unforgivable sin, because it signals up to one’s last breath of life the desire to want nothing to do with God.

Charlemagne, I respectfully am not sure if I can agree with you on what you said here. I do not believe that the statement “An athiest wants nothing to do with God” applies to ALL athiests. It may be true for some and possibly even for most, but is definitely not true for ALL. You and I can only see “THAT” and athiest does not believe in God. But you and I cannot see “WHY” they do not believe in God. That alone is between them and God. An athiest may be someone who deeply is in search for the Truth, but are just being honest about where they are in their journey and how they understand reality and the world around them. Everything they see, interpret, and understand just does not “add up” yet for them. I would imagine that when an athiest hears a believer that they need to believe in God because of how a believer see’s the universe, it must be like someone telling them “there is a pink elephant right over there” … don’t you see it? They cannot “make themself” see what they don’t see, understand what you and I understand. An athiest can be someone who is just a real genuine human being who is being honest about where they are. That does not mean they do not have a deep desire to know the Truth or desire to seek the Truth. In fact, as you and I know, St. Augustine says it better than you and I ever could - “O God, you have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee”. Each person is created for God. Each person wants Happiness and are searching for it. What they are really searching for is God, even if they don’t know it. Most are looking for Him in the wrong place.

Conversely, it is prudent NOT to assume an athiest is going to Heaven after death. That also would be a false presumption. I guess maybe I just give athiests the benefit of the doubt and maybe that is an indication of my immaturity.

 

[jkiernan56]

That is your truth, and I honor and hugely respect that truth.

That realization is what has driven all of the great sages, clerics, saints, teachers, buddhas, bhodissatvas, shamans, and everyday people touched by grace since the beginning of time. At the heart of each persons’ individual, subjective experience of realization is that Absolute Truth, and all were overwhelmed, as you were.

Thank you. I really hope I am not being a nuisance, but what I was trying to communicate here is that the Absolute Objective Truth that I encountered and subjectively experienced - is Absolutely TRUE and never could be anything different. Being absolutely true - it is true not just for me in my experience, but rather I know it is true for ALL. This truth will never change because it cannot. What I experienced is not true “just for me” because I experienced it. What I experienced is true “for me” and “for everyone” - because it is absolutely true - independant of you and me. Even if I did not believe it, it would still be true. Even if I did not exist, it would still be true.

 

[jkiernan56]

No. God can create any universe that is internally consistent if it is to sustain life. Any set of natural laws has to be consistent and in a system as immense as the universe will give rise to a certain percentage of harmful coincidences. Can you describe a system in which this is not the case?

Tonyrey - the question that Severntofall asks is a very good one. I honestly don’t understand the relationship between moral evil … and how that impacts the natural world around us. I have always heard there is a connection between moral evil and the other evils of the natural world. One upset the balance of the other. I have a 1st grader understanding of this.

Isn’t there a direct cause/effect relationship between moral evil and the evil of natural disasters?

 

[jkiernan56]

Here’s a question for you: could God create a computer program that would always work correctly and never give any error messages? Of course he could. He would foresee all future problems and write additional lines of code to fix those problems. Now of course pretty much all large programs written by humans have errors, but God could avoid these. Just like God could have added additional lines of code to handle a small number of cases where the rest of the code wouldn’t work, God could have created additional natural laws to handle those times that the other laws would have led to unnecessary suffering.

Another excellent question.

As I posted earlier, I don’t understand the relationship between moral evil and natural disasters, but my gut says there is a connection. One effects the other. How? I have no freakin clue.

The statement about God creating a program without errors in concept is a very good one. But here’s the problem. God is writing the program using human beings who have a “free-will” … and dang it, God does not “control” the universe like marionettes or puppets on a string. If the human race and the angels (who also have free-will) had only cooperated with God, it was in the realm of possibility that God could have created His program “error free”. But in the realm of probability - you can see the results of God’s program. God is writing His program with the cooperation of human beings who have free-will. The more we cooperate with God, the less lines of code will result with errors.

 

[jkiernan56]

Well, then that makes it a great day, doesn’t it?

(I was involved in rDB pretty much from the beginning when Codd and Date began developing the idea. I left that arena before I learned much about OOP, though.)

I’ll leave you with this quote regarding our experiences:

“I have no reason to argue notions of spirit or otherwise try to invalidate them. Everyone who has deeply felt the unifying embrace of spiritual experience knows that any perceived differences in these matters are ultimately of little importance, and that “behind the veil”, the intense light of our essential oneness blasts away the shadows of our separation.” – *Steven McIntosh, in Integral Consciousness. *

Thanks.

One, for some reason I never tried to put my experience into an OOP representation - and now I have you to thank you for it !!! And your nickname is perfect - it says what I am about to explain quite well.

Imagine a CLASS than contains ALL methods and ALL properties that are possible in reality. There is no other CLASS that could inherit these methods and properties and then add their own - because the CLASS I speak off already contains everything that is possible.

Now take this ONE CLASS and instantiate it 3 times. You have 3 separate and distinct objects with ALL the same methods and properties that are possible .

One CLASS - Three distinct OBJECTS sharing the same CLASS. There is nothing that each of the 3 objects can do, that the other cannot do. There is nothing that each of the 3 objects have as properities, that the other objects do not have. They all possess the same, yet are distinct. Thank you very much for pointing me to see this representation.

That would be analogous to the Holy Trinity. One essence, nature that is fully possessed by 3 distinct Personalities/Persons. The Unbegotten Father who eternally Begets a Son. The Eternal Begotten Son who is Begotten of the Father. These two distinct Personalities/Persons in a union of love give birth to another distinct Personality/Person named the Holy Spirit. In Catholic Theology we say the Holy Spirit IS the Love between the other 2 Persons (Father and Son). The Holy Spirit eternally PROCEEDS from “The Father AND the Son”.

This union of Love in God is what “caused” or overflowed into creation. God did not have to create the universe, but freely willed to be. And He could have just as easily willed it NOT to be. I see creation as God’s love being poured into a container that “spilled out” into creation because it could no longer contain the water. But that seems to imply that creation was something God could not stop or prevent from happening. That I totally disagree with. Creation only happened because God wanted it to happen. But it was definitely because the container was overflowing … .in a sense, God could not contain Himself. If I put a container under a running facet and let the water fill the container - eventually the water would spill out from the container. That is the mental picture I have of when I think of creation. God was fully in control and yet His love was so immense, that it overflowed into His creation by His sheer will.

 

[Detales]

I agree, then, that from very early times there has been at least some form of acknowledging the sese that there is something larger, uncontrolable, and worthy of respect, and that there has been as well a comensurate need to feel relationship with this seeming “otherness” that shows unfathomable manifestations. In that sense, perhaps it can be said that God can be known about through natural reason. The bigger picture works very consistently, despite misinterpretations of some kinds and degrees of divine or spiritual intervention, or lack of it.* After all, there is good evidence that to the untrained eye, everything from objects tossed by a juggler to ships to steam engines, can be rendered invisible by the simple fact that they are not in the percievers paradigm of reality. This is known. And probably we have all experienced some form of the rope looking like a snake. We’ve likely experienced the other, but hadn’t noticed, lol! I could tell you stories! So, we can read into what we see what isn’t there, as well as not see what is there. This is not the exception, but found on examination to be the way we live, day to day, now.

As you imply, such a sense of need for relationship with the Unknown probably manifested in some form of religion or another. Now we know that “religion” means “to tie back to” at its root, or radical, meaning. Naturally, Man wanted to feel allied with whatever invisible forces had him at their mercy. I’d guess that there were systems used to foprge an alliance that were based on everything from fear, through awe, to curiosity. That would mean kinds and degrees of everything from worship to science and mixtures of those seeming opposites that both deal with the unknown, but in relatively different ways. So it its understandable that religion can’t be stamped out, because it is part of the human way of expressing relationship with the invisible Unknown.

Since it is reasonable to interpret that the world in its totality works as one thing, parts of that working being known and unknown, it is also reasonable to assume that there is Someone behind it all, bigger and better than us, but like us. Like us because we don’t really commonly know what might work that way and not have our characteristics. So arises the anthropomorphic god, and with good reason.

But in all societies and thruoghout all time, there were oddballs. They didn’t restrict their perceptions to the ordianry work-a-day ways of perceptual accounting. No, thse folks got mysitcal on us. They imperically knew that there are other than ordinary ways of seeing and knowing. Taken as a group, these folks had the same spectrum of abilities and intelligence, or lack of it, that anyone else did. At one end of this continuum, there are those who emotionalize their perceptions and concoct the things that cults are made of. At the other end, we have genuine mysitcs who penetrated the picture of the world both with clarity of vision and of reason. Their picture of Reality was/is radically different than the ordinary. It is/was at right angles to what we ordinarily think we are.

So, we have a large group of people who see and experience a horizontalized world as a commonality in time, but interpret it differently anywhere between dull acceptance on that axis, up throgh a radically different vertical experience that yet includes the horizontal. Of course, this engenderes a great rift in communicaton. As Heinlein said, the IQ spread between leader and follower ought not be more than 10 points. But what happens when you throw into that mix a different mode of perception and knowledge?

Those strictly on the horizontal can’t conceive of anything differnt than their own way of traveling with time’s arrow. Those who are vertical (symbology here abounds) might as well be talking about life on Canopus as far as having an actual conversaton with the strictly horizontal. But they try, as it seems incumbent on us to raise our Brother’s awarenes about his actual state. But we are a people that crucifies its saviors, as is evident throughout history in many realms of endeavor. Even recently the man who invented transfusions died because he was deinied admittance to a hospital due to his color. Other recent similar examples may be found as this end of a long line of tradition of denial and death perpetrated on those who would show us a better way.

So, I am afraid that I do not share your enthusiasm for the compassion of all Catholics for all atheists. In fact, I consider the making of “allness” statements a serious detriment in accurate thinking. Such statments are one of the more than one-hundred fallacies of logic we commonly use in our speech. Yet we tend as a group to shy away from any improvement in our skills in linguistics and in critical thinking. It is easier to work on the faith that we are right in our assumptions, examined and conscious or not. Bon chance!

Hmpph. I thought somebody by now would get a chuckle out of the “ad homonym” story. Oh well. There was nothing personal in my response, Charlie, anyway, about the thought experiment, except to point out that that particular one has generally failed to be useful. It didn’t work for me even when I was a staunch Romeist. It has nothing to do with person, it’s just flawed and not in the field where plowing might be useful. How many labor in the wrong field and expect to be paid? At least some labor, and might be compassionately re-directed. As for your “imaginary person,” what does anyone think they are???

* Penn, of Penn and Teller fame, wrote a wonderful article about the neurology of magic, worth reading in this regard.