Would You Serve a God Who You Believed was Evil?

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Robert_Sock said:
Worship and serve only LOVE and you cannot go wrong. The problem is that many people seek, and worship, immediate gratification and falsely worship it.

LOVE! ❤️
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I see. And what is love? How would God define it?
 
Achilles6129 said:
I see. And what is love? How would God define it?
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On the one hand, God is LOVE and He is well beyond comprehension and definition, but Christ taught us to LOVE our neighbor as ourselves which to me implies caring and treating everyone as we would ourselves.

LOVE! ❤️
 
Achilles6129 said:
The question is simple: Suppose God exists but that he’s reprehensibly evil by your standards. Would you serve him?
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The “by your standards” critera is sketchy and subjective. But in the spirit of the question I’d say: It wouldn’t matter, you’d be pretty much doomed anyway.
 
Achilles6129 said:
The question is simple: Suppose God exists but that he’s reprehensibly evil by your standards. Would you serve him?
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This is the usual argument for atheism. Better to believe in no God than the evil Christian God.
 
I would be 100% willing to serve - believe in - an evil God (Designer, Creator, Maintainer of the Universe, Perfect Unity, Perfect Love, Perfect Mind), no less than I would be willing to believe in a square circle, and serve an unservable master. In other words, the question is what philosophers call an “absurdity.” The question posits as potential something that is not potential, that is impossible, and therefore could never be actual.

It’s not much difference from asking,
“Would you serve a perfect God if he were imperfect?”
 
Robert_Sock said:
On the one hand, God is LOVE and He is well beyond comprehension and definition, but Christ taught us to LOVE our neighbor as ourselves which to me implies caring and treating everyone as we would ourselves.

LOVE! ❤️
Click to expand...
I see. Do you think that the two witnesses display your definition of loving your neighbor as yourself? What about John the Baptist?:

“7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Mt. 3:7-10 (NRSV)
 
Tarquin said:
I would be 100% willing to serve - believe in - an evil God (Designer, Creator, Maintainer of the Universe, Perfect Unity, Perfect Love, Perfect Mind), no less than I would be willing to believe in a square circle, and serve an unservable master. In other words, the question is what philosophers call an “absurdity.” The question posits as potential something that is not potential, that is impossible, and therefore could never be actual.

It’s not much difference from asking,
“Would you serve a perfect God if he were imperfect?”
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Why would God being evil by someone’s standards be an absurdity? God could be good in reality but evil by someone else’s standards - doesn’t Revelation 11 (the passage that I quoted earlier) prove that that’s an actual reality?
 
Wildgraywolf said:
The “by your standards” critera is sketchy and subjective. But in the spirit of the question I’d say: It wouldn’t matter, you’d be pretty much doomed anyway.
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Why wouldn’t it matter? You could start out serving a God whom you thought was evil but then end up discovering that your own standards of good/evil were completely wrong and that God was actually good.
 
Achilles6129 said:
The question is simple: Suppose God exists but that he’s reprehensibly evil by your standards. Would you serve him?
Click to expand...
What would be the point of serving an evil God? If he is evil, he will do evil to you whether you serve him or not. If you are evil, he will do evil to you whether you serve him or not. If you are good, he will do evil to you whether you serve him or not. It’s a no-win situation.

AS AN EARLIER POSTER SAID, YOU ARE DOOMED WHETHER YOU SERVE HIM OR NOT.
 
Achilles6129 said:
The question is simple: Suppose God exists but that he’s reprehensibly evil by your standards. Would you serve him?
Click to expand...
If God were evil (forget the bit about “by our standards” since we all have different standards - He’s either evil or He’s not), then everything else would be evil. Existence would be complete and utter chaos.

So there would then be only two choices - to actively serve an evil God by being evil oneself, or to somehow try to survive without becoming evil. Yet if evil were all prevalent, as it would be if God were evil, to survive without becoming evil would be impossible.

This is the situation the inmates of Hell face each and every day. Their entire existence is marked by evil, as their ruler is evil. Hence there is no possibility they will become “good”.

Where this question might have some relevance is to ask why the demons serve Satan. They don’t do it out of love. So why do they serve him? Or is it a case of “The enemy of my Enemy is my friend”?
 
Achilles6129 said:
I see. Do you think that the two witnesses display your definition of loving your neighbor as yourself? What about John the Baptist?:

“7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Mt. 3:7-10 (NRSV)
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What two witnesses are you speaking about? Where does John the Baptist fit into this? Surely he loved God and his neighbor.

LOVE! ❤️
 
I would do everything in my power to subvert him if not actively resist him.
 
blase6 said:
It does not work. God is being and evil is non-being. God cannot be evil. Though he can seem that way sometimes, it is because we have an imperfect understanding of him and will have to accept that.

An “evil God” is meaningless.
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What a strangely narrow definition of a god.
And of evil for that matter.
 
How evil and in what way? The reason I ask is: if this malevolent bugger is likely to toss me in the lake of fire on a whim anyway, what is the point of serving him? A God who rewarded his followers’ loyalty to him, or held to his side of a bargain, wouldn’t be as evil as he could be…
 
Winterwolf00 said:
I would do everything in my power to subvert him if not actively resist him.
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And what if God actually turned out to be good and your standards of good/evil turned out to be completely warped and distorted?
 
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