In the world of Christian apologetics, the question “Why do Christians worship God,” comes up usually as a challenge from scornful atheists who view God as a narcissistic megalomaniac who demands attention to feed his weak ego. Of course, their idea is anthropomorphic (it assigns human characteristics to God) and therefore invalid. However, discounting the unwarranted scorn, it’s a fair question, and one that I’ve had difficulty answering in the past, other than to say “Because God says to do it.” So, I examined that part of my life a bit more carefully, and developed a more robust answer.
There are actually several reasons why we worship, all arising out of different parts of our relationship to God. Since our relationship to God changes as we mature, our reasons for worshiping change over time as well. The categories I’ve discovered are:
- Natural worship, or the natural response to God as creator;
- Instructional worship, or the required response to God as parent;
- Battle worship, or the necessary response to God as liberator;
- Intimate worship, or the voluntary response to God as intimate companion.
The first and last are natural responses of the individual, and are not commanded by God; the second and third are commanded by God, but for our benefit, not His.
Today I’m going to describe Natural Worship. I’ll follow up in the coming days with separate installments explaining what I mean by each of the other three terms.
Natural worship: the response to God as creator
A little after 3 PM on January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 took off from Laguardia airport in New York only to fly through a flock of geese, rendering both engines mostly inoperable. Without enough lift to stay aloft in the wake of the freak incident, pilot Chesley Sullenberger turned the plane around, determined that he would not make it back to Laguardia, and after checking unsuccessfully for alternative runways on which to land, laid the plane gently onto the Hudson River in one piece, at a point within easy reach of three major docks. Because of his level-headedness, preparation, and flying skill, 155 people were rescued unharmed who could easily have been involved in a fatal crash. The nation responded by making “Sully” a hero for a few weeks, and properly so.
Why is it, do you suppose, that we all automatically praise excellent performance, as we did Captain Sullenberger’s? This is clearly a human characteristic, not a cultural trait; every culture on the planet has some form of recognition for jobs done well, as they count jobs done well, and for the people who do them. It’s so much a part of us that we never wonder about it. Of course we praise those who do well. Doesn’t everybody? This is as natural a part of being human as are eating and sleeping.
Every one of us has experienced the same feeling while looking at a sunset, or at a vista of enormous mountains, or at a storm on the horizon over the ocean. The power of nature is awesome, and the recognition of it is a common human theme, a stock topic for poetry and song. I submit to you that this is the same impulse as the impulse to praise those who have done well; we recognize what is excellent, and we respond by first feeling, then expressing its excellence. The only question is, whom or what are we praising?
Praising nature itself is like praising a remarkable feat itself without knowing who performed it. When we see something remarkable take place, we naturally want to know who, what, and why. While the feat is remarkable, it’s the person who performed it that deserves the praise. And by the same token, Scientific Materialists speak of praising the excellence of nature as an end in itself, but the Christian does them one better; the Materialist can feel awe at the creation, but the Christian feeling the same awe knows Whom to commend. It’s great to enjoy a work of inspired engineering; how much better, to enjoy close friendship with the Engineer?
I’ve been taught at various Christian meetings that praise is commanded, with reference to the Psalms, vis: “Praise God in His sanctuary! Praise Him in the power of His creation!” (Psalm 150) I think the ministers who teach this are misreading the Psalms. This is no more a command to praise than a dinner bell is a command to eat. This sort of praise is not commanded because it does not have to be. It’s a natural response. When one sees greatness, one praises it.
The only part of natural worship that requires anything approaching a command is the exhortation to notice. Allow me to illustrate: I find that I enjoy road trips, driving excursions that require me to drive on the interstate highways in the US, particularly on clear days when the traffic is not too heavy. I enjoy it because it’s an occasion where I get to view the horizon. During ordinary days when I’m not driving, my focus is on a computer screen, on my lawn, on cooking utensils, and so forth; it takes a special occasion, like a road trip, to force me to look at the horizon and remember the exquisite world I live in. In the same manner, the Psalmist encourages us to look up and notice; and once we notice, praise comes naturally.
What I’m calling “natural worship” progresses as the Christian gains maturity. It begins by recognition of nature, but as the Christian grows, his or her awareness of God’s acts grows as well, and praise naturally follows. Thus Christians with a little more experience will find themselves praising God because, for example, a check arrived in the mail at a moment when it was particularly needed. The natural response to good fortune (“sweet!”) converts into gratitude (“Thanks, Jesus”), and with gratitude comes recognition of God’s sovereignty (“God is amazing.”) And then, as the Christian matures even more and this sort of interaction becomes the norm, comes a sort of intimacy with God that I will discuss later in this series as intimate worship. Natural worship grows in proportion the Christian’s awareness of the work of God in his or her ordinary life; it never needs to be commanded.
It appears that this sort of praise is designed into us for the purpose of identifying and recognizing God. If that’s true, then atheists’ questions on the order of “If God exists, where is He?” are at least partially answered by nature.
We can infer from the design, from the natural impulse to praise and from the naturally-occurring objects that evoke praise, that God recognized that we humans would be plagued by what I call the “Fish Problem.” The “Fish Problem” arises when one considers how difficult it would be to explain to a fish in the ocean that there exists such a thing as an ocean. The fish has a problem understanding (suspending such obvious problems as language and intelligence, of course) not because it cannot see the ocean, but because it has never experienced anything but the ocean. There’s no background against which the ocean appears in the foreground. By the same token, humans cannot see God in our universe because there’s no part of the universe that is not an active, ongoing work of God. God is never the foreground in our universe because everywhere, God Himself is the background. It’s not that God is nature (that would be Pantheism,) nor is it that God started nature and then stepped away (that would be Deism,) but it’s more that God wears nature, like a glove on His hand (this is an analogy; God is not a spatial being). Every event in nature that is not touched by human will is an act of God in some sense.
Thus, the literally correct answer to “Where is God?” is “Where isn’t God?” But because we have this foreground/background problem, God designed into us and into our world both the impulse to worship naturally, and the natural object of that worship; looking up, noticing, and offering praise to the creator of what we see is a natural response, as natural as eating or sleeping. So the correct answer to the atheist who asks “Where is God?” should be, “Look up and take notice,” because the atheist is someone who has somehow lost the natural ability to wonder at the immensity of nature and praise Whomever made it.
Next: Instructional worship, our response to God as parent.
“Praising nature itself is like praising a remarkable feat itself without knowing who performed it.”
I think for atheists and scientists this statement is the divide with religion. We do not believe nature had a creator. To us no one performed these feats. Nature is the manifestation of atoms. Atoms are the manifestation of the intense fusion in stars. Subatomic particles and time sprang from a big bang (or bounce), the explosion (expansion) of a singularity. What caused the initial (if there were in fact an intial beginning) singularity? We don’t know. But we’ll let you know once we research it for years and years and figure it out.
Of course, their idea is anthropomorphic (it assigns human characteristics to God) and therefore invalid.
And yet, you feel it’s okay to assign human qualities to God in that He can act, judge, change and make decisions? That He has feelings, can respond to emotions, can be offended, can love? Those are all human qualities. And it is because you attribute these human qualities to God that others, in turn, attribute similar qualities to God. People who haven’t read the Bible can only gain their understanding of your God from the way you display your God’s tendencies, and so if you portray them in a contradictory light, other people will naturally be confused by it.
* Natural worship, or the natural response to God as creator;
1) How is this a “natural response?”
2) If it is a “natural response,” then why does that mean we should do it? If you say we should because it is natural, then you are relying on the naturalistic fallacy.
Battle worship, or the necessary response to God as liberator;
But in this case God is a captor, not a liberator; you cannot say that He “frees” your soul if He wants you to dedicate it to Him. That’s like saying that a prisoner of war has been “freed” from the world outside of his cell.
Or, if you prefer to make the “I dedicate myself to God of my own free will” argument, that’s like locking yourself inside of a bomb shelter and telling everyone that your reason for doing so is to “free” you from the world outside of your shelter. That you are “free” to restrict yourself to such means; not necessarily a contradiction, but not exactly sensible, either.
Intimate worship, or the voluntary response to God as intimate companion.
….um, what exactly do you mean by this? An “intimite companion?” 0.0
Why is it, do you suppose, that we all automatically praise excellent performance, as we did Captain Sullenberger’s? This is clearly a human characteristic, not a cultural trait; every culture on the planet has some form of recognition for jobs done well, as they count jobs done well, and for the people who do them. It’s so much a part of us that we never wonder about it. Of course we praise those who do well. Doesn’t everybody? This is as natural a part of being human as are eating and sleeping.
Well, not everybody does. Most people have a natural (perhaps genetic) tendency to feel gratitude towards people who have helped them or someone close to them in some way. It’s another step on the grand chain of relationships between organisms, and it’s how we’ve evolved to be such social creatures that we actually rely on one another to survive. But there will always be a few odd ones out who, for whatever reason — be it that seeing the success of others makes them feel insecure about themselves, or be it that they feel the other person’s deed wasn’t prominent or recognizeable enough — tend to withold such gratitude towards what they otherwise see as a “job well done.”
My theory is that, because we are biological entities by nature, we have a limited perception of the workings of things; much like a dog has a limited perception, such that it might tend to interpret the rumbling of thunder as the actions of a giant dog outside, coming to get them. If we don’t understand something, we try (as part of a natural process in our brains) to associate it with something that we can understand. This is why so many Gods and deities have such human characteristics as emotion, desire and consciousness.
Think of it this way; when I have a good day, and lots of basically unrelated factors come well together independently of one another — my band has a good practice session, I get paid more than I had expected to, I find a game I’d been looking for for awhile at a fair price, my dog comes home after being lost for two weeks — I feel very grateful. I say to myself, “I am glad that all of this happened.” If there were a person who had orchestrated these things for whatever reason, I would likely say to them, “Thanks, I had a great day because of those things you did. I owe you one!”
But there isn’t such a person. The fact is that these factors could have turned out any of a number of ways, but due to a combination of semi-random things (or things which at least appear semi-random to me, such as the whim decision of a dog, or the personal turmoil of a bandmate that manifests as a particularly emotionally expressive practice session), things have simply “worked out” for me. And there is no one source responsible for this overall happening. I think that some humans, in an attempt to ‘personify’ an imagined source for this apparent ‘luck,’ and subsequently ‘gratify’ this
source, imagine that there really is some entity that lurks out there that manipulates circumstances to an end that occasionally results in personal fortune. They imagine that a person orchestrated the events of their life; instead of accepting a one-off “good day” as just that, and accepting the understanding that life will continue to be what it is regardless of whether or not we feel gratitude towards such a source, they want to try to gratify the source that they believe is responsible, in hopes that this source will again make similar decisions in the future.
All in all, I think it’s one of the more ingenious phenomena of human nature; it makes me think of a small child whose lack of understanding of the universe leads him/her to assume that there really are tiny people inside the phone and the TV, or that the meteorologist decides the weather and makes it happen.
What caused the initial (if there were in fact an intial beginning) singularity? We don’t know. But we’ll let you know once we research it for years and years and figure it out.
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really think that a perfect understanding of the universe is necessary to understand and appreciate the fact that it is here. I also think that this desire to appreciate leads humans to pursue further physical truth about the functionality of our universe; we’re simply fascinated with it. I think of it as a sort of outlet that those of us who do not believe in gods use to express the sense of mystery and fascination that we have with this endlessly HUGE and intricate universe around us; Christians, particularly, have used the fact that we do not know all the answers to everything as some kind of “gotcha” argument to prove that science is inconclusive; if it was conclusive, it would be a truth in itself, not a method to find physical truth. Science is a method, and methods must be carried out. As long as we are making progress, we know that we have not reached the end of what science can accomplish as far as physical truth. That alone is a good enough reason to assert that science still has a long way to go before we come to the End Of The Line, as far as knowledge is concerned.
There is still much to learn; I find that Christians (specifically, Creationists) are much more disturbed by this notion than anyone else.
“Of course, their idea is anthropomorphic (it assigns human characteristics to God) and therefore invalid.”
Atheists don’t believe in God. Therefore, when they discuss God they are dealing with the character that theists present as their God. And pretty much this character does indeed have human characteristics – he is a vengeful God for example, or he is described as all-loving. Atheists are merely responding to this character.
“the atheist is someone who has somehow lost the natural ability to wonder at the immensity of nature and praise Whomever made it.”
Sorry, but this is nonsense. A theme that I see in all the ‘New Atheist’ books – Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens etc – is an immense sense of wonder at the immensity of nature. I would say that that an atheist geologist with an understanding of the extraordinary geological forces that created the Grand Canyon over millions of years has a greater wonder for the Nevada landscape than a young earth creationist who believes that it was created a few thousand years ago in a blink of an eye.
Saying one must find a figure to praise for it seems not far removed from ancient animists who would attribute life to water, to fire, to the sun or whatever.
[...] (Author’s note: This is the second installment in a series discussing why Christians worship God. The first installment can be found here.) [...]
Andrew Ryan wrote:
Except, they’re not. This notion of God being a megalomaniac, for example, is not remotely like what the Christians say about God, but rather takes a biblical statement (“You shall have no other gods besides Me”), imagines what might cause a warped human to say something similar, and then attributes to God the motive of the warped human. This is not dealing with anything theists present, but is actually a rather nasty distortion of the theists’ position.
Andrew also wrote:
I think you misunderstand me, Andrew. I certainly don’t think atheists are incapable of feeling or expressing wonder. As you point out, many of them do. In fact, in my experience you can hardly get some of them to stop going on about it, as they seem to think that their sense of wonder is something unique to atheists, and not a normal human response. (Come to that, Andrew, why, precisely, would thinking the Nevada desert is recent reduce one’s sense of wonder at it???)
What I meant — and really, what I said — is that they’ve lost the connection between the natural sense of wonder and the object toward which that sense is naturally inclined, namely God Himself.
Tim D wrote:
Since this was just an introductory remark, and not really part of the body of my discussion, I’m inclined to just say “Hey, if it doesn’t work for you, forget it.” But we can talk about it.
It’s linguistically impossible for humans to speak of esoteric or philosophical concepts without assigning images that are concrete and metaphorical. If God isn’t man-like in that he “feels” or “judges,” then he becomes wind-like or electricity-like in his power, or ocean-like in his immensity and depth. That’s just a linguistic fact; we don’t have any other tools for conceiving the inconceivable. And since man is the top of the evolutionary heap, it seems a lot more likely that God will be man-like than that he’ll be rock-like or sea-like, so we’re comfortable with those metaphors. I think we all know that whatever “feeling” is like for God, it supersedes human feelings by a greater gap than human feelings exceed, say, cat feelings.
Still, it’s possible to assign actual, physical attributes to God and believe they’re real (“God must be REALLY TALL!!!”) That’s anthropomorphism in a manner that our necessary metaphors are not.
So the question is, does the atheist charging God with megalomania commit some form of assigning human characteristics to God that goes beyond our necessary metaphors, and falls into the error of genuinely believing that God really is like a man?
I think the answer is “yes.” It’s one thing to imagine that God does something like judging “only bigger,” something like loving “only bigger,” etc. The limits of language force us to do that. It’s another thing entirely to imagine that God possesses character flaws, doing the sorts of things we humans do to compensate for our damaged self-esteem. Does the atheist imagine that God was ignored by his father, and is compensating? That he’s too short, like Napoleon? That He’s trying to impress His girlfriend?
Tim also asked about the various terms: Natural worship, battle worship, etc. I spent several paragraphs explaining what I meant by natural worship, and in what way it’s natural; what’s lacking from that discussion, exactly? The meaning of the other terms, I’ll discuss when I actually write about them at length, in the coming days.
I don’t believe I’m committing a “naturalistic fallacy” (or even an “is-ought” fallacy, which I think is closer to what you meant) because I’m not really constructing a logical syllogism, I’m merely explaining Christian theology.
Finally, Tim wrote at length about how men create God because they want someone to thank:
You’re so sure? How are you so sure?
Again, I’m not attempting a proof here, I’m just explaining the view from within Christian theology. However, we don’t see inanimate things in our universe constructing animate things, and we don’t see things of lesser intelligence constructing things of greater intelligence. Wind produces chaotic motion, but never produces trees that ask each other to dance. Waves produce interesting dune structures, but never produce crabs and and urchins. So it seems likely to me that since we’re social creatures, we were created by something SUPER-social, not something SUB-social.
I know you’re going to want to invoke evolution at this point, but evolution does not solve the problem for you, it turns out. Think about it; nothing evolves without survival value, and survival value does not exist unless a characteristic conforms to something that already exists in the natural environment. The evolution of a flap of skin that permitted a small reptile to glide from tree to tree did not CREATE the laws of aerodynamics, it took advantage of them. The flap would have had no survival value if aerodynamics were not already part of the natural environment. Likewise, social skills, reason, justice, morality: they have no survival value, and hence will never evolve, unless they’re intrinsic to the universe in which they occur. Evolution cannot create arbitrary attributes that have real value, like morality, any more than evolution can create the laws of aerodynamics. So in a very real way, the fact that we’re social and want to find someone to thank, suggests that there actually IS someone there to thank.
“Likewise, social skills, reason, justice, morality: they have no survival value”
They do.
“they’ve lost the connection between the natural sense of wonder and the object toward which that sense is naturally inclined, namely God Himself.”
They haven’t ‘lost’ the connection, they just don’t make one, that’s all. It’s not surprising they don’t – why would they when they don’t believe in a deity?
You say that reason has no survival value. In what universe would the ability to reason not aid your survival?
You’re saying that humans can’t understand God as our minds can’t comprenhend him. Fine, in which case why speculate about him at all? Why attribute concepts like justice and love to him, when you admit that he is unknowable to us? How is that any different to attributing megolamania to the character?
There are at least four errors in those two sentences.
1) I did not say, think, or imply anything about God. I didn’t even MENTION God in the context you’re discussing. I was talking about non-tactile ideas generally — concepts like “justice” or “moral virtue”.
2) I did not say, think, or imply that we can’t comprehend non-tactile ideas. I said that language gives us no tools for discussing them that do not rely on metaphor. Metaphors are actually useful; they convey real information when used properly.
3) To fall short of a complete understanding is not to fail completely to comprehend. A three-year-old does not begin to understand why his father refuses to let him cross the street alone, and understands even less what Dad is up to when he’s fretting over the bills with the checkbook. That does not make the three-year-old’s experience of his father any less real, or any less meaningful.
4) As to why “speculate” about Him at all (as though an incomplete understanding is the same as no understanding,) you may as well ask, Why try to understand your parents? or Why examine the universe at all? If the fact that a concept supersedes our ability to grasp it at this moment, leads to the proper conclusion that we should simply ignore it and move on, why are you so interested in science?
Andrew, there’s something squirrelly about your reading skills. Twice in just this brief discussion you’ve asserted I said things that even a casual reading of what I’d written would tell you that I did not say. I can’t diagnose your reading problem from this distance, but you’ve clearly got some sort of comprehension issue going on, and I suggest you deal with it before continuing to waste time objecting to things that have not been asserted.
“unless they’re intrinsic to the universe in which they occur.”
Right, and I said “In what universe would the ability to reason not aid your survival?”
So don’t say I’m not reading your posts properly. I addressed what you said. My point is that it’s an odd idea that reason only helps us in THIS universe, as if things could have been set up differently.
“you may as well ask, Why try to understand your parents?”
…Well they’re humans like me.
“or Why examine the universe at all?”"
…Which we can examine through science.
You were making a special case of God: “So the question is, does the atheist charging God with megalomania commit some form of assigning human characteristics to God that goes beyond our necessary metaphors, and falls into the error of genuinely believing that God really is like a man?”
I replied: “You’re saying that humans can’t understand God as our minds can’t comprenhend him.”
And then you claim: “I did not say, think, or imply anything about God”
Well in that quote you certainly implied that God is nothing like a man and can’t be judged by our criteria.
Now you’re denying it, and even accusing me: “you’ve clearly got some sort of comprehension issue going on”
Well one of us certainly does…
If you think I’m misreading your posts, Phil, then I apologise. But honestly, I can’t follow the reasoning of your post at May 15th, 2009, 10:17 pm at all.
You say “we don’t see inanimate things in our universe constructing animate things”, and you guess that we’ll answer with evolution. But I don’t see how your pre-emptive response actually addresses or refutes this. You say “survival value does not exist unless a characteristic conforms to something that already exists in the natural environment”.
I don’t understand why this is a problem. We have evolved to be social creatures. If you say this is because of something that exists in the natural environment already, this doesn’t negate that we evolved to be social. Other species have evolved without the need to be social, it just so happened that it benefitted us.
“we don’t see things of lesser intelligence constructing things of greater intelligence”
We certainly see simpler organisms creating more complicated ones – a seed to a plant for example. Sperm don’t have intelligence, but they fuse with an egg and grow into intelligent animals. And on a inter-species level, I don’t see why evolution cannot indeed explain how intelligence can arise from lesser intelligence. A ‘bottom up’ explanation makes more sense to me than a ‘topdown’. Saying that we started off with simple life-forms and they got more complicated makes more sense than starting off with something incredibly complicated, because it just poses the question of what created that. Something even MORE complicated?
“Evolution cannot create arbitrary attributes that have real value, like morality”
I think you’re saying that evolution can only make us aware of, or use, attributes that already exist, including morality. I think that morality is a word that we use to describe a useful concept. In many ways we act in groups in similar ways to other great apes, such as bonobos. They don’t have a word for the social rules they abide by, as we do. But they still have the rules, and they are rules that they have evolved to have, or that have arisen through a primitive form of culture (passed on, learned etc) because they have aided their survival.
We’re more sophisticated than chimps, but the reasoning behind it is the same. I don’t see why a God is essential to this concept. How is the way we act inconsistent with the way one would expect a species to act if it evolved in a Godless universe? I’m not saying there’s no God, just that I’m not sure why the atheist view is supposed to be inconsistent or incoherent.
“Evolution cannot create arbitrary attributes that have real value, like morality”
We have evolved in such a way that the concept of morality has value to our survival. What’s more, we have evolved to have empathy for other creatures. I can understand what it’s like to suffer, I value happiness, I think happiness is better than suffering, I will prevent suffering in others when I can.
Correct. My point in this part of the discussion was to posit that social behavior confers advantages in a manner that’s intrinsic to the universe, like the laws of aerodynamics confer advantages that are intrinsic to the universe. And as you pointed out, plenty of beings could evolve without taking advantage of social behavior, just as plenty evolve without wings (but they do have to pay their dues to gravity nonetheless. Elephants need larger legs than we do.)
But those are instances of natural growth. The seed does not produce the plant (in the sense that I produce this essay) — the seed IS the plant, only in an earlier stage of development. The sperm does not produce the animal; the sperm, when combined with the egg, IS the animal.
Perhaps a better way to say what I mean is that we cannot build a machine with capabilities that are not analogous to things we already know about, or that we cannot imagine colors we have never seen. Our ability to create is limited by our experience, so we don’t really create so much as we imitate and enhance things that already exist. It seems to me that this is a universal principle — that no creature can produce anything intrinsically greater than itself. (I’ll try to figure out a better way to say this; the term “greater” is ambiguous.)
Given that the benefits of social behavior, and of other such behaviors (justice, compassion, etc.) are intrinsic to the universe even apart from our evolution of them; and
Given that lesser things do not produce greater things;
Therefore, it is reasonable to assert that whatever produced us more likely SUPER-human than SUB-human. By that, I mean that whatever produced us is not likely to lack our characteristics, but instead to supersede them. For instance, we were likely not produced by something mindless or thoughtless, but likely instead to have been produced by something that has a super-mind. We were likely not produced by something incapable of justice, but by something immensely more capable of justice than ourselves. And so forth.
That was the point of the argument you’re struggling with.
What I thought was misread occurred in two places:
1) You took a paragraph of mine, lifted a sentence out of it, truncated the sentence to omit a key explanatory clause, and then quoted the phrase back in such a way as to say precisely the opposite of what I was expressing.
2) You seemed to think I was saying that metaphors are incomprehensible, when I said nothing of the sort. In the instance I recall, my major premise was “Non-tactile concepts (like justice, or consciousness) always require metaphoric language.” This is not a premise about God specifically, it’s about language, language pertaining to abstract concepts. My minor premise was “God is an abstract concept”, and my synthesis was “Therefore, all talk about God must use metaphoric language.” This is not to say that God is incomprehensible, just that all talk about God uses metaphor. If I believed that metaphor was incomprehensible — and it followed from that that there’s no point in talking about it, as you suggested — then you’d have to say the same about every other particular case to which the major premise applied:
Abstract concepts are incomprehensible;
Justice is an abstract concept;
Therefore, we can’t understand justice, and there’s no use discussing it.
Abstract concepts are incomprehensible;
Consciousness is an abstract concept;
Therefore, we can’t understand consciousness, and there’s not use discussing it.
Clearly, these would be nonsense, and they’re nothing like what I meant. So, no, I don’t think God is incomprehensible; I just think that anything we say about him is going to draw on our experience with other beings — hence we’ll speak of Him as “him,” as “making choices,” as “having preferences,” as “getting angry,” etc. as though he were an irascible uncle. But we know perfectly well that he’s not an uncle.
Clearer?
What I meant — and really, what I said — is that they’ve lost the connection between the natural sense of wonder and the object toward which that sense is naturally inclined, namely God Himself.
You cannot know that this is “naturally inclined” toward Yahweh. Until you have established credibility to that end, I will not answer this statement.
That’s just a linguistic fact; we don’t have any other tools for conceiving the inconceivable.
Man can only assign subjective meaning to that which he can conceive. If he cannot conceive it, then it is beyond conceivability, simple as that. You conceive it in some way, or else you do not conceive it at all and cannot know anything about it or even that it exists. So if you conceive it in some way, then it is not inconceivable; so how do you conceive it? How do you perceive it, and how would you relay that information?
And since man is the top of the evolutionary heap, it seems a lot more likely that God will be man-like than that he’ll be rock-like or sea-like, so we’re comfortable with those metaphors.
First off, rocks and seas don’t “evolve” like humans do, and second, the idea that humans are the “last rung” of the evolutionary ladder is a common misconception; as it was once phrased by a friend of mine, “an accurate depiction of human evolution would not have a human at the end, but in the middle; the end point would be a giant question mark, signifying that we may in fact have much more evolution to do, and that we don’t know what the end point is/will be/could be.”
I think we all know that whatever “feeling” is like for God, it supersedes human feelings by a greater gap than human feelings exceed, say, cat feelings.
How can we know that? Isn’t God “inconceivable?”
So the question is, does the atheist charging God with megalomania commit some form of assigning human characteristics to God that goes beyond our necessary metaphors, and falls into the error of genuinely believing that God really is like a man?
If a god can do something that a man can do, then it is manlike in that sense. Just as if a cat can do something that a man can do, it is manlike (or man is catlike) in that sense. A cat can feel hunger, and so that can be considered humanlike. We don’t call the cat human on that basis, but if someone said the cat feels resentment and acts bitterly, we would say that the cat is exhibiting humanlike behavior (because humans also feel resentment and can act bitterly).
Second; if your metaphors do not accurately describe God, maybe you shouldn’t use them? They only lead to misunderstanding. Also, another problem with your claim that your metaphors aren’t literal is that your conception of God depends on the literality of certain metaphors — such as God’s ability to feel, to sympathize, or to believe — in order to establish an entity to which humans are capable of relating in any sense.
You’re so sure? How are you so sure?
Nobody is sure either way in a 100% sense, and I think that much is implied. Deferring to Absolute Certainty Principle isn’t an effective argument at all because anyone will come to the same midpoint if pressed — that nobody truly knows if God is real or not. There is only belief (or lack thereof).
However, we don’t see inanimate things in our universe constructing animate things,
That is only true if you believe God made the universe. If you do not, you still cannot deny that the universe is here. And so other explanations arise. Once we step outside the boundaries of this universe, there is nothing whatsoever to restrict the possibilities to God’s existence. Once we defy the traditional definition of existence by supposing that it’s even possible for something to exist outside of the universe of space, time, matter and change, then we can literally suppose anything at all, and we have a perfectly level amount of evidence by which to consider any and all takers. God’s existence, then, is no more or less likely than the Giant Space Robots that created mankind and forged false religions to keep man from discovering them (for example).
Wind produces chaotic motion, but never produces trees that ask each other to dance. Waves produce interesting dune structures, but never produce crabs and and urchins.
You’re oversimplifying. We’re talking about the forces that created the forces of nature — simply put, the natural behavior patterns of matter, space, time and change that caused these forces to equalize in the first place and therefore “exist.” The “stopping point” for all of existence.
So it seems likely to me that since we’re social creatures, we were created by something SUPER-social, not something SUB-social.
That sounds pretty, yes. But things in nature tend to be born from the ground up, not from the up down. Life starts small and gets bigger, it doesn’t start big and get smaller. Simple-to-complex is an apparent design in nature.
I know you’re going to want to invoke evolution at this point, but evolution does not solve the problem for you, it turns out. Think about it; nothing evolves without survival value, and survival value does not exist unless a characteristic conforms to something that already exists in the natural environment.
What are you talking about? Seems you’re a step behind where I’m speaking from. I’m not talking about the forces of nature that evolution takes advantage of (metaphorically speaking), I’m talking about the origin of the forces of nature.
As for thanking those forces or their supposed origin….do you thank the guy that invented records every time you listen to a CD? Or do you just think, “Wow, this is a good band/artist.”? Do you thank the man who invented computers every time you use the internet?
I mean, I think we all subconsciously feel some gratitude to that end, but it’s not something we think of or are aware of. So even if we assumed there was a guy named Yahweh that created the universe, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should feel obligated to thank this guy any time any of us does anything. It would only follow if it was something that stemmed directly from that; like, if we were saying, “Man, I’m glad this universe was created so the patterns of nature could stabilize and produce the laws of physics, which allowed the conditions of primitive earth to assemble the first RNA and help them evolve into the first life forms, which then underwent a series of evolutionary progressions lasting billions of years until humans came into existence, adapted to their environment and learned to survive within the laws of nature, manipulated the patterns of nature to produce pleasant sounds which they called “music,” later learned to produce vinyl, learned to harness magnetic recording techniques, and eventually came to record these musical acts on vinyl records!”
It’s not a process that most people follow back through when they’re immediately appreciable. That tends to only happen after a series of similar incidents; I might think, “Hey, it’s funny how that keeps happening….I sure am happy that it does, though!”
So in a very real way, the fact that we’re social and want to find someone to thank, suggests that there actually IS someone there to thank.
^
How do you get this
from this
v
Evolution cannot create arbitrary attributes that have real value, like morality, any more than evolution can create the laws of aerodynamics.
How is God any different? So let’s say he was real and he made the laws of reality in this universe. Did he make the laws that determine his own reality? If so, where did those laws come from? Anytime God acts, he’s taking advantage of factors that already exist. So who created the factors that define God’s ability to act? If you say nobody, then God is infinite such that he extends over everything until nothing except him exists. And that’s clearly not the case, as we also exist.
Also, who’s to say what is “arbitrary” and what is not, in this case? Do you say it’s not arbitrary just because you think Yahweh did it?
“you may as well ask, Why try to understand your parents? Or Why examine the universe at all?””
You’re rooting for some final objective reasoning that obligates me to do those things? Well, there isn’t one. I do them because I want to, and because I have (subjective) reason to. There’s nothing I can say to require you to feel the same.
Saying that we started off with simple life-forms and they got more complicated makes more sense than starting off with something incredibly complicated, because it just poses the question of what created that. Something even MORE complicated?
This is because creationism “cheats” in its answer to the question of “where does life come from?” It answers, “from more life.” For any true scientist, that would pose a follow-up question, “well, where did that life com from?” And the creationist would pursue that line of thinking as well, for any belief other than their own. For their own belief, they feel content to stop at, “Well, God is infinite.”
…
Which leaves the rest of us back at the original statement that caused the creationist to posit God in the first place: Life can’t come from non-life (even though it actually can). They open the loophole to defeat any scientific explanation of life’s origin, then close it once God has been squeezed into the equation. It’s dishonest and tiring.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assert that whatever produced us more likely SUPER-human than SUB-human. By that, I mean that whatever produced us is not likely to lack our characteristics, but instead to supersede them.
Unfortunately, there is nothing about that logic that says that God himself can exist without having something that superceded him that created him. There is nothing about that logic that says we can stop there and say, “God is infinite.” Hence my statement about the loophole.
Also, another problem with your claim that your metaphors aren’t literal is that your conception of God depends on the literality of certain metaphors — such as God’s ability to feel, to sympathize, or to believe — in order to establish an entity to which humans are capable of relating in any sense.
Clarification: In order for God to have a “superior” sense of justice or emotion or love, as you claim here:
For instance, we were likely not produced by something mindless or thoughtless, but likely instead to have been produced by something that has a super-mind. We were likely not produced by something incapable of justice, but by something immensely more capable of justice than ourselves. And so forth.
….it would have to have a capacity for those things. Which implies that it is humanlike in that sense.
“that no creature can produce anything intrinsically greater than itself.”
I’d say that we can create computers that have computational power vastly higher than anything a human could manage. These computers can give us ‘new information’, things that were never part of our intellectual world before. As you say, ‘greater’ is ambiguous here. Is a computer ‘greater’ than us? Depends on your defnition, but certainly the computer can do things no group of humans ever could, it’s not just taking a human attribute and ‘doing it more’, not in any meaningful sense.
“1) You took a paragraph of mine, lifted a sentence out of it, truncated the sentence to omit a key explanatory clause, and then quoted the phrase back in such a way as to say precisely the opposite of what I was expressing. ”
Then I apologise. It is never my intention to deliberately misunderstand people. To do so is an admission that you cannot defeat the other person’s arguments on their own merits, which I don’t believe is the case.
I won’t pretend to be as up on these issues as the previous posters but you have trapped yourselves in a non-sensical endless loop that could go on for the rest of your lifespan.
Computers don’t count as they will never have a soul and will never have conscousness (sp) as we know it. We know that humans have a soul because of the evidence of jesus rising from the dead (not going into proving that, u know the evidence if you are on this site). They will always be limited when compared to humans.
Secondly, everything we create came from our creator initially in some way. So we cannot take the credit as the builder but even if we do, a computer will never be as complete as a human as it is completely material to this world by definition..
The issue with folks today is they are caught up in the worship of logic and intelligence. Logic is to be used as a tool not a idol. Let’s get to the real issue. I have a friend who is dead. He too worshiped his own intelligence. He had his chance but now he is outta here…
Computers don’t count as they will never have a soul and will never have conscousness (sp) as we know it. We know that humans have a soul because of the evidence of jesus rising from the dead (not going into proving that, u know the evidence if you are on this site). They will always be limited when compared to humans.
Thanks for letting me know that your future posts will not be worth reading.
The issue with folks today is they are caught up in the worship of logic and intelligence. Logic is to be used as a tool not a idol. Let’s get to the real issue. I have a friend who is dead. He too worshiped his own intelligence. He had his chance but now he is outta here…
As you and I will soon be one day. What, are you trying to use the fact that people die as some kind of threat to scare people into believing what you do? That’s pathetic.
I believe that there is a God because all creation tells me so. The heavens and the earth are just filled with His glory and righteousness.
So if there is creation then there must be a Creator. Someone with a mind that none of us can totally comprehend. I also believe because of changed hearts that came to God by faith. The way countless lives have been transformed. Drug addicts have been cured, homosexuals set free, derelicts and deadbeats transformed, hardened criminal reformed, sinners rebuked, and hate turned to love. Who but a loving, and righteous, God can do this. He saved me from myself and I will always be grateful to Him for that.
“homosexuals set free”
I don’t understand this – it’s mostly the God believers who are persecuting the gays in the first place.
Did God also create the parasitic worms that blind millions of African children? Or do you only credit God with the good stuff?
Did G-d also create the parasitic worms that blind millions of African children? Or do you only credit G-d with the good stuff?
This is a good question Andrew.
You probably know that sin entered into the world because of man (Romans 5:12-14, etc). And you probably know that creation now groans because of this sin (Romans 8:22).
I think the explanation has become necessarily more complex now. If we believe that information can’t “self-organize” or “self-create” than who made the complex genetic code for those parasitic worms you mention? If that genetic code wasn’t just that certain way, the worm would likely not live. It contains books and books of As, Ts, Cs and Gs, arranged just-so, that had to come from somewhere.
The worm, it seems to me, shows clear signs of design, so who designed it, if not G-d?
Some would argue that sin corrupted the nature of the worm (just as it has corrupted our nature), but I don’t know how satisfying this explanation is. It seems that certain animals were designed to be parasites. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination that leads us to believe they could live no other way.
But when we look at bacteria, in many ways we, as humans, are just as coded to the bacteria as they are to us. Bacteria, again, contain millions of little ATCGs that make up their genetic code. This code had to be programmed by someone. But our code had to be designed to allow us to become ill due to the specific bacteria. So many diseases affect only dogs or horses, and don’t bother us. Likewise others seem to bother only us (or sometimes us and animals that are a lot like us, like other mammals).
Furthermore, we were designed with an immune system that easily takes care of many of these things, but not all. Why would G-d design it imperfectly (or why not save the trouble of designing one in the first place, and just not create the bacteria and viruses which our systems easily defeat)?
These things are a mystery, of course, and we may never know. We can’t understand the ways of G-d. But they are interesting to consider nonetheless. At least I find them interesting.
Alternatively Luke, the world is exactly as one would expect it to be if all these creatures just evolved without outside intervention. So we find a world where some things are pleasing to us – bananas, sunsets, sex, fluffy kittens – and some things aren’t – blow flies, parasitic worms, leprosy
If Adam and Eve had listened to God we in this world would not be in the big mess we’re in. I’m grateful He did not create robots to worship Him!
There are a lot of professing Christians but a lot of them are not true professing Christians. Jesus did say “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” So those who call themselves “Christians” that are bashing homosexuals to me are not true Christians. I know you must of heard ” Hate the sin, but love the sinner”. We hate sin by refusing to take part in it and by condemning it when we see it. Sin is to be hated, not excused or taken lightly. We love sinners by being faithful in witnessing to them of the forgiveness that is available through Jesus Christ. A true act of love is treating someone with respect and kindness even though he/she knows you do not approve of his lifestyle and/or choices. We love the sinner by speaking the truth in love. We hate the sin by refusing to condone, ignore, or excuse it.
Alternatively Luke, the world is exactly as one would expect it to be if all these creatures just evolved without outside intervention.
Yes Andrew, there is that.
Anna: If Adam and Eve had listened to God we in this world would not be in the big mess we’re in.
I told you, Andrew.
Anna: I’m grateful He did not create robots to worship Him!
Why???
Anna: So those who call themselves “Christians” that are bashing homosexuals to me are not true Christians.
Anna: The way countless lives have been transformed…. homosexuals set free
Je ne comprend rien!
Anna, could you please answer Andrew’s question: “Did God also create the parasitic worms that blind millions of African children? Or do you only credit God with the good stuff?”
Luke, I love the way you always ask people to answer my questions. You’ve done it about 20 times now, and they very rarely actually answer!
In return, I’ll say that I think Phil/Plumb Bob completely fudged your question about ‘collatoral damage’, or civilian deaths in war time. His long-winded answer about lacking expertise, about not being up on warfare and how things are done in battle was a complete avoidance tactic.
It was a very simple question you asked: do you accept the inevitable civilian deaths that result in wartime as a ‘necessary evil’. One’s military expertise is irrelevant to answering the question. And to think that Obama got a rough ride for saying the ‘beginning of life’ question was above his level of expertise!
Luke, I love the way you always ask people to answer my questions. You’ve done it about 20 times now, and they very rarely actually answer! When I pose a question several times and no-one addresses, I tend to think I probably asked a good one.
In return, I’ll say that I think Phil/Plumb Bob completely fudged your question about ‘collatoral damage’, or civilian deaths in war time. His long-winded answer about lacking expertise, about not being up on warfare and how things are done in battle was a complete avoidance tactic.
It was a very simple question you asked: do you accept the inevitable civilian deaths that result in wartime as a ‘necessary evil’. One’s military expertise is irrelevant to answering the question. And to think that Obama got a rough ride for saying the ‘beginning of life’ question was above his level of expertise!
Luke Says: “Did God also create the parasitic worms that blind millions of African children? Or do you only credit God with the good stuff?”
Like I said, had Adam & Eve listen to God when He told them not to eat the forbidden fruit the parasitic worms, would of been your just for fish food etc. Before they disobeyed God everything was perfect. Sin entered and everything rots and dies. That includes you and I.
Why do you judge God from the bad things in the world only? What about the good things that are in the world or universe to thank Him for? Like the stars still shine, or the sun that still rises and sets, or the mountains that are not moved, birds sing. Little streams dance merrily on their way. Flowers bloom and give off their perfume. The world goes right on being an everlastingly beautiful place. And so much more!
Like I said, had Adam & Eve listen to G-d when He told them not to eat the forbidden fruit the parasitic worms would have been there just for fish food etc.
Anna,
I address this in my post. Many parasites seem designed to be just that. They are perfectly made to live off of other organisms. It is not their nature, but their very specific DNA information that makes them what they are.
I think this is something that needs to be addressed. I think you dismiss the question far too casually.
Do you believe sin changed their design? Who can arrange the nucleic acid just so, if not G-d? (And, as he mentioned, Andrew’s post-modern system of Darwin love.)
Anna: Why do you judge G-d from the bad things in the world only?
Why do you think either Andrew or I are doing this?
I think Andrew was asking the question because you are making a judgment on only part of the available inputs. You dismiss the other inputs not on what seems not like evidence, but rather because you need to find a way to dismiss it to keep your point viable. The question has to do with logic and reason, not judging G-d
“Why do you think either Andrew or I are doing this?”
I certainly wasn’t. My reply “it’s mostly the God believers who are persecuting the gays in the first place” was badly worded. What I meant was that saying that you find evidence for God in the fact that ‘gays are set free’ strikes me as a circular argument. By that I mean this:
The belief in God seems to be giving you both the impetus to see gays as a problem and also the notion that God solves that problem. In other words, it’s circular.
If Adam and Eve had listened to God we in this world would not be in the big mess we’re in.
So would you be happy if the government decided to put your grandchild in prison for a crime that your grandfather committed?
I’m grateful He did not create robots to worship Him!
I think that this is a convenient excuse to explain away the fact that it is clearly possible for a sane, intelligent human being to be morally repulsed by the idea of your biblical Yahweh as having any sort of moral authority over anyone whatsoever.
I mean, we have free will. But if God created people for the sole ultimate purpose of glorifying him, then we shouldn’t have free will. So why create a robot that can rebel against its purpose? What kind of “freedom” is that? Seems that your god didn’t think things through very well.
There are a lot of professing Christians but a lot of them are not true professing Christians.
“No true Christian” argument; -10 points.
We hate sin by refusing to take part in it and by condemning it when we see it.
Yeah, and if someone gets bashed in the process, tough luck, huh?
Before they disobeyed God everything was perfect. Sin entered and everything rots and dies.
Ah, but the Bible only says that man fell because of sin! How did the animals “change” because of man’s sin?
Why do you judge God from the bad things in the world only?
I judge your version of god based on both the good and bad; the problem is, I consider worldwide disease and plague, mutilating animals and parasites, and horrible natural disasters (all bad things) to greatly outweigh a few hundred thousand emotional revelations to people who are in otherwise pretty acceptable living conditions regardless of their faith. If God was really so awesome, I really think he’d be spending time delivering miraculous aid to people who will die (without ever “knowing god”) and showing them this so called “truth” through action, instead of talking to select people in developed nations through people who make lots of money writing books or performing on television ministry program.
Funny thing is, all the “good” things that “god” does, they seem to come from humans acting on “his” behalf (a pilot landing a plane as he was trained to do; a doctor successfully operating on a patient who was thought to have no chance to survive). All the bad things, they seem to come from “nature” or “man’s folly” or some other convenient excuse.
Maybe I’m wrong; I only hear what other people tell me about this god fellow. I’ve never seen or heard from him one iota, myself.
Tim D says: …I only hear what other people tell me about this god fellow.===Who people who do not believe in God?
I’ve never seen or heard from him one iota, myself.========Did you ever try to ask Him?
Jesus said to doubting Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Like a good parent would say to his or her child “don’t touch that hot stove you will get burned ” What should a good parent do if the child disobeys?
Like I said before: God said “thou shalt not” did man listen?
Luke says: Anna, could you please answer Andrew’s question: “Did God also create the parasitic worms that blind millions of African children? Or do you only credit God with the good stuff?============In the beginning God created everything, and it is written that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. Gen 1
God created the worms but not to blind millions of African children. So I credit God for the good only, because that was His intentions from the very beginning. Sin turned it into bad.
Tim D says: If God was really so awesome, I really think he’d be spending time delivering miraculous aid to people who will die (without ever “knowing god”) ========What would you suggest how God should do this?
“What should a good parent do if the child disobeys?”
Is the answer ‘torture that child for all eternity’? I don’t think so. Also, what do you call a father who never lets his children see him?
Andrew Ryan Says: Is the answer ‘torture that child for all eternity’? I don’t think so. When does God torture anyone for all eternity? You pick the place for all eternity you will land up in. He gave you a free will. He did not leave you clueless when it came to know who He is.
Andrew Ryan Says: Also, what do you call a father who never lets his children see him?
God is a Spirit, and His children can see Him, and talk to Him, in spirit and in truth. Those He call’s His children are does that believe He is the their Father in heaven.
“When does God torture anyone for all eternity?”
Do you believe that someone who lives a good life, but does not believe in God, will be tortured for eternity in hell? In what respect will this person have ‘chosen’ hell? Who created hell if not God? If someone else, God at least condones it through allowing it to continue. Again, not the actions of a loving entity.
If/when you get to heaven, and you find that someone you love is being tortured for eternity in hell, how will you be able to enjoy heaven knowing that this loved one of yours is suffering so terribly? I wouldn’t be able to. It would be like trying to enjoy a meal out while your sister is being burnt alive next door, only forever.
Imagine that when you die you are told that you got a few bits of dogma wrong in your worship. Perhaps you occasionally drank orange juice, and that turns out to be sinful (or whatever). You’re told that you must go to hell. In what sense will this have been your ‘choice’, part of your ‘free will’?
And no, I can’t see God, not in any meaningful sense of the word ‘see’. My daughter can see me, she can touch me and cuddle me. She doesn’t have to ‘believe in me’ first, she can just do all those things.
Anna: n the beginning God created everything, and it is written that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. Gen 1
This judgment seems to be G-d’s. G-d said it was good.
Before the fall, we had the serpent. The serpent must have been created by G-d, yet would you judge him as good?
What was good about him?
Maybe G-d’s idea of good is not the same as Anna’s.
Anna: God created the worms but not to blind millions of African children. So I credit God for the good only,
But as I said, the worm was created with a pretty distinct and purposeful design.
If I build a shrapnel bomb — a device designed only to explode and hurt people, and it does what it was designed to do….
Would you say: “Luke created the bomb, but he didn’t hurt those people”?
Anna: Sin turned it into bad.
Can you say anything about how this might work?
If a hurricane, for example, was once good and is now bad, how did sin cause this change?
(If that is a poor example, please offer your own; I am not trying to offer a deliberately difficult example or anything.)
Anna: Tim D says: If God was really so awesome, I really think he’d be spending time delivering miraculous aid to people who will die (without ever “knowing god”) ========What would you suggest how God should do this?
G-d is omnipotent.
Andrew Ryan Says: Do you believe that someone who lives a good life, but does not believe in God, will be tortured for eternity in hell? Yes, but there will be different degrees of torture, the worst being separated from God for all eternity. ==== Our goodness is not what will give us excess to heaven, but the goodness of God. Unbelief is what will send anyone to hell. Paul in Romans 3:12 wrote … there is no one who does good, not even one.” that is- in the eyes of God.
Andrew Ryan says: If/when you get to heaven, and you find that someone you love is being tortured for eternity in hell, how will you be able to enjoy heaven knowing that this loved one of yours is suffering so terribly?======The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased. We won’t even know.
Andrew Ryan says: Imagine that when you die you are told that you got a few bits of dogma wrong in your worship. Perhaps you occasionally drank orange juice, and that turns out to be sinful (or whatever). You’re told that you must go to hell. In what sense will this have been your ‘choice’, part of your ‘free will’?=======After coming to Christ all sins past,present,and future will be erased. But, the Bible does teach that knowing this, it is no license to willfully, or habitually go on sinning. Like the there is a saying among us Christians: ” We may fall on board the boat but,we will never fall overboard.
She doesn’t have to ‘believe in me’ first, she can just do all those things.=========No,she has to believe that you are there, her daddy, in order for her to see you,touch you.
“No,she has to believe that you are there, her daddy, in order for her to see you,touch you.”
No she doesn’t. Even if her mum told her that I had gone away for a week, so she thought I wasn’t around, if I came into her room wearing a mask so she still thought I was someone else, she’d still be able to touch me, wouldn’t she? Her being able to see and touch me is completely independent in her ‘believing’ in me.
“The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased. We won’t even know. ”
Sounds horrible. God will wipe your memory of your loved ones? This sounds like brain washing. Without your memories, part of what makes you YOU is gone. So he’s torturing your friends, and he’s brainwashed you to forget all about them?
“Yes, but there will be different degrees of torture”
Where does it specifically say this in the bible?
Andrew Ryan Says: Sounds horrible. God will wipe your memory of your loved ones? This sounds like brain washing. Without your memories, part of what makes you YOU is gone. So he’s torturing your friends, and he’s brainwashed you to forget all about them?========First it was, it would be awful seeing your friends or love ones being tortured in hell for all eternity and now it would be horrible not to have the memory of them tortured. The question was: Seeing your love ones being tortured in hell. Would you really want to? How would you know your memory was erased,if it was erased?
“Yes, but there will be different degrees of torture”
Andrew says: Where does it specifically say this in the bible?
Luke 12:47 “That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows….
Anna,
Do you mind if I ask how old you are? I’m just curious, and can’t quite tell from the way you write.
Also, did you see the post I wrote right before you responded to Andrew? I just thought maybe you missed it.
Anna: Our goodness is not what will give us excess to heaven,
Have you ever read Matthew 25, specifically the last section?
Anna: there is no one who does good, not even one.” that is- in the eyes of God.
But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. (Mark 14:6; KJV; Greek: kalos/kalon)
Anna: The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased. We won’t even know.
I think you may be oversimplifying a bit here, but maybe you can tell me which verses you are referring to?
Do you believe for example that your great-grandparents are unable — at least with any recognition of who you are — to look down on you and see the things you’re doing?
I think there’s a very good Christian answer to Andrew’s question, but maybe yours is better than mine.
Andrew: She doesn’t have to ‘believe in me’ first, she can just do all those things.
Anna: No,she has to believe that you are there, her daddy, in order for her to see you,touch you.
Are you saying that if someone for whatever reason truly believes that someone does not exist, they will not see them or be unable to touch that person?
Say for example that you had a long lost brother — your parents never told you he was born. You have never even considered the idea that you may have a sibling. Are you saying that if you and I were in a room, and the long-lost brother walked in, I would see him and you would not, simply because you didn’t believe he existed?
Andrew: God will wipe your memory of your loved ones? This sounds like brain washing.
It does, quite literally sound like that, doesn’t it?
Luke Says: If a hurricane, for example, was once good and is now bad, how did sin cause this change? ==========When if ever would a hurricane be good?
God created everything good and for the purpose of giving Him the glory.
Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way but,God has His plans and they will come to fruition in due time. Sin to me is like spilling ink on a brides white bridal gown.
Luke Says: Do you mind if I ask how old you are? I’m just curious, and can’t quite tell from the way you write.===========Why is there something wrong in the way I write?
Anna: When if ever would a hurricane be good?
Hurricanes are part of the universe created by G-d, and are therefore created by G-d? Correct?
You said that everything G-d created was good.
I am not sure why you are now asking me “when if ever would a hurricane be good.” I thought this was your presupposition. If I misunderstood something then I apologize.
Anna: Why is there something wrong in the way I write?
I didn’t say that Anna. I simply said that I couldn’t tell from the way you wrote how old you were. I was simply curious; I believe that I have a pretty good idea how old Tim and Ernie are, for example, but if you told me you were 15, I would believe you; likewise if you told me you were 55, I would believe you. That made me curious.
You do make grammatical mistakes from time to time, but so does everyone, even Andrew “your nice for lending me you’re bicycle” Ryan.
BTW, can you tell from the way I write how old I am?
Who people who do not believe in God?
So you don’t believe in God?
Did you ever try to ask Him?
Can’t seem to find him anywhere. Everyone says he’s in the rocks and the trees and your heart and all this funny stuff, but nobody seems to know where he *actually* is.
Like a good parent would say to his or her child “don’t touch that hot stove you will get burned ” What should a good parent do if the child disobeys?
Like I said before: God said “thou shalt not” did man listen?
So you say that I will “get burned” if I don’t pretend against my better judgment that I believe in your god? If so, I say, that’s a risk I am not only willing, but some would say obligated, to take. I mean, I’d rather be honestly atheistic than dishonestly Christian.
Sin turned it into bad.
But how? How did man’s “sinful nature” compel these worms to blind them?
What would you suggest how God should do this?
I haven’t the slightest clue. See, I am not a god. I would expect god to figure out how to do this on his own in a way that isn’t inherently contradictory. Therefore, it’s not my responsibility to come up with solutions to the moral dilemma that your idea of god has placed upon itself.
Also, what do you call a father who never lets his children see him?
I call him a deadbeat. Either that, or I call him “not a real father.”
Hmm….you might be on to something here, Sir Ryan….
Again, not the actions of a loving entity.
In order to understand how a Christian Evangelical will respond to this, you must understand that they equate the word “loving” with “godlike” such that it becomes meaningless and redundant to call god “loving.”
(I’m 99% sure you already knew that, as it’s been discussed before, but I can already see this fallacy being trotted out again in response to what you say here….)
the worst being separated from God for all eternity
I don’t feel it’s been explained adequately how that encompasses “torture.” According to you, I have willingly separated myself from god here and now, and yet I feel no such misery.
The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased. We won’t even know.
Ignorance is bliss, eh? Another reason I don’t like your idea of heaven. What does this life mean at all, then, if it will be as if it never existed in the afterlife?
If that’s true, then I can’t really say I would want to go to heaven.
But, the Bible does teach that knowing this, it is no license to willfully, or habitually go on sinning.
So do you belive that, as long as you believe you are not sinning, then it doesn’t count as sin in god’s eyes? If so, how can you justify god sending Dr. Tiller to hell for performing abortions that, he very likely believed, were saving the lives of women? Regardless of whether you yourself think otherwise. Assume Dr. Tiller believed he was doing god’s work. Do you believe he could be sent to heaven based on that?
No,she has to believe that you are there, her daddy, in order for her to see you,touch you.
Not at all! If I refused to believe in my father, he’d still be there, and he’d still kick me out of the house if I stopped paying him rent 0.0
That’s actually one criteria for most people’s definition of “reality” — that which refuses to go away when we stop believing in it.
When if ever would a hurricane be good?
Would you say that a hurricane was “good” if it wiped out an abortion clinic and killed an abortionist?
P.S. reading back over this, some of these questions may sound particularly snide. Let me just add that this is because I am fairly incompetent at having non-confrontational debates; attribute no more meaning to what I say than what I say, exactly. If it sounds harsh, it’s because I am a passionate thinker, not because I mean personal offense by what I say.
I believe that I have a pretty good idea how old Tim and Ernie are,
Well, you can access my myspace page from the band URL in my handle. I’m “Tim” on the top friends list there~
But in case you’re curious, I’m 20, about to be 21 (we like to joke that I’m going to have the most anticlimactic 21st birthday ever, because I’m pretty much straight-edge — no sex, drinking, drugs, any of that sort of thing….everyone else I know got drunk on their 21st birthday…so I have no idea what I’m going to do to make it unique 0.0).
Anna: “Would you really want to? How would you know your memory was erased,if it was erased?”
Would you be fine with this: someone is going to rape you, but then wipe your memory after so you don’t know it happened.
But in case you’re curious, I’m 20, about to be 21 (we like to joke that I’m going to have the most anticlimactic 21st birthday ever, because I’m pretty much straight-edge — no sex, drinking, drugs, any of that sort of thing….everyone else I know got drunk on their 21st birthday…so I have no idea what I’m going to do to make it unique 0.0).
Well happy birthday man!
20 or 21 is actually exactly what I would have guessed.
I will try to go to your myspace tonight just to check it out. For now, I am a bit confused… why are you your own top friend?
Got it; I re-read — a band. I’ll check it out when I get a chance.
But yeah, I thought you’d be right at 20. I think Andrew is a bit tougher, but I’ll go with 27 or 28.
Anyone have any idea on me? Does my writing betray me?
BTW, sorry for bringing in the random tangent of age.
I’m 33… and now very insulted!
Reckon you’re about 23.
I’m 33… and now very insulted!
Doling out insults is my middle name.
I think I was close. 27 and 33 is a similar stage in life, I think.
Reckon you’re about 23.
How insulted to you think I am now? I’ll see if someone else wants to guess, but I shall reveal all soon!
I figured you were older, but was just underguessing to pay you back.
Tim, Luke, feel free to find me on Facebook. I’m easy to locate – I’m the only Andrew Ryan who’s friends with Frank Turek…
Andrew Ryan Says: Would you be fine with this: someone is going to rape you, but then wipe your memory after so you don’t know it happened.
There will be no rapes in heaven. Erased memory was once we get into heaven.
Andrew Ryan Says: So do you belive that, as long as you believe you are not sinning, then it doesn’t count as sin in god’s eyes? If so, how can you justify god sending Dr. Tiller to hell for performing abortions that, he very likely believed, were saving the lives of women? Regardless of whether you yourself think otherwise. Assume Dr. Tiller believed he was doing god’s work. Do you believe he could be sent to heaven based on that?
Unbelief is the only reason a person will go to hell.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
Well happy birthday man!
Hah, thanks
But it’s not until June. Actually, my birthday is the summer solstice. We have this running gag about how that explains my “sunny disposition” (hah, yeah right~).
But really, contrary to what my tone here might imply, I’m actually a lot more easygoing in real life….I just get tense whenever I have to talk politics, religion or philosophy.
BTW, sorry for bringing in the random tangent of age.
No problem, really! If there’s anything this forum has taught me, it’s how to handle random tangents and red herrings.
Also, it never hurts to remind everyone that we’re all human with a little casual, non-political conversation. I think too often, we’re lead to define each other on the level of our political beliefs.
As for guessing ages, count me out….I suck at judging ages. Unless you’re over 60 or under 20, I’d be dead wrong no matter where I aimed. Kids are getting smarter these days, so the only way I can usually tell between a kid and an adult is the dialect and the grammar.
There will be no rapes in heaven. Erased memory was once we get into heaven.
Sorry, but I have to ask….in what way is this a good thing to you?
Unbelief is the only reason a person will go to hell.
I’m only saying this because you seem to want me to conclude your position on my own instead of directly telling me….but am I to understand that you don’t believe that Dr. Tiller will go to hell, even though he performed late-term abortions?
If so, that is a very interesting position, indeed, and I’d be interested to hear what some of the other regular (Christian) posters here think about that.
Gha, I wish there was just a Big Encyclopedia of What Christians Think About Stuff that I could spend days reading through and taking notes on. This conversation thing is just too slow-paced for me….my interest can take on a level of near-obsession on days when I’m particularly bored 0.0
Me: “Would you be fine with this: someone is going to rape you, but then wipe your memory after so you don’t know it happened.”
Anna: “There will be no rapes in heaven. Erased memory was once we get into heaven.”
That’s nothing to do with my question. I’m asking whether you’re fine with the concept of terrible things happening, as long as you get to not know about them. If someone said ‘I’m going to torture and kill your mother, but I’ll wipe your memory of this conversation so you just believe she’s gone on a long holiday’, what would your thoughts be before they wiped your memory?
Would it be, ‘Oh God, my poor mother, and I’ll not even know about it!’? Or would it be, ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter, cos I’m not going to remember her suffering’?
“Unbelief is the only reason a person will go to hell”
So the Catholic Hitler will go to heaven, whereas Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates – atheists who donated billions to charity – will both go to hell?
Anna: Andrew Ryan Says: Would you be fine with this: someone is going to rape you, but then wipe your memory after so you don’t know it happened.
There will be no rapes in heaven. Erased memory was once we get into heaven.
Anna, I don’t think this has anything to do with Andrew’s point.
The point is, if someone makes you unaware of the fact that you should be suffering, is it ok for that person to make you suffer?
Andrew’s question makes sense. I don’t think he ever mentioned rape in heaven.
Anna: Unbelief is the only reason a person will go to hell.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
Again Anna, I don’t think you answered the question.
Surely you don’t believe that it’s just faith — of any kind, in anything — that matters.
I have faith Wisla Krakow will make it to the Champions League this year. I really, truly, honestly believe that.
Surely you don’t think that this faith will get me into heaven, do you?
So it is not just faith, but a certain kind of faith: a faith in the right thing. I am correct?
So what is your answer to the question about Dr. Tiller?
Anna: Unbelief is the only reason a person will go to hell.
I asked you before if you have ever read Matthew 25.
In in Jesus gives several reasons for asking certain souls to depart from Him saying “into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (NASB). He gives several reasons for doing this, of which faith is none.
Do you disagree with Jesus on this? As I said, He gives other reasons.
You may say that faith is the underlying reason in all of these. Fine. I think good people can disagree on that, but don’t you at least think it’s odd that he didn’t mention faith at all when describing the judgment?
In effect the systems can be quite different, for I can imagine a person who does the things Jesus asks, but doesn’t have faith in Him.
On the other hand, I can imagine a person who has “faith” in Him, but does not do the things He asks. (Jesus seems to address this type of person in Matthew 7:21.)
Also, some other things I asked you above:
Anna: there is no one who does good, not even one.” that is- in the eyes of God.
Luke: But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. (Mark 14:6; KJV; Greek: kalos/kalon)
– Was Jesus wrong when he said Mary had done something good?
Anna: The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased. We won’t even know.
– Which verses you are referring to when you say “The Bible teaches that all past memory will be erased.”?
– Do you believe for example that your great-grandparents are unable — at least with any recognition of who you are — to look down on you and see the things you’re doing?
– Before the fall, we had the serpent. The serpent must have been created by G-d, yet would you judge him as good? What was good about him? Maybe G-d’s idea of good is not the same as Anna’s.
Anna: God created the worms but not to blind millions of African children. So I credit God for the good only,
Luke: But as I said, the worm was created with a pretty distinct and purposeful design.
– If I build a shrapnel bomb — a device designed only to explode and hurt people, and it does what it was designed to do…. Would you say: “Luke created the bomb, but he didn’t hurt those people”?
Anna: Sin turned it into bad.
– Can you say anything about how this might work?
I figured you were older, but was just underguessing to pay you back.
I’m 30, and as you can probably gather from my post above, I’m from Krakow, Poland.
I may have gathered that if I knew anything about football! I guess 30 sounds right. Is English your first language? I sometimes find people who have English as a second language are particularly good at writing clear arguments. Not sure why, perhaps they have to examine each word a bit harder, or perhaps they don’t fall back on lazy use of language.
Anna and Ernie write like they’re not really thinking about what they’re saying – whole sentences are coming out in one go. But I think this reflects that they haven’t really considered or examined their own opinions.
Phil/Plumb Bob thinks through what he says, but seems more to post here in order to throw his weight around. It’s more an exercise in trying to prove himself smarter. I’d have guessed that he was more middle aged, and I was right.
Frank by contrast is an excellent communicator. He doesn’t say anything that he doesn’t think is important to his point. That’s why I’m suspicious of his back peddling on the waterboarding issue. Well I’m sure he doesn’t view it as back peddling, but you obviously agree with me that he was very clearly saying that waterboarding isn’t torture, and subsequently was disingenuous with regards to that aspect of his recent blog.
Is English your first language?
No, but I started learning when I was about 10, so…
Ecclesiastes 12:12-14 (NIV)
Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study wearies the body.
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.
Andrew: Ernie write[s] like [he's] not really thinking about what [he's] saying
If you see my last post (other thread), I sincerely hope you’re right. We can all say terrible things that are far detached from our beliefs. I truly hope this was true in Ernie’s case.
Tim: we like to joke that I’m going to have the most anticlimactic 21st birthday ever, because I’m pretty much straight-edge — no sex, drinking, drugs, any of that sort of thing….everyone else I know got drunk on their 21st birthday…so I have no idea what I’m going to do to make it unique
I think you and me are similar in quite a few ways. My 21st birthday was the last time I ate meat. Perhaps that helped a bit with the day’s uniqueness.
If you see my last post (other thread), I sincerely hope you’re right. We can all say terrible things that are far detached from our beliefs. I truly hope this was true in Ernie’s case.
I’m 90% sure that’s the case with most of what goes on here; I don’t think people who can say things like that have really had the time to think through the consequences of what they say.
I won’t go any further in that direction, though…..it just seems rude to continue talking about people when they’re standing right there (metaphorically, of course)….but on the other hand, if they won’t talk to you, what can you do?
*sigh*
People….
I think you and me are similar in quite a few ways. My 21st birthday was the last time I ate meat. Perhaps that helped a bit with the day’s uniqueness.
Well, we have some ideas….I’m thinking of making it my band’s first live show 0.0 Although, we still kinda need….um, a whole band….it’s just me and my friend Steve right now. And I can’t play all the instruments at once (though I would if I could, believe me)….
[...] in a series discussing why Christians worship God. On this blog, the first installment may be found here, the second here, and the third here. On the author’s blog, the first installment can be found [...]
Andrew presupposes that Phil thinks he has weight to throw. At 54, he knows better. He just loses patience with folks who can’t read what’s written, and with trying to explain why a general position about an entire topic cannot be used as support for a sub-question toward which it was not directed; e.g., even if Albert Schweitzer was opposed to capital punishment generally, his opposition can’t be used as support for the proposition that death by lethal injection hurts a lot.
Now he’s wondering why he’s writing about himself in the 3rd person.
This strikes me as a failure of imagination more than anything else.
I’m just finishing Lewis’ book on Miracles; he begins with an explanation regarding why evolution cannot explain the development of reason. I can’t see how a concept like “justice” could possibly evolve, if there was no ultimately just creator. I can’t see how consciousness could arise, or mercy, or affection, or meaning, or any sort of morality. None of these things are explained by saying that creatures evolved.
In fact, “it evolved,” in the context of those topics, is simply a “god-of-the-gaps” fallacy; one takes a complex topic, and simply asserts “It evolved” as though that explains it. In the cases of everything that makes life worthwhile and meaningful, the simple fact that creatures in the biosphere can develop physical characteristics that may not have been present in previous generations provides no explanation for them at all.
The point is, the world we live in is NOTHING like what it would have been if all things had evolved without intervention. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it were, let alone be imagining that the conversation had any relevance to anything. We wouldn’t even have the concept “relevance.”
Personally, I think Plato’s concept of archetypes is a lot more sensible than the modern, knee-jerk “it evolved” nonsense that’s usually offered without the slightest thought. Plato had the sense to recognize that everything could not possibly arise out of nothing, and that a world full of lesser, imperfect things might more reasonably point to the existence of ultimate, greater things; e.g., the various variants of “horse” might point to an ultimate, perfect specimen of “horseness” to which all the others point. Western research has produced a lot of useful knowledge about how the universe is constructed, but most of those who speak of how little the ancients knew compared to us, usually haven’t read much from the ancients. Their conclusions made sense given their data, and some topics (like about morals) aren’t really helped by adding more data.
“I can’t see how a concept like “justice” could possibly evolve, if there was no ultimately just creator.”
That seems like a failure of imagination on YOUR part.
“The point is, the world we live in is NOTHING like what it would have been if all things had evolved without intervention. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it were”
Why ever not?
“I can’t see how consciousness could arise, or mercy, or affection, or meaning, or any sort of morality.”
I’m afraid I’m short of time here, so my short reply is not an attempt at glibness: they all aid survival. The most obvious example is oxytocin. Again, it seems a failure of imagination not to understand why an affectionate species would not survice better than an indifferent one.
“Their conclusions made sense given their data, and some topics (like about morals) aren’t really helped by adding more data.”
I agree with you here actually Phil. Plato dealt with the ‘morals can only come from God’ idea thousands of years ago in Euthyphro. And Hume dealt with Paley’s Watch without having any understanding of evolution.
I’m just finishing Lewis’ book on Miracles; he begins with an explanation regarding why evolution cannot explain the development of reason.
I don’t understand why you think reason can begin or be created. Do you think God is a reasonable being? If so, then you admit that reason has always existed, even by your own theory (because you also believe that God has always existed).
Not trying to be a twit here, seriously….but how does reason “begin to exist?” And I might also ask you while we’re on a similar subject, how does the Law of Non-Contradiction “begin to exist?”
I can’t see how a concept like “justice” could possibly evolve, if there was no ultimately just creator.
I think that objective “justice” is an idea that humans project that is based on the idea of a creator, yes; I think that humans theorize the existence of this concept in an objective state based on their belief in a deity. But I don’t think that really says anything about whether or not it actually exists; if I imagined a God of “infinite loudness,” then that wouldn’t really mean that such a thing as an “infinitely loud sound” actually exists. Just because my mind can comprehend it in theory doesn’t necessitate that it exists.
In fact, “it evolved,” in the context of those topics, is simply a “god-of-the-gaps” fallacy;
I think you’re wrong about this (I think you simply misunderstand the context of the phrase “it evolved”), but that’s not actually the point I want to make here. The point I want to make is that, while I have defended the idea that morality evolved, I don’t mean that in a literal sense — that there exists a magical standard called “morality” that humans simply evolved into existence. What I mean is that morality is subjective by nature (as it relies on assertions of what is “good” or “best,” which are conditional terms and mean nothing objectively), and so humans have developed a set of morals (which are basically ideas) that allow them to survive in harmony as a natural result of their learned cooperation. For example: even altrustic principles can instill moral concepts separate from themselves; if a man learns that, by not killing people for arbitrary personal gain (such as to gain access to a person’s property), he earns the respect of others, who admire him because they don’t feel that they have to fear for their lives when he is around….then he learns that this is a useful tactic for human interaction, and that if he can instill this belief in others, then he can form a simple, peaceful society.
Although I must also add, I don’t believe humans can possibly be 100% rational in their thinking….and so even if a person acts on these kinds of beliefs over a long period of time, I don’t believe that he will invoke them rationally at every turn; sooner or later, he simply accepts them as “right” or “wrong,” and no longer feels the need to consider them as he has enough experience with them to know that they are both effective and satisfying.
The point is, the world we live in is NOTHING like what it would have been if all things had evolved without intervention.
Can you back this up with some basic evidence?
Plato had the sense to recognize that everything could not possibly arise out of nothing
Are you saying that I don’t have any sense?