A Personal View of God

[jimmydasaint]

I have read, with interest, other hot topics in this Forum, which comment on the nature of God. I only have my limited knowledge and a paucity of secondary validation, so I may find this post in 'Speculations' if the mods don't like it. I'll take a deep breath and here goes:

 

Most thoughts about God being omnibenevolent (absolutely good) and omnipotent (all powerful) are under the assumption that God adheres to human moral values, thinks, and often behaves like a human being - having a sense of what is 'good', being 'angry' and thinking before acting.

 

However, if a supreme intelligence or Creator has created all atoms in the Universe, to my logic, He cannot be made of atoms. He is 'something other' that cannot be comprehended. If He is 'something other', he cannot be anthropomorphised into a human form.

 

If He was omnibenevolent, He would not have allowed any harm to His creation, yet we have Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, George Bush and Tony Blair - all of whom have indirectly ordered the death of hundreds of thousands of people. My view is that God has created Evil. It may be that it helps us to recognise good or to achieve a moral or personal evolution of the soul by being 'tried through evil' as gold is purified by fire.

 

Omnipotence implies that God has the power to do anything that He wants, yet He does not prevent the murder, rape or assault of millions. Why? Again, my personal view is that He has set in place metaphysical unseen Laws that ensure that the action of each person is rewarded or punished according to action and that the soul is either evolved or thrown into an animalistic state from its direct actions on another sensate being. His Laws do the job. He has already seen the end of the existence of His Creation.

 

The endgame seems to be one where we are thrown on the Earth to question our own existence, to find the existence of soul (a complicated concept) and then to link cause and effect together. We are also here to appreciate the design of the Universe and of our own forms, and to ultimately evolve the soul to a more and more purified form until it transcends death and survives with a memory of the Earth; moving to a life that is everlasting.

 

I apologise to all those who consider that I am a heretic but my meagre logic finds these personal pictures of God to be more suitable than contradictory and sometimes downright silly dogma.

 

Any comments, or different personal views of God?

[Marat]

You begin by suggesting that God may be so different from humans that his apparent willingness to tolerate evil in the world cannot be comprehended by humans according to our standards of morality, but then you go on to try to account for his actions in moral terms anyway. I am not entirely clear on whether your view of God is of something which we should be able to comprehend or not.

 

Since the phrase and the concept, 'God is infinitely good,' is said by humans to other humans with the intent to convey a meaning which is suitable for other humans to comprehend, then it seems we are committed either to saying that God is good in a way that makes sense for us to say in human terms, or that God is not good because the only possible account of his being good would have to involve some sort of mysterious account we can't understand.

[michel123456]

I think you are not far from Islam.

[zapatos]

At one time I believed that God probably existed, and right now I believe He probably doesn't. But I wouldn't be too surprised one way or the other.

 

My personal view of God has never had any more detail than that. I was raised Catholic but don't ever remember feeling confident that what I was told about God was true. And when I learned to think critically I was never able to feel confident about any aspect of God, even His existence. When somone feels they know anything about Him at all it makes me wonder what clicks in their minds that never does in mine.

[jimmydasaint]

You begin by suggesting that God may be so different from humans that his apparent willingness to tolerate evil in the world cannot be comprehended by humans according to our standards of morality, but then you go on to try to account for his actions in moral terms anyway. I am not entirely clear on whether your view of God is of something which we should be able to comprehend or not.

 

I am trying to reconcile the human moral quality of infinite good with the presence of evil, or what we perceive as wrong, and elevate it to a 'meta' platform. The comparison I can give is of a child reading the alphabet and learning to string together words in front of a professor of linguistics. We are looking from a relativist platform, glimpsing a part of a portrait, or admiring the brushstrokes, whilst God is looking at the whole picture. I can only think and articulate from a human viewpoint and do so using human moral references. How else can I do it? My logic is not deductive but rather inductive and faulty, I cannot help it.

 

Since the phrase and the concept, 'God is infinitely good,' is said by humans to other humans with the intent to convey a meaning which is suitable for other humans to comprehend, then it seems we are committed either to saying that God is good in a way that makes sense for us to say in human terms, or that God is not good because the only possible account of his being good would have to involve some sort of mysterious account we can't understand.

 

 

I take your point but using an incorrect statement like 'God is infinitely good' just to make it comprehensible would not even cut the mustard with an eight year old who is exposed to the reality of evil on a daily basis. The statement would have to be replaced with 'God is infinitely just'. And then we have a statement which is comprehensible in the face of the real world that most of us live in.

 

If I am making my point incomprehensible, then I apologise, but I am trying to rationalise the existence of God and evil and also God and His apparent lack of care for His creation. An all-powerful God who is infinitely good cannot possibly watch His creation suffer, yet He apparently allows unspeakable things to happen on Earth, sometimes in His name.

 

If I don't make sense then it is my own stupidity.

 

I think you are not far from Islam

Wow, as a heretical Methodist, I also feel like a heretic from every religion. From what little I have read of Islam, there is no way that what I have written squares with that faith.

 

 

 

At one time I believed that God probably existed, and right now I believe He probably doesn't. But I wouldn't be too surprised one way or the other.

 

My personal view of God has never had any more detail than that. I was raised Catholic but don't ever remember feeling confident that what I was told about God was true. And when I learned to think critically I was never able to feel confident about any aspect of God, even His existence. When somone feels they know anything about Him at all it makes me wonder what clicks in their minds that never does in mine.

 

An honest view zapatos. I also have my doubts but I also believe that the love that I feel for my family and children, and for other individuals, cannot be explained by temporary imbalances in certain hormones and chemicals in my brain but has a deeper bond than the purely physical. I think that the possibility of a soul which is not merely a 'driver' of the body was a thought expressed by several sages including Augustine and Descartes. Your brain is in a dark and quiet environment. When you see your bus approaching, who is that sees the picture in the brain and interprets it? Who in your brain interprets the sound of footsteps behind you on a dark and foggy night...In short, if the soul exists, it is there for a purpose and, if we accept that there is a soul, we have to find the purpose of its existence. This is where the Scriptures come in with metaphors that transcend the errors and shortcomings that are evidently man-made.

 

This is why I came up with a personal justification of my impressions of God (the Father).

Edited December 28, 2010 by jimmydasaint

[Marat]

If there were an entity which was omnipotent, omniscient, and infinitely just, but not good, would it be correct to call it God? It would seem rather to be just some sort of extremely powerful metaphysical oddity which would fail to meet the prerequisites of the definition of God, so it would only be a 'god' such as the Gnostics described -- that is, some evil genie in control of humanity and the Earth, but not a being matching the dictionary definition of a true God.

[michel123456]

I think a free mind in quest of God don't have to hurry. No answer is obvious: if it were, we would all be enlightened. The good way is to look at reality en face. IMHO there is no need for excuses like "God is good" when your child is dying or your wife raped, tortured, killed. Reality is there, it is the starting point of everything and we have to deal with it. But that is only my opinion.

 

Shortly, I think we have an incredible chance to live at a time & at a place where free investigation is allowed (is it?), so I vote freedom of quest. And I vote against blind faith.

[jimmydasaint]

If there were an entity which was omnipotent, omniscient, and infinitely just, but not good, would it be correct to call it God? It would seem rather to be just some sort of extremely powerful metaphysical oddity which would fail to meet the prerequisites of the definition of God, so it would only be a 'god' such as the Gnostics described -- that is, some evil genie in control of humanity and the Earth, but not a being matching the dictionary definition of a true God.

 

There are, to my mind, no pre-requisites or definitions of God. I think that was my main point. In an attempt to understand God, humans impose absolute moral qualities on Him. To magnify our human 'qualities' of good, power and knowledge to an infinite level (another arbritary human term) is not enough, in my opinion. IMHO, God is almost incomprehensible. However, we can recognise His act of creation called the Universe by looking at the physical laws (e.g. gravity) that He has set in place, and then considering the invisible law which goes under the term: 'what goes round comes round'. So we all pay for, or gain, from our actions. I think that there is something called 'soul', which I am trying to get my head round by reading Descartes and Augustine.

 

The part about justice is that I cannot imagine a God who is not just. And that there is an Earthly life and a life beyond, where justice is delivered fully. The other qualities are relativistic and human. To my mind justice is a quality where there is no Golden Mean - you either have it or you don't.

 

I think a free mind in quest of God don't have to hurry. No answer is obvious: if it were, we would all be enlightened. The good way is to look at reality en face. IMHO there is no need for excuses like "God is good" when your child is dying or your wife raped, tortured, killed. Reality is there, it is the starting point of everything and we have to deal with it. But that is only my opinion.

 

Shortly, I think we have an incredible chance to live at a time & at a place where free investigation is allowed (is it?), so I vote freedom of quest. And I vote against blind faith.

 

Good thoughts michel123456. Well said! In my opinion, organised religion and blind faith are the factors holding humans from recognising the true glory of our Lord. The sooner, we lose these unnecessary accessories, the quicker we understand what is meant by true worship.

Edited December 29, 2010 by jimmydasaint

[Kturbo]

There are many attributes that must be possessed to be called God,especially the God of the bible.Attributes such as perfect holiness,perfect righteousness,infinite power,wisdom and knowledge,perfect in love,mercy and compassion.Indeed the God of the bible who is my God fits all this attributes,He is the indescribable one.He does not think or follow human logic,knowledge or morality.He through his prophets instead lead humans to become like him as he meant us to be.We fell because he gave us free will and we were decieved by the Devil.God provided a way back to himself through Jesus Christ who himself is God just as his father is God.I look forward to beholding his face one day.