Can you know God without understanding or recognizing his perfect works?

[Greatest I am]

Can you know God without understanding or recognizing his perfect works?

 

The whole notion of knowing and following God, is to know how he works and thinks, tied to a belief that he is perfect in all things and has the miracle at hand to create things the way he wants.

 

Scripture tells us to look to the universe around us for proof of his reality. Logic and reason tell us the same thing. This indicates that we should see the perfection of his works all around us.

 

Deut 32;4

 

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

 

Mat 7;18

 

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

 

The logic trail of these two verses says that God’s works all begin as perfect and that that perfection is maintain and passed up through history.

 

I like to think I know a bit about God because, as I look about, I see that ever lasting perfection as it moves to a more perfect state over time. Evolving perfection.

 

Consider a baby, all babies including you and I.

 

We all begin life as perfect as nature, or God, can produce with our DNA and all other conditions at hand. This is a truth even if we are born with flaws and is irrefutable in terms of both nature, logic, reason and the Bible.

 

This truth led to my apotheosis and knowledge of God and nature.

 

I offer it here for your contemplation and comments.

 

I cannot see anything that would my view but am willing to listen. If you cannot see the perfection that I do, then I will try to persuade you.

 

Perhaps the best way to begin would be in you opining on the following and telling me whether you think it is a cynical view of life or if it is a real and true view of life.

 

Candide

 

"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPClzIsYxvA

 

Regards

 

DL

 

 

[mississippichem]

Can you know God without understanding or recognizing his perfect works?

 

The whole notion of knowing and following God, is to know how he works and thinks, tied to a belief that he is perfect in all things and has the miracle at hand to create things the way he wants.

 

Scripture tells us to look to the universe around us for proof of his reality. Logic and reason tell us the same thing. This indicates that we should see the perfection of his works all around us.

 

Do logic and reason tell us the same thing? We should see his perfection in the world around us. But the fact of the matter is, that we don't. The human body itself is full of useless organs [appendix, tonsils and the like], our backs are poorly engineered for upright walking, we are very poor at accessing risk [just watch the news, you would think we were all about to die from terror attacks or nuclear reactor meltdowns]. I don't see much that is perfect about our design as a species, and I don't know by what objective standard you would call anything in the universe perfect.

 

That's the inconvenient thing about claims of perfection. By the definition of perfection, no matter how many "good" things you find; if I find one detail that has one con, then the perfection claim goes out the window.

 

If you want to say that the universe is perfect by a god's standards, then you have no way of confirming that or even producing a shred of objective falsifiable evidence to back it. So basically, we are shooting in the dark here; and even if we hit the target we have no way of knowing whether or not we did.

Edited May 11, 2011 by mississippichem

[Athena]

Understanding how God works is essential. However, when you add to this, "knowing how He thinks" the truth is distorted by humanizing something that should not be humanized.

 

Remember when God was a she? Bad things happened when She was offended and She needed to be appeased. Whatever people's god myths are, there is a common thread. If you don't understand how things work, and do something against nature, something is going to turn bad. Science is a better way to understand how things work, then reading the stories written before scientific was developed. The more science studies the better our understanding and therefore judgment, can be.

 

However, our perspective is very important. We can have a very narrow perspective, reacting to the world knowing no more about it than our personal experience of it. Or we can expand our point of view by trying to look at things through a god's point of view. We are doing good if we can imagine the results of reactions for the next 3 generations. That is how long a direct memory of an event last. first the child is aware of it, and then becomes a father and may pass it on to his children, and then he is a grandfather and can pass it on again to the third generation. The memory many last much longer, depending on how many people believe it is important to retell the story, or if it is something like an earthquake that sinks an island, it can last as long as there is human memory.

[lemur]

If humans are fallible, then God's perfection would be unknowable to them, no? They/we can know the idea of perfection as an ideal, but in practice we would have no way to recognize it because it never has, nor can it, occur in our lives. I think this is why false idolatry is condemned, i.e. because if we can't ever achieve perfection in practice, we shouldn't pretend to. We can only keep pursuing the ideals of perfection we create without the expectation of ever being able to reach them (i.e. reach perfection), imo.

Edited May 11, 2011 by lemur

[Marat]

Leibniz has an interesting angle on this. Since the world obviously has evil aspects, we can only find that God's creation is good if there is an adequate excuse for the evil in it. The excuse, Leibniz suggests, would have to be that to create the best possible net world, it would have to contain some evil, and the world God has created has the least amount of evil you could get away with an still maximize the net goodness of the universe.

 

But if we were to understand this assertion rather than just accept it, we would have to be able to see why Jimmy falling and scraping his knee on the way to school at 8:19 A.M. on October 3, 1957, was a necessary element of this world being the best of all possible worlds. Since we can't understand that and any number of other apparently contingent evils, since we have no concept of 'universal compossibility unto the maximal realization of goodness,' the most we could say is that if there were any solution to the problem of evil marring God's creation, it would have to be along the lines of Leibniz's suggestion.

[Greatest I am]

Do logic and reason tell us the same thing? We should see his perfection in the world around us. But the fact of the matter is, that we don't.

 

You don't. Some do.

To do so, you would have to ponder my baby analogy as well as the Candide quote.

 

 

The human body itself is full of useless organs [appendix, tonsils and the like], our backs are poorly engineered for upright walking, we are very poor at accessing risk [just watch the news, you would think we were all about to die from terror attacks or nuclear reactor meltdowns]. I don't see much that is perfect about our design as a species, and I don't know by what objective standard you would call anything in the universe perfect.

 

That's the inconvenient thing about claims of perfection. By the definition of perfection, no matter how many "good" things you find; if I find one detail that has one con, then the perfection claim goes out the window.

 

If you want to say that the universe is perfect by a god's standards, then you have no way of confirming that or even producing a shred of objective falsifiable evidence to back it. So basically, we are shooting in the dark here; and even if we hit the target we have no way of knowing whether or not we did.

 

 

Your observations are correct. That does not take away from the fact that nature is doing the best possible creation out of the DNA and conditions at hand. Defects and extra organs and all.

 

Regards

DL

 

Understanding how God works is essential. However, when you add to this, "knowing how He thinks" the truth is distorted by humanizing something that should not be humanized.

 

Remember when God was a she? Bad things happened when She was offended and She needed to be appeased. Whatever people's god myths are, there is a common thread. If you don't understand how things work, and do something against nature, something is going to turn bad. Science is a better way to understand how things work, then reading the stories written before scientific was developed. The more science studies the better our understanding and therefore judgment, can be.

 

However, our perspective is very important. We can have a very narrow perspective, reacting to the world knowing no more about it than our personal experience of it. Or we can expand our point of view by trying to look at things through a god's point of view. We are doing good if we can imagine the results of reactions for the next 3 generations. That is how long a direct memory of an event last. first the child is aware of it, and then becomes a father and may pass it on to his children, and then he is a grandfather and can pass it on again to the third generation. The memory many last much longer, depending on how many people believe it is important to retell the story, or if it is something like an earthquake that sinks an island, it can last as long as there is human memory.

 

What you say is true enough for the super Christian God scenario.

 

You might remember that scripture says that A & E became as Gods.The ancients, it seems, thought we could understand God.

 

It is my belief that our first God was a man and so I think we can have a pretty good idea how God would thing.

 

Who but a man can put words to the will of God.

 

There has always only been man.

 

 

 

 

 

If humans are fallible, then God's perfection would be unknowable to them, no? They/we can know the idea of perfection as an ideal, but in practice we would have no way to recognize it because it never has, nor can it, occur in our lives. I think this is why false idolatry is condemned, i.e. because if we can't ever achieve perfection in practice, we shouldn't pretend to. We can only keep pursuing the ideals of perfection we create without the expectation of ever being able to reach them (i.e. reach perfection), imo.

 

I agree and the U S version of perfection does as well. At least for some.

Even their constitution says that things can go to a more perfect state.

 

You are bang on on idol worship. If we ever think we have found God, we should discard those notions, raise the bar, and look further. The search should never end.

 

Regards

DL

 

 

 

Leibniz has an interesting angle on this. Since the world obviously has evil aspects, we can only find that God's creation is good if there is an adequate excuse for the evil in it. The excuse, Leibniz suggests, would have to be that to create the best possible net world, it would have to contain some evil, and the world God has created has the least amount of evil you could get away with an still maximize the net goodness of the universe.

 

But if we were to understand this assertion rather than just accept it, we would have to be able to see why Jimmy falling and scraping his knee on the way to school at 8:19 A.M. on October 3, 1957, was a necessary element of this world being the best of all possible worlds. Since we can't understand that and any number of other apparently contingent evils, since we have no concept of 'universal compossibility unto the maximal realization of goodness,' the most we could say is that if there were any solution to the problem of evil marring God's creation, it would have to be along the lines of Leibniz's suggestion.

 

I would say, keeping to the script in that link, that since this is the only possible world. it is the best that the conditions at hand can create at any given point in time. Regardless of the time we are looking at.

 

As we start to add what we think would be better condition, Jimmy not falling for instance, we must remember all the conditions that would have had to be different or changed before hand, right back to the beginning including the big bang.

 

Regards

DL

 

 

[mississippichem]

Your observations are correct. That does not take away from the fact that nature is doing the best possible creation out of the DNA and conditions at hand. Defects and extra organs and all.

 

So you have to admit that either God didn't set up the initial conditions, or that the initial conditions God setup are imperfect. Both of which contradict the scripture quoted above:

 

Deut 32;4

 

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

Edited May 11, 2011 by mississippichem

[Marat]

DL: What you say is certainly ontologically correct, since if this were the best of all possible worlds, then everything in it would have had to have been conditioned by some necessary steps to achieve the best possible outcome. The only possibility of alternative causal sequences would be if there were more than one world of maximally good character, which seems unlikely, given the amount of varied detail in the world.

 

But my worry concerns how we would be able to know that this is the best possible world? Jimmy falling and scraping his knee simply looks bad. I can imagine it being connected to some sort of complex causal sequence, which like a Rube Goldberg device intersects with other events so that Jimmy's fall in 1957 winds up preventing thermonuclear war resulting from the Cuban missile crisis, but really don't have any insight into this. I simply have to assume it.

 

But since I have to assume it without being able to understand it, it seems that the premise of the OP, that we have to comprehend the perfection of God's works, is impossible for us to achieve.

[Greatest I am]

So you have to admit that either God didn't set up the initial conditions,

 

Yes.

 

I admit that there is no evidence for God or for his having set up conditions.

 

I believe that notion to be fantasy based since it goes against the laws of nature and physics.

 

 

or that the initial conditions God setup are imperfect. Both of which contradict the scripture quoted above:

 

 

 

Yes again. But again, nature has inadvertently set up the conditions we have here, and for man, they are as perfect as they can be and this perfection will continue to evolve as man does.

 

To me, this perfection started with the big bang.

 

Physicists have pointed out that in the math that explains the universe, if we changed any of the constants by even .00000000001, man would disappear and would not have ever been born.

 

Regards

DL

 

DL: What you say is certainly ontologically correct, since if this were the best of all possible worlds, then everything in it would have had to have been conditioned by some necessary steps to achieve the best possible outcome. The only possibility of alternative causal sequences would be if there were more than one world of maximally good character, which seems unlikely, given the amount of varied detail in the world.

 

But my worry concerns how we would be able to know that this is the best possible world? Jimmy falling and scraping his knee simply looks bad. I can imagine it being connected to some sort of complex causal sequence, which like a Rube Goldberg device intersects with other events so that Jimmy's fall in 1957 winds up preventing thermonuclear war resulting from the Cuban missile crisis, but really don't have any insight into this. I simply have to assume it.

 

But since I have to assume it without being able to understand it, it seems that the premise of the OP, that we have to comprehend the perfection of God's works, is impossible for us to achieve.

 

We do not comprehend all of it at this point in time but mankind has many generations ahead of it and I think that eventually we will know all the workings of nature.

 

You may be right about us never knowing how God thinks and works if it is different that the natural world that we live in.

 

As far as I am concerned, the word God was meant as a moral standard and a set of rules for a good life and that is all that that word was meant to represent. This quote seems to indicate that as A & E, nor us, ever became miracle workers.

 

Gen 3;22

 

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:

 

As this next says, only a ver few of us may ever truly understand it all.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O9cYTZXekA&feature=related

 

Regards

DL

 

 

[John Cuthber]

"Can you know God without understanding or recognizing his perfect works?"

Nobody understands how, for example, a dandelion works.

If that plant is a work of God then nobody meets the criterion of "understanding or recognizing his perfect works"

So nobody knows God.

That's fine by me; I'm an atheist.

It must be troublesome for any theists out there.

Perhaps the simple answer is "No, neither with, nor without, understanding anything, you can't know God because He doesn't exist."

 

Re.

"Physicists have pointed out that in the math that explains the universe, if we changed any of the constants by even .00000000001, man would disappear and would not have ever been born." Douglas Adams came up with a great reply to that.

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it!'"

[Athena]

Why do people who are sure God doesn't exist, enter discussions of God? Why do others discuss God?

[Marat]

I think both sides have a practical interest in converting the other side to its position. The believers want to save souls and the atheists want to live in a society with rational people.

[Edtharan]

Why do people who are sure God doesn't exist, enter discussions of God? Why do others discuss God?

There are many reasons. One is understanding.

 

Although as an atheist I don't believe in any Gods, I do want to understand the people who do believe in them. Partly because I interact with them, and also I am a bit of a history buff and want to understand how these societies worked and what those people were like.

 

You can turn the question around: Why do believers ask why atheists don't believe in gods?

 

It is the same reason: Understanding.

 

Another in fantasising. I might not believe in Hobbits, but does that stop me imagining if they were real, or discussing with people what that might be like? No. I play role playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons", and in that I pretend that Gods (and Hobbits ) are real. And getting back to understanding, understanding why someone believes in God(s) helps me to play a character that does believe in God(s) or create a society that does.

 

So there are actually many valid reasons that an atheist can enter into a discussion about God(s).

[Greatest I am]

Why do people who are sure God doesn't exist, enter discussions of God? Why do others discuss God?

 

Perhaps we see ourselves as our brothers keeper.

 

It is my view that all literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are Religionists.

 

They all hurt their parent religions and everyone else who has a belief. They make us all into laughing stocks and should rethink their position. There is a Godhead but not the God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution. Belief in fantasy is evil.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HKHaClUCw4&feature=PlayList&p=5123864A5243470E&index=0&playnext=1

 

They also do much harm to their own.

 

African witches and Jesus

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlRG9gXriVI&feature=related

 

Jesus Camp 1of 9

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqGhcwwE1s

 

Promoting death to Gays.

 

 

For evil to grow my friends, all good people need do is nothing.

Fight them when you can.

 

Regards

DL

[A Tripolation]

It is my view that all literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are Religionists.

 

They all hurt their parent religions and everyone else who has a belief. They make us all into laughing stocks and should rethink their position. There is a Godhead but not the God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution. Belief in fantasy is evil.

 

You keep saying this. Is it not clear that your religion, whatever that is, is no more rational than any other religion? They are ALL illogical and fantastical. You can never rationalize them. There can be no sensible religion.