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Do you believe in God?
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Post by
Magician22773
what if he was born 3,000 years ago instead of today.
Now that is a completely different question. It is still hypothetical, but it is at least "plausible".
As for me, if I were alive during the Old Testament times, I would hope that I would have acted as Abraham did, which means, yes, I would have jumped at His command.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I think what a lot of the hypotheticals in this kind of debate don't maybe convey, is that the belief in god for someone in an organized religion that has a doctrine is a belief no only in that he exists, but what the nature of God is, and so to ask what would you do if god were X is hard to translate directly into a test of belief, since part of that belief is that god isn't X at all.
A similar question might be "What if rape was good (in and of itself)- would you do it?" It's something that's impossible to answer, because the nature of what rape is makes it impossible to reconcile the idea of it as something that COULD be good. If it was something that was good, then it could not be rape as we understand the concept, because there is something inherently evil about rape. A reasonable person would have a hard time giving a yes or no answer to that question, because they would know that neither answer is appropriate because the question doesn't really make sense in the context of what rape is.
Another way to look at these hypotheticals would be if I asked you a question like this:
"Would you let someone inject you with a fatal disease so that you would die."
Most people would expect that the knee-jerk reaction would be "No- why would I do that?"
If the question was, "Would you let someone give you a disease that would kill you, but in doing so it would create an antibody that would save millions from suffering the same fate." The answer might be quite different.
Because of the nature of what they believe God to be, he cannot make an unreasonable or evil demand. He can only make a demand that they, because of their limited perspective or information, might not immediately see the good or reason behind without an explanation. But they follow it because part of their faith is that god does possess the wisdom that his judgement is always correct, then it is impossible for him to make an incorrect judgement, or tell them to do something that seems destructive unless it was for a greater good. A secular equivalent might be something in line with butterfly effect theory. Their belief is that god knows enough to be able to tell what every flap of a butterfly wing, every dropping eyelash, every cloud across the sun, is going to lead to immediately, and 1000 chain reactions down the line, and so any specific interventions he makes are going to take all of those results into account.
Also, the belief that there are rewards in the afterlife make any death or suffering in life less of an ultimate consequence, and more of a disciplinary measure or a transition. When a good parent punishes a child, their purpose in doing so- despite the fact that in the short term it is distressing to the child- is that they know that the long term effects on the child's life, if they don't learn the proper lessons now- will be much much worse, and so they hurt them (in the non-physical sense) in order to save them from their poor decision making. If you believe that life is only the childhood of your whole existence, then any suffering now that teaches you how not to ruin an eternal life afterwards is for your own good- it's like parental discipline. For someone who is not religious, if life is all there is then suffering that makes life horrible, or ends life, is to inflict the worst things possible on a person. The idea that most religions push is that no matter the suffering here, it's going to be minor when put into perspective of the kind of suffering it pushes people to avoid, and so is not in and of itself something evil.
So if a hypothetical question is "What if God told you to jump off a bridge," the answer will be in the context of A) It will be for a good reason, even if I can't see it, and B) even if I die following his command, it's not really anything major, because it's a small incident in my overall existence that will continue far after I die.
The next logical question would of course be, "If he is omnipotent, couldn't he achieve all of the best ends with no suffering at all?" The answer to that would be that he could, but there is a reason he does not and because of the nature of what they believe god to be, they do not need to know what that reason is to accept that it must be valid based on who made the decision.
To clarify, I'm not a religious person. But I have a number of family members who are very religious, and in my experience this is the best context to understand what and why they follow their religion the way that they do.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##ElhonnaDS##DELIM##
Post by
Gone
I think what a lot of the hypotheticals in this kind of debate don't maybe convey, is that the belief in god for someone in an organized religion that has a doctrine is a belief no only in that he exists, but what the nature of God is, and so to ask what would you do if god were X is hard to translate directly into a test of belief, since part of that belief is that god isn't X at all.
A similar question might be "What if rape was good (in and of itself)- would you do it?" It's something that's impossible to answer, because the nature of what rape is make it impossible to reconcile the idea of it as something that COULD be good. If it was something that was good, then it could not be rape as we understand the concept, because there is something inherently evil about rape. A reasonable person would have a hard time giving a yes or no answer to that question, because they would know that neither answer is appropriate because the question doesn't really make sense in the context of what rape is.
I realize this, I just didn't think the question was out of the realm of conceivable possibility given the nature of God. The only thing restricting it was the verse Magician listed where He said He wouldn't be taking as active a role in the world until His second coming.
Which to me makes the problem more a question of time rather than it being out of God's nature to make such a command.
It's not so much like saying "what if rape were good" as it is saying "what if you were born into a society where rape was acceptable. Viking culture for example." It's impossible for us to imagine rape being good because of what it is. But it's easily conceivable to imagine what it would be like to live in a culture where it were acceptable. In this same line of thought I didn't think it was impossible to imagine living in another time where God did command such tests of faith of people.
Not that I'm pressing the issue on MyTie anymore, I just wanted to respond to this and clarify.
Post by
asakawa
But some people do do things that I consider immoral (Westboro) and sometimes that are also illegal (suicide bombings) in the name of their religion even if these actions are not in line with the mainstream view of those religions. So, I suppose that the fear from a secular point of view is that if someone receives their morality from an outside source then that can misfire in various ways. My personal fear is of one party (a religious authority of one sort or another) using their influence to get others to do immoral actions in the name of religion. Another example of a "misfire" might be someone with strong political views, cherry picking morality from a religious text to allow them to carry out an action as a martyr.
The claim of divinity is powerful and the request is not always something as extreme as killing a son, jumping off a bridge or detonating a bomb. When JFK was running for election, I hear, people were worried that a Catholic president would be a puppet for the Vatican. If the man truly felt that the Pope was his god's representative on earth with all the powers of infallibility then how could he refuse a request?
Regarding the second coming idea, this is often used by cult leaders who claim to be that second coming and can therefore command people with the authority of a god.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Oh, and that's completely reasonable too. No one who doesn't believe that particular religion is correct has any reason to have any faith in the idea that the teachings are right because they're from God. There's no way to convince someone who isn't a member that there is anything logical about your beliefs, just like it's hard for you to convince someone of faith that there is a logical argument against their because any logical argument that doesn't accept the "God is infallible" tenet as fact doesn't matter to them because it's based in something untrue, from their perspective.
Post by
Eccentrica
what if he was born 3,000 years ago instead of today.
Now that is a completely different question. It is still hypothetical, but it is at least "plausible".
As for me, if I were alive during the Old Testament times, I would hope that I would have acted as Abraham did, which means, yes, I would have jumped at His command.
One thing I don't get is why always the 'His'. Where does it explicitly say in the Bible that God announces, "By the way, I am male".
Post by
Gone
what if he was born 3,000 years ago instead of today.
Now that is a completely different question. It is still hypothetical, but it is at least "plausible".
As for me, if I were alive during the Old Testament times, I would hope that I would have acted as Abraham did, which means, yes, I would have jumped at His command.
One thing I don't get is why always the 'His'. Where does it explicitly say in the Bible that God announces, "By the way, I am male".
Personally I think God is beyond things like gender. When I think of God I think of Jesus, who is God in human form according to the Christian faith.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Gone
To me it's a simple answer, if God was commanding me to do anything, and yes it really was God, I wasn't suffering a break from reality, I would do it without a second thought.
That's disturbing, to say the least.
No, it's more of you being closed minded. If you actually believed in an omnipotent God who controls the universe and an afterlife and all that, you would do the same thing, and so would any logical person. You might say that you wouldn't, but I don't believe it. This entire thread you have based every scenario from the perspective of somebody who does not believe in God, your current mindset. If you want to have an open minded debate you need to look past that, and imagine your reaction if you had the mindset of a believer, something you obviously have a problem with.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Gone
No, I wouldn't, because I'm not insane or incapable of forming my own opinions on right and wrong.
Like I said, I don't believe you. You're only so comfortable saying that because you
don't
believe in a God. If one were in front of you, you would do what He/She/It said, you would have to be an idiot not to.
And btw, making a comment like that is saying, by implication, that me, and Magician, and anybody else who said they would jump if God told them to, is "insane and incapable of forming their own opinions", and is fairly obnoxious.
I'd tell him to go eff himself and would not do it.
Sure you would. Plenty of people in the Bible did that and it didn't end well for them. If you believe in God, and he's right there in front of you, and you still choose to do something like that, there's no courage in it, just stupidity.
Like I said, you're only so comfortable saying something so foolish because it's a hypothetical you don't believe in and will never come to pass.
Post by
asakawa
I'm loath to leap to Sold's defence because I agree that calling people "insane" is not a good way for adults to conduct a calm and friendly discussion. However, I feel similarly in that if I were faced with an awesome power of whatever kind then I would not be willing to give up my own sense of morality or critical thinking due to demonstrations of god-hood. Now, if they're omnipotent then I might not have any will in the matter at all but that would be force not request. I would be interested to hear why they were asking something of me when they were omnipotent though and why my worship of them was so important. Also, why they created someone who didn't believe in them ^_^
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Monday
I would say no, and tell him to go eff himself.
I find that a lot of people are really courageous when they brag.
There's a point where a label, like insanity, is an actual non-insult description for someone, doesn't matter if one takes it as an insult or not. As in, I could say you're insane and not be insulting you, instead, I'm just stating a fact. I think what you said in that post was screwed up the to extreme, that you would so blindly follow the words of another, resulting in there being no lines you would not cross, if said person commanded you to do so, just because they said so.
But this wasn't a person, in the example. It was
God
. Not even close to the same thing.
Than it wouldn't be done willingly, he would be forcing me to do it.
You
could
refuse. Something bad might happen, but you could still do it. He's not forcing you to do anything.
No, because nobody tells me to do something that doesn't have an obvious reason for doing without giving me a good reason to do it. Especially not something like that.
What is a "good reason" then?
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Monday
god no different from a person, he's just super powerful and smart.
I think that's where our philosophies differ. To me, God is above humanity as humanity is above the microorganisms that live in our bodies. He isn't just "smart." He has all knowledge. He knows everything that can be known, as He created it all.
He isn't just "super powerful;" He is omnipotent. He has all power. He could command our sun to stop shining and it would. He could command the tornado to cease its spinning, and it would. He could command the earth to fulfill itself and to return us all to Him... but what would the point? We're here to learn of Him and His grand designs, and to act our part in fulfilling them.
"Because I said so" is certainly not a good reason.
Mmm... but wouldn't an omniscient and omnipotent being have reasons for everything they do? God has never once asked someone to do something because He said so. There has always been an underlying reason, and always for our good.
Post by
MyTie
One thing I don't get is why always the 'His'. Where does it explicitly say in the Bible that God announces, "By the way, I am male".
Among several others:
Galatians 4:4-7
But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying out, "Abba, Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Isaiah 54:5
"For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.
1 Cor 11:7
For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.
I just want to note how
trendy
it is to question the sex of the Biblical God, despite hundreds of Biblical references otherwise.
Post by
MyTie
I don't understand what people are trying to accomplish by being upset in this thread. It doesn't hurt anyone if someone believes differently than you. I mean, if this were abortion, or homosexual marriage, or gun rights, or whatever, yeah, get mad, but this is religion. Who cares if someone does/doesn't believe in God? You aren't going to beat it in/out of their head.
Post by
Jubilee
I can't speak for everyone, but I assume it's mostly because religion tends to be the root cause of a lot of those things for people. Religion is a very pivotal issue to a great many people in the world and consequently has very real ramifications on how the world is run and how people interact on even a global scale. To view it merely as a personal opinion that doesn't affect anyone else is to do the role of belief in the world disservice.
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