Incredible mindfuck that needs to be deciphered...

So I just thought this up...

" The concept of an omniscient, omnipotent god is impossible.

If god is omnipotent, and omniscient than god must be infinitely good.

To be infinitely good is to be free of evil. But without evil, how can one measure good?

Good is only good because we have evil to compare it to. Without the capability of that comparison, all actions are neither good nor bad. They are simply actions.

But if God is not capable of being infinitely good, than god is not all capable. Which means that god is flawed."


It seems to me that the concept of a perfect god is really paradoxical. One could never be all knowing or all capable.


I feel that I'm missing something as I thought this up at 4 AM.


Help?

on the omnipotence question, Is God capable of creating an incredibly heavy rock - one that is so heavy that even he can't lift it?

and,

Is there a "meanest" person in Heaven?

When I was in college, my philosophy professor was a well know pot head around campus.

We suspected that he mixed it with the cherry tobacco that he smoked in his pipe in class.

The most simple things are amazing to me. I mean really simply shit. Like the fact that if the sun rises in the east it must set in the west and not again in the east. I'm blown away by the concept of "cause and effect".

But when I come down from the high I realize I was just acting like a moron.

Epicurus 341-270 B.C.] Greek philosopher

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

It even has an official name: the Theological Problem of Evil.

If God is all-powerful, and all-knowing, then how does evil exist?

Theologians have been struggling with this conundrum for as long as there have been theologians.

And you are right: the very concept of God is paradoxical. God is a mystery. That is something the fundies can't grasp, since they insist on seeing everything in black and white.

everything just IS. The only real "evil" is that created by humans (abuse, war, sadism, etc.). There is nothing "evil" in nature. Only human activities resulting from warped minds ("unnatural" behavior) can be considered "evil."

It seems that we must attack this from one of two angles.


1. If we want to think that God exists within the perceptions of humanity, than god is either not perfect, or does not exist. In that case, we should not even bother worshiping God because God is flawed.

2. If God exists outside of human perception, we will never be able to communicate with God and therefore questioning Gods existence or Gods capabilities is pointless and should be abandoned.

3. God is also a construct of humans. Whatever you want "God" to be, it is.

and, yes, you are right that "good" has no point if there is no evil.

Quakers, Buddhists, and some others get around this by trying not to talk of good and evil, which are value judgments, but talk of some variations of a duality that is necessary for change.

We love to assign the "evil" tag to villains, and whether it be Madoff or Hitler or the Green River Killer, we parade them out as inhuman demons destroying the fabric of our peaceful civilization. The truth is, though, that we live in a universe of violence-- everything living thing on the planet lives on the death of others. Galaxies crash into each other and explode. Violence is the norm, and the amazing thing about peaceful civilization is that we are able to conceive of it at all and are able to impose our own order.

It's in this universe of violence that God exists, and the question is whether this God is a violent one of the universe, or a peaceful one answering the universe. Either way, this God will be flawed from our tiny perspective.

Your first statement is unprovable.

Then you have a conditional statement where you don't prove that the condition exists or that the result is necessary.

Then you create a subjective definition of good and evil and try to spin them into your other speculations.

Then you pretend that you have laid the foundation for a profound conclusion.

Let me help you out a little.

God is what you believe he is. The attributes of god are whatever you want them to be. Any paradox that arises is due to YOUR accident of giving god the wrong attributes. That is a result of trying to define fictional characters.

If you are not happy with the paradoxical god, make up one that suits your needs a little better.

because the human mind can conceive of anything. And if you are talking strictly of concepts based upon what you understand as reality (including the presence of evil), then some can appear impossible. But the thing is, concepts of anything don't deal with reality. Reality is experience. Concepts come into play only when we try to interpret an experience we have had.

But when it comes to experiencing God--that is beyond concepts of duality, way beyond that. Gone. Gone gone. Gone beyond gone. Gone to Buddha Nature. So be it. (Rough translation of the last few lines of the Heart Sutra.)

For humans, suffering is bad. It is painful and harmful. God could have created a universe where there was no suffering and everything was perfect and there was no suffering. If God works outside of human understanding, than why do we even bother to seek out or worship god at all? God has made it impossible for us to understand God and therefore God has purposely designed us to be ignorant and unintelligent.

Like a previous poster said, why didn't god create something of equal perfection?

the Buddha said it is desire. Suffering, like everything in this reality, is subjective. And like everything in this reality, it is illusion. God created the universe so that God could realize God. And out of what is everything made? God! This is a grand play with each being an actor on the stage of life. As for God making it impossible for us to understand God--sorry, but I disagree--understanding is very simple, not impossible. But it comes outside the usual way of looking at things, and comes from direct experience. God is That in which we live, move and have our being. As the poet Kabir said, "I laugh when I hear the fish complain that he is thirsty."

If suffering comes from desire, than our free will is the cause of our suffering. In that case, God shouldn't have given us free will. And in that case, it is still Gods fault that we suffer.

Either you must admit that God is not all knowing and all capable, or you have to admit that God is malevolent. Or you can just claim that there is no evidence to suggest that God exists.

There is really no point in trying to make God out to be some sort of romantic character. The universe is clear evidence that God has created mass destruction and, to living conscious bodies, great suffering.

and not mine. You are where you are, you see what you see. Interesting that you call mine bullshit when I don't do the same about yours. I hope that your path brings you peace.

:toast:

Why do you believe this?

and just for fun...

...but I've always favored this one:

otherwise it's just a bunch of confusing craziness.

My teacher said, "Some people believe in evolution. Thats where we people all evolved from lower animal life."
I thought, "Finally something that makes sense." I never changed my mind.

That was 73 years ago. She probably would have been fired if the powers that be had known.

I do not see how this follows.

If you allow human biases to take effect, along the lines of 'if he see's all human suffering he must feel compassion', I see how you might draw that conclusion.

However, that's cramming God into a might tiny little box. I think we are very arrogant to assume we can derive ANY information about the limits of Gods abilities at this stage of our knowledge of the universe. (Including whether or not we can even know if there IS a God in the first place, but that's another discussion.)

In the grand scheme of things, it's likely we humans are a minor part of the action in this universe. A God who knows all within this universe has got a lot more on his mind that just we few slightly poetic monkeys. We have no clue what true good and evil might be, much less what the universal balance of those might be.

And even if we did, that still doesn't require that God be concerned about it. Good/evil might be pretty irrelevant to the universe as a whole.

Mankind needs to get over this ego thing that makes us think we're important in the overall scheme of things. Odds are we aren't, and we could disappear tomorrow and the universe would hardly notice. As a result, we must do our homework. We must learn of this universe. We must learn to secure our survival. And we must realize that all we know, of religion and God and science at this point is most likely childishly wrong.

In other words, we've got to get over ourselves.