Re: a large philosophical hole in christianity

[brekfustuvluzerz]

i was taught growing up in church that god was the completion of all of your wants and desires. once you get to heaven, all of your love for money, sex, power, etc. melted away in the rush of joy you felt being in the presence of god. heres the problem i discovered when i was in my late teens that began me questioning my religion.

my ultimate dream in life would be to sail the ocean with my wife and children on a 30 ft catamaran sail boat. if one day a man approached me and offered me 50 million dollars to learn to sail and navigate the ocean, buy a really nice boat and leave my life, never to return, i would not hesitate for a moment. now christianity teaches that as much as i would love to do that, once in the presence of god, i would forget about all of that and realize that what i wanted all along was to experience ultimate joy and love which the whole boat thing was merely the best means to that end that i can imagine for myself.

are you with me so far?

so if god is that great, how could lucifer, gods number one guy, spend a negative eternity (forever in the opposite direction) with this great god, and one day decide to leave him and make his own way? only two possibilities seem possible to me.

1.) god is not as great as christianity claims. maybe he sucks. maybe hes a dictator with unhappy subjects. or,

2.) god created the concept of evil, and chose lucifer, his favorite, to become the antagonist. then he created a whole universe with inhabitants given free will to choose which master they will serve.

and thats when i said f*** it! what do you guys think of this? i came up with it on my own, but im sure something like this has been brought up before. if anyone knows where, let me know. i would be interested to read about it.

[wheels5894]

What you say is most interesting. If our desires and so on will strip away as we gaze on and worship the great god, are we still ourselves? Are we not a combination of various desires, ideas and so on which people recognise as us. Look at a person you know when they get a dementia or a stroke and no longer think like they did. We even say they are not the same person. So, the ultimate removal of the things thatn make us up would mean we were really not there in any normal sense. This is rather like the Hindu idea of nirvana.

Of course, one could ask why god would want to be worshiped anyway. I suppose we have devised him in the image of a king, a tribal leader perhaps, for whom one show respect and earn trust. However one looks at it, god is a very man-made (yes it was men only in those days) creation. The biblical texts can be seen as a seeking after explanation and so I think Lucifer was invented to explain the evil people found in the world, probably without thinking quite hard enough about how the theology might work. It is either that or there is some veiled form of more than one god. The creation narrative seems to be a reworking of the the stories of Ahura Mazda the head of the Babylonian pantheon so perhaps Lucifer is a reflection of another Babylonian god. It may be the quite close to the truth.

[karadan]

Well, what i'd like to know is if the sexually repressed reverands who fiddled with little boys gave any thought as to what would happen to them in the afterlife, or if they just didn't care because their perverted urges were ultimately stronger than their religious convictions.
It always makes me laugh when you hear other christians just palm it off by saying 'well, they obviously weren't christian in the first place'.. Yeah, way to go... Divert the blame and stick your head back in the sand....

[nikkixsugar]

i was taught growing up in church that god was the completion of all of your wants and desires. once you get to heaven, all of your love for money, sex, power, etc. melted away in the rush of joy you felt being in the presence of god. heres the problem i discovered when i was in my late teens that began me questioning my religion.

my ultimate dream in life would be to sail the ocean with my wife and children on a 30 ft catamaran sail boat. if one day a man approached me and offered me 50 million dollars to learn to sail and navigate the ocean, buy a really nice boat and leave my life, never to return, i would not hesitate for a moment. now christianity teaches that as much as i would love to do that, once in the presence of god, i would forget about all of that and realize that what i wanted all along was to experience ultimate joy and love which the whole boat thing was merely the best means to that end that i can imagine for myself.

are you with me so far?

so if god is that great, how could lucifer, gods number one guy, spend a negative eternity (forever in the opposite direction) with this great god, and one day decide to leave him and make his own way? only two possibilities seem possible to me.

1.) god is not as great as christianity claims. maybe he sucks. maybe hes a dictator with unhappy subjects. or,

2.) god created the concept of evil, and chose lucifer, his favorite, to become the antagonist. then he created a whole universe with inhabitants given free will to choose which master they will serve.

and thats when i said f*** it! what do you guys think of this? i came up with it on my own, but im sure something like this has been brought up before. if anyone knows where, let me know. i would be interested to read about it.

hmm, muy interesante. It's a good thought/hypothesis.

[Sophus]

This reminds me of a question I've heard being asked toward Christians before.

If you could have paradise without Jesus/God, would you be satisfied?

The idea of heaven is preferred by theists much more than the idea of God himself.

[Strider]

it sounds like you're asking how god could be all good and still allow evil, but you seem to want to emphasize your place in the larger scheme of things. if i've understood that much then you might be interested in reading about the "problem of evil" (as it is often called in philosophy classes). a theist response to this is called a "theodicy".

personally, i don't really believe that meeting god would be like that. there are many Christians who seem to believe in an immaterial afterlife (where the disembodied souls of "the righteous" spend eternity enjoying an abstract blissfulness known as "worship") but i don't buy that. for one thing, Jesus's idea of the afterlife seems at least as material as spiritual and also very similar, in many ways, to life on earth. so i think that for you, "meeting god" might be like sailing. maybe heaven will have a spacious ocean where you will spend eternity "catamaraning" with your family...

[brekfustuvluzerz]

im not asking how god could be all good and still allow evil as i already know this answer: he cant. what i am asking is two-fold.
1.) if all feelings of joy and all desires of something more are put into me by god in order to lead me to him (which is what i was taught by the church for years), then why wasnt god the answer to lucifer's desires unless
2.) god created the possibility of evil ( since god is the only truly creative force in the universe, as i was also taught) and gave his creation to lucifer and caused him to want to jump ship(along with 1/3 of all the angels) or
3.) god isnt as fun of a guy as christians think?

its always been interesting to me, even as a christian, how the personality of god as imagined by modern christians so differs from what is in their bible.

also,i find it interesting that you have based your belief in what heaven is like for three reasons:

1.)its interesting that you believe in such a place,

2.) its more interesting that you have chosen to believe this based on what the bible claims jesus said, and

3.) its interesting how self serving your idea is.

[Wechtlein Uns]

Chances are God didn't really exist in the first place. Give the guy a break. I mean, it's not like he can repend and set things straight, y'know, due to the fact that he doesn't exist.  

[Strider]

okay, i can see that i misunderstood you before. you weren't talking about the problem of evil or theodicies; my apologies.

and now that i see your objection to christian belief more clearly, i think it is a very good one. many christians DO claim that god put all joy and all desires into people explicitly in order to lead us to god. without granting the entirety of that premise (since i am not sure i ever really understand why god does what god does), let me engage your question as you have restated it:

1) "god created the possibility of evil," by which you mean that god created humans and angels to do evil, or 2) "god is not as fun of a guy as christians think," by which you mean that god, in godself, is evil (i am very willing to believe that god isn't as fun as many christians believe god to be; i am also very willing to believe that he is more capable of forgiveness than many christians believe. in fact, i'm not at all sure about what exactly god is like.)

i think the first possibility is the right one; i even think you phrased it very well. god DID create the possibility of evil. god did so right from the very beginning, because god made the world good. every good thing has the possibility of evil in it, by definition. for example, god created work as a good thing, in Genesis 2:19--before evil has entered the story. but work can become evil if it becomes oppressive and exploitative (as in slavery), or if it swallows up all of someone's time (as in someone who lives for their job to the exclusion of family and friendships, etc).

but does that mean that god created evil? no--as you stated, god created the possibility of evil. god created good things (a whole world full of them) and then created human beings and gave us all the good things, to care for, to order, and to prosper as we would. unfortunately, we humans chose (and choose) to do evil all the time, and have marred or destroyed much that was good. we tell ourselves that we are as good as we can be expected to be, considering all the temptations to evil that we resist; but the truth is that none of us is as good as we were all created to be--not even those of us who profess to be followers of Jesus.

[brekfustuvluzerz]

good points guys.

[wheels5894]

Whilst I can agree with your points about god leaving the possibility of evil, Strider, I'm not sure that this leads to a god of any great morals. I think it depends on how one understands god. I think the mainstream understanding of god, as omniscient, omnipotent and eternal is the right starting point.

Now if god creates the world in such a way that the creature could do nothing by worship and adore him it would not be a good world since the creature would not have free will and therefore could not do good things, (or bad things or course.) Giving people free will gives them the chance to prove themselves as worthy of life after death and so on. The snag comes in the nature of god. If god is eternal, that is outside time, and omniscient, then he can see the end of time in the same sweep as the beginning as well as everything in between. Doing so, he could see how the fate of the world and of people would work out and could see the great evils that were on the way.  So whilst we might want to say the people deliberately chose evil as against good, we would have to include god as part of the evil if he were knowing about dreadful things and yet did nothing to 'nudge' events to help. Failing to help is the same as causing the evil if you are a powerful god who could do something.

As far as teh revolt of angels and of Lucifer is concerned, perhaps we have here something of the problem personified. Perhaps we have Lucifer and co. seeing where god's inactivity was going and the evil it would cause and wanted to prevent it. I mean, even early on, when the Israelites were killing everything in site as they moved into the Promised Land one  must ask if there was not a better way to arrange things than have one group kill another over the ownership of land. That sort of solution is that of a clan chief not a loving god. maybe it is a shame that things didn't work out better and god made to do a bit more practical loving in the world!

[Strider]

hmm... i've heard a few versions of the myth of Lucifer's fall, but i can't find one anywhere in my bible right now.

wheels5894, you have a good point: i don't think i've given any hard evidence in this thread that god, according to the bible, is really good (or as you more eloquently phrase it, "a god of any great morals"). So let's talk about the conquest of Canaan, as carried out by god and instructed through Moses. you said,

When the Israelites were killing everything in sight as they moved into the Promised Land one must ask if there was not a better way to arrange things than have one group kill another over the ownership of land. That sort of solution is that of a clan chief not a loving god.

and i think you're partly right: god, in order to be moral in any way that we can understand, would need sufficient and demonstrable reasons for ordering the conquest of one land by an alien people group. in fact i believe these reasons are given in the biblical text.

Deuteronomy 12 is one place where Moses describes how and why the conquest is supposed to go down. the first thing i noticed when i read this passage is that the main point of the conquest was clearly religious in character; the most abrasive and violent language is reserved for the pagan altars, shrines, and idols, which the Israelites are supposed to "break down," "burn," "hew," and "blot out". perhaps surprisingly then, the following is the language used for the Canaanites: "the nations whom you are about to dispossess" (NRSV). other verses say drive out of the land rather than dispossess, but it comes to the same thing: the Canaanites were just supposed to leave. if this reading is correct, god was instructing the dispossession of the Canaanites and not their merciless annihilation. (also: in verses 29-31 the Israelites are: 1) instructed to dispossess (not kill) the Canaanites; 2) warned not to imitate the Canaanite religion; and 3) told that the Canaanites practiced child sacrifice as part of their religion, which we can all agree is despicable and immoral).

so an important question arises: "does the rest of the biblical record support this reading of the text?" in fact, three times the Israelites are instructed to "drive out" or "dispossess" the Canaanites for every time they are instructed to "blot them out" or "annihilate" them. to me, that shows that the Israelites were supposed to drive out the Canaanites (who we have just learned practiced religious child sacrifice). so what about that 25% where the Israelites are commanded to kill the Canaanites? those, i suggest, are the Canaanites who resist the invasion, the ones who stay and fight to protect their false gods and their immoral religion; the ones whom god instructed them to kill in order that the Israelites could practice pure and holy worship in the land god had given to them.

[wheels5894]

Well, you may be right about the 'driving them out' in terms of the texts but it doesn't really help as much as it seems. An omniscient god would have know what the Israelites would  and would have made doubly sure that the instructions were watertight. Clearly there were some problems.

Then again, the Israelites were only given the job of taking over Canaan because god had decided to adopt them - in a stroke making any other nation false and thus evil. Of course, this is a repeating pattern as first Abraham and Lot settle the land, then later Joshua and the Israelites repeat the process and then, finally, people come from Babylon for a 3rd go. In each case there seems to be chucking out / killing to be done to establish the place.

There is a lot to this but it is certainly not that simple.

[Strider]

indeed, it is not surprising that many times the people of god act like normal human beings--people who sin, who fall short of perfection, who disobey god, who hate and kill and destroy and blaspheme against the fingerprints and image of god in the world. that is the case in the world today and (according to the bible) has been the case since the beginning of history. what makes a difference is whether the whole revelation of god (a.k.a. the word of god) is divine (or merely human); and whether that divine revelation is good news (or bad news).

i believe that even in the conquest stories, divine (not from human origins) good news can be found. if it was normal at the time for tribes to kill each other, then a god who says "drive out your enemies" is good. if it is normal for humans to quarrel over religion, then a god who says "this is true worship and that is not" is good. if it was normal for kings to tax their subjects harshly, lead men to war, and build harems of women, then a god who says "you will be my people and i will be your god" is good.

in the case of the books of the bible we have been considering (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua included), it might be worth considering the fact that they were very likely written during the period of the Babylonian captivity (which wheels5894 referred to in the previous post). thus they should not be read historically in the sense of being the original records of god's instructions for the conquest, but rather in the sense that scribes were looking back on the traditions of what had happened and writing those stories to emphasize theological points which would be relevant to their contemporaries (e.g. exiled Israelites were probably losing some of the purity of their religion, so scribes at that time probably wrote that god commanded Joshua to "utterly destroy" the Canaanite idols and altars, thereby emphasizing the need for purity and holiness in worship.) this explains why the polemic of conquest instructions is always--100% of the time--against Canaanite religion and not against Canaanite ethnicity.

[wheels5894]

i believe that even in the conquest stories, divine (not from human origins) good news can be found. if it was normal at the time for tribes to kill each other, then a god who says "drive out your enemies" is good. if it is normal for humans to quarrel over religion, then a god who says "this is true worship and that is not" is good. if it was normal for kings to tax their subjects harshly, lead men to war, and build harems of women, then a god who says "you will be my people and i will be your god" is good.

So, Strider, are you saying that the standards of god should be judged by the standards of men in their different stages of history? Are you arguing that god, though he didn't support murder, was happy enough to see some as it showed progress. If so, then the bible is a set of moving targets that are only applicable in earlier times. I mean, there is support for slavery in the text of the Torah yet, somehow, Chrisitians manage to ignore it as it is no longer thought to be right even though it claims to be god's word.

in the case of the books of the bible we have been considering (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua included), it might be worth considering the fact that they were very likely written during the period of the Babylonian captivity (which wheels5894 referred to in the previous post). thus they should not be read historically in the sense of being the original records of god's instructions for the conquest, but rather in the sense that scribes were looking back on the traditions of what had happened and writing those stories to emphasize theological points which would be relevant to their contemporaries (e.g. exiled Israelites were probably losing some of the purity of their religion, so scribes at that time probably wrote that god commanded Joshua to "utterly destroy" the Canaanite idols and altars, thereby emphasizing the need for purity and holiness in worship.) this explains why the polemic of conquest instructions is always--100% of the time--against Canaanite religion and not against Canaanite ethnicity.

Oh, right, I get it now. The Torah was written in Babylon by men and not by men claiming to write the word of a god. These texts are human are they? If we see it like that we certainly sort out some of the problems in the texts and can see them as a slowly developing ethic. In that case we no longer have to worry about a god and out problems are solved.