A fascinating essay. When I get some time, I will responding much more fully. But a quick couple of quick comments for now:
It seems to me like the question of whether God exists, and the question of whether you like the attributes that he has said to have, are different questions. So I assume that we are agreeing that you’re not liking the attributes of God has nothing to do with whether he exists.
There are a couple of spots where I am wondering if you fully thought through what you said. For instance at one point you said that it would be impossible for God to directly rule. That left me kind of scratching my head. Because if you accept the idea of God as the omniscient creator of the entire universe, it would obviously be trivial for him to rule directly.
Given that I don’t actually believe in God, it is a bit difficult for me to write from a perspective that assumes he does exist, so I apologize for any misunderstandings that causes in my writing. For context, when I think of God, I imagine him similar to how I would imagine Zeus or Ra or any other polytheistic creator god. I look forward to the rest of your thoughts.
Yeah, and I’ll definitely get to them. I’m a little busy this weekend but I’ll definitely get to them. It amuses me from time to time when people say something like you know God couldn’t have made a virgin birth. And I’m like he created the entire universe from nothing and you would think it was difficult for him to put a baby, inside of mother?
Yeah, I am having fun. We’re working a conference and so we’re busy 24 seven.
I’m wondering if my next post shouldn’t be something on the order of the nature of God. Because there’s several issues in your last post that indicate that you don’t understand the Christian conception of who God is, and so you have some interesting category errors. And so for example, one doctrine is that God is the owner of everything. Our stuff and our lives. And so when it comes to something like murder or something like theft if a human being steal something from another human being the ultimate crime is that they have stolen it from God. That God has given that thing to one person and another person has taken it away.and so murder would be the same thing. That God has given life and that you have unjustly taken it away.
That is very interesting. I’ll certainly admit there’s a lot of Christian concepts that I don’t fully understand - the idea of the Trinity being one of them. I’ve had them explained to me before, but they often just don’t make a lot of sense to me. About God owning everything, that too seems like an unhelpful idea for the world because (as far as I can tell) it seems to imply we shouldn’t really care about the emotional damage that our actions can have on other people, but instead we should only care about the opinion of God. I’d still file that under the problematic realm, personally. To your prior point, yes, I don’t suggest my feelings about this have any relevance to the question of whether God exists, but I do suggest it has relevance to how we should treat our fellow people on Earth regardless of his possible existence.
I understand. I think these conversations tend to be a lot more productive if we start by laying the groundwork so that everybody understands what everybody’s talking about. So if one doesn’t understand the theory that God owns everything then one can’t really react to it in an intelligent and helpful way. Either direction whether you agree or disagree it’s still important to understand what the theory is.
So like going back to the virgin thing, the person who says you know the virgin is impossible obviously is reflecting the fact that they don’t understand what the theory is. They don’t understand that what’s being proposed as a creator God who created the whole universe from nothing.
Yeah I totally agree with that and I’d be very interested to hear more about it. Even from my perspective, just based on everything that’s in the Old Testament stories, I don’t get how he wouldn’t be able to make the virgin birth happen. Seems like he can do whatever he wants lol
Great essay. Yes, religion has definetily proven to be great fiction. And I believe in my dog.😉
A fascinating essay. When I get some time, I will responding much more fully. But a quick couple of quick comments for now:
It seems to me like the question of whether God exists, and the question of whether you like the attributes that he has said to have, are different questions. So I assume that we are agreeing that you’re not liking the attributes of God has nothing to do with whether he exists.
There are a couple of spots where I am wondering if you fully thought through what you said. For instance at one point you said that it would be impossible for God to directly rule. That left me kind of scratching my head. Because if you accept the idea of God as the omniscient creator of the entire universe, it would obviously be trivial for him to rule directly.
Given that I don’t actually believe in God, it is a bit difficult for me to write from a perspective that assumes he does exist, so I apologize for any misunderstandings that causes in my writing. For context, when I think of God, I imagine him similar to how I would imagine Zeus or Ra or any other polytheistic creator god. I look forward to the rest of your thoughts.
Yeah, and I’ll definitely get to them. I’m a little busy this weekend but I’ll definitely get to them. It amuses me from time to time when people say something like you know God couldn’t have made a virgin birth. And I’m like he created the entire universe from nothing and you would think it was difficult for him to put a baby, inside of mother?
Lol yeah. Anyway, no rush. Enjoy your weekend.
Yeah, I am having fun. We’re working a conference and so we’re busy 24 seven.
I’m wondering if my next post shouldn’t be something on the order of the nature of God. Because there’s several issues in your last post that indicate that you don’t understand the Christian conception of who God is, and so you have some interesting category errors. And so for example, one doctrine is that God is the owner of everything. Our stuff and our lives. And so when it comes to something like murder or something like theft if a human being steal something from another human being the ultimate crime is that they have stolen it from God. That God has given that thing to one person and another person has taken it away.and so murder would be the same thing. That God has given life and that you have unjustly taken it away.
That is very interesting. I’ll certainly admit there’s a lot of Christian concepts that I don’t fully understand - the idea of the Trinity being one of them. I’ve had them explained to me before, but they often just don’t make a lot of sense to me. About God owning everything, that too seems like an unhelpful idea for the world because (as far as I can tell) it seems to imply we shouldn’t really care about the emotional damage that our actions can have on other people, but instead we should only care about the opinion of God. I’d still file that under the problematic realm, personally. To your prior point, yes, I don’t suggest my feelings about this have any relevance to the question of whether God exists, but I do suggest it has relevance to how we should treat our fellow people on Earth regardless of his possible existence.
I understand. I think these conversations tend to be a lot more productive if we start by laying the groundwork so that everybody understands what everybody’s talking about. So if one doesn’t understand the theory that God owns everything then one can’t really react to it in an intelligent and helpful way. Either direction whether you agree or disagree it’s still important to understand what the theory is.
So like going back to the virgin thing, the person who says you know the virgin is impossible obviously is reflecting the fact that they don’t understand what the theory is. They don’t understand that what’s being proposed as a creator God who created the whole universe from nothing.
Yeah I totally agree with that and I’d be very interested to hear more about it. Even from my perspective, just based on everything that’s in the Old Testament stories, I don’t get how he wouldn’t be able to make the virgin birth happen. Seems like he can do whatever he wants lol