When was America great ?

[KillerGoose]

(07-11-2023, 06:55 AM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I understand your reasoning here. I just disagree with the notion that God holds responsibility for the shooting happening. I think perhaps the issue here is what you mean by "responsible" because that to me sounds like God is the reason that the shooting happened  and not the individuals own desire to shoot people. Or am I wrong?

I will tell you the same thing I said to BengalYankee - I really appreciate your willingness to engage in these discussions. I know it can feel like being swarmed with flaming arrows at times, but they aren't coming from a place of malice on my end and I think it brings critical/philosophical thinking to the frontlines. 

To this portion of your post, I would say that yes, god is responsible in part for the shooting. Maybe you assign blame in his original design with free will and the inclusion of sin. You can assign blame at his decision to not intervene and stop the shooting. Regardless, he is to blame in some manner. This brings me to one of my core tenets when it comes to the idea of god. I am agnostic, so I will not actively tell you that you are wrong and god does not exist. I can fully accept the idea that there is a higher power in some capacity. However, if there is, I do not believe he is omnipotent, omniscient, or all-loving. He may be one of those things, but I don't believe he possesses all three traits. I would also say that if this deity exists, I don't believe we worship him on Earth nor do I think we have any idea what he, or they, are like. 

If we believe in the power of prayer and someone prays for god to keep their child safe at school, or to cure their child of cancer, and neither of those things happen, I think we have three reasonable explanations. 

1. God is unable to accomplish these things. Therefore, he is not omnipotent.
2. God did not know these things were to happen, and was not able to act in time to prevent it. He is not omniscient.
3. God knew these things were to happen and has known since the beginning of time. He also has the capability of preventing it, but chooses not to. How can he be described as all-loving? 
   

One response to #3 may be that he has a "greater plan" but this doesn't sit well with me. For instance, if a nice, well-to-do gentleman comes to you and attempts to take your child against your will with promises to provide the best life imaginable - he will have every comfort he could possibly want, have the best education, best nutrition, best everything, and you get to see him on a regular basis - it may be likely that you will kill that person to prevent them from taking your child. However, if that same child is diagnosed with terminal cancer and the prayers go unanswered, we will worship the being that took them from us because we believe they did it for a good reason and they have been given eternal salvation. However, no one really knows for certain and that is where faith comes in - but what if there is no afterlife? I know people at this point will say "I know there is" but no one truly knows just like no one can answer what occurred before the universe was created. That person may believe with their whole heart that there is an afterlife, but that doesn't prevent them from being wrong. If there is no afterlife, but there is a god, then that god allowed your time with your child to be cut short. We can go down a rabbit hole there, and the "you's" aren't meant to directly refer to you but just more general speech. 

Quote:Honestly  I don't really know why God created this way over another. But I'm also not overly concerned with that detail. But I will say that while I don't know exactly why he created this way over another I will continue in my belief that it wasn't so we would suffer. The fact that God doesn't have the worst interests for us and even gave us an alternative option to suffering (salvation) is enough for me to consider a finite life of suffering a fair trade off with eternal peace. When you compare the two, finite suffering pales vastly in comparison to eternal peace.

Well that depends on how one defines "perfection" because really... what does it actually mean to be perfect? I would say God is the only perfect being in the purest sense of the word.

Human beings can never truly be "perfect" on God's level because that would then make them God. It's the very same reason why complete free will cannot exist because to have complete free will is to have the free will to do anything, which would include becoming a being as powerful as God, which is paradoxical. You cannot have more than one "God". 

So right from the get go God already has to limit what we can and can't do based on the contradictory nature "free will" presents. 

Where things get iffy for people is the fact that God created divine law from which we can be punished. Why? I'm not sure, but at the same time I believe God deserves that right since he created the universe and everyone in it. 

As for the love aspect, I think this again comes down to how one defines love. God doesn't want us to suffer. I believe he wants us to live in peace because he loves us, otherwise why even offer it? Its not like God actually needs us to live in peace with him. He doesnt need us to suffer fir him either. In fact, he doesnt need us at all. He wants to give us peace on his terms and is not willing to bend to what man wants in order to give them peace.

I think there are several points in this portion that I can connect with. Like I said earlier, I am not atheist but agnostic. I can fully accept the idea of a deity, and one answer that I have found that sits well with many of my other beliefs is that if there is a god, he does not interfere with the physical universe. You very well could be correct that this god would not have bad interests in mind for us. He could have created this universe and all of the laws and life that come with it. However, that is where his influence stopped. He won't interfere to stop plagues, meteors, wars or anything else in between. He loves us - as in the universe - as we are his creation. He would prefer us live in peace, but doesn't require it nor does he require us to suffer. He simply created everything and let's it continue as is. This idea of a creator is something that I can make fit my worldview, but I don't believe that this creator is worthy of worship, personally. This goes back to my idea of "he is interested more in the simulation of life rather than the life itself".

Quote:God also gives us mercy, literally everyday. God could be striking us all with lightning bolts everyday and killing off humanity on a whim, yet he doesnt. There's also the fact that God sent Jesus to die for our sins to also show his love for us.  Again, I understand peoole have a problem with defining that as "love" but I guess that's just where "agree to disagree" comes into play and people will see such thought process as "insanity/ludicrous/illogical etc...".

But it could be argued that it's insanity/ludicrous/illogical to defie an all powerful god with which we know we cannot win who has offered us the very thing we seek in life, which is eternal peace, all for the sake of being able to have a little more choice than we had before. Now, I don't think anyone should follow God simply because he's all powerful, because that wouldn't be what God wants in my opinion. 

Hmmm. I don't view this as mercy, or at least, not a type of mercy that is worthy of being recognized. For instance, if we change that sentence to "I show my wife mercy every single day. I could be beating the shit out of her daily and making her wish for death, but I don't." would your first thought be "KillerGoose is merciful"?