If god knows everything, then he knows exactly all our thoughts and feelings when we did something, even when we sinned. So then he should know exactly how we felt when we did something and should know exactly our intentions and reasons and how our reasons seemed the best when we sinned. But then if he knows all this, how can he condemm us for our behavior ? He knows why and how we did something then how can he judge us, since knowing all our mental states he would be looking at us like a deterministic event, already achieved. It is like morally judging a program you wrote or that wrote itself but you know all the reasons and mechanisms that brought about the program. How can something like that be judged morally ?
But then what exactly would god know in this case ? His knowledge would never be exactly equal to ours when we performed a behavior, his knowledge would be made up of two parts: A) our own knowledge-mental states PLUS B) his own infinite knowledge of all. So the two knowledges are very different. A + B is not A. He really doesn’t know exactly our state since his knowledge of our state is perturbed by his own knowledge. The two things are not the same! He will never exactly know what we know or knew when we performed a behavior or else he would have to be EXACTLY US and in that case he would no longer be god. So we will always know something that god does not know, no matter how hard god tries because he would have to deny all else he knows to know exactly what we know.
More knowledge can be understood technically as what must be known to solve a problem. If you know a detail that another person does not with regards to a technical problem, then you have more knowledge than that person and can solve that technical problem. But in the case of god judging us morally, more knowledge does not equate to a technical detail necessary to solve a problem. The kind of knowledge he would need is EMOTIONAL knowledge of our mental states, all our impulses and feelings when a sin was committed. But in order to know this exactly he would have to be 100 % exactly us when we committed the sin without knowing anything else, so he would have to be us and not god. How can something see us from the outside ? More knowledge in the case of god is always a DIFFERENT KNOWLEDGE compared to ours so this contradiction can’t be solved.
Of course it can be solved by simply saying, god is an authority, you must obey and even if he knows nothing and condemns you, he made the universe and he makes the rules and you get hosed. He can simply be a drone executing a program without having any feelings, god is a metaphysical entity and has no obligation to anything we think is just or logical. He can just punish for the fun of it, after all he has to respond to no higher authority and our ideas and sense of morality in his metaphysical eyes may seem like a joke.
This is the same problem of observation in physics. As an observer you are part of the system so you will never be completely independent from what you observe and you will always influence what you observe even if minimally.
So this problem is also the problem of what happens when we start to modify our own mind-neural circuits to become a different kind of mind in the future technological singularity. Can this mind know and understand another mind that is designed differently ? Can the addition of knowledge in one mind let that mind understand a mind with less knowledge ? So god knows more than us but at the same time HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW IT IS TO HAVE LESS KNOWLEDGE! So he knows something but he also does not know something we know. So we know something that god doesn’t even though he knows millions of other things compared to us. Very odd situation…
Lately I felt that talking about god was disrespectful to the universe
[considering the creationist and superstitious roots of the entire word]
I also lately felt that most religion & spirituality is rather smug.
People want to have both comprehensible knowledge and satisfaction at the same time. Both can’t always be found in the same place. Allot of truths doesn’t feel “spiritual” at all, they just happen to occur within the heads of some physics professors instead, in the form of an aspiritual fact.
~
I’ve noted that many “spiritual” persons tend to fall in love with the universe, despite how cold, distant and completely misunderstood it is.
I wont call it “mental masterbation”, but I will call it fantasy “supported” by subtle and partial bits of precieved “reality”.
God can be anything, even a drone robot. There are no constraints logically or morally on what he thinks and does and how he designed the universe. If his only son came down to earth and simply lied ? If the bible is false and he just gave us false doctrines to see how we act ? What if he doesn’t even know what he wants ? what if he changes his mind all the time ? What if he kills himself from time to time ?
Metaphysically he has no obligations to respect anything at all, not even logic, so he may even not exist and says he exists, since logic is not an obligation.
He doesn’t know exactly what each of us knows because he would have to be exactly each one of us but nothing more, he couldn’t know nothing extra or else he would be a different entity from you or me. We know more than him or at least something different.
he wouldnt just give false doctrines…
he would give 1 which is correct as a test
he wouldnt change his mind, because he always knows everyfact…
and if u mean change your mind by sum1 bcoming a good person…
than no, b.c he counts ur deeds after u die.
but god wouldnt commit suicide … b.c its useless
he has no need…
and this. uhh doesnt make sence, if he were to say something itd mean he exists.
no, why would that be? he knows everything, ur feeling r included in everything, your intent is included.
He has to be exactly you to know exactly what your feelings and mental states were. He can’t be you plus anything else. That is a different entity.
You are different from god, you are not god, god is not you, he can’t know you like you know yourself. He is a superset of you plus something else. That is different.
God doesn’t have to justify or give any answers. He made the rules and no matter how absurd they seem to us, they are his rules and if he asks what the name of god is and expects you to say OHM and you say Jesus and he punishes you because it is wrong, well those are his rules and his game.
He is a metaphysical entity that has no obligations towards morality or logic. If he is absurd then so be it. Even the laws of physics are absurd quirks, they could be anything else. Even a god that is a robot is possible. We don’t know what the metaphysical basis of reality is.
It’s all contextual. Even if we don’t have free will, and all is deterministic, we treat each other as though we do- we punish each other, and so on. If determinism is true, then God’s punishing us exists in that context as well- the context of how things appear to humans. In the broader context, where we can’t help the things we do, I would argue that we aren’t truly moral agents, and that God can do with us as He wants- the act of tossing someone in Hell wouldn’t be a punitive action, but rather something else entirely, more akin to throwing out a defective product.
It is important to note, in a case like this, that God is omniscient. In addition, God is transcendent. God is everwhere at once (omnipresent). In other words, God has no limits. Once the attributes and characteristics of God are fully grasped, the concept of just how God can know exactly the thoughts of his creation without being his creation becomes readily apparent. God is not limited in knowledge of “A” entity or “B” entity, but rather his knowledge is both “A” and “B” entity. Humans are limited to the four observable dimensions of time and space. God has no such limitations. God is a trinity made up of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He does not necessarily assume anthropomorphic form. God can see through the eyes of his creation and not be corrupt in the process. These realities are impossible to be fully understood to the feeble, finite human mind. Humans can benefit themselves by recognizing their own, very limited scope of knowledge.
In the case that God couldnt know EXACTLY what His creations feel on an emotional level because He would have to be EXACTLY his creation, one could understand God as being both a righteous legislature and a judge. God creates the rules. The rules always apply simply because God says they do; He answers to none. God has sole authority to condemn His creation. If his creation violates the rules he has stipulated then He must take the appropriate action and punish his creation for their wrongdoings. God is just. He would be unjust if he did not punish sins accordingly.
Fortunately for us (God’s creation), we do not have to be punished for our sins! God became a man and died on a cross as retribution for our sins by means of his extra-dimensional capabilites. God is not eager to punish, but He would rather we repent and simply put our faith in his atonement through the cross.
So our feeble minds can’t understand god’s contradictions. There are 4 possible cases:
god can break the principle of non-contradiction and does not have to respect the constraints of logic and/or physics. So then in this case anything goes: god can even not exist, he can decide to invert all his judgments like the good go to hell and the bad to heaven, there is no limit on what can be if contradictions are allowed. Then I am god and command him what to do, this is ok there is no need to respect any constraints or logic or non-contradictions etc.
god follows a “higher” logic; in this case then this logic may allow contradictions here and there and anything else since we have no idea what a higher logic is: maybe an engineered brain that is the size of the sun with trillions of self conscious items in it: who knows. Even in this case anything goes, and in fact god may simply be the result of an advanced civilization, some supercomputer that has evolved for billions of years.
god can’t perform contradictions. Then there is no way he can exist; he can’t be one of us and at the same time something else, some superset of people.
the bibles and all we know about god is false because they are all invented by man. God has characteristics that we have no idea of. Maybe zen or yoga has got it right, maybe some ancient Brazilian indian cult has got it right. In that case we are all hosed.
The point is that we can’t trust this metaphysical entity in any way; we don’t know how he reasons, we don’t know if he exists, we don’t know anything. But the religious people think they know and arbitrarily assign what they want to what god wants.
Why does the bible want to convince us by using miracles ? Because a demonstration of something that is outside our everyday experience is supposed to impress and convince us of the supernatural. But to perceive miracles you must use reason and logic. A miracle doesn’t have any apparent chain of cause and effect, so it must be the supernatural. But even in this case science teaches that we may not know the chain of cause and effect but it may be there only to be discovered in a future.
Would you recognize a miracle if you saw one ? You would have to use reason and the principle of non-contradiction and still you could never be sure if the miracle is just a trick of physics or the supernatural. If someone in the 1950’s said there will be a machine that can show you every point on the planet earth, they would have thought it impossible or a miracle. But a website like maps.google does exactly that, a miracle, but you have to use logic and your mind to perceive a miracle. Many don’t even recognize a miracle. The maps website is a much more spectacular miracle than walking on water. But to perceive a miracle you must use reason and intellectual comparisons, something few people do. The miracle of maps.google is the result of the intersection of 2 technologies, the internet and satellite imaging. No one I know recognizes this miracle when they see it.
Debate all 4 cases. You will just put alot of incoherent words together and think you debated it. Religion is impossible to debate, impossible to understand, and most of all it is all invented. We know nothing and if god exists he is the farthest thing from anything we can think and from the bibles and korans that preach violence, hate and punishment. Why do the jews kill muslims and the muslims kill jews ? Why are these people so sick ? why are these religions so hateful ?
it always seems odd to me that people think determinism and free will cannot exist side by side. Determinism states that given enough knowledge it could predict everything…
Given that the human mind is a complex system and we live in a complex system it’s fundamentally impossible to have all the variables. The way free will works, is that we have FOREKNOWLEDGE of what a particular action will produce. We know that saying something hurtful will hurt our friends feelings, yet we choose to do so anyways.
If you are merely acting to stimuli you or no better or worse than an ameoba.
if you REact to stimuli and the world around you… you are awakening the stranger within your soul. It’s easier to act, than to react.
It’s easier to doubt than to believe.
Both suffering and pleasure emanate from god. And, no that’s not purely an eastern philosophy. Read the book of Job.
God commands Satan (his arch-angel, his “demi-god”, lesser-god.) to torment Job.
On jews and muslims war; christianity does not endorse war or violence in any way as far as I know, jews I am not sure, koran and Islam endorse war and violence heavily.
On miracles, it is interesting that we must first know the laws of a universe and reality before recognizing a miracle. When the snake talked to Eve she did not notice anything strange, but if all of a sudden a snake talked to you or even a 5 year old child, it would appear to be a miracle or supernatural.
So recognizing a miracle is an intellectual affair, you must analyze the situation and decide if it is supernatural or just a magician’s trick. I agree that maps.google could be close to a miracle just for what it does, namely seeing every town on earth. But we know that there is a sequence of cause and effects, so it is just everyday technology. Then again, if a dead person came back to life we would be surprised but who can say that there isn’t a cause and effect or that the rules of reality-physics-universe include supernatural phenomena ?
On the right religion I would go with the Ancient Brazilian Cult.
So does god feel all the pains of all the people in hell ? Does he feel all their suffering exactly like them ? He would also have to be exactly a person in hell burning all the time without knowing anything else like god knows, he would have to be EXACTLY HIS OWN VICTIM! Does he also feel at the same time all the pleasures of heaven ? And at the same time all the pleasures and pain on earth ?
Then when the technological singularity will create modified minds that can greatly amplify pain and pleasure and create trillions of new emotions-sensations-feelings-pleasures etc. will god also feel all these ?
And he can feel all this without breaking the principles of non-contradictions ?
So bringing it a little further we can say that god also feels everything the devil feels. And he knows all of the devil’s mental states and decisions. And he is also EXACTLY the devil when the devil operates. So god is the devil but at the same time he isn’t but at the same time he loves the devil but at the same time he can see, feel and manipulate the devil’s free will and IS the devil’s free will.
So god is the devil otherwise there would be something independent from him, he would be a lesser god. There would be items of the universe which he can’t control or manipulate or BE and feel. So if he is everything he is also nothing. Or maybe there are many subgods and supergods. So he can also contradict himself and IS contradiction. What a carneval of contradictions, what a risky metaphysical being this god is.
But then again just obey your local pastor and don’t think about it. Just have faith. Just say yes to anything the priests feed you. Don’t think otherwise you will get confused.
Here’s an easy way to understand god: just accept any properties he has and anything he can do. Someone said you can’t limit the absolute, then OK, god exists and doesn’t exist, he is big and small, he can be me or you sometimes, etc. Any contradiction is OK, anything you say, any sequence of words or symbols, in practice anything and everything goes!
If god is a pure contradiction then he exists since a contradictory item is the only one that is true and exists since if it is false it is true, if it doesn’t exist it exists and if it exists it doesn’t exist. God doesn’t exist. He is transcendent meaning anything as wild and insane you think can go, is true and false. He burns the just for the unjust, he loves hitler, pol pot (cambodian crazy dictator) was god on earth, but then again no. Everything these sentences say are false. That is they are all true.
D
