God, the Creator

JSS wrote:

A quote by Polkinghorne. “however valuable natural theology (science) may be in pointing to the divine and affording insight into his creation, it will only at best be able by itself to bring us to the Cosmic Architect or Great Mathematician. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be sought by other means.” For anyone who wants to find God, science is not the first way. Who God is and what He does must be answered elsewhere.

Jeeves and Berry (recognized working scientists). “An understanding and acceptance of modern science does not - cannot - prove anything about the existence and activity of God.”

To seek intellectual explanations down to the last detail is not always be valid.

Your God concept is vague and deistic James, I think most atheists would react indifferently towards it, I know I sure did. You claim to be a theist and that biblical stories are relevant, but where are the traits that make your God theistic and biblical, what are some relevant biblical stories, what makes them relevant and why? How do you know what the authors were referring to better than they do? Are you calling primitive the authors of the bible, the theists or atheists?

Also, regarding God’s face, "Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” - Genesis 32:30
“And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.” - Exodus 33:11

vs.

“No man hath seen God at any time.” - John 1:18
“And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live.” Exodus 33:20

This sounds to me like you’re trying to trick somebody into labeling themselves a believer in a theistic God without actually believing in what most people would consider a theistic God.
I guess an atheistic equivalent would be trying to make somebody label themselves an atheist by pointing out contradictions in the bible and saying they must believe in that specific, contradictory God, if they don’t, they are atheist, or saying that either they believe in a magical sky daddy who is also >add more ridiculous attributes< or they’re an atheist.

James, do you at least realize that your concept of God is more similar to a deistic one than a theistic one, and that it’s different from what the majority of theists actually believe? I think calling “God” what you call “God” only confuses people, because it has nothing to do with God as he has been conceived by the large majority throughout history, and this is why I advocate that if you come up with a new concept, use a new name.


Arbiter of Change
wrote:

I must admit the same thought went through my mind also.

To all of you;
A) I really couldn’t care less what atheists might think one way or another. Their conversion is not my job, but their own.
B) Try to consider a non-literal reading of ancient texts sometime. They make a lot more sense.
C) I haven’t invented any new concept concerning anything related to scriptures. I merely reduce the noise to its basic ontology.
D) I really don’t care all that much what other theists have proclaimed about God or the limits of men either.

I really haven’t found anyone who can rationally argue with my definition of “The God” other than to say, “that’s not the one I want to argue about”. The definition has nothing to do with what anyone wants to argue about or believe in. The definition is a deductive certainty in that any other God concept, if not equivalent, will be merely subservient to the one I proposed, thus not “The God”, but perhaps “a god”.

And I don’t call it something else simply because I happen to know that it actually does relate to what ancient authors were speaking about. How I know that is another issue that ye’ole typical atheist couldn’t begin to deal with merely because he wants only to preach, never to learn. All God concepts are subservient to the impossible.

Not everything said on these boards is fuel for fire or fodder for cannons. Sometimes they are merely things that have need of being said. But feel free to argue endlessly if you feel the need.

So basically James you:

1) Dismiss straight up contradictions as a literal reading…


2) Don’t care what atheists might think one way or another, thinking that they should be the ones converting


Yet atheists are supposed to be the close-minded ones

3) Don’t really care all that much what other theists have proclaimed about God or the limits of men (my interpretation is right, everybody else’s is wrong)


Yet you appear to care deeply about what theists who authored the bible think…

And not only that, but you know precisely what METAPHORICAL meaning the authors of the bible had in mind

Personally, I’d grant you almost everything you described in the OP exists, except that I wouldn’t call it God, I’d call it jubuwubu. Like it or not, the majority determines definitions of words, to insist otherwise is to intentionally cause confusion in communication, which indicates insincerity and suspicious motives.

Did I say that you had to?
The fact that you had no idea of even what a god was doesn’t play to your argument that I am the one proposing some kind of change from your uneducated presumptions. You believe they were speaking merely about fairy tale … that is what you are supposed to believe.

AoC, I am not here to convert your ass.

If you want to think that the Bible absolutely MUST!!! be read LITERALLY with every jot and tiddle, that is your prerogative. And if you choose that course, of course, you are going to think that it is all bullshit. It seems that an intelligent man would at least consider an alternative to thinking that billions of people and their leaders throughout history were THAT damn stupid and yet have managed to dominate you entirely. But maybe it just takes one to know one.

Everything that is posted isn’t merely for mindless atheists to argue about. But if you have an argument, no one has stopped you from posting it.

And YES!!!, I dismiss literal readings (and those who insist on it) concerning almost all literature and films (and frankly don’t know of any intelligent and educated people who don’t do the same).

That OP was actually one of the cleanest simplified theories of what a ‘god’ might be, that I have seen. Nicely done, JSS.

You stayed well outside the boundaries of any pathetic or anthropomorphic fallacy… a good, simple, paint-by-number deistic model you’ve got there.

I’ve seen some card carrying Thomists go to work before at Revleft on a few atheists. It was something serious man, way above my pay grade.

Allegorical and metaphorical readings produce varied interpretations, which would mean that the event(s) interpreted in a non-literal way could have been many different events at once! But this is impossible; whatever happened, happened just like it happened in a very certain way, for very certain reasons and/or causes. Only a literal description of events has any real meaning regarding the relevancy and accuracy of historical events.

You can say story X means this or that, but that interpretation wouldn’t be any more credible than any other because, according to you, nothing literally happened.

Well, thank you. It would be nice if my time could be spent challenging those theists to get even better rather than merely posting what atheists and many theists want to rant about. I have never, in many years, met an atheists who had anything relevant to say on the subject and in person, doesn’t stay an atheist for long around me (Online is a very different story).

First, realize that I didn’t say that NOTHING literally happened. I said consider a literal reading … so that you could see the options of which literally happened and which was metaphor or allegory.

But now consider the follow recent response given after a math-word problem/teaser had been proposed;

Of course Lev had no idea that the brain teaser had a perfectly legitimate and provable answer to the riddle. Its first impression is that there is no way that anyone could resolve such a problem. Yet there was and usually is.

That exact same concern is raised when anyone speaks of metaphorical understandings of the Bible (although seldom concerning anything else). How could anyone know?!?! They immediately profess that “because there could be many interpretations, there can be no certain truth in the text”. And yet, just exactly like those brain-teasers, there really is only one story that is truly consistent, comprehensive, and relevant (the very definition of Truth).

The teaser that Lev was given was;

The unintelligent and uneducated read that problem in the same way they read everything else, including the Bible. They proclaim that there is no sense at all and the problem is not resolvable because the reader is given no clue at all. But of course, they are wrong, just as every atheist.

The fact that most people do not have the “eyes to see and ears to hear” (aka “the intelligence and education required”) is why there is such a huge belief in the anthropomorphic non-sense, the “Santa Claus version of the Bible”.

The religions, as with every organization, must consider the consequences of trying too hard to make every person understand the exact truth. When dealing with millions of very uneducated and unintelligent people, it is certainly unwise to disallow them to believe in what is a distortion of the truth, because that is all they are going to be able to understand for the rest of their lives.

And that is why it is not my job to convert AoC. He only has a certain amount of education and intelligence to work with. The fact that it isn’t enough to see the resolve of the brain teaser, isn’t something that would be wise for me to struggle against. He is going to believe that the Bible cannot be understood and that anyone who believes in anything it says is merely deluded because he already knows that it cannot make any sense … end of story. Why should I try to change that? I can’t increase his intellect from this distance.

If you can’t see the truth behind the myth and you want to rant at anyone who gives you clues, who am I to force you to do otherwise.

I realize that statistically, saying there’s a God makes you more likable, and I know this is all you care about from my correspondence with you, you are like all the other apes to this regard.

But you have to understand that you’re using the same argument John Bannon used, which I destroyed. I stated that there are many things, probably about 5 through the course of those threads that NO BEING can create or destroy. And you’re sitting here just like John Bannon, and saying that the creator chooses what to manifest.

After our private discussions, considering them in detail, are you really sure that is where you want to take this?

The many theories attempting to explain God, and the many arguments for and against His existence, show that human wisdom is limited in its capacity to do so. When truth is combined with error, this creates a real challenge and should not be taken lightly, it distorts the truth in an insidious way, while not denying the truth, but by mixing truth with error. To not take literally the Scriptures, one ignores Prophecy, which is narrative in advance, a spotlight into future events.

Understood, but when it comes to the concept of God, I’ll argue that with anyone. I think they do it to fit in when they otherwise wouldn’t. I mean just think about my argument that atheists practice religion better than theists for example… and use basic logic. If you were an ethical God, judging people, wouldn’t you be more interested in the purer sacrifice of the atheists who doesn’t believe life is fair but still acts out of goodness, rather than blind faith that some being is going to make it all better. The size of the hearts between the two beings is infinite in extent. I call this the god paradox, if God did exist, God would favor the atheists, and this works better than Pascal’s wager when considering the entire strain of theism from it’s inception.

I like squirrels. That doesn’t mean that I believe their theories or want to argue their effort at logic.

The very reason one should not presume literal translations of spiritual texts from spiritual peoples.

JSS wrote:

JSS wrote:

Perhaps you should take your own advice.

You must have a different interpretation of the word “literal”. :sunglasses:

Wow. Seriously, WOW. :mrgreen:

Sorry Ec, I had missed this response of yours;

Note an issue with plurality in that quote? The Lord has six legs, yet is human?
It is little things like that, which most people miss, that tell you there is something to be read “between the lines”. In general, when something seems too magical (eg. dividing the sea, walking on water, turning water to wine,…) it is time to think deeper about what is really being said.

I’ll look further for the quote I remember… it’s been a long time since i read the Bible… What I recall is that God came with two angels and refused to look at Abraham. I always wondered why God wouldn’t look at Abraham. You never responded to Arbiters better example either.

Just as with all great literature, not merely scriptures, if you are silly enough to read them literally, you deserve to misunderstand them as simplistic stories with no significance. Hollywood films are similar. Even extreme slapstick films still carry a subtle message. If you can’t see the subtle, you can’t see the light in the shadows. Homer and Shakespeare didn’t become famous by telling meaningless fairy tales.