theodicy

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

What is more merciful, to scrap it and start over, or to let us slowly scrap ourselves?

@Ichthus77

Do you think you can get everybody to agree to that? If you can get everybody to agree to that, with the snap of God’s fingers, this can all disappear. // Would you rather share that message, or would you rather share the message that we are all loved no matter what and should love each other likewise?

@Ichthus77

If I was the whole universe (kind of like how BriBri esteems himself) and could move the entire universe, and gave consciousness to little parts of the universe, if I was a good being, I would have co-regency with all of those little consciousnesses.

Should we all start a global petition to press the reset button? Or instead, should we just pull our heads out of our asses and love each other the way we wanna be loved? Which meme do you think will spread faster?

[iambiguous]

Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil.

Why…should we believe that a God who is prevented by the laws of nature he has himself created from making that nature free of appalling suffering, or who sees the pain of the evolutionary process as an acceptable price to pay for the emergence of beings with free will, will be able to secure his favourites a decent after-life?

You bet your life? And, really, for any number of mere mortals around the globe that will always be what it comes down to. With God [most of them] you have access to moral commandments on this side of the grave. Nothing fractured and fragmented about the Ten Commandments, right? And then the point of all that…acquiring immortality and salvation on the other side for all of eternity.

And you don’t have to actually demonstrate the existence of a God, the God, your God. Instead, you take a “leap of faith”. Like Kierkegaard. Though some leaps [or wagers] appear to be considerably more sophisticated than others.

While it may seem plausible that, as Goff says, “a loving God would want to preserve our conscious lives after death and would want to move us towards a better world”, it is equally plausible, on the basis of his performance in this world, that this will beyond his limited powers.

Of course, this prompted those like Harold Kushner to argue precisely this in regard to the God of Abraham. A Divine rendition of “it’s beyond My control”. On the other hand, when you go down that path, you can’t help but wonder what else might be beyond His control. Immortality? Salvation?

And then, historically, the part those who worshipped one God came to view those who worshipped a different God [or no God at all] as infidels. Deserving of one or another inquisition, crusade, jihad, final solution.

The supreme irony here being that these horrific conflicts can even revolve around the same God. And you know what I mean.

[iambiguous]

Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil.

Goff’s claim that life after death and a cosmic purpose are ‘a reasonable hope’ does not therefore stand up.

Tell that to the approximately 2.6 billion Christians around the globe. Those folks either convinced by others or by themselves that a God, the God, their God is the one and the only truly divine path to moral commandments, immortality and salvation. Trying to grapple with God and religion philosophically is just not going to appeal to many of them. They have faith in God. That comforts and consoles them. Really comforts and consoles them.

God’s performance in this world does not give me confidence as to the quality of the next one.

Again, though, with so much at stake, it’s not the quality of the next one that counts so much as the fact that it doesn’t all end in oblivion.

After all, we cannot imagine that, in creating the world as we know it, he wasn’t trying hard enough or was deciding not to exercise the powers that would be necessary to create an afterlife – an afterlife, incidentally, not available to someone like me, whose gaps in understanding do not seem to be shaped to accommodate a god.

And around and around and around we all go speculating about life and death. In particular, the part where we grapple with connecting the dots between them. For some, of course, the gaps here will be considerably longer than for others.

A limited God who has the power to create a universe, but who is unable to protect its most innocent inhabitants from suffering that’s ended only by death, cannot be relied upon to deliver on the promise of an eternal life of unalloyed joy.

Unless, of course, in ways that no “mere mortal” can possibly grasp, He does work in mysterious ways.