Is God good?

Absolutely.

This explain what I think.

youtube.com/watch?v=0IqYHiejTVM

Further, I love and hare, just like Yahweh does, but I have better morals ands would not follow his lead.

That is why I am bound for the Christian hell, not that it exists.

Those who embrace genocide and infanticide will be with Yahweh.

It’s like Hitler having his own branch in heaven.

Regards
DL

Statistically speaking, the world has never been so blessed with such a small amount of evil as compared to the huge amount of good that statistics say we are enjoying.

This is in spite of the vile mainstream homophobic and misogynous religions preaching against the law of the land.

They are traitors to their countries.

Regards
DL

Sounds like a lie, but it may not be depending on your definition.

How can you know that as a fact?

Have you seen/found/talked with a soul?

Regards
DL

I’m not going to watch a video - so if you have an argument for your real situation having a “back” then state it.

No lie. Yes, I have met some gentle souls. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Oops

I recognize my substance dualism. Do you?

Regards
DL

In the original post in this thread, in the End Notes, I informed everyone that “God is my ever-present help.” Now I’ll elaborate on that, giving more details. In the course of doing this I will touch on topics of illumination, healing, and prosperity. In doing so, I’ll offer some affirmations. As I affirm them, during prayer, when I speak to this force called “God,” miracles occur in my life – at least I call them miracles …as God answers my prayers.

God, my ever-present help, fills me with light: I am guided in making wise decisions. And I am inspired …with ideas to write about. God fills me with life; I am restored and revitalized. God fills my life with abundant good. I am prosperous and successfull.

In general, God, my ever-present help, fills me with love. I am peaceful, joyfull, and confident.

In your own life, if you have a concern, call it to God’s attention. Be affirmative. Believe that God will help - in God’s own time. Ask God humbly. Pray, for example, “Come to me as Health.” Or draw on God’s infinite substance: be prosperous and live long!

What say you? Comments? Questions?

Well, it sounds like delusional garbage from one who has allowed his mind to damage itself with supernatural and stupid beliefs.

But hey, I believe you.

With you pipeline to god, why are millions of children still starving yearly?

Ask you phantom god to get to work.

Regards
DL

Hi, DL

I’ll answer your question with a question for you: Why are millions of people having children for which they are not able to provide for adequately? Why do they do something that immoral? Is it that they do not know their Ethics?
The male could request a (possibly-reversible) vasectomy. The female could have her tubes tied. (Later they could be untied if she is ready to support her kids, as ell as give them the moral support of(hopefully) wise parenting, coming from either a two-parent family, or from an entire village. …as we see in North-Africa, or as Israel did in their Kibbutzim.

Or is it that the young girl who gives in to the boy’s advances, is ignorant? Or was she forced to submit? Or is she insecure because she is herself love-deprived - or any of a number of other reasons?
Does she live in a culture where birth-control is not available, or kept from being available because the men don’t recognize women’s rights? Why do the rest of us put up with that? Is it that we do not know our Ethics? Do WE have lousy values?

I have been telling you about a personal relationship I have with my Precious God. Tell me about yourself, DL: did you get a vasectomy so that you could enjoy a good climax? Or did you hook up with a woman who physiologically could no longer have children? Or did you have one child each year for 7-9 years in a row, as did a Roman Catholic family; and as did a Mormon family? I am personally acquainted with both families.

Hey there, DL

If you’re the greatest - and the name you have selected tells us that you are - then you ought to be a great reader, or at least a good reader.

You need to re-read the last paragraph of the Original Post – especially the second-to-the-last sentence!

Furthermore, I have not taken a stand on whether Intercessory Prayer works beyond one’s immediately-close loved ones, such as one’s ‘better half.’ I am open to learning the facts and the truth about this issue.

In a sense, our thoughts are prayers. So we need to be very fussy what thoughts we harbor. Many, who are vulnerable to psychological depression, cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought.
And, As Robert S. Hartman taught, in his writings and classes pessimists. in a sense, are “a little-bit sick,” since, by definition, they put a name that does not fit on things and situations. Thus they can call the thing “bad.” Dr. Hartman gives many examples and illustrations. If you speak of a slum as “adequate housing” then you are likely to find it to be “bad.” You could well judge that something is wrong with it. You are then a fault-finder.
But if you instead - as an optimist - as [someone who, by definition, puts a fitting name on things] - called the set of buildings “a good slum!” it would live up to its name, and thus indeed be good. The optimist finds things to be “good,” because he names them properly, and realistically. As the old saying has it, s/he calls a spade “a spade” …not “a rake” or a “broom.”

The point is that an optimist has a healthy mind; a pessimist not so much.

That children are hungry is a good problem to solve. Human beings caused it, not God. Let’s get busy in finding a good solution to this problem, and then implementing that solution. Let’s not focus on starvation but rather on how to eliminate it in the most-efficient manner possible!
Let’s begin by cleaning up our act here at home.

I believe that the U.N. is trying to fix this. But the amount that they try could have been far greater.
As far as i know.

I think the real question is ; “Is God. ?”

WHo says what is good?

Before it can be determined whether or not god is good, one has to ask a more fundamental question: Does god exist? More broadly, one has to know the true nature of existence.

I assume you are referring here to the Christian god and will continue as if. Nonetheless, my statements apply to religion in general:

God does not exist. (God is the construct of deluded human minds.) Neither is the god that has been constructed, good. Far from it.

A natural, healthy human being is free and independent. Loss of freedom and independence cause illness and death, death in this case being death of aspects of the self (possibly even of the physical body). Worship is very unhealthy. Firstly, it is over emotional, and this damages the mind. In addition, religions impose moral codes and a host of rules and regulations about how to worship and how to conduct one’s daily life. In other words, the price to the individual of religious belief is loss of independence and of self-determination. Worship puts a person in a cage. Any god, therefore, who would deprive a person of their freedom and, ultimately, kill them, is not a good god.

An example: many incidents in the old testament illustrate god’s cruelty. Abraham was told that he had to sacrifice his son, until he was given a last minute reprieve. That is extremely cruel.

Given the above other questions such as “Is god love?” are redundant. As to love itself, what passes for love in this world is not love. There remains some wisdom still in the Bible. From Corinthians: Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly….

The positive qualities of love listed in that quote most certainly do not apply today. Take, for example, “love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up”. When one sees the extraordinary lengths people go to, to “show they care”, then one knows that they protest too much. (I refer to Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, here: “she doth protest too much, methinks”.) When people protest too much then one knows that they are being insincere i.e. lying.

As to Jesus protestations of love, I think that came from the need to put a better spin on the, until then, jealous, vengeful etc., god. Jesus was giving his religion a makeover to win more adherents who would, given what god did to the likes of Abraham, be understandably reluctant to submit themselves to a vengeful, jealous deity.

I agree with pinklady dragon when she criticizes organized religion… I have no use for it …with a few rare exceptions. I shall not go into those now.

And, in a sense, I agree with her conclusion that God does not exist.

God does not merely exist: God is real.

And god is not merely real. I agree with Spinoza that God (which at times he refers to as substance) is "the Reality of all realities.

Evidently pinklady overlooked entirely my definition of “God.” Recall that in an early post in this thread I defined “God” as a value …and values are intangible. I defined it as "the value of all high positive values put together. So God is not only love; God is also Morality, Integrity, Liberty, Community, Friendship, Sincerity, Honesty, Individuality, Freedom, Creativity, Fidelity, Dependability, Reality, Responsibility, Democracy, etc., etc.
No, it is not the Christian conception of god I am talking about. I speak of my own personal idea, my own concept …although it may share some of the metaphysics of the Unity viewpoint of the Unity School. Hence her recent post commits The Straw Man Fallacy.

In her defense, pbviously she is using a different definition, for a different concept, of God than the one about which this thread was created. She further argues that God limits one, and deprives one of freedom.

Do I look of feel deprived??!? Hardly !! My god-concept definitely ADDS to my freedom, and to my autonomy :exclamation:

God fills me with joy. God blesses me all day long. If it pleases you to “put me down” as having ‘an imaginary playmate’, or as ‘delusional’, go ahead and pile on your disparagement, and your curses. I won’t let it rob me of my serenity, my peace-of-mind, my confidence, my feeling quite lucky, my deep gratitude for health, life, and - above-all - love.

Yes, God is the Creativity principle, and yes, God is the highest reality, and yes,
God is good.

[size=57] {I feel sorry for the atheists who miss out on all that goodness! I really do. I notice that the Humanists, and even those who identify with Dewey’s Naturalism/Humanism, are super-sensitive to any mention of the word “God.” Yet when they congregate and they hold and affirm certain values as ideals, are they not engaging in “religion”? Yes, by Edgar Brightman’s definition of the term “religion.” }[/size]

As to quoting Spinoza, since philosophy has failed to come up with an account of the true nature of reality, then his thoughts on the matter are not relevant. In fact, he is also obfuscating by playing with definitions, as you are doing here. What is relevant here, as I may have said in my previous post, is that neither philosophy nor its off-shoot science, has been able to explain the true nature of existence. No one thus far has explained the true nature of existence. That is one’s starting point.

As to people putting you down, you asked a question: Is god good? If all you want is affirmation of your beliefs and opinions, then perhaps you should not ask such questions in the first place, most especially on a philosophy forum.

The existence of god is not about definitions. Playing with definitions will only get one helplessly bogged down in detail. One has to be able to see the wood for the trees. So, forget definitions. The fundamental question is: Is there a god? No, there is not. Gods do not exist. And the reason is perfectly simple to explain when you understand how the mind works. Furthermore, this explanation applies to any god in any religion.

First, delusion. It is a common enough mental illness. I had a lot of contact with a mental health organization at my previous home. I mixed with people with a variety of mental illnesses, including someone who was delusional. He thought he was King of Scotland. Other delusions which are more accepted and often considered, wrongly, as “normal” include the little girl who is “Daddy’s Little Princess”. The princess is the daughter who has been spoiled by her father. By being treated like a princess, she comes to expect adoration, to be the centre of attention, and to having her wishes obeyed as though they were royal decrees. In short, this daughter learns that she can wrap her father round her little finger and eventually expects to be able to do that with everyone. When she grows up, she expects the world to treat her as royalty, and when they do not, she feels herself ill-used. That is delusional behaviour. It is very common.

As to delusion in religion, you first look at the creation myths of whatever religion you are examining. These are interpretable and will reveal that the adherents of that religion were, in the beginning, albeit unwittingly, delusional. Specifically, the founders of the religion considered themselves to be gods. They might, for example, have considered themselves to be all-knowing and all-seeing. They certainly expected to be worshipped and adored as well as to be able to lay down the law. This, you might say, is the ultimate delusion of grandeur. And this delusion, like the princess delusion, is also a common affliction in this world.

My own father certainly expected his wife and children to adore him and he definitely laid down the law in the home. He may not have been so deluded as to think himself a god, but he certainly behaved round the house as if he were a monarch, expecting his wife and his children to run around after him e.g. to have his meal on the table the minute he set foot in the house, no matter the hour. Actually, upon reflection, he was more than a monarch. But he was not quite a god. Thus, my father was afflicted with a demi-god delusion. (The Greek myths are full of demi-gods such as my father.)

The above, then, is a potted account of how religions arose.

You say that god is morality as well as love. You do not know what love is, otherwise you would not mention morality as an attribute. Morality is redundant when people are capable of love. The love you talk about is heartless.

What is love? To love, you must have a heart. Therefore love, real love, is wanting the best for everyone, no matter who, no matter how they have treated you. (Wanting the best for everyone does not necessarily mean molly-coddling them or wrapping them in cotton wool. Nor is love about self-sacrifice. Love is win-win, not lose-lose.)

As to morality, morality is a set of rules by which one should live. A person who has a heart does not need morality. A person who has a heart behaves naturally, behaves well, no matter what. Morailty is about prevention, not cure. If a person is not behaving well, then forcing them to obey rules will only make them worse. The cure for someone who behaves badly is to establish why they behave badly and then to cure them.

One last point about religion. It is very noticeable that people often turn to religion in times of need, not before. My neighbour is such a person. She was going through an extremely bad patch in her life, a sort of mid-life crisis, when, in desperate need of succour, she took to religion. Now she is very devout. However, she is no different from other aging people in this world. Despite her religion, her life is quite clearly going downhill - she has forsaken all her other interests and is now completely dependent on her religious friends. In short, she is closing down. She is dying. Her complete and utter dependence on religion is not freedom.

Just a reminder for those here interested in exploring either the existence of God or in speculating on a God, the God, your God’s nature, that my own approach to all of this is more…existential. So, if you ever feel the need to bring your spiritual contraptions “out into the world” of actual human interactions, here are my own areas of interest:

Bring your conjectures here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=186929

A good way to deflect from your inability to answer.

Thanks for the chat.

Regards
DL

“thinkdr”

Hi thinkdr, is this the advice which you would really give to someone? Would you be proactive at all?
Do you believe that God is omniscient? If so, why bring your concern to God? Wouldn’t God already be aware of you?
Why do people always say "in God’s own time?
Perhaps God is saying “Think for yourself” “Do for Yourself”.

What if someone’s time is running out and God does not get there in time?

I can sit in front of a tree, gaze at it, observe it, and gather strength and even wisdom and answers from it. I can even hug that tree and know that it is real. That, to me, is Real.

How can one pray to a God and know that God listens except by faith. Is that “knowing”? What about all of the other people who are still waiting for God’s answer and to be rescued? How is it that God does not show up there?

Are some more special than others in God’s eyes?

Think for yourself.

I believe some people are too stupid to understand what think for yourself means.

…hell, maybe people are too stupid to understand what “Do for Yourself” means, who knows…

either way, it seems really sad to me

people are running around trying to tell others how to think when they can not even think for themselves - check!

how can one even know themselves? given this state of affairs