The right of God to judge

[Jenyar]

You mean, whether He is enforcing His will contrary to our will, and what right He has to do so - but being a dictator is not about oppression, it's about monopoly of power. If God creates us with the ability to think for ourselves, but then also 'lays down the law' and the consequent punishments for disobedience, then He is a dictator. However, if God created us with free will, and this necessarily entailed certain consequences of certain actions about which we cannot understand, then God is not a dictator even though he has the potential to do what He likes. By this I mean God creates life and for some reason thinks it's good, then humans gain self-understanding themselves and suddenly have the ability to send themselves to Hell (here I ignore the implications this has on God's supposed omnipotence) so God gets worried and tries to make them understand what they need to do to live eternally (submit to Him). In this way God is not a dictator, but rather a somewhat frustrated Creator who loves His creations but apparently doesn't have a very good grasp on the best way to get them to behave in such a way as to return to Him. If, on the other hand, the alternative were true, that God created us with the ability to disobey (or come to an honest conclusion that He didn't even exist), but then decided that we must behave a certain way and not another way, whether we understood why or not, and then punished us if we didn't comply, then He definately would be a dictator.

It's more complicated than "sending ourselves to hell", because evil is involved - and it's a mystery, even in the Bible. We only work with what we have. The flexibility was towards being human in all its glorious diversity, without having to disobey. Sin is simply destructive. We're certainly able to understand the concept, but since more than just what we have in front of us is involved, we're simply out of our depth if we don't allow for God's perspective on the problem. We have strayed from what God considered "good", and we find ourselves in foreign lands with a lodestone that points to a place that can't exist in that environment.

If there was a seed of morality within us (perhaps a better metaphor would be a lodestone so we can instinctively know which way is North) then this is still an emotion, and emotions should not be blindly followed - you know this. So even if a subject living under a dictatorship inexplicably felt like he wanted to obey, even if this seemed rationally to be a bad idea, should he? No, right?

Love is generally considered to be an emotion, and I asked someone in another thread: why have such faith in it? His answer was it simply makes him feel good, and that's enough for him - it doesn't require faith. Such implicit and blind faith in an "emotion" is certainly unreasonable. If it is just an emotion, which the Bible takes pains to point out it can't be, if we are to use it as a moral guideline.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails..."​

These aren't definitions, these are ingredients. They're things we can recognize - in their presence as well as their absence.

I agree with all of this, if we agree that sin is self-destructive behaviour (not just disobedience of God, as the honest man would not hesitate to disobey a tyrannical or immoral God). The honest Christian is just an example of an honest man. I just don't see how those who regulate themselves and their motives and arrive at my position are sentenced to eternal death. Behaving toward your fellow humans in the way God intended depends on your personal inclination towards that kind of morality, while actual belief in God has not nothing to do with emotion, but is rather a completely rational thing - do you believe He exists, or not? If you need to be convinced of the evidence for the existence of God first, before you can become completely moral, then the odds are currently stacked against the independent-minded and sceptical people.

Now you've turned this into an emotional argument. If I told you "I can't see why we should be alive at all, and have nothing certain to hope for except death", would you have a rational argument ready to put me at ease? I doubt it, the best answer would be "that's life", or something suitably reductionist and unproductive.

We're free at arriving at any conclusion we feel comfortable with, but that is over and above what we're faced with: that God interfered and felt the need to interfere with what we'd call "normal" history. The rational is always subject to reality. Flying elephants would be rational in a world where they existed. And emotion carries no authority in a rational world. Or does it? You're argument above seems to indicate something else.

Now this is something I can agree to! But then, you're just watering God down to a metaphor of our own ideal selves. But I happen not to aspire to the ideals of the Bible, like I've said before. For example, I don't think turning the other cheek is such a good idea, neither for you nor for the person that slapped you. Not turning the other cheek would therefore not be a sin, and not take me further from my own ideal (God). What do we do about that? You see Jenyar, you eventually have to say 'Turning the other cheek is ideal/godly because...', thereby identifying the standard that you use to show why God is good and worth following, and describing God as an entity that wants something specific for us, irrespective of whether we want it for ourselves or not. Why doesn't God just leave that up to us by encouraging democracy? If the seed really is there in all of us, democracy will allow us to end where He wants us to be anyway. Then it's up to Him to supplement that with actual evidence of His existence, so we can make the final step without having to make blind leaps.

The "turning the cheek" will make a good example. It's certainly impractical in an abusive society - where people would take advantage of such meekness, where you will get trample for such pacifism. But in a society that recongizes love as its prime directive, things begin to look different: people who have experienced forgiveness should be forgiving. People who have seen their saviour suffer should be sensitive to suffering. You get the picture. Turning the other cheek is mere foolishness in the world we live in - but so is believing in God. Such is the world we live in...

I thought you were arguing that it was the other way around?

I'm arguing for dialogue. You know the phrase often used in weltpolitik: "we seeked to establish a dialogue with such and such ruler..." You use the example of a democracy, like Plato used his republic, "a world ruled by philosophers". We can't think of a more powerless government than that today, but that's because we don't know "philosophers" the way he thought about them. Maybe we should take another look at Jesus' parables - you know: the ones that describe the Kingdom of God. He saw this world as a foreign country to God's, one where righteous people lived in exile. We are to uphold God's principles, but at the same time realize: "there is a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to let live, a time to kill..."

God is a King whose people live in foreign soil, among foreign people and foreign beliefs. His kingdom's gates are shut against evil, sin and corruption and will always be. But his people are sick with these things... they're dying from them. They want to know why their king allows it. "But you're not obeying me anymore," He says. "I don't recongize you as my people anymore!" He sends messengers with medicine: laws, forgiveness, hope, love. Some become addicted to the medicine, some messenger become corrupt themselves. Some return to Him. But things are getting worse. So He sends his own son, and clothes him in his own clothes and gives Him is own seal ring so that people would recognize him. "Even if they don't accept his message, at least they will know whom they're rejecting, and I will be able to see who are my people are who aren't". And so it was. But some loved Egypt more than only a promise of Canaan. Some loved Babylon more than a broken city. Some loved the democracy of Rome more than the promise of heaven.

We do live in a democracy - it's the best way to live among each other. We can't respect kings, we don't tolerate dictators, and we resent communism. We like ruling ourselves. But our relative comfort doesn't change the fact that we're still in exile on earth, our lives dictated by death. One democracy can't rule over another, one monarchy can't usurp another, and one dictator won't serve another, without someone dying and bringing down the house. They are all subject to death, and death to God. Still, it's your vote.

It's true that you can get away scot-free, but doing so harms society, and it is in society's interest that this doesn't happen. The ideal society is the one in which all behaviour which we deem 'good' is encouraged and rewarded, while anti-social and destructive behaviour is discouraged. It has to be universally understood that behaving in the best interests of the society is the same as behaving in the best interests of yourself. Religion tries this, and failed, communism failed, all manner of other dictatorships have failed too, because they don't realise that it is the people themselves that must determine their ideal society. Perhaps if you had written the Bible yourself, Christianity might be closer to the ideal than it is, but you didn't, and nowhere does it encourage democracy, meaning it is a bad guide.

Um... maybe you missed it, but those examples you provide were people deciding themselves who determined their ideal society. It's just that their ideals conflicted with the "better" ideals of others.

Christianity isn't an ideal - it's a community with an ideal. It encourages love, without which any democracy is about as moral as the average criminal - laws and regulations in spite. But Christianity hasn't and won't "fail", because it's failure is no worse than any other: death, and the line that separates the living from the dead are the same among Christians as among every other group of people. Except for one thing.

1 Corinthians 15:19And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.​

As indeed we are pitied by those who only have hope for this life.

The greater the society, the more consensus, full stop. Lack of agreement causes collapse. This is exactly why religions and dictators always demand obedience before understanding.

Lack of love causes collapse. Even thieves can agree about their victims. You can't corrupt something without becoming corrupt yourself, and you can't redeem something without redeeming yourself. This no democracy or set of laws or holy book will do for you. Love is obedience to God, and to that God I will give my allegiance without blinking.

 

[Katazia]

Jenyar,

Democracy is not a good system; it is really quite atrocious since it excludes minority interests. Democracy is simply the best of a bad lot. Consensus is the only fair system but we are all too impatient to wait around until everyone agrees on the same thing – that is more a reflection of our current limited social and intellectual evolutionary state.

Lack of love causes collapse.

That is a nice dream that fits well with your Christian paradigm, but really can’t be true. Love is only an emotional state that can be used as a method of interaction with others, yet it is neither needed or in most cases a desirable feature when reaching mutual stable agreements with others. In all practical issues in life we do not express or show love for others, but rather there is a neutral intellectual recognition of the needs of others where they affect your own life. For example when interacting with a shopkeeper business can be effectively conducted in a pleasant manner but without any need for an interchange of love. This same approach has been shown as a very effective as our civilization grows.

The Christian over-emphasis on love devalues its real place as an intimate emotion and is quite unnecessary and unwanted in all other practical applications.

Hate and aggression, on the other hand, are another matter.

Lack of agreement is the cause of collapse. I could still love someone and still intensely disagree with them. The negotiations might be very pleasant but ultimately doomed to collapse if love is the only driving factor.

Love is obedience to God, and to that God I will give my allegiance without blinking.

Love for your fellow man would be of greater value. It is the love of gods that has resulted in the many religious wars over the millennia and even now Muslims love their god so much that they kill themselves and others in their blind and deluded love.

Kat

 

[Alaric]

Katazia, atrocious is a reletive term, so if democracy is the best system, it's not atrocious. And the whole point of democracy is that it includes minority interests - if the winning party rules alone then the society is no longer a democracy.

Jenyar, your post before this last one was great, but this one misses just about every point I was making, and/or avoids every issue.

It's more complicated than "sending ourselves to hell", because evil is involved - and it's a mystery, even in the Bible. We only work with what we have. The flexibility was towards being human in all its glorious diversity, without having to disobey. Sin is simply destructive. We're certainly able to understand the concept, but since more than just what we have in front of us is involved, we're simply out of our depth if we don't allow for God's perspective on the problem. We have strayed from what God considered "good", and we find ourselves in foreign lands with a lodestone that points to a place that can't exist in that environment.

This answers nothing. Is God a dictator, or not? Is sin immorality, or disobedience to God? How do you know we're out of our depth if we don't allow for God's perspective?

Love is generally considered to be an emotion, and I asked someone in another thread: why have such faith in it? His answer was it simply makes him feel good, and that's enough for him - it doesn't require faith. Such implicit and blind faith in an "emotion" is certainly unreasonable. If it is just an emotion, which the Bible takes pains to point out it can't be, if we are to use it as a moral guideline.

Right, so if it's just an emotion it is certainly unreasonable, but if we are to use it as a moral guideline, it can't be. So, either we can't use it as a moral guideline, or it is something more. What?

Now you've turned this into an emotional argument. If I told you "I can't see why we should be alive at all, and have nothing certain to hope for except death", would you have a rational argument ready to put me at ease? I doubt it, the best answer would be "that's life", or something suitably reductionist and unproductive.

How did I turn it into an emotional argument? This passage or yours is a good example of emotional argumentation - you base your belief on the fear of the alternative. Just remember that you are just one human, and the human race continues after you are gone. We don't know what is possible, we don't know how far life can progress - and that alone is enough to satisfy me. I like the idea of life being a kind of race to Godhood - which lineage on which planet will get there first? Lotsa fun!! I don't mind much that I'll be dead and gone before the really interesting discoveries are made - as long as I've been a part of it.

We're free at arriving at any conclusion we feel comfortable with, but that is over and above what we're faced with: that God interfered and felt the need to interfere with what we'd call "normal" history. The rational is always subject to reality. Flying elephants would be rational in a world where they existed. And emotion carries no authority in a rational world. Or does it? You're argument above seems to indicate something else.

Huh? "Reason is the slave of the passions." - David Hume. That is, all rational decisions are made on the basis of passions that are effectively immune to reason (it is not irrational to like liquorice, for example). Do you disagree with this? We've been over this before, I hope I don't have to repeat myself.

The "turning the cheek" will make a good example. It's certainly impractical in an abusive society - where people would take advantage of such meekness, where you will get trample for such pacifism. But in a society that recongizes love as its prime directive, things begin to look different: people who have experienced forgiveness should be forgiving. People who have seen their saviour suffer should be sensitive to suffering. You get the picture. Turning the other cheek is mere foolishness in the world we live in - but so is believing in God. Such is the world we live in...

I hoped you would be smarter and see the point behind the example. To go generic: If I believe in A as an ideal, and you and your religion claim B as an ideal, how do we resolve the dispute?

I'm arguing for dialogue. You know the phrase often used in weltpolitik: "we seeked to establish a dialogue with such and such ruler..." You use the example of a democracy, like Plato used his republic, "a world ruled by philosophers". We can't think of a more powerless government than that today, but that's because we don't know "philosophers" the way he thought about them. Maybe we should take another look at Jesus' parables - you know: the ones that describe the Kingdom of God. He saw this world as a foreign country to God's, one where righteous people lived in exile. We are to uphold God's principles, but at the same time realize: "there is a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to let live, a time to kill..."

Dialogue with whom? Do you base your beliefs off what you perceive is necessary for people, or do you declare what is necessary for people based on your beliefs?

God is a King whose people live in foreign soil, among foreign people and foreign beliefs. His kingdom's gates are shut against evil, sin and corruption and will always be. But his people are sick with these things... they're dying from them. They want to know why their king allows it. "But you're not obeying me anymore," He says. "I don't recongize you as my people anymore!" He sends messengers with medicine: laws, forgiveness, hope, love. Some become addicted to the medicine, some messenger become corrupt themselves. Some return to Him. But things are getting worse. So He sends his own son, and clothes him in his own clothes and gives Him is own seal ring so that people would recognize him. "Even if they don't accept his message, at least they will know whom they're rejecting, and I will be able to see who are my people are who aren't". And so it was. But some loved Egypt more than only a promise of Canaan. Some loved Babylon more than a broken city. Some loved the democracy of Rome more than the promise of heaven.

What you believe is not relevant to this debate. Save the quotes for fellow believers. I'm only interested in the reasoning that justifies it.

We do live in a democracy - it's the best way to live among each other. We can't respect kings, we don't tolerate dictators, and we resent communism. We like ruling ourselves. But our relative comfort doesn't change the fact that we're still in exile on earth, our lives dictated by death. One democracy can't rule over another, one monarchy can't usurp another, and one dictator won't serve another, without someone dying and bringing down the house. They are all subject to death, and death to God. Still, it's your vote.

As above.

Um... maybe you missed it, but those examples you provide were people deciding themselves who determined their ideal society. It's just that their ideals conflicted with the "better" ideals of others.

Nonsense. Most thieves understand why a society in which property is not respected would collapse. They know they are trying to take advantage of the system.

Christianity isn't an ideal - it's a community with an ideal. It encourages love, without which any democracy is about as moral as the average criminal - laws and regulations in spite. But Christianity hasn't and won't "fail", because it's failure is no worse than any other: death, and the line that separates the living from the dead are the same among Christians as among every other group of people. Except for one thing.

1 Corinthians 15:19And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.​

As indeed we are pitied by those who only have hope for this life.

It shouldn't surprise you that you are pitied - your life must be pretty miserable if you can't stand the thought of death and no divine purpose. You should read Nietzsche's 'The Antichrist' - that will really show you a different perspective on Christianity. (Don't let the title put you off, it's not satanic or anything.)

"To cultivate out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to falsehood at any price, an antipathy, a contempt for every good and honest instinct! These are the blessings of Christianity! - Parasitism as the sole practice of the Church; with its ideal of green-sickness, of 'holiness' draining away all blood, all love, all hope for life; the Beyond as the will to deny reality of every kind; the Cross as the badge of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy there has ever been - a conspiracy against health, beauty, well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself..."​

- Nietzsche, The Antichrist

Lack of love causes collapse. Even thieves can agree about their victims. You can't corrupt something without becoming corrupt yourself, and you can't redeem something without redeeming yourself. This no democracy or set of laws or holy book will do for you. Love is obedience to God, and to that God I will give my allegiance without blinking.

No, love is not obedience to God.

 

[Jenyar]

This answers nothing. Is God a dictator, or not? Is sin immorality, or disobedience to God? How do you know we're out of our depth if we don't allow for God's perspective?

I was trying to allow for God's perspective, but it's a lost case because you don't allow me to allow for it. God is a King, but his kingdom is not an earthly one. He wants people to speak to Him, to fight out their issues with Him, and He wants to help them. That makes Him a good king. But He also lays down laws that creates an infrastructure that can experience His help - where people can begin to help themselves as well. It doesn't affect his kingdom, but it affects our experience of it. Therefore immorality is sin because it's disobedience; and love is obedience because it's not sin (cf. Rom. 6:16). It makes his heavenly kingdom a reality on earth, not according to "natural" borders, but with moral human lives and responsible love as its borders.

Right, so if it's just an emotion it is certainly unreasonable, but if we are to use it as a moral guideline, it can't be. So, either we can't use it as a moral guideline, or it is something more. What?

Haven't I been clear? It's something much more. Sure, it's possible to reduce it into just an emotion, which is again reducable into "just" chemistry and hormones - but that inevitably also reduces it's power and meaning. God's love is revealed and described so that we can know and follow it. A watered down version of it won't hold water as a moral guideline, which is why people don't trust it anymore - we can't trust people with it anymore.

How did I turn it into an emotional argument? This passage or yours is a good example of emotional argumentation - you base your belief on the fear of the alternative. Just remember that you are just one human, and the human race continues after you are gone. We don't know what is possible, we don't know how far life can progress - and that alone is enough to satisfy me. I like the idea of life being a kind of race to Godhood - which lineage on which planet will get there first? Lotsa fun!! I don't mind much that I'll be dead and gone before the really interesting discoveries are made - as long as I've been a part of it.

Look carefully, I just rephrased your question ("I just don't see how those who regulate themselves and their motives and arrive at my position are sentenced to eternal death") with "secular" words to see what kind of answer you really expected from me. The only possible answer to an emotional question is an emotional one.

I'm all for fun, and death isn't scary because we know it's inevitable. Sometimes the thought makes people uncomfortable, but then they just remind themselves how much fun life is and get on with it. On the other hand, suicide rates show that many people find death much more attractive than life. Maybe that's because in the end emotional arguments carry more weight than reasonable ones when push comes to shove.

Huh? "Reason is the slave of the passions." - David Hume. That is, all rational decisions are made on the basis of passions that are effectively immune to reason (it is not irrational to like liquorice, for example). Do you disagree with this? We've been over this before, I hope I don't have to repeat myself.

Obviously I agree with this.

I hoped you would be smarter and see the point behind the example. To go generic: If I believe in A as an ideal, and you and your religion claim B as an ideal, how do we resolve the dispute?

Responsibly, with love and sensitivity. The Bible is full of disputes like these, as are our interaction with the Bible itself, and indeed with God himself. Its detractors frequently like to call them "contradictions".

Divorce is one example: God didn't approve of it, but through Moses made a law that allowed and regulated it, and Jesus pointed out what the we should keep to God's ideals, and not see his patience with sin as an endorsement of it: divorse amounts to adultery, and adultery originates in the heart (Matt.5:28).

All ideals converge in God, so our job is to work out our differences like the children of God we are, and bring them into obedience to God. Because neither of us is an authority, and any ideal that serves only one of us must be inferior to an ideal that serves both of us; it must never go outside the boundaries of love.

Dialogue with whom? Do you base your beliefs off what you perceive is necessary for people, or do you declare what is necessary for people based on your beliefs?

Beliefs are subject to God, but they serve people because God served people. What is necessary for the moment might not be necessary on the long run. We should try to settle matters that are of passing significance among ourselves, but things like sin and immorality can't be tolerated even for a while, because they have long term consequences. Not everything is of the same importance.

Nonsense. Most thieves understand why a society in which property is not respected would collapse. They know they are trying to take advantage of the system.

They are sabotaging the system. And what you proposed seems to give them licence to do so:

"It has to be universally understood that behaving in the best interests of the society is the same as behaving in the best interests of yourself. Religion tries this, and failed, communism failed, all manner of other dictatorships have failed too, because they don't realise that it is the people themselves that must determine their ideal society."​

Unless you are agreeing with me that even people outside one ideal society can be held accountable for sabotaging a greater ideal society. When Singapore or Malaysia don't enforce copyright laws, the economy of the rest of the world suffers for it. But they're not doing anything wrong in the society theydetermined as ideal, are they?

It shouldn't surprise you that you are pitied - your life must be pretty miserable if you can't stand the thought of death and no divine purpose. You should read Nietzsche's 'The Antichrist' - that will really show you a different perspective on Christianity. (Don't let the title put you off, it's not satanic or anything.)

"To cultivate out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to falsehood at any price, an antipathy, a contempt for every good and honest instinct! These are the blessings of Christianity! - Parasitism as the sole practice of the Church; with its ideal of green-sickness, of 'holiness' draining away all blood, all love, all hope for life; the Beyond as the will to deny reality of every kind; the Cross as the badge of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy there has ever been - a conspiracy against health, beauty, well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself..."​

- Nietzsche, The Antichrist

I have a lot of respect for Nietzche. I think he was more honest about what life without God means than many people who propose to. However, I don't see why I should agree with him that Christianity is somehow the antithesis of what it is trying to achieve. Because its motives are wrong? What standard does he use to qualify what's "wrong"?

Our humanity is our identity. I don't consider being held to it by God (who defines that identity as "love") to be an unfair application of something we are trying to achieve on our own anyway. Our inability to enforce an identity we intuitively recognize as "the proper way to live" shows our lack of authority on the matter, and I don't think a "well, if we can't enforce it, then God may not either" attitude is rational.

No, love is not obedience to God.

I beg to differ, unless you are talking about a different god than I am...

2 John 1:6
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.​

Most interestingly, just after this verse John identifies the antichrist as the antithesis of it.