Though shalt not kill. Would you do so for your God?
- Thread starter Greatest I am
- Start date
Not at all, if anything I was assuming we were more like children, which is the dominant metaphor - God the Father/Mother - in many religions. You asked me how I would deal with God's 'problem'. I gave an answer to that, using an overriding parent dealing with children metaphor. Right now God is not dealing with us as I would with either young children or grown up ones. The young ones tend to want to be hugged even more.
Don't you want God to make his or her presence known to you directly?
Don't you want to be comforted by an actual relationship, rather than one based on faith?
Why is an absentee father a good symbol for God today?
correct..
The term slave was used to try and communicate the ideal that we would act like we had no free will, that we MUST obey or go to hell,because of popular religious teachings..irregardless of the truth.
This doesn't speak to any corrections God would try to teach..assuming we would actually listen to him saying that we didn't have to obey him..over 200 years of religion teaching 'obey' would be hard to give up all at once.
we would in essence feel like we were slaves..at least most ppl..(not all)
whether it was warranted or not..
true
i kinda disagree..simply because i think God does communicate with us, but on a level so subtle that there is room for doubt, its kind of like the parent just communicating their opinion of how the kid should handle a situation and letting the kid choose whether he wants to listen or not ,instead of the parent forcing the kid to following that advice.(through coercion,guilt,humility,indoctrination,etc)
this is where personal revelations come in..
I believe he is there giving me advice, but he is so subtle, i actually have to think and choose instead of just mindlessly obeying..
other than the obvious selfishness of that question..see last comment..
again..see above..he isn't really absent if you learn how to listen for him..
Except even a parent who feels there should be swing room on a particular issue and wants the child to work it out for herself IS STILL clearly demonstrating his or her existence. Sure, dad in the armchair may not tell me whether to go to college now or work for a year first, however I will still hear his voice, get a squeeze on the shoulder, see the changes in his face as he listens to me, and so on.
You are coupling God making our decisions for us, with God allowing us to be sure he or she exists. But these are not coupled, as shown by parents. Parents can allow us to make our own decisions AND clearly exist. They don't need to start hiding when the kid is 16 and doing mind manipulation about whether they existed in the past either.
Sure, many people would run to god and ask, even demand, to know what to do, but there is a pretty easy option that many non-domineering parents use: refuse to decide for them.
see above
selfishness? Is a child being selfish when it wants a hug from a parent. Is a husband when he wants one from his wife? Is an all powerful deity sacrificing itself if it hugs or is physically present to someone?
Where did this horrible guilt come from?
Maybe. You have to add maybe. Since in your view if you were confident he was there and present you would have lost your free will. So there must always be anxiety. Like a parent hiding from their kid some mornings, or all mornings it turns out.
no..in my view most ppl would choose to give up their free will, if God were to be uncontestable, not they would have to give up free will,they would not actually lose it,they would still have it, they would just convince themselves that they didn't have it.
notice i am not including ALL ppl in this..just the majority in my opinion.those who want to be led. (whether consciencley or subconsciously)
Greatest I am
Valued Senior Member
I was envisaging the Christians of that day saying the same thing just before showing that their might made right and started burning, piliaging, and rapping. More babies heads against the stones.
Regards
DL
But you are still not addressing this issue:
the existence of God does not give them anything to hook their slavery lust to. They wouldn't know what rules to follow. If God appears incontrovertably AND tells people what to do or lets them know what heshe wants then the issue you are talking about arises. But the mere, obvious existence of a God, even a loving one who expressed care for each of us, does not give people a set of rules to follow.
What we have now is people who know something about God spreading the word and it always seems to include rules. This situation is much worse. It means that if people come in contact with God, 99.9999% of the time it will be in the context of a religion with rules. IOW something to hang up and abandon their free will on.
NMS' thinking looks more like what in Horney's theory would be a neurotic solution to alleviate anxiety, specifically the resigned type (moving away).
The tyrannical shoulds for this solution are:
The detached person believes that he should be totally self-sufficient and independent.
He should never need anybody, yield to any influence, or be tied down to anything.
He should always maintain distance and separateness from others.
He should avoid needing others, ties to others, closeness to others, and love.
He should always strive for perfection, and reflect upon and correct all possible flaws.
That would explain NMS' insistence on self-sufficiency and full personal responsibility when it comes to belief in God.
I think there is support in this in this exchange...
Is a child being selfish when they desire comfort from a parent, a parent who does not have unlimited power? or one spouse from another?
That such a basic need, to be comforted and feel loved, would be seen a selfish is bizarre to me.
Even more so than the kinds of physical deprivations of ascetics and self-flagellants.
It also seems to harbor a great terror of intimacy. That to be in contact with another means the other has total control.
If we know God exists, we will become slaves. If we have contact with God, we will become slaves.
IOW it seems to have an underlying terror, which gets sublimated into a kind of pride/independence.
Which is something some distant fathers want to instill in their sons, especially. Don't get too close to me. and its underlying fears gets translated into a lifestyle aesthetic.
It's not uncommon for victims of various crimes and transgressions to develop an exaggerated need for self-sufficiency and independence.
I've known of people who have come out of cults who have an intense drive - "Unless I myself can prove it is true, it is not true; it all depends on me."
While a requirement for personal realization is natural, those victims are driven into extremes that are logically untenable.
Ie. they try to practice extreme epistemic egoism - which becomes even more absurd when it is coupled with the belief that it is God who guides a person's mind.
I've known of people who have come out of cults who have an intense drive - "Unless I myself can prove it is true, it is not true; it all depends on me."
While a requirement for personal realization is natural, those victims are driven into extremes that are logically untenable.
Ie. they try to practice extreme epistemic egoism - which becomes even more absurd when it is coupled with the belief that it is God who guides a person's mind.
What??
And what is God in all this - a pawn, a puppet?
God is, per definition, the source and origin of all knowledge and wisdom.
God would be a carrot one is ultimately agnostic about, a situation one thinks is necessary.
This is where the donkey is more grounded than us. A potential, invisible carrot does not = motivation.
i have claimed to be a hermit..
alot of that kinda describes me..i do distance myself from ppl because of the feelings of worthlessness that accompanies others critique of my person/character, but at the same time i do recognize that i need ppl to exist in this world for support,iow i cant survive without the help of others.
i believe alot of this is conditioning from society (see my attitude about insults)
(i actually did read the link)
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by all technicalities..yes..
they put their concerns above others..
the selfishness comes in when they put their concerns over the needs of others..
i am not saying that they should not get the comfort and love,
??
nope..to be in contact with others sets one up for feelings of worthlessness..
i would not have a prob with 'doing as your told' IF the person telling me what to do did not default to a selfishness..(caring more for their own feelings of worth than mine.)
you say that as an all or nothing..like If God were to show himself ALL ppl would be slaves, there would be no choice..that is not what i am saying.
I don't follow..?
@ signal
"God is, per definition, the source and origin of all knowledge and wisdom. "
yes..but we should listen to him, not because he can punish us because he is all powerful, but because he is right.
do you want your children to listen to you because you can hurt them, or because you are right?
This is one strange reasoning, and I don't understand how you can pose that dichotomy.
If I would have children, I would hope that I would be so wonderful, so loving and so advanced that my children couldn't help but to look up to me and would want to be like me.
But since I am not wonderful, loving and advanced, I don't have children nor do I intend to have them.
God is sometimes called the All-Attractive: everyone is attracted to Him, they cannot help themselves but to be attracted to Him.
There is no issue of threat or cognitive coercion in this.
To provide yet another angle to this: since we, individual beings, are defined as being parts and parcels of God and have the same nature as God, whatever discord there may be between us and God, is merely temporary; we are bound to do as God desires, because we have the same nature as He (even though we are infinitensimally smaller than Him).
There is no issue of us "having to listen to God" - we are bound to do so by default.
You seem to derive your self-worth, to the point that it is pride,
out of your conviction that you are "thinking for yourself."
Those other people, those pious pawns piously sitting in pews - you are nothing like them, you "think for yourself."
those pious pawns piously in pews your portraying pretend to pray to prop up their posterity to get their props from the pastor, provided the pastor doesn't pretend to prostrate himself to please the ppl so when he passes the plate the ppl can put the paper into the plate to pay for his Porsche..
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program..
:bugeye: