So I was raised in a protestant church where we took the word literally. Basically a textualist approach to scripture.
As I got older and learned more about our understanding of reality, the scripture went from being the bona-fide literal truth to seeming more like a story.
Rebel-teen brain kicked in and found everything wrong that it could. Things like the creation story, the floods, etc. made less and less sense to me. Then I became angry with the idea that it was so easy for me to believe because of how easy my life was and how fortunate I was while growing up. I was never starving, I was never in fear of not having clean water, I wasn't born with any disabilities, etc.
I felt like I'd been had, but instead of giving religion the benefit of the doubt, my mind decided to go scorched earth on the idea. I felt that religion was for people who were afraid of death, who wanted to justify wrongs in the world as being "the plan," and wasn't satisfied with the idea of ignoring these thoughts by simply having faith. Evidence to the contrary piled up, but the church said "don't worry your pretty little head, just ignore that."
I don't hold those hostile attitudes any more (especially with Peterson's lectures), but it's hard for me to believe in the God I was taught about. At least as far as his abilities went.
I went to a catholic university and had some really great discussions with my theology professor about my journey. He said that a collegue of his has argued that the Bible may have overstated the power of God. Im gonna butcher it, but it was something akin to:
"Due to the suffering allowed in this world, God cannot be all knowing, all loving, and all powerful. One must give. He either knows and controls all, but is not all loving (or else we would not have childhood cancer), controls and loves all but does not know all (i.e. he isn't aware of childhood cancer), or he knows and loves all, but is not in control (therefore he detests childhood cancer, but cannot prevent it)."
He told me it was a point that caused him to struggle, and that he subscribes to the idea that God knows and loves all, but is no longer in control. He says he can see a reality in which God was in control, but gave up the controls to man in a way that he cannot override them.
I'm just rambling at this point, but basically it doesn't jive with my interpretation of reality. I can see the scripture as a philosophy that still holds value, but the superstition is something I can't bring myself to hold as true without being dishonest with myself.
I'll give my answer to the problem of evil, which will almost certainly be insufficient, but here it is anyway.
What if the things we see as evil aren't actually evil? We are extrapolating from extremely incomplete data. Even materialistic interpretations of the universe acknowledge this.
So, and bear with me here, what if childhood cancer isn't the evil we think it is? (I have children, and Ive suffered personal tragedy before you think me callous) What if the reality we experience is not actually real? Have you ever experienced a dream which changed your life? I have. There was a point in my life where I was starting to get into some gnarly shit, and I had a nightmare about the consequences and turned it around. As horrible as that nightmare was, it wasn't real. But it had real, positive effects. What if this reality is a proofing ground for remedial souls to give us a foretaste of existence outside of God's presence so that we can make a more informed decision about how to spend eternity?
"Why doesn't God just say that, then?" He kinda does if you read the Bible a certain way. But it would also spoil the effect IMO if He was more explicit.
"But there's no proof for this" True. Which is why it's insufficient. Here's the thing, I find that there's plenty of evidence, both material and philosophical, for intelligent design. (Not young Earth creationism, ID) So if there is a God, there's no reason we should expect to understand His mind completely. And there's no reason to assume that we can comprehend the complexity of His actions.
Spez: here's the mindfuck, imo: what if God is all powerful and all evil? What if the good things we experience are designed to make the suffering here and after more intense? Now, I don't believe this but it can be disconcerting in moments of weakness.
Very well worded (I've long dabbled in the realm you are speaking) except I would counter your "mindfuck" with this, hopefully calming, questioning:
If God was all powerful and all evil and good things we experience were designed to increase suffering (contrast) - why then does the world default to decay? The absence of action in this life results in good / usefulness / fufillment dwindling:
Stop lifting weights? Muscles shrink back.
Don't go to work? Stop getting paid.
Don't plow the fields? Weeds grow not heads of cabbage.
Stop enforcing the law? Criminals run wild.
Don't take care of your teeth? They rot.
Etc. Why would a constant need to perservere / face adversity be needed to demonstrate contrast so suffering was deeper? Why not just make everything extremely easy?
You may then counter that well then that an "evil" God made us desire the satisfaction of rewarding work so that we can than be made to toil for ever and never reach satisfication in some sort of hell but now then are you not seeing the infantile nature of this line of thinking? If God can (which we must assume at face value for this topic) plant the inner concepts of desires / mental feedback does this whole thing not seem like a bunch of extra steps that are unneeded? Would an "all powerful" God waste his effort time / creation / power doing such things?
Now taking it all back a step to the higher picture let's flip it. Why then would an all powerful "good" God put us through this if he could just control our desires / mental feedback to make us want to do good? Well, my interpretation of the Holy Spirit is that he actually has. I believe our conscious is the Holy Spirit guiding us subtly to know what is right in God's eyes - this manifests itself in successful cultural norms that even most athesists accept as "right". Don't murder, don't steal, fight off addictions, etc. The important distinction is we are not robots though - you still have the choice to ignore such guidance though God very much does not want you to.
But I will stop here as we are getting into "initial sin" / knowldge / Adam talks as to why you can even choose to do sin / be evil. I wil lleave it with this for those still following who struggle with this part: If God is everything and good and if true praise (not shallow modern usage of the word - think deeper here, 'oneness') is his desire - would he want it to come from creations that had to or from creation that actively had to surpress a mountain of reason not to but still chose to? Does a merciless tyrant have more real power than a deeply loved President?
If you consider good and evil as a spectrum such that it is impossible for good to exist without evil, maybe this universe is an optimal balance of the two?
You got me thinking theology this morning, so I'm going to lay it all out for you. This is the only analysis of Christianity that makes sense to me...
The creator of this physical world is Satan, and his power is an emulation of God's. It's pretty good but not entirely real because the divine spark of true creation always come from God Himself.
We are partially the creation of Satan's physical world (our bodies) while also being God's children through the divine spark within all of us. This divine spark is often called "soul".
This physical world is kind of like a science experiment. It's Satan's attempt to "out-god God". He wanted to make a perfectly balanced, perfectly consistent, self-sustaining creation. And this world is perfectly balanced. Good equals bad in all things. For example, if you feed a puppy and watch it grow, other animals will need to die in order to provide meat to feed it. If you fall in love with someone, one day either you or your loved one will die, resulting in sorrow. Every birth results in death.
Keeping all this in mind, we can answer why God does not intervene. And the answer is free will. Satan, as a divine being, has the gift of free will from God, just as Man -- a partially divine being -- also has free will.
God cannot intervene with our affairs because He would then be stepping into the science experiment that Satan has set up. And if He took away that free will from Satan, God would be denying the nature of his own creation.
But how could God leave us to suffer, you may ask? God has not left us abandoned. We also have free will, thus God can only show us the way. He cannot force us into it. God speaks to us constantly if we listen, and He even sent Christ to be a little more obvious about the message.
Because we are an inherent part of Satan's experiment, we are the ones who can change things within it without violating the rules that Satan himself has set up. And we are the ones who can choose God if we wish. Of course, this infuriates Satan because it proves that despite all of his perfect and beautiful illusion, the truth of God still wins out in the end.
God is in control. But that control also means that free will must play out...and in the end the choices we freely make may be the most important aspect of our existence.
So I was raised in a protestant church where we took the word literally. Basically a textualist approach to scripture.
As I got older and learned more about our understanding of reality, the scripture went from being the bona-fide literal truth to seeming more like a story.
Rebel-teen brain kicked in and found everything wrong that it could. Things like the creation story, the floods, etc. made less and less sense to me. Then I became angry with the idea that it was so easy for me to believe because of how easy my life was and how fortunate I was while growing up. I was never starving, I was never in fear of not having clean water, I wasn't born with any disabilities, etc.
I felt like I'd been had, but instead of giving religion the benefit of the doubt, my mind decided to go scorched earth on the idea. I felt that religion was for people who were afraid of death, who wanted to justify wrongs in the world as being "the plan," and wasn't satisfied with the idea of ignoring these thoughts by simply having faith. Evidence to the contrary piled up, but the church said "don't worry your pretty little head, just ignore that."
I don't hold those hostile attitudes any more (especially with Peterson's lectures), but it's hard for me to believe in the God I was taught about. At least as far as his abilities went.
I went to a catholic university and had some really great discussions with my theology professor about my journey. He said that a collegue of his has argued that the Bible may have overstated the power of God. Im gonna butcher it, but it was something akin to:
"Due to the suffering allowed in this world, God cannot be all knowing, all loving, and all powerful. One must give. He either knows and controls all, but is not all loving (or else we would not have childhood cancer), controls and loves all but does not know all (i.e. he isn't aware of childhood cancer), or he knows and loves all, but is not in control (therefore he detests childhood cancer, but cannot prevent it)."
He told me it was a point that caused him to struggle, and that he subscribes to the idea that God knows and loves all, but is no longer in control. He says he can see a reality in which God was in control, but gave up the controls to man in a way that he cannot override them.
I'm just rambling at this point, but basically it doesn't jive with my interpretation of reality. I can see the scripture as a philosophy that still holds value, but the superstition is something I can't bring myself to hold as true without being dishonest with myself.
I'll give my answer to the problem of evil, which will almost certainly be insufficient, but here it is anyway.
What if the things we see as evil aren't actually evil? We are extrapolating from extremely incomplete data. Even materialistic interpretations of the universe acknowledge this.
So, and bear with me here, what if childhood cancer isn't the evil we think it is? (I have children, and Ive suffered personal tragedy before you think me callous) What if the reality we experience is not actually real? Have you ever experienced a dream which changed your life? I have. There was a point in my life where I was starting to get into some gnarly shit, and I had a nightmare about the consequences and turned it around. As horrible as that nightmare was, it wasn't real. But it had real, positive effects. What if this reality is a proofing ground for remedial souls to give us a foretaste of existence outside of God's presence so that we can make a more informed decision about how to spend eternity?
"Why doesn't God just say that, then?" He kinda does if you read the Bible a certain way. But it would also spoil the effect IMO if He was more explicit.
"But there's no proof for this" True. Which is why it's insufficient. Here's the thing, I find that there's plenty of evidence, both material and philosophical, for intelligent design. (Not young Earth creationism, ID) So if there is a God, there's no reason we should expect to understand His mind completely. And there's no reason to assume that we can comprehend the complexity of His actions.
Spez: here's the mindfuck, imo: what if God is all powerful and all evil? What if the good things we experience are designed to make the suffering here and after more intense? Now, I don't believe this but it can be disconcerting in moments of weakness.
Very well worded (I've long dabbled in the realm you are speaking) except I would counter your "mindfuck" with this, hopefully calming, questioning:
If God was all powerful and all evil and good things we experience were designed to increase suffering (contrast) - why then does the world default to decay? The absence of action in this life results in good / usefulness / fufillment dwindling:
Etc. Why would a constant need to perservere / face adversity be needed to demonstrate contrast so suffering was deeper? Why not just make everything extremely easy?
You may then counter that well then that an "evil" God made us desire the satisfaction of rewarding work so that we can than be made to toil for ever and never reach satisfication in some sort of hell but now then are you not seeing the infantile nature of this line of thinking? If God can (which we must assume at face value for this topic) plant the inner concepts of desires / mental feedback does this whole thing not seem like a bunch of extra steps that are unneeded? Would an "all powerful" God waste his effort time / creation / power doing such things?
Now taking it all back a step to the higher picture let's flip it. Why then would an all powerful "good" God put us through this if he could just control our desires / mental feedback to make us want to do good? Well, my interpretation of the Holy Spirit is that he actually has. I believe our conscious is the Holy Spirit guiding us subtly to know what is right in God's eyes - this manifests itself in successful cultural norms that even most athesists accept as "right". Don't murder, don't steal, fight off addictions, etc. The important distinction is we are not robots though - you still have the choice to ignore such guidance though God very much does not want you to.
But I will stop here as we are getting into "initial sin" / knowldge / Adam talks as to why you can even choose to do sin / be evil. I wil lleave it with this for those still following who struggle with this part: If God is everything and good and if true praise (not shallow modern usage of the word - think deeper here, 'oneness') is his desire - would he want it to come from creations that had to or from creation that actively had to surpress a mountain of reason not to but still chose to? Does a merciless tyrant have more real power than a deeply loved President?
If you consider good and evil as a spectrum such that it is impossible for good to exist without evil, maybe this universe is an optimal balance of the two?
Maybe. That kinda gets into dualism, which is a path I'm not ready to walk.
You got me thinking theology this morning, so I'm going to lay it all out for you. This is the only analysis of Christianity that makes sense to me...
The creator of this physical world is Satan, and his power is an emulation of God's. It's pretty good but not entirely real because the divine spark of true creation always come from God Himself.
We are partially the creation of Satan's physical world (our bodies) while also being God's children through the divine spark within all of us. This divine spark is often called "soul".
This physical world is kind of like a science experiment. It's Satan's attempt to "out-god God". He wanted to make a perfectly balanced, perfectly consistent, self-sustaining creation. And this world is perfectly balanced. Good equals bad in all things. For example, if you feed a puppy and watch it grow, other animals will need to die in order to provide meat to feed it. If you fall in love with someone, one day either you or your loved one will die, resulting in sorrow. Every birth results in death.
Keeping all this in mind, we can answer why God does not intervene. And the answer is free will. Satan, as a divine being, has the gift of free will from God, just as Man -- a partially divine being -- also has free will.
God cannot intervene with our affairs because He would then be stepping into the science experiment that Satan has set up. And if He took away that free will from Satan, God would be denying the nature of his own creation.
But how could God leave us to suffer, you may ask? God has not left us abandoned. We also have free will, thus God can only show us the way. He cannot force us into it. God speaks to us constantly if we listen, and He even sent Christ to be a little more obvious about the message.
Because we are an inherent part of Satan's experiment, we are the ones who can change things within it without violating the rules that Satan himself has set up. And we are the ones who can choose God if we wish. Of course, this infuriates Satan because it proves that despite all of his perfect and beautiful illusion, the truth of God still wins out in the end.
God is in control. But that control also means that free will must play out...and in the end the choices we freely make may be the most important aspect of our existence.