Philo,
So God permits evil for the purpose of moral instruction? Why not just tell people that murder and rape are wrong and develop their "inner constraints" that way? That's how I developed a moral compass -- I never saw anyone murdered or raped, and I haven't even seen all that many fights, but I was taught that it was wrong to force my will on other people except in certain circumstances (self-defense, stopping an assault or murder, etc.), and I accepted it. I didn't have to see bad things firsthand to know that they were bad, and I don't think I'm exceptional in that regard.
But we do not know if, for example, reincarnation is true, and I think it is, whether you were born with a well developed moral sense that took just a little prodding. I also don't think that we are here to learn just the basic and crude morals, but to attain much finer gradations of understanding.
Is the person who gets murdered by a stranger "responsible" for being murdered? I don't see how letting murders go on enhances anyone's sense of responsibility, do you?
No, I didn't mean that, although it is possible in a karmic sense. Nonetheless, belief in karma, while incredibly useful, does carry a danger of becoming complacent about suffering. This is wrong. If a person is being raped because their particular karmic history invited this thing, they are nonetheless to be viewed as completely innocent in the moment. That is a bit paradoxical, but I believe it is correct. And besides, we have no way of knowing this series of prior causes that lead to the present moment, and we should act in the best and most ethical way. This is the way to dissipate negative karma for all parties, whereas if we ignore the situation, the karmic situation worsens.
Earnest,
So perhaps a sensible definition of omnipotent is "Having the power to do anything that is possible".
Yes, perhaps. I have not worried too much about those definitions.
And in turn I generally find the removal of culpability from God to humans due to "the gift of free will" to be rationally suspect, not to mention that the idea that God fails to prevent immense suffering when He could is dubious at best (and I'm being very kind to you in choosing that word).
I guess I am at a loss here. I can't seem to convey that we have to learn and become by doing things ourselves. Life is not a spectator sport. This is it. It's real.
I do not go on about free will because I find it a very difficult question. There are very good arguments both in favor and against it. I agreed with your below essay that our free will is constrained. Yet, such as it is, it seems to be vital.
If God prevents us from acting on our impulses he controls us and we never grow up or become worthy companions. It would be very strange if every time someone wants to strike someone else, they find that their nerves oddly won't function like they just had a stroke or something.
And then, too, there is the argument that we cannot know the good if it has never had a contrast.
God is culpable, if you want to put it that way. God is responsible. God is responsible for it all because everything, absolutely everything comes from and arises out of God, yes, evil and the devil too. But for the greater good, God allows us to become real souls, not robots or automatons.
Yes, yes, exactly. But by your conception, God doesn't intervene to stop suffering when He could. Should we desire to be like and emulate that behaviour?
For me to fully emulate God I would need to be free of the fear of death. God is completely invulnerable in every way, and allows us to make choices. But I do admire God for completely accepting all creatures at all times, and I do strive to be like that, with pretty good success.
4. It implies a belief that God created the Devil (a fallen angel), which I don't believe - I believe that the Devil is a preexisting counterpart to God, beyond God's direct control.
This would make you a gnostic but I am sure they are in error. First of all, there is nothing preexisting God because the definition of God is the fundament of existence itself, and nothing can precede that nor equal it. Evil is not real, it is a potential, and it depends upon good for its existence.
Do you identify as a Christian?
No, for the first two of your reasons, as well as others, in which I think Christian theology has been derived from minds tempted by evil thoughts, which have slandered God.
The things Jesus taught (and I don't know if he even lived) are in direct contradiction to some things in the Old Testament and to things that are common in christian theology. Primarily, the doctrines of eternal damnation and the idea that God in some way needed a sacrifice as an offering in order to forgive humanity. Not to mention painting God as an egomaniac who's going to be really pissed if you can't figure out the Jesus question, or figure out whether he exists.
Christian theology, unfortunately, tends to prevent people from having the very breakthroughs that the New Testament teaches.
You seem to believe in the traditional Trinity. What is the Holy Spirit to you?
I wrote that because I thought you would understand it. Concepts of trinity are important to several belief systems, as well as concepts of one, and of two...these are all sacred numbers for different reasons.
The Holy Spirit to me is the life-love energy of the universe, the Force, the ether, the akashic field, the uncreated energies of God which pervade everything and uphold everything. It is the void, the womb of creation. The Holy Spirit, as an energy, can ignite a spark within the human person, the brain, and cause them to come to life, spiritually speaking.
Therefore, an omnipotent God has the power to bring us to this state of behaving in a godly way without us having to go through all of the suffering to get there.
You have said so, but perhaps you are wrong. Or perhaps it would be agonizingly slow.
Oh, but I'm not suggesting that scenario. I'm suggesting the scenario where the people in heaven want to give you their only truck just because they know that it would give you pleasure, because that's the way that God created them.
I'm not a believer in magic.
I pay close attention on this board to elitism and assertions of superiority, because it's quite commonplace - it's one of the defining dynamics of the place. I'm disappointed to see you hinting at it in the above quote - I had thought that you were humbler than that. The implication that I get from that quote is "I have reached a certain level of attainment where I can see certain things that you can't because you are at a lower level". Really, what do you know about me to make that implication except that I take issue with the characteristics that you ascribe to God?
Yes, you are right, I did hint at that. I don't really think that very many people have gotten to that understanding, especially since there is first of all the confusion of the map with the territory, and second of all, various lessons are learned and relearned at new and deeper levels. As for me, I had a profound breakthrough about it maybe 6 months ago, which brought me great joy. You are right of course that I don't know much about you; I had gotten certain impressions from some of your questions. I would think a person who does not understand the issue of spiritual responsibility might not understand this either. I did not intend to be so offensive, I rather meant it as a carrot.
And what of the suffering that is not directly human-related? Weather-related disasters and the like? Are these in any way necessary? What purpose does God intend with them?
I don't know, but we can remind ourselves that no one gets out of here alive, we are not supposed to, we all die and again, it would be odd for every person born to die at the age of exactly 85. Also, we cannot see the full picture and while no one wants to die or have a loved on die at any given moment, there are many ways in which things could be all working out to the good. Perhaps many people gather together during a disaster all of whom have a karmic need to die at that time.
Then, too, some people think, and I am not at all averse, that our thoughts and inner state affect everything - how humans feel on the planet and how the weather behaves. It may be that disasters could be a rarity if we were in a heavenly inner state. Does not this "whole world groan together under the bondage of decay and corruption?" If this whole cosmos is indeed an interrelated whole, all things affect one another.
And who, that has ever had a near death experience, found it other than wonderful? Is death bad? What if death is like waking up in the morning? What if there is no death? Must every chess piece agonize when it is removed from the board till the next round?
We live in the moment. What happens in the moment is important. I don't think that the fact that one day we will look back on our suffering diminishes its overall significance.
Not now, no. Suffering and injustice are very poignant. They are the goads that we need. We must take them seriously. Nonetheless, suffering will drop away as if it never existed. As will guilt and anger.
If God is omnipotent and if He created us, then God structured our free will, and God is ultimately responsible for who we are.
Yes, totally.
I don't buy this "God gave us free will and therefore we are responsible for suffering, not Him" argument.
But we are responsible for what we do, even if we are tempted by the devil! God's responsibility runs deeper, on an ultimate level. But it is immature to blame God for our actions because getting out of hell is our responsibility, and
finding the way out is, well, the whole point.
Better to get started. Have a little more faith, so that anger and confusion don't hold you back.
Furthermore, as the architect of the universe, it would be God who determined that the consequence of sin is suffering, but He need not have made that the case: He could have chosen instead to ignore or forgive sin and to not impose any consequences. Again, responsibility for suffering remains with an omnipotent God.
I agree with most of your essay, but:
It seems to me that Christianity quite often promotes a grade-school level of spiritual understanding, as opposed to eastern thought, for example. It is to this limited understanding that you are arguing in this essay. I, too, have thought of writing something to help Christians out of their morass.
Here you speak of sin as a kind of badness, which is overemphasized in christianity to the point of making sin seem innate to the human soul whereas it is not. What is innate to the human soul is purity.
But sin, in Hebrew, means to miss the mark, and the mark that is missed is perfection. So sin is a lack of perfection, and the Buddhists simply call it ignorance and I think they are right.
Since sin is a falling short of a full residing in God, or an optimally developed soul, then naturally it entails suffering since the further we are from God the more unhappy we feel. The closer we are to God the more we treat one another as equal to ourselves, and therefore to be far from God is to be lost in ego constriction, misery, fear and violence.
This is not an arbitrary decision of God, it is how reality works.
God does not impose consequences, karma is how reality works. It is an energy flow.
God ignores and forgives all sins, for all time. There was never a time when you weren't forgiven from the foundation of the world.
Truth is a pathless land.