Can God Experience Pleasure?

[Cacotopia]

70 years huh. Old age doesn't mean you are wise. Just because you have lived longer than other people doesn't mean you have more experience than say me a 34 year old. I am not assuming to know what you have gone through in your life. Learning from life experience in my opinion is wisdom. If you keep making the same mistakes then your age doesn't mean jack.

Being old doesn't automatically mean we should hang on your every word.

 

[Katzpur]

Your response is doublespeak and really doesn't tell me anything.

I know that. It's my belief, pure and simple. It's not something I can convince someone else of. It's just how I've experienced life that has taught me that.

 

[shunyadragon]

70 years of life.

Were you born a LDS Christian? bIf you were born LDS and still LDA, that's 70 years waisted.

I got you beat I;m 71. Nonetheless so what?

 

[Katzpur]

Being old doesn't automatically mean we should hang on your every word.

I'm not asking you to. It doesn't matter to me in the slightest whether you believe a word I say. I can speak only to my own experience and that's all I'm doing.

 

[Windwalker]

I'm not sure that I am attribuing human qualities to God, but rather God attributed His qualities into man.

"In the beginning God created man in his own image". "In the beginning man created God in his own image". Which is true? Perhaps both? I'd say both are.

 

[Vee]

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

It's more like attribute godly qualities to humans. The Bible says that God created humans to his image, not the other way around (Genesis 1:26,27)

 

[shunyadragon]

"In the beginning God created man in his own image". "In the beginning man created God in his own image". Which is true? Perhaps both? I'd say both are.

Both

 

[Kenny]

Wasn't the serpent already in the garden (assuming the serpent was Satan) when Adam and Eve were given the choice of whether or not to eat the forbidden fruit?

That he was in the earth, yes. He was cast down from Heaven to the earth. Whether or not the Devil entered into the serpent, was like unto a serpent that slithered into the Garden is a debate. But that Adam had dominion to expand the Garden with authority seems to be given. I think it is pretty obvious he could have said, Devil, "NO - FOR IT IS SAID..." just like Jesus did in the temptation.

 

[Truthseeker]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

I'm assuming you're reply has basis in Genesis 1:27, which I anticipated ITT.

If my assumption is correct, and if He attributed His qualities unto man, why do we have sociopaths, murders, rapists, and other miscreants roaming the earth?

And while I'm anticipating a Satan reference in upcoming posts, I'll preempt them by asking why He would introduce such malevolent attributes to mankind, or question the relevance to the OP.

We all have a nature of attributes from God, but we also have attributes from the material world.

 

[Truthseeker]

No, the traditional doctrine holds that God is defined by divine impassibility: which means that he is not affected by emotions like we are, as in changing from a state of pleasure to one of grief or pain.

See:

Impassibility - Wikipedia

Impassibility (from Latin in-, "not", passibilis, "able to suffer, experience emotion") describes the theological doctrine that God does not experience pain or pleasure from the actions of another being. It has often been seen as a consequence of divine aseity, the idea that God is absolutely independent of any other being, i.e., in no way causally dependent. Being affected (literally made to have a certain emotion, affect) by the state or actions of another would seem to imply causal dependence.

The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that God is impassible. The divine nature accordingly has no emotions, changes, alterations, height, width, depth, or any other temporal attributes. In Catholic doctrine, it would be erroneous and blasphemous to attribute changes or emotional states to God, except by analogy. Thus scriptural expressions which indicate "anger" or "sadness" on God's part are considered anthropomorphisms, mere analogies to explain mankind's relationship to God, who is impassible in his own nature. Some objecting to this claim assert that if God cannot have emotions, then God cannot love, which is a central tenet of Christianity. However, Catholics would point out that love is not an emotion except in a secondary sense, and is far more than simply a changeable emotion. Furthermore, the human nature of Christ expressed emotional love as well as possessing the timeless, unconditioned "agape" of God.​

I agree with you about impassibility.

 

[Brickjectivity]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

In typical Christian bibles there are different ways of looking at the question, and modern understandings of God could come after certain parts of the Bible are written. I think for all practical purposes and literal ones: no. There could be some abstraction or higher thing analogous to pleasure, but I think the answer is no probably.

 

[Kenny]

He is supposedly infallible and omnipotent so he knew it would happen. Why was he protecting the tree of knowledge by the way? Didn't he have the knowledge to know it would happen. So why would he be saddened by something he KNEW for a fact would happen. It's kind of like dropping a bowling ball on your head and not expecting it to hurt.

Although it sounds like you really don't have questions, have you had children knowing they will do wrong?

 

[Kenny]

"In the beginning God created man in his own image". "In the beginning man created God in his own image". Which is true? Perhaps both? I'd say both are.

I would say that in one case, "In the beginning God created man in his own image" and in others "Man created God in his own image".

The first would would be a correct perspective and in the second in wouldn't.

 

[Katzpur]

If God cannot experience pleasure, how in the world can we think He is capable of empathy or compassion towards us? This makes no sense to me whatsoever! I cannot conceive of a God who has no feelings. Incidentally, I don't think I feel this way because I'm a Mormon, but it's one very good reason why I am a Mormon.

 

[sojourner]

I can confirm that the only god that matters* does have feelings.

*Yes, I'm talking about the FSM. Deal with it.

May you be touched by its noodly appendages!

 

[sojourner]

I'm not sure I quite understand so let me assume I do.

It wasn't God who introduced it in as much as Satan was first without rebellion. Adam was suppose to maintain the order of keeping Satan out of the Garden but chose instead to heed and follow Satan.

This is patently not part of the Genesis mythic account. The serpent Was. Not. Satan.

 

[sojourner]

Your response is doublespeak and really doesn't tell me anything.

I dunno. Experience is a valid tool in the formulation of a theological position. Not the only tool, but one of several that’re prescribed for the job.

 

[sojourner]

Gods in other cultures feel much pain and pleasure and are often painted specifically with human emotions. There are Gods of Chaos who love mankind. Gods of Choas who take on the form of nature and do natures will. There are Gods of Strategy who are also Scholars and poets. There are Gods who love material wealth yet help out sometimes when they feel like it. There are Gods of Healing who also collect the dead.

If you are discussing the Abrahamic God of Israel (Which I believe you are) then the kindest way to put it is he is *********. He feels everything a ********* feels. He's also the type to come to a party and demand you kill your son to show you really love him. Very insecure and childish. All one needs to do is look through the bible and look at human history to see that.

Genesis 22:2 Then God said, “Take your son to the land of Moriah and kill your son there as a sacrifice for me. This must be Isaac, your only son, the one you love. Use him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains there. I will tell you which mountain.” (What kind of Good Person does this)

Genesis 22:12 The angel said, “Don’t kill your son or hurt him in any way. Now I can see that you do respect and obey God. I see that you are ready to kill your son, your only son, for me.”(Naw don't sacrifice your son I just wanted to see you loved me)

He's also the type to mess up then a do over and say he is awesome and perfect.

Genesis 6: 11-13 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.(Not much has changed afterward to be fair)

Genesis 8 20-21 20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. (Wait what why?) ​

The perfect parent who sends his "only" son (even though we are all supposedly sons and daughters of your God) to die because he messed up by imperfectly creating original sin which he could have seen because he is supposedly infallible and omnipotent. The Christian God is more like an awful alcoholic stepdad who kills his child to hide some horrible things he did in the past. He then makes a gofundme to make money off of his death so he can build the Vatican.

He is supposedly infallible and omnipotent so he knew it would happen. Why was he protecting the tree of knowledge by the way? Didn't he have the knowledge to know it would happen. So why would he be saddened by something he KNEW for a fact would happen. It's kind of like dropping a bowling ball on your head and not expecting it to hurt.​

Do you understand how myth, allegory and metaphor work, or are you building straw men just to hear your head rattle? Seriously, none of your post addresses the issue with a realistic and responsible theological argument.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I dunno. Experience is a valid tool in the formulation of a theological position. Not the only tool, but one of several that’re prescribed for the job.

I will agree that experience is. However, the sum of the years of temporal existence is not.

@Cacotopia already covered this in post #41.

 

[shunyadragon]

If God cannot experience pleasure, how in the world can we think He is capable of empathy or compassion towards us? This makes no sense to me whatsoever! I cannot conceive of a God who has no feelings. Incidentally, I don't think I feel this way because I'm a Mormon, but it's one very good reason why I am a Mormon.

God's attributes, like compassion are a given of the nature of God without reason nor cause.