Why do most people assume God is benevolent?

[Thief]

Thief here...
I don't see any progress here at all.

Has anyone noticed there could be a line drawn between...
God's benevolence and God's indifference?

 

[OmarKhayyam]

"We believe, however, that God comforts us during our suffering. In this way, God can be said to be benevolent."

This sounds SO familiar. Reading that kind of drivel re-enforces my disgust with the belief in this god thing.

'I'm gong to take the stick to you and you will suffer for failing to learn your verses. But afterward i will be here to hold you hand and comfort you in your pain.'

Rules here will not allow me to express appropriately my response.

 

[sojourner]

Thief here...
I don't see any progress here at all.

Has anyone noticed there could be a line drawn between...
God's benevolence and God's indifference?

How is love ever "indifferent?"

 

[Kilgore Trout]

'I'm gong to take the stick to you and you will suffer for failing to learn your verses. But afterward i will be here to hold you hand and comfort you in your pain.'

This is actually quite similar to the behavior patterns of abusive spouses/parents.

 

[sojourner]

"We believe, however, that God comforts us during our suffering. In this way, God can be said to be benevolent."

This sounds SO familiar. Reading that kind of drivel re-enforces my disgust with the belief in this god thing.

'I'm gong to take the stick to you and you will suffer for failing to learn your verses. But afterward i will be here to hold you hand and comfort you in your pain.'

Rules here will not allow me to express appropriately my response.

God's probably not thrilled with you, either. The difference between you and God, is that God gives infinite "second chances," and always gives the worst of us the benefit of the doubt.

I don't know where you got the idea that God abuses us, but it just ain't so. God does not "require us to learn Bible verses."

Your posts are becoming rapidly more caustic, sometimes to the point of being abusive. I can't imagine why you're overreacting.

Maybe you're just hateful by nature. I don't know -- I don't know you. But your posts are becoming less and less logical and objective.

Simmuh down, now.

 

[cottage]

Yes! He can be taught! God is more concerned about our autonomy than God is about our suffering, because suffering is transitory. It passes. But freedom is a necessary component of love.

Point 1. That is the clearest confirmation that I've ever read, that God's concern for our welfare takes second place to his consideration for an abstract concept.

Point 2. Freedom is not a necessary component of love. Love has existed in prisons, PoW camps, and between enslaved peoples. If anything, loves endures in spite of the loss of liberty and autonomy.

Point 3. Even if suffering were transitory (and you've no argument to demonstrate that it is), God cannot undo the past or make history other than what it is; and, as a single instance of suffering proves the contradiction, if all sufffering ended today God would never be 'all loving, omni-benevolent' and 'merciful'.

 

[cottage]

God comforts our spirits, strengthens our resolve, and brings peace. God surrounds us with people who love and care for us -- should we care (and choose) to recognize it.

The above is nothing other than a summation of your beliefs. And God certainly hasn't brought peace to the world! The argument, lest you forget, is that God has the identity of perfect goodness, charity, mercy and benevolence. But now you say he surrounds us with contingent, imperfect humans who, for all their evident good will and intent must fall short of omnibenevolene and omnipotence. So if that is God's benevolence at work - it is a demonstrable failure.

 

[J Bryson]

I'm not sure about the existence of God one way or the other, but I am of the opinion that we're the ones allowing needless suffering to take place, not God.

 

[Thief]

Thief here...
I don't assume God's love.
Neither should any one else.
There has been so much discussion over pain and suffering.
Obviously....God is indifferent.

So much discussion that God is benefactor to those He loves.
But God does have some tendency to do harm.
He doesn't love everybody.

If God loves you....He is benevolent.
If God hates you...He is violent.
If you don't fit either way...He is indifferent.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Why do most people assume God is benevolent?

Our knowledge of the Abrahamic God, which comes from the Bible, shows Him to be benevolent.

 

[Thief]

Thief here...
Webster's defines benevolence as lacking hostilities.
I reiterate post#432.

 

[cottage]

Is everyone tired of running in circles, or will this keep on going? No one is going to change their mind, no one has learnt anything, nor does anyone wish to learn anything.

It will keep going. Nobody is expected to change their minds or give up their faith. We have to remember that folk are defending their beliefs, an emotional investment, which will not be quickly given up to reason. And far from going in circles it is fascinating to see the way the responses are shifting ground.


"There's evil in the world. A benevolent God can't exist."
"A benevolent God would allow evil."
"There's evil in the world. A benevolent God can't exist."
"A benevolent God would allow evil."

Repeat, repeat, repeat...

I believe it was you, Rojse, who started this thread? You asked why is it assumed that God is benevolent, and the question was answered in a variety of ways. The general opinion, though, was that nobody wants to believe in a malevolent God. True enough. But what we would like to be true, and truth itself, are very different things.

For the theistic religions, especially Christianity, the PoE has a significance that cannot be overstated, as it is the only argument to demonstrate the logical impossibility of the God in question. But while the contradiction cannot be overturned, theists still have resort to theodicy or a series of apologetic arguments by which they mean to justify what they believe to be true.

And it is those arguments that we will continue to discuss.

 

[cottage]

How is love ever "indifferent?"

When it doesn't exist!

 

[cottage]

So? it's the truth.

Is it? Then please show how it is true?

 

[cottage]

I've never danced away from either evil or suffering. In fact, I've been the one to advocate the reality of the world: There is evil, and there is suffering. That has never been at tissue with me. Y'all seem to be the ones who want to take the opiate and say, "But...it doesn't have to be this way!":sad4:

I'm sorry to say you have prevaricated and stalled over questions and points that I've put to you. I'm still waiting for an answer concerning the suffering that exists in nature, in other words independent of free will? And, come on, what's with saying you're an 'advocate of the reality of the world'? Evil and suffering, is hardly revelationary, or something you can deny! The question isn't 'Does suffering exist?', but why does it exist if there is a God who is inclusively merciful and everywhere good and benevolent?



The thing we Xians have that you non-believers will never have, is hope. While you all are stuck in the hopelessness of despair (in the meantime covering it all up by playing games with "blaming" "God" for your suffering), we maintain hope that God comforts us when we do suffer, and that, one day, suffering will be no more for us.

Look, you and I have been having a discussion based on your refusal to see God as less than all loving and omni-benevolent, despite the evident facts. So I'm surprised to see you say here that you hope that God comforts you when you suffer. Now you've moved from your previous position to one of uncertainty and hope. Also, when you say 'we maintain the hope that God comforts us when we suffer and that one day suffering will be no more for us', surely you mean you hope one day 'suffering will be no more for all.'

Last point. Sceptics cannot blame God while disbelieving its/his existence.

 

[sojourner]

Yes! He can be taught! God is more concerned about our autonomy than God is about our suffering, because suffering is transitory. It passes. But freedom is a necessary component of love.

Point 1. That is the clearest confirmation that I've ever read, that God's concern for our welfare takes second place to his consideration for an abstract concept.

Point 2. Freedom is not a necessary component of love. Love has existed in prisons, PoW camps, and between enslaved peoples. If anything, loves endures in spite of the loss of liberty and autonomy.

Point 3. Even if suffering were transitory (and you've no argument to demonstrate that it is), God cannot undo the past or make history other than what it is; and, as a single instance of suffering proves the contradiction, if all sufffering ended today God would never be 'all loving, omni-benevolent' and 'merciful'.

1) Our welfare is best served by our being free to make choices. So God's concern for our welfare is paramount in God's giving us free will. The "abstract concept" is made concrete in our praxis of loving.
2) Freedom is a necessary component of love. If love is forced, it is not love -- it's coersion. Love must be freely given and accepted on both sides. We're not talking about being in prison. We're talking about having no choice but to love.
3) Once again, I don't see how you've shown that non-suffering is necessary for God to be benevolent, especially in light of the fact that I've shown that our freedom to make our own choices is benevolence.

God has always been, is now, and shall always be ... benevolent. If God is love (and God is) then God can be nothing else but benevolent.

 

[sojourner]

The above is nothing other than a summation of your beliefs. And God certainly hasn't brought peace to the world! The argument, lest you forget, is that God has the identity of perfect goodness, charity, mercy and benevolence. But now you say he surrounds us with contingent, imperfect humans who, for all their evident good will and intent must fall short of omnibenevolene and omnipotence. So if that is God's benevolence at work - it is a demonstrable failure.

Beliefs are what count, my friend. God cannot be proven. God must be believed.
God has not "brought peace to the world," because we, in our free will, keep screwing up. Ultimately, that freedom is more important to our well-being than God making decisions for us. The peace I was talking about was peace of heart and mind.

You're not making sense. If we were perfect and omni-anything, God would not be God. We would be God.

God has not presented a "demonstrable failure," because, in the face of evil and suffering, love and goodness prevail.

 

[sojourner]

I don't assume God's love.

Then you don't assume God, for God is love.

 

[sojourner]

When it doesn't exist!

Come on! You know as well as I that a non-existent thing has no qualities. Now you're grasping at straws. By definition, love cannot be indifferent, for ambivalence is the polar opposite of love.

 

[sojourner]

Is it? Then please show how it is true?

I could, if you had eyes willing to see. As long as you doubt, you will never see.