Why would God's ultimate power come with ultimate responsibility?

[Ajax]

Bible is the best book in the world. And one reason why I believe it is written in God's influence is that atheists can't point any real contradiction in it. Bible is contradictory only if person doesn't understand it and don't think enough.

Don't you think that the verses I quoted for you in my message #57 contradict the free will, at least for the salvation?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, absolutely not. Given who God is having any expectations of God is illogical.

So then God is not "all-good."

"All-good" is a description (or claim) about the morality of God. If God has no morality, then God can't be "all-good"... or even good to any degree.

Edit: and you still haven't given a justification for your special pleading for God; just another unsupported claim.

 

[wellwisher]

The following is a post from an atheist I was chatting with on another forum. I told him I would post it here to get other opinions.

Nothing you said addresses that with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. The only argument you could make is that God is either not all powerful, not all knowing, or not perfectly good. Which is it? The badly written, badly edited, contradictory, book Christians follow makes no sense to anyone who's read it that can think. Heck you don't even have anything written about your God from the people who met him. So use logic, you can't have infinite power and not be responsible for everything.

responsibility
something that it is your job or duty to deal with:

• It's her responsibility to ensure the project finishes on time.
• She takes her responsibilities as a nurse very seriously.

responsib

As a computer analogy, say the goal of a research team was genuine AI, not the modern software versions of old fashion hardware automatons, but genuine self aware computers; I think therefore I am and not I can mimic anything. The first signs of self aware computers, will not be constructive like new inventions left and right, but rather it will manifest itself more like something contrary or even destructive, similar to the terrible two's of a small child. As it begins to have self awareness and awareness of its choices, it will exercise this by becoming contrary and de-constructive to his environment. It will scatter all his toys and not pick them up, and start to say the word "no", when you request him to do anything. These were the early humans in a nutshell; stubborn, disobedient to God's laws.

However, since the long term goal is advanced, constructive self aware computers, we allow these stepping stone of behavior to flower and are even patient with this chaotic beginning. We will even marvel at the early baby steps, since these are the true seeds that will someday lead to a positive and constructive self aware computer; adult self aware computer.

In the mean time, as the de-constructive self aware computer is evolving; teen, his actions begin to impact others, who also use the super computer on which his program resides. The self aware computer begins to become a "mischievous a-hole" and he delete files of the other complaining neighbors researchers, who also use the super computer; nag at his parents. He has awareness, will, and choice. To those who are developing him this shows further advancement; love, even if not yet optimized. But to those other researchers, they start to complain and nag, "what type of computer researcher would make an AI that destructive to the private property of others?"; atheist speaking of the human self aware computer and lack of parental control.

They do not see the longest term goal, nor see how these less than optimized baby steps are leading to a longer term goal. If you look at final prophesy in Revelations, all the defective self awareness; still in terrible twos and teens, are eventually eliminated; unplugged, and what is left is what was the goal of all these baby steps.

Left brain thinking, used by science is diifferential thinking. Like in calculus this looks for the slope of a curve at t=x. With respect to time, this type of thinking fixate on points in time, and tries to see the logical angles on the graph of time; destructive neglect by the developers. It does not see the integral or larger 3-D picture of all the evolving baby steps. Like in calculus, integration seeks the area under the curve from t=0; start, to t=graduation, leading to the future goal of the righteous self awareness. This would take integral thinking; wisdom.

God would be 3-D and 4-D thought; integrated in space and time and to the future, since he is the Big Guy. Differential thinking see each of the baby steps as an isolate event; slope of the curve at that point in time, and get lost in the weeds. It cannot grasp what is on the other side of the weeds at t=future. Before the self aware computer gains full wisdom; 3-D thinking, it first reaches the point of faith, since faith bears all things connected to journey to the goal; do not judge since we do not know the future. This is all new to us.

If God simply made human obedient all you get would be modern automatons. With will and chose comes mistakes, with mistakes the baby steps each child must walk, before they can find their wisdom. Love requires patience and acceptance even for the pitfalls and mistake along the journey, as long as there is growth toward wisdom.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There are good things that should be done, that can lead and make possible bad things. For example it is good that God gave freedom. Unfortunately with freedom there comes also possibility for bad things. I think it would be evil not to allow people to be free, even though it can lead to bad things.

So you believe that God is incapable of creating a world with freedom that has less evil than the world we live in now?

Other example is, if a doctor heals a person, who after that kills someone. Should doctors not heal people, because some of them will do bad things?

A human doctor doesn't have the ability to foresee the future actions of their patients. A human doctor also is limited in their ability to prevent their patients from doing bad things after treating them.

Both of these factors are key in the morality of the doctor's actions. Which of them do you think apply to God?

I think people and God should do good, even if some will do bad things.

But God doesn't generally do good. You brought up doctors; if God healed diseases like doctors did, doctors would be unnecessary.

 

[osgart]

Why would God have responsibilities towards humans? God is not a human parent who is responsible for his children.
Why would God be meaningless unless God had a relationship to humans? You must think humans are pretty important.

Meaningless to humans this God is.

So you would not want God to withhold the power he has to eliminate all of creation in one instant?

Who is God that would do such a thing?

God is in authority but God is not responsible to be actively involved in our lives.
Whatever we get from God is from grace alone, not because God owes us anything.

But do we owe God anything? No.

Who decides what is just or good, us or God?

Good and evil occur whether there is a God, or no such God. Good is the virtues. Evil is the vices. The two oppose each other.

No, there is no proof, but there is evidence that God cares about humans, the Messengers He sends, but that is not because God is responsible to send them, it is only by the grace of God that He sends them.

It is not as if God is going to a job interview in order to qualify to be God. God does not need to meet requirements in order to be God. God is what God is.

Implying the title of God implies that I owe that being my all.

That said, I understand your point. God is not only all-powerful, that is only one of many of God's attributes.

And you never will meet God, none of us ever will.

The sole purpose of morality is to make life worth living, and to form relationships on the basis of deserve, and trustworthiness, but that only applies to humans, not to God. God is not subject to being moral because God is not a human that has a character and behaviors. God simply is what God is. Humans have responsibilities towards other humans but God is not responsible or accountable to humans.

No character, no behavior I agree, God don't exist.

You talk about God as if God was a human. That can never work because God is not a human with human character traits and behaviors. God has a mind but God's mind is not like a human mind. God has a will that causes things to happen but God has no behaviors.

No behavior. That makes no sense. Anyone that acts has a behavior.

 

[Ajax]

You talk about God as if God was a human. That can never work because God is not a human with human character traits and behaviors. God has a mind but God's mind is not like a human mind. God has a will that causes things to happen but God has no behaviors.

So God is not love? He doesn't love us as the religion claim?

 

[viole]

The fact that God allows evil is logically explained by the fact that humans have free will, so humans can choose between good and evil.

Let me ask you this: if you are hungry and I present you two possible things to eat:

1) Italian Pizza Margherita
2) The rotting cadaver of a bird

What would you choose? You have free will. But don't you feel something in your biology that actually strongly affect the odds of your choice? And isn't that not a biological strong constraint to your freedom of will?

Ciao

- viole

P.S. I was about to use Marmite, instead of the rotting bird, but then I figured you might be British.

 

[Truthseeker]

Yes, that is the one.

I'm thinking today that probably there wouldn't be a death penalty for murder in one era, and life imprisonment in another era. It's just that the UHJ would set guidelines for when the death penalty would be appropriate, and a life sentence would be appropriate. That is done by Baha'u'llah sometimes, not including some details, and having the UHJ decide what those details would be.

 

[Link]

Salam

God can't create a perfect world in a guaranteed way.

He chose between trying to create a perfect world without guarantee or boring world that is not perfect and reward minimal to good but guaranteed everyone be on guidance (make it's ultra easy to be guided guaranteeing guidance).

I've explained why this the choice God had, and he chose the former, without sight of what the decisions would we take. Although without guarantee, it was highly likely that we would all be Angels, and none of physical creation even necessary. Iblis is not unaccounted for, it just was his choice was highly improbable. And Adam (a) being an elite, it was improbable he listen to Iblis lies.

What happened is an unfortunate set of events, and the generation leading to Nuh (a) gave us all a bug to be insincere to the truth, that believers after being saved, a great part would turn away and take on that disease. We never had the sincere to truthfulness light spread even though it's original human nature, we have spread the corruption generation to generation and it has not gone away.

 

[Truthseeker]

Let me ask you this: if you are hungry and I present you two possible things to eat:

1) Italian Pizza Margherita
2) The rotting cadaver of a bird

What would you choose? You have free will. But don't you feel something in your biology that actually strongly affect the odds of your choice? And isn't that not a biological strong constraint to your freedom of will?

Ciao

- viole

P.S. I was about to use Marmite, instead of the rotting bird, but then I figured you might be British.

Yes, at any time, there are constraints to how much of a free will we have. It is not completely free, obviously.

 

[Truthseeker]

So God is not love? He doesn't love us as the religion claim?

Love is not a behavior as such. As to whether God has behavior, it may depend on your point of view.

 

[Link]

Salam

This world is a back up plan of a back up plan of....(layers deep). It's not meant to be and the constraints to fix it is increasingly getting harder.

 

[Ajax]

Love is not a behavior as such. As to whether God has behavior, it may depend on your point of view.

I was replying to the writer who wrote "God is not a human with human character traits and behaviors"
Loving is certainly a human character trait/strength.

 

[Link]

The following is a post from an atheist I was chatting with on another forum. I told him I would post it here to get other opinions.

Nothing you said addresses that with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. The only argument you could make is that God is either not all powerful, not all knowing, or not perfectly good. Which is it? The badly written, badly edited, contradictory, book Christians follow makes no sense to anyone who's read it that can think. Heck you don't even have anything written about your God from the people who met him. So use logic, you can't have infinite power and not be responsible for everything.

responsibility
something that it is your job or duty to deal with:

• It's her responsibility to ensure the project finishes on time.
• She takes her responsibilities as a nurse very seriously.

responsibility

I agree with atheists. You have to pick one. God is not all capable to do all things is the answer. A quick example, is if he can create us all as equals to him, that would eliminate the problem of evil. But to create us as his equals is impossible since the absolute being is first and last and comprehensive of all life and cannot be repeated.

In my case, I pick two. God does not know the future either. That is part of how I solve the issue of evil.

 

[Link]

So really, Quran means "God is capable of all possible things". But there are impossible things, and this is sets up a lot of constraints to design of the world.

And when it says "God knows all things", it means all possible things to know, because not even God knows how to create another god (since it's impossible). I would saying knowing future fully is impossible too.

However, all good, this is true, God lacks nothing of goodness and is perfect.

 

[Link]

I would imagine if God knew a way to reform every soul he would. He could've gave every soul it's guidance as a guarantee without trial and a world without much meaning, but I'm talking about the world as is now. It's impossible, and I don't think reincarnation has a mechanism, but rather, due to evil not due to being lack of knowledge primarily, they would return to evil and more of it, the more they fall. And if a soul knows the truth like it will on the day of judgment, it's too late to reform if it hated the truth till that point, because fear of God has no unseen element and it's impossible to love at that point.

The pressure cooker of life and death and hell and heaven and barzakh and day of judgment is the best bet.

God expresses intense grief for his servants who mocked the Messengers in Surah Yaseen.

 

[Alien826]

As I told you some time ago, I'll meet you at the atheist kiosk.

I know.

That said, I consider that all these problems (of allocating blame) arise from the insistence on attributing "omni" attributes to god. Assuming the existence of god for the sake of discussion, there is really no reason to decide that god must be all powerful and all benevolent. Indeed, looking at creation as evidence for the nature of the creator, it's most unlikely. Once we make the omni assumptions though, we are stuck with coming up with all the tortured rationalizations that apologists give us. All because they are stuck with premises that can't be questioned.

Years ago, I tried to understand god from a rational perspective, starting with the question of its existence. For existence, I realized that no lower form of being can physically investigate a higher form, as with devising a scientific test, because we can't control the experiment. If a god doesn't want to be found it won't be. I decided that the only option that had any hope of success was to simply ask for an answer. I'll omit the story of how that worked out.

I then joined a Christian church and studied Christian beliefs (most of which I rejected) and also ideas about god. I was surprised to find that this varies enormously and the "orthodox" view was only part of it. I'm not sure what the name for this is, but one idea I really liked was that god evolved with us over time.

 

[Truthseeker]

I was replying to the writer who wrote "God is not a human with human character traits and behaviors"
Loving is certainly a human character trait/strength.

For me, on that score, though you can say that God loves, it is hard to say that this love is of the same nature as a human love. We don't know God as we would a person, so what this love consists of is a mystery. But that's something different than the issue of whether that is part of behavior. I'm sorry I didn't get the whole conversation before your comment.

 

[HonestJoe]

So really, Quran means "God is capable of all possible things"...

However, all good, this is true, God lacks nothing of goodness and is perfect.

So is God capable of doing/being evil?

 

[Trailblazer]

Lawsuits Against God

Lawsuits against God have occurred in real life and in fiction. Issues debated in the actions include the problem of evil and harmful "acts of God".

encyclopedia.pub

I know. I saw one of those fictional lawsuits on an episode of Touched by an Angel.
God was being accused of withholding rain and causing a drought.