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

[Trailblazer]

I didn't say "rules", I said "fundamental aspects". The core concepts of humans having free-will, God wanting us to use it to act in particular ways and then rewarding or punishing us in some way as a consequence simply don't work in the context of the all-knowing and all-powerful God.

Why doesn't human free will work in the context of the all-knowing and all-powerful God?
Why can't an all-knowing and all-powerful God give humans free will, and why can't humans choose if God is all-knowing and all-powerful?

We can't have true free will if something out there is all-powerful

Why can't we have free will if God is all-powerful?

and a being can't have wants or needs without being within linear time.

God has no needs and wants nothing for Himself, but God desires certain things for humans, as the scriptures say.

 

[Trailblazer]

There is no freedom, when you are threatened with everlasting torture if you disobey him.

I do not believe that God threatened us with everlasting torture, but even if that was the case we still have freedom to choose to obey or disobey.

Case in point: If a man holds you up in a dark alley and says"give me your money or I will kill you" the person being held up has a choice to give the man the money or risk being killed.

 

[Trailblazer]

God could remove all evil people. And so He is responsible of removing or not removing them.

Just because God could remove all evil people, that does not mean that God is responsible for NOT removing them.
Saying that God is responsible for not removing them implies that is God's job or duty to deal with evil people.

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

 

[Trailblazer]

That's a bit dangerous my friend.. It means you agree with my quoted verses in message #57

I do agree that God ordains certain things, and what God ordains let no man put asunder.

“Say: He ordaineth as He pleaseth, by virtue of His sovereignty, and doeth whatsoever He willeth at His own behest. He shall not be asked of the things it pleaseth Him to ordain. He, in truth, is the Unrestrained, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p, 284

However, that does not mean I agree with those Bible verses since God did not write them.
That also does not mean tat humans don't have free will, since God doesn't ordain everything for us.
God gave us free will to choose what we can choose.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

God does not NEED morality. God is all-good by His nature (just as God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise by His nature).
Humans need morality because humans are not all-good by their nature. Humans can be good or bad or evil.

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

I did give you the justification.
Comparing God with humans and expecting God to act like a human or be subject to the same requirements as a human has is illogical because God is not a human.

Here it is again.

False equivalence is a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.[1] A colloquial expression of false equivalency is "comparing apples and oranges".

This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result.[2] False equivalence is a common result when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as equal, but the claim of equivalence doesn't bear scrutiny because the similarity is based on oversimplification or ignorance of additional factors.
False equivalence - Wikipedia

The Meaning of Comparing Apples to Oranges When you're comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing two things that are fundamentally different and, therefore, shouldn't be compared.
Comparing Apples to Oranges - Idiom, Meaning & Origin

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

Thanks. You just explained the primary purpose of this mortal life, to learn and grow, in preparation for the next life which is eternal.
How could we learn and grow if God was making all our decisions for us? No, God wants us to make our own decisions and learn from them..

 

[Trailblazer]

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

So what if God is capable? God did not create the world that way for good reasons, reasons God has revealed to us in scriptures.

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

Here you are comparing God to humans again, and expecting them to be the same.
Again, that is the fallacy of false equivalence because God is not a human.

God does not have to "do good" by human standards. God is all-good by His very nature.

God doesn't heal diseases because that is not God's responsibility. That is a doctor's responsibility.

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

 

[Trailblazer]

Meaningless to humans this God is.

Yes, God is meaningless to humans unless we assign a meaning to God.

Who is God that would do such a thing?

God has never done that, has He?

But do we owe God anything? No.

No, we don't owe God anything, nor is God expecting anything from us. All of what we get from God is only for our own benefit. God needs nothing from humans.

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.

That's true. Good and evil would exist even if there is no God because good and evil come from man.

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

I don't know why you would think that, other than the fact that most believers in the God of Abraham make that claim.
I do not make that claim.

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

God does not have a character because God is not a human being. Only humans have character.
Allegedly God has certain attributes that scriptures assign to Him, but that is not the same as a character.

Character comes from behavior. God has no behavior, only humans have behavior.

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

God is not a person who acts. God does not act, God wills.
God has a mind and a will and things that God ordains happen according to God's will.

All that said, I cannot blame you or anyone else for believing these things about God since the Bible anthropomorphizes God and makes it sound as if God is a human being!

 

[osgart]

Yes, God is meaningless to humans unless we assign a meaning to God.

God has never done that, has He?

No, we don't owe God anything, nor is God expecting anything from us. All of what we get from God is only for our own benefit. God needs nothing from humans.

That's true. Good and evil would exist even if there is no God because good and evil come from man.

I don't know why you would think that, other than the fact that most believers in the God of Abraham make that claim.
I do not make that claim.

God does not have a character because God is not a human being. Only humans have character.
Allegedly God has certain attributes that scriptures assign to Him, but that is not the same as a character.

Character comes from behavior. God has no behavior, only humans have behavior.

God is not a person who acts. God does not act, God wills.
God has a mind and a will and things that God ordains happen according to God's will.

All that said, I cannot blame you or anyone else for believing these things about God since the Bible anthropomorphizes God and makes it sound as if God is a human being!

I'll add your God to my list. Lol.

 

[Trailblazer]

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

I do not believe that God is love since that makes no sense. However, I believe that God loves us as the religions claim.
I believe that God created us out of His love for us. God knew He would love us even before we were created.

3: O SON OF MAN! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.

4: O SON OF MAN! I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life.”

The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 4

I said that God has a mind but God's mind is not like a human mind. Why would God have to have a mind like a human mind in order to love?
God does not love like a human because God is not a human.
Human love is conditional...
God loves everyone unconditionally, but that doesn't mean that God approves of everyone's behavior.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'll add your God to my list. Lol.

I sure hope that is not a hit list.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

I would choose the pizza.
I said we have free will, I never said that there are no constraints on free will.

Here is my personal definition of free will:

I believe our choices are determined by our heredity and previous experiences, but that does not mean we do not make choices. Free will is simply the will/ability to make choices based upon our desires and preferences, which come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. All of these are the reasons why we choose one thing or another.

How free our choices are varies with the situation. Certainly what we refer to as “free will” has many constraints such as ability and opportunity but we have volition as otherwise we could not do anything.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

I was not thinking in terms of different eras. I was only thinking in terms of which punishment would be the most appropriate.

Baha'u'llah did not specify which punishment would be applied, He said that either one could be applied.
The UHJ will set guidelines for when the death penalty or a life sentence would be appropriate.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

Yes, I understand your point.
The problems ensue when believers insist that God has all the omni attributes, which lead to the the tortured rationalizations that apologists give atheists.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

God's love is a mystery... You can say that again!

 

[HonestJoe]

Why doesn't human free will work in the context of the all-knowing and all-powerful God?

Because an all-knowing God must, by definition, know everything any of us will ever do. That means that in any given situation, there is only ever one course of action we will ever take. We can have the perception or illusion of free-will from our point of view, it doesn't actually exist, and, of course, an all-knowing God would know that.

God has no needs and wants nothing for Himself, but God desires certain things for humans, as the scriptures say.

It doesn't matter what the desire is for, a being outside time can't have them. A desire is about a change in something in the future. If you already know for certain what the outcome is, if you've effectively already experienced that future, the concept of a desire relating to it is meaningless.

It is very difficult for us to conceive of the concept of being outside time in this way, but that's all the more reason that we can't attribute the thoughts and emotions we have to an all-knowing God. It would be so entirely alien to us (and us to it).

 

[osgart]

I sure hope that is not a hit list.

Nahhh, depends on what that God wills. Will is also a human characteristic. If that God has will then that God must be alive somehow. Being alive with the inability to act on things would drive me crazy though. I can't imagine what your God wills, and how that translates into things happening according to that will.

Sometimes people think atheists are against a God existing, or a particular God is my enemy. The actual honesty of an atheist is that none gods exist. But , as you know, atheists find it useful, and very relevant to challenge and argue about gods, especially with so many theists around; Belief in God has effects on society. God is a reflection, and major influence on how people behave in the world. So it's useful to argue about God as if God existed, and follow that line of thinking.

I remember I went to a Baptist Church and I started expressing my opinion on what I thought the Bible meant, and the elders all came over to silence me quickly. I do NOT want to live in a Baptist society. I'm so very interested in how believers would require non believers to live. Groupthink is not within my will nor ability to surrender all my thoughts to a believer's book. I always was under pressure to conform but I couldn't fake being a believer, and I tried to avoid that pressure whenever I could.

The nicest Christians I've ever met still had that gentle expression that the condition is believe or else. And with smiles nonetheless. My dad would say that I'm under conviction of the Holy Spirit. Lucky for me my mother allowed me to be myself, and she was very much a person with her own convictions, but she knew and agreed that it's important to let her children be who they are.

Oddly enough I've grown used to living with alien believers, and dealing with their ultimatums. I can even maintain a friendship with a Christian who never pushes, prods, or forces the issue; yet every time I talk to him the implications and condition of the believe ultimatum is there. It's unavoidable. On one hand I feel sorry for the nightmare they believe in. On the other hand I am
extremely disappointed in them for accepting such a horrible moral system.

Then finally there's Christians who have their own unique version of Jesus, and they practice Christianity liberally as it suits themselves. I tell them sometimes they are following it wrong, and they really don't like that. I even point it out to them, but they rationalize it away.

So excuse me if it is really difficult to reason about other gods. The Christian influence has always been in my life bearing down on me, and I've always had to avoid consequences with people over it. I've been fortunate to have just enough free thinkers in my life to avoid such consequences.

 

[CG Didymus]

God can't be expected to behave morally?

All I can say is that at least Christians invented Satan, so they could get their God off the hook for creating evil. What do Baha'is have? They have to make their God have no behavior and no morals? Whatever this God does is just automatically good, because God can't help be anything but good?

So, I guess creating and judging and listening to prayers isn't behavior? Then creating things that kill people like a meteor crashing down on Earth, or a volcano or earthquake? All those things that their God created are good? And when those things kill people, it's not God's fault for creating them?

Yet, in the Bible God sends floods and fire from heaven to kill people to teach them a lesson. So how do Baha'is explain God's "behavior" in the Bible? The only consistent answer they can give is that the Bible stories about God aren't true.

 

[Ajax]

I do not believe that God threatened us with everlasting torture, but even if that was the case we still have freedom to choose to obey or disobey.

Case in point: If a man holds you up in a dark alley and says"give me your money or I will kill you" the person being held up has a choice to give the man the money or risk being killed.

No, he has no real choice, but to give his money because life is of the utmost importance for anyone. There is no real freedom of choice when someone presents you with two choices only, and one of the two choices has severe consequences for you.
In any case the whole discussion is funny, because nobody, repeat nobody knows what God is like, let alone if he/she/it exists.

 

[Truthseeker]

I would choose the pizza.
I said we have free will, I never said that there are no constraints on free will.

Here is my personal definition of free will:

I believe our choices are determined by our heredity and previous experiences, but that does not mean we do not make choices. Free will is simply the will/ability to make choices based upon our desires and preferences, which come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. All of these are the reasons why we choose one thing or another.

How free our choices are varies with the situation. Certainly what we refer to as “free will” has many constraints such as ability and opportunity but we have volition as otherwise we could not do anything.

I said basically the same thing to this person. There are constraints to our free will.