To ManipulatorGeneral, on the subject of the Christian God being expected to create life:
An omniscient being capable of choice is a paradox. A perfect being that feels emotion (such as pleasure) is also a paradox, depending on your definition of perfection. Additionally, one of the mandates of your God is that he must be worshipped; why, exactly, does this please him? Why does it please him to have people love him? Why would he create people and intentionally withhold information about his existence such that they end up burning in Hell for eternity as a result of using their God-given logic; does this please him?
But I digress...assuming that I could do anything I wanted, I would do nothing even remotely like what God purportedly did in the Bible. I cannot overstate how pathetic that book is, not least regarding its anthropocentricity. This extends to all human religions as well; if there IS a supernatural force that is responsible for our being here, human religions are the most ultimate insult to this force imaginable.
I also agree with BitBuster: "I guess I have questions about the utility that an omnipotent being could derive from lesser beings that are wholly his/her/its creation."
To Geodave, on the origin of creativity:
Also, it's definitely worth noting that acknowledging a natural origin of human qualities such as love and creativity does not have to diminish our appreciation of these qualities. In fact, a natural formation of these qualities (and even life itself) is far more beautiful an explanation than religion could ever offer.
A comment on BitBuster's remark on the Bible:
Mm. One must wonder why, exactly, God would create a book that can be used to justify so many points of view that in fact it ends up justifing no point of view at all. You would think a being with infinite capabilities would be able to create some clarity, especially around points that are crucially important. Or, y'know, he could just come down and clarify things for us, but then he's no longer testing us by requiring faith, or something...
Of course, the inevitable response to this is that the book has gone through so many re-writings and so many re-translations and so on. But whose fault is that? You have a being of infinite capability that chooses to:
*reveal himself arbitrarily to a "chosen group" (lol) of people in ancient Palestine
*instruct fallible scribes to write down his will in a book
*leave the book for thousands of years to be altered by anybody with dishonest motives
*let the book be copied and recopied, translated and retranslated, by humans who are guaranteed to make errors at every step along the way
*let the contents of the book be voted on by humans in various councils
*etc. (see Documentary Hypothesis, Authorship of the Pauline epistles, Synoptic problem, how the NT canon was formed...)
...does that make any sense? (coincidentally, I can provide a viewpoint where all of this information makes perfect sense...)
[Click to Show Content]
Quote:I could suggest attributes of God's nature that could explain why, with all knowable information at hand, He would decide to create rather than (as I sometimes joke) lounge around and mentally solve Sudoku puzzles for all eternity. The biblical understanding of God, as I'm reading it, is creative and personal, such that it gives Him pleasure to create and to share Himself with sentient beings; it's just in God's nature, so we would expect creative action when presented with this scenario. (Dave might have more input, as he commented on a similar status of mine; ask him.) The parents here could also relate this to why they decided to have children: not because they needed kids, but because having children pleased them. To gauge somewhat what I'm posing, you can test this thought experiment: what might you decide to do in God's position, with all knowledge and capability thereof? We can perhaps divert this thread to this thought now; I would argue that we all have ideas of what a god or gods should be and do, regardless of whether we even believe in any. I never had truly considered your query before, BitBuster, so thank you for asking it.
An omniscient being capable of choice is a paradox. A perfect being that feels emotion (such as pleasure) is also a paradox, depending on your definition of perfection. Additionally, one of the mandates of your God is that he must be worshipped; why, exactly, does this please him? Why does it please him to have people love him? Why would he create people and intentionally withhold information about his existence such that they end up burning in Hell for eternity as a result of using their God-given logic; does this please him?
But I digress...assuming that I could do anything I wanted, I would do nothing even remotely like what God purportedly did in the Bible. I cannot overstate how pathetic that book is, not least regarding its anthropocentricity. This extends to all human religions as well; if there IS a supernatural force that is responsible for our being here, human religions are the most ultimate insult to this force imaginable.
I also agree with BitBuster: "I guess I have questions about the utility that an omnipotent being could derive from lesser beings that are wholly his/her/its creation."
To Geodave, on the origin of creativity:
[Click to Show Content]
Quote:I think this is probably a better argument than evolution to make people thing about God -- if there is no God, then where did we get creativity from?What, exactly, prevents creativity from being formed through natural processes (i.e. evolution)?
Also, it's definitely worth noting that acknowledging a natural origin of human qualities such as love and creativity does not have to diminish our appreciation of these qualities. In fact, a natural formation of these qualities (and even life itself) is far more beautiful an explanation than religion could ever offer.
A comment on BitBuster's remark on the Bible:
[Click to Show Content]
Quote:I think part of the issue is that even if you accept that there's a God, it brings up the issue of "which God?" Even Christianity has plenty of different sects, most of whom interpret the Bible in a different way (and within those denominations, individual people often interpret it a different way...).
Mm. One must wonder why, exactly, God would create a book that can be used to justify so many points of view that in fact it ends up justifing no point of view at all. You would think a being with infinite capabilities would be able to create some clarity, especially around points that are crucially important. Or, y'know, he could just come down and clarify things for us, but then he's no longer testing us by requiring faith, or something...
Of course, the inevitable response to this is that the book has gone through so many re-writings and so many re-translations and so on. But whose fault is that? You have a being of infinite capability that chooses to:
*reveal himself arbitrarily to a "chosen group" (lol) of people in ancient Palestine
*instruct fallible scribes to write down his will in a book
*leave the book for thousands of years to be altered by anybody with dishonest motives
*let the book be copied and recopied, translated and retranslated, by humans who are guaranteed to make errors at every step along the way
*let the contents of the book be voted on by humans in various councils
*etc. (see Documentary Hypothesis, Authorship of the Pauline epistles, Synoptic problem, how the NT canon was formed...)
...does that make any sense? (coincidentally, I can provide a viewpoint where all of this information makes perfect sense...)