If God isn't Benevolent Doesn't that make God and the Devil?

[exile]

If God isn't a benevolent God doesn't that make God both God and the Devil?

[wil]

You keep making G!d an entity.

Expecting a 'Him' to 'do' things.

Ya gotta move beyond the anthropomorphising principle.

[exile]

Originally Posted by wil

You keep making G!d an entity.

Expecting a 'Him' to 'do' things.

Ya gotta move beyond the anthropomorphising principle.

I didn't say 'him' I said 'God.' I don't see the anthropomorphism here. What I mean is if God is responsible for good and evil doesn't that make God both God and the Devil? Isn't this a flaw in the belief system?

[wil]

responsible, benevolent, you are giving human qualities to spirit.....

it doesn't exist.

in my opinion and understanding.

It is like saying G!d is loving, or caring, or causes plagues, bumper crops, thunderstorms, floods....

this is 2,000 year old thinking....blaming and pointing.... as a society we need to move beyond that.

[exile]

Originally Posted by wil

responsible, benevolent, you are giving human qualities to spirit.....

it doesn't exist.

in my opinion and understanding.

It is like saying G!d is loving, or caring, or causes plagues, bumper crops, thunderstorms, floods....

this is 2,000 year old thinking....blaming and pointing.... as a society we need to move beyond that.

I think that's actually the way most people think about it. In any case I think that if we were to assign these anthropomorphisms to God and if God wasn't a benevolent God that would make anyone who worships that God a satanist.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by exile

I think that's actually the way most people think about it. In any case I think that if we were to assign these anthropomorphisms to God and if God wasn't a benevolent God that would make anyone who worships that God a satanist.

aka--idolatry.

[radarmark]

Anthropomorphism includes attributing any human quality to the D!vine, or to the universe (see the anthropic principle)... and even if all people agreed to the claim of G!D's benevolance, if it doeas not exist, those beliefs do not make it true (everyone thought that the world was flat ot that man could never fly or that the world was deterministic).

[wil]

Like Budwieser being the highest selling beer indicating it is the best beer......right.

exile, what you are questioning/stating is exactly why so many folks are moving away from a literal theology, a literal theism.

We anthropomorphize because it is easier....the He/Him thing for not a genderless being...but for spirit/principle.

If you can't move beyond that definition, you will have issues with it. Once folks start questioning, they need to see what is there....it is the old problem of pointing at the moon, but observing the finger.

Tis why in many religions they teach you not to question, not to explore, just listen to what you are told and have faith it is true...

Like the guy caught in bed with another woman.... He asks his wife, "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?"

The fact that you are exploring and questioning is good, keep it up, but also question your instant conclusions.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by exile

If God isn't a benevolent God doesn't that make God both God and the Devil?

I'd say God is somewhat indifferent meaning God doesn't intervene in our lives apart from natural laws. It is up to us to recognize and then live in harmony with the laws that govern our existence. When we fall short we have a negative consequence. When we meet the mark we have a positive consequence. This all plays out on a global scale. We are not just individuals; we are a collective whole and responsible for one another's well being.


God surely is not an adversary (satan/devil). To me God is "life". Life is structured in a manner that leads us to live in harmony with all existence. We are still a relatively young species, however. I think we as humans are just beginning our first steps as children of "life". God is the ALL, meaning all things. We are simply pilgrims living in God -- slowly learning, growing, and developing as a species as we inch our way forward.

[bananabrain]

in isaiah, G!D Makes it perfectly clear that the Divine "Makes peace and Creates evil". i don't see why that is such a problem. are you expecting G!D to Suspend the laws of nature on your behalf? the point is that humans have responsibility, that includes responsibility for our actions given that we possess knowledge of good and evil. it's hardly an out of date insight.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Amergin]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

aka--idolatry.

I agree. It is almost all idolatry devoid of reason and scepticism or analytical thinking.

I think the concept of a personal god or a god with a humanoid personality is too silly to debate. Nobody knows if God the creator is a conscious being, or a natural cosmic force that is not conscious and lacks a personality. There is a new hypothesis seen on the TV show "Through the Wormhole," in which the entire cosmos is regarded as a single being much like a computer can be conscious and cognitive while being composed entirely of wires, silicon, or diamond, or nano-Carbon chips which individually only say yes or no. In the complexity of the circuits can behave like a conscious cognitive being.

It is hard to conceive in many ways those galaxies, nebular clouds, and the Hadron field of space, matter, dark matter, dark energy, and the nano-universe where the rules of physics are different. It rather confuses me to some extent. However, that Cosmic Being as my mere human brain understands it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Humanoid Gods invented by man with no evidence.

JHWY, Allah, Elohim, Brahmin, Ahura Mazda, Zeus, Jupiter, Dagda, Amun-Ra, Odin, Jesus in the deified fraud, or Quetzalcoatl are products of our imagination. All of those gods make no sense whatsoever. They are called god but do horribly evil things. The Old Testament God does all of the killing, and Satan does none. It looks like Satan is the Good God while JHWY is the terrifying and sadistic Cosmic Monster.

I believe that the Creator is not a being but a force or collection of forces acting over 11 dimensions to create an eternal series of universes that expand, contract, and burst again into a new universe. I cannot comment if that ultradimensional force has a personality. However, it does not need a personality of conscious to do what it does.


Amergin

[Amergin]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

in isaiah, G!D Makes it perfectly clear that the Divine "Makes peace and Creates evil". i don't see why that is such a problem. are you expecting G!D to Suspend the laws of nature on your behalf? the point is that humans have responsibility, that includes responsibility for our actions given that we possess knowledge of good and evil. it's hardly an out of date insight.

b'shalom

bananabrain

God makes nothing perfectly clear. God is composed in the brain circuits of human beings. That is why there are so many. Like the human warlords on which God's are based, they are horribly imperfect. Some mentally insane, and many amoral or psychopathic. That is why they don't make sense.

Humans do have knowledge of good and evil as it applies to our species. It was not confered by a god invented 6000 years ago. That God was much more evil and sadistic than the worst warlord on which they were designed.

Evolution of humans over 3 million years of human evolution, selected for greater success, humans who defended the tribe, made wise decisions, used justice. Those randomly mutated genes for psychopathology and other mental illness, dementia, vengeance, rage attacks. Further evolution from Homo habilis through Homo erectus, to Homo heildebergensis, Homo rrodesiansis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Homo neanderthalis, and Homo sapiens sapiens. Each stage partially perfect brain with intuitive knowledge of good and evil. But like many genetic diseases, there are mutations and recessive bad traits that keep psychopaths, amoral leaders, insane psychotic leaders, and brains with very small amygdalae.

Our moral evolution is not just in the 3,000,000 years of genus Homo. Proto-humans like Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, and Sahalanthrampus were working on natural selection and social selection (banashment or killing them) to eliminate the psychopathic, amoral, and insane of humanity. It works for most humans today. However, some, perhaps with inbreeding, preserved the humans lacking intuitive morality.

This led to additional pressure to eliminate those defective humans by civil law (Clan Law), and punishing religions who considered defective humans to be evil spirits. The last 7 million years of hominid-human evolution has done a good job at eliminating most encephalopathic psychopaths, amoral humans, insane-delusional humans with irrational thinking.

My real fear is that we may divide into two groups of humans. One a chaotic society of criminals, psychopaths, and schizophrenics...with a high reproductive rate and overpopulation. The Second is the more intelligent, with strong intuitive morality, social morality, Advanced in technology, science but devoid of Stone Age religions. They would likely live in thick walled cities with highly trained armies, helicopter gunships, missiles, and artillery to protect the City State from the incresingly stupid undereducation population will not be a happy world.

Amergin

[exile]

Originally Posted by Amergin

The last 7 million years of hominid-human evolution has done a good job at eliminating most encephalopathic psychopaths, amoral humans, insane-delusional humans with irrational thinking.

My real fear is that we may divide into two groups of humans. One a chaotic society of criminals, psychopaths, and schizophrenics...with a high reproductive rate and overpopulation.
Amergin

There has to be a division between the two groups, but how is it supposed to happen when the people on one side of the group behave like the people on the other side of the group? How is that supposed to happen when the psychiatrists hold delusional beliefs like "God exists" in the NT sense and the schizophrenics are the ones who are saying that "God does not exist."

[seattlegal]

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[Servetus]

Originally Posted by Amergin

The Second is the more intelligent, with strong intuitive morality, social morality, Advanced in technology, science but devoid of Stone Age religions ...

One of the most advanced in technology and science, J. Robert Oppenheimer, exploded his firecracker in the Mojave Desert and, in the process, became, in his words and quoting the Bhagavad-Gita, Shiva the destroyer of worlds. Therefore, I conclude, science, in its purest form, is religion.

Serv