Can God even be Questioned?

Our understanding of God can only be by analogy to ourselves. The problem is that we often forget that it IS an analogy, and think we are saying something true about God, who if outside the universe, is thus unknowable in itself. And so we argue about interpretations and then about interpretations of interpretations, each of which is different, some of which often contradicting one another: God becomes an image (or better: images) of our likeness.

As I understand it, God cannot be questioned if He appeals to the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination.

God cannot exist outside of tautologies created within the human mind. Absolute Being (God) is the antithesis of reality, which is dynamic nonlinear flow, a.k.a. non-absolute becoming.

Joe:

I don't think it's a radical misstep on our part to hold God to the same moral standards we ourselves hold, and uphold, amongst ourselves.

After all, some people claim that God, as the creative order, is our absolute moral authority. Is this position defensible? I don't think so.

What if God decreed tomorrow that indiscriminate killing is good and compassion is bad? Would anyone really accept these moral precepts? Doubtful. But then again, God is our absolute moral authority, so who are we to question His edicts?

Theists could bite the bullet here and reply that it's no coincidence that God hasn't yet decreed such vices. But were He to, few followers would obey. More importantly, why wouldn't they? Because God's edicts just so happen to coincide with what most theists independently value, God or no God. I bet you that if, tomorrow, a disembodied voice boomed from the heavens, instructing its faithful followers to slay their children and rape their neighbors, few would act. Why? Because God was merely the medium through which their independent moral values gained some (wishful) supernatural legitimacy.

No (sufficiently horrid) divine decree would really override these independent moral values, because they never really derived their legitimacy from God in the first place. These independent values are the products of personal convictions couched in theological rhetoric--an historically popular and effective way in which to instill them some (wishful) absolute authority. Now you might be saying: "Hold on. Human history has countless examples of religious believers who gleefully killed in God's name." True. But again, these events likely coincided with furthering the perpetrators' social, political, and economic interests. For these immoral perpetrators, what was sorely missing from their independent moral values was the notion that "harming others to advance one's interests is morally wrong." So if a disembodied voice, or popular text, had prescribed edicts that conflicted with their (lack) of values, they probably would have ignored them, because these sources never really held any authoritative sway outside their just so happening to coincide with what the perpetrators really cared about in the first place.

In other words, "God" provides the pretext through which we wishfully attempt to confer absolute authority upon our passionately held moral values--values whose authority is really independent from God, because God's edicts had no central role in their derivation, unless they just so happened to coincide with what people really care about, in which case the alleged divine agreement is a fortuitous benefit. Of course, groups of people also author divine texts with the express purpose of doing just this.

One last thought: if we want to assign God as the (all-good, all-loving)absolute moral authority, He better exhibit a nature consistent with this attribution. Here's an all too familiar and tragic scenario: a newborn baby comes into the world with congenital intestinal blockage. This baby experiences interminable pain and suffering as her insides literally burst and decay. She lingers on like this for four full days, until at last she expires, spiraling her parents into a devastating depression. Now, it is an epistemic possibility that God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting this, or for permitting any natural disaster, chronic disease, or congenital defects. But is it plausible to assume there is such a reason? In other words, do we really have any independent reason to suppose that these tragedies result in some greater compensatory good? I think that if we analyze the situations candidly, and if we employ a little commonsense, it should be readily apparent that we have no plausible reason to believe in the existence of an all-good God in a world riddled with incalculable natural horrors. Indeed, this world is exactly as we'd expect it to be if it were created by a process of pitiless indifference (evolution), rather than an all-good Sky Daddy.

In my opinion you cannot apply any human conceived attribute to an infinite omniall entity like god

By the same token, one must remember that the "via negativa" that defines God by negation, is also dubious. To say, for example, that everything we know exists in time, but that God does NOT exist in time, is a kind of analogy, too.

This is not to say that such analogies are false (we cannot determine that) or do not perhaps give our minds gestures and hints toward the godhead; it is to say, however, that we must keep before us that they are analogies about the incomprehensible, and we must use them, as Kierkegaard might have said, in "fear and trembling."

In my opinion you cannot apply any human conceived attribute to an infinite omniall entity like god

...The Apostle Paul did nothing but question God and gods ways in order to better understand Divinity.

Any question as to the motives of a God, How does our understanding of the universe, or lack there of, even begin to let us assume that God makes or made these choices or those choices??

Im in a bit of a struggle in wording this right, so let me try to explain.

Any question as to the motives of a God, How does our understanding of the universe, or lack there of, even begin to let us assume that God makes or made these choices or those choices?

My example comes from another thread called God on Trial. I think the general argument is that if we have these morals against killing people and causing suffering, then God should be held in the same light since we are made in his image. Is that the Catch right there? Are we an image of his likeness? Does it have to be that way?

I know Im asking alot here but, I will make the statement that we cannot question something and want human structures applied to something that, whether you believe in God or not, we have no clue as to what the hell something like that would even imply.

Am i overlooking something more simple? Is it merely a matter of wanting to identify with God in someway? Is that what really pisses off people when they dont think they can? If so, I think thats understandable, but hardly a strong argument against the Existence of such a being.

Agree? Disagree?

In my opinion you cannot apply any human conceived attribute to an infinite omniall entity like god

And yet to question God is to doubt him, oh ye of little faith.
Faith must be absolute, or it is not faith.
That opens up a whole new can of beans, which I won't get into here, but it does raise the question; If you doubt God enough to question him, do you have faith?

Is there any syntax in which we could ask (such as prayer) an absolute being anything?