A perfect god can not exist?

@Alan McDougall,

but alan all this is predicated on the notion that we can form an idea of God. It might be something utterly beyond your reckoning and what you are talking about is just the dregs of several hundred centuries of conversations about what people think.

Another point. Many spiritual philosophies understand that life on earth sucks. It is not, has never been, and will never be perfectly free of pain, fear, suffering, and so on. That is the nature of life. We can and should do everything possible to minimize it, of course, but you're always going to have disease and death, and people by nature are not perfect. Why this is turned into a complaint about God, I will never be able to fathom. It seems obvious to me that all the greatest evils in history have been perpetrated by human beings on each other. The fact that earthquakes and epidemics occur is just a condition of being alive.

The sooner you stop trying to work out what god is, the better off you will be. If it exists, and I am not saying it does or doesn't It is something utterly beyond our conceptual ability.

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;143036 wrote:

Respectfully xris I don't have a God that god I wrote about is the result of a lively imagination, why people get so hot under the collar about it perplexes me. What I wrote could be my version of Genesis chapter 1

This? ..think it says it all.

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@Alan McDougall,

I think it's funny how some people want their god to be a wrathful no mercy tyrant and others want their god to be a benevolent good hearted judge. Some want a little bit of both and then there is another group that keep saying god can't be defined and their god defies human logic. If a god defies human logic and can't be fully comprehended by humans then by all means it could also be just as bad as any other version, yet they abandon that line of thinking all together. So what we are really left with when we take into consideration all these different aspects of some supreme entity is nothing more than a vague concept. The last group to me in my opinion are just trying to hide behind a definition that has no definition. That they can have any attributes they want or don't want because it can't be systematically pinned down. This to me is funny because where would they even get the notion that this "thing" existed in the first place if it is beyond comprehension? So they have some vague notion that this "what ever" exists yet they can't explain it or comprehend it. To me that is nothing more than hearing a random sound and making up all sorts of explanations for it. In other words, what you are trying to explain, is nothing more than your own imagination.

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;151718 wrote:

Hi All

That the idea of a perfectly good god contradicts itself means that it is impossible for a good god to exist. An amoral or immoral one could exist though. The evidence is suffering, pain and the unsuitability of the universe for peaceful life is rather a big hint, however, that God is not amoral, but is actually immoral and sadistically evil. Of course it is completely more obviously the case that there isn't a god of any kind, but if there was one, it wouldn't make sense to call it "moral", it'd have to amoral at best.

This reminds me of the book of Job, where God speaks out of the whirlwind to mock man's conception of good and evil. Jung wrote a good book on it. I think Spinoza addresses it to. Ye old problem of evil. Jung argued that the devil-myth was split off from a more complete "quaternity," leaving a trinity. For me, "God" is the structure of things, and "he" is indeed sometimes grotesquely "evil."

---------- Post added 04-16-2010 at 12:06 AM ----------

Krumple;152642 wrote:

I think it's funny how some people want their god to be a wrathful no mercy tyrant and others want their god to be a benevolent good hearted judge. Some want a little bit of both and then there is another group that keep saying god can't be defined and their god defies human logic. If a god defies human logic and can't be fully comprehended by humans then by all means it could also be just as bad as any other version, yet they abandon that line of thinking all together. So what we are really left with when we take into consideration all these different aspects of some supreme entity is nothing more than a vague concept. The last group to me in my opinion are just trying to hide behind a definition that has no definition. That they can have any attributes they want or don't want because it can't be systematically pinned down. This to me is funny because where would they even get the notion that this "thing" existed in the first place if it is beyond comprehension? So they have some vague notion that this "what ever" exists yet they can't explain it or comprehend it. To me that is nothing more than hearing a random sound and making up all sorts of explanations for it. In other words, what you are trying to explain, is nothing more than your own imagination.

This is well written, and I think you make some great points. Here's one more twist, that you may not have mentioned. Responding to your last line: Blake presents the human imagination itself as God. But in the more casual sense he would not be considered, in my opinion, a theist. I suppose he's a happy artsy humanist.

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@Alan McDougall,

God may not be perfect. God did create your consciousness which gives you the ability to criticize and hate God and/or the universe. God will still love you unconditionally and welcome you back to your sanity when you are ready to let go of labels, judgments, and criticisms. No matter what you thought, said, or have done in the past.

You assumption that God is affecting the universe is just that, an assumption. It is the opposite. God has nothing to do with the universe's functioning (see free will) But only waits for you to grow tired of it and want to find out who and what you really are. Hint; your not your thoughts about, or perceptions of this universe.

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@awareness,

awareness;152925 wrote:

God may not be perfect. God did create your consciousness which gives you the ability to criticize and hate God and/or the universe. God will still love you unconditionally and welcome you back to your sanity when you are ready to let go of labels, judgments, and criticisms. No matter what you thought, said, or have done in the past.

You assumption that God is affecting the universe is just that, an assumption. It is the opposite. God has nothing to do with the universe's functioning (see free will) But only waits for you to grow tired of it and want to find out who and what you really are. Hint; your not your thoughts about, or perceptions of this universe.

I welcome your opinions. You are going to bump into some atheists, agnostics, and heretics here. I can assure you of that. But I personally welcome your contributions, even if our perspectives on God are different.

5 MINUTES LATER

I just reread your post, and you are coming off quite friendly, which I like, but you are also basically expressing passionate opinions without the argumentation that is needed to give them weight. To talk of God with such certainty is going to alienate some folks. Personally, I find the God concept to be defensible, but it requires some sophisticated argumentation. And I should indicate that I myself live without it. Or see man as "God." I'm not denying that life is mysterious, but I'm leaving it at that...until the Good Lord visits me. If you argue ONLY from private experience/revelation ("it's true because I know it is, etc."), I expect that you will make no converts. In fact, the reverse might happen. :Glasses:

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@awareness,

awareness;152925 wrote:

God may not be perfect. God did create your consciousness which gives you the ability to criticize and hate God and/or the universe. God will still love you unconditionally and welcome you back to your sanity when you are ready to let go of labels, judgments, and criticisms. No matter what you thought, said, or have done in the past.

You assumption that God is affecting the universe is just that, an assumption. It is the opposite. God has nothing to do with the universe's functioning (see free will) But only waits for you to grow tired of it and want to find out who and what you really are. Hint; your not your thoughts about, or perceptions of this universe.

That will never happen for me. I am perfectly fine without needing an invisible friend to comfort me. If a god made me, then that god would know that what I say is true. So I will never grow tired of this experience. For one I have no problem with my experience of life. I am not expecting life to be any particular way, or needing it to be any particular way. I might not like it sometimes but that is how it is. I only worry about the things that I can change and if I can't I don't bother to complain or worry about it. I don't need a god, and probably more than likely will never.

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@Krumple,

Krumple;152642 wrote:

In other words, what you are trying to explain, is nothing more than your own imagination.

What do you think imagination is?

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 12:06 AM ----------

Reconstructo;152937 wrote:

To talk of God with such certainty is going to alienate some folks.
:Glasses:

I am glad that i can agree with others expression of God, for although i call God Christ and the resurrection, i have yet to really give a decent description of what i think God is comparable to, i guess my concept of God is not yet finished, so in some respects is never definate.
God is poetry in motion.

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 12:11 AM ----------

Krumple;152938 wrote:

That will never happen for me. I am perfectly fine without needing an invisible friend to comfort me.

But you must also think that if God does not exist, then what is this imaginary friend?
The blind are just as capable as seeing god as a sighted person.
What i mean to say is that an invisible friend can be more real when you dont have a tangible one to hold your hand.
And what is this weakness/strength that means one can rely on the invisible even mor eso that the visual.
Lets not even get into visions.
Is the imagination limitless?

1 Reply

@sometime sun,

sometime sun;152978 wrote:

What do you think imagination is?

Imagination, is just that, imagination. If we were to delve further into just what that is in terms of brain conscious, we'd find out a lot more, but, of course, here's not the place for that, right?

sometime sun;152978 wrote:

But you must also think that if God does not exist, then what is this imaginary friend?
The blind are just as capable as seeing god as a sighted person.

To think that YHWH exists, we need to demonstrate a pragmatic and reasonable reason to think so, in a third party sense (that is, most objective in nature). To think that Baal exists, we need to do the same; in fact, for any deity which any may fancifully wish to think actually exists out there in the external universe, we'd need to do the same.

Otherwise, all we will be looking at, sometime sun, is a figment of imagination. I will not deny, nevertheless, the real internal value of entertaining imaginary friends and foes. This process is a very real contributor to the development of certain mental traits during the process of becoming an adult. Such use of the imagination is used by most all animals, just as it is for humans (especially for language development).

Could you please expound on what claim you are trying to put forward with that last sentence, please?

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 09:46 AM ----------

awareness;152925 wrote:

God may not be perfect. God did create your consciousness ...

Could you please support this claim, awareness?

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@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin;153023 wrote:

Could you please expound on what claim you are trying to put forward with that last sentence, please?

Imagination is real for us all,
Imagination makes of all real.
No one with a larger imagination is any less real than one with less.
What is imagination but our entrance or exit to reality?
Is imagination God?
Is not imagination present?

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

But I can imagine all kinds of things, which are unreal, which are just delusion. I can imagine the God speaks to me, or that I am the King of Denmark, or that aliens are beaming thoughts into my mind from outer space. Of course imagination is important, vital in fact, but you have to have your feet on the ground also, you have to be able to distinguish reality and fantasy. The Arabs say 'trust in Allah - but tether your camel first'.

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@sometime sun,

sometime sun;153029 wrote:

Imagination is real for us all,
Imagination makes of all real.
No one with a larger imagination is any less real than one with less.
What is imagination but our entrance or exit to reality?
Is imagination God?
Is not imagination present?

Thanks for getting back with that, sometime sun. I cannot quite see such a strong connection with the previous sentence, but would like to parse, if you will, the above, in relation to that previous sentence.

By using the case of a blind person--someone who (we can take, here) is congenially blind--you appear to be presenting the concept of such a person being able to imagine a visual object without ever having actually seen that actual object. In the real world, that is of course true to the degree that backup sensory input has created a long-term (or short term in some instances) memory from which that brain can formulate an image on their stage of consciousness. In the event that there is no back-up input in memory, we can hardly say that there would be much of any imagined image. Think of the situation where there has been absolutely no visual input, somatosensory input, or auditory input.

What this will mean, even in the 'best case scenario,' is that whatever degree of imagined thing may be assembled by the brain, it not be an external reality. This will automatically demonstrate that it is not true that a thing imagined in the brain is an actual existing thing in the universe outside the parameters of that one's brain. Although, converserly, such can be created by the creator of that imagination--just go to your local Disney Land, and look at all the Mickey Mouses on the counters of the shops and so on (not to mention the one walking around shaking and waving hands, but which never speaks). The stuffed Mickey in the bedroom is an actual existing thing externally (it's not just a figment of my mind), and it can very easily be demonstrated that it is.

Imagination, when more precisely defined, and in opposition to the term/concept 'memory,' is only an internal matter. It is a fallacy to think of that as being any kind of 'entrance' into anything other than the reality inside that particular brain, which, additionally, will always be inside that brain alone (even if someone else is imagining the exact same thing, each imagination structure is exactly within each individual's brain).

No, the fact of the faculty of imagination is not to be considered a deity, althuough all god-models are figments of the imagination (that is, created by such mental ability). To aruge that because one has imagination, therefore, and can imagine a god-model, does not lead us to the valid conclusion that that god-model, therefore, exists in the real universe outside the confines of that particular person's brain--unless cute little fluffy stuffed-figurines are made of it.

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@KaseiJin,

God did create your consciousness:

This is based on meditation practices to remove the universe and mind (thoughts/feelings) from existing and seeing what happens or what is experienced. the experience is perfection of oneself/existence and the strong sense of something present or of a source from which consciousness (the perfection) comes from. This is what I want to find out. What is the source of consciousness??? I call it "God" for convenience and because the word is universal for that which is beyond. A better name which is a definition is "The Source"

the claim can only be supported by individual experiences which are identical to all others who claim to have metaphysical or mystical experiences. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, other spiritually "liberated" people, etc...

---------- Post added 04-17-2010 at 09:44 AM ----------

I have also come to the conclusion that a "perfect" God cannot exist. But, not for "universe" reasons. If god were perfect then it could not create. For after creating it would no longer be perfect and the act of creating means the destruction of perfection. Perfection being uniform and unchanging.

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;151718 wrote:

Hi All

That the idea of a perfectly good god contradicts itself means that it is impossible for a good god to exist. An amoral or immoral one could exist though. The evidence is suffering, pain and the unsuitability of the universe for peaceful life is rather a big hint, however, that God is not amoral, but is actually immoral and sadistically evil. Of course it is completely more obviously the case that there isn't a god of any kind, but if there was one, it wouldn't make sense to call it "moral", it'd have to amoral at best.

I haven't had the chance to review the entire conversation, so I will answer without the context of the conversation's development. The position of God being immoral and sadistically evil is, respectfully, absurd. This idea places God subject to a way, which is far higher, but what we say of God is that He is above all and not bound to anything besides His will, which is absolute. Besides, evil requires good to compare; if your considered god is a god of evil, then it is only fair to conclude that it is not the true God, that is, the Creator of all existence. It is the true God who sets the standard, from which all creatures are required to act. It is this God that the Christians worship in spirit.

1 Reply

@CharmingPhlsphr,

CharmingPhlsphr;155028 wrote:

It is the true God who sets the standard, from which all creatures are required to act. It is this God that the Christians worship in spirit.

What does that even mean? "God who sets the standard from which all creatures are required to act?"

Where do you come up with this stuff? How can you even come to such a conclusion? Is this the way it has to be or else the concept of god falls flat?

So how exactly do all creatures act anyways? Are you saying all creatures act according to how they are programed? Since you use words like "standard" and "required" it implies that there was a mechanism by which their "acts" are based. This implies that they can not act other than by the standard set. In other words programed. If they are programed what is it they are programed for? No creature can ever go act other than it's programing? This is probably too many questions, that you will probably not answer, but I wonder if you know where I am going with these questions. I'll see if you can do your homework for a change.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;155043 wrote:

What does that even mean? "God who sets the standard from which all creatures are required to act?"

Where do you come up with this stuff? How can you even come to such a conclusion? Is this the way it has to be or else the concept of god falls flat?

So how exactly do all creatures act anyways? Are you saying all creatures act according to how they are programed? Since you use words like "standard" and "required" it implies that there was a mechanism by which their "acts" are based. This implies that they can not act other than by the standard set. In other words programed. If they are programed what is it they are programed for? No creature can ever go act other than it's programing? This is probably too many questions, that you will probably not answer, but I wonder if you know where I am going with these questions. I'll see if you can do your homework for a change.

You are very arrogant. Arrogance can be misguided and often is.

As for the requirements for the creatures which had been created, I cannot provide specifics on how each is to act, but the creation account and the last four chapters of Job show a bit of what God has done to the non-sentient creatures. As for the human creature and those spiritual creatures such as the angels, I am referring to morality, which is an area you have shown yourself to be in fervent opposition to Christian thought. Requirement =/= programming. Sentience eliminates the programming possibility, but not the requirement to act in a certain way; it is for this reason that one might be moral or immoral, good or evil.

1 Reply

@CharmingPhlsphr,

CharmingPhlsphr;155059 wrote:

You are very arrogant. Arrogance can be misguided and often is.

How can you say that? I am asking questions to you and you call that arrogance? I am the one asking how you come up with this stuff and I get called arrogant? I am not the one making this stuff up and calling it factual.

CharmingPhlsphr;155059 wrote:

As for the requirements for the creatures which had been created, I cannot provide specifics on how each is to act, but the creation account and the last four chapters of Job show a bit of what God has done to the non-sentient creatures.

What are non-sentient creatures? Can you give me a short list what those are because I have no idea what non-sentient creatures are. As far as I am concerned anything that reacts to pain or damage is considers by me to be sentient. This would include insects and animals. I can't seem to determine what a non-sentient creature is. If you mean angels are non-sentient creatures I would agree with you, because they are nothing other than imaginary creatures.

CharmingPhlsphr;155059 wrote:

As for the human creature and those spiritual creatures such as the angels, I am referring to morality, which is an area you have shown yourself to be in fervent opposition to Christian thought.

Oh christian thought is the only right thought? So burning people and killing them for not accepting the faith or promoting slavery is considered good, I don't want any part of it. I guess that makes me an evil person because I don't support the bigotry.

CharmingPhlsphr;155059 wrote:

Requirement =/= programming. Sentience eliminates the programming possibility, but not the requirement to act in a certain way; it is for this reason that one might be moral or immoral, good or evil.

Immoral and moral are completely subjective terms. Good or evil are just as subjective. They only come about because of what a particular society adopts and enforces them to be. If a society accepts that murder is just and fine by all means that is what will happen. Just like I consider war murder yet people have some ways of justifying it. Your bible promotes that anyone who suggests you follow a different faith, they should be killed. You accept that to be justifiable?

Exodus 22:20

"Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the LORD must be destroyed."

This is not the only place it suggests killing those who follow a different faith.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10

"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God"

So if I suggest that you take up Buddhism instead of Christianity, you should kill me right? Isn't that what your manual suggests. So why don't you look into Buddhism? I guess I just signed my death sentence.

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@Alan McDougall,

there is a perfect god enough to make a perfect problem that humanity cannot understand, he is the existence/fullness itself, he gives you everything you have, you just don't understand why he plan everything complicated, that must be the only way to attain the greater good for us and for all.

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@Alan McDougall,

ahem. I wonder if it is possible to debate or discuss this particular topic without it assuming the format of a Christians vs Lions Death Match.

I don't want to get caught up in the polemic too much, but might I venture to observe that the threats to "worshippers of other Gods" originate many centuries BC in the sacred writings of the desert peoples. The 'other gods' in question were the local deities, animal spirits, Baal, and others whose names are long lost to history. The contrast between 'the One True God' of the Bible and the older deities and demigods who were displaced by God is quite fundamental to Western civilization. The historical relationship between modern Christianity and other faith communities (such as Buddhist) is a different question altogether. And even though there are fundamentalists on all sides, few people seriously believe that Christians should go and attack those of other faiths. Most modern-day Christians understand perfectly well that times have changed since Deuteronomy was handed down, and adjust their outlook accordingly.

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A perfect god can not exist?

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