[net.religion] The morals of God

ewp@ihuxn.UUCP (Ed Pawlak) (01/12/84)

I have great difficulty understanding the statement, 'Who the hell is God
to do that!'  This type of statement seems to be stated with an agreed
upon set of postulates for the argument.  (These are the infamous "EVEN IFs",
which logically means they are accepted for the sake of argument, even if
one of the arguees doesn't accept them outside of the argument at hand.)

              1) God exists.

              2) God is all-knowing.

              3) God has tremendous power to create matter/energy, destroy
                 matter/energy, and alter the mental states of humans.

              4) God created the universe and everything else (no assumption
                 is needed as to how).

I believe this is the basic framework of the current discussion involving
Dave Norris, Tim Maroney, and others.  Remember, you don't have to believe
these four statements, they are just the basis of the discussion.  Debate
on their validity is a completely different argument.

Given these premises, I find the evaluation of God's ethics absurd.  God is
not an equal of yours to be judged by whatever standards you see fit.  He
created you, has full power to control your destiny, and I feel every right
to do as He sees fit.  You may not like the idea of not being able to appeal
to a higher authority but this isn't a game of chess He's playing, it's only
solitaire (apologies to Jethro Tull).  God devised the game and He makes the
rules.

In the scheme of the entire universe with an infinite span of time, how
important do you think you are?  Where's your outrage at a sick person
taking medicine which will kill countless millions of germs and bacteria?
Given the definition of God, do you think a human, even a whole planet of
humans are any more significant than a mosquito you swat when it bites?
You didn't even create the mosquito.  You couldn't.

Most people reading this create files occasionally.  These are your creations,
your universe.  Do you ponder the moral implications of editing a program
that doesn't do what you want it to?  What about deleting a file, or a
whole directory of files?

Comparisons of the God - human relationship to a human dictator - human subject
greatly understate the relative rights and demands of God and humans.  I put
the question to *you*, who the hell are you to make demands of and judge
God?

A final note:  If you want to dispute any, or all, of the assumptions that
is fine.  That is also a different discussion.  Don't change the assumptions,
then knock down the argument on that basis.  If everyone is in agreement,
given these four premises, and someone wants to start with a different set
of assumptions, we can start a new discussion.  If you want to discuss the
validity of an assumption, we can start a discussion about that, too.
Please stick to one topic at a time.

trying to be logical but, probably sounding fanatical,
Ed Pawlak
ihnp4!ihuxn!ewp

laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/14/84)

Ed Pawlak needs to add one more assumption to his list, at which
point the argument about the morality of God becomes once again
reasonable.

	There may be more than one of them.

Note -- there may be none at all, but just because for the purpose of
argument I assume that the Christian God exists doesn't mean that I 
assume that Pan, Athena, Tara and a whole host of others don't. I have a
plethora of gods to chose from, so how do I make a choice, even if the
choice is to reject the whole lot?

Confession time -- I believe that the most basic truths are moral
truths, not existential truths. (You can all read the Concluding
Unscientific Postscript by Kierkegaard if you want to know why,
he does a much better job than I do. It won't make you into a
Satanist -- Kierkegaard is arguably the greatest Christian philosopher
of all time. He spent his whole life (except for what he considered
'excesses of youth') trying to demonstrate the subjective truth
(the only kind he believes in, since he believe that truth is
subjectivity) of Christianity. Just don't believe everything that
he says about Paganism -- he got some bad data there somewhere
which he never learned was bad until rather late in his writing
career).

from this perspective, it is not surprising that I want to know
about the morality of any god -- long before I want to hear about
his existence. Existence doesn't move me (since I think that an
existential system of logic is impossible -- see the Concluding
Unscientific Postscript again) but Goodness does.

if god is simply the prime mover that keeps the laws of nature
from changing tomorrow, then i don't care. I would be as likely to
love my terminal than such a god. (of course, such a god probably
would be uninterested in my love). The only gods that i care about
are ones that I can love, and I can't love a god that is immoral.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura

emjej@uokvax.UUCP (01/21/84)

#R:ihuxn:-48500:uokvax:8300031:000:607
uokvax!emjej    Jan 19 16:28:00 1984

>In the scheme of the entire universe with an infinite span of time, how
>important do you think you are?

Not terribly, but then God is the one Whose eye is on the sparrow (pace
whoever sang the theme to *Baretta*)...

>Comparisons of the God-human relationship to a human dictator-human subject
>greatly understate the relative rights and demands of God and humans.  I put
>the question to *you*, who the hell are you to make demands of and judge God?

Nobody (again, we are using the assumptions you list). But I don't have to
like the situation I find myself in in that case, either.

						James Jones