silver (02/19/83)
Suppose that God is actually all that really exists. Therefore, He contains the whole Universe, and then some. This includes good, evil, all souls, all matter, all energy, all duality... everything. Then what's the devil spoken of in the New Testament? Suppose it is the tendency of people to turn away from God (one "o") and spiritual thoughts, towards selfishness, materialism, etc. You can read the Gospel this way and it still makes sense. Comments (to the net please)?
jss (02/20/83)
I think that this view of god (containing the entire Universe and then some; including good, evil...) leads to the (relatively) simple deist or humanist kind of 'religion'. If god is everything and everywhere, we are all god, and all to be respected and loved. There is certainly no need for groveling ritual. To my mind, it's a very good sort of religion, but I am prejudiced. Everyone, of course, will not come to the same conclusions. It is possible to take the premise, first come up with Vegetarianism (all animals are part of god), carry that to Insanity (all vegetables are ALSO part of god), and bounce off that to another Insanity (we have to eat SOMETHING, everything is part of god, --> we can eat EVERYTHING). I think I am sliding off the subject. Or maybe not. love, judith !decvax!brunix!jss
djhawley (02/21/83)
I think I detect a misunderstanding. Traditional christian theology
considers God transcendent, ie there are two classes :
1) God, the creator
2) Everything else, the created
So God is not everything. The classic "problem of evil" tackles the
question of the following set of ?incompatible? propositions
1) God is all-powerful
2) God is all-good
3) Evil exists
There are a number of possible approaches to "explaining away" the
?incompatibility?. But I'll leave it to others....( if Exists(interest) ).
The closet debater <----starner (02/23/83)
If God contains both good and evil then the concepts themselves have no meaning. Personally, I can't accept that. I believe that there are really "good" things in this world -- such as one human being caring for another. I also believe that there are really evil things in this world -- such as murder or rape. And if there is such a thing as real "good" musn't there be a standard of goodness? Anyone else have thoughts on this? Guy Starner
djhawley (02/26/83)
Good is one of those words that everybody likes to throw around
which is very vaguely defined, and changes from person to person
as well as from year-to-year.
The current view of morality ( lead by the war-cry of "relativeness",
loosely based on Einstein, as social darwinism was on Darwin ) just
doesn't seem to cut it. People want absolutes ( when they are
disinterested parties!!! ).
Its pretty ugly to have "good" change from time to time, or
from group to group. ( How-To-Win an argument about right and wrong -
kill the people who disagree, and then re-vote. Pacifists can wait
until they leave, or die of old age ).
It seems to me that there is no really appropriate way to define good
rather than in relation to some fixed standard. The standard
itself can't be judged, it must be ultimate ( otherwise you have the
paradox of your standard itself not being good ).
This is one of the main points raised against hedonism -> no one
really says *all* pleasure is good; they judge its appropriateness
by some other, never clearly expressed, criteria.
On the other side of the stick, the choice of the ultimate seems
arbitrary, since it can't be "judged". This is a typical attack
against a morality based on God.
It seems to me that you choose your moral stance based on your
presuppositions, and the range of world views available for the
shopper are quite varied. (I think this pluralism is tearing
Western civilization apart, bu that's another matter ).
My own moral stance is based on a combination of
1) Enscripturated revelation ( ie Bible ).
Unfortunately, humans are fallible and selfish. We know only
in part(I Cor 13) and therefore our interpretation is not
100% reliable.
2) Advice of other 'moral" people ( ie, whose past behaviour I
have deemed moral in long retrospect. Time is a good judge.
If there is a creator, what He says is good should work,
although an eternal God looks at the looooooooong run ).
3) Common-sense evaluation of possible outcomes of an action.
Note this requires some prior evaluation of what is a
"good" end result.
A comment on my taking the arbitrary standard of the "bible" :
It seems that the journey I've taken to get there encompassed
many different avenues of evidence, subjective and not, and
experiences ( in the non-supernatural sense ).
Any arbitrary standard is picked on basically how if it
"feels" right, and bears up under thought and the test of time.
To me, when I accepted the "yoke of Christ", it just "felt"
right, to my mind and moral sense.
Sorry if this is too long and rambly,bly,bly
Dave Hawley