God To You?

[PaulS]

Thanks, JZM. The only thing I would add then is that I can't imagine our 'origin' somehow correcting the actions of it's creation through the laws of cause and effect, when that creation doesn't understand the laws of cause and effect (innocent children I'm talking about). To me it seems that you are saying our 'origin' somehow, because of love, uses cause and effect to help us learn from our mistakes, but that's an onerous task for a sexually abused 6 year old. So I have trouble imagining God in that way at all. What does it mean to that sexually abused 6 year old when one says God gives us the chance to make choices and if we make ones that aren't aligned with God's love then God's cause and effect kicks in, hence we live unhappy lives? Sounds to me like any 6 year old might take that as blame on their part. Clearly you wouldn't mean that, but if God's law of cause and effect applies to one, surely it applies to all?

 

I can imagine a force or entity, something that we can't put an exact handle on, somehow creating life and thus allowing it the opportunity to thrive, and that life suffering or enjoying its existence accordingly to its actions, but then that doesn't allow me to imagine that entity as a parent, or in fact as love (in the traditional sense anyway). Just my thoughts.

 

Please don't think I'm rude after this post, but I'm off to Tasmania today (a state on the other side of Australia) for a couple of weeks and I intend to stay 'off the grid' as much as possible , so I won't be able to respond any further (at least for a fortnight anyhow).

 

Cheers

Paul

 

PS ...and of course, thanks for the discussion.

[PaulS]

Paul, I appreciate your honesty in all this, and your good humor, too!

 

Obviously, these notions of "God as a parent" are not ones that either of us have just recently started thinking about. For me, because my father was not that good at fathering (other than siring), I longed for some kind of father-figure in my life, and my theistic notions of God as Father attempted to fill that void for many years. Though I inwardly struggled with the notion (for many of the reasons that you have cited), I did find *some* comfort there. Was it all false delusion? I don't know. And to this day, if asked to pray in public, I will start my prayers with, "Father...", not because I think of God as the perfect, literal father, but because that is my religious background and I still invision God in a somewhat fatherly role as the Source of life and love. Am I deluded and a hypocrite? I suppose it is possible. But, to the best of my ability, it is what I know at this point. And when I know better, I will do better.

 

The problem is theodicy is, imo, Christianity's Achilles Heel. This is especially so if the flavor of Christianity involved is of the supernatural theist bent, where God is all-powerful (can do anything), all-loving (of each and every person), and all-good (wanting to do good to everyone). Within supernatural theism, I've found no convincing answers or solutions to that problem, though I've considered many. And I especially loathe the cop-outs that God is a mystery or that we simply need to trust him to make heaven better.

 

To be honest, I'm not convinced that my kind of deism offers a much better solution. To say that God cares about us as a race but that his concern is not an overwhelming passion/personal care down to the individual level seems cold. But perhaps this is because we come from such a highly individualized society where everything is about me, myself, and I. So maybe we think God should be as obsessed with our individuality as we are, I don't know.

 

But, as you've said, pain and suffering are a reality (and, yes, I know that some on this board would disagree with my statement for reasons of their own -- I don't wish to debate this). I would hope that most agnostics and atheists agree with this reality and would be willing to do *something* to help alleviate *some* of the pain and suffering in this world. Though I believe most would, I am not convinced that it would be the "survival of the fittest" paradigm that would lead to such attitudes and actions. To me, the SOTF paradigm truly *is* individualistic, seeking personal survival at the cost of others and, sometimes, our limited resources.

 

I am convinced that God is real, though I also know that all human concepts of God fall short of the reality. But my conclusion that God is real is based, not on faith, but on evidence that I found to be convincing to *me*. Others may not be so convinced. At the same time, I have to admit that I could be wrong. Maybe there really is no being such as God. Maybe, as some progressives say, God is nothing more than a concept that we hold to in our heads. If that is indeed the case, but that concept, though not reflecting reality, still motivates us to do something about the pain and suffering in the world, still motivates us to love one another, then what harm is there in that delusion?

 

Likewise, if an atheistic or an agnostic still follows the path of compassion, tries to help people when he/she can, and endeavors to become a better person or to work for a better world, then it doesn't matter to me whether they believe in God or not. They still believe in our best human concepts of God and the role that God might play if God were/is real. This is why I've said before that some people follow Jesus without ever knowing his name or hearing his teachings. Is this just the result of "natural selection" or the "survival of the fittest"? I don't think so. But, then, I only have 5 pounds of brain and the experts say that we only use 10% of that! So I do the best I can with my half-pounder!

 

Wayseeker,

 

Thankyou very much for your honesty too. I really enjoy reading and participating in this forum for those reasons - genuine people genuinely thrashing about the issues they wrestle with, or sometimes simply sharing what works for them. I like the open, no blame approach, and the preparedness of most to accept they don't have all the answers or know the 'truth'. 'Tis refreshing.

 

Off to Tassie now, catch you on the forum in a couple of weeks

 

Cheers

Paul

[glintofpewter]

the ancient Jews were hard-core monotheists.

They were not firmly monotheists until the exile. The worship reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah were an attempt at centralization of power and a move to monaltry.

[GeorgeW]

They were not firmly monotheists until the exile.

 

Yes, hence the many biblical exhortations about following other gods. There is no need to prohibit something that no one does.

 

George

[BillM]

Thanks, gentlemen, for the correction/contribution. If memory serves, even the Torah was not written until the exile, right?

 

Maybe they pushed monotheism as a way to solidify their religion in much the same way that the church pushed the Trinity as a way to codify the Jesus debate at the time?

 

What I find interesting is that the Jews left these plural references to God in their text. Why would they do that if they really wanted to push hard-core monotheism?

[GeorgeW]

What I find interesting is that the Jews left these plural references to God in their text. Why would they do that if they really wanted to push hard-core monotheism?

 

I have read that these are thought to be historical remnants. The word for God elohim is morphologically plural but grammatically singular in Hebrew. So, it is not a true plural in Biblical Hebrew. But, as you say, there are some clear plural references.

 

George

[glintofpewter]

Wayseeker,

 

Why did the Israelites protect text they didn't agree with? It is a curiosity. One could say that, in the end, they realized they were documenting conversations and not truth claims.

 

Dutch

[BillM]

Paul,

 

I know you won’t be back for a couple of weeks so I don’t expect any immediate feedback on this, but I had just a couple more brief thoughts on this that I wanted to share while they were still fresh in my mind.

 

If I may, I think I’ll start with my conclusion: To me, the burning question is not so much “Why do the innocent suffer?” as it is “What can we do about it?” I suspect that if we, as humans, had a solid, beyond-debate theological answer to why the innocent suffer, we would somehow feel that answer would exempt us from taking any action. After all, if we could find some reason to pin it all on God, then it would leave it entirely up to God to fix it, wouldn’t it? And the other question that haunts me is, “Why do we think it is wrong for innocents to suffer?” Where does that notion come from?

My sister, a number of years ago, lost her 8-month-old son to birth defects, despite numerous operations to remedy certain problems. At the time, I was a supernatural theist but, truth be told, I had no answers for my sister as to why this happened. I certainly didn’t take the route that most of the family held to that God needed another angel up in heaven. But neither could I bring myself to believe or to say that, in keeping with the Bible, God had formed this child in the womb to be this way. I just didn’t believe that to be the case. So I was simply there for my sister and cried with her over her loss. She now has two other almost grown children which, according to the book of Job, should rectify the loss of her first child. But I don’t believe that either.

 

For me, I don’t believe that God wiggles his fingers around in human wombs to either form perfect or imperfect babies. Rather, I think that God gave us the gift of reproduction that, if our population figures are correct, works fairly well. Is the system of reproduction perfect? No. It definitely has glitches. Things go wrong. But it generally works and I consider it to still be a gift from God. In fact, Antony Flew, a long time atheist, changed his mind to accept deism because he felt, from his studies of genetics, that the odds of DNA working as well as it does by pure chance are so astronomical as to be not worth believing. He felt that some superior Mind had to have come up with this system of reproduction, not because the system is perfect (it isn’t), but because there are so many variables that should prevent it from working at all that it seems almost a miracle that it does work, it seems “designed”.

 

Therefore, to me, a loving Creator would give us such a gift, a gift that works right most of the time and a gift that is, to some extent, even tweakable by us. But the gift is the system of life, not the personal intervention of cosmic fingers that form (and deform) children in the womb. Could God have given us a better system, a more perfect system whereby good results were always guaranteed? Can God make a rock that is too heavy for him to pick up? We have to work with what we’ve got, not with what we don’t have.

 

For deists, we feel that there is sufficient evidence around us and in us to posit that a good Creator exists and created the universe. And most of us don’t have a problem, in keeping with the Judeo-Christian religion, in calling this Creator “God.” But beyond that, we are reluctant to try to describe God because 1) we don’t think we are him and 2) our knowledge is so limited. So we affirm that God exists and then we use our God-given reason to try to understand the creation that he has given us. For us, God has given us our five senses and our intellect to try to understand the reality of our universe, and while our understanding is certainly limited, we don’t feel, as the supernatural theists do, that God is in the business or habit of violating the laws he created in answer to prayers or in response to certain religious rites. This is why most of our prayers consist more of thanking God for the blessings that we do have rather than asking God to change things for us. This doesn’t eliminate experience or spirituality from our worldview (or Godview). It just means that our personal experience and spirituality is not binding on anyone else.

 

Again, I don’t think deism answers the question of why the innocent suffer except to agree with the Bible mythos that God created creation “good”, but not “perfect.” But what deism does say, again similar to Bible mythos, is that God has given us responsibility over and for the parts of creation that we can influence and change. We, as humans, have a response-ability to the world around us to set things right where we can, to change things for the better. Given all that we can and could do, sitting around pondering why God would cause or allow our universe to be the way that it is seems, to me, to be missing the point, much like praying for God to send a cup of water to the thirsty while we are standing at the well.

[BillM]

Why did the Israelites protect text they didn't agree with? It is a curiosity. One could say that, in the end, they realized they were documenting conversations and not truth claims.

 

Perhaps, Dutch. It is, as you say, curious. But, for me, I don't think they were as detached as you seem to suggest. Why document conversations that they felt were filled with lies? Usually, conversations are documented because those conversations are thought to be of some value or truth. And why would they refer to many of these conversations as "the Word of the Lord" if they felt that the conversations were rooted in lies or falsehoods?

[GeorgeW]

Why did the Israelites protect text they didn't agree with? It is a curiosity. One could say that, in the end, they realized they were documenting conversations and not truth claims.

Dutch

 

From what I have read, they were very conservative in preserving old texts. The fact that the Torah has multiple, and sometimes contradictory, sources (J, E, P, et al) suggests a conservative approach.

 

As someone has pointed out, many of the OT heroes have tilted halos which could have been edited out (like Jacobs parenting, David's indiscretions, etc.).

 

George

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Thanks, JZM. The only thing I would add then is that I can't imagine our 'origin' somehow correcting the actions of it's creation through the laws of cause and effect, when that creation doesn't understand the laws of cause and effect (innocent children I'm talking about). To me it seems that you are saying our 'origin' somehow, because of love, uses cause and effect to help us learn from our mistakes, but that's an onerous task for a sexually abused 6 year old. So I have trouble imagining God in that way at all. What does it mean to that sexually abused 6 year old when one says God gives us the chance to make choices and if we make ones that aren't aligned with God's love then God's cause and effect kicks in, hence we live unhappy lives? Sounds to me like any 6 year old might take that as blame on their part. Clearly you wouldn't mean that, but if God's law of cause and effect applies to one, surely it applies to all?

 

I can imagine a force or entity, something that we can't put an exact handle on, somehow creating life and thus allowing it the opportunity to thrive, and that life suffering or enjoying its existence accordingly to its actions, but then that doesn't allow me to imagine that entity as a parent, or in fact as love (in the traditional sense anyway). Just my thoughts.

 

Please don't think I'm rude after this post, but I'm off to Tasmania today (a state on the other side of Australia) for a couple of weeks and I intend to stay 'off the grid' as much as possible , so I won't be able to respond any further (at least for a fortnight anyhow).

 

Cheers

Paul

 

PS ...and of course, thanks for the discussion.

 

Thanks Paul,

 

I believe the law of cause and effect is a part of God, not that God created the law. God is bound to be who God is, just as we are bound by that which binds God. I think love is the Spirit and power of God, and that this spirit is able to create a functional family unit. Likewise, if we as a people observe the law of cause and effect, lean on love in all we do, it is my view that we will be reconciled and brought back in harmony with existence. In the case of the 6 year old, this is where man comes into play. We create laws to help prevent such things from happening. Our laws are for evil men, while the laws of nature are for all. It is written that against love there is no law, which to me implies that if we love above all else there is no law that can stand against us.

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

We are corrected by the law of cause and effect much how a parent would correct their children. When children, we don't view these corrections as acts of love, however. In the same manner, the law of cause and effect does not seem like a law built on love, but in my view love is the essence of life, thus the law itself being a part of God, is a law built on love. God did not create the law, but rather the law is a part of who God is. God can't change it. We can't change it. The only logical thing to do is observe it in order to change ourselves. I think if man modeled their behavior in regard to this law we'd be better off.

[JenellYB]

I think trying to place God into any human construct such as father, dictator of the universe or whatever can only be a flawed and feeble attempt to understand and comprehend something so much greater than ourselves and anything we can know and perceive is folly. The minnows in the puddle cannot possibly comprehend the greater cosmos within which their little puddle exists.

 

I find it satisfactory to think of God as both the ground of being our of which all arises and all of that which arises from and is within it. And if there be any 'order' to the processes involved, it simply is what it is, whether we call it god or a greater intellegence or just what is. As for a "greater consciousness" and "greater intelligence" involved overall, I think even a purely secular, atheistic view can embrace and comprehend that, considering the our own consciousness and intellegence demonstrates the existence of consciousness and intellegence, and you don't need a concept of something supernatural to consider that our own consciousness and intellegence are simply microcosm occurances within a like macrocosm.

 

A point of conflict that arose early on in life for me is that if in religion one is going to insist that "God is real" why get upset when through observation and scientific thoughts and discovery something about God believed as "real" becomes empiracly understood and proven real? Does understanding how the forces of nature operate to bring about wind and rain and other natural weather phenomenon undo God because it means the old idea that weather happens because there are angels at the 4 corners of the flat square Earth holding and directing the winds, or that the sea stays within its bounds by natural gravity rather than by being retrained by "the hand of god" make reality any less amazing, even miraculous? We still do not know WHY these things, these natural phenomenon even exist to begin with, or HOW they came to be as they are. The very idea of order arising out of chaos, something out of nothing, is pretty amazing and miraculous whether you attribute it to something called god or not. As for odds of such order arising out of chaos being no more than a chance occurance out of infinite possiblities, i can no more believe that than that the blowing material particles in a dust storm in West Texas might by chance fall into an arrangement so as to produce an operational jet plane sitting there in the aftermath. None of the laws of nature, physics, seems to support any idea of order arising out of chaos by chance, the actually is quite the opposite....order disintegates into chaos. Arrangment disintegrates into disarrangement.

 

As for how any of this related to what we percieve as suffering, human and otherwise, in this reality within which we exist and expereince, I think its amazing enough, miraculous in itself, that we even HAVE this opportunity to exist and experience to begin with. And I tend toward that being perhaps the very reason we have it, just for the sake of having it. We are here to exist and expereince existance. And to experience, and experience fully, there must be a range of experience potentials, and that range of experience potentials arise direcly out of the same ground as existence and capacity to experience, itself. The range of physical, cognitive, psychological, and emotional experience potentials require distinctions of contrast in order to be experience at all. Pleasure cannot be comprehended without comprehending pain as well. Success, acheivement, not without failure, incomptence. Risk brings its own 'reward' in the potential experience of succeeding, accompliishing, over obstacles, but cannot be risk or produce satisfaction without also the potential for failure and loss.

 

All that is our percieved reality, the field upon which we experience opportunity to experience, is one vast interconnected field that included both the ground of being out of which it arises, and all that arises within it. We both contribute to the matrix of the reality in which we exist, and influence the reality that all of us experience. None of us exist in a disconnected reality of our own making, what one does affects another, what choices we make affects ours and others' futures, whether we are consciously aware of that or how it does so or not. And the "natural" qualities of our shared reality, this entire field of experience potential in which we exist, is just what it is. It had to be some way, this is just how it is in the way we have it. The "natural world" as we percieve it and experience wiithin it, is just how the field for experience is constructed. Sometimes we have more or less influence over what will affect our experience and how. The abuse and suffering of the unprotected "innocent child" comes of all the other forces working in that childs existential experience, both arising out of "natural phenomenon" and the effects of others' actions. Even as adults, we have a very limited range of power in controlling events in our experience. Those of us that live in this here and now as we do, a relatively free society with many social and technological advantages tend to take that for granted, that the power we have in directing our life experiences is not our own, but granted to us out of the mere circumstance of the time and place of our birth and life. Even adults the world over suffer abuses, starvation, lack of any means for securing even basic needs, as helplessly as any child.

 

Even suffering from natural phenomenon, being caught in an earthquake or flood or typhoon or avalanche or whatever, is part of our opportunity to experience, and often has much more to do with human choices than we want to attribute to it. Cause and effect is how reality unfolds. Human understanding and action at both individual and collective levels has a much greater affect on even those things than we are prone to recognizing.

 

Witness some of what emerged from the recent catstrophic tsunamies in Indonesia and Japan, relative to deaths and survivals. In the Indonesian event, notable were a few rather primitive, indigneous fishing tribes were largely spared major loss of life because they have kept alive the "superstitous" elements of native religious and folk lore that allowed them to recognize the warning natural signs of the coming tidal wave, and react appropriately and immediately in defense. When they observed the unusual pulling back of the sea tide, their folk lore legends of how the sea god occasionally extracted a cost on humans for the bounty of fish they took from the sea by lunging onto shore to engulf villages and villagers sent those on land or near immediately scrambling for pre-planned high ground, and those caught in shallow waters immediately paddling out toward deeper waters, where they could ride atop the great incoming swells instead of being caught in their fury as they crested and broke in shallow waters.

 

In the aftermath of the disaster in Japan, images of ancient stone markers set upon hillsides all along the vulnerable coast warned furture generation not to build below those marks, and warnings to immediately flee lower ground to those levels marked following earthquakes, lest they be washed away by tidal waves, but "modern, more educated" humans had discounted and ignored them, to their own peril.

 

The human experience, opportunity to learn, and direct the course of human future in those examples are not must personal, individual, but collective. It is not the "fault" or "failure" of any individual that dies in those tsumanis, but the failure of human collectives they live within. And sadly, now, they work to rebuild on the same inherently dangerous ground.

 

Even now, much of the suffering whether from natural weather phenomenon of poltical/social. economic condtions in the world are the direct relust of human actions, outworking of consequencees, through which part and present human actions affect both present and future generations.

 

as it goes, when will we ever learn? Or perhaps better said, when will we ever learn to learn?

 

Jenell

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Wonderful post, Jenell!

 

 

To comment directly to your first paragraph: God is knowable (in part) by all that exists. God is knowable (in part) by our ability to hear, feel, see, smell, and taste. We experience God through our senses and through life itself. We cannot comprehend God wholly as God is infinite, but we can experience and learn of God through what has been made, through all that exists. God is the great I Am (as the scriptures state). We are merely pilgrims on a journey in God.

 

 

Black holes, the earth, outer space, the universe are but a grain of sand compared to God's infinity. One might compare the universe to a single human cell existing within our body. Multiply this thought by infinity and we still will not be able to grasp the depth of God. God has no beginning nor no end.

 

 

Our journey in God might be said to be a never ending quest to understand God as life and love. God is our ultimate reality. There is no end destination to reach for us, but rather a continual communion with God, a coming to know life and love more full as we move forward. Life is an ongoing relationship between God and man. We live through and in God, and perhaps in much the same way, God lives through and in us as living, breathing creatures.

[NORM]

** Our father is the head of our family unit, and our mother is who rears us in the physical world. Our mother supplies our physical needs to survive, just as our Father supplies our spiritual needs to survive. Together they make up God [plural] and we, their offspring, complete the God-head (Family). Our Father is our spiritual life force and our mother is our physical life force, the Holy Spirit is love and the power of our parents (God). Love is the motive of (God). It is the motivation behind all life, and when God's motive is embraced by us fully, the Holy Spirit enables us to live abundantly. We are part of the God-head (family) and in order for us to live abundant lives, we are required to value both mother and father, then live through the Spirit behind them both (Holy Spirit).

 

As a non-theist, I probably ought not comment in this thread, but I just couldn't let this go without putting in my thoughts.

 

I think this is a nice, comfortable world view for somone who has had a nifty family experience, but I would gather that those of us who suffered through our childhood years would recoil at this characterization of the "G-d as family" notion. I think Paul rather handily addressed this same concern in his posts.

 

I've lived long enough to know that this patriarchal view of theology (G-d the Father = Spiritual head + G-d the Mother = Homemaker) is not a universal concept. My background includes Judaism, and this is the ultra-orthodox view. One of my teachers at schul described the dual-sexed nature of G-d (called the Shekinah) in a very similar way as you have described in your OP. The funny thing is that you only are exposed to this teaching after you've reached the age of 13 (or have bar / bat mitzvah'd). It's considered Kabala teaching by the rabbis.

 

Still, I applaud your attemp to fashion a religious interpretation of Christianity that fits your way of thinking. It's too bad many in the faith limit their vision to what they've been told is dogma. Religion is a man-made tool for unlocking the secrets of the universe. We alone hold the keys.

 

Personally, I've abandoned the whole idea of a supernatural Mother / Father / Lawgiver / Etc. and find peace in embracing humanity on its own, raw, natural, come-as-you-are terms.

 

Interesting discussion. Welcome to the Forum.

 

NORM

[PaulS]

Paul,

 

I know you won’t be back for a couple of weeks so I don’t expect any immediate feedback on this, but I had just a couple more brief thoughts on this that I wanted to share while they were still fresh in my mind.

 

If I may, I think I’ll start with my conclusion: To me, the burning question is not so much “Why do the innocent suffer?” as it is “What can we do about it?” I agree - that is way more important. I suspect that if we, as humans, had a solid, beyond-debate theological answer to why the innocent suffer, we would somehow feel that answer would exempt us from taking any action. After all, if we could find some reason to pin it all on God, then it would leave it entirely up to God to fix it, wouldn’t it? Well I guess that would depend on what the answer was. If the answer was "that's the way God wants it" then yes, there probably would be a prevalence to leave it all in God's court. However there could be an answer that still requires us to take action too, couldn't there? And the other question that haunts me is, “Why do we think it is wrong for innocents to suffer?” Where does that notion come from? I actually think that notion arises out of the confusion caused when people say God loves us all, God is like a parent who applies corrective actions, God will only load us up with what we can bear, etc. When people hear that I think it naturally makes them ask such questions about innocents. I myself don't look at it as fair or unfair - it's just how things happen. We can do what we can to minimise it, but we can't always prevent it.

My sister, a number of years ago, lost her 8-month-old son to birth defects, despite numerous operations to remedy certain problems. At the time, I was a supernatural theist but, truth be told, I had no answers for my sister as to why this happened. I certainly didn’t take the route that most of the family held to that God needed another angel up in heaven. But neither could I bring myself to believe or to say that, in keeping with the Bible, God had formed this child in the womb to be this way. I just didn’t believe that to be the case. So I was simply there for my sister and cried with her over her loss. She now has two other almost grown children which, according to the book of Job, should rectify the loss of her first child. But I don’t believe that either.

 

For me, I don’t believe that God wiggles his fingers around in human wombs to either form perfect or imperfect babies. Rather, I think that God gave us the gift of reproduction that, if our population figures are correct, works fairly well. Is the system of reproduction perfect? No. It definitely has glitches. Things go wrong. But it generally works and I consider it to still be a gift from God. In fact, Antony Flew, a long time atheist, changed his mind to accept deism because he felt, from his studies of genetics, that the odds of DNA working as well as it does by pure chance are so astronomical as to be not worth believing. He felt that some superior Mind had to have come up with this system of reproduction, not because the system is perfect (it isn’t), but because there are so many variables that should prevent it from working at all that it seems almost a miracle that it does work, it seems “designed”.

 

Therefore, to me, a loving Creator would give us such a gift, a gift that works right most of the time and a gift that is, to some extent, even tweakable by us. But the gift is the system of life, not the personal intervention of cosmic fingers that form (and deform) children in the womb. Could God have given us a better system, a more perfect system whereby good results were always guaranteed? Can God make a rock that is too heavy for him to pick up? We have to work with what we’ve got, not with what we don’t have.

 

For deists, we feel that there is sufficient evidence around us and in us to posit that a good Creator exists and created the universe. And most of us don’t have a problem, in keeping with the Judeo-Christian religion, in calling this Creator “God.” But beyond that, we are reluctant to try to describe God because 1) we don’t think we are him and 2) our knowledge is so limited. So we affirm that God exists and then we use our God-given reason to try to understand the creation that he has given us. For us, God has given us our five senses and our intellect to try to understand the reality of our universe, and while our understanding is certainly limited, we don’t feel, as the supernatural theists do, that God is in the business or habit of violating the laws he created in answer to prayers or in response to certain religious rites. This is why most of our prayers consist more of thanking God for the blessings that we do have rather than asking God to change things for us. This doesn’t eliminate experience or spirituality from our worldview (or Godview). It just means that our personal experience and spirituality is not binding on anyone else.

 

Again, I don’t think deism answers the question of why the innocent suffer except to agree with the Bible mythos that God created creation “good”, but not “perfect.” But what deism does say, again similar to Bible mythos, is that God has given us responsibility over and for the parts of creation that we can influence and change. We, as humans, have a response-ability to the world around us to set things right where we can, to change things for the better. Given all that we can and could do, sitting around pondering why God would cause or allow our universe to be the way that it is seems, to me, to be missing the point, much like praying for God to send a cup of water to the thirsty while we are standing at the well.

 

I think we're not much apart on this. I don't ponder about innocents all that much because I think pain and suffering is just a normal part of our existence, God or no God. Most of my points raised against this OP were simply challenging the initlal view of God as a parent, which as you know doesn't work for me.

 

I'm not so certain about the designer bit though. To me it seems to take things too far to say that a Creator designed us this way, but didn't/couldn't do it properly (i.e. didn't create us to give birth without severe risk of death without modern medical intervention, etc).

 

Just my thoughts and I appreciate you sharing yours.

[BillM]

Welcome back, Paul.

 

I agree with you that the problem of theodicy is mainly relegated to that part of Christianity that insists that God is all-loving, all-powerful, and in control (sovereign). Hard to jibe those three things together with real life.

 

But I also think that a parent has more than one role. Granted, a father who only sires a child and leaves isn't much of a father. This is how many deists view God, as starting the universe and then going off somewhere else to do something else (perhaps multiple universes?).

 

Another role for a father, especially for the young, is that of provider and protector. This, of course, encompasses the notion of loving care that we've been discussing.

 

But I tend to think that the overwhelming role of a father is to raise responsible children, children who learn to be compassionate and to influence this world for good. In this role, the father doesn't always seem, to the children, to be a good provider or protector. In teaching my children how to be responsible adults, which often meant stepping back so that they could reap some of what they sowed, I don't know how many times I heard, "You don't love me!" They wanted the provider, the protector, the nuturer, but in a selfish way, in a way that ensured that *they* got what *they* wanted and who cares about other people. But I've tried to teach them, often through sowing and reaping, that my role as a father isn't just about them, but about raising them to be responsible to God, to themselves, to others, to the world, and, hopefully, to their own children. Therefore, my actions and attitudes certainly didn't always line up with the metaphor of a hen shielding her chicks, smoothing them with affection, and protecting them from all harm.

 

Sometimes a father steps back and finds the child crying out in anguish, "Why have you abandoned me?"

 

I don't think that good fathers really do abandon their children. But I do think they seek to have those children grow up.

 

Thanks for your thoughts also.

 

'Til next time...

 

Regards,

Bill

[NORM]

But I also think that a parent has more than one role.

 

Yes, in a rich society, we have the luxury of "allowing" our children to suffer (to a certain degree) the consequences of their actions.

 

However, I have been witness to cultures where the sole purpose of the adult parents is to provide that day's meal - and protect the family from being the victim of savage animal attacks (including those of the human kind).

 

Nurturing and role-modeling isn't even on the radar when basic survival is the name of the game.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, Paul, but isn't this your point (more or less) with regard to the god-as-parent question? Insofar as our American culture is a different experience than what much of the human population endures; the anaolgy loses meaning.

 

NORM

[PaulS]

Yes, in a rich society, we have the luxury of "allowing" our children to suffer (to a certain degree) the consequences of their actions.

 

However, I have been witness to cultures where the sole purpose of the adult parents is to provide that day's meal - and protect the family from being the victim of savage animal attacks (including those of the human kind).

 

Nurturing and role-modeling isn't even on the radar when basic survival is the name of the game.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, Paul, but isn't this your point (more or less) with regard to the god-as-parent question? Insofar as our American culture is a different experience than what much of the human population endures; the anaolgy loses meaning.

 

NORM

 

You are spot on there, Norm. That is precisely my point. To me, the analogy of God as parent doesn't fit nicely in a world where we face slowly starving to death, where we are a 10 yr old child abducted by Belgian peadophiles and kept in a dungeon for sexual abuse for years on end, where our earthly family sells us into sexual slavery at the age of 16, where we are stoned to death for being raped against our will, etc etc.

 

I don't see any of the above as being gentle, parental, corrective actions for lessons to be learned neccessarily for those who experience such.

 

If as Bill suggests, the overwhelming role of a father is to raise responsible children, children who learn to be compassionate and to influence this world for good, how is God being a good parent in these instances I've suggested above?

 

Whilst Bill suggests that the father doesn't always seem, to the children, to be a good provider or protector, I would go to say that God in this instance is no parent whatsoever.

 

Bill, you teach your children how to be responsible adults, which often means stepping back so that they could reap some of what they sowed. But like Norm says, in a society where we have the 'luxury' to allow our children to suffer and learn lessons without being scarred for life, that's okay. But what is it that the sexually abused innocent child sowed to be reaping such a painful harvest? What has a Somalian 3 year old who is dying from malnutrition supposed to learn from his experience? Sure, you and I can learn to help out our fellow man, but if God is a 'parent' then isn't that God a parent to all simultaneously?

 

Bill - "I don't know how many times I heard, "You don't love me!" They wanted the provider, the protector, the nuturer, but in a selfish way, in a way that ensured that *they* got what *they* wanted and who cares about other people. But I've tried to teach them, often through sowing and reaping, that my role as a father isn't just about them, but about raising them to be responsible to God, to themselves, to others, to the world, and, hopefully, to their own children. Therefore, my actions and attitudes certainly didn't always line up with the metaphor of a hen shielding her chicks, smoothing them with affection, and protecting them from all harm." B

 

But Bill, would you let your child be sexually abused? Would you let your child starve to death? What lesson would you hope the 16 year old sold into sexual slavery from a village in Cambodia learns from the experience?

 

Again, I'm not saying that's what God does, I'm just saying that the metaphor of God as parent seems to me to be a poor one if that parent stands back and lets his innocent children, the ones who are too young to do anything about the situation themselves, suffer. That is not a parent I understand.