The Perfect God - Comments Page 2

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• 26 - parker

  Sep 07, 2005 at 5:21 pm

  "So in the end, there is no real discussion because ultimately you cannot have an honest debate with someone who has no ability to examine their point of view."
  
  You've actually got this backwards. Because the person without faith has no experience with spiritual matters, having never experienced God, they are the ones with no ability to rationally discuss the issue.
  
  It's like having an argument with a blind person who has never had sight. They insist there is no such thing as color. At some point, you have to stop arguing and walk away. It doesn't mean the blind person is right and the sighted person has the inability to provide proof.
  
  We all have a choice in what we choose to believe. You might give "Life of Pi" a read. It will explain it much more eloquently than I can. To put simply, belief in God is a better story than the belief there is nothing but molecules and death.

• 27 - Baronius

  Sep 07, 2005 at 8:31 pm

  Rudicus - I've got to say that this site has one of the best "I disagree with your position"-to-"your a ass" ratios. I appreciate the courtesy.
  
  Let me clarify my earlier statement: I don't believe that there is a practical difference between not thinking (my term) and not examining (your term). Wasn't the thrust of your article that Christians "are immune to critically thinking about anything pertaining to their beliefs or belief system"? I suppose there is a difference, between thinking and thinking well, but one that hardly seems worth arguing about.
  
  (In the interest of fairness, let me be clear: I am about to make a cheap rhetorical move.)
  
  What is the difference between thinking and thinking critically? Is it that critical thinking means agreeing with you?
  
  (Man, that's cheap.)
  
  Few Christians approach their faith unthinkingly, or un-critical-thinkingly. I imagine that some do. But as with any belief which has been arrived at over time, the mere presence of a counter-argument won't cause a rout. What seem like canned responses may just be well thought out replies to questions they've already dealt with.
  
  And don't discount the natural awkwardness of religious conversations. It's easier in a face-to-face religious debate to just say 'I'll pray for you' and bail. The internet allows us the luxury of patient, extended conversation without eye contact. If you were here in my apartment, you'd be wondering how I spilled so much food on myself, and we'd both feel like the other person isn't going to give in. Even experienced missionaries feel weird sometimes.
  
  Of course, the internet also brings out the creeps and people who won't shut up. I'll be in both those groups if I don't stop writing now. We should talk about proofs of God sometime.

• 28 - Michael Bindner

  Aug 10, 2006 at 12:18 pm

  There is also the whole - don't teach that it will damage those with a weakness of faith - syndrome of the Catholic Church. This also discourages critical thinking.
  
  What Benedict doesn't get isn't that relativists don't believe that their might be some absolute truth, but that he and the churches are not in any superior position to divine it. The whole protection against error means only that if one of the faithful sins based on what he was taught it is not a sin. This of course, is relativism at its finest (do it because I said so).
  
  Rudicus is mixing his demons, however. It is only the Evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of the scriptures. The Catholics do not. They have, but don't argue all of that any more. They are about 50 years ahead of the other Christians, although they have a long way to go toward rational thought. Their Achillies heal is the Magisterium, which I dealt with above. Papal infallibility has only been used twice - and on non-moral issues only. Pseudo-infallibility is used more often. Those of us who are Catholics on the left have learned to ignore it because we like the ritual on Sunday and have learned to sleep throught the anti-gay and anti-abortion homilies. The former are actually pretty rare - too many gay priests for them to give it much emphasis - the only who do are true right wingers and gay priests trying to make it look good.
  
  The Perfect God concept (rather than the syndrome) actually comes from Greek philosophy as preserved for the west by Islamic scholars. Would you rather have a God who was not perfect? That wouldn't make logical sense. The whole omniscient thing can be explained by believing that God acts within time perfectly while seeing the whole thing. Granted, its philosophical masturbation, but any masturbation has its satisfactions.
  
  As a humanist, I like having a perfect God. A perfect God needs nothing from me. God is absolutely alturistic. He doesn't have a stake in the game so the morality I live by does not have to please him unless it acts against my fellow humans. That is the test of a moral precept, if it is not humanistic it does not come from God - in philosophical terms it cannot be natural or divine law. The fact that curial bureaucracy hasn't made that particular connection disproves the competence of curial bureaucracy, not the perfection of God. Homosexuality is the prime example. If science proves that gays and lesbians are created that way (and it pretty much has) then that creation must be good in a natural and divine law perspective. Promiscuity and pedastry are still bad ideas because of the way people link sex with emotional attachment in the former and because the latter is exploitive - especially if the younger partner is not gay (of course if the younger partner is gay - that is another story - then the question is age of consent - which is a human construct - not exploitation).
  
  As to Jesus (Peace be upon you), if he was anything at all the Trinity has to be true. A humanistic take on the Crucifixion is that it was a vision quest whereby Allah (most merciful) could only experience the pain of sinful man through the total abandonment Jesus (pbuy) experienced on the cross when he said Eloi, Eloi, lana sabacthani! Only a Triune God could have felt that abandonment without causing all creation to rend. When the Prophet (pbuh) came to the Arab tribes of his day, they could not have understood that message as a way to abandon the paganism of their time. That time is passed so openess to a disucssion on the nature of Allah (most Holy) can take place.

• 29 - RaV

  Oct 24, 2006 at 4:48 pm

  Thanks for that. It was an interesting read. You have some good ideas on religion and science :D

• 30 - Chad

  May 09, 2008 at 1:04 am

  From the book of genesis:
  "And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."
  
  This proves that god made a mistake, even in his own mind. This single verse does more to disprove the god of the bible and anything else, considering the "perfect god" theory. Enjoy.

• 31 - Ruvy

  May 09, 2008 at 10:03 am

  I've had a ball reading Rudicus' pile of nonsense, and reading the attempts to refute or disagree.
  
  1. Rudicus, you can't prove the existence of G-d. Attempting to do that is like a cell on a fingernail trying to prove the existence of the shoulder to which it is ultimately attached. Accepting G-d's existence ultimately requires what we call in Hebrew bitaHón which literally means belief in something that has not happened yet.
  
  2. None of you seem to realize that the Torah, which is the basic Revelation of G-d to the Children of Israel, is written in Hebrew, which is authoritative, and that all the translations are well, just translations. Il traddutore è il tradditore. The translator is the traitor....
  
  So, unless, you know the language the Torah was written in, you will have one hell of a time debating its validity.
  
  3. Christianity? Please, folks, spare me the humor. Christianity is a an attempt to take Hebrew ethics and marry it to Greek pagan philosophy, and then, the ultimate stupidity, to cut off the resultant mutant creation from its Hebrew roots.
  
  The Christian religion is falling apart because it has cut itself off from its Hebrew roots, and its creation, "western civilization", is falling back upon its Greek roots of paganism because it is also dying. Even after 20 centuries, insanity will eventually die. Western civilization is turning into a pornographic sexualized comedy of what it ought to be, because in the end, we all seek roots and the roots of western civ are the pornographic Greek culture of sacred whores at pagan temples.
  
  Shabbat Shalom from Liberated Samaria,
  Ruvy

• 32 - saint

  Apr 06, 2009 at 8:52 am

  the bible did not summarily say that god is without flaws, it is christian bigots who say so.