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Originally posted by rwingettJohn3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Does such a god deserve our worship? Or does he even care?
Originally posted by rwingettDoes such a god deserve our worship?
Does such a god deserve our worship? Or does he even care?
Well, if you accept Colletti's picture of him then I would have thought the answer is clearly yes. Great big vastly superior beings are surely entitled to every bit of respect you can muster, whether you personally like everything they do or not. The only thing that would dictate otherwise is your own pride.
Or are you going to suggest that whether he deserves worship depends on whether or not he meets your moral standards? I think the point Colletti is trying to make that measuring God by YOUR standards is completely the wrong way around - he should be measuring you by his.
Does he even care?
The Bible certainly seems to suggest so. The first of the Ten Commandments was to worship. There's also a great many passages to indicate that God takes a deep interest in our lives, which is a related point.
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Originally posted by no1marauderPredestination is a whole new issue, and one I'm not sure I have answers for.
I've asked before and never got an answer: why do people who believe in predestination pray? Or follow ANY moral code as it is irrelevant to their ultimate salvation? If I'm one of the Elect and I toss a couple of three year olds into a furnace it's all cool anyway.
As to following a moral code, I'd suggest that the purpose of it is not to obtain salvation but to work on the relationship with God. Because one tends to feel that spending an eternity with God could be mighty awkward if you've done a lot of things he doesn't approve of.
I have no doubt though, no1, that with your tough skin you could handle all the awkward silences without batting an eyelid. 😉
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Originally posted by orfeoDoes such a god deserve our worship?
Does such a god deserve our worship?
Well, if you accept Colletti's picture of him then I would have thought the answer is clearly yes. Great big vastly superior beings are surely entitled to every bit of respect you can muster, whether you personally like everything they do or not. The only thing that would dictate otherwise is your own pride.
Or are ...[text shortened]... many passages to indicate that God takes a deep interest in our lives, which is a related point.
Well, if you accept Colletti's picture of him then I would have thought the answer is clearly yes. Great big vastly superior beings are surely entitled to every bit of respect you can muster, whether you personally like everything they do or not. The only thing that would dictate otherwise is your own pride.
Why are “great big vastly superior beings” entitled to respect? Especially since you seem to imply that we are in no position to judge—or even to determine—whether or not that being is “morally” superior, since our standards would simply not apply? Even if holy scriptures say that God is good and just, are such words, when applied to God, so far beyond our understanding as to become virtually meaningless for us? If yes, then we can really say very little about God at all; if no, then we can make some judgments about moral or just behavior independently of who the actor is.
Your position seems to really come down to might (in this case, redundantly, "omnipotent might" ) makes right, period--whether that's what you intend or not.
Now, a person might publicly venerate a despotic king, say, simply out of fear—otherwise, the king might give the command “Off with ‘is ‘ead!” But (1) that does not say that a despotic king is entitled to respect, and (2) in Coletti’s model, none of our beliefs or thoughts or actions affect the outcome anyway.
With regard to pride, three definitions (from Webster’s New World College Dictionary):
1 a) an unduly high opinion of oneself; exaggerated self-esteem; conceit b) haughty behavior resulting from this; arrogance
2 proper respect for oneself; sense of one’s own dignity or self-worth; self-respect
3 delight or satisfaction in one’s own or another’s achievements, in associations, etc.
Now, if I conclude that I am not one of the elect according to Calvinist doctrine (and that is my conclusion, if Coletti’s worldview is correct), then claiming simple pride—in the sense of dignity and self-respect (ala definition 2), and taking delight in my own life by my own decisions and actions (akin to definition 3)— may be one of the few things that I have by way of affirming my own life, and it’s being worth living.
If we are incapable of judging God’s “goodness,” I suspect that our standards are insufficient to judge the extent of our own “depravity” as well, as a justification for all but the elect to be condemned from the beginning of time. If we are all irredeemably “totally depraved,” then from God’s point of view, any sense of dignity or self-worth that I have is “totally vain,” as are any moral/ethical standards by which I choose to live. But I don’t have God’s point-of-view; I don’t measure myself against (any) God to determine my self-worth or deservingness of self-respect (now that would be vain, whether the result is false pride or false humility); and, while I certainly don’t take pride in all my actions, I do take pride in my willingness to confront my own being-here, with all its questions and uncertainties and the necessity of making my own life as I go along, to the best of my ability.
Originally posted by vistesdThat's tantamount to saying that people should just roll over & take it from the Boss. Hardly surprising that Lucifer revolted against the Big Cop.
[b] Great big vastly superior beings are surely entitled to every bit of respect you can muster, whether you personally like everything they do or not. The only thing that would dictate otherwise is your own pride.
Originally posted by LemonJelloThe opposite of free will is not being a robot - the concept of free will is not so easy as that. The idea of free will and morality is that we are completely free to choice to do good or evil in any given situation. So are we truly free to do anything? But note that I did not ask if we can do anything we want - because we are free to do what we want - we do what our will is to do. So the question is, can we do something regardless of our will. Before we can do anything, we must will to do it. So free will requires freedom to change our will. Can we change our will? Or do we do exactly what we will (or want) to do?
as i understand it, according to your world view, we have no free will and our fates are pre-determined. in other words, we are all puppets. so if you are right, i'm confident there's no useful protest i can mount: god will either pitch me, strings and all, into the fire; or he will perch me on a dusty shelf until he deems it fit for me to dance for h ...[text shortened]... port your view. this doesn't mean you're wrong, but i don't see why you think you are right.
Free will is impossible because it requires us to change our wills from doing A to doing B without any outside influence. But we know that how our will is orientated is dictated by external forces. And what we do (A or B) is a direct product of our will. We won't do anything but what is in accord to our will - and if doing A is according to our will, we will do A and not B.
God does not force us to do anything against our wills. We have free moral agency - to act according to the dictates of our wills. If we are puppets, we are puppets of our own wills. The question is, what forms or orientates our wills.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageYeah—that version seems to shake out as: 1) don’t worship God because God is good, but just because God is God, and demands it; and 2) we really have no way of judging whether God is good (using that as an overly-broad, catch-all term here) or not, because of our limited capabilities of understanding.
That's tantamount to saying that people should just roll over & take it from the Boss. Hardly surprising that Lucifer revolted against the Big Cop.
To be fair, I’m not sure that Orfeo agrees with Coletti’s position; I just took him to be saying that, even granting the Calvinist double-predestination worldview, God would still be entitled to worship—at least by the elect. And if you question that, then—again, from the Calvinist perspective—that might be a pretty good sign that you’re not one of the elect.
Originally posted by vistesdInteresting who pride has such a wide array of definitions. It seems the second definition would be the healthiest "proper respect for oneself; sense of one’s own dignity or self-worth; self-respect." And the third "delight or satisfaction in one’s own or another’s achievements" could also be healthy. But at this point, pride and humility seem to be compatible. Pride gives you a proper sense of ones value, humility is pride with proper perspective.
[b]Does such a god deserve our worship?
Well, if you accept Colletti's picture of him then I would have thought the answer is clearly yes. Great big vastly superior beings are surely entitled to every bit of respect you can muster, whether you personally like everything they do or not. The only thing that would dictate otherwise is your own pride.
...[text shortened]... uncertainties and the necessity of making my own life as I go along, to the best of my ability.[/b]
Now, a person might publicly venerate a despotic king, say, simply out of fear—otherwise, the king might give the command “Off with ‘is ‘ead!” But (1) that does not say that a despotic king is entitled to respect, and (2) in Coletti’s model, none of our beliefs or thoughts or actions affect the outcome anyway.
In my world view - beliefs are critical. Whoever shall believe will have eternal life. The issue is how can one believe. On the other hand, our actions or secondary. We do not believe because we act, we act because we believe. Our actions are the direct result of our thinking - so thinking (believe, faith, will, intentions).
If we are incapable of judging God’s “goodness,” I suspect that our standards are insufficient to judge the extent of our own “depravity” as well, as a justification for all but the elect to be condemned from the beginning of time. If we are all irredeemably “totally depraved,” then from God’s point of view, any sense of dignity or self-worth that I have is “totally vain,” as are any moral/ethical standards by which I choose to live. But I don’t have God’s point-of-view; I don’t measure myself against (any) God to determine my self-worth or deservingness of self-respect (now that would be vain, whether the result is false pride or false humility); and, while I certainly don’t take pride in all my actions, I do take pride in my willingness to confront my own being-here, with all its questions and uncertainties and the necessity of making my own life as I go along, to the best of my ability.
You packed so much into that paragraph it's hard to respond to.
1) We don't judge God's goodness because that would be like saying we are going to make something that is all red more red. God defines goodness for us.
2) We do have God's "point of view" via the knowledge he gives us in scripture. He gives it to us so that we can judge our own actions and beliefs. We are not perfect judges, even of ourselves, but we can do a fair job of it with some enlightenment. One purpose of the law is the show us what is good, the other is to show us our need for Christ to redeem us.
3) Our self worth (pride) is vain as far as our salvation goes. I don't know if it will do much for us with respect to knowing God or living for him. As long as our pride does not hinder us from serving God - loving our neighbors, worshiping God) the it is fine. A healthy self worth would seem to be an aid to being of good service.
Originally posted by ColettiHi Col,
Interesting who pride has such a wide array of definitions. It seems the second definition would be the healthiest "proper respect for oneself; sense of one’s own dignity or self-worth; self-respect." And the third "delight or satisfaction in one’s own or another’s achievements" could also be healthy. But at this point, pride and humility seem to be c ...[text shortened]... ing God) the it is fine. A healthy self worth would seem to be an aid to being of good service.
I have to go run some errands, so I'll be brief for now:
But at this point, pride and humility seem to be compatible. Pride gives you a proper sense of ones value, humility is pride with proper perspective.
Agreed. In this sense, I think of humility as a realistic sense of integrity in seeing oneself.
In my world view - beliefs are critical. Whoever shall believe will have eternal life. The issue is how can one believe.
I am confused here. I would've thought that, in your worldview, right belief was simply itself given as grace; and as such, might be a sign that a person is one of the elect--but that believing is not something one can choose...?
You packed so much into that paragraph it's hard to respond to.
Yeah, that was all probably a bit convoluted. Rather trhan replying to your points, let me first see if I can (later) do a better job of presenting what I'm thinking....
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Originally posted by ColettiWe don't judge God's goodness because that would be like saying we are going to make something that is all red more red. God defines goodness for us.
Interesting who pride has such a wide array of definitions. It seems the second definition would be the healthiest "proper respect for oneself; sense of one’s own dignity or self-worth; self-respect." And the third "delight or satisfaction in one’s own or another’s achievements" could also be healthy. But at this point, pride and humility seem to be c ...[text shortened]... ing God) the it is fine. A healthy self worth would seem to be an aid to being of good service.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here, but it gave me an idea for trying to flesh out what I meant in my prior post—
Let’s take the statement “God is good.” Again, I am using “good” as a broad catch-all term; you could say God is just, God is merciful, etc.
Now, in order for this statement to have any meaningful descriptive content (or, more formally, for it to be a logical proposition subject to being true or false) for me, I must have some understanding of what the word “God” means or refers to, and, separately, what the word “good” means or refers to. Just as, if I say: “A tomato is red,” you would have to know what a tomato is and what the word “red” refers to, in order to know what I’m even talking about—or to counter, for instance, that sometimes (unripe) tomatoes are green.
The only other possibilities I see are that to say “God is good” (or just or whatever) is either (1) incoherent, or (2) a tautology (in which case to say “God is good” is to say the same thing as “God is God” or “good is good,” and nothing more.
We do have God's "point of view" via the knowledge he gives us in scripture.
This brings up a related point. The scriptures are written in human language(s), using human words and concepts. Any statement of God’s attributes in scripture, or derived from scripture, are either consistent with human understanding—or they are beyond our understanding, in which case we—well, just can’t understand them, let alone discuss them.
Using the “God is good” example: If the word “good” as applied to God is categorically different from the word “good” as applied to human beings, that would be as if the word “red” as applied to x really meant “blue” as applied to some other non-x—that is, it would represent the sense perception of some other range of frequencies in the spectrum.
So, when God commits some act, I can say that (1) God was acting, say, justly; or (2) God was not acting justly (and perhaps I conclude that that particular story either has some other meaning, or was not very inspired); or (3) I can, and should, say nothing at all.
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ASIDE: This whole discussion has put in sharp relief for me the difference between the Jewish concept of a covenantal relationship with God, versus the notion of a God we simply submit to. The Jewish viewpoint is that the covenant(s) between God and Israel (and Israel’s predecessors such as Abraham and Noah) are presented in human language for human understanding. Chaim Potok, in his Wanderings: A History of the Jews describes the original understanding of covenant as a treaty of sorts between a king and a vassal people (I no longer have my copy, so I can’t give the citations offhand). Now, either party has the right to “sue” the other to enforce—or expand or renegotiate—the terms of the agreement; and just like our system of jurisprudence, there is not only the written (statutory) agreement, but years of revisions (written and oral) due to (analogously) renegotiations and “common law” rulings; i.e., the covenant is dynamic, not static. One thinks of Abraham or Moses arguing with God, as well as the whole rabbinical oral tradition.
Genesis 18:25. Then Abraham came near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?"
According to tradition, Abraham stopped arguing at ten, because he thought that surely there were 10 righteous people in the city, including Lot and his people—otherwise he would have kept arguing. But note the nature of the argument: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just!” And note that God in this story implicitly accepted Abraham’s notion of justice here—which was that God should forgive all the residents of Sodom “for the sake of” the righteous ones living there (although his comment about the wicked and the righteous faring alike might hint at a possible back-up position--not an unheard-of negotiation strategy). And am I now not permitted to ask whether God's actions were just? Am I not permitted to follow Abraham?
I’m being very rough and simplistic, and a bit tongue-in-cheek, here, but the Jewish tradition is full of things like:
God: “You did not act correctly…”
Rabbi: “But, Ribbono shel olam (Master of the Universe), that is not how I understand your Torah where it says xyz.”
God: “It does not say xyz; it says zyx.”
Rabbi: “Ah, but it can be read xyz just the same, as Rabbi Hillel pointed out.”
God: “Hmmm….”
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Originally posted by Colettithanks for your post. your concept of free moral agency sounds like free will to me; and your concept of free will sounds like gibberish to me.
The opposite of free will is not being a robot - the concept of free will is not so easy as that. The idea of free will and morality is that we are completely free to choice to do good or evil in any given situation. So are we truly free to do anything? But note that I did not ask if we can do anything we want - because we are free to do what we want - we ...[text shortened]... puppets, we are puppets of our own wills. The question is, what forms or orientates our wills.
"Before we can do anything, we must will to do it."
if the quotation above is what you think, then i don't see how you conclude from there that free will doesn't exist. for if willing an action is a necessary condition for carrying out said action, then it follows that any action we undertake is done so according to our will. that sounds like free will to me (of at least the compatibilist sort).
So free will requires freedom to change our will.
huh? i think you're confused. free will (at least of a compatibilist variety) concerns the agent's endorsement of the maxim of an undertaken action, even if the ultimate cause of the action comes from external sources. so free will minimally requires the freedom to act in accordance with one's will.
i think i get your position now. i see your argument as follows (you can correct me if i am completely off base):
you seem to argue that one cannot carry out any action that is not in keeping with one's will. then you ask 'could one have changed his will, such that he may have carried out another action instead?'; and you arrive at the conclusion that no he could not (debatable, but...). so basically, your stance is that one always acts in accordance with one's will, but could not have acted otherwise. THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN COMPATIBILIST FREE WILL.
the simple fact that one could not have acted otherwise (this is still highly debatable) does not mean free will does not exist. it just means that if free will does exist, it is of a compatibilist sort.
i think we actually have very similar views on this issue; it's just that we differ in our definition of 'free will'. regardless, i think i see now how moral responsibility is accounted for in your world view, which is a concern i had earlier since you insisted that free will doesn't exist (personally, i don't see how one can be morally repsonsible for anything if free will doesn't exist, but i think now that what you call a lack of free will is what i would call compatibilist free will). so now, i would be more interested in knowing why you think the bible supports pre-determination with respect to salvation. i can't find any verses that support that view. if you know some offhand, could you please refer me to them?
Originally posted by checkbaiterInteresting how you classified this as the only RELIGIOUS document.
I believe in God because of the bible.The Bible is the only known religious document with historically verifiable prophecies that have consistently been fulfilled. This point cannot be overstated. That the Bible has dozens of prophecies that can be verified by historians as having been accurately fulfilled is very strong proof that God is its Author. The ...[text shortened]... next few days or weeks. Only God could be the source of the accurate prophecies in the Bible.🙂
There have been a number of secular documents (notably Nostradamus) that show a strong validation for prophetic ability in humans. Understandably, Nostradamus' "predictions" are not dead-on accurate, but neither are the "predictions" within the bible. By stating that the Bible is the only known religious document to have verifiable prophecies, all you are doing is showing that the Bible is a good history book. It does not prove the existance of God, as prophetic ability has been verified in secular arenas. Nostradamus was consistent in his prophetic visions up to 5 centuries later...that is pretty damn consistent!
You also say that "Only God could be the source of the accurate prophecies in the Bible." - which means that, per Christian belief, Satan does not have the power to have given Nostradamus these prophetic visions. It has also been proven that Nostradamus was not Christian, so God would certainly not have given a non-believer these visions.
Originally posted by ColettiAs far as inductive evidence....Yes, we science worshipper love it...but this inductive evidence that the bible provides is only historical. It offers zero proof of the existence of a Deity.
Hey, if you want inductive evidence - the Bible is full of it. I thought you science worshipers live and breath inductive evidence - so the Bible's mass of evidence ought to be more than enough to convince.
Originally posted by KnightWulfeIf you mean proof by deduction - of course not. The historical evidence of the Bible is better than you find in most ancient literature. It's not a proof of God, but it gives strong inductive argument for God - and that's all natural science requires. One can not prove anything using evidential arguments.
As far as inductive evidence....Yes, we science worshipper love it...but this inductive evidence that the bible provides is only historical. It offers zero proof of the existence of a Deity.