God and defining perfection

To add an IMHO;

If the Abrahamic God from the Bible was forgiving... there would be no hell. Pain suffering and torture is relative to each individual that views it, burning is most likely painful but may not be the most painful thing to certain people.
Thus in order for an effective Hell to be created, every individual would have to have a Hell custom made for their personal suffering... which would in physics terms be very energy demanding... of course if God had all that extra energy why would he spend all the energy punishing people for an eternity.... who would he put in charge of punishing them all? And even Satan would need a break sometime.

I think there is a possibility of redemption and a "heaven" per se... but not to what we think. To create a hell for each person would be just as energetically unfavorable as it would be to create a personalized heaven for each person.

To allow people to know that they would reach heaven eventually (which is in some ways the idea behind reincarnation and buddhism) would make people unsatisfied.... knowing that people would not get immediately punished or feel their "karma".

Hell to me, is a fabrication by authoritative religious organizations, a kind of fear factor placed into the belief so that people follow the rules. In essence... its almost like a built in revenge system, people who do bad things are sent to hell... or will go to hell when they die. that way we don't have to come to terms with it in our lifetime, we believe that God will take care of them later. It seems only humans harbor that animosity that they would want eternal pain and suffering on another human being that they were not able to forgive for one reason or another. If we took the Hell aspect away, it may just be that a lot of people would take what they believed to be justice or vigilence into their own hands instead of waiting for death to judge them.

 

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If the concept of God holds that he is the greatest, is eternal, is source of all creations, the most knowledgable, the most benevolent, and a host of other goodies.
Would that be the highest level of perfection?
And if not, why not?

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jan.

 

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hmmm...

Well, if you are referrring to the biblical God, then I don't see why a most benevolent God woudl choose to punish good people in Hell if they did not believe in him. If I could find one person on this planet that would be able to forgive someone for not believing in God, then that person already degraded the perfection of God.

Unless of course you were referring to a more omniscient higher God.

 

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The god I'm refering to is the one in the description.

janl.

 

The greatest in what way? Most powerful and/or something else?
It can't be the source of all creations.
The most benevolent would assume I do not exist.

If it's not the biblical god, where did you get the "idea".

 

Yes, it is vengeance, pure & simple.
WHO waits for death (or gods in an afterlife) to judge others?

 

Relax, take the load off.
It is a concept.
Can you deal with that?
Is that concept the ideal of perfection?
If not, why not.

For the purpose of discussion we wont use the term God
as it makes you feel uncomfortable.
We'll call it harry.

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jan.

 

I can only assume then that you have no experience with nature..

You do have a terrible short term memory.
Post 154:

Again, you're not using the word correctly.

I am not interested in blind opinions.

Given that its explanatory power vastly supersedes the whims of an invisible mythic creature.

None of this makes sense.
This again, is a fine example of a blind opinion.

Ah.
I guess then we're fine just ignoring all evidence except for our own personal experience.

egads.

 

glaucon
“

That's fine

But since there are no empirical models of consciousness, your answer is not empirical.

yes

accounted for by their different qualifications

Yes
I was I used the word "value" in a categorical sense

in short
for experience to successfully be transformed into knowledge, it requires a set of "schema". Without the schema, there is no knowledge. (for instance if you have no knowledge of what a staircase is, the statement "take the staircase" is meaningless", ) .... what to speak of if one is harboring a schema that inhibits the acceptance of knowledge (proactive interference).

hence, given a typical atheists adamant determination to not change their experience .....

that's fine

but I don't see how that assists your criticism

 

True.
Nor was it meant to be. I'd say my answer was phenomenological.
(Alas, you're correct; to further pursue this line of thought, we would have to get back into the ontology of consciousness...)

No; by the merit of their conclusions.

I agree with all of this.
I must admit I don't like the psychological word (schema), though it's fine.
I prefer "epistemic structure", or even "epistemic gestalt" (yes, I know, again with the psychology..).


However,:

I'm not being obtuse; I still don't follow you here..

All I was attempting to establish is that not every experience is knowledge-generative. Which, interestingly, is related to the previous comments (regarding 'schema').

 

“ Originally Posted by StrangerInAStrangeLa
The greatest in what way? Most powerful and/or something else?
It can't be the source of all creations.
The most benevolent would assume I do not exist.

If it's not the biblical god, where did you get the "idea". ”

It is not a concept. You haven't properly defined it & the little you provided is contradictory.
You haven't shown why it IS the ideal of perfection.
I gave no indication the term God makes me uncomfortable. Can you possibly stop making unwarranted assumptions about me?
Tho perhaps you may define it better as harry.

 

glaucon,

Here is a definition of imperfection at encarta.
Please explain how nature falls into any of those categories.
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/imperfect.html

Note that I prefixed "conception" with "personal".
Maybe that was a bit too subtle for you?
You are aware that (by your analasys) you are using scripture to aid your personal concept of God, too?

Why?

Ouch! Hold on while get a band aid.

Great answer.
Pointless, but great nonetheless.

What part of it didn't you understand?

If the so-called evidence is superfluous to to the actual question, it becomes a pointless excersise.

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jan.

 

Again: improper appeal to authority.

Imperfect means flawed.

Yes, your personal conception of god has been influenced by scripture.

Sorry, I don't repeat myself.

Pointless only given your lack of understanding.

No part.

No evidence is superfluous.

 

Nature is flawed, how?

jan.

 

StrangerInAStrangeLa,

From 'Davros' the leader of the Daleks, and the self-aclaimed supreme being of the universe. It was a very early episode of Dr who.

concept;

Any abstract notion or idea by virtue of which we apply general terms to things.
http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/c7.htm#cpt

Not only is this a concept but.....

The concept of harry is extremely well known.
The definition provided is more than adequate explanation for aspects of the concept.
The so-called contradiction is not an aspect of the concept of harry, it is merely a point of view held by some.

It has to be the ideal of perfection by default.
The concept holds that harry is a supreme being, meaning there is nothing equal to or greater.

Stop obfuscating, and stop being dishonest?

jan.

 

How do you know that man can't know whether he knows God or not ...

It is said sometimes that a philosopher won't turn to God (that is - won't take turning to God seriously) until he has experienced defeat in all areas of knowledge. Looks like you still have some areas left.

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I suppose the common way in which nature tends to be considered 'flawed' is in that it doesn't give us the satisfaction we hope to get from it.

For example, a piece of chocolate might taste good, two pieces might taste even better - but a hundred pieces don't taste a hundred times as good - they only make us ill and to vomit.

 

The reason he can't know because if man knew God, then it wouldn't be faith anymore. It'd just be knowing.

Faith is believing in something when you don't actually know for sure that it is there, you just believe that it is. Confirming your assumptions would remove the faith aspect and the existence of God would then be a fact.

And with that saying, how would a philosopher be defeated in areas of knowledge if he understands that he does not know enough in each area to know what defeat is? IN order to be defeated at something you have to be somewhat competent enough given a set of standards in order to "compete" in whatever it is you have to be defeated or succeeded at.

You can't be defeated in something you don't know how to do. That's like putting a professional car driver and making him race a guy who doesn't know how to drive. Technically yes, he defeated him, but under what conditions he defeated him in is relative to each judge that is measuring the defeat.

 

That example is the law of diminishing returns in economics. If you could elaborate more on your metaphor, because I don't exactly see a significant correlation between those two comparisons.

I.E. I don't see how seeing more of nature or knowing more about it will make me sick of learning about nature. Granted it is a subjective/relative experience that differs from individual to individual, but using the law of diminshing returns fails in this example because that law is based on individual human preferences in general and not typically used as a mathematical presentation. Some people actually would enjoy 100 chocolates, even though most wouldn't.

Again, you need to explain your analogy more, or find some other way to describe what he meant by nature being flawed.

 

Whose reason, what reason?

So that is a Yes, allright?

Please explain how God is a concept that has no pragmatic utility.