Is God Good?

[Quasar1011]

I thought that God was supposed to be all-powerful ?

How does having a rival not make Him all-powerful? Satan has only 1 chance against God, and God is actively working to see to it that Satan doesn't succeed.

You realize you aren't exactly helping your case here ?

I'm more interested in your case. You seem to think that God enjoys killing people. He does not.

Ezekiel 33:11
Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’

Now, if you had cancer, would you not want the surgeon to cut it out of your body? That is all God is doing when He cuts off a people. He removes wicked people from mankind, from time to time. If He didn't. we'd be right back here:

Genesis 6:5
"The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time."

 

[Akka]

How does having a rival not make Him all-powerful?

Is that a serious question ?

Satan has only 1 chance against God, and God is actively working to see to it that Satan doesn't succeed.

If Satan has even 1 chance, it means that God isn't all-powerful.
You fail at logic...

I'm more interested in your case. You seem to think that God enjoys killing people. He does not.

The time he spends killing people right and left and the fact he supposedly set up a world where the very rule of life is to kill or be killed tends to say otherwise.

Now, if you had cancer, would you not want the surgeon to cut it out of your body? That is all God is doing when He cuts off a people. He removes wicked people from mankind, from time to time. If He didn't. we'd be right back here:

If he's all-powerful, he can make it so that there is no evil to begin with.
You fail at logic, part 2.

 

[Quasar1011]

Nowhere in that quote is "the god of this age" actually identified.

If you cross-reference that with other passages, it is plainly talking about Satan. For example, when Jesus was tempted by Satan, Satan showed Jesus the entire world, then said this: “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” (Luke 4:4-7 NIV)

Jesus didn't dispute Satan's claim to world ownership, but answered, "It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only'."

So here is the good God versus the evil pretender god.

 

[Quasar1011]

If Satan has even 1 chance, it means that God isn't all-powerful.

Satan cannot defeat God- ever. However, in the realm of possibility, there is 1 way where Satan could play God to a stalemate. If Satan could see to it that God could not fulfill all His promises, there would be a stalemate. If all the Jews in the world were killed, God could not fulfill His future promises to them. Satan incited Hitler to kill the Jews, and Hitler succeeded in killing 1/3 of them. But as I said, God actively intervened to see to it that the Jews were preserved. He has done this again and again for the nation of Israel since its rebirth in 1948.

So you count a possibility against God, when the actuality is that God has never failed. How is God not All-Powerful if He has never failed?

If he's all-powerful, he can make it so that there is no evil to begin with.
You fail at logic, part 2.

Thanks for making my point! God DID make it so that there was no evil to begin with! When He created the universe, there was no evil in it at all! The "very rule of life is to kill or be killed," as you put it, came later, after man rebelled against God. Don't blame God for what mankind did!

 

[Traitorfish]

Did you watch the video I posted in the OP? This doesn't seem to address the issues which it raises in the slightest. (Unless you think that the Old Testament god is, in fact, Satan?)

Meaningful cough?

 

[Lillefix]

Thanks for making my point! God DID make it so that there was no evil to begin with! When He created the universe, there was no evil in it at all! The "very rule of life is to kill or be killed," as you put it, came later, after man rebelled against God. Don't blame God for what mankind did!

I have to admit he has a point here. Humans have free will. If God removed evil we would by definition not have free will. Not even en omnipotent being can make a square with three sides.

 

[Akka]

Satan cannot defeat God- ever. However, in the realm of possibility, there is 1 way where Satan could play God to a stalemate.

Then God is not all-powerful.

Thanks for making my point! God DID make it so that there was no evil to begin with! When He created the universe, there was no evil in it at all! The "very rule of life is to kill or be killed," as you put it, came later, after man rebelled against God. Don't blame God for what mankind did!

So in other words, God failed at making the world in such a way that evil could not appear, and he also failed at removing evil once it appeared.

You REALLY don't get the logic part, do you ?

I have to admit he has a point here. Humans have free will. If God removed evil we would by definition not have free will. Not even en omnipotent being can make a square with three sides.

We have free will inside our limitations - there is LOTS of thing we can't imagine because they are just alien to us. God could totally have made it so that evil was outside these limitations.

And actually yes, an omnipotent being can make anything. That's what the word mean - and that's a logical absurdity, which is kinda part of the point.

And also, I don't see how the fact that human may have free will have anything to do with animals having to eat each other just to survive. That's sort of totally unrelated.

 

[Formaldehyde]

If morality does mot apply to God, what does it mean for God to be "good"?

Perhaps a better question is why so many humans have decided to worship a vengeful god who has committed so many atrocities against the very same creatures he created in his own image.

Oh I agree completely the new testament version is undoubtedly good and loving.

Isn't it the same god? Doesn't the Bible contain both an old testament and a new testament?

 

[Quasar1011]

So in other words, God failed at making the world in such a way that evil could not appear,

You can't have free will, without the chance that someone would exercise their free will by the doing of evil. Rather than create robots, God created men and angels with free will. That still doesn't mean He is not omnipotent.

and he also failed at removing evil once it appeared.

That's because He's not done yet. After Jesus Christ returns, He will do away with evil.

And actually yes, an omnipotent being can make anything. That's what the word mean - and that's a logical absurdity, which is kinda part of the point.

That's not the definition of omnipotent. God could have made Earth to be ruled by giant death robots- but He didn't want to. Why would an omnipotent being make something He didn't want to make? Who could force Him to do so?

 

[innonimatu]

How does having a rival not make Him all-powerful? Satan has only 1 chance against God, and God is actively working to see to it that Satan doesn't succeed.

What, this Satan guy has a chance against your evil god? Good! Where do I sign up with Satan?

In all seriousness, I want to say that coming from a judaico-christian cultural background I always found the figure of Satan far more sympathetic in the initial myths of the Old Testament that that of God. Look at how the OT presents him: the angel who rebelled against the tyrant; the liberator of a mankind that were merely the pets of a mighty god. And then how the same old testament goes on to represent the vengeful wrath of that god against its human pets who dared to exercise... their god-given free will!

I'll take the Satan of the Old Testament over its God any day! And it's not just me either: Milton's "Paradise Lost", for example, nearly got banned for making Satan stand out as the tragical hero - unintentionally to the author! Anatole France, a great and unfortunately near-forgotten left wing secular french writer, whore a very amusing mockery of God and the OT story in his "La Révolte des anges". And so on.

Satan incited Hitler to kill the Jews, and Hitler succeeded in killing 1/3 of them. But as I said, God actively intervened to see to it that the Jews were preserved. He has done this again and again for the nation of Israel since its rebirth in 1948.

"But your honor, Satan made me do it!"
You're a religious nutcase, ok, we get it.

 

[Leoreth]

Wait, are you seriously using the "God wanted us to have free will"* and "Satan made them do it!"** defenses at the same time? Doesn't that strike you as, well, contradicting?

* one wonders why God didn't simply create us as unable of being evil. You know, because being unable to fly on our own power or become invisible or whatever doesn't take away our free will, either.

** one wonders why God doesn't simply stop Satan, being all-powerful and all. Letting Satan control the free will of other people doesn't seem to be all that pro-free-will to me, contrary to your characterization of God.

 

[Dachs]

I think I'll channel philippe here:

this thread has too many bogomiles [sic]

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't like to use the Bible. The OT is so full of false history that its portrayal of the Creator is nearly libelous. There's no reason to think the authors of the NT had any greater insight into the Creator, either.

I think the goodness of God can be discussed in the context of ~ 150 million years of evolution. In that time period, animals evolved larger and more empathic cortexes. These brains became capable of not only experiencing pain, but fear and sadness and dread as well. Life is pain. I betcha 90% of those higher organisms died in agony and terror.

And for what? Well, that's the question. If natural history was made by God to make 'us', then that's an awfully high level of pain to create - especially if it didn't need to happen. Modern scientists and engineers run natural selection algorithms all the time, but if these virtual constructs experienced dread and agony whenever their iteration was insufficient - well, that would be monstrous.

 

[Gatsby]

Setting aside the particular details concerning Jews and the covenant and so forth, what sort of reactions do you have to the criticisms of a benevolent conception of God as presented in the extract? Do you think that the summary "God was never good, he was only on our side" is accurate? Are there some crucial details or perspective which you think are missed? Is there some third response which I haven't the imagination to think of?

"God" is a model (in the academic sense) that people impute onto reality. As this model becomes more sophisticated and detailed, it becomes increasingly likely that the model will be compromised for various reasons and expediencies. Having even one slightly faulty assumption included during the model's development can cause a cascade of errors which results in the model becoming convoluted, inaccurate, and internally inconsistent. There is a saying from Zen IIRC that goes something like "off by a hair at the beginning, off by a thousand miles at the end."

To my mind the fundamental faulty assumption in common models of God (such as the model referred to in the OP's video) is an anthropocentric view of reality. Ideas such as "good" and "bad" have been derived from our own very particular evolutionary, social and environmental contexts. Because our lives are all about us and we experience reality from our perspectives, we tend to infer that we are at the centre of the universe in at least some sort of ontological sense. Therefore we impute our own ideas and human-centric values on to non-human aspects of reality, including aspects relating to the origin and operation of the universe. In other words, instead of thinking about reality in terms of "as above, so below" we actually tend to think in terms of "as below, so above." When reality clashes with this distorted perception, we get upset and confused and grasp desperately for perplexing or evasive explanations to defend our faulty models, e.g. "God works in mysterious ways", "Satan is the rival of all-powerful God." What we should be doing instead is reviewing our models, especially the assumptions which underlie them.

 

[Akka]

You can't have free will, without the chance that someone would exercise their free will by the doing of evil. Rather than create robots, God created men and angels with free will. That still doesn't mean He is not omnipotent.

Actually it does mean exactly that.
It's been what, six times in a row you managed to not understand the very meaning of the word ?

Oh and you "conveniently missed" the point that we only have free will inside our limitations, so god could simply have made it so that our limitations prevented us to be evil, while still having free will. Or is your god more stupid than even a regular human to not being able to think about it ?

That's because He's not done yet. After Jesus Christ returns, He will do away with evil.

Why waiting ?
To have fun while letting people suffer ? Yeah, he's a jerk.

And I notice you still avoid the inherent sadistic streak of someone who make a world where everyone has to kill and eat everyone else just to survive.

That's not the definition of omnipotent.

Yes it is, actually.

 

[Gogf]

Oh and you "conveniently missed" the point that we only have free will inside our limitations, so god could simply have made it so that our limitations prevented us to be evil, while still having free will.

That is not the point of free will.

Lots of people think that the point of free will is for us to make a panoply of relatively meaningless decisions, like what to eat for dinner or what color shirt to wear. From a Christian perspective, the point of free will is that people can choose whether to accept and love God (ie to be good) or to stray from God (to be sinful). If God had created man without the possibility of being evil, then it would be meaningless for him to be good.

 

[Leoreth]

... and what would be wrong with that?

 

[Gogf]

... and what would be wrong with that?

There can be no good without evil.

 

[Leoreth]

Why? There are two possibilities:

1) "Good" only means not to be evil. Then it is desirable just because evil exists. Without evil, there isn't anything commendable about being good, because it is not necessary. The actual lives of the people in this world would not be any worse than in one where evil exists but everyone chooses not to be evil.

2) "Good" actions exist independently of evil actions. Then your above premise is wrong.

 

[ArneHD]

There can be no good without evil.

Evil is not the opposite of good. Nor is good the opposite of evil. The two are mutually exclusive, but the existence of one does not require the existence of the other.

Edit: Also, why free will?