Simple question about god-human relations

[Kyriakos]

Nietzsche had written that, when he was a child, he imagined god as an evil demon, responsible for every hideous activity in the world.
I'd like to focus on some aspect of the dynamic between a hypothetical god and a human, though:

Assuming a god exists, what is the point of salvation being gained by humans depending on some action, ethic, work or other part or even the whole of their life? If god is omnipotent and omniscient, it would already be aware of who will be saved and who will not.
At times I've heard the argument, from clergy, that the point is to have people realize that they are responsible for what will happen to them, and therefore if they aren't saved it is due to their decisions. If so, god would still be aware they would act in this way, rendering the decision-making decorative at best, and at worst a pretext to have god mock those destined to fall anyway.

If one is organizing a trip, and wants specific, athletic people to join, but doesn't wish to be very outspoken about it, he might not say no outright to an obese person who wishes to come along. But after the trip starts, the obese person will be unable to continue, due to the difficult hiking or other strenuous activities. Maybe then the obese individual will recognize that he never was destined to come along, and accept that he has to leave. But if god is the one organizing the afterlife trip, he already knows who will be too fat to come along, and yet not only has them follow the team for decades of life here, but actually creates them so as to be discarded as he already knows they will as he creates them.

Other religious people try to argue that those discarded only fail because some antagonistic deity, a devil, intervened. But in the christian religion there is no duopoly of power; satan isn't as powerful, so ultimately any discarded human was such because god allowed it to be so.

Maybe there is some other dynamic here? Asking people who believe in religion.

 

[Narz]

An all powerful being and free will are simply incompatible.

 

[Birdjaguar]

So you are only including the christian god in this conversation?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Don't ask me. God hates me.

 

[El_Machinae]

God is perfect and a perfect being cannot create imperfection. Therefore you are perfect. - Gaias Baltar

The truth is that theologians have struggled with Free Will and Predestination for a long, long time.

 

[Joij21]

Other religious people try to argue that those discarded only fail because some antagonistic deity, a devil, intervened. But in the christian religion there is no duopoly of power; satan isn't as powerful, so ultimately any discarded human was such because god allowed it to be so.

That's usually interpreted as God allowing Lucifer to live and do such things. Mostly because Lucifer made a bet that humans are not worthy, and so God agreed. God is more interested in proving Lucifer wrong through bets than the wellbeing of humankind in general. Despite being stronger, his hatred to prove others wrong is greater than his general compassion. A character flaw which Lucifer has successfully exploited to stay alive and do harm to others.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Don't ask me. God hates me.

Pick a better God then.

 

[r16]

that the obese guy will still find a couch to sit and eat something as waits for the team to walk down the hill . But accusing the team leader for calling him while like everybody knows he wouldn't be up to him and discuss whether the team leader happened out of wedlock is a thing that should count against the obese guy .

edit : Goddamned tablet "correcting" things while ı am two sentences away , writing something different . Should read everybody knows he wouldn't be up the hill !

 

[Farm Boy]

<shrugs> I don't know. What am I going to do about it? Seems you have the option, at least somewhat, of deciding how much of yourself you want to reside in yourself, and how much of yourself you want to reside in other people. The older people get, the more often they seem to choose the latter. I can force my son to do things, and he'll have done them. Or I can help suggest he want to do things, and that's different. He did not care for The Last Starfighter. Oh well. The difference has meaning, focusing only on the obedience or the thing done/measurable outcome is terrifically blind. No? The point of a song is not the double bar at the end.

 

[Hrothbern]

Nietzsche had written that, when he was a child, he imagined god as an evil demon, responsible for every hideous activity in the world.
I'd like to focus on some aspect of the dynamic between a hypothetical god and a human, though:

Assuming a god exists, what is the point of salvation being gained by humans depending on some action, ethic, work or other part or even the whole of their life? If god is omnipotent and omniscient, it would already be aware of who will be saved and who will not.
At times I've heard the argument, from clergy, that the point is to have people realize that they are responsible for what will happen to them, and therefore if they aren't saved it is due to their decisions. If so, god would still be aware they would act in this way, rendering the decision-making decorative at best, and at worst a pretext to have god mock those destined to fall anyway.

If one is organizing a trip, and wants specific, athletic people to join, but doesn't wish to be very outspoken about it, he might not say no outright to an obese person who wishes to come along. But after the trip starts, the obese person will be unable to continue, due to the difficult hiking or other strenuous activities. Maybe then the obese individual will recognize that he never was destined to come along, and accept that he has to leave. But if god is the one organizing the afterlife trip, he already knows who will be too fat to come along, and yet not only has them follow the team for decades of life here, but actually creates them so as to be discarded as he already knows they will as he creates them.

Other religious people try to argue that those discarded only fail because some antagonistic deity, a devil, intervened. But in the christian religion there is no duopoly of power; satan isn't as powerful, so ultimately any discarded human was such because god allowed it to be so.

Maybe there is some other dynamic here? Asking people who believe in religion.

God is perfect and a perfect being cannot create imperfection. Therefore you are perfect. - Gaias Baltar

The truth is that theologians have struggled with Free Will and Predestination for a long, long time.

Vikings accepted very much the concept of Fate for their earthly life. What was important for their "free will" goals was to die with a sword in their hands to get into Walhalla... for the beer etc.
Predestination gives Fate the face of a God making a decision about you
In Norse mythology it is the three sisters Norns who spin the threads of life, spin the fate of both humans as gods. In Greek mythology it is the three sisters Moirai who spin the fate of humans and gods. In more diffuse European mythology often called the three Fates.
Fate decided by some sisters stronger than Gods !

The concept that there is a God stronger than Fate is a revolutionary concept in our history !

IDK all the religions precisely enough, but it would be nice to know whether this revolution, goes together with mono-theism in general, or only the Abrahamic God.


My other general remark is that we look upon differing religions as a choice we can make as individual (ofc strongly influenced by the culture in which we grew up,developments there, and access to other thoughts).
BUT in the time the old religions emerged, we were much more tribal and lived in more closed societies,
=> there was much more competition between the entity (tribe+religion). If a believe-conviction system enhanced the tribe to compete better, it would simply push out other believe-conviction systems. Fate gives for example fearless warriors. But for more complex societies obedience to rules and striving for virtues becomes more useful.

What also happened was that tribes took over other religions (peacefully) for very practical reasons.
Vikings tribes in the North were so impressed by the prosperity of Christians that many just switched to the more succesful god.
Another anekfote is about (IRRC) a Kiev Viking warlord who decide to become Christian because he assumed it would be better for trade with Constantinople and making alliances.
Not bothered at all by going from a Fate system to a "free will -- predestination tension.

EDIT
Another concept needed for predestination is that God is "Almighty"
Not only the Creator but continued control.
The Almighty God concept is less obvious than you might perhaps think.
In the 13th century that concept was so eroded by the intellectuals reading Aristoteles (crusades, early Renaiisance, etc) that a Paris Bishop found it necessary in 1277 to "order" Christians to accept and believe that God was Almighty. The Pope took this over after some time as official AND articulated doctrine,

 

[Kyriakos]

So you are only including the christian god in this conversation?

Yes, and/or similar ones (eg jewish, islamic)

In Norse mythology it is the three sisters Norns who spin the threads of life, spin the fate of both humans as gods. In Greek mythology it is the three sisters Moirai who spin the fate of humans and gods. In more diffuse European mythology often called the three Fates.
Fate decided by some sisters stronger than Gods !

The three moirai (which just mean 'fates') only control your life on earth, though. In greek mythology/religion the dead just go to Hades, and some in better land than others. Even the mighty Achilles becomes a shadow in Hades. Only those who turn to gods through apotheosis (Herakles) escape that afterlife.
It's only if you tried to con the gods, that you have to do horrible work in Hades, like pushing a rock up to a top only to watch it fall back again and have to repeat indefinitely. That said, we know from the story of Lycaon that Zeus isn't omnipotent - Zeus still had to discover that Lycaon had done what he did.

Of course some of the religiously inclined philosophers did argue for the existence of an omnipotent god (not all), and one who isn't at all like the olympian gods. For example, Parmenides and his supposed teacher spoke of an infinite sphere (though it still bordered something else, somehow). But in such philosophical ideas, humans basically don't matter at all, and god may be omnipotent or not but they certainly are one with the universe/cosmos or universes/cosmoi and arguably not exactly what humans would identify as an intellect.
Plato had other ideas, which imo are worse, and there the god is just outside humanity but benevolent and helps you with math or thinking by blindly being tied to you in some infinitesimal way through intellectual thought and a game of idols using mirrors.

There is also Descartes, who in a very crude way tried to argue that the christian god exists because he is so noble that he wouldn't allow you to be entirely certain of something and also be wrong about it - I guess Descartes didn't really believe in his views about how the heart works, but what do you expect from a catholic ^_^

 

[Matsuda123]

Predestination / Fatalism isn't a part of Christianity. The reason is that God exists outside of time. Our actions and choices cause his knowledge. Since he exists outside of time, he gains that knowledge from our choices retro-actively.

https://creation.com/does-gods-foreknowledge-entail-fatalism

This may help with some questions regarding it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Predestination / Fatalism isn't a part of Christianity. The reason is that God exists outside of time. Our actions and choices cause his knowledge. Since he exists outside of time, he gains that knowledge from our choices retro-actively.

https://creation.com/does-gods-foreknowledge-entail-fatalism

This may help with some questions regarding it.

So god isn't even omnipotent but just cheated to see the end of the game?
Somehow doesn't sound very abrahamic-religiony either. I am also outside of any given recorded game of Age of Empires II, but that doesn't make me a god to AOEII sprites.

 

[El_Machinae]

This entire problem still exists, even if we don't assume that The Creator is an entity worthy of moral consideration. We each individually will cause actions that cause, minimize, or aggravate natural evils. And we cannot tell if we truly have choices or if all of our neuronal behaviour is predicated in the conditions of the Big Bang. We 'feel' like we have Free Will and I'll outright say that people who behave as if there are moral consequences to their actions might actually be nicer to deal with. But, even without a God to shake our fist at, no matter how upset we are at the 'unfairness' of hurting future people with today's choices, it's going to happen. And those outcomes determine your current moral standing.

We're stuck, the best we can do is our best, without actually knowing if we can influence our best or if our best is good enough.

 

[Farm Boy]

"A man can look upon his life and accept is as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things."
- Murray Kempton

"Do good anyway."
-I'm not sure

"Just remember you are loved."
-A small town reverend

 

[Joij21]

Predestination / Fatalism isn't a part of Christianity.

It most certainly is if you're a Calvinist or Puritan. Those two denominations are perfect examples of Christian groups who do/did believe in such.

 

[Matsuda123]

It most certainly is if you're a Calvinist or Puritan. Those two denominations are perfect examples of Christian groups who do/did believe in such.

Yes, that is correct lol. It is very strange to me. I can't understand what that's all about, why they would go towards that. It's just silly, and I would very much like to see what they believe supports their views.

So god isn't even omnipotent but just cheated to see the end of the game?
Somehow doesn't sound very abrahamic-religiony either. I am also outside of any given recorded game of Age of Empires II, but that doesn't make me a god to AOEII sprites.

It's not really cheating if you created the game, is it... Like being an artist. The art doesn't exist or change until I make it. Only this time, God manufactures the means by which the art itself is created too. If God is the creator / ultimate modder of the universe, then he would be permitted those options. And if he created the universe, then he is also outside of it and in it after creating it as well.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, that is correct lol. It is very strange to me. I can't understand what that's all about, why they would go towards that. It's just silly, and I would very much like to see what they believe supports their views.



It's not really cheating if you created the game, is it... Like being an artist. The art doesn't exist or change until I make it. Only this time, God manufactures the means by which the art itself is created too. If God is the creator / ultimate modder of the universe, then he would be permitted those options. And if he created the universe, then he is also outside of it and in it after creating it as well.

The issue with this is that if god is outside the universe, he may just be a god here and just some sad guy with a slave-wage in the real universe

 

[Skwink]

If I was president I would put God on trial for everything that's happened thus far. God must face trial.

 

[Kyriakos]

If I was president I would put God on trial for everything that's happened thus far. God must face trial.

"God's only defense is that he doesn't exist".