God is not a fairy-tale creature

A lot of individuals out there seem to have a poor concept of God and who/what He is. I would like to attempt to aid your understandings of Him as best that I can.

The first thing to understand is that we cannot understand His essence. He is completely unlike anything with which we are familiar or any concept contained within our minds. The fact that we know that we cannot know Him actually reveals a great deal about Him, because we can look around at the world and see everything which God is not. Anything that can be applied to existence can thus be denied in God.

For example, everything in this world is Finite and can be Defined. Therefore, God is not finite and cannot be defined (He is infinite and indeterminate).

We thus also know that He is not human, He does not have limbs or indeed parts of any kind. He does not have intellect as we understand intellect nor does He have a personality as we understand personalities. Here's a big one: He does not have free-will; He in fact has Perfect Will. All of these statements are cryptic and truly say nothing, but they reveal much.

Though we cannot understand His essence we can, to an extent, understand His action: how He interacts with us. Since He created and governs all that exists, the greatest tool for understanding His actions is observation. Everything that exists, everything that happened from the beginning of time to the end, everything in the upper and lower worlds, everything that we can access with our minds and even more, all of it is happening according to His will.

Should a baby be tortured and killed by a psychopath, would that be God's will? Well, if you read the previous paragraph then the answer is 'yes'. He would sad about it most certainly, it would be a tragic occurance that shouldn't happen ever. And of course it wouldn't be a direct command by God, it would happen indirectly through him giving us free will and saying 'go do what it is you would do'. But look at it this way; if it was contrary to God's will, then God would stop it from happening. Thus, if it happened then God didn't stop it and it is thus not contrary to God's will.

This point is probably extremely troubling to some of you. Please, take a deep breath and calm down. I am not urging people to torture babies and I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying God thinks it's right. I hope it never, ever happens and I'm sure God does too. Please continue to read this logically with an open mind - don't close up just because things are looking ugly or troubling.

Now, let me break down the trouble within this argument. The trouble occurs because of four premises which are difficult to consolidate. They are as follows:

1) God Exists
2) God is All Powerful
3) God is All Good
4) Bad things happen

All four of these are true and they are all true within the same logical framework. None of these statements need to be denied if you are simply willing to open your mind and come to a higher realization of morality and the meaning of 'Evil' within this world.

First, however, I would like to show you four different perspectives which exist, each of which denies one of these four points in order to consolidate them.

1) Atheism.
Quite obviously, this perspective denies the first point - that God exists. They would say "If there is a God then he wouldn't let bad things happen; since bad things happen there can't be a God". This is wrong. They are assuming that points 3 and 4 contradict. This perspective clearly views God as a fairy-tale creature who is a loving lah-dee-dah hippy who wants to give us all candy for breakfast and let us sleep on marshmallow clouds in perfect, mild weather. Of course, this is an exaggeration and a simplification of the Atheist perspective - I am well aware that there are more than one reason for being an Atheist. What is common to most Atheists, however, is that they have not arrived at a mature understanding of God since they obviously do not value it's pursuit as worthy. They are thus left with this skewed fairy-tale concept and projecting this crude fairy-tale concept within the minds of all those who believe in God, reinforcing their notions that all monotheists are idiots when in fact, their use of the word God is totally different. It is in fact their own undereducation that they are perceiving within those they degrade.

2) Christianity.
The christians resolve this argument by denying the second point, that God is All-Powerful. Christians believe that an entity exists known as 'The Devil' who rebelled against God and now works against Him - and actually succeeds! If someone can succeed against God then that someone must either be equal in power or more powerful than God. Christians thus say 'God is super nice and all evil comes from THE BLOODY RED EVIL MALICIOUS AND CONNIVING DEVIL!'. Christians also have a fairy-tale concept of God. They look around at the world, see things and say 'gosh darn it, if only God were here'... firstly not realizing that God is always here, even when he's not and secondly not accepting that even bad things are God's will. All of Christianity's battles were fought in the name of God against the forces of Satan. Not only did they believe in duality but they believed they were on the just side of that duality. They believed that their God was all good and anyone who didn't believe in their God was under the influence of the devil - the other side of duality. Indeed, all the woes caused by christianity over the past 2,000 years were because they didn't understand and acknowledge the simple fact that God is All-Powerful.

3) Islam.
The Islamic perspective is that God is not All-Good. They acknowledge that He exists and that He rules over all. They understand that all is according to God's will. Unfortunately, they believe that God is good to His followers but despises those that don't follow Him. They believe that God hates and desires death, that he desires suffering and war - - - for some. For others he wants candies and rainbows and 50 virgins in heaven. This lack of understanding is also creating a duality though it is less of a duality than Christianity, because this is a duality of existence and non-existence - the existence of belief and the lack, instead of the influence of God or the devil. The end result was the same, of course, centuries of wars and bloodshed, of righteous battles against infidels, of committing ruthless atrocities in the name of God.

4) All is Good.
Finally, there is a scattered perspective that posits evil does not exist and there is only ever Good. Period. These people say there is no bad, that bad is only in perception. This can lead to 2 conclusions: (1) I can do anything because nothing I do can be classified as morally evil or (2) These so called 'bad things' never actually happened because I don't want to think about them. Regardless, these people deny that there is an objective code of right and wrong written into all of our hearts, no matter how hard some try to ignore it. They furthermore deny that there is a spectrum of Good and Evil and that we need to strive to be good. This denial, no matter the reasoning behind it, leads a person to doing bad things because they remove their awarenesses from that spectrum and don't strive to adhere to it. These people would also generally believe in Egalitarianism, disolving the perceptions of all boundaries entirely either as a result or cause of this mistaken perspective. The fact is that just as there is Good and Evil, so too are there Rich and Poor, Strong and Weak. The previous two perspectives resulted in a belief in a duality where there should only have been unity. Here there is a perception of unity where there is duality. This mindset of egalitarianism is corrosive to the mind - because the philosophical and ideological beliefs are so strong and so firmly contradict the reality of the world that there must of necessity be some kind of mental defense mechanism built up around it lest the believer suffer a mental break. The world of fiction enhances the beliefs of Egalitarianism by giving the philosophy a world to play in where its rules match events and characters - when they so strongly do not reflect the world outside of fiction.

*ahem* sorry about that tangent. Anyways, those are the four premises and the four examples of denials. Now, I promised you a resolution - a way to fit these four premises within the same, logical construct. The thing is, that by fully revealing the resolution then I would be denying that same resolution and when I deny the truth nobody will believe me so I will fail at bringing people to the truth by using the truth, since using the truth denies it. So instead I will leave you with two words which will hint at the resolution and hopefully spark some of it within you, freeing you from the shackles of whatever and returning you to the state of whatever. So here goes. The resolution has to do with:

Free Will.

I don't have much to say at the moment besides that I found this extremely thought-provoking. Keep on rockin' Yamah!

*walks off, thinking about free will*

[Riboflavin]

The first thing to understand is that we cannot understand His essence. He is completely unlike anything with which we are familiar or any concept contained within our minds. The fact that we know that we cannot know Him actually reveals a great deal about Him, because we can look around at the world and see everything which God is not. Anything that can be applied to existence can thus be denied in God.

If this is true, then god is a non-relative that has nothing to do with humans, in which case, what is the point?

Should a baby be tortured and killed by a psychopath, would that be God's will? Well, if you read the previous paragraph then the answer is 'yes'. He would sad about it most certainly,

The fact that you would use an example like this, means that there is most likely something wrong with your ability to discern what makes an acceptable conversation piece. You could have used a very different example not aimed at shocking or disturbing people. That aside, why would god be sad? You said that god is completely alien to human considerations. That seems contradictory.

They are thus left with this skewed fairy-tale concept and projecting this crude fairy-tale concept within the minds of all those who believe in God, reinforcing their notions that all monotheists are idiots when in fact, their use of the word God is totally different. It is in fact their own undereducation that they are perceiving within those they degrade.

This is called a strawman fallacy. That aside, atheism isn't just pointing at a concept and saying "I don't believe in that", it's more of a "I don't believe in anything regardless of conceptual definition without proof of it's existence."

Which actually kind of makes your statement ironic. Your using a strawman fallacy to dismiss a strawman fallacy that was likely used to attack yet another strawman fallacy lol..

2) Christianity.
The christians resolve this argument by denying the second point, that God is All-Powerful. Christians believe that an entity exists known as 'The Devil' who rebelled against God and now works against Him - and actually succeeds! If someone can succeed against God then that someone must either be equal in power or more powerful than God. Christians thus say 'God is super nice and all evil comes from THE BLOODY RED EVIL MALICIOUS AND CONNIVING DEVIL!

Honestly, since you don't know anything about god (You yourself have claimed such), how do you know there isn't really a devil? What if the "devil" that we perceive are trans-dimensional insects that burrow into our brains and feed on chemo-electric energies we produce whenever we think, causing psychosis? How would we even know the difference?

Maybe SATAN stands for Super Atomical Transharmonic Anomaly Neo-Wifi and was invented by an alien scientist named Patrick Sennheiser the 3rd wishing to study organisms while under the effects of different harmonic distortions introduced into the earths electro-magnetic field, showing up on our instruments as schumann resonances. These waves would cause distortions in human behavior that could be the root of all "evil" as we know it. Heck, maybe the crop circles were drawn in by disgruntled employees that disagree with the torture of animals (An alien form of PETA) urging us to fight on.

For example, everything in this world is Finite and can be Defined. Therefore, God is not finite and cannot be defined (He is infinite and indeterminate).

I posit that which is "finite" is in fact infinite due to the law of conservation of energy. Whatever parameters existence has, it is infinite in it's existence.

[psychoslice]

No, there is no god, there has never been any prof by anyone that there is a god, there is out there all that is and we are a part of that, and that is all that is, why make fairy tales and worship that fairy tales just because you cannot understand what its all about.

[Riboflavin]

No, there is no god, there has never been any prof by anyone that there is a god, there is out there all that is and we are a part of that, and that is all that is, why make fairy tales and worship that fairy tales just because you cannot understand what its all about.

While lurking the forums, I've seen you say a lot of variations of this where you say you don't believe in most other things. I've often wondered why you use a spiritual forum when you in fact do not have any spiritual beliefs?

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by Riboflavin

While lurking the forums, I've seen you say a lot of variations of this where you say you don't believe in most other things. I've often wondered why you use a spiritual forum when you in fact do not have any spiritual beliefs?

No I don't have beliefs and you do not need beliefs, we are all One in Consciousness, this Oneness is what so many have made into a god, and also why there are so many religions, this Oneness is also called Spirit, so why shouldn't I be here, I don't have to believe in fairies or many of the other stuff people believe here to be spiritual, I am Spirit and I am here, so hello.

[Riboflavin]

No I don't have beliefs and you do not need beliefs, we are all One in Consciousness, this Oneness is what so many have made into a god, and also why there are so many religions, this Oneness is also called Spirit, so why shouldn't I be here, I don't have to believe in fairies or many of the other stuff people believe here to be spiritual, I am Spirit and I am here, so hello.

Oh. I guess that makes sense.