Re: Face of god... (part 2)
Resigned said:
don’t spend time looking for contradictions in holy texts and I attack no individuals or personal faiths. I question the concept of faith and also that of reason and everything else that is asserted.
so what are you actually looking for, given that certainty isn't an option and you don't seem to be offering any answers? if you're just looking to understand the questions people have about faith and texts, then fair enough, but you've not got much of a basis on which to question either if you question reason as well.
The question of gods is the only question humans allow to escape the strictures of what constitutes knowledge.
absolutely not. we (or at any rate i) simply reject the axiom that double-blind, peer-reviewd evidence-based testing is the *only way* to determine what constitutes knowledge. science cannot tell us anything especially useful in any real, meaningful sense about why i like one piece of music as opposed to another, although it may be able to discover excellent evolutionary reasons for my preferences.
The point is, the evidence needs to be looked at, and tested, and corroborated, and thrown against other evidence that may be contrary
but it must also be a proper weighing of the evidence, with a robust control environment to prevent false positives and misleading interpretations of the same data set - the only thinker i know of that has even scratched the surface of the sort of evidence-based testing that i would consider reasonable and impartial is the atheist philosopher daniel c. dennett, in his book "breaking the spell", which i suggest you read.
did you realize that you attributed the term “incomprehensible nature” to god and then proceed to add any number of human attributes to him?All of thisreally begs the question: “If you cannot understand him, then how do you understand what he expects of you”?
er, because we have a book which we believe to be from G!D which tells us these things. human attributes are given to G!D not because it helps us understand what G!D Is, but because it helps us understand what G!D Wants. this has been consistently understood by jewish sages from time immemorial.
Revelation is a viable method, though the act of sharing a revelation is no different from it being hearsay.
unless it is done to lots of people simultaneously, as at sinai, which is what our apologists say. but, of course you can question that really easily by questioning the chain of transmission by which it gradually turned into hearsay.
Each of those attributes by definition assumes some lack or need that is required to be satisfied. This will not do in your argument, because it immediately defuses your claim that he is in some way eternally perfect.
no it doesn't. you need to understand the concept of "tzimtzum" or restriction; in this, G!D "Makes", as it were, a space within the Divine which allows for lack or need by virtue of restricting the Divine Presence. thus, lack or need can be activated through choice and free-will, which allows for the possibility of wrong choice and therefore sin and, therefore, atonement for sin. that is what the whole garden of eden story is about.
you might better try to make the case that because god cannot experience sin and such “human experience”, he needed to do it by proxy through mankind [though why god requires to satisfy this need also fatally flaws that argument, in my opinion].
you could just as well argue that there's no point doing a jigsaw when you already know what the result will be from the picture on the box.
Taking that a step further, nobody has ever been able to say with any degree of certainty that any words in any of the variously asserted holy texts are of a Divine origin.
well, like i said elsewhere, i wouldn't expect my inner experience of the Divine origin of the Torah to be transferable, because of the privacy of experience. but to my way of thinking, this is simply one of the features of the design of reality which prevents one removing all doubt - non-doubting humans being, essentially, non-human in various important respects. that is why all miracles are plausibly deniable - because otherwise doubt would be unsustainable. check the Text - the night before the red sea split, a "strong east wind blew". the only unambiguous miracle there has ever been from my PoV is the Revelation at sinai and even then, we still can't really agree what that actually was.
The theist creates for himself a genuinely unsolvable dilemma. He/she claims there is a source material that lays out the belief system. He/she claims this source material has a level of functionality that supports that belief system as well. He/she further asserts that unless the "author" of that support system (a god or god(s)) endows one with some special knowledge (knowledge that can’t be shared in a meaningful way), one cannot understand that support system as laid out and supported by the source material.
not at all. it *is* a circular argument, but you've not quite understood it. i call it the "if you were me, you'd agree" argument and it works basically like this: if you engage with the source material and work through the support system that enables you to understand the source material, you will not only experience the functionality, but gain the special knowledge. thus, someone will tell me that if i went to yeshiva for 20 years, i'd end up agreeing with them. it isn't exactly wrong, but it isn't testable. in the same way, if i learned evolutionary biology or philosophy for 20 years, i'd be unable to do question evolution or the experimental method. the conditions for the test are made effectively untestable. unfortunately, both arguments are vulnerable when someone who has been through either system then turns round and says, you know, this doesn't do everything its apologists say, it isn't the whole answer and i know of cases where this has indeed happened and it tends to be quite controversial, louis jacobs and antony flew both being famous cases in point.
Then the theist proceeds even further. He/she states that the god has a vested interest in human salvation, and through this book makes that word of salvation known, and yet... according to you there are varying degrees by which this knowledge may or may not be interpreted or even discovered.
not all theists have the same concept of salvation. this one you quote is not a jewish one.
In other words, the message of the book is a cold, unalterable law: Ye must believeth this, or be damned.
absolutely not. all we can say is "the righteous amongst the nations will receive a portion in the World to Come" [if they obey the 7 noahide laws, knowingly or unknowingly]. it's not a high standard of behaviour either.
Then the book itself ranges from fact to fiction, from literalism to metaphor helter-skelter, and humans are then asked to pick and choose which aspects are literal and which are not.
you think G!D is wrong to expect humans to develop their judgement over time? i would consider it rather wrong to keep treating us as eternal children.
Well, let's look at the source material, why don't we
the KJV is *not* the source material. it is an interpretation via about three different translations.
Is Joshua's sun-standing still (i.e., Earth stopping its rotation) a true rendering of an historical event, or not? Is the flood true? Is Adam and Eve and original sin true (this one is primary, for without it, all the rest is unnecessary)
you are right - but you're not asking the right question: is original sin actually SIN? of what does the sin consist? how you interpret this will shape your view of humanity and your entire belief system and judaism and christianity are, i fear, in total disagreement.
Sin is the failure of the test -- but if sin is evil, and man was kept from knowing what good and evil are (only the tree could supply that knowledge and he was told not to indulge), then he is precluded from being able to pass the test. God must know this, and God, being omniscient, must know which way Man would choose. Hence, free will is an illusion.
now you're getting somewhere - without free will man is not
man. but from G!D's PoV there is no such thing as free will, because from G!D's PoV, man did not choose and remained in the garden *at the same time*, in alternate realities, or dimensions, or what-have-you, but in such a scenario, the world as it is for us cannot exist. perhaps angelic beings are the manifestation in our reality of the descendents of adam that did not choose and therefore lack free will? remember, the tree's not the tree of *evil* - it's the tree of *knowledge*, the tree of *choice* - in effect, choosing to be able to choose. incidentally, satan's not that important in judaism for this very reason, he's a bit more like the CPS or DA - he can only get you with what you've done, otherwise it's entrapment.
Believe this, or be eternally, forever, always and from now until never – marshmallow in Hell.
not in judaism.
The bible, you will argue, "gets a pass". No, it doesn't.
not from anyone else except literalists and fundamentalists. however, not all of us are such.
What we are left with is this: Evil is of God -- no way around that -- hence, God is all good and all evil at the same time and is completely self-contradictory.
er... why? in isaiah, we have G!D Saying "I Do good and Create evil; I Am G!D, I Do all these things". what is so self-contradictory?
b'shalom
bananabrain
