is God good ?

Also, Wil-

I think your problem may lie in the fact that you are unable to consider that God All Powerful can, if He so wishes, cause evil. In fact, He created it. However, S/He (in Arabic language, Name--The God, has no female or male gender aspect of it) commands us to do good because S/He loves good.
 
Amica said:
In fact, I even think it is disrespectful towards me and many other hundreds of thousands Muslims out there who do not terrorize other people. .
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a. no intention to be disrespectful but....
b. I will gladly declare anyone murdering in the name of Jesus is not acting Christian and I have no respect for them.
c. If hundreds of thousands of muslims are not willing to do the same in regards to those who terrorize, I've lost respect for them as well.

Amica said:
Also, Wil-

I think your problem
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Namaste Amica,

The blessing is, I've got no problem, that would be your perception, Allahu Alam
 
Peace to all--
:) I hope also that I did not offend anyone in my own views as well. As we Americans say, we agree that we have the right to disagree.

Anyway. Wil, we Muslims can individually or collectively denounce anyone who terrorize others in the name of our religion (and hundreds of thousands of Muslims do!) but we cannot say who is/is not a Muslim. According to our faith's teaching, we do not know what is in a person's heart and mind--only God Almighty knows. But we can say that a person is NOT behaving the way a Muslim should/must. It is up to God Almighty to judge all of us.

As for articles of Bosnian Muslims being forced to convert to Christianity, I could do reasearch but I personally know individuals who were baptized in the war and forced to change their names.
GloryToGod, I think that our history shows that there were those killing in the name of Jesus. Elizabeth The Catholic--the Queen of Spain for one, during the Inquisition.

But, I think that the original post asked is God All Good? My final answer, I guess I tried to articulate earlier was: Yes, but S/He can create and cause evil to happen as well because S/He has that power.
I mentioned the Holy Attributes to describe what my religion teaches about the powers God Almighty has. 99 Attributes (or qualities/abilities if you will) are mentioned in the Holy Qur'an to help Muslims understand some of the Power of God Almighty. Each Divine Quality is not believed a being and has no intelligence in itself but is controlled by The Divine Intelligence (God Almighty) alone.

The concept of many, two or three dieties 'in one' will forever be confusing to me as I cannot graps how 100=1, or 3=1, or 2=1. My confusion comes in when I am presented with a belief/claim that a being can have more than one ascpect of itself but each aspect being different, unique and having a unique power. :) Kind of reminds me of current bosnian trimuvirate (three members of Presidency--Bosnia now actually has 3 presidents). Each member pulls strings his own way and no decision is ever made that is good for the people in general (whether Bosnians, Croats, Serbs or anyone else living in the country).

:) Peace
 
Amica said:
Peace to all--
:) I hope also that I did not offend anyone in my own views as well. As we Americans say, we agree that we have the right to disagree.
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indeed we can and do have different opinions, although many people who post on this forum seem to think that their opinions are better than other peoples.

Anyway. Wil, we Muslims can individually or collectively denounce anyone who terrorize others in the name of our religion (and hundreds of thousands of Muslims do!) but we cannot say who is/is not a Muslim. According to our faith's teaching, we do not know what is in a person's heart and mind--only God Almighty knows. But we can say that a person is NOT behaving the way a Muslim should/must. It is up to God Almighty to judge all of us.
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I think some radical Muslims today have found some sort of way around that stuff of saying and who is not muslim, I cant remember the details though.

As for articles of Bosnian Muslims being forced to convert to Christianity, I could do reasearch but I personally know individuals who were baptized in the war and forced to change their names.
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forced convertion, i thought you said killing in the name of Jesus

GloryToGod, I think that our history shows that there were those killing in the name of Jesus. Elizabeth The Catholic--the Queen of Spain for one, during the Inquisition.
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i dont deny atrocities committed by organized religion, but i was responding to your statement of killing in the name of Jesus which I equated to mean killing and then saying it was for Jesus in the same way that some islamix extremists kill and then say "alla ukba" or Allah is great.

I have never heard of people using the name of Jesus in that manner.
 
...do we speak of God, or do we speak of the demi-urge, a fake God, corrupting the souls of man, enforcing his twisted morality upon his creation?

a father who punishes, threatens, imprisons, encourages his child to be weak?

God the tyrannical narcissist, an oppressor, the bringer of plagues and famines, a maligned malcontent who sets his creations up to fail?

If this is God, then he is not God, for, if he is omnipotent and omnipresent, he cannot be anything but evil...
 
Francis king said:
...do we speak of God, or do we speak of the demi-urge, a fake God, corrupting the souls of man, enforcing his twisted morality upon his creation?

a father who punishes, threatens, imprisons, encourages his child to be weak?

God the tyrannical narcissist, an oppressor, the bringer of plagues and famines, a maligned malcontent who sets his creations up to fail?

If this is God, then he is not God, for, if he is omnipotent and omnipresent, he cannot be anything but evil...
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Why would you equate G-d with humans' imagery of same?
 
lt seems the only imagery we've got is human!

omnipotence, omniscient, omnibenevolence is logically impossible anyways but heyho who's talking logical....we want to believe in the possibility of absolute Good despite the reality of absolute Bad.. heres hoping:)
 
Peace to all--

When you either convert or kill to bring back to 'heavenly faith', the 'heavenly faith' considered Christianity, then yes--to me it sounds that it is in the name of Jesus since those who believe themselves to be Christians they believe Jesus to be divine/god. Plus, those who are killed for choosing to be Bosnian Muslims (who according to Serbs "were all Serbs who converted to Islam") to have carved crosses on their bodies before their horrible executions (the people who survived have lived to tell) signifies that they were killed for Jesus. The cross, as we know, for many Christians (including the Serbs) represents Jesus. I am not sayign that Jesus would do the same as some of those Christians had.

I believe with all my heart that extremists, whether Muslims, Christians or Jews, are equal in their hate and should not be considered to represent the religions they consider themselves to belong to.
 
Amica said:
Peace to all--

I believe with all my heart that extremists, whether Muslims, Christians or Jews, are equal in their hate and should not be considered to represent the religions they consider themselves to belong to.
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Amen, my brother.

Let's all open our windows and yell it out. Let's shout it from the rooftops and put it on billboards. Or paint it on the side of the moon so we are reminded every day!

If we could only follow our religions and not distort them.
 
hello,
If you study the bible until you see that it is composed of three equal parts, then you can also see that they represent three progressive forms of government. The first is the state of mankind before Moses's Law. It was the survival of the fittest and it was during this time that Abram came back from the slaughtering of 5 kings. He was then glorified, because at this time the natual laws of selection was the highest ideal. It developed "vitality" in human beings.
Then when Moses brought the Law, when the tribes of Israel crossed the Jorsdan and instigated it fully there was no more "survival of the fittest there." Within a short time the punishments prescribed for breaking the good just law had everyone good and honest. You could plough your field with out looking over your soulder or carrying your sword. Even the Jubillee made the population of Israel fair in economy by forgiving depts every 50 years.
But living under an unflexable law that does not allow for Mercy and conmpassion was actually horible. So when the people had learned the essence of the Law (Paul says the law was our teacher when we were yet children) they could not underatand Jesus's new covenant where the law abides in our oun individual hearts. And those in whose hearts the law does abide, and being the heart also functions with compassion and mercy, they are the prophesised new covenant of Jeremiah. " The law shall be in their heart and minds."
So what I mean to say is that "goodness" is the eventual result of the three governmental stages possible to human being individually and collectivly as societies in general. This is not the entire message of salvation that Christianity offers us. It is the essence of it. Goodness is actually following your conscience. And when you follow your conscience then this leads to greater Consciousness! This is the formula that Jesus was preaching. After those that follow me will recieve the Holy spirit So those that grow towards the light inevitably arrive at "goodness."
 
God is good and evil.

If one believes in Bible God then as the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega that no one is to place another God above, then he must be the epitome of all attributes.
The most good and the most evil.
That may be why the Bible N T preaches love, while the O T shows God's hate as it shows him killing innocents as in the days of Sodom and Noah.
God is to be our example of the highest love and the lowest hate.

Regards
DL
 

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The final flaw in any discussion such as this is the human propensity for providing our own measuring standard and then applying it to the Creator of Standards.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, if one has two boards and wishes to measure which will fit in the project one is building, the standard of measurement cannot be one of the boards in question. Yet in discussing what is "good" or "bad, we apply human standards, based upon emotional responses and felings, forgetting that God was here first, and so He gets to make the rules. Whatever He is, is good, regardless of whether it syncs with our preconceived notions and presuppositions about the nature of good and evil. We are so proud of our "ethical sense" and our concept of what is good, so much so that we demand that even God conform to our definition of good too, and if He does not, then we are right and He is bad.

Remember how it was on the playground in school? If Johnny brought the ball, Johnny got to make the rules. Well, God, the Creator, both made and brought the ball, so He gets to make the rules, and those who decline to play by them are not part of the real game.

Ubuntu
Art
 
Can an unchanging, perfect, just, and loving God be both merciless and merciful? Would He order His people to kill helpless infants? I believe that we are to rightly divide the scriptures .... Much like a net cast into the sea, and when drawn up it is filled with every kind. We then sift through all of what was gather in that net, and separate the good from the bad (Keeping only the good). So it is with scripture .... In it are both darkness and light - Good and evil.

Our innate sense of good and evil helps us when it comes to the scriptures. If God is good, then I'm of the mind that our sense of good would be applied to Him as well (Evil too). Is murdering infants good? Is ordering man to break Gods commands good? I think God is good, but also that mankind has attributed many evil deeds to Him.
 
Maybe we ought to define "good".

Then:
Good for who?
Good for you?
Good for me?
Good for us?
Good in an abstract way?

Further:
What may be good for one could be bad for another?
So the question can become quite relative then.
 
friendofbill said:
The final flaw in any discussion such as this is the human propensity for providing our own measuring standard and then applying it to the Creator of Standards.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, if one has two boards and wishes to measure which will fit in the project one is building, the standard of measurement cannot be one of the boards in question. Yet in discussing what is "good" or "bad, we apply human standards, based upon emotional responses and felings, forgetting that God was here first, and so He gets to make the rules. Whatever He is, is good, regardless of whether it syncs with our preconceived notions and presuppositions about the nature of good and evil. We are so proud of our "ethical sense" and our concept of what is good, so much so that we demand that even God conform to our definition of good too, and if He does not, then we are right and He is bad.

Remember how it was on the playground in school? If Johnny brought the ball, Johnny got to make the rules. Well, God, the Creator, both made and brought the ball, so He gets to make the rules, and those who decline to play by them are not part of the real game.

Ubuntu
Art
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One has to question a God who says that it is good to murder children and babies because they are evil.

Sodom, Noah's genocidal flood and much of the O T show his murder of the innocent.
For a God who creates all things perfect, getting only 8 good soul out of millions should indeed be placed on the carpet to explain his incompetence.
 

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Gatekeeper said:
Can an unchanging, perfect, just, and loving God be both merciless and merciful? Would He order His people to kill helpless infants? I believe that we are to rightly divide the scriptures .... Much like a net cast into the sea, and when drawn up it is filled with every kind. We then sift through all of what was gather in that net, and separate the good from the bad (Keeping only the good). So it is with scripture .... In it are both darkness and light - Good and evil.

Our innate sense of good and evil helps us when it comes to the scriptures. If God is good, then I'm of the mind that our sense of good would be applied to Him as well (Evil too). Is murdering infants good? Is ordering man to break Gods commands good? I think God is good, but also that mankind has attributed many evil deeds to Him.
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Nice.
We must also wonder why God was quite peeved at and in fact forbid Eve to reach out for the knowledge that gave us that very moral sense that you speak of.

The knowledge of good and evil that makes us as Gods.

Any father worth his salt wants his children to meet or beat whatever he is. God the father, it seems, wanted to keep man at the level of common animals without a moral sense. Strange.

Regards
DL

Regards
DL
 

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GIAm,

Your attempts to be offensive are cute, but- ironically- you are not actually being offensive because you are portraying views that nobody actually has and confusing them with something else.
 
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