Does God Have A Sense Of Humor - The Great Debate

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No, quite the contrary - it certainly does. Free will is an illusion, it doesn't exist - period. The way I come up with that - everything we do is input driven, every choice is a reaction based on a combination of neurology/genetics and prior experience. You can take someone throwing craps, getting lucky sevens, rewind it, play it forward, rewind it, play it forward, its the only time where you'll see someone throw it exactly the same way no matter how many times you'd choose to rewind and replay it. With crucial moral decisions - same thing, the person would struggle over the decision, think about it, and with the exact same moods and input, would ultimately come to the exact same end result - every time.

In other words, while people have every right to be punished here for transgressions, its part of that logical process, God telling anyone "I didn't send you to hell - you chose it yourself" would be like him trying to make a vinyl or record, hating the result, and wanting to damn the hihats, snares, or basslines because he couldn't put it together right. Carl Jung tried to suggest the possibility that such a consciously feeble god could have created our universe - I have problems with that on too many levels just because it, at every turn, shows him taking zero responsibility for his omniscience.

isn't that rather close-minded?

imagine this situation: you are friends with someone who likes milk chocolate. you present them with a choice between a milk chocolate bar and a dark chocolate bar. You already know which one they will choose.

one could argue that, since your friend did not choose their taste buds, they did not make a choice, but I disagree. I am right-handed, but I use my left hand for the vast majority of things that I do simply because I insist on dong so, in defiance of the way my body was programmed to act. one cols argue that this defiance is born of some genetic or neurological phenomenon, but that is shaky ground. there is not enough evidence for you to say that free will absolutely does not exist, or at the very least, I am not aware of any.

Sand: that is a fallacious argument. for one there is no control. have you ever heard of amore fati? as bad as things are, they could be worse, and it is through struggles and travails that we become better people. if the world was perfect, people wold be amoral because they could not choose to be immoral, and immorality and amorality are, in my opinion at least, equivalent evils. only be a rejection of immorality can one be moral. If God rigged the world to make it impossible to make a bad decision, there would be no point to any of it.

I think, while you're pinpointing something that comes up in the immediate present - choices over chocolate bars, we're forgetting to extrapolate this friend's entire past, if they had health concerns for instance and heard that dark chocolate was healthier they may still go the other way. Our broader moral decisions in life, our long term hobbies, our desires to take on certain endeavors (like you deciding to give it a go at training yourself to be ambidextrous), those things, those events, are built directly on the momentum of many other prior factors - things as simple as choosing milk or dark chocolate or as complicated as writing an entire book down to the very keystrokes chosen and the very words taken out our suggested for revision by the editor - you could rewind it as many times as you liked, it would happen the same way, mainly because everything that lead up to it happened and no new factors are being introduced. These prior experiences and action potentials in our own behavior, as simple or as elaborate as you wish to make the examples - are given to us, we don't create them ourselves. My desire to get heavily into working out, becoming serious about learning Kali (something like 11 hours a week), desiring to learn to speak Spanish as well as I can speak english, as well as my hobby from my late teens up through now which is create music and of the particular genres I like, why I like them, these are things that were given to me via various life experiences as filtered through my own proclivities.

I wouldn't use this argument to necessarily suggest an atheistic reality as many would - I think its indifferent; this just seems to be how time works. My own internal experience seems to hearken back to something more of a pagan monotheist outlook - ie. that God is a collection of all light, all beauty, all wisdom, all things positive - and that's it. I don't think a divine comedy of an omniscient being creating something that turned evil, which omniscience being eternal long-view he should have known without any excuse, all the way through acting wrathful toward the world at points when omniscience really, when you examine it, should also mean infinite empathy, I see where certain strange things happened along the course of time that seemed to almost supernaturally pound the bible into history - my thought is that while some of the ideals are to be looked up to, while there are certain guideposts therein just like in many philosophies where if you obey them you'll make the world a better place, I really get the impression that in a world with no free will - if a creator wanted to both control everything and make us 'feel' like we had it, certain lynch pins and ideas had to be placed into history in certain ways to get a certain outcome - ie. a lot of what's there could simply be arbitrary to us on the individual level or in terms of our relationship with God but, on the human species level through the past two hundred years its been a very deliberate guide - both in its brightest and darkest hours.

I think we are more or less on the same page in our interpretation of of how decision-making works, but not on what it means.

yes, no matter how many times you replayed the scenario you would get the same result, but for me free will is not random. your friend will choose the same choice every time because that is their decision. I am not one who believes free will and predestination are dichotomous. the environment we grow up in will affect our decisions, but how it affects those decisions is ultimately up to us. you could argue that the interpretation on that environment is genetic, but again, I feel that is shaky ground. I guess the only way to science it is to get two newborn identical twins and present them with a choice of some kind and study how they react... though a. newborns are pretty limited in how they will be able to react and b. it would be hard to get a mother to agree to lend her newborn children to such a study.

I would call that Deism since I associate "Pagan" with the western polytheistic religions that Abrahamic Monotheism destroyed, but I guess it technically fits in with the dictionary definition.

I guess I view God as the creator. I believe the creator must be Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent simply because he is the creator.

If God is the creator of all existence, he could, presumably, create something to give him any power he did not have, or simply create an existence where he can do anything.

If God is the creator of all existence, he would presumably know everything he created, and on the off chance there was something he did not know, he could simply create the means to gain that information.

But the most important is why I believe God is Omnibenevolent. When I was little, like five or something, my older brother, a couple of cousins, and I where playing in one of those inflatable backyard pools. I blew some bubbles, and, though I can't remember the exact sequence of events that lead up to it was, but one of my cousins tried to imitate me. when he blew bigger bubbles, they all hailed him as "better". But I pointed out his goal was not to surpass me: it was to imitate me. By blowing bigger bubbles, even though they felt it was a more impressive accomplishment, he failed to imitate me. I added that, since he lacked the physical features I had, he could never blow the bubbles in the manner I blew them as well as I could. all this of course went WAY over their heads, but the point is God created benevolence, thus benevolence is what he says it is. Humans cannot argue that God is cruel because we do not make the rules. he does. So assuming Good modeled Benevolence after his own ideals, he would, by default, be the perfect picture of benevolence.

It’s all a load of crap and you know it. Get off your high horse and don’t take any wooden nickels from the chicken man. I made the mistake of doing that once and never lived it down. The problem started with those yellow shoelaces, but I guess you know that. Still, I should have known better. I was warned. It’s interesting to wake up and find the third floor of your house missing. I tried to explain this to my doctor once. He told me to eat more oat bran. I don’t like my neurosis being shoved under the rug. I keep tripping on it. You can laugh all you want. It won’t change a thing. They still pick up the trash every Tuesday. It’s amusing. Carlos visited yesterday and brought me some bananas. I will put some on my oat bran and think about Dr. Cyborg. Eventually everything will fall together and I will get back to work on my volcanic cranium simulator. The paper is going well. Just a few minor details to reconfigure. Do you remember the time we crashed the party at the Teetzleburgers? Ronnie shoved gherkins into his pockets and you played the piano with you nose. What was it? Schubert’s Serenede?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpA0l2WB86E[/youtube]

Two things on that:
1) I'd add one more thing to the mix not mentioned - prior information, genetics in terms of processing, I'd add in the way events came down, how they shaped your beliefs, and especially the heavy-handed learning situations that really ground an impression in that was in some way shape or form life-changing and which stuck with you. Morality in a lot of senses can be turned many different ways based on what your prior beliefs lead you up to; you can even agree on the same facts but have their salience arranged in different ways and have different schematic ideas of what should be done or what's innocent in their coping mechanisms whereas someone else could very easily emphatically disagree.

2) The study on twins separated at birth actually has been done, the result of the documentary was that they looked the same, acted the same, had the same interests. Of course like most people here indicate, a lot of wizardry can be done with 'studies', I don't know if they might have lacked objectivity and ignored some identical twins who were different, I still don't think - even then - that it would change a lot regarding the going process of reality or the bondage one incurs by existing within time.



Actually, in reading 'No One Sees God - The Dark Night of the Soul for Atheists and Believers Alike' (excellent book, and you seem like the type that I'd recommend it to as you like exploring these issues and ideas), a lot of things came up that I hadn't been aware of - much like my political senses changed about after reading Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. With No One Sees God, Novak talks about a lot of the philosophical ideas that were out there at the time, somewhat surprisingly many pagan theologies were veering toward condensing their deities into one, I can't remember what the causal dynamics were in that - you could perhaps look at it as having deist aspects, though at the same time I don't know that they necessarily were of the belief that God simply kept time and had no interest in human affairs or even individuals.


Those three things are exactly what get me in a tangle with traditional theodicy, heaven/hell, old testament behavior of Yahweh as well as in the book of revelation - to be omnipotent, omniscient, and *especially* omnibenevolent - you can't do things that way. Reading Answers To Job by Carl Jung he argued for a Yahweh who existed within time, was mostly unconscious and thus amoral, and acted the way he did because he had little conscious development and as strange as the argument sounds had omniscience and omnipotence but ignored or rarely ever consulted his omniscience - that's a God with two out of three but ultimately lacking the third, that God seems to go with the general flow of the scriptures and fill in the strange gaps and lapses of definition over divine morality, but on examination its highly troublesome (and yes - I'd strongly prefer a god with all three, for even Jung's sense of God to become this tame and all of a sudden break out in a divine fit of rage in the Revelation - ultimately shows something that makes no sense, ie. people and I'd imagine deity as well become better by learning, adapting, and moving their outlook to more benevolent points rather than bottling anger up until you explode all because someone said you should behave right - that's the later is the god of the Book of Revelations).

Because of that, while I see truths in the bible, I'm not sure that I trust the narrative in any literal sense. I don't trust that a God with infinitely more power than us could be vengeful, especially if he can't escape that he knew exactly what he made. If a deity lets say way barely more powerful than we are to where we could end his existence, that deity might feel the need to act despotic due to its own self-preservation but something that minor simply couldn't have made the majesty we see around us in nature and even ourselves on a daily basis - so that option is off the table as well.

This is where I really start wondering about Gnosticism, especially the works of Valentinus; ie. God, the Aeons of Aeons, all were diads that begot new diads, the Logos was a very ambitious being who overstepped his own abilities in a fit of wrecklessness (in all good intent - the Aeons even, like us, couldn't get to know God in all his vastness in any other way than creation), of the Logos' moment of doubt came the realm of shards (ie. our universe), something like a bubble outside the perloma, and anything that's possibly interacted with us has been more on an Aeon scale than actually 'God' - ie. it could be the diad of the Logos, the Demiurge, many different things of that nature.

When I look back at Irenaeus choosing the four gospels in 180 AD and throwing away the 32 others including certain Gnostic writings, he was focusing on the going concern of the church, realized that getting into Aeons and perlomas would be way too cerebral for most people of the time, too confusing in terms of what it all meant, and he felt that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the best choices for a coherent message - perhaps incomplete but the most coherently poignant without getting into overly or unnecessarily high philosophy. I think in that sense, for people who need deeper or broader answers, the Nag Hammadi may well be a great place to look. People also talk about the 'Christ Myth', and as if its a disproof come up with the excuse that many many religions and cultures, long before Christianity, had narratives of a son of God born of man and dying to be resurrected as a God again - people can look at it as a problem if they come from absolute certainty that this means its purely anthropological koolaid and human stupidity, that a sucker is born every second and the world was almost nothing but suckers back then - or you can look at it that archetypes have been floating out there for a long time, that they mean something in the collective consciousness of societies, and that the ideas coming forth very well could have been premonitions.

That's not to say even how sure I am of the whole narrative - raised Catholic or not - just that I do think there are a lot of different ways these things can be looked at on an ongoing basis.




And he never gets stuck in such goo to begin with if he exists outside of time, created our whole existence as a four dimensional object, which would appear to be three in his realm, time being more the result of a carefully built contraption acting itself out. In that sense humanity or the universe can't do anything that he'd need to adapt to because, to him, its like listing to an mp3 audio book that he wrote - surprises aren't really possible.



That's amazingly perceptive - especially at five, and I definitely look forward to talking to you more on this topic as it sounds like you have a lot to offer on it.

@Techstepgenr8tion & Tensu

I am enjoying your discussion immensely and hope you keep it up and continue to contribute to this thread. Don't mind me. I drop in every once in a while to inject some humor and a shot or two of the beauty and splendor of creation.

Is that just because the Jameson and Crown are gone?

All this talk of God topic

Humour is absurdity, and God is a cruel joke that humans wrote along with a book (the bible) to reference it. [This is very convoluted, I know.]

One interesting thread, and where it goes is unknowable to me at this point.

TSG wrote:

I keep running across this odd inconceivable concept of a thinking planning being existing outside of time. Thinking, any dynamism, or any action requires a being to act within time. Everything outside of time is totally static. No action. No movement. All that requires time.

I think its actually quite easy - as in that God could exist within time, just a time-line exterior to our own. That's why I brought up the example of a book; the reader can examine the pages in a similar cadence but they could just as easily read page 1, jump to the last chapter, read a bit of chapter 5, chapter 17, chapter 3, and the person who wrote the book, who's ideas it all came from is likely working from the entire structure as a rough draft in the beginning and filling in the spaces as they go. You could look at it as Heron building a mechanical play - while there's a beginning and end to the play, the physical object mechanizing the play didn't need to be experienced in the same way as the play by Heron - rather he built the rods, the spools of rope, the levers, etc..

I think you misunderstand revelations. If interpreted as a doomsday prophecy (there are other interpretations) It is less an act of divine rage and more an act of justice. Revelations presumably happens when everybody on earth who is going to repent and be a good person has already done so. It is about giving the righteous their reward and the wicked their punishment. if the Abrahamic God is a just God, then he presumably must at some point in time administer justice, right?

I am a little curious about Gnosticism, I've done a little research, but my knowledge on it is still rather limited. I always viewed Jesus's statement that we should reject the worldly to have more to do with rejecting society, money, and temptation as opposed to rejecting matter itself, though.

Having an interest in mythology, I'm well aware of the various "dying god" myths. But most of them seem to have more to do with winter and spring than salvation.

I've also considered him existing in a separate timeline. I was just trying to be pragmatic.

Well, I have had a little trouble remembering my own age, but I'm pretty sure it was before third grade... It was have been between first and second, which would put me at what... six? seven? or was it between kindergarden and first? what birthday did I get those plastic lizards? I expect you to have this information! WHEN DID I GET THOSE LIZARDS!?

*ahem*

I have several more ideas about the nature of God 'n stuff, but I was planning on waiting 'till later to bring them up. because I have like, nine panic attacks to get over.

What you are doing with your alternate time line is dodging the issue. I have thought about 4 dimensional space for many years and had many thoughts about time and space and am thoroughly suspicious about something existing outside our universe of 4 dimensions. I know it is possible and there are valid scientific theories about it but really what you are proposing is not a God existing outside of time but existing in an alternate universe playing games with ours.

I'm not denying something of an alternate universe, just that I think that's what it would take to make a four dimensional object three dimensional, just as - quite likely - to make an object that advanced it would have to be inhabited by beings endowed with neural (or whatever their brain capacity medium is) exponentially greater than our own 3 lbs.

That idea though, why I'd suggest that either 1) atheism is the truth or 2) in the case of monotheism being the truth that Valentinian Gnosticism is a heck of a strong candidate - it incidentally talks a lot about a concept called the Perloma. If you ever get a chance to read the Tripartite Tractate and rather than grabbing the reading the tone of it as gleeful theistic idiocy, rather thinking of - say a parallel - JRR Tolkien's books had a gleeful tone but the guy who directed it in movie made a much more dark/haunting picture just because he stripped it of the euphemistic energy (which, to fall for it is generally somewhat naive) and unveiled - what this guy was describing - this is what it would 'really' look and feel like; he did a great job. Put that same kind of scrubber on the Tripartite Tractate as I did, envision the color-depth of components to reality that it talks about, you get to understand that the Perloma, if existent, is a place built on such different mechanics that I think most of us in our current state would be throwing up from migraines within a few seconds of mapping the concept if it could be launched full at us. Yes, it smacks of schizophrenic gargantuanism and grandeur but, I have a feeling that no matter what the story - whether what's in the Plemora or the forces that you and Arthur Dent were kicking around, that are unconscious - have that same kind of grandeur and would be of course equally likely to induce migraine and vomiting in the space of seconds if you could really 'see' them in full depth, even if your mind refused to process it all.

I will admit, I bear a burden in that I, technically speaking, do dial in on this as I go and yes - I'm taking my own logic and intuitions over any particular dogma, religious or otherwise, I could imagine enough people think the exact same way that I do, they're likely just too rare to be organized or, just as likely, wouldn't want to strap their thinking down to an organized ideology anyway as - while it moores more acceptance - it strips you of the freedom to admit your wrong on something, if you realize it, and come up with a better explanation; hence why agnosticism or 'spiritual but not religious' is far from simply shifty non-committal people.

I might have given you way more than you perhaps wanted there but, you asked some good questions and I'm just trying to give you enough detail to outline the shape of what I'm thinking as accurately as I can without writing a few pages - things generally sound absurd in floating segments as well.

There is also a third possibility - one that I haven't particularly explored much yet but, I can't summarily rule it out. That's the possibility that there is no God but, by our own psychic energy signature we have created our own degree of 'life hereafter', spirit, or whatever else. Its not something I'd stand on without getting more of a grasp on it, but, in the sense of atheists who do perhaps believe in life essence reincarnating or some form of animism, may well be on to something. Admittedly though, I simply don't know enough on that school of thought.