Is God Perfect?

[TomOfSweden]

I don't quite buy the idea that helping one person over all others means he is being cruel to everyone else. If he takes something away from all the others to give to the favoured one, then, yes, I agree.

I like the idea of deism.

As for God's quid pro quo, I agree, what could an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity possibly want from us? Yet the accounts we have seem to speak of his anger when disobeyed and of the harshness of his retribution; of his tantrums where he meets decadence, such that he destroys cities, and, worse, how he floods the whole world, killing virtually every single person alive at the time. And, according to those accounts, all he really wanted was to be loved.

And this reveals him to be less than omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent - or at least, it does to me.

TYWD

The problem with this is of course that well... who the fuck am I?!? The greatest minds of humanity has wrestled with just this questions for 2300 years and not gotten anywhere. So I wouldn't be surprised if I miss something important.

Still... it's not clear what is God's actions and what is human interpretations of God's actions. Let's say there's an earthquake which leads to one side winning a battle. Maybe the earthquake was completely unrelated to either of the battling forces? But the winning side might interpret it as God intervening on their behalf... if they're theists of course. But it would just be pure assumption from their part.

edit: I would like to make it perfectly clear that in the few previous posts I've just been philosophising freely. Shopenhauer managed to break the problem down and made the problems with the God theory very easy to understand. He made it perfectly clear that God as defined by Christians is at best unknowable. The Unmoved Mover theory doesn't have to exist by necessity as Aristotle claimed. It's just one possibly theory among an infinite of theories. Any other religion might have nailed that one. Or quite possibly, which is the most probable..we're all wrong. If the Cosmological Argument doesn't by necessity have to hold we can't deduce anything from it. BTW, for those who haven't read a boat load of philosophy. "By necessity" in philosophneese is a fancy schmancy way of saying that it's an absolute truth or constant given the scenario. Anyhoo... So if the Cosmological Argument isn't always an absolute truth because any other solution is unthinkable, we've pulled out the rug under Christianities most critical and fundamental argument. If this is up for debate... then so is absolutely everything else about Christianity.

That is why no philosopher after Shopenhaur is Christian. Either they made/make a big deal about being atheists, (the vast majority) or they simply said, "who cares. It's impossible to say anything about it or argue in any direction". And don't make the mistake of thinking, "who cares about philosophers. They'll just question anything for the sake of it". Christianity is the invention of Philosophers. Everything attributed to being said by Jesus was first penned by the philosopher Philo of Alexandria. The Christian theory of the universe is purely a philosophers model of the universe. It's impossible to link the alleged miracles in the Bible to any specific religion. Even if they did take place just as described, they don't strengthen the case for Aristotle's Unmoved Mover theory. It could be the result of any religions Gods, or none of them. And this is assuming they actually took place. No, it's not a question of faith. If you think it is, you haven't understood the word "faith". Even if you're one of those who have spoken to God and Jesus in person, or even have them as close personal friends... doesn't add to the Unmoved Mover theory. You still can't tell the God you're speaking to is omnipotent. Do you think the ants crawling around our feet think we're omnipotent... I mean if they could ponder about the nature of the universe. You have no platform from which to measure of make judgements.

I do enjoy having a little bit of cerebral exercise regarding the nature of God if he/it did exist. But we're pretty far from reaching a stage where anything can be deduced. And we're pretty far from a position where Christian faith is even worth considering. We're still in the fact finding stage.