Good God Vs. Evil God Thought Exercise

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by TheSamantha, May 26, 2016.

  1. I find myself funny and that's all that counts.
     
  2. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    it isn't that our concepts of good and evil are limited, it's that they only exist within human constructs and do not exist in nature as intrinsic qualities as your premise would suggest.
    Thought that was rather easy to understand.

    according to Christianity "sin" is not an act or failure to act, it is a condition of our existence.


    I'm beginning to doubt that you fathom any of this crap you keep posting about.
    you need to break out of the confinement of Christian ideas and thought if you actually want to learn about it. ;)

    So, as I asked first, is this thought experiment relegated to only the God of the Bible/Torah/Quran or are you talking about the concept of god in general?
    inquiring minds want to know
     
  3. TheSamantha

    TheSamantha Member

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    The Abrahamic God.
     
  4. TheSamantha

    TheSamantha Member

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    Aww :D
     
  5. I don't see how any good or evil action can be outside of the influence of a 3O God.

    I always think about what it means to be all-powerful. And I think it means that you can potentially have all the power that exists. But if we truly have free will, God can't even potentially have all the power that exists.

    It works similarly with omniscience. If we are knowing things God can't possibly know, how is God all-knowing? God doesn't know what it's like to be any of us, and the only way to really know what it is like to be us is to literally be us.

    And if we take omnipresent to mean that God is everywhere... Well, I'm somewhere. If God isn't where I am, how can God be everywhere? Only I can be literally where I am.

    So I can't think of any quality of anything that the 3O God doesn't have. The 3O God makes rainbows to please our eyes. The 3O God makes rainbows to torture the blind.
     
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  6. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    than this will get boring real fast
     
  7. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    but if God is the source of all of everything in the universe, including you and I, a 3O God is very easy to conceive and is actually the only way it could be, if God is the ultimate source from which everything arose.
    if everything came from God, then by logical deduction, God is present in everything--omnipresent
    if God is present in everything, then it follows God would also be aware of everything--omniscient
    if everything is sourced from God, both matter and all energy, well that's pretty friggin' powerful--omnipotent


    so what's the problem again?

    it's only a problem when you try to cram God into the narrow confines of certain belief systems rather than considering them all ;)
     
  8. I'm not sure if I'm saying there's a problem. I'm only saying that a 3O God must both be good and evil by definition. I'm not sure if we're not saying essentially the same things. I think it stands to reason that if God is the source of everything, God must literally be everything, as God only had itself from which to source everything. If God is perfect and only has itself as a source, how can anything that comes from God be less perfect than its source, and if it's not less perfect than its source, how is it not God?







    Again, not sure we're not saying the same things. I just think if you want to get technical, everything in space is present somewhere. So it would follow that God would have to be present in the exact same space in the exact same way. So if you're talking about a 3O God in the most literal sense, you're talking about the totality of everything, which encompasses both "good" and "evil".

    Which isn't self-contradictory at all, and like you said, good and evil are human constructs. But God is physically everything, sustains everything, and everything is a collective whole that can't be altered except in real time. Alongside this I also postulate a super-advanced, super-intelligent, chaotic mind that exists in tandem with reality, outside of time and space.
     
  9. Perfect Disorder

    Perfect Disorder Paradoxically Spontaneous

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    I would speculate that "God" is neutrality and that we have overlaid our concepts of good and evil onto it
     
  10. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    There is a philosophical rhyme and reason to this-----it is an exercise in deconstruction. Though Derrida, the father of deconstructionism, would have approached it a bit differently.

    First of all he would have gone directly to the binary opposites (as he would say)---God vs Devil. In the end this really equates to a deconstruction of good and evil. Derrida would have said to TheSamantha that by framing it in terms of Good God - Evil God it might weaken the argument towards demonstrating that the theology is vapid, and after all, Western culture, founded upon duality as it is, is all too well acquainted with the devil as the binary opposite to God. Deconstruction does not need to sugar coat the negative or non-dominant side in order to reverse the role as TheSamantha was doing here.

    Deconstructionism rocked the philosophical world in the 1960's and 70's but it is really shaping cultural dynamics today more than it did then---philosophy has a way of playing out that way.

    For example, the new series on the Fox Network, Lucifer, is clearly deconstructionist----at least as far as the First Season went. It did not engage in blatant Derridean Deconstruction, but as the story unfolded you had Lucifer becoming more and more of a good entity in the streets (so-to-speak) of a Post-Modern Los Angeles filled with its immoral and bad mortal souls (and good mortals too), while his brother, an angel from heaven, became increasingly bad. While he was the hero, his brother was the anti-hero. It is hard to say where the story will go in the second season, but it appears that they may complete the deconstruction by working together-----a metaphor for the signifiers of Western Good and Evil in a dance of non-hierarchical, non-stable meaning.
     
  11. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    I believe this is where Derrida would have taken it---except that he concluded that deconstructionism can neither prove nor disprove God-----the Transcendent Signified----as he called it.

    He did say that Western Man is always trying to find a center---whether we call it a Principle, an Ideal, or God---it is that center which is lacking in presence that we are trying to fill---there is always that Transcendent Signified.

    But the Christian God, because of its binary opposite in the Devil, regardless of how marginal we try to make that devil (because binary opposites always represent a dominant and non-dominant side anyway) will always be subject to deconstruction. Ultimately, without a center, you will have deconstruction ad-infinitum---there can be no stability.

    A truly transcendent signified center then would be a divinity that is transcendent of Good and Evil (i.e. neutral). The Christian God and Devil could then be simply metaphors of good and evil, subject to deconstruction around this center.
     
  12. relaxxx

    relaxxx Senior Member

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    (Knock knock knock)
    "Who is it?"
    -"It's me, God. Man, open up I've got the stuff"
    "God's not here man!"

    I can testify to the account that God is not here. Therefor there is no God that is omniscient or omnipresent, and if not omniscient then he can't possibly be omnibenevolent either. What exactly are the three O's, Oh what a crock of shit!?
     
  13. relaxxx

    relaxxx Senior Member

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    Consider that God is also a human concept and most likely has little meaning or import in the grand scheme, unless you mean scam, yes there are one or two of those that God is deeply involved with.
     
  14. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    No, he was behind the couch the whole time...
     
  15. Perfect Disorder

    Perfect Disorder Paradoxically Spontaneous

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    Honestly your first sentence would seem to make Derrida's argument illogical. Why would it be beneficial to spend one's time deconsructing God when there is no rational answer to be obtained from the practice? Unless you acknowledge the rationality of admitting "I do not know"

    As an aside my wife and I just recently discovered Lucifer. She is rather taken with it.
     
  16. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    It is a question of God as Transcendent Signified vs the Christian God or any other God that is off-centered in any way and therefore subject to deconstruction.

    Something that just ocurred to me as an example from Eastern Philosophy---considering your interest---the Tao would be the Transcendent Signified, while the Yang would be subject to deconstruction against the Yin (and visa versa). However, in true philosophical Taoist fashion, the yin and the yang represent a fully deconstructed dynamic already----there is no dominance/marginaliztion nor any stabilization of meaning on one side---one always becomes the other around the center presence of the Tao. In fact, trouble arises when one becomes dominant over the other, and the balance is lost.

    I enjoyed Lucifer, even if at times the story was overly contrived, and there were epsiodes where I wish he would have secretly used his abilities more, but I look forward to the second season.
     

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