How God works (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 16:58 (4119 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

As a hypothetical explanation of this life's mixture of good and bad, suffering and joy etc., I suggested that God created it as an entertainment to relieve his eternal boredom. This would justify Tony's claim that he HAD to make the world this way, but at the same time would make God responsible for a great deal of the suffering. -TONY: Well, if God did create us for endless entertainment, don't you think he would want to avoid the endless frustration of dealing with a bunch of whiny, ignorant, violent, hard-headed assholes?-He wouldn't have to deal with them, any more than we have to deal with the violent assholes we watch night after night on our TV screens for our entertainment. Once they've gone, they've gone. Imagine a TV schedule that consisted of nothing but feel-good movies, newspapers with nothing but tales of how wonderful everything is, books without a hint of suffering. As always, you start off with a very particular concept of God, and impose it on the observable world, as follows:-TONY: (See numerous references to God being hurt in his heart over our actions...doesn't sound like much fun or good entertainment to me.)-You quite rightly question the claims of scientists whose work can be and is tested against observable reality, and yet you base your beliefs on ancient texts largely written by unknown authors, as if these fallible humans presented infallible evidence! How do YOU know that God is hurt? The hypothesis I have offered you makes no claims to "truth". It is, like all theories, an attempt to join up the dots of observable reality into a coherent pattern. Your only objection to it is that it doesn't fit your pattern of a God who cares, but you yourself have admitted that you do not know WHY your caring God created a world of joy mixed with suffering. The pleasure we all seem to have in watching other people's suffering (as well as love, happiness, humour, adventure etc.) on film, in books, in plays may be shared by the God in whose image you think we are made. The mixture IS the entertainment. -The above is simply a theistic (or deistic) hypothesis that might explain the mixed world we know, but your image of God as a "parent figure" trying to teach us, being upset when we fail to learn, allowing us time "to come to our senses", is not derived from your observation of the world we know. It is derived from those ancient texts, as is even more obvious when you describe the visions you have of the future. Like David, I respect your faith and your scholarship, and like BBella I concede that nothing is impossible (within subjective boundaries of common sense). Perhaps, again in line with BBella's posts, there are personal experiences that have convinced you of your God's caring love. I'm in no position to say what is true and what is not, but I hope you will understand why I find the arguments themselves so deeply unconvincing: quoting religious texts does not provide evidence that those religious texts are true!