Origin of God? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, April 21, 2016, 13:44 (2920 days ago) @ David Turell

David: Certainly more mature, but we don't know that God loves us, that being a human hopefulness about God. So finally all we can do is look at that He created which included us and our lives.
dhw: So the mature view of God should equal convincing ourselves that he represents love and honour, not war and fear, but that is a matter of hope, and all we can do is look at the mixture of love, honour, war and fear he created, and conclude that he is…? Well, what do you see as the “mature” concept of God?-DAVID: War and fear are human creations or haven't you noticed? Yes, He granted us free will, but it is not His fault that we screw it up; it is ours. Limiting our concept of God to what He created is mature per Armstrong.-War is conflict, and the prey fears the predator, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that conflict and fear pervaded the natural world long before humans came on the scene, just as they still do, or haven't you noticed cats fighting, or the mouse running away from the cat? I agree that limiting our concept of God to what he created is the best way to imagine what he is like, and I am surprised that you consider all the natural disasters, destructions, diseases, conflicts and fears of life's history to be the fault of humans even before we were around. If God exists, I can find credible reasons why he would create the great mixture of “good” and “bad”, but they would not alter the fact that if we try to gauge his nature from what he created, it is difficult to suppose that as first cause he only created the “good” and had no knowledge of the “bad”.