Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Thursday, November 26, 2009, 03:41 (5263 days ago) @ dhw

Here's the second part:-"By accident, he therefore brought into being..."-Wow, did I ever say that? Talk about dementia! I'm sorry! What I meant to say is that he spun fundamentals off himself which would eventually evolve into life, with all its attendant conflicts and joys (mostly joys). But in any particular case, he didn't bring anything into being. All he did was spin off enough fundamentals to give rise to the Big Bang. Everything after that just happened naturally.-"Thanks to his infinite consciousness he's aware of every single creature (since he loves them all)..."-Jeez! Did I say that??? Whap me aside the head! I didn't mean to say that God is aware of every single creature because (synonym for "since") he loves them all. It is his perfect perspective that causes God to love all individuals in the universe, from atom to humans and beyond. What this means is that he wills the self-actualization of every individual, although he can only help conscious individuals along that road. He wills the self-actualization of every individual because when that happens, God's own self-realization is advanced. So it is in God's own self-interest that he wants to see each individual realize its full potential. Do you see how this all hangs together, and why God's "selfishness" is actually good for every individual?-I might add that sometimes conscious individuals act demonically. Basically, God can't get in there, at all. God is simply helpless in that case, and can only offer aid to the victims, if they are open to it. I imagine God regrets the development of demonic individuals. God's love is only manifest when he can get through to an individual. Therefore it is never manifest to unconscious individuals and probably not to demonic individuals either, regardless of how much he wants to get through to them.-"He's therefore aware of every scream of pain, every maiming, premature death, depression, disaster etc."-In other words, those extremely rare events that hardly ever happen in the entire life of any individual -- except when self-conscious creatures arrive on the scene, and then it's just a few thousand years compared to the two million years of the entire species. So in the big picture, it's just a blip. He's also aware of all the ecstasy in every individual, which is 99.99% of existence. Overall, life is amazingly pain-free and is mostly full of joy.-"(The joys too, but these are not my focus here.)"-As irrelevant as your focus might be to the main thrusts in life.-"And the almost-but-not-quite-ultimate horror is that he can't do anything about it."-It's so minor in the big picture that it simply doesn't matter. Most animals only experience pain in the throes of death and that only lasts a tiny fraction of their entire life, even in infants.-"(The ultimate horror would be that he enjoys it.)"-That's incoherent and inconsistent with God's perfect perspective. It's an anthropomorphic nightmare that is denied by mystical experiences throughout the ages. Enjoying the pain of others is precisely caused by limited perspective: the sadist does not truly put himself in the place of the tortured and does not have empathy with the pain. But God cannot help experiencing all the pain and sadness of every individual. To illustrate just how incoherent your view is, if God was the cause of pain and enjoyed it, why wouldn't he have arranged the laws of nature to be 99.99% painful instead of 99.99% joyful? This nightmare possibility you offer just doesn't make a bit of sense no matter how you look at it, and is entirely the result of limited perspective.-"These are what I see as "broad strokes" of your theology, and I have to say I find them pretty repugnant."-Well, hopefully I've given you a proper perspective and you now see that in fact it's just the opposite of what you've been lamenting. No wonder you've preferred to be agnostic, with such a skewed view on life. -I think the entire reason for your dismal attitude about existence is the bugaboo I've been complaining about recently: limited perspective! You're the classic case of someone who remembers the hits and forgets the misses. You concentrate on the extreme minority of "bad" things and forget all about what happens most of the time. As far as human beings go, we've hardly been around for more than a blink of the eye. If we survive, we'll be around for billions of years, and we'll all be happy billionaires, as Ray Kurzweil explains it.-Stay tuned for more.