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

by dhw, Monday, April 18, 2016, 14:09 (3140 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The OT has a forceful fearful god, the NT preaches love, a good advance. The Koran tells us to look for God is His works, a final more mature approach. It shows us that humans had to mature in their appreciation of who or what God might be. Whether mature religious folks realize it or not, they follow the Koran and look at works.-dhw: I wonder how you define “mature”. .... All three books that you have quoted have been used to justify what you and I would consider some of the most barbaric acts in human history: wars, persecution, terrorism ("Therefore prepare against them [= the unbelievers] what force ye are able, and troops of horse, whereby ye may strike a terror into the enemy of God, and your enemy, and into other infidels besides them, whom ye know not, but God knoweth them” (Koran, Chapter 8). As for the works of God, let us by all means admire the beauty of nature, but let us not forget its indiscriminate violence and brutality. Maybe the three books and the works all capture the many different elements of God (if he exists). After all, if he made man in his image, then man must be his reflection.-DAVID: Misuse of 'image'. Our consciousness and ability to think is the 'image', not what we decide to think. We have free will to be stupid if we wish.-I don't know where you get your authority from, to judge how the word is to be used. I find it difficult to imagine your God creating something which can think thoughts of which he is totally ignorant. “Gosh,” said God, “I knew there was goodness, kindness, love, beauty, harmony, joy, but I had no idea there could be such a thing as evil, greed, violence, cruelty, deceit, selfishness, hatred…I wonder who invented such things.”
 
DAVID: Yes, the Koran has some immature and dangerous passages if followed literally. Man's stupidity in reacting to the religious books is part of a human problem with being free to be stupid. In God's view (I think) humans have to evolve morality. "Do unto others'.-Of course I am all in favour of “Do unto others”. I'm surprised that you are defending these religious books, bearing in mind that they are written by humans who are “free to be stupid” and contain material that encourages “stupid” behaviour. The do-unto-others “morality” is basic to the functioning of human society, and for those who regard God and religious books as indispensable guides (this is not aimed at you, David), it is patently absurd to imagine that society was unable to function “morally” before the arrival of monotheism, let alone the invention of writing.