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While I don't want to meet God--if there really is one--too soon it would be a mind boggling experience and questions for days.
But just imagine the lineup!!
A cursory look at stats seems to indicate approximately 154,000 people die each day. I would imagine most would have questions for God...sheesh...good thing eternity is eternal....
A cursory look at stats seems to indicate approximately 154,000 people die each day. I would imagine most would have questions for God...sheesh...good thing eternity is eternal....
Yeah--we would grab a few cold ones, turn on the tunes and hangout, shoot the bull with everyone. Be a good time. Might thank him/her for the abundance of a special herb too.
I agree. It was more the snarky tone I sensed in the question than the question itself. I would not just assume that God was the bad guy and immediately lay into Him. I'd probably think something more along the lines of, "Wow! Okay, so you're God. That's quite an amazing universe you created! And all those people -- not a carbon copy among them! Do you think we could talk awhile? I have a few things I'd like to ask you -- things that bugged me my whole life."
That's an approach, and nothing wrong with it. Anger, disillusionment, disappointment and hurt, honestly expressed, is also an approach with which there's not a thing wrong. It can be argued that a mentally and emotionally healthy person, much less a deity, can and should be unperturbed and unthreatened by such an approach, and that being threatened by the feelings of others is a signal characteristic of emotional immaturity.
That many of us would become defensive and otherizing in the face of someone else's misunderstanding of our pure and elevated motives, and perhaps lash out -- does not mean that god would, or should.
I've noticed that no religious folks, in either this thread or the other one, have made much of an effort to answer Fry's question. Mystic seems to be saying that it is silly to want apples without the tree, but he is not a conventional theist, so he doesn't really need to address the core of the issue here. As UsAll points out, the illogic of an Omni-etc god creating a world with evil runs deep. The classic "problem of evil" in theism is ultimately unanswered, and is a major reason why I am not a theist - or, at least, why I'm not any sort of traditional theist. The classic answer is to point to free will and blame evil on the fall of Adam and Eve, but from a logical point of view this is an incredibly lame response. There's just no way around it; you gotta get rid of at least some of those "Omni" features if you want to reconcile a good, loving god with the existence of suffering.
One classic approach is to say that everything comes out perfect in the end. Suffering is temporary whereas the joys of heaven are eternal. Okay, but that doesn't really explain why the suffering is unavoidable for an Omni-this-n-that god.
To be fair, I should point out that the problem of evil/suffering is not really answered by anyone. The atheist can say "that's just the way it is" and of course that's almost certainly true. Evolution is competitive and chaos underlies the origins of order, so - given that there is qualitative experience at all - it makes sense that there can be suffering. But there is still the nagging lack of theory that really explains the qualitative characteristics of joy and suffering. Is pain and/or suffering inevitable for us? Or could we, in principle, someday eliminate it? In other words: Are joy and suffering in a necessary sort of zero-sum balance, such that any increase in joy has to be balanced by a compensatory increase in suffering? Or could we, in principle, achieve an overall increase in joy that is not compensated by any required increase in suffering (or vice versa)? Would it be possible, in principle, for someone to live an entire lifetime without any suffering - just out of sheer dumb luck, given the nature of statistics in an infinite universe? (Or could we, perhaps, someday play god with the help of technology and design a living being that experiences joy, but never suffers?) Without a theory, we have no way to answer this. And, I have to say, it nags at me a bit.
I suspect that the Buddhists are right: Pain in inevitable, but suffering is not. There are neurological reasons for thinking that suffering may not really be necessary, even if pain is unavoidable. Some patients with Cotard syndrome, for example, feel pain but apparently don't suffer from the pain. (V.S. Ramachandran mentions this in his book The Tell-Tale Brain, p. 282)
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 02-11-2015 at 10:23 AM..
I'd ask the obvious question - why did he made me an atheist?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
I realize that most of the people posting on this thread are atheists and see the possibility of there actually being a God as either very remote or absolutely impossible. But, given the fact that the OP presented a hypothetical scenario in which God really does exist, I am truly blown away by some of the sarcastic responses I've seen here. If I were an atheist, if I were absolutely convinced that God was a figment of some very gullible people's imaginations and then died, only to discover that I was wrong, the last thing I'd be asking God would be, "What up with bone cancer in children?" I'd at least be in awe enough to realize that if this being had been intelligent enough to create me and had had power over when I drew my last breath, I'd likely just hang my head in shame, mumble, "I'm sorry," and hope for the best. I sure wouldn't be so presumptuous as to start bad-mouthing Him. Clearly this Being would have been shown to have powers you could not even conceive of, and probably ought to be at least acknowledged with some degree of respect.
Ironically, your answer here actually supports Stephens Fry's perspective. You are making the assumption that if we say exactly what we think to god, he wouldn't like it therefore we should keep quiet about it - or else. In fact if there is a god, we have no idea how he would respond to Stephens statements. For all we know he might have the utmost respect for Stephen saying his mind. He made Stephen didn't he? What does he have to apologise about? Maybe Stephen is his golden boy who certainly uses his god given brain more than most. Your response is a result of your conditioning with what you imagine god to be. God might for all we know send all those who don't speak their mind to the corner of shame.
That's an approach, and nothing wrong with it. Anger, disillusionment, disappointment and hurt, honestly expressed, is also an approach with which there's not a thing wrong. It can be argued that a mentally and emotionally healthy person, much less a deity, can and should be unperturbed and unthreatened by such an approach, and that being threatened by the feelings of others is a signal characteristic of emotional immaturity.
That many of us would become defensive and otherizing in the face of someone else's misunderstanding of our pure and elevated motives, and perhaps lash out -- does not mean that god would, or should.
You may notice that I said nothing about God's response, though. I doubt he would feel very threatened or perturbed by anyone. My comments pertained solely to the atheist coming face-to-face with God for the first time and starting out the conversation by being snarky. Basically, all I was saying that was if God actually is real, and really did create a universe as magnificent as ours, He may very well be just a tad more intelligent than the smart-alek standing in front of Him. Maybe I should give Him some credit for knowing what He was doing, even if it didn't make sense to me. Some people obviously have a really hard time being proven wrong, and that kind of person was the kind of person I was describing. You've got to know when to back off, and some people just don't. (Not all of them are atheists. )
I'd ask the obvious question - why did he made me an atheist?
Ironically, your answer here actually supports Stephens Fry's perspective. You are making the assumption that if we say exactly what we think to god, he wouldn't like it therefore we should keep quiet about it - or else. In fact if there is a god, we have no idea how he would respond to Stephens statements. For all we know he might have the utmost respect for Stephen saying his mind. He made Stephen didn't he? What does he have to apologise about? Maybe Stephen is his golden boy who certainly uses his god given brain more than most. Your response is a result of your conditioning with what you imagine god to be. God might for all we know send all those who don't speak their mind to the corner of shame.
I just remember my dad saying to me, "Kathryn, it's not what you're saying; it's how you're saying it." Or, "You've got to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable." Civility never did anybody any harm. Don't misunderstand... I believe God gave us our brains for a reason, and He expects us to use them. I was always taught (especially by my dad) that questioning is okay, that doubting is okay. Growing up, I was never once made to feel that God was going to strike me down if I didn't believe everything I heard someone say about Him from the pulpit.
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