This guy needs to learn how to THINK. God cannot be evil, because that would imply the existence of a higher standard than Himself, which He hasn't lived up to. But there can be no "higher standard" than God Himself
A lot would be depend on what the person means by God. If you mean "an omnipotent being," then is that sufficient to guarantee that this is a good being?
Actually, yes - for the reason I stated above. For God to be "bad" implies that there is some standard higher than Himself which He has not met... and therefore, by definition, "God" would not be God. What would in that case be worthy of worship would be that higher standard.
The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still. I cannot and never could persuade myself that such defiance is displeasing to the supreme mind. There is something holier about the atheism of a Shelley than about the theism of a Paley. That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem. The point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receives the divine approval: the orthodox, pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify God are condemned. Apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is not to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. Just as the pupil advances to more perfect arithmetic not by throwing his multiplication table away but by working it for all it is worth.
From "De Futilitate," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp.69-70.
That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem.
I dunno. God Himself answers Job and wasn't to happy with Job's kvetching. It was Job's acknowledgement that although he, at least temporarily lost trust in God's plan, shouldn't be judging God that ended up being what God blessed.
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This guy needs to learn how to THINK. God cannot be evil, because that would imply the existence of a higher standard than Himself, which He hasn't lived up to. But there can be no "higher standard" than God Himself
A lot would be depend on what the person means by God. If you mean "an omnipotent being," then is that sufficient to guarantee that this is a good being?
Actually, yes - for the reason I stated above. For God to be "bad" implies that there is some standard higher than Himself which He has not met... and therefore, by definition, "God" would not be God. What would in that case be worthy of worship would be that higher standard.
What if God was the Calvinistic God?
Depends on what you think "good" is doesn't it?
Depending on what YOU think is "good" is the same thing as making yourself God. You have made yourself that higher standard, to which God must submit.
The sin of Lucifer, the sin of Adam... the sin, when one thinks about it, of all of us.
The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still. I cannot and never could persuade myself that such defiance is displeasing to the supreme mind. There is something holier about the atheism of a Shelley than about the theism of a Paley. That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem. The point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receives the divine approval: the orthodox, pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify God are condemned. Apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is not to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. Just as the pupil advances to more perfect arithmetic not by throwing his multiplication table away but by working it for all it is worth.
From "De Futilitate," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp.69-70.
That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem.
I dunno. God Himself answers Job and wasn't to happy with Job's kvetching. It was Job's acknowledgement that although he, at least temporarily lost trust in God's plan, shouldn't be judging God that ended up being what God blessed.
Wasn't Jesus also treated unjustly?
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