I hold this "truth" to be self-evidently ridiculous

[BurtWorm]

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001588.html

I believe that God created man in his image and that our dignity (literally our "worth) is based on this imago Dei


What about you?

[LizMoonstar]

1. i always thought

that it is a way cooler and more 'special' origin for us to have if against seemingly ridiculous odds, we evolved into what we are today. to me saying, well some dude just made us, makes me feel less worthy.

i'm working and can't find quite the right words to explain what i mean, but it pretty much goes along with carl sagan's view if that helps.

[BurtWorm]

2. I understand what you mean, and I agree with you.

:toast:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. Me, too

Adam and Eve? Boring. What's so miraculous about throwing a couple of humans into a garden?

Now eons of evolution? THAT's miraculous! I can't understand why fundamentalists settle for the myth.

[OneBlueSky]

3. then again, maybe man created god in HIS image . . . n/t

.

[More Than A Feeling]

5. To me, saying that God created man in his image...

means that we are capable of infinitely more than we settle for now. It says that man may have fallen, but some of the original perfection is still there, and we have a duty to live up to that. It's where conscience comes from.

So, no, I don't think that truth is self-evidently ridiculous.

[trotsky]

6. Not infinitely.

If we were capable of "infinitely" more, then we could become gods just as powerful as your god.

No, if we are to believe the Christian myth, then we must believe in a god who creates only creatures that are woefully inferior to itself.

[More Than A Feeling]

7. fine, poor choice of words

what I should have said was "so much more"

[trotsky]

9. Still a depressing theology.

After all, any finite amount is incomparable to infinity. From the perspective of an infinite being, human beings would be capable of just about as much as a single-celled organism.

[More Than A Feeling]

11. That would be where love and mercy come in

so that even though a person fails to live up to the standard, they don't have be consumed by guilt or give up, if they accept the love and forgiveness being offered, (or some other method that gives them hope and value, in the case of other religions/ideologies)

[trotsky]

12. Whoa

We are expected to live up to a standard that we can't ever meet - because we were specifically created to be inferior. But thanks to your god's bountiful love and mercy, he's willing to overlook the shortcomings that he himself created in us.

What a swell guy.

[More Than A Feeling]

13. Well, as you know...

in the beginning, we didn't have to worry about any of this. But because we were created with some modicum of free will (which we already discussed, and whether or not that's a shortcoming depends on how you look at it), something changed and people "fell", and are now in this situation. Some say that the story of the fall is a metaphor for when people gained the conscious characteristics that made them different from animals. Others say that the story of Adam and Eve took place outside of time. Of course there are the literalists who say that the Garden of Eden is in the Middle East somewhere. Either way, its led us to this place that we are in now.

[trotsky]

14. No, I don't know that.

I understand that is the myth at the heart of Christianity, but we don't "know" that humans "fell" from some state of bliss.

Besides, this only shifts the design flaw. Instead of your god intentionally creating inferior creatures from the outset, he creates creatures that will become inferior after exercising their "free will." And much like a child will behave if you put a desired toy on the floor in front of it and admonish him, "No, don't touch this, OK?", humans reached out so they could understand the difference between right and wrong, and became eternally cursed - UNLESS we plead for god's forgiveness, to be spared from the punishment that will result from the system that was created in the first place... by god.

[More Than A Feeling]

15. I should have said as you have heard...

wait, why am I even telling you this? Why do you keep asking me questions, when you have already rejected everything I have been saying, before I said it?

Well, perhaps it is my fault for not telling you something that maybe you should know. If you think that I haven't experienced atheism, you would be mistaken. I spent the first nineteen years of my life as an atheist (parents didn't give a care about religion, so I heard nothing at all on the subject from them. Had to find out everything for myself.)

So, I made a choice to believe, which is what I think everyone should have, and how I will raise my child, should I have one. It's why my denomination is Baptist, because I don't believe children should be baptized before they know what its all about.

I also didn't start out as orthodox as I am now. I started out as a very liberal "Jesus was a great teacher" type of Christian. So I have been both atheist and liberal christian, and I sympathize with you all. I am radically in favor of the separation of church and state. But I know what I believe, and it has come out of my experiences and learning I have done on my own. Because of that, I feel the truth of what I am saying, and I don't feel the need to heap the accusations and blame on God, as you have been doing (which is fine, by the way. That has a long and honorable tradition dating back to the Book of Job. I just don't agree.)

Anyway, that is my story, and you want to continue the discussion, we can. But I want you to know what sort of person you are dealing with, so you can make that decision with as much information as possible.

[trotsky]

16. How can I blame something that doesn't exist?

I am just trying to see the reasoning behind loving/worshipping/etc. a god that, if it created us, made us inferior either by choice or by design, and then set up a bunch of arbitrary rules to condemn us by because being imperfect - as it designed us - means we are destined for punishment.

If you say you were an atheist, fine. Just as I used to be a Christian, but then found way too many problems with the theology that offended my intellectual and moral senses. I see you have no answers for them either.

[More Than A Feeling]

18. ok, let us continue then...

In your ideas of what God is like, reacting to what Christianity says, your picture of God is a crooked card-dealer in a casino, where all the people who stay in the hotel are forced to play.

But you are attributing too much to God (in your story of what God is like). How could God make us equal to him? God is absolute, and therefore, by definition, if he made something that was the same as him, it would still be him. More absoluteness. If the Christian story is correct, if God had done this, we would never have existed as we do now. Also, God may be all-powerful, but he cannot do what is intrinsically impossible, such as make 2+2=4 and 5 at the same time, because that would be sheer nonsense.

Taking a look at the rules issue, again, some of the rules that the Bible attributes to God are really what God wants, and others are unique to the culture they were created in. You can't build a stable society based on the idea that murder and thievery amongst the members of said society is good, so not doing those are probably close to if not exactly, what God wants (lots of uncertainy, I'm sure you would agree). Now, whether you wear two types of cloth together, or who is screwing who, those are probably cultural(IMO, if you asked someone else, you'd probably get a different answer.) There is human action there, its not all God.

As to the destined for punishment thing, well, no one really knows that for sure except God, right(again, assuming the Christian story to be true)? What we have heard is that the results will be surprising , and that it has something to do with being a good person. Faith comes in because if someone doesn't know the forgiveness and love is there, how can they ask for it and take it? It'd be like if I had never heard of soup, and you invited me to dinner and asked me what I wanted, would you expect me to be able to tell you that i liked and wanted soup, without me knowing what it is and accepting that it is possible for me to have soup for dinner?

[trotsky]

19. A moral dilemma for your god.

Stay alone and eternal, or create temporal beings who must necessarily be inferior, and know that some will suffer terribly simply because they didn't understand the rules. What exactly was "incomplete" about god before it decided it needed to create humans? And by being incomplete, doesn't that mean god WASN'T an infinite and perfect being?

And regarding those rules, how about abortion? Blood tranfusions? Euthanasia? A fairly stable society can exist with all or none of those, can't it? So what's god's stance on those issues? How do you determine that? Plus the thousands of other moral quandaries that aren't found in any bible and have multiple answers.

Your soup analogy fails on way too many levels for me to try and address it.

[More Than A Feeling]

20. I'll take the second one first.

The Bible not a political platform. Simple as that. You can't take a look at the Bible and go "Oh, chapter 20, verse 2: Thou shalt pass a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus saith the Lord". Taking every word and and verse at face value and applying them all is bibliotry, meaning you are worshipping a book, rather than God. There is room open for people to interpret it for themselves.

It's become a cliche to say "God is Love". Well, what does it mean to love, without something to apply the love to? What does it mean to love something, if its just another part of you? Doesn't there have to be something independent of you for love to really be meaningful? A God who loves must have someone to love, and because as previously mentioned, God can't create more God, the someone to love must then of course be temporal.

Are you enjoying these marathon apologetics? Probably nothing you haven't heard before, right?:-)

[trotsky]

23. Who said anything about flag burning?

I'm talking about serious and difficult moral questions, on which the bible is completely silent AND on which people use their own innate feelings to come to completely different conclusions.

Not to mention issues like homosexuality where the bible does have some verses that seem to condemn it, but some liberal Christians tell us that those aren't what they seem. Says who? What gives you the authority to pick & choose which parts of the bible you want to believe?

"God is love." Yes, it is a cliche, and it explains nothing. It's a "feel good" explanation. The big problem is, the answers that make you feel good aren't always right or even meaningful.

If your god just had to create something to love, then it wasn't complete. And if the god wasn't complete, then it wasn't infinite or perfect, and thus wasn't god.

[More Than A Feeling]

24. Like I said, some of it is from God, some of it is culture-specific

Correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard that homosexuality was more widely accepted in Greek and Roman culture than it is today. If the verses that condemn it are taken at face value, is it really so shocking that a counter-culture (which Christianity was, before Constantine.) would be against something that the dominant cultures were ok with? Both the dominant cultures and Christianity are changed today, so just because that original tension is recorded in the Bible, I see no reason to bring it back, regarding the issue of homosexuality. I am all for gay and lesbians having equal rights under the law, including the freedom to marry whom they wish.

Again, the Bible is a temporal product, written by humans, so they are naturally going to put stuff particular to themselves in it. The value of the Bible can be two-fold: first, a cultural treasure trove consisting of hundreds of years of an ancient Hebrew culture and the beginning of the culture of Christianity (whether you believe or not, it has had tremendous influence for good and ill), and second, if you believe that within it is contained revelations from God. (It has some good ethics in it too, apart from all the religious stuff, but as others have pointed out, you can find similar things in other ancient and modern writings, so I don't see that as being specifically valuable to the Bible.)

So my theology is depressing, and I have "feel good" explanations? Shouldn't it be one or the other?

I am not sure about your take on love, but the little I understand about it tells me that in order to love others you have to first be alright with yourself, else you will be too self-absorbed to really build a meaningful relationship. So one can be complete within oneself, and still have the capacity and the desire to love others. So it may be with God. Now, as I mentioned previously, if love is not shared, what good is it? Since according to the story, it doesn't mention anything that wasn't God in the beginning (prior to creation), if God is going to have perfect love, He is going to share it with something that is not Himself, which will have to be created by Him. (Of course, God has no gender, I use one merely for the sake of brevity and to avoid saying the word God so much)

[trotsky]

25. How does that answer anything?

"some of it is from God, some of it is culture-specific"

That's the question! Which is which? You evidently have no answer.

And yes, Christian theology is depressing, which is why you have to present "feel good" answers to try and make up for it. "You're born, you suffer, and you die. And after you die, you might just be punished forever because you made the wrong choices, even though we don't know for sure what the correct choices are since we have no way of knowing which orders are from god and which are from people. But don't worry, god is love and he created you to love you!"

Your attempt at rationalizing a complete and perfect god "needing" to do anything falls rather flat. If god could not BE love without something TO love, then he was incomplete before, and thus imperfect. Ergo, he was not god.

[More Than A Feeling]

26. To know that for sure, I'd have to be God.

As I see it, I do the best I can, and have faith that if I have made a mistake here or there (On the one hand, maybe it really was God telling us not to wear two types of cloth together *shrug*. On the other hand, I have a little more confidence that God likes it if I help poor people), I might still get points for the effort. Forgiveness of sins, and all of that. So I could tell you my opinions on which is culture and which is God, but they aren't necessarily going to be more right than yours. We won't know for sure until after we die. All we can do is hope.

If you are depressed by the fact that life has a lot of suffering in it and death is inevitable and maybe everyone hasn't lived the best life that they could, well, welcome to the club. I don't think you have to be religious to realize that human history is a blood-soaked tale of sorrow, punctuated by efforts to rise above that and move forward. Any theology that doesn't take into account human suffering isn't credible, IMO.

Things aren't hopeless. The idea is that we are supposed to show love to our fellow human beings and keep trying to live up to the ideals of love and brotherhood, while having faith that our failures will be forgiven. That to me, is The Good News, which is different from "transgress this law, and I will drop-kick you into hell", which is what I have heard you say Christianity is.

God is called "I am", not "I was" or "I will be". So your idea of God being imcomplete before creating everything doesn't even make sense. I can't imagine there being a "before" or "after" for an eternal being.

[trotsky]

27. So you may burn in hell someday too, huh?

Despite your best efforts, you might just have guessed wrong. But you've got that "hope." Gosh, God, I hope I guessed the correct rules! Strange, how it's like living under a petulant dictator who refuses to say what the laws are. But we can have hope! And forgiveness! Or at least we can hope FOR forgiveness, because that might just be one of those things we guessed wrong about too! Yeah!

I'm not depressed by the amount of suffering in the world. Sure, it sucks, and I wish more people - religious and non-religious - would do something to alleviate it. "Hands that help are better than lips that pray," a wise man once said. But you seem to sidestep the issue here, again. It's not about your theology accommodating suffering, it's about satisfactorily explaining it. You offer no explanation other than, "well, we just gotta trust that it'll work out."

So you can't imagine a time "before" or "after" an eternal being, huh? Well, we're ephemeral, and the earth is ephemeral, so there must have been some passage of time before the earth or its inhabitants existed, but after the universe was created. God just sat around twiddling his thumbs? Being incomplete, and thus imperfect, until he got around to creating us to love him or perish in eternal flame for trying?

No real answers, just canned Sunday School responses.

[BurtWorm]

8. You don't think conscience comes from one's parents or social group?

Do we not have to learn right from wrong? Don't we manifestly learn this from other humans?

[More Than A Feeling]

10. Religions are sub/counter-cultures, so the answer is both.

Also, which part of conscience comes from God v. which part is socially constructed is a question whose answers are going to change depending on who you are. Each of us thinks/acts as if they have an answer to a question. You might say its all socially constructed, I might say that the important things are from God (charity, the injunction against murdering and killing and so on), and the rest is accidental and different for every society. To actually be sure we know the absolute truth on the matter, we'd have to be God, and we are not. To be human means that any answer we give is going to be relative to some degree. Some answers are less relative than others, but there is still a lack of certainty. To be faithful in these matters, IMHO, means to accept an answer, and act on it, but bear in mind the uncertainty, and don't make your answer an idol.

[BurtWorm]

17. How does God enjoin against murder and killing? Through scripture?

Or do you think there might be some divine receiver within individual human beings--maybe in the form of a gene, maybe in some more supernatural form?

[More Than A Feeling]

21. Sorry, I'll get to your questions soon...

As you can see, Trotsky and I are having it out, again. (this is the third time we have discussed aspects of the Christian faith at length, I think).

[BurtWorm]

22. Take your time.

:boring:

I'll just be napping here until you get back.

[grumpy old fart]

28. The issue for me is the relevancy of god. If he is or isn't, so what?

The "rules" are unknowable and the outcome also. The suffering of a little child at the hands of some perverted demon before he ruthlessly kills said child (among other assorted horrors) shows clearly a god who does not actively participate in our world. A god may have started the world (the prime mover issue) but beyond that, any relevancy to our world is beyond me.

[enki23]

29. does god have a foreskin?

fucking inane.

[Darranar]

30. "Image" as in physical image - total nonsense...

"Image" as in the granting of elements of the divine to humans, formerly solely possessed by God, it makes some sense (free will, knowledge of good and evil, sentience, and so on).

The idea does not have to be taken literally.

[BurtWorm]

31. I assure you, it is meant to be taken literally.

It's also difficult to take seriously the idea that our "worth" comes from our reflecting "God" back to "his" "face."

[Darranar]

32. Considering that, in traditional monotheistic theology...

God has no physical image, I do not think at all that it is meant to be taken literally.

As for "value," do you agree that sentient life has value? Could not a theist argue that since sentience is the "image of God" that we have recieved, that is indeed the source of our moral value?

[BurtWorm]

33. As far as I can tell, the value comes entirely from human beings.

Theists may argue that humans are just vessels for the divine criteria, and maybe there's no harm in believing that.