As Above, So Below - the religion thread (formerly: People of California, beware)

gayest Dark Lord......EVER.

Piss off! He's GREAT!
And RED!
He's like Hellboy's evil twin.

I find you objectionable.

I don't get it. Is it because I start with 'I think' ??

I have no idea what a wanker is?
Tom

Brit slang for someone who masterbates.

Now you know why a certain composer changed his name to Wander

You are asking about the theodicea (not sure how you spell the English for it), which is quite the problem for theology, actually. I don't know the most recent theory. Personally, I don't think of it too much, having been born too long after the Holocaust, but it has made people wonder even in the Biblical terms. Your question makes me want to take another look at the Book of Job, really.

The concept of the free will is something quite important in Catholicism. Basically, you are allowed to do what you want and you'll go to Heaven or Hell based on your deeds, but if you don't want God in your life, it's not like He will impose himself on you. I think that's the basic Catholic theory, but it's not something I ponder much about. Really, I don't have very many religious thoughts, so it doesn't "take me over"

I do believe in a personal God, but I am not thinking too much of theological issues, just trying to live my life here on Earth and hope I'm being good enough! Religion is more of a metaphysical framework to me rather than a set of activities or even thoughts. I just haven't found anything better for my spiritual needs. I am aware of scientific discoveries, but haven't found anything that would disprove a deity's existence or rather I believe it can't be proved nor disproved.

Evil? Yeah, it's there all the time. I do believe quite a lot in free will, but that's about it. I guess wondering about free will or no free will and handling those things in everyday life is, frankly, a more psychological problem to me than theological or even philosophical.... I have to ponder more about this.

By calling it a psychological problem, I merely meant that it's an issue I am trying to deal with myself

Why don't you believe in free will?

I ain't no preacher!

To me it looks like this. Neurology of course comes in, but I come from the perspective that a person basically does what they want when they want and how they want to do. Morality, which was something discovered back in 16th Century (late 16th Century and I don't know that much about this particular text, the Essays of Michel Montaigne), is nothing more than a social construct that helps society basically handle itself. I still haven't fully explored by the relation between law and morality, because law is more about holding the social order together (but not in the sense of holding the social behavior together, I mean I agree with Erving Goffman, who says that a mental illness is in a lot of cases a social way of handling people who break the basic rules of communication and of basic behavior, his definition of depression as a situation when a person is tired of playing their social role and realizes what it really is has made me think quite a lot).

Whether we stick to the moral rules outlined by the society in many ways, is a matter of choice. One of course may be a psychopath and basically don't have the "moral nerve" and for example, kill people just because they merely feel like it (though in case of serial killers it's a much more complex issue with the evidence suggesting repeated patterns interpreted in a strictly psychological way, let's say if a murderer kills very pregnant women by shooting them in the uterus and the head, it hints at the problem of being born, just an invention here). The moral order as I said is outlined, and often codified, in many ways using many sources. There is the ethic theory of the ancient Greek and Roman sources (which led to the codification of Roman law that is still the basis of legal proceedings), there is the Torah, the Law of the Bible. But as much as law and any ethical codification is basically a showcase of the consequence of a behavior, it is still a conventional contract we subconsciously agree to sign, when we decide to live in the society. Cutting an old tree to have a great camera setup (Akira Kurosawa) might lead to great cinematic results. But it's not something society really likes, outstanding individuals are allowed more, because of what they bring to society and culture. If you walked the street wearing two different socks, you would be scolded as crazy, unless your name is Albert Einstein. He was a genius, he was allowed more.

Free will is the decision of the path we take and the way we take it. We might choose to adhere strictly to moral and religious rules (which at an early point of human development were the same, this explains why Torah may be precisely the legal code of conduct for Israelis, both in an informal and formal sense, I believe this is the case of the shariah as well), we might choose to break them. We may choose to limit our lives to be closer to God or we may not. It's up to us. In the Bible it's explained through the moment when Adam and Eve commit the Original Sin.

I guess theologists wouldn't agree with me and what I am saying is a blasphemy, but I don't think one can ignore the positive aspect of the Original Sin. This is my honest belief here. God created humanity to control the living beings on the Earth he created. I don't have to explain the Tree of Life and the Tree of Good and Evil, because it's widely known. The whole history of the creation and of the Paradise (Eden, coming from edin meaning merely garden). God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden, so they don't eat from the Tree of Life anymore. Where does it lead us?

Conscience and awareness or immortal life. I personally believe that with all the negative implications of a mortal life (the pain of birth-giving, etc.), what we got is what makes as human, which is inquisitiveness, conscience, the intelligence. God is ironic, saying that he's scared of them being like that in an immortal life. This brings us closer to who God is. Then again, we must wonder whether everything happened by design. To be honest? I think it did. Having created humanity, God KNEW we would break his basic rules, because he designed us to break his rules and go off on our own. And by design, we have to choose whether we are good people or bad people. He doesn't impose Himself on us. He wants us, but it doesn't mean that He will push himself on us. If we reject Him, it's not His problem. It's our problem. The ball is on our side.

Oooooo, I'm dying to jump in here on the "no free will" bit, but it would completely go off the actual topic, so I'll try and contain myself a bit.

I think Bruce Hood puts it quite well in the interview I linked to above:



I suppose put another way, we cannot choose to choose!

That's a bit too determinist to my taste, to be honest.

Some explanations I've heard from Christians:

1.We live in a fallen world. Some Christians (the creationist kind) believe it's because a couple of ancestors ate some fruit, and God got mad and punished us for disobeying him. I find this view to be the most twisted take on the question, as you have to have a warped and outdated moral system to believe that it's right to punish you for the wrongdoings of your ancestors. People who believe this also insist on putting all the blame on us, and they tend to avoid saying that we are being punished by God, and instead say vague phrases like "sin brought evil into the world", even though they full well know that sin alone can't create something as complex as a Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria for instance, and that God would have had to meticulously create this evil, out of many, to be able to infect us and cause us to suffer.
2.The saner ones accept the findings of science, and believe the ills are simply here because God used the method of evolution (with the help of other processes with random elements) to create us, and one consequence is that all organisms exploit all the niches they can, only with their own fitness in mind, i.e. irrespective of the preferences of human beings; natural disasters are also part of the randomness inherent in nature. This answer doesn't really address why God would use this system in the first place though, as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being would have been aware of the immense suffering this method of creation would cause.
3.The most annoying and nebulous one is about free will, and that this ill defined term is so important, because otherwise we would be robots or something. It annoys me, because a world without cancer for instance woudn't take away our free will, in fact in such a world we would have more free will. The argument of free will only seems to address the existence of suffering caused by other human beings, and not suffering caused by bacteria, mutations or natural disasters. Another problem with it is that Heaven is supposed to be better than this life, in fact it's supposed to be perfect and free of sin, so according to the argument there wouldn't be free will in Heaven and we would be robots... and yet Heaven is supposed to be a better world than this one... What I find most annoying about this argument is that it highlights how religious people tend to quell cognitive dissonance with vagueries and poetic wording, so they end up offering beautiful sounding gibberish that only raises more questions than it solves (that be zero).
4.Suffering brings us closer to God/Jesus. This is actually true. People tend to become more religious when they are experiencing hardship. Of course this raises countless other questions as well, for instance why God didn't set up a system without suffering, where joy for instance brought us closer to him.
5.In comparison to the eternity of Heaven, the hardship we face here on Earth would be nothing. I guess this kinda makes sense, if you view life and suffering as a mathematical equation. This view also seems rather nihilistist, as it essentially states that nothing we do matters, except this one question about what God you believe exists.
6.The only good Christian response is that God can't be both benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. Of course, this doesn't address the problem of evil, but simply informs you that your question doesn't apply to that particular person.

Peter