Is God Altruistic? Is God Happy?

[Rogue]

I am trying to say that SPAG is a result from not taking the buy-bull literally. I was SPAGing when I became atheist. I no longer SPAG.

That didn't help. I still don't know what "SPAG" means/is. You're talking to an old fart.

Self
Projection
As
God

[brewer]

That didn't help. I still don't know what "SPAG" means/is. You're talking to an old fart.

Self
Projection
As
God

Damn solipsists. 

[Drich]

---

Hey-sus... help me.

WHERE DO YOU SEE DISINTEREST AND SELFISHNESS IN GOD Where are you estimating God is showing disinterest and selfishness given what you quoted in scripture.

I'm not estimating that God is showing disinterest, for a start.  In the scriptures quoted, God is clearly showing an interest - this is part of what prevents God from being altruistic.  In order for him to be so, he would have to show disinterest (from the definition you quoted)

I think a fair point is that 'selfless' and 'selfish' are not necessarily opposites.  That God is not selfless is shown by his requirements that human beings do and believe certain things.  This doesn't make God necessarily selfish, but he does indicate a certain level of self-interest which - again - precludes his being altruistic according to the definition you quoted.

Boru

How is it 'self interest' if it is the truth? Is expecting people to seek and follow the truth selfish? While helping people on a global scale such as God does, is it wrong to expect people to act and understand who and how God works if for no other reason than to be counter productive to what it is God is doing?

[Rogue]

define care.

You are being pedantic. 

care
/ker/
noun
noun: care

1. 1.
   the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.
   "the care of the elderly"
   
   
   

To be altruistic you take care of others, not your own things. You can plainly see no gods are taking care of this planet and its inhabitants.

Are you being altruistic when you shave? Mow your lawn? Put gas in your car? Take care of your children?

[Acrobat]

My answer to- Is God altruistic is no, that is not possible. Everything Yahweh does in the buy-bull is for his own pleasure such as worship by piss ants compared to His glory and magnificence.

My answer to- is God happy is no, I think it needs a psychiatrist. I am perplexed as to why God would even have emotions. Human emotions have a function. Love for reproduction and sanctity of life. Anger for strength. Guilt for self-reflection. I think you see where I'm going with this. Yea, I cannot reconcile how a disembodied brain would even exist even in the strangest of places in our universe. I am not trying to claim there is, I do not believe the woo woo. If somebody can convince me why the supreme being that existed before time and space has emotions, I might change my mind.

God doesn't have emotions, at least not in the way we speak of emotions, which result as a reactions to things, like seeing a newborn baby, or someone spitting on you. God is unchanging, so it would be false to say God feels one thing, then feels something different later on, etc.

We might use expressions that imply God has emotions like we do, but these are to be taken metaphorically, as a result of the limits of our language in our expressions about God. 

God's charachreristics  like Goodness Love, are statements about God's being, what he embodies. An expression like God hates sin, can be understand as sins reaction to God's love, like an objects reactions to being in close proximity to the sun, which implies not a change in the nature of the sun, just the object itself. 

When speaking of God natures an orthodox believer is referring to his eternal, unchanging nature.

[The Grand Nudger]

Guess that's just another thing that magic book got wrong, then.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm not estimating that God is showing disinterest, for a start.  In the scriptures quoted, God is clearly showing an interest - this is part of what prevents God from being altruistic.  In order for him to be so, he would have to show disinterest (from the definition you quoted)

I think a fair point is that 'selfless' and 'selfish' are not necessarily opposites.  That God is not selfless is shown by his requirements that human beings do and believe certain things.  This doesn't make God necessarily selfish, but he does indicate a certain level of self-interest which - again - precludes his being altruistic according to the definition you quoted.

Boru

How is it 'self interest' if it is the truth? Is expecting people to seek and follow the truth selfish? While helping people on a global scale such as God does, is it wrong to expect people to act and understand who and how God works if for no other reason than to be counter productive to what it is God is doing?

We seem to be at cross-purposes.  Truth or falsity has nothing to do with self interest, and you seem to be having trouble distinguishing between 'selfish' and 'self interest'.  Furthermore, I'm not saying that God's described behaviour is wrong or inimical in any way, merely that it isn't altruistic.  God expects things in return for his help, which is the antithesis of altruism.  It may be perfectly reasonable for God to 'expect people to act and understand who and how God works' in order for God to help them. But the very expectation precludes altruism.

Suppose I give a homeless person $10 000.  If I hand it to him, and walk away and never think about it again, that's altruism.  If I hand him the money and say, 'You have to spend this on food, housing and medical care', it's still a gift that accomplishes some good, but it isn't altruistic.  ANYthing with conditions attached - no matter how reasonable those conditions are - cannot, by definition, be altruistic.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

My answer to- Is God altruistic is no, that is not possible. Everything Yahweh does in the buy-bull is for his own pleasure such as worship by piss ants compared to His glory and magnificence.

My answer to- is God happy is no, I think it needs a psychiatrist. I am perplexed as to why God would even have emotions. Human emotions have a function. Love for reproduction and sanctity of life. Anger for strength. Guilt for self-reflection. I think you see where I'm going with this. Yea, I cannot reconcile how a disembodied brain would even exist even in the strangest of places in our universe. I am not trying to claim there is, I do not believe the woo woo. If somebody can convince me why the supreme being that existed before time and space has emotions, I might change my mind.

God doesn't have emotions, at least not in the way we speak of emotions, which result as a reactions to things, like seeing a newborn baby, or someone spitting on you. God is unchanging, so it would be false to say God feels one thing, then feels something different later on, etc.

We might use expressions that imply God has emotions like we do, but these are to be taken metaphorically, as a result of the limits of our language in our expressions about God. 

God's charachreristics  like Goodness Love, are statements about God's being, what he embodies. An expression like God hates sin, can be understand as sins reaction to God's love, like an objects reactions to being in close proximity to the sun, which implies not a change in the nature of the sun, just the object itself. 

When speaking of God natures an orthodox believer is referring to his eternal, unchanging nature.

'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.'  How is this not an emotion?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

See, the Name of the Lord comes from afar,
with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke;
his lips are full of wrath,
and his tongue is a consuming fire.

Guy even has a favorite kinda chick...the scared kind.

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

[Acrobat]

God doesn't have emotions, at least not in the way we speak of emotions, which result as a reactions to things, like seeing a newborn baby, or someone spitting on you. God is unchanging, so it would be false to say God feels one thing, then feels something different later on, etc.

We might use expressions that imply God has emotions like we do, but these are to be taken metaphorically, as a result of the limits of our language in our expressions about God. 

God's charachreristics  like Goodness Love, are statements about God's being, what he embodies. An expression like God hates sin, can be understand as sins reaction to God's love, like an objects reactions to being in close proximity to the sun, which implies not a change in the nature of the sun, just the object itself. 

When speaking of God natures an orthodox believer is referring to his eternal, unchanging nature.

'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.'  How is this not an emotion?

Boru

Since God is immutable, God can't feel differently towards Jacob than he does towards Essau. It can only be that he is the same towards both of them, but both Jacob and Esau experience it differently. Since God's immutability is a fundamental orthodox belief, passages of scripture written of in such away are recognized more metaphorically than literally, as expression of the limits of human language when speaking of God. 

There's a passage in Paul about doing good towards one's enemies, and that doing good to them, is experienced by ones enemies as pouring hot coals over their head. Unlike when one does good towards one's friend. If one loves his enemies and his friends, while one's love might be the same towards both, that love is experienced differently by the two. 

The love of God feels like hatred upon those that are defiant towards God's will, and Grace towards those that do the will of God.