RE: Is God Altruistic? Is God Happy?
April 1, 2019 at 6:21 am
(This post was last modified: April 1, 2019 at 6:51 am by Acrobat.)
(March 30, 2019 at 5:54 pm)fredd bear Wrote: I've asked this question before, but no one has answered. How can an infinite god be offended or pleased by his finite creations?. Plus, he is omniscient, so knows how each of his creations will behave. The so called free will he bestows is an illusion.
He can't be, at least least not in way that's not radically different than how you or I, and other finite being be pleased or displease with each other.
Our actions can not impact God, because an infinite being is not contingent on our actions, but they can impact us.
(March 30, 2019 at 8:19 am)Rogue Wrote: No it is not perfectly okay to lie to people. The buy-bull lies about God's nature.
It’s not lying though, just resorting to speaking of the nature of God via analogies, because the limits of human language, the limits of the way in which finite beings like ourself can speak of God, and eternal and infinite being.
Quote:If there must be a being that is an emotion, like love, then there must be a god that is hate, a god that is contempt, a god that is happy and a god that is sad.
Love is not an emotion in Christianity, love is way of being. It’s a way of life, and existence itself. It’s not something God feels, but something God is.
Quote:I’m really feeling sorry for God not knowing happiness and joy. I did ask if God was happy and if I listen to you the answer is no God is not happy. God does not feel He is the feeling.
We call humans without emotion sociopaths and psychopaths.
Sure, but God is not human, with fluctuating emotional states. God’s attribute are eternal and infinite, so implying God feels happy at one moment, sad the next moment, angry another moment, negates these essential elements of who God is.
Quote:I seriously cannot comprehend God as love itself. Love does not cause suffering as did God when he created all this per the bible.
Again this assumes love is a function of a being, and not being itself. A god of Love created our world, with its beauty, suffering, pain, and joy, and depth. And it’s not true that a God of love ought not have created a world like ours.
Quote:Human's cannot really know God can they? WE are too stupid. Too limited to our planet. It is an ant trying to understand a human.
Humans can know God, it’s just that our knowledge will always be imperfect, and incomplete, as men seeing through a glass darkly.
Quote:You did not respond to my comment about emotional intelligence. God cannot understand the plight of humans without experiencing emotion. This is why we have empathy for each other. You are saying God has no empathy. [b]I do not want to be judged by a character with no empathy or compassion.
Human beings perhaps can’t understand what others are going through, without experiencing some elements of those aspects themselves. It might be hard for a man to understand the pain of child birth, or parents who never lost a child, to understand the loss of our child. Our emotional understanding develops as the result of our experiences.
But God’s knowledge is not contingent, he doesn’t became aware of something when we perform an action, or actions themselves. He is all knowing, and not just knowing of mathematical truths, all the cold hard facts of reality, but knowledge of all things, including love, suffering, etc… But that knowledge is not dependent on our experiences to exist. It’s been known before we were even created, or formed, known eternally.
Quote:You also did not answer the question: How does sin affect God?
Sin doesn’t affect God, sin affects the sinner.
If I do something wrong towards someone that loves me, like my wife or mother, even if they don’t know about it, it impacts my relationship with them. I feel guilty and ashamed for what I did, it prevents me from having a close relationship with them, from looking at them in the face, our relationship becomes fractured, even if they’re none the wiser. Sin has separated me from them. Maybe I’m afraid they won’t forgive me, maybe I feel unworthy of their love because of my actions. This dark place that I found myself in, is someplace I put myself in, and threw away the key.
I can not draw near to God as the result of my sin, but this doesn’t mean that God has moved away from me, just that I can’t move towards him. I have to recognize his eternal love and forgiveness, the Grace of God, in order to be restored.
In the story of the prodigal son, the son has lived a sinful life, squandered his inheritance, and in the end desires only to be a servant in his father’s house. When the father sees him, he doesn’t condemn him for what he did, hold his sins against him, but celebrates his return, welcomes him as the son, he always was.