I have been meaning to come back to Jorm's post from the thread "Why, God? Why". It was thoughtful and thorough and deserves a response.
I originally addressed the evolution question in my first draft of this answer. I deleted all mention of it for this discussion. I may pick it up in subsequent posts.
When you talk about any similarities with God, you are not talking about physical similarities. God is immaterial. When we say we were made in his image, we mean: a person who is conscious, self-aware, rational, relational, moral agents capable of complex emotions, language, aesthetics, and altruism (to name a few).
Part of being made in the image of God is to be relational. I think a very strong argument could be made that it is better to have relationships than not to--including God. Love, enjoying the successes, sharing in the losses, learning, shared experiences etc. with others adds a component that enhance one's existence to a far greater degree than solo practitioners.
God obviously does not have a gender (being immaterial and all). So any associating with one is purely metaphorical. I think monotheism entails that you have a God with attributes typically associated with males. Why? First, you are right that the male has been the dominate gender through all of world history. Why? Wouldn't the same reasons why males dominated be applied to why God's attributes are seen as more closely aligned with a males (bigger, stronger, anchor, authority, etc.)? Second, because the defined relationship more closely mirrors paternal aspects than maternal aspects. Third, I don't think your point holds up because there were plenty of religious with powerful goddesses in the ancient world so it is not like the Christian God followed a standard model.
If we were made for a purpose, it would seem that purpose has something to do with our ability to have both horizontally and vertically-oriented relationships. The vertical relationship necessarily has vast differences in ability, knowledge, capacity, and experience that is a lot like a parent-child relationship.
It would seem that God's goals and his purpose for making us are wrapped up in one thing. If we know our purpose, we can infer a plan. It is also reasonable that any being with even basic consciousness seeks relationships--let alone beings with advanced consciousness. By its very nature, a relationship with another person adds significant value to both individuals. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus also instructs us as to God's overall purpose: restoration to a state that was possible (call it the original purpose), but needs fixing.
Concerning how we refer to God in a way that shows the appropriate vast separation between beings such as ourselves to another being who can speak a universe into existence and who's will hold all things together--I think you are reaching. Another fact that undermines this point is in the days of Samuel in the OT, Israel clamored for a King. God warned against it but gave them one anyway (including a long list of warnings of what would happen in I Samuel 8). The relationship (even in the OT) was way more complicated that just a king. For a Jew, you did not worship a king, you did not seek atonement for sin from a king, you didn't show absolute obedience to a king. It seems a "king" is a step down and is at best another metaphor that people can understand.
I don't think the fact that we "value life, individual autonomy, family, sex, food, shelter, authority, adulation, loyalty" is because of our "biological nature". We value these things because of advanced consciousness. Any comparison how we perceive God and how we perceive ourselves is entirely due to both are conscious beings.
I think you are probably correct when it comes to many of history's religions. But it is simply not true in Christianity that God is everything man is but bigger/better. Again, the similarities between man and God are because both are conscious beings.
This brings up an interesting point. Compare the combined OT/NT image of God with that of the other civilizations in the same time frame. Jewish theology was way more sophisticated than anything else -- so much so that it is still easily integrated into modern systematic theology. For example, from the beginning, Jews were taught that everything was made by God. Contrast that with all the celestial gods/goddesses, concepts of gods that were contained in idols/temples, or were contained in things like Nature. There were other religions where gods were killed/died/assumed a new form and now a physical feature of the environment. To your point, many religions had gods/goddesses that were so anthropomorphic that they had even the worst qualities of humans. Monotheism was rare (if not unique) because it was far easier for ascribe all manner of conflicting circumstance/activities/physical realities to gods/goddesses. To what do you ascribe the foresight of the ancient Jews to come up with a theology that would survive all of the advancements of civilization in both science and philosophy--even to this day? All it would have taken is one major feature of the framework to prove to be wrong (physically or metaphysically impossible) and the whole theology would have crumbled like every other ancient religion. Don't you find this remarkable?
I chose to answer this summary question paragraph by paragraph. While not as exhaustive as I would have liked, I hope they will be the start of a discussion. I would like to hear your responses.
I will get to the second part of your original post shortly.
(February 9, 2018 at 7:03 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: When we look at things like wants and desires, the things we value and the things we don't, there exists a material explanation in our origin as biological beings. We evolved to have wants and desires and goals and values. We hunger for food when it is necessary that we eat because if we didn't eat, we would die. Evolution only preserves those solutions which are self-justifying. Those animals that didn't get hungry and eat, they died, leaving the world to those that did. Our wants and desires exist in us and other animals because if they didn't, those animals would be replaced in the gene pool by those that did. So evolution provides a material explanation for both why we have wants, generally, and also why we have the specific wants and values that we do. What explains why God has these specific wants, desires, goals, and values?
I originally addressed the evolution question in my first draft of this answer. I deleted all mention of it for this discussion. I may pick it up in subsequent posts.
When you talk about any similarities with God, you are not talking about physical similarities. God is immaterial. When we say we were made in his image, we mean: a person who is conscious, self-aware, rational, relational, moral agents capable of complex emotions, language, aesthetics, and altruism (to name a few).
Quote:It's important to take a closer look at how our biology influences our psychology to underscore just how strange it is that an immaterial spirit would have a similar psychology. For example, as a species, we depend upon one another for the success of the group. We prosper as a species because we depend upon, and support, each others effort to live, succeed and breed. We are a social species. We live in groups, not as solitary individuals. That has implications for our psychology. We will have wants that prod us to engage in social behaviors. We interact with one another because doing so is the ecological niche that we occupy as a species. Why is God a social being? It's not clear.
Part of being made in the image of God is to be relational. I think a very strong argument could be made that it is better to have relationships than not to--including God. Love, enjoying the successes, sharing in the losses, learning, shared experiences etc. with others adds a component that enhance one's existence to a far greater degree than solo practitioners.
Quote:We are a sexual species, in that we are divided into male and female, and the interaction of the two is necessary for our species survival. One might dismiss it as a mere artifact, but God has always been described as sexed. He is a he, not a she. A father, rather than a mother. And Jesus certainly was no eunuch. As theology and apologetics evolve, Christians have tended to distance themselves from such ideas, but they are the history. In the original time in which these ideas were developed, it was a part of our culture that the male of the species was the head, the leader, the source of authority and power. This just naturally gravitated to their ideas about God.
God obviously does not have a gender (being immaterial and all). So any associating with one is purely metaphorical. I think monotheism entails that you have a God with attributes typically associated with males. Why? First, you are right that the male has been the dominate gender through all of world history. Why? Wouldn't the same reasons why males dominated be applied to why God's attributes are seen as more closely aligned with a males (bigger, stronger, anchor, authority, etc.)? Second, because the defined relationship more closely mirrors paternal aspects than maternal aspects. Third, I don't think your point holds up because there were plenty of religious with powerful goddesses in the ancient world so it is not like the Christian God followed a standard model.
Quote:A key aspect of our biology is that we have a parent child relationship, and humans tend to engage in long term bonding. This makes sense because as an animal, we have few offspring, with larger brains, and we invest in that solution to the question of survival by having a prolonged period in which the child is dependent upon the parents. We didn't have to be this way. It is our biology which determines that we are. We could be like the oak tree, that cares not where it's nuts may plant themselves and mature into adult oak trees. Bacteria reproduce and depart from one another, never to be seen together again. Many micro-organisms are similar. The guppy doesn't care for her multitude of young after they are born. Why is God more like us than like the guppy or the oak tree? God wants a parent-child relationship with us. Why? What is the explanation? Our biology explains why we are like this. What is the explanation for God?
If we were made for a purpose, it would seem that purpose has something to do with our ability to have both horizontally and vertically-oriented relationships. The vertical relationship necessarily has vast differences in ability, knowledge, capacity, and experience that is a lot like a parent-child relationship.
Quote:What about goals, plans, and values? Basically these are tools for managing the complexity of our behavioral responses. They are psychological crutches which help us complete long term actions. If we want to become an engineer, we become college students and commit to a goal of completing an education. If we want to live in a house, we develop a plan for sustained effort over time, either to earn enough money or to simply build a house. Why does God have goals, and more specifically, why does he have the goals he does have? Why did God choose these particular goals over some others? Is it just a brute fact of his existence? That he just "happened" to have these goals and plans and values? Why?
It would seem that God's goals and his purpose for making us are wrapped up in one thing. If we know our purpose, we can infer a plan. It is also reasonable that any being with even basic consciousness seeks relationships--let alone beings with advanced consciousness. By its very nature, a relationship with another person adds significant value to both individuals. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus also instructs us as to God's overall purpose: restoration to a state that was possible (call it the original purpose), but needs fixing.
Quote:It's also worth noting how much the definition of God mirrors the assumptions of the era of the men and women who developed our stories and conceptions of him. I already noted the sexist bias of the original stories and concepts, but there's also the historical concepts of nation states, magic, and divine kingship. God is described as "our Lord" and Jesus is called the king of the Jews. This mirrors the political structures of the time, in which ultimate authority and power descended from a king or ruler. Except in Greece, there was little thought of distributing power equally among members of a society, such as in a democracy. God is not an egalitarian; he inhabits a specific power structure. That was also a time when the existence of empires and nations, and the commonplace acceptance of magic -- causing an effect by merely willing it to happen -- were readily accepted. Thus we have a God who establishes a church and who does impressive feats of magic. We no longer accept magic as commonplace. Perhaps if God were re-imagined today, he would be an all encompassing machine.
Concerning how we refer to God in a way that shows the appropriate vast separation between beings such as ourselves to another being who can speak a universe into existence and who's will hold all things together--I think you are reaching. Another fact that undermines this point is in the days of Samuel in the OT, Israel clamored for a King. God warned against it but gave them one anyway (including a long list of warnings of what would happen in I Samuel 8). The relationship (even in the OT) was way more complicated that just a king. For a Jew, you did not worship a king, you did not seek atonement for sin from a king, you didn't show absolute obedience to a king. It seems a "king" is a step down and is at best another metaphor that people can understand.
Quote:And the details in which the God of such people as those who wrote the bible extend down to the question of values. We value life, individual autonomy, family, sex, food, shelter, authority, adulation, loyalty -- many things, all of which can be traced back to our biological nature. God appears to value many of the same things, which makes sense, as we are made in his image, but it doesn't explain why he values those things in the first place? Could God have had different values and still be God? I don't see why not. If that's the case, then God having the values he does, and mandating them to us, seems rather arbitrary. God essentially says my way or the highway, despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be any meaningful reason which answers the question of why God's way is in any sense privileged and right. God's values just seem to have "just happened." He is the way he is for no particular good reason; he "just is."
I don't think the fact that we "value life, individual autonomy, family, sex, food, shelter, authority, adulation, loyalty" is because of our "biological nature". We value these things because of advanced consciousness. Any comparison how we perceive God and how we perceive ourselves is entirely due to both are conscious beings.
Quote:Now one can imagine that there might be multiple explanations for why these facts apply. One obvious explanation is that God is nothing more than a projection of the minds of mortal men, working in an ignorant age. They attributed our wants and desires and behaviors to our personhood, to our spirit or soul. For them, to imagine the ultimate person, God, was simply to take the human template and blow it up to larger proportions. God becomes everything that a man is, only bigger. He has all the things that a rational, loving man has, and more. He's not only powerful, he's uber powerful! He not only knows stuff, he knows everything! They were drawing from their imaginations the qualities that they thought exemplified the existence of a perfect soul. But in this they erred. They didn't know that many of our psychological traits can be attributed to our material existence as biological beings. How could they know? Evolutionary theory and neuroscience were centuries ahead of them in the future. They imagined a God based upon their assumption of what made a thinking man -- a Logos in the vernacular -- what he was, and simply extrapolated from those errant assumptions.
I think you are probably correct when it comes to many of history's religions. But it is simply not true in Christianity that God is everything man is but bigger/better. Again, the similarities between man and God are because both are conscious beings.
This brings up an interesting point. Compare the combined OT/NT image of God with that of the other civilizations in the same time frame. Jewish theology was way more sophisticated than anything else -- so much so that it is still easily integrated into modern systematic theology. For example, from the beginning, Jews were taught that everything was made by God. Contrast that with all the celestial gods/goddesses, concepts of gods that were contained in idols/temples, or were contained in things like Nature. There were other religions where gods were killed/died/assumed a new form and now a physical feature of the environment. To your point, many religions had gods/goddesses that were so anthropomorphic that they had even the worst qualities of humans. Monotheism was rare (if not unique) because it was far easier for ascribe all manner of conflicting circumstance/activities/physical realities to gods/goddesses. To what do you ascribe the foresight of the ancient Jews to come up with a theology that would survive all of the advancements of civilization in both science and philosophy--even to this day? All it would have taken is one major feature of the framework to prove to be wrong (physically or metaphysically impossible) and the whole theology would have crumbled like every other ancient religion. Don't you find this remarkable?
Quote:Now, I'm not saying this is the only possible explanation for why your God has the peculiar psychology that he does have, but the mystery remains. I don't have an explanation that fits better than the one above, but I'm no longer a theist. Perhaps I'm overlooking an obvious explanation for why God is the way he is, and I leave it up to you to provide that explanation. Failing a suitable explanation, God's nature just becomes a brute fact; he isn't the way he is for any particular reason, he could have been different, he "just is" the way he is, as a random and arbitrary fact of existence. So theists, what's your explanation?
I chose to answer this summary question paragraph by paragraph. While not as exhaustive as I would have liked, I hope they will be the start of a discussion. I would like to hear your responses.
I will get to the second part of your original post shortly.
![[Image: hMpUyjAM_o.jpg]](https://images2.imgbox.com/11/4f/hMpUyjAM_o.jpg)
