Benevolent Creator God?

[Ahriman]

As a necessary disclaimer, I don't really care what it says in the Bible. God never does anything evil. He would rather do nothing at all, than do something evil.

How do you know what god would or wouldn’t do?

It's common sense, based on what I imagine God's character to be like.

[LadyForCamus]

How do you know what god would or wouldn’t do?

It's common sense, based on what I imagine God's character to be like.

Common sense? Could you elaborate?

[brewer]

It's common sense, based on what I imagine God's character to be like.

Common sense? Could you elaborate?

I believe his common sense is derived from a community of 1.

[The Grand Nudger]

As a necessary disclaimer, I don't really care what it says in the Bible. God never does anything evil. He would rather do nothing at all, than do something evil.

Well, that's probably where things went awry, huh?  Why would you try to give excuses for these biblical narratives people were referencing, then? Your dreamgod sounds more pleasant than the christian god. Why do you need to excuse the latter if you believe in the former?

[Ahriman]

So here's the monkey wrench in my belief system (or rather, system of belief).......I really just synthesize various parts of various religions/spiritualities and come up with something that I feel like is more than the sum of its parts, but still lacking any kind of realistic, logical rationale. I am fully aware that the God I see in my dreams could just be a personal egregore, but that's good enough for me.

[The Grand Nudger]

Cool, and is a part of that system of beliefs the idea that a person who issues an immoral order is absolved of moral responsibility for that order in the event that other people carry it out?

[Angrboda]

So here's the monkey wrench in my belief system (or rather, system of belief).......I really just synthesize various parts of various religions/spiritualities and come up with something that I feel like is more than the sum of its parts, but still lacking any kind of realistic, logical rationale. I am fully aware that the God I see in my dreams could just be a personal egregore, but that's good enough for me.

Imagine you lived in a world where, instead of God or gods, people believed in invisible horned demons. That everything bad that happens does so because of these invisible demons. And that avoidance of these bad things occurs by doing the correct rituals and cantrips to distract these demons from lavising their attentions on you, and diverting them to bothering someone else.

In this world, you would do the same thing -- looking for things that are more than the sum of their parts -- and you would find such things in this demon lore, because that's what we humans do. It's called confirmation bias and you aren't going to avoid it.

So whether you ended up thinking in terms of God or gods, and whether you ended up thinking in terms of invisible horned demons, depends mostly on which world you were born into, and which myths you imbibed from your culture. So, ultimately, demons or gods, what you end up believing has almost nothing to do with any "sum of the parts" but rather depended on what you happened by chance to encounter in your world. If you encountered people who believe in demons, you'd end up believing in demons. If you encountered people who believe in gods, you'd come to believe in gods. So what you would end up believing, if you set reason aside, is basically by pure chance. You didn't decide what kind of world you were born into, and your methods can't distinguish between that default and anything else. So you aren't really in control of what you believe. You've left yourself vulnerable to believing whatever you happened to imbibe from the culture.

That doesn't bother you?

[Ahriman]

That doesn't bother you?

I'm not bothered by stuff like that. If it works, it works.

---

Cool, and is a part of that system of beliefs the idea that a person who issues an immoral order is absolved of moral responsibility for that order in the event that other people carry it out?

Maybe not absolved entirely, but people should know better than to do something immoral just because someone wants them to do the immoral thing.

[Angrboda]

That doesn't bother you?

I'm not bothered by stuff like that. If it works, it works.

What do you mean by "it works," here? In some very important ways it doesn't work.

[The Grand Nudger]

How does the fact that other people should have known better modify anything about the issuer? -and, if it does..then should other people -not- knowing better leave all responsibility with the issuer?