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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!ihopa!dap
From: dap@ihopa.UUCP (afsd)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: What should God be like?
Message-ID: <161@ihopa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Feb-84 01:05:23 EST
Article-I.D.: ihopa.161
Posted: Wed Feb 15 01:05:23 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 03:42:51 EST
References: <292@bunkerb.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 241

>>ihopa!dap (you forgot to include your real name) has offered answers
>>to my questions on what God should be like.  I think you have at least
>>partially misunderstood the point I was trying to make, but I found
>>your answers interesting.

My real name is Darrell Plank, ihnp4!ihopa!dap.

>>I don't think that the freedom to rape or murder is a human right, either,
>>and I hope you are not saying that I do.  Is it ever right to start a
>>war?  Is it right for someone who is starving to steal from someone who
>>is overfed? I don't propose to try to reach a universal consensus on
>>which of the rights humans claim are valid, or in what order of precedence.
>>What I am saying is that if it is possible to choose, it is possible to
>>choose rightly or wrongly.  If it is possible for a human to choose to
>>be moral, it is possible to choose to be immoral.  "A good, omnipotent
>>God would not permit evil; evil exists; therefore, there is no good,
>>omnipotent God." is the argument I am dealing with here, and it is the
>>major premise which I am denying.

No, I didn't mean to imply that you thought that such things were a right.
But what does it mean to say "You have the right to CHOOSE whether to rape
or not but you don't have the right to rape"?  There are some tricky questions
as to what should and should not be allowed in human behavior, but if the
courts can make a meager attempt at such a thing, then an all loving perfect
God had ought to be able to do a bang up job.  I think that most of us would
agree that murder is not an acceptable response if someone steals your
parking spot.  If God were to disallow such blatant cases and leave the
minor decisions to us I think that most people could agree on that.  After
all, while the courts have problems, most people wouldn't like to live in a
society without them.  In other words, people WANT to have the "right to
choose" curtailed when such a choice might result in a murder.  To put it
another way, I don't think many people would want ALL choices removed, but on
the other hand, I don't think people like a world where ANYBODY can make ANY
choice ANYTIME he/she wants to.  A happy medium exists somewhere between which
is far preferable to either extreme, and if God were interested in our welfare
I think he would try to meet this happy medium instead of the extreme we are
currently experiencing.

>>     I'm sorry, but if God supplied earthquakes, violent storms,
>>     sickness and hangnails just to occupy my mind, I am more than
>>     willing for him to remove these challenges and work on Fermat's
>>     theorem instead.  There's plenty to think about without
>>     natural catastrophes to titillate us.
>>
>>I admit that I don't have a good answer; I don't know why earthquakes
>>etc. are allowed to happen (note: God allowing earthquakes is not
>>necessarily the same as God causing earthquakes).  I have heard
>>theories -- to show his power, to show that this world is temporary --
>>but I don't know.  Question: can a real challenge exist without a
>>real risk?  Some people, I am sure, would say no, and these might
>>find Fermat's assertion dull.

Well, I guess you're saying that you don't have the answer here.  But then
at the end you make a curious point.  It seems that you are still trying to
argue that God put volcanoes on earth as some sort of intellectual
entertainment for man.  I still don't think that this is reasonable and I
take it that you don't either from your earlier remarks.

>>     Once again, if God wanted to occasionally miraculously avert a
>>     volcanic flow, that really wouldn't bother me a bit.  Maybe he
>>     could label all miracles with the assurance that the event is a
>>     bona fide miracle and should not be dealt with scientifically.
>>     Also, he could assure us that anything not labelled as a miracle
>>     would be a natural phenomena which could be understood with the
>>     scientific method.
>>
>>I thought you wanted him to prevent natural catastrophes like volcanic
>>flows altogether; now you seem to be saying that you would like
>>such things to occur, as long as harm was averted (perhaps to give
>>geologists something interesting to study?).  "Look, God miraculously
>>diverted that volcanic flow to save us from danger."  "Danger? What
>>danger?"

A volcano that doesn't cause any damage due to God's intervention doesn't
sound like a catastrophe to me, natural or otherwise.  I don't detect anything
at all in my statement which says that I want natural catastrophes to occur.
As I said earlier, if they occurred and didn't cause any damage, then they
aren't a catastrophe and you're right, it might be sort of interesting to see
the miracle.  On the other hand, I didn't mean to imply that he had to restrict
his miracles to what would otherwise be a catastrophe.  If he wanted to move
around a few stars to spell out "God was here" that would be sort of
interesting too.

>>If miracles were commonplace, they wouldn't be impressive;
>>they wouldn't prove anything.  But if they aren't commonplace, then
>>those who were not eye-witnesses (and even some who were) will try
>>to explain it away, saying that it was a trick, or hypnosis, or some
>>such.

If pennies suddenly started always landing on heads every time that would
impress me.  If the sun came up a different color every day, that would
impress me.  On top of that, I think there are plenty of miracles that
people would not "explain away", the trick with the stars being just one of
them.  I don't think you can effectively argue that God could not manage to
impress all of humanity if he really wanted to.

>>But what I was really trying to say is this: People have said that
>>if God wanted them to believe in him, he ought to provide signs and
>>wonders to prove his existence; but the same people refuse even to
>>consider the possibility of a miracle, because then their science
>>won't work.

See below.

>>    Now, Gary, I would like to ask you a few questions.
>>
>>    1.  You imply that a perfect world and a free will is incompatible.
>>
>>No, I said that some people who have rejected God reject him because
>>they think a perfect world and free will are incompatible.

But later Gary says:

>>If we have mutually exclusive expectations of God, then God cannot
>>fulfill them.

I assume that the "mutually exclusive expectations" were the expectation of
a perfect world and the expectation of a free will.  If not, you will have
to clarify because if these expectations are not mutually exclusive, then
there is no reason that God can't live up to these requirements.  If he can
live up to them, then there is no reason that I shouldn't expect him to do
so.  At least no logical reason.

>>    2.  You also imply that a perfect world is incompatible with an
>>	interesting world.
>>
>>Again, I said that some people who have rejected God reject him because
>>they think a perfect world is incompatible with an interesting world.

Again, I refer you to your statements mentioned above.

>>Will there be free will in heaven?  I think so.  Objectivists claim
>>that if everyone were truly rational, then no one would wish to harm
>>another.  If this is true on earth, then all the more so in heaven.

I see no reason to believe that people will be any more rational in heaven
than on earth.

>>    3.  Another implication you make is that the scientific method is
>>	incompatible with miracles.
>>
>>I did not intend to make such an implication.  I do not think that
>>the scientific method is incompatible with miracles.  (I wish I had
>>a quarter for every time someone was misquoted in this newsgroup.)
>>I was specifically talking about the case where miracles were
>>commonplace.  They are not commponplace; they are exceedingly rare.

However, Gary earlier observed that:

>>But what I was really trying to say is this: People have said that
>>if God wanted them to believe in him, he ought to provide signs and
>>wonders to prove his existence; but the same people refuse even to
>>consider the possibility of a miracle, because then their science
>>won't work.

In all honesty, I think that Gary is ascribing this belief to others and
not himself.  However, this means that it is perfectly acceptable to expect
miracles from God and still expect the scientific method to work so point
3 in Gary's original article is eliminated.  At any rate, whether or not Gary
believes that miracles and the scientific method are incompatible, I do, and
will discuss this below.

Gary goes on to say that:

>>Are you saying that if I believe in one miracle, then I have to disbelieve
>>everything else?  Does one whisker make a beard?  When you say that
>>you assume that I believe in miracles, I am inclined to say that I don't,
>>because you seem to think that believing in miracles implies believing
>>that they occur daily.  Well, I don't believe they occur daily.  In
>>order for people to recognize that a miracle has taken place, it has to
>>be a rare occurence.  E.g., the resurrection was miraculous because, in
>>the normal course of events, people who die stay dead.
>>
>>Another thing about miracles: I believe that each miracle has a purpose.
>>I don't think God makes exceptions in the natural laws, which he
>>established in the first place, without some specific purpose in mind.
>>
>>But most events are not miraculous.  So your science is still useful.

No, I'm not saying you HAVE to disbelieve everything else, just that you
haven't got any logical reason to believe or disbelieve.  No, a whisker
doesn't make a beard, but a set of scientific axioms makes a scientific
theory, and if one of those axioms is ever wrong, then there is no logical
reason to believe any deduction which arose from that axiom.  You can
BELIEVE that God doesn't make exceptions to the natural laws often, but
that is an arbitrary belief.  An equally valid belief is that God is
constantly making exceptions, that all we KNOW are exceptions and that
one day God will pull the rug out from under us and all science will come
tumbling down.  The size and relative frequency of such exceptions is not
important.  Either everything is molecular or not.  If God would send
even one tiny particle of matter from space which was not molecular, then
we have no reason to believe that the spectroscopic analysis of
distant stars has any meaning at all.  You can believe it or you can
disbelieve it.  Sure, science has made small errors in its axioms before
(witness Newtownian Physics) and when they were discovered, a substantial
part of science had to be rewritten.  However, these have usually been
fairly good approximations to the truth, and there is no reason to believe
that they resulted from the laws of nature being supernaturally tampered
with (something we can't control) but rather to man's incomplete understanding
(something we can hope to remedy).

The emphasis in the next paragraph are my own.

>>If we have *mutually exclusive* expectations of God, then God cannot
>>fulfill them.  If we expect God to be not-God then he cannot fulfill
>>this expectation.  This has nothing to do with omnipotence.  It has to
>>do with self-consistency.  If a statement is *self-contradictory*,
>>prefacing the phrase 'God can...' to it does not make it consistent.
>>"What happens when an irresistable force meets an immovable object?"
>>Nothing, because the two concepts "irresistable force" and "immovable
>>object" are mutually exclusive.  If one exists, the other cannot.

Agreed.  This leaves us with two possibilities.  Either Gary's original
statements are not mutually exclusive so it is logical to expect God to
fulfill them all, or they are mutually exclusive and God cannot fulfill
them, in which case see my remarks on heaven below.

>>     This relates to the earlier questions.  Is God actually powerless
>>     to provide a perfect heaven?  If so, just how powerful is he?
>>     What CAN he provide?
>>
>>God can provide a perfect heaven.  He cannot make the same heaven
>>adhere to every individual's current concept of what would make heaven
>>perfect.

Compare this with Gary's earlier remark:

>>Will there be free will in heaven?  I think so.

But we have already pointed out that either these two statements are
inconsistent so that God can't abide by both or we are left with the
conclusion that God COULD create a perfect earth and still allow free
will and so why doesn't he?  Which is it Gary?  You can't have it both
ways.

Well, sorry for such a LONG rebuttal, but there was a lot covered here.
Thanks Gary for the thought you put into this thing.  I tried to give
responsible (if lengthy) answers.

Darrell Plank
ihnp4!ihopa!dap