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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40536)	6/15/1999 12:34:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

People who in their wondering about God set up their own judgmental criteria and then, when God doesn't meet those criteria, not merely rejecting or deciding not to believe, but actively condemning or denying. To do so requires the individual not only to disbelieve in but to actively judge God because God doesn't comply with their notions of what God should be. How can I judge an entity that I don't believe exists? I think you may mistake judgement of professed believers with judgement of God. If a person declares belief in God and insists that God has certain qualities, I can feel relatively free to point out that these qualities are blatantly inconsistent with each other and with observed reality. If I do so I'm not judging God. I don't even believe in God. I am reaching a certain judgement: that these individuals are not only holding contradictory beliefs but demanding that others hold them as well, and holding them up as the only true beliefs. Believers that attempt to define God, God's words, God's roles, God's expectations and demands, and who insist that they know exactly what God is, thinks, and wants, leave themselves wide open to this sort of judgement.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40536)	6/15/1999 1:07:00 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

No, Christopher, I think you misunderstand. I believe what happens is that we say God is a construct of the human mind; and then, in response to descriptions of that constructed (albeit, in our view, nonexistent) entity, we judge. I have many times, for example, asked If you believe 'He' is allowing that to happen, how, oh how, can you WORSHIP a being with such cruel standards of behavior? It's an artifact of discussion that one 'assumes' the God, to discuss the description of 'Him.'

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40536)	6/15/1999 8:26:00 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 108807

OK, you're saying it's an attitude toward God which some people have that you object to. Also I gather when you said "wrong" you meant mistaken or foolish, not necessarily morally wrong, heretical, blasphemous. You're entitled to your opinions. I don't want to argue about that. One interesting idea in your post I saw was that you believed that God has different standards of behavior than men. I think you're correct in your observation that this is more like the ancient Greek conception of divinity than it is to the Biblical god. I seem to recall the Romans adopted and renamed the Greek pantheon (Zeus = Jupiter, for example). It's probably true that nobody today actively acknowledges following the ancient Greek religion. However, perhaps if moderns conceive of God in the same way the ancient Greeks conceived of their principal god, Zeus, for example, they could be said to be revering the same god regardless of whether they use the name Zeus. Maybe the ancient religions aren't completely dead just submerged. Bruce