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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (9395)	1/15/2002 12:46:02 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Why couldn't God just be big, powerfull and corrupt. That would make him morally inferior but still able to impose his way. Or does that make "might is right" the defacto ultimate morality? TP

To: Greg or e who wrote (9395)	1/15/2002 1:29:40 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

>>If God exists, then He, is the ultimate standard and Judge of morality and he (Solon), and we, must submit to that judgement, like it or not. If, as Solon asserts, God does not exist, then there is no basis for Solon to make such moral judgements aside from his own personal feelings, or the tyranny of the majority<< I have often read you repeating this CS Lewis argument on these threads, but fail to see how it holds up. I'm sure you would agree with me that there is no "Ideal Football Team" (IDF) against which we can judge all other teams (unless you consider the '85 OU team to be it :). A person might argue that an IDF must exist (at least in theory) so that there is an ultimate standard or Judge of good footballness. If there was no IDF, then our only legitimate judge of whether one team is better than another is to rely on personal opinion or the tyranny of the polls. Sometimes funny or paradoxical things happen in football. For example, Team A might beat team B : Team B beats team C : Team C beats team A. Now such a thing cannot happen if we have an IDF as the judge of good footballness, because with an IDF each team can be judged on a linear scale. But football can have funny cases so we shouldn't think too hard about that. (Morality sometimes has funny or paradoxical situations, but we like to not think of those either... citing personal ignorance or the mystery of God to explain them). But despite all the above, sometimes I (and I assume you do, too) will state that a certain football team is better than another. It is not just personal opinion because my judgements on this will probably agree with independent judgements of other people. I feel that sometimes the [tyranny of the] polls will be incorrect in their judgements, but they are a good yardstick most of the time. Yet I don't assume an IDF.

To: Greg or e who wrote (9395)	1/15/2002 1:31:00 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

I will let Solon speak for Solon. I was just stating what I read in the header you referenced. You raise some wonderful points which touch upon many fundamental issues. First, one of the many paradoxes that thwart human understanding is the simultaneous immanence and transcendence of God. God is both wholly present and wholly apart from everyone and everything. In previous posts I've characterized this is that He is both consistent with and orthogonal to everything. One way I've understood this paradox is that our relationship to God-as-immanence is love while our relationship to God-as-transcendence is worship. The latter perhaps illuminates somewhat the 'All grateful' attribute of God since God is both self-immanent and self-transcendent as well. I believe the key to our differing perspectives on the subject of morality lies in the Illusion of Disunity. If We Are All One then one will see things one way. If We Are Many than one will see things in another way. I observe that denial of the reality of unity leads to one set of misperceptions while the denial of the reality of separation leads to another set of misperceptions. I accept both.