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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (71221)	7/31/2003 5:11:21 PM
From: one_less	Respond to of 82486

I find myself somewhere in between you and Tim. How do we know what is right, and whether or not it is right according to God. Perhaps you have listened to some wise person, read something that was attributed to God, or observed some phenomenon in nature that represented to you God's view of right and wrong. Since there are varied and conflicting messages in the universe about right and wrong, you have only your own inner conscience (or self evidence) to compare with the external evidence. You sort through all the stuff and determine how much of the wise person’s teachings, the doctrinal evidence, and your understanding of nature can accurately be referenced to God. In other words, you end up making a judgment about the evidence. You are not necessarily judging God but you are judging the evidence and determining that a particular statement about good would be associated with a good God. You may operate on the presumption that an Omnipotent God has created rights that are good for humans and wrongs that are bad for humans. Then you judge the rules: Is drunken sloth behavior bad for humans, etc.? If you can line up the dos and the donts and determine the dos are good, then you may judge that the evidence is representative of a Good God. If you accept such an entity as your God, then you have determined that such an entity exists and judged the entity as being worthy of worship.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (71221)	7/31/2003 5:21:40 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Yes at least to an extent. I think that it is possible for the creator of the universe (I am assuming no other qualities about God for the purposes of this discussion, although I think it likely that any being that can create the universe is probably also more intelligent then man. I am not assuming the traditional Jedeo Christian idea of God.) can act in either a moral or immoral manner. I think God would be in the best position to judge his own behavior (leading aside the question of possible bias) but if God was evil he might not announce this fact to the universe. Our ability to understand and judge would be more limited but it would be all we had to go on. If I had real direct knowledge of God's actions (rather then accounts of what people say God did, or my own guesses as to God's actions and nature) and the record was uncertain I probably would give God a lot of "benefit of the doubt", recognizing that God could have reasons I could not understand, but the benefit of the doubt would not be infinite. Of course the creator of the universe might not care much what I think about him, but my opinion is important to at least me. To the extent I believe in God (and I do but not very strongly, I border on agnosticism), I also think he is good, but I don't take this as an axiom. Tim