What is your Religion: Part II

[Banquo's Ghost]

sorry i thought you did, i remember you talking about how you were a christian and couldn't accept the concept of hell and then saying that you couldn't believe in a god that let children suffer or something i can't find the comments (why can't you search the backroom like the other forums? its very annoying! )

BM, it was me who quoted Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'. The book is about organized religion, in 19th century Russia (the Orthodox Church) and about the challenges it provides to faith. At one point Alyosha (IIRC, long time since I read it last) objects to the teachings of the Church by saying - "I cannot believe in a God that would permit the suffering of a single child."

This goes to the root of belief in a loving God who actively intervenes in our lives. If He could send His son to die for us, and, as most Christians seem to believe, He listens to prayers and acts upon them, why does He permit any suffering at all, let alone the unfathomable awfulness of a suffering child?

If He does not so act, out of respect for the free will we took in the Garden of Eden, then he is a remote God lacking in the one essential component of love - compassion. This unengaged God is closer to the pagan pantheon, than the Christian diety. The Bible is all about God intervening, so why then and not now? The fundamentalists love to quote the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah where He stomped on lots of bad people - this is after the Fall, so why not now? Jesus was said to heal the sick and raise the dead - why not now, and why them? (Yes, I know the hardcore will pop up and quote so-called miracles of today, but I've never read of any of them being properly substantiated, and I have known some really kind people of immense faith die miserably when they should have been first on the saved list. Consistency is a good thing).

Alyosha was asking the question that challenges all faith - Why, God, why?

It is a question that affected my own faith, and to which I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. I don't accept unquestioning blind stupidity of thought from humanity, I certainly won't accept it from someone who wishes to be my God.

[Byzantine Mercenary]

BM, it was me who quoted Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'. The book is about organized religion, in 19th century Russia (the Orthodox Church) and about the challenges it provides to faith. At one point Alyosha (IIRC, long time since I read it last) objects to the teachings of the Church by saying - "I cannot believe in a God that would permit the suffering of a single child."

This goes to the root of belief in a loving God who actively intervenes in our lives. If He could send His son to die for us, and, as most Christians seem to believe, He listens to prayers and acts upon them, why does He permit any suffering at all, let alone the unfathomable awfulness of a suffering child?

If He does not so act, out of respect for the free will we took in the Garden of Eden, then he is a remote God lacking in the one essential component of love - compassion. This unengaged God is closer to the pagan pantheon, than the Christian diety. The Bible is all about God intervening, so why then and not now? The fundamentalists love to quote the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah where He stomped on lots of bad people - this is after the Fall, so why not now? Jesus was said to heal the sick and raise the dead - why not now, and why them? (Yes, I know the hardcore will pop up and quote so-called miracles of today, but I've never read of any of them being properly substantiated, and I have known some really kind people of immense faith die miserably when they should have been first on the saved list. Consistency is a good thing).

Alyosha was asking the question that challenges all faith - Why, God, why?

It is a question that affected my own faith, and to which I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. I don't accept unquestioning blind stupidity of thought from humanity, I certainly won't accept it from someone who wishes to be my God.

It is a good question that is often asked of religious people in the end it all comes down to freedom imagine you had a body guard escorting you everywhere and stopping anything that they dissaproved of even when you didn't understand why, there is so much in the world that god does not like more then we could ever know they are all taken seriously if god were to interfere with one then god would have to interfere with the rest too.

Freedom would be almost nonexistant and many would find existance intorerable. So, say a child dies, you blame god for not stopping this in so doing you don't have to worry about the real cause of this childs death but the fact is that the child died for a reason i.e. there was a factor that caused it to happen there are two groups of such factors the man made and the natural, a natural cause is part of the very reason we are here and so the suffering caused by it is a bi product of the way the universe works and so should be balanced out if not outweighed by the good that comes of the natural world (there is probably more of this then we will ever know too) or the event was caused directly or indirectly by man, in which case god did intervene but instead of giving mankind a fish he taught him to fish (i.e. he taught us how to live best without harming others) so he has in fact intervened.

Do you wan't to be controlled? any intervention is control and im sure you yourself know that by helping one person another can be indirectly harmed, (e.g. letting a man in line in front of you at a sandwhich shop, i kind act, untill, because you intervened he leaves the shop earlyer just as Franz Ferdinand goes by!)

This is the best explanation i can give at two in the morning!

[Divinus Arma]

It is a good question that is often asked of religious people in the end it all comes down to freedom imagine you had a body guard escorting you everywhere and stopping anything that they dissaproved of even when you didn't understand why, there is so much in the world that god does not like more then we could ever know they are all taken seriously if god were to interfere with one then god would have to interfere with the rest too.

Freedom would be almost nonexistant and many would find existance intorerable. So, say a child dies, you blame god for not stopping this in so doing you don't have to worry about the real cause of this childs death but the fact is that the child died for a reason i.e. there was a factor that caused it to happen there are two groups of such factors the man made and the natural, a natural cause is part of the very reason we are here and so the suffering caused by it is a bi product of the way the universe works and so should be balanced out if not outweighed by the good that comes of the natural world (there is probably more of this then we will ever know too) or the event was caused directly or indirectly by man, in which case god did intervene but instead of giving mankind a fish he taught him to fish (i.e. he taught us how to live best without harming others) so he has in fact intervened.

Do you wan't to be controlled? any intervention is control and im sure you yourself know that by helping one person another can be indirectly harmed, (e.g. letting a man in line in front of you at a sandwhich shop, i kind act, untill, because you intervened he leaves the shop earlyer just as Franz Ferdinand goes by!)

This is the best explanation i can give at two in the morning!

EXCELLENT!!! This was the best argument for non-intervention I have read yet. You have completely articulated my understanding of suffering in this world.

NOW, try this on for size: Buddhism teaches that all suffering is the result of desire and ignorance. Essentially, our ongoing want is the cause of suffering. We want many things: happiness, life without pain, comfort, food, etc.

Only by recognizing the impermanence of all things can we alleviate suffering. We must, as Christians say, Let go and Let God.

This does not mean that we should not work towards peace and prosperity, instead it means that we should recognize that everything is temporary. When we realize this, everything comes into perspective.

This works well with an ecletic religious perspective, because it recognizes the freedoms that God has given us (as explain by BM) while providing a way to cope with the pain that we experience in our short lives.

Our attempts to be eternal instead of worship, gratitude, and humility is the source of human pain. We should continually strive for perfection in right action while simultaneously recognizing the futility of all.

[mystic brew]

interesting, and, BM, the most convincing arguement for non-intervention. It's certainly the best argument i can see.

Do you also subscribe to the view that this non-intervention applies to prayer as well?

otherwise, IMO the non-intervention theory falls flat on it's arse. as you say, the moment a decision is made to intervene it instantly results in all inaction being made a decision, and an intervention also.

[Divinus Arma]

interesting, and, BM, the most convincing arguement for non-intervention. It's certainly the best argument i can see.

Do you also subscribe to the view that this non-intervention applies to prayer as well?

otherwise, IMO the non-intervention theory falls flat on it's arse. as you say, the moment a decision is made to intervene it instantly results in all inaction being made a decision, and an intervention also.

Hopefully I can answer this. Because we are the Lord's agents and it is our purpose to freely choose to do His will, the Lord answers prayers through the actions of people.

What do people ask for when they pray? Money? Power? Health?

They should be praying for strength, for understanding, for patience, and for humility. Our prayers are ALWAYS answered, when our prayers are unselfishly motivated and fall within the Lord's design.

For example, let us assume you have a sick child. Do you pray for his health? Instead pray that your child will be filled with understanding and courage. Pray that you, too, will be understanding and accept our impermanence in this world. Of course you want your child to be well! But this is the cause of your suffering- desire for more than our fragile mortality offers. Thank the Lord that you were able to know your child and be grateful that he had a life to live at all.


When we pray for the external, our wishes will not be fullfilled. When we pray for the internal, our prayers are always answered. And because of this, we can do the good work of God and become agents of change. Through us, God will do external work and make our human experience a better one.

[Kanamori]

To answer the original question: I believe in a God's existence, and I believe that the existence of an objective reality is dependent on the existence of some version of God. However, I don't look to any texts as they were all written by other men and suseptible to many and various errors, if God -- whatever it may be -- would ever talk to us, IMO.

[mystic brew]

Divinus Arma...

thank you. that was damn near poetry! rather beautiful. I don't happen to agree with it, but there we go.

I would still maintain that was intervention, but that's a pov issue.
This is why i love discussing these things. every now and again someone says something you've not heard before!

cheers

[GoreBag]

For example, let us assume you have a sick child. Do you pray for his health? Instead pray that your child will be filled with understanding and courage. Pray that you, too, will be understanding and accept our impermanence in this world. Of course you want your child to be well! But this is the cause of your suffering- desire for more than our fragile mortality offers. Thank the Lord that you were able to know your child and be grateful that he had a life to live at all.

Yes, take your lumps and smile about it. This makes no sense to me; of course I want my child to be insightful and strong, but for now, it's more important for me that he is well. If he does not survive, then he does not live; that much is obvious. If I were to find the silver lining, fine, if that's what I need to do to cope, but no god is responsible for my forced perception or for the health of my child.

[Divinus Arma]

Yes, take your lumps and smile about it. This makes no sense to me; of course I want my child to be insightful and strong, but for now, it's more important for me that he is well. If he does not survive, then he does not live; that much is obvious. If I were to find the silver lining, fine, if that's what I need to do to cope, but no god is responsible for my forced perception or for the health of my child.

I agree. We want our children to be healthy. But God does not externally intervene just as BM so eloquently explained. He only intervenes internally as I explained.

[Kralizec]

"Chaos" and "order" are all in the eyes of the beholder- quite literally. We designate something as chaos because from our perspective, it is uncontrolled. However I hold a very deterministic and mechanical view of the world. Concepts like "chaos" and "chance that [event] will happen" hold meaning to us, because we are ignorant. But everything that has happened was always meant to happen. The Punic wars, the renaissance, etc were at the start of the universe BOUND to happen. If a hugely powerful entity would know all the current conditions and directions of matter and energy, he could both perfectly reconstruct what has happened before and also predict everything that is yet to be, reasoning by causality.
In the eyes of (the hypothetical) God, the being that knows all conditions, there is no chaos (or order, as both terms are meaningless). Just a bunch of matter and energy that flows logically from one point to another, the consequense of the conditions before, the prelude to the conditions thereafter. This, and no less, is omniscience.
Christianity teaches that God is all knowing. Satan rebelled against his creator. So did humanity. How did this get pass him? Or did he mean that to happen? Do we have the "power", the fundamental characteristic to do things God can't predict? In other words, do we have Free Will? Or is God omniscient? I think the two are mutually exclusive.

[Byzantine Mercenary]

interesting, and, BM, the most convincing arguement for non-intervention. It's certainly the best argument i can see.

Do you also subscribe to the view that this non-intervention applies to prayer as well?

otherwise, IMO the non-intervention theory falls flat on it's arse. as you say, the moment a decision is made to intervene it instantly results in all inaction being made a decision, and an intervention also.

Good Question

well, Jesus said when healing people that it was their faith that had healed them now, the placebo effect is a resonably accepted theory and would supply some of the method by which prayer can directly help (i believe that there must be a use to it as Jesus said to do it).

God is of course omnipotent and so knows what we want before we ask for it and so praying is not realy to inform god what you want him to do, as much as to clarify your thoughts, spend time thinking of others and hopefully get strength from the holy spirit. I am of the mind that god has given us the cures to our problems, we just need to look for them, use the gifts that we and others were given and sources like the bible and other christians for guidance, prayer is also to show support, many people even atheists apreciate it when people pray for them, it is a good way to show that you care about whats going on in their lives.

Essentially god intervened once, when he made the universe, in that intervention everything else was layed out in gods mind so for him the future would be pre-determined there is free wil its just he knows all the desisions that we will make!, so in a sence there is intervention, at the beggining that has decided the whole history of the world, and must have if god is omnipotent after all ''god does not play dice'' .