Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

What do they believe? What do you think? Talk about religion as it exists today.

Moderator: JoeWallack

Post Reply
User avatar
Gnostic Bishop
Posts: 766
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 2:57 pm

Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Post by Gnostic Bishop »

Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Religions tout themselves as being the final word in moral issues, even though secular law has rejected as too barbaric most of those laws. Not that they were original to Christianity as many of the older traditions had variants of the same laws.

To me, a moral god would cure and never kill. That is the position Jesus took towards the non-believers.

Jesus said to love all people including your enemies and if Jesus is Yahweh then he too must love all and save all just as Jesus would.

Jesus would say that God killing instead of curing is evil.

Jesus would say that God curing instead of killing is good.

If god cures instead of killing then there is no hell as a good god or Jesus would have no use for purposeless torture and death.

Thoughts?

Regards
DL
User avatar
Geocalyx
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:59 pm

Re: Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Post by Geocalyx »

(Yes, I will haunt you. Let's see how this recently crystallized knowledge of mine holds up when confronting actual gnosticism. C'mere, snake! Test your bearings against a second lowest of land plants. Take a sip from the cup of ground and see where it leaves you. =P)

So we kind of speak on the same terms here, finally. Except maybe ... well so I view the universe as intrinsic, and the best thing about it is life. Life on Earth in particular is a struggle to perpetuate due to poisonous oxygenated atmosphere which is extremely corrosive - in fact, the only way a known form of life could exist is by cooperation - read about what cellular mytochondria and chloroplasts actually are, I'm not going into it here - and it still erodes life away simply by processing too much oxygen. Two different things stem from this kind of thought:
- that the 'good' is actually keeping life - yes, curing it, but also perpetuating it. Generations need to follow one another in order for it to sustain itself, or it will eventually cease to be. (So being a 'father' is good, for that matter. But I might get back later to this, because I'm not going into the concept of fatherhood here, it's not on topic.) Evil is therefore destruction, prevention and discontinuation of life in general.
- that on the ultimately bottom level, every single cell that makes you or your salad breathe is based on love and cooperation of two entirely different species. This cooperation and love that exists in all those cells is extremely tense - mytochondria will sacrifice themselves if the DNA of your cell goes awry; this will kill both of them in order to sustain the greater good that is your whole aion. If it fails to do that because it is already dead or damaged itself, the whole cell becomes cancerous - extremely selfish and pervasive and not giving a damn about sustaining the aion's life, it eventually kills everything. It is an example of greed being harmful to life and therefore evil, in the flesh at that. So both good and evil exist in physical terms even on cellular level, much more in nature. Evil is ultimately ignorance, in the case of cancer it is ignorance of higher levels of existance. But the word used here, ignorantia, implies a special kind of ignorance - one where the bearer does not want to know something and it results in a lot of death. This has so many examples and implication in the modern world it is impossible to list half of them, at all levels of existence.
You can, applying to your first statement, conclude, that since proof of God is a moral question, you've got God at the most physical level of your existence. But I'm not calling this God because this bottom level love cannot be prayed to or worshipped or even believed in. It manifests itself when its bearer knows and appreciates it by sustaining life in general, and treating it with respect.

The morals shown for god can be good or evil, but gods don't exist. Which means God is ephemeral. When it is time to believe it is time to cut the necks, everyone will believe ... ignorance is the magic of archons. Why do you bother yourself with such things? Respect life, perpetuate it, attempt to sustain as much as you can. Use your mind. Nobody has to believe in anyone.

Again, gnosis is the opposite of religion. It is to know rather than to believe. For me, atheism means I have no God. For most people it seems, it means there is no God. Which is a belief. Then there's also gnosticism - where the gnostic canon is interpreted as a religious worldview, usually one with disdain for the Church or society in some form. Gnosis makes loads of fun of the Church, but never expresses to openly rebel against it or destroy it. People who read stuff written by guys who read this stuff partially, usually eventually do so. They are not proper gnostics.
User avatar
Gnostic Bishop
Posts: 766
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 2:57 pm

Re: Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Post by Gnostic Bishop »

Geocalyx wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:17 am Evil is therefore destruction, prevention and discontinuation of life in general.
I am not sure what exactly your well written rendering has to do with the O.P.
I was talking mental good and evil and you went physical.

I pulled that line above because I do not agree with it.

You went rather long on me so let me do the same for all human to human evil, which is basically the only thing I would call evil as it has evil intent. This is an older O.P. but relevant.

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.

Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.

Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.

Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.

As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

This link speak to theistic evolution.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new ... 66/?no-ist

If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.

Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Regards
DL
User avatar
Geocalyx
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:59 pm

Re: Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Post by Geocalyx »

I am not sure what exactly your well written rendering has to do with the O.P.
I was talking mental good and evil and you went physical.
This is the only kind that matters. All evil manifests physically. This includes mental torture, religious manipulation and high level political intrigues. So does good: all good manifests physically, and benefits life in some fashion.

If evil thoughts don't result in evil action, they make no difference - 90% of the world would be evil if that wasn't the case. It's the same with good, it is in deed.

This is where we part ways. You wonder why Eve was made to fall if God wasn't evil where I wonder why any sane God would expect to follow the 'good' in his advice not to eat from the fruit of telling good from evil... before they ate from the fruit of telling good from evil in the first place? We agree on it all being rigged - but I am staying on the level and terms of the Bible, which is indeed a very... grounded book, whereas you decided to drop it all like poison and look for a higher light elsewhere. My path leads to cutting through bullshit and optimizing life as much as possible, yours to either fruitless ramblings, or as history had unfortunaley taught us, fruitful evil. By which I mean undoing of life.

You may have great knowledge and endless wisdom and all the power to shape reality in whatever way possible, but for the last time, gnostic you ain't.

I wish you best of luck to finding the answers to your questions.
User avatar
Gnostic Bishop
Posts: 766
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 2:57 pm

Re: Proof of god is a moral question. Do you see the morals shown for god as good or evil?

Post by Gnostic Bishop »

We have no place to go.
Thanks for the chat.

Regards
DL
Post Reply