If God is all powerful and created human. How come God in endowed with human emotions? Shouldn't he or she be beyond that?
If God is all powerful and created human. How come God in endowed with human emotions? Shouldn't he or she be beyond that?
This is "no stupid questions," but asking rational questions about religion is a waste of time. In most religions, the answer ultimately "you are too stupid to understand the great plan of god."
You can debate interpretation of religious texts, or how best to follow the laws religions set down; but questioning articles of faith is fruitless.
Christianity is especially full of self-contradictions and paradoxes: can God create a rock so big he can't lift it? You can spend a lifetime poking holes in The Bible, and you will never get a rational, satisfactory answer that isn't based on a version of "you are too stupid/not meant to know."
Many religions are less paradoxical, but the monotheistic ones are mostly just an unbelievable shit-show, unless you're especially susceptible to self-delusion.
No apologies to Christians: your religion is a fucking mess. You have to be particularly dumb to read the old and new testaments and come away thinking those are the same God. That the loving, caring one who sacrificed his son for people is the same one who allowed Satan to torture his most faithful worshipper on a bet.
Buddhism and most pagan religions make more sense. Buddhism in particular lacks most of the dependency on mysticism and unprovable articles of faith, and is almost more a philosophy than a religion. Buddhists, I can respect. But Christianity is all sorts of dumb.
Actually, taken by itself, the new testament is mostly OK; if you follow only Christ's teachings, and ignore the peyote trips of post-crucifixion books, like, Revelations, it's a solid basis for a society of decent people. But Christ was a liberal socialist, which is why most organized Christianity leans so heavily on the old testament and ignores Christ's teachings of acceptance, communism, and forgiveness.
Nice .... now I need to learn more about Buddhism and use an ice pick to remove all the information I have about the Christian Bible.
Buddhism as it originally was, was more of a philosophy and way of life.
However, as will all organized religion, Buddhism has morphed in Tibet (free Tibet), India, and other places into mysticism with gods, recurring semi-saviors through "reincarnation", and classist systems and hierarchies. Sad, really. Humans mess everything up for personal gain and control.
You have to be particularly dumb to read the old and new testaments
Do you legitimately think that the same people who get into organized religion, that buy into thought systems that tell them how things are supposed to be and how they should feel about stuff, as a general rule have read their own source material that meticulously?
Yes. Some do. I was raised by a fundamentalist; they read the Bible constantly. Like, book clubs, a couple, three times a week, reading and discussing different parts of the Bible.
By the time I left that home (went to live with mom at 14), I'd read the thing myself four times all the way through, and various sections of it far more often. When dad visits, I hear audio book versions of it playing in the night as they're getting ready for bed. Self-indoctrination.
IME, they're not all that unusual in their church.
You donโt have to read it meticulously to see the contrast heโs taking about.
But few actually read it at all. They say they do, but their reading consists of looking up verse numbers they saw on bumper stickers, leafing through the first pages of Genesis, and occasionally reading a random page only to say to themselves, so silently that they are not actually conscious of it: โhm well I donโt know what all that old timey language means but Iโm going to go see whatโs in the fridge now.โ
Projection?
I had a car that didn't like when the weather was cold and damp. It wasn't too happy about being parked on a slope, either.
Did the car actually have human emotions? No, of course not, but as a human it was both easy and natural to frame and process it that way.
Instead of it simply being "God made made in his own image", the truth is probably that there's more than a little of "man made God in his own image" too.
Yeah, all gods have been made by man.
โThere is no god but man.โ - Aleister Crowley
God didnโt design us in his image, we designed him in ours.
1 In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created him.
2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of names,that he might be Lord of all the earth when it was suited to Man.
3 And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good.
4 And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground, and a host of others likened unto his kind.
5 And these lesser men were cast into the void; And some were burned, and some were put apart from their kind.
6 And Man became the God that he had created and with his miracles did rule over all the earth.
7 But as all these things came to pass, the Spirit that did cause man to create his God lived on within all men: even within Aqualung.
8 And man saw it not.
9 But for Christ's sake he'd better start looking.
- from the aqualung album cover - jethro tull.
One hell of an album.
I don't believe you
You got the whole damn thing all wrong
He's not the kind you have to wind up
On SundaysโGod creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaursโ
Because it's all made up. It's foolish to expect any of it to make sense or be consistent.
First prove that this god even exists, then maybe we can have a discussion about it's properties.
Going down the God rabbit hole is frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying. Every answer boils down to faith, which is basically belief without proof.
To paraphrase someone: If God is all-good, then God canโt be all-powerful. If God is all-powerful, then God canโt be all-good.
I probably sound like Iโm being dismissive of people who believe in God. Thatโs not my intent. Faith can be a healthy source of strength in difficult times, and when dealing with our chaotic world. I only have an issue when blind faith is allowed to override common sense, like not getting your kids vaccinated, or drinking raw milk.
The answer to this is going to differ heavily from religion to religion. You've already been inundated with the atheist and agnostic response. Christian theology could give you a few different answers.
The Bible could been seen as man's interpretation of God, therefore God's will is placed in terms we understand: emotions. Calling God jealous, angry, sorrowful, or joyful is a lot easier than asking you to understand a four-dimensional physical space. The latter is beyond your perception, much like understanding the "feelings" God exhibits, so it is simplified to terms you can understand.
The second potential answer would be: why wouldn't he/she be? You've made the assumption that emotions are bad or wrong, but if you throw out that assumption, there's nothing wrong with an emotional God. Maybe being "beyond that" is in fact a mistake? If he/she made us in his/her image, then of course we are given emotions similiar to God. Ultimately, who are you or I to judge whether such feelings are good or bad, or make a being imperfect?
Admittedly, I am deeply agnostic myself, because I ultimately don't buy any of the explanations I've provided here. But I've taken time and energy to understand Western theology, rather than dismiss it out of hand, and these are the explanations I suspect you are likliest to find.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Trying to understand theology is a waste of time because it's all made up.
Theology is not a belief in God. It is a study of the belief in God, the connection between humankind and the possibility of God, and the philosophies grounded in religious doctrine. Saying that trying to understand theology is a waste of time is the same as saying that trying to understand any social science is a waste of time.
You may dismiss the beliefs as "all made up", but their impact on our world is very real. Is studying politics a waste of time because it's "all made up"? Or are the arbitrary thoughts and feelings on how the world should be run suddenly more important because we've removed a belief that you personally disagree with?
Trying to understand theology is a waste of time because it's all made up.
Made up, sure, but still very useful to understand because so many people believe it.
Trying to understand fictional media is a waste of time because it's all made up.
Trying to understand linguistics is a waste of time because it's all made up.
Trying to understand the economy is a waste of time because it's all made up.
Hey wait this sounds like anti-intellectualism disguised as anti-theism
Ehh, I'm gonna push back and say that, as a lifelong atheist, I have greatly enjoyed reading books on Jesus and the early church. But I'm also a history nerd, so I enjoy stuff from other times already.
Religion is still dumb and makes people hate each other but the books are entertaining regardless.
Christian theologians believe in the impassibility of God, which means that God does not have emotions as humans do. Then biblical texts where emotions are attributed to God are explained as anthropomorphism - God using human language to communicate his nature and actions.
How the hell do they explain his "love" then? Seems like they create more problems than they fix with this crap.
"Love" in the scriptures is typically a verb, e.g., "God so loved the world..." It describes an action that God does, not a feeling. God's love is his acting in a loving way towards undeserving people.
Exactly, that's a perfectly theologian explanation, it sounds good, but doesn't stand the least bit of scrutiny.
Already the creation story on the first pages says god created light and saw the light is good. How is it good without subjective emotion?
How exactly are gods emotions supposed to be different. Does good mean something different to god?Religion is nothing but worthless bullshit from start till end.
This is the answer or similar enough I got when I was Catholic
Itโs all made up by humans
Assuming weโre discussing the Abrahamic God, He used to be much smaller in scope; in fact, He was the ancient Jewish War God, back when they had a full polytheistic pantheon. So if weโre going back to the original myths, He didnโt really create humans, nor was He all-powerful or all-seeing, or โabove-it-allโ in general.
(This is back in the days when Gods were more seen as local clan/town sponsors, like how Athena is the patron God of Athens. He was just a tribal patron god, one they prayed to in order to be safe and successful in war.)
Also, back then Gods in general were written as being much closer to humans, in term of emotions and motivationsโagain, Greek mythology gives a good showing of this, but you can read a lot of ancient myths and see it in play.
As Jehovah became more and more popular (due to all the wars in the region), He started to absorb many of the myths and abilities of the rest of the pantheon, which is why He seems kind of schizophrenic in the older stories. YHWH was actually the head of the pantheon, and as Jehovah supplanted Him as the ancient proto-Jewish tribes moved towards monotheism, the two Gods ended up essentially being merged with each other.
Still, back then, while Gods were seen as powerful, they were still somewhat seen as limited and fallible. In fact even today there is a strong Jewish tradition of questioning God (albeit politely and a bit indirectly so as not to get turned into salt or whatever).
But, as Judaism grew, and split off into Christianity and Islam, Godโs followers began tack on more and more powers and abilities to make Him sound cooler (and increase the power of the Church). So thatโs where the โall-seeingโ and โall-powerfulโ Great-God-of-Everything business comes from, really.
TL;DR โGod wasnโt all-powerful and was โwrittenโ to have emotions much closer to humans when those creation myths were first being told.
Do you have any links to recommend to check out for further reading/watching? Or what search terms should help me find this the best? Ty :u
I've got one that would likely be relevant: The Early History of God โ Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
Because humans create their gods in their own image. Not the other way around. Your god becomes a reflection of what you already tend to believe because it exists solely as a justification for believing it.
If you're part of a society that believes that all outsiders are bad. You're going to invent your god that proclaims outsiders to be bad. If you're part of a group that has no sense of monogamy, you're going to create a god that proclaims "polygamy is good"!
Gods are the invented paragons of whatever society created them.
With literally hundreds of Gods I think you're right.
You can make the characters do whatever you want when you're writing fiction.
They didn't have science back then so they were even stupider than today.
The best answer. It really is that simple LOL.
a better question is 'the problem of evil'
if god is truly omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (perfectly good), then it seems logically impossible for significant evil to exist, as god would both know about it and have the power to prevent it.
this is my favorite as the theistic hand-waving needing to resolve it is incredible from the start.
Why would you come to someone's question, not engaging with the question in the slightest, to say "my thing is better"?
questions about god, which is commonly defined as "perfect in every possible way" are irrelevant when it's been demonstrated that god, by that definition, doesn't exist
god didn't "give" people emotions. people evolved that way
needing to resolve it
it's not been resolved, despite millions of apologists dedicating their lives to the problem of evil for thousands of years
every discussion just ends up in "you need to have faith," which literally just means "believe something to be true simply because you want it to be true, without any good reason." and no, "because otherwise where did we come from" (god of the gaps--another fallacy that seems to be the best they can come up with) isn't a good reason
I mean there are some who claim to have solved it. You see, you have to have evil to understand good. Since they think their god is the ultimate good, the more evil you see just proves how good their god is. After all, how can you consider a stick straight if you don't have a crooked one to compare it to?
This is exactly why I believe in an evil god. The problem of good is then easily solved. All that good in the world just proves how truly evil my god is. Burn in hell you sinners... although his punishments might be good? Cause he's evil. I dunno. Trust me it works. Just have faith.
I don't understand why a god would have to be all good as humans understand goodness. I'm more open to the idea that God either set things in motion and stopped caring, or is actively ambivalent and lives to cause a ruckus on occasion for his entertainment. This view allows for the existence of preventable evil.
Because an uncaring or immoral god is unworthy of praise or devotion. Why donate your life or your fortune to a god that created the universe and then fucked off?
And allows for free will.
That side is definitely the most interesting, but the reverse side of the Problem of Evil is interesting too: if there is no god/God, then why do we call things evil. How can we apply some objective morality if everything is random and subjective?
There are good and interesting arguments related to evolution creating a sense of common morality, like an instinct, to drive behavior that is beneficial to the continuation of the species and a bloodline. But some of what we consider moral is uniquely against a 'survival of the fittest' framework.
Like I said, at the very least it is interesting
omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (perfectly good)
Part of the problem with "The Problem of Evil" is assuming your personal experience turning sour is a sign of an existential "evil". Take this to a macro-level of the natural world and you can argue the wolf eating the sheep is "evil". And the sheep eating the grass is "evil". And the grass polluting our air with coercive oxygen is "evil". But then you're in the position of arguing that existence is evil, which flies in the face of the Abrahamic assumptions of creation.
Does your single bad day refute the eternal existence of the Perfect Being? Does your pessimistic view of the natural order refute a Perfect Being? Or is the problem entirely with your personal limited perception and selfish worldview?
it seems logically impossible for significant evil to exist, as god would both know about it and have the power to prevent it.
It seems logically impossible to define "evil" objectively. You're coming into the conversation as an ill-informed and deeply biased observer.
Is the fly evil because it lays maggots on your meat? Is the spider evil for killing the fly? Is the rabbit evil for killing the spider? Are you evil for killing the rabbit? Well, then why are you complaining about the fly spoiling your dinner?
Humans seem to define evil merely as unpleasantness, as though "pleasant" and "good" are synonymous. But if you just want to feel pleasant all the time, we've got a tool for that. It's called heroin. Shoot up until you waste away and then tell me that God Is Great, because you've lost the ability to perceive your misery. Your actions will be perfectly predictable and your behaviors extremely pliable, while your sensations are entirely blissful. Is this the Divine Perfection you're looking for?
I asked a Christian friend of mine how an all knowing god could be jealous or angry if they were all knowing and the actions of the people they were angry/jealous at were part of his plan.
I never got an answer other than 'mysterious ways'
He wanted a good plot arc leading up to robots not just starting with robots right off the rip
Man saw his ego and named it God.
Which God? There are so many to choose from.
Maybe we're endowed with Godly emotions.
The answer differs depending on which religion/sect/philosophy you adhere to, but God is usually attributed some sort of emotion, or at least a will, because without it the belief in God can't serve a societal use.
Say you assume a God without emotions. From this it results that nothing we may do or fail to do would impact them, so there are no sins, no divine laws, prayers and rites are useless... So your belief can't be a religion; nor can it be used to control people. There's no physical use to preaching belief in God, and not much of a metaphysical need either since God doesn't care whether you believe in them. "God" becomes a concept like the laws of physics, there's not even much meaning in considering it as a being. There's little difference between an emotionless God and no God at all. So all religions will personify God to some extent.
From this it results that nothing we may do or fail to do would impact them, so there are no sins, no divine laws, prayers and rites are uselessโฆ
That's not entirely true. You're describing what is effectively Calvinism (also, Hinduism/Buddhism) wherein you are born into a particular state of grace (or absence of it) and you just have to play the hand you're dealt because its "part of the plan". If you are aware of God, that's a kind of blessing in its own right. But its like being aware of a political head of state or a famous historical figure. Knowing they exist can give you insight into how to live your life, but they don't fundamentally know or care that you exist and you don't impact their grandeur in any meaningful way.
Thereโs little difference between an emotionless God and no God at all.
There's a huge difference, in the same way there's a difference between a Law of Physics and No Law.
Understanding physics allows me to live relatively safely compared to someone who is totally unfamiliar with how conductivity or gravity or momentum works. Understanding spirituality will (presumably) serve the same effect. Spiritual enlightenment affords you a way of avoiding certain hazards, like not holding a big metal rod above you in a storm or leaping into the ocean without a buoy. Ritual and prayer becomes like a car's safety belt and air bags, cushioning you from the psychic trauma of daily life and protecting you from malicious spiritual entities.
There's also a host of spiritual intermediaries in the more esoteric faiths. Catholicism has its saints and angels, while Islam and Judaism has the prophets. Animist religions have spirits of the land and the animals. Pagan faiths have their pantheons and demigods. And they've all got their terrestrial spiritual adversaries - demons, heretics, the acolytes of rival deities, etc.
Why am I praying to ward off evil spirits if there are none? Why am I wearing these vestments and holy symbols to insulate me against "evil" radiation or bad juju? Why am I going on these crusades if I don't think capturing the Holy Land has any benefit for my nation or clan?
You don't have to believe in a "Personal Jesus" to believe in the consequences of a God or a Godly World. Sometimes its just Metaphysical Capture the Flag.
Calvinism still has a notion of divine will, even if there's no divine judgement. Maybe the notion of "will" can be dissociated from the notion of "feeling", but that'd be a debate in itself, I personally tend to think that it can't: Awareness can only indicate what is, not what should be.
As for all the religions with an intermediate between God and men, either they represent God's will... In which case, God does have a will; either they have their own will. And this just displaces the question, because if God has no will but his angels do, then the angels are effectively the Gods: They're the ones whose favour prayers are supposed to get.
Also, when I mention the "societal use" of a religion, what I mean isn't how the religion is useful to the believer, but how it makes the believer useful to the state and/or clergy. My point was that religion with a personalized God who directly judge human actions tend to dominate because they're most useful as tools to influence people's actions.
Itโs all made up buddy
Well you kind of have the thing reversed.
All gods are created by man in mans image. And gods are generally exactly as selfish childish (narcissistic) and emotional as a 4 year old, because that's the mentality of the people with the delusions that created the gods in the first place. And then the people who think they know what god is and want.The answer will, of course, vary depending on religion and even depending on sect or school of thought within the same religion, but here's the Sunni Islamic answer as I understand it: God has emotions befitting of His grace and perfection, as opposed to our imperfect human emotions. For example a human might get angry and say or do something that they regret, but God's anger doesn't take away from His wisdom (I think Christianity has something about God regretting flooding the Earth in Noah's time, but islam rejects that sort of thing out of principle). God's mercy doesn't make Him commit injustice, as a human might. Etc etc. We humans don't need a deeper understanding of Allah than this, so Islam doesn't really get into the details of these things, but that's the gist of it. This does contradict your premise that God should be beyond emotion, but there's really no reason for that to be the case. God should obviously be beyond imperfection, but emotions aren't inherently imperfection; only humans' flawed emotions are.
why should he or she be beyond that?
The answer depends on your religion, but in the monotheistic traditions of the major religions, the notion of God might be better aligned with โonenessโ or โintegrationโ than a personification as we think about them. In that way, God is โeverythingโ (including the contradictions) which would also mean emotions. To say God feels things, it means โGod has the capability to feel, because God is all powerful.โ
Whether God is impacted by those emotions or their reasoning changes because of them, I think the realities and contradictions are a part of faith. If it all made sense, faith wouldnโt be necessary. Youโll find reasoning similar to this in someone like Kierkegaard.
Iโm a UU (raised Catholic, was an atheist for 20 years, followed Buddhism for a few years). My internal conception of God has changed a lot over that time: mostly expanded and includes more grace about this โgrand everythingโ rather than โOld man in a cloud who can be sorta weird and spiteful.โ I like that the UU lets me ask questions and develop my own faith.
Whipping out my clover and putting on my best Irish Accent to explain the Holy Trinity
Why are we satisfied with the idea that God made man intelligent in his image, while being all-knowing, but not this? Isnโt this the same thing? God could have made man with emotions in his image, while being in no way limited to those emotions himself. Why would we limit ourselves to an uncaring God above all that when he could also be all-caring, all-feeling
(Insert misogynistic crack about an all-emotional God being proof God is a woman)
Most importantly is to ask why is he subject to time? Our only concept of existing or being alive is tied to time: thought is a change of state, and change is defined by a progression of time. But if God is everything, why is he subject to time? What's "outside" time?
I'm assuming you're looking for a basic answer from Christianity. In that case, the TL;DR is that Humans are created in God's image. We're endowed with God's emotions, not the other way around, and emotions aren't necessarily bad, they're just corrupted in us by sin.
God experiences all kinds of emotions in the Bible, he is "jealous" for us, he's also depicted as sad or angry in many cases. Even Jesus, a "perfect man without sin" feels anger and flips the tables of a synagogue when he sees people turning that religious practice into a corrupt business.
So a religious answer to "shouldn't God be beyond human emotions?" would be that emotions aren't inherently bad. We should be angered by injustice, for example. Emotions can be bad, if you let them control you and fly into a rage for selfish reasons, for example, but they don't have to be bad.
I think killing everyone on the planet would be considered bad or ungodly. Have you seen what God did to Job? God is pretty fucked up.
Politely, no one asked? OP asked a direct question, I'm doing my best to answer it, and you're... dunking on me about a point nobody was talking about?
At best, this is an odd non-sequitur. At worst, it's toxic behaviour meant to shut down any discussion about a topic you personally dislike.
What gets me is in that belief god is essentially is the real person in the real world and he is the head honcho but there are other angels there. heck some things in the bible suggest other gods. definately a we oftentimes. well then our existence is created by him and he has totaly control of it. so from gods perspective our universe is essentially virtual reality. the matrix.
What โthings in the bible suggest other godsโ?
Mostly genesis but might be a few things in other old testament or something like revelation. If you insist I can go look around but the sections are either the creation area, tower of babel, or the flood. things like we or us. granted its the stuff that basically was just carried over from babylonian things. Its not until abraham that it kinda starts being its own thing.
Perfection is a malleable thing. To Christians humans are made in gods image, including emotions. In the minds of people they only think of the emotions that are reflected by god as the positive ones; like caring, empathy, love, ect. But if you take into account that god made everything it is reasonable to say that god gave us the negative emotions as well, since Satan (gods creation) harbored these feelings when it made Adam and eve sin in the garden of eden. Even if god only has positive emotion it does have emotion.
Because main evolved advantageous uses for emotion. We cry, and no longer have to communicate with words that something is wrong. It is advantageous to us to be able to communicate with emotions in more than a vocal manner. Things make more sense when we consider the real reasons they came into being. "We" have probably had these emotions for far longer than we could be considered humans.