Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

chrisso99 wrote:So now things are relative? God is defined in absolute terms. ALL powerful, ALL loving, ALL forgiving. Not somewhat powerful depending upon the circumstances.

huh?
Who said anything about God defined in relative terms? I happen to accept that God is Just and that Man has free will. You asserted that His performance "sucks". I only questioned on what basis do you claim God is a failure? As compared to what...your standard and notions? Some objective standard? How exactly do you (or anyone) determine anything about the performance (failure or success) of God? To do so IMO is to elevate Man to a footing where Man gets to agree, concur, and evaluate God...which as I said, has been the problem from the get go. BTW, IMO this is how Man in effect worships himself even if Man remains in denial about the topic.

oh ok...so you are measuring God by your standard....OK, then yes, I agree with you then...God is a complete failure by your standard. Well that is easy.

Ya know it seems that this ranting about God being a failure could be considered by some to be a thread hijack and off-topic. I know that concerns some people, so I am going to drop this discussion on my end. Thanks.

It seems like half the (ahem) strong discussions about 'god' exist because what the word 'god' represents is rarely defined ahead of time, and is often totally different from person to person.

I don't think - personally - that (assuming a god exists) that it is even remotely possible to comprehend 'god' and there is no way to actually know (for certain sure, as we used to say) what that god wants, why that god did whatever that god did, etc.

Now many people will say that God could most definitely accurately convey to people all sorts of things - which immediately reveals something about their own conception of 'God'.

I'll have to stick with that Paul thing about 'through a glass, darkly', even though usually he's no favorite of mine. But I think I get what he was saying there. We can't 'see' - or understand - in anything like a clear and useful fashion.

It's our general opinion that God defines what is 'good' (as 'moral') for humans (and has the 'right' to do so, as Creator). But humans can't say what it is for God to be 'good' (moral) because moral actions are defined relative to the community, and God is unique/one and has no 'peers'. It is likely enough that such a 'being' (or the 'ground of being') also has no LANGUAGE, because a language has no use except to communicate to others - and the Creator presumably has nothing and no-one to talk to.

The corollary to that is that we can't 'judge God' or God's (presumed) actions by our standards. God is simply not on the scale of measurement(s) at all. Neither 'good' nor 'evil' nor 'strong' nor 'weak', nor 'powerful' nor 'wise' or anything else which used comparative language. What are you going to compare a unique entity TO?

Thinking you can do that sort of thing leads to those answerless questions, like 'can God create a stone too heavy for God to lift' and such like. It assumes that god-descriptions are just a magnified kind of human-person descriptions.

Sorry - that's pulling the discussion way off the 'coc doctrine on authority' topic.

I might say 'incomprehensible in the entirety', but I would surely not say 'inconsequential to our lives'. Not least because the world is full of God-believers, and unless a person wants to live in a cave and grow their own mushrooms while wearing batskins, we all must deal with other people.

Besides, something ultimately incomprehensible in the entirety' may or may not be totally incomprehensible in every possible way - and we all live inside our heads, so other people are - ultimately - incomprehensible to us, to at least some degree. Yet we still manage to communicate (mostly).