Call me a silly goose, but I think a being capable of creating the entire universe and everything in it qualifies as "breathtakingly intelligent and powerful."

I’m currently a catechumen in the Catholic Church. Good to know there’s others on this forum who are catholics or in progress to becoming catholics!

Welcome to the RGT Forum, avro_504!

I am a Christian, but not Roman Catholic.

Great. Which denomination?

I like how you call Christians egotists and in the previous paragraph place your intelligence and moral standing above gods.

There’s plenty reason to conclude that god is perfect - read St. Thomas Aquinas.

I am a member of a Baptist church in Chico, California (about a 100 miles north of Sacramento).

Souls in hell are there because they freely chose it. Sin separates us from God and this separation is an effect of the cause of "rejecting God". If you die in a state of that separation then you spend the rest of your existence in that state. God doesn't force himself upon us and lets us have the choice.

I also want to mention that there are different types of punishment such as temporal and eternal. Additionally, different levels of sin such as venial and mortal. This is important because your not destined to Hell the moment you sin.

Welcome Home Avro, how would you classify yourself before you decided to join the Catholic Church?

sounds a lot like the movie Constantine

For a few months prior I would classify myself as a Christian but unsure of denomination.

Prior to that I was an atheist and I’ve slowly been turned to god.

thats exactly the same as saying "He freely chose to be shot when he refused to give me his money. It was his choice"

Why can't it be a Rube Goldberg scenario. A dog barks in Colorado. The dog's bark is the right frequency to break a glass that someone is drinking from in NORAD headquarters. It cuts him up, so he goes to the first aid station. Meanwhile, someone slips on the broken glass and liquid, careening into a keypad where, by pure misfortune, his arm hits the keys in the exact order of a launch code. A nuclear missile is launched towards Russia, which thinks it is a first strike and sends its whole array of missles back at us.

That dog has destroyed the population of the United States. Is it breathtakingly intelligent and powerful?

There's nothing about the notion of a created universe that necessarily implies a brilliant creator. Maybe it just required the creator to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe the creator was a dim bulb but the universe as we know it was a necessary product of the laws of causation. Maybe the creator was just rolling the dice and it happened to come out the way it did.

Indeed, the creator could even be evil. Maybe the creator deliberately created a universe where life forms would have artificially short lifespans, so the creator could watch them die.

As I said, I don't see it as unreasonable to posit a creator. There are coherent philosophies that don't, but it's not an unreasonable supposition. But the attributes that people assign to that creator aren't necessary at all. There are any number of possible creation scenarios.

1. I don't place it above or below gods. Indeed, I am not even sure that gods exist or what their nature is. I am not even sure that they have "intelligence" in the sense that humans do. Does Spinoza's god have intelligence?

And, of course, it is entirely possible, as I point out above, for what we label a "god" (I suppose some sort of creator) to be a dim bulb. We don't know any of those things.

2. I've read Aquinas. He's a great philosopher, and I think some of his insights about natural law are really profound (even if I reject them). But nobody, including him, has proven god to be perfect, and yes, I think Aquinas had a GIGANTIC ego to believe that and to place himself at the center of the creation story.

People brutally tortured in governmental custody are there because they freely chose it. Their sin separated them from the law abiding population, and this separation is an effect of the cause of "rejecting law". If you are imprisoned in a state of that separation than you spend the rest of your existence in that state of being tortured. The government doesn't force itself upon us and lets us have the choice.

See the problem here? All you are doing, literally all you are doing, is saying "even though God is all powerful and makes all the rules, She is not one bit responsible for anything She decides should happen to anyone who breaks the rules". You are defining God as good by not applying any ethical rules at all to Her.

Well, if you don't apply any ethical rules at all to Adolf Hitler, Hitler could be defined as good too.

All I ask of God is that She not behave like a complete jerk towards people She doesn't like. That's all. Minimal ethics.

A God that tortures humans is evil. Just like humans who torture humans. And the reason God tortures humans is because these holy books were written by human beings who wanted to see their enemies tortured, so they figured God was the same way.

+1

But don't you know, the robber LOVES you! Indeed, he LOVES you more than any human could ever love you, eternally!

Let's say hypothetically that you believed in God and everything about Him, same as Christians. What do you think would be just for deliberate disobedience against Him?

I see no reason why divine justice shouldn't work like the best systems of human justice. And in those systems, it depends on (1) the severity of the offense and the harm that it causes, (2) the moral culpability of the offender, (3) the validity of any justification of excuse for the conduct, and (4) the degree to which the person accepts responsibility.

Now I admit some of these concepts are present in Christian doctrine, but they aren't present in very morally satisfying ways. For instance, some Christian sects have a distinction between venal and mortal sins, addressing (1). However there are only two gradations, and the notion that any "mortal" sin will get the maximum punishment is a moral abomination. It would be the equivalent of a justice system with only two sentences available: (a) a parking fine, and (b) painful execution. Nothing in between.

Now I get that holy books aren't going to read like criminal codes with all the punishments spelled out in detail. But that doesn't mean they can't say something like "God will decide a just punishment, which could be any of a range of different outcomes". Instead of "sin and you get tortured in hell for eternity".

Similarly, you can argue that (3) is somewhat addressed at least in Catholicism, which does recognize some justification defenses. For instance, waging war is generally a mortal sin, but waging a just war might not be. The problem is even in Catholicism, the justification defenses are way too narrow.

For instance, until very recently, the Church actually taught Africans that if their husbands had the HIV virus, the only moral options were to have unprotected sex and take the risk, or to be abstinent (and perhaps get raped by their husbands). This is the sort of situation you get in when you aren't liberal enough with justification defenses. I mean, it's perfectly clear that even if one assumes that using a condom is ordinarily sinful, the use of a condom with an HIV infected husband is justified. There are many examples of where justification defenses ought to be more widely available (e.g., abortion in the case of a threat to maternal health, for one example).

And you can argue that (4) is addressed by repentance. Again, though, Christian repentance is all or nothing. You either repent, and the sin gets washed away, or you don't, and you face the full punishment.

Anyone who has worked in the criminal justice system can tell you there are degrees of acceptance of responsibility. Everything from the minimal acceptance that comes when a person sees they are about to get caught anyway and turns himself in, all the way to a person who has guilt pangs long before she is ever suspected, and goes to great lengths not only to confess to the police but also to take major steps to apologize and make amends for what she did and to restore what was lost, turn in all of her co-conspirators and provide the state with evidence for their prosecutions, and beg for forgiveness.

In the human justice system, these different degrees of acceptance will result in different levels of lenience. The guy about to get caught might get a little time shaved off the prison sentence, because he at least saved the state the burden of apprehending him. The woman who took all those steps to repent will likely get a substantial break and might even see no prison time at all.

A truly good God would do something similar. Heartfelt repentance coupled with a true acceptance of responsibility and attempts to make amends might get you forgiven, whereas phony, go through the motions, yeah I sinned talk might not get you much at all.

And, of course, I don't think (2) is addressed at all in Christian theology. What if a person is insane, and knows not what he does, or simply lacks the volitional control to conform his conduct to God's law? What if he acts consistent with delusions? What if he makes a completely honest mistake?

And, of course, finally, the sentence of eternal torture is simply too harsh for any crime. There's a reason why there are international conventions against torture. Even a mass murderer is not tortured in a justice system run by benevolent actors.

But the notion of eternal torture for the list of Christian "sins" is ridiculous. I think it's wrong, but I at least understand if you want to eternally torture Genghis Khan. But eternally torturing a man for having a homosexual tryst? Eternally torturing someone for saying God's name in vain?

And, of course, the worst of them all. Eternally torturing someone for not believing? Especially since, if there is a personal God, She has made her presence extremely mysterious, appearing but once in thousands of years, in some obscure settlements in the Levant, and concealing any active role that She has in the world behind rules of causation and fossil records that would indicate that She is not present?

Basically, She has presented to us a world in which it is entirely rational and consistent with the evidence to conclude that She doesn't exist. And then She tortures us, eternally, for following the evidence She left?

That is pure evil and unworthy of worship.

Out of curiosity, why is everybody referring to God with a female pronoun?

Given your username and knowledge I'll assume your a lawyer and this is right up your alley. Not debating you here just pointing out a few things. Who you offend matters. Punching the president in the face will yield a different and more harsh punishment than punching someone at the bar. And in the case of God it would be someone of infinite importance and therefore yield a harsher punishment.

There is temporal punishment which is worldy. For example, if you get caught stealing you go go to jail which is your worldly punishment. Let's say you repent and are clear with God, you still have to serve your jail sentence. This could be classified as a punishment that is not eternal.

Also, Purgatory exists where souls go before you enter heaven. If you enter Purgatory you're 100% going to heaven. But nothing impure gets into heaven therefore suffer before you enter. This happens if you die with unconfessed venial sin.

We have the Catechism which seems to be along the lines of what you are referencing and linked it here: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_c...sm/p123a12.htm

I don't know much about the justification defenses but think it boils down to is it morally good or not but I do see both sides of the examples you mention.

We do not claim to know all that happens when people are near death as we do believe that God is merciful. It's possible for them to repent right before dying and be saved but that is between them and God and we have no way of knowing.

You could say that the amount of time in Purgatory could act as the different degrees as there could be different lengths of time served in that state. So you essentially can equate heaven (freedom), purgatory (prison sentence), hell (death penalty).

This is actually addressed, essentially if you're in a position through no fault of your don't know Jesus etc. you can be saved. Think of someone who is mentally handicapped who cannot comprehend God, they will not be damned.

Do you think that annihilation would be more just (opposed to eternal torture)? There would be no justice in that as there is no punishment served.

In response to your statement about God not showing himself we believe that God makes himself known to us and below is from the Catechism.

"The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator."

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_cs...ism/p1s1c1.htm

The dog analogy isn't applicable, because the dog caused a chain reaction that effected ALREADY EXISTING THINGS. Has nothing to do with the ORIGIN of the things themselves.



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Your shaggy dog story is loaded with stuff that was intelligently designed:. Drinking glass, NORAD headquarters, First aid Station, Keypad, missles, etc.



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The concept of *causation* requires something to already exist. An effect can't precede a cause


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It's not "everybody." Most religious people prefer the masculine pronoun. Theologically, I think most of Christianity takes the position that God isn't actually masculine or feminine, even though the imagery is often masculine ("God the Father") that's not a statement of the God's "actual" gender. It's just representative imagery.

I think the most common reason for using the female pronoun is just contrarianism. Since most religious people prefer the masculine pronoun, if you are a non-religious person in discussion there is some weight that is associated with using a female pronoun, and you can get in a couple "points" (so to speak) by doing it.

Well said.

I agree. I just quickly scrolled through a few posts on this thread and saw “She”.

Good answer. Summed it up perfectly.