As a young child I was told to believe in god. Every Saturday my family would attend our temple along with a large portion of other conservative Jews. Along with that every Sunday I would attend a Jewish day school and learn things like the prayers and culture of my Jewish heritage. At the age of thirteen I was bar mitzva. On the day of my bar mitzva my task was to read out of the Jewish bible in Hebrew (the jewish language). Overall I had to read about fifteen paragraphs out loud and to be honest I didn’t even understand what I was saying. It was all memorized.
This got me thinking. How much did I really know about my own religion? As I thought about this I began to research my history with more care. As I grew more knowledgeable I acquired more respect for my culture however the idea of an all powerful god seemed more and more ridiculous. I just couldn’t imagine a god being able to split the seas for Moses to be true. I look at an Omnipotent being as only a myth. The reading made my beliefs even clearer to me when it brought up the stone theory.
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3 Comments
Yeah the all-powerful God seems impossible.
If God was all-loving and all-knowing, then God would know the joys of doing evil (hurting animals,babies whatever). Right? God knows all true propositions. This seems totally messed up though because God is all-loving.
How about fearing danger? You are all-powerful but you know what it is to fear something?
Your all-loving/all-good but you still have the power to commit evil acts?
There are many instances that contradict that a OOO-being exists. But once you put a restriction on the extent of that beings powers that it makes it much easier to see that there could be a very powerful spirit (thing) that is greater than us. A OOO-being sounds very nice because they encompass everything, they are completely whole, they are all. But is this really necessary? Do you need a being that is so amazing to believe that there is a greater power out there? I would contend that it would be much easier and make much more sense if that being had a few flaws. With god having a few flaws it would make him seem more human and more comparable to us as humans. This theory would be much like the Greek gods where they were very powerful but had some flaws. I think that it would be a good thing for a 000-being to be slightly flawed, because then a faith could drive home the idea that no one is perfect, but you should strive to be the best person you can be. I think this would make the OOO-being seem more realistic and more believable. So I pose this question, is it really that important that a 000-being exists or can that being be slightly flawed?
To answer kess’s question, I do not think it’s crucial for a OOO-being to exist. Not only does it present us with the problem of evil, among other things, but a OOO-being is incomparable to humans, making it much more difficult to relate to. Also, after talking in class about a God that created humans knowing full-well that they could make bad decisions (sending them to Hell) or good decisions (sending them to Heaven), it seems impossible for that same God to be omnipotent. This would bring the argument of whether we as humans have free will or not, and if a OOO-being existed, free will would be impossible, and Heaven and Hell would seemingly be negated from the equation.
Honestly, this whole concept boggles my mind. But I think Stump makes a very strong argument, not only for the problems associated with atonement, but in her description of God as determining AND determined. This not only allows us to believe that the human sense of freedom is true, but it emphasizes a sort of relationship with God, where there is give and take. I would have to say that this makes the most sense to me in the end, because that seems to be what most religious people are looking for: a relationship with God, and a feeling of acceptance by Him. Based on this idea, if a person does something wrong, God cannot be blamed for that person’s act of free will. However, the path that person takes in order to redeem him/herself could potentially be in response to God’s will. And if this were the case, God would have to be slightly flawed, because at times he is determined, while at other times he is determining.