What would Jesus do?
Turns out he would do whatever you think he would do. People create God in their own image - the Will of God turns out to be remarkably close to the Will of whoever thinks they're interpreting it. Which we have known all along of course. Here's more... http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php
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Things are altogether harder when it comes to predicting the will of a deity.....But the fact that different denominations have such diverse views of God's attitudes shows that these sources of information are inconsistent at best."
ReplyDeleteInterpolating from this piece of reasoning, it is also true to say that the will of deity is unchangeable. But we, humans, due to our inherent rigidity and/or tendentiousness, are prone to take the will of God and mix it with our desires to suit our biases.
The question of numerous denominations in one particular faith system is the human fault. And it is no excuse for not doing the right thing. We can no more blame the interpretability of the Bible for the existance of conflicting Christian opinions, just as we cannot blame the interpretability of American Constitution for the existance of conflicting political, economic or social groups in the US.
Clearly, I am not endorsing the disunity among the Christians. But as long as the denominations exists, as a matter of fact, the way out is to concetrate much on what unites us and less on what divide us, if tolerable.
Well, I rather think that the point is that even if there is a god, we humans make some pretty major mistakes when we try to determine what it wants us to do, so we are probably better ditching such presuppositions and basing our ethics fairly and squarely on humanistic principles that at least are likely to get the support of the Other Guy who will be affected by our actions. More than that is just superstition, and, no matter how sincere, deserves no respect.
ReplyDelete"...we humans make some pretty major mistakes when we try to determine what it wants us to do"
ReplyDeleteExactly. What I said is that "to make mistakes" is an inherent part of human traits whether it is about interpreting the will of God or interpreting our man made principles. If we can not get the things right with the will of God, what assurance do you have that we get it right with the will of man? (Keep in mind that we have prisons or even death penalties, yet, our man made Constitutional principles are daily being broken.)
I have no idea what do you mean by humanistic principles. If you ditch God out of the equation, you are no longer a human, you are just like any other wild beast or domestic pets, whose existance depends on no principles whatsoever except by the instincts to survive the odds. And for that matter, you will have no rights to criticize despots because their insticts lead them to behave the way they are.
Hi Edson, and thanks for sticking with this. My point is that you HAVE to ditch god out of the process; since we can't really determine the will of a god (and even less determine the motives or inherent mindset of a god), then it is crazy to suggest that a god provides an ultimate and reliable source of justice anyway. We are back to relying on ourselves. Does that give us an ultimate right to oppose despots? No - because "ultimate" right is an illusion. We oppose despots because of purely *humanistic* principles which the despots violate. And they can (and will) put forward their case; our hope and objective is always to conquer that, not with "ultimate" right, but with ethics that we can justify in relation to the principles that we humans have derived.
ReplyDeleteAscribing these principles to a god is neither necessary nor helpful. Hence atheistic christianity.
Ha Shane, I can see you are really determined to deny the ultimate.
ReplyDelete"Ascribing these principles to a god is neither necessary nor helpful. Hence atheistic christianity."
In other words, you are attracted to Christian principles but you get irked if these principles are attributed to God, aren't you?
Whatever. At this point I think we can just both agree to live by these principles. Though you dont attribute these to God and I do, the only difference between us will be on the mental level. But outwardly, as long as we abide in loyalty to these principles, we will both be Christians and that's what matters for a better world.