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plato
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How can pure goodness create something other than itself
#7744606 - 12/11/07 11:31 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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It is my belief that pure goodness(for lack of a better word) has not the ability to create anything other than good without suffering the loss of its perfection. How can the pure goodness of the Christian god have created anything other than perfect goodness. The principle of the omnipresent and perfectly just god allows no room for evil or injustice. When humankind and consequently freewill were created, the choice to do bad or good was introduced. This of course led to the inevitable choice to do "bad". So my question now is: Is that perfectly good god now not perfect because bad has come from his hands? I.e. Can a potter be a perfect potter if a pot he created is not perfect
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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backfromthedead
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7744634 - 12/11/07 11:41 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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What is perfect?? What is good??
I feel that it is all mixed up.
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: backfromthedead]
#7744648 - 12/11/07 11:46 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I am talking from a christian standpoint of a definitive line between good and bad, and that good cannot be bad
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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backfromthedead
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7744666 - 12/11/07 11:52 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Do you see that that kind of good has been advanced by the use of the bad??
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Silversoul
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7744905 - 12/11/07 12:49 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, "good" and "evil" only seem apparent to us from a dualistic perspective. A God who is truly infinite is beyond good and evil, but because our dualistic minds tend to see things in good and evil, he appears good to us. It should be noted that "Satan" was actually referred to in the original Hebrew Bible as "the Satan." This may not seem that important at first, but what it indicates is that Satan is an aspect of God, just like the other angels. Satan is the aspect which pulls us away from the infinite world of spirit into the finite world of matter and ego. This was actually necessary in order for the universe to be created, but at a certain point we have to reconnect to spirit and start ascending again, or it will keep us in samsara, and lead us to the kind of destructive behaviors that people with giant egos tend to do.
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: Silversoul]
#7745028 - 12/11/07 01:22 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I know that your arguments are valid. I am not a Christian. But when it comes to Christianity and it's view of good and bad, it now looks as if their god is not perfectly good and that would seem to undermine all of the rest of Christian thought.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7745036 - 12/11/07 01:24 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, of course my explanation above is mostly a Kabbalistic point of view. Orthodox Christianity is riddled with contradictions. However, I can give you the standard cop-out of "free will."
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7745041 - 12/11/07 01:25 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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When in genesis it says that god made us in his own image the good verses bad/ His version if morality would have been part of that. So truly from a christian standpoint our abiltiy(or handicap) to differentiate between good and bad would be his as well
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: Silversoul]
#7745046 - 12/11/07 01:27 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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And i will take your cop-:) out
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7745133 - 12/11/07 01:45 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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But if God created this freewill which has negagtive consequences then he is still creating something negative.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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EternalCowabunga
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7745524 - 12/11/07 03:36 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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It depends on how you want to position God in his relation to his creation.
Sure, we could say that it is more perfect to create autonomous beings than mindless robots so evil is a necessary consequence of humans having free will. But, as you said, God is always the first cause and therefore also the ongoing cause, and so he is actually responsible for the evil in humans.
I can think of two major refutations to this argument. The first argument is from the classical theist St. Thomas Aquinas, who argues for "The Unreality of Evil". Aquinas argues that everything is indeed pure goodness and that evil has no positive actuality.
What he means to say is that we can't point to any one thing in existence and say "This is Badness" or "This is Evil". Evil is always a privation of goodness - it is goodness that is lacking in goodness - so it is simply a degree of perfection which it has failed to reach (makes me think of the "different infinities" thread). A man with one leg is only good, can only do good, but he lacks in goodness in regards to the potential for having two legs. So to answer this:
Quote:
Can a potter be a perfect potter if a pot he created is not perfect
The potter is perfect, and so is the pot, but they could in fact be more perfect. This doesn't imply any badness in either of them.
Another refutation is the "We Don't Know The Whole Picture" argument or "No Pain, No Gain". Philosophers such as Swinsburne and Hicks (not Bill Hicks) argue that without the pain and suffering, we would not know God's goodness or achieve virtue and moral excellence. This argument relies on God having some greater purpose for existence that requires evil and that we have yet to understand because of our finite minds. An infinite being cannot be subject to our moral definitions because, since he is infinite, he is incomprehensible and so his attributes such as goodness or power are of a different kind than the finite forms we are used to.
Some Christian philosophers kind of just cop out and say that while God is Good, he is not maximally good, but essentially good - God's goodness is not unlimited but he is still good, only his goodness is limited by some of his other unlimited attributes such as his power (it is not within God's power to remove ALL evils, but only so much as is logically possible in order to be creating the best of all possible worlds)
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7746476 - 12/11/07 06:51 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, in your sense, pure goodness is a conscious perception that you have directed your attention to. Your perception and your attention. It is unmistakeable that there is an overall creative power which has the intent of positive effects arsing from its causes. The means can be accomplished through many different ways. The many different ways will always start out positive but it is human perception that deems the means or even the intent negative, which produces negative environments. This is because the outward environment is an expression of what you percieve on the inside, and perception my friend is a choice. You are therefore choosing to percieve creative acts in a negative sense because you think not of the cause or the intended effect. There is a law of compensation; that is, you will be refunded for your services whether spiritually or physically, but you must percieve correctly in order to recieve benefit. Think of it like this, you get a hundred dollars stollen from your unlocked car. The service returned for your physical contribution is the lesson of being overall more responsible and remembering small things like locking your car. You could say that they don't balance out on the scales, but thought prior to an incident balances the scales to the nearest quark. You should read the Master Key System, it would greatly contribute to more affluence in your life. It is evident that you are in tune, but being in tune is like a wavelength and the wave is so pure energy that it be invisible to the eye. You are not invisible to the eye, so why not strive for anything else? To be able to go into the overall consciousness and come back out...
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: EternalCowabunga]
#7748378 - 12/12/07 08:36 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
EternalCowabunga said: It depends on how you want to position God in his relation to his creation.
Sure, we could say that it is more perfect to create autonomous beings than mindless robots so evil is a necessary consequence of humans having free will. But, as you said, God is always the first cause and therefore also the ongoing cause, and so he is actually responsible for the evil in humans.
I can think of two major refutations to this argument. The first argument is from the classical theist St. Thomas Aquinas, who argues for "The Unreality of Evil". Aquinas argues that everything is indeed pure goodness and that evil has no positive actuality.
What he means to say is that we can't point to any one thing in existence and say "This is Badness" or "This is Evil". Evil is always a privation of goodness - it is goodness that is lacking in goodness - so it is simply a degree of perfection which it has failed to reach (makes me think of the "different infinities" thread). A man with one leg is only good, can only do good, but he lacks in goodness in regards to the potential for having two legs. So to answer this:
I have read Augustine's confessions and just did not feel it was a good enough argument for the existence of bad. Voltaire makes a good counter argument in candid. But out of all the arguments if i cannot find a way to refute it, this one sounds the most reasonable.
Quote:
Can a potter be a perfect potter if a pot he created is not perfect
The potter is perfect, and so is the pot, but they could in fact be more perfect. This doesn't imply any badness in either of them.
Another refutation is the "We Don't Know The Whole Picture" argument or "No Pain, No Gain". Philosophers such as Swinsburne and Hicks (not Bill Hicks) argue that without the pain and suffering, we would not know God's goodness or achieve virtue and moral excellence. This argument relies on God having some greater purpose for existence that requires evil and that we have yet to understand because of our finite minds.
Again if God was truly perfect(which i believe the Christian belief system says of him)He would not need to evil as means to an end. If he did then that would again bring us to the original question.
As to the theory of god not being able to rid the universe of all evil i see that as putting limits on a limitless being.
I have read Augustine's confessions and just did not feel it was a good enough argument for the existence of bad. Volt air makes a good counter argument in candid. But out of all the arguments if i cannot find a way to refute it, this one sounds the most reasonable.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7748385 - 12/12/07 08:39 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Hey sorry but i do not know how to do the quoting thing. But my replies are in the quote itself.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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Boundless
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7748461 - 12/12/07 09:14 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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God knows only Goodness. His freewill creates only good things. He created us perfectly good with his ability to create and gave us freewill.
So everything is perfect.
Then some how we got an insane notion to ask what we are. When we did this, it implied that we did NOT know what we were, and then we started projecting and creating suffering for ourselves because the question implied seperation.
So then seperation started and God saw this, gave us the answer to save us, which is really just a call back to pure knowledge, known as the Holy Spirit.
This has been completed and in the same instant that we asked the question "What am I" the answer was given, and we returned to God in complete happiness and perfect creation.
Though in that instant, a world opened up and time was created to help us get out of delusion, so we could "take time" and gradually make our way back to God.
So Free will means we have infinite creative ability like God. Choice is only meaningful when we choose between 2 alternatives, and only when we don't know who we are is when there seems to be a choice between what our higher self wills(aligned with God), and our ego tells us to do.
God doesn't know delusion, but he can sense when his creation is seperate from him, and so he sent us the answer and now we Know.
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: Boundless]
#7748572 - 12/12/07 10:09 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I could just be putting up a mental block for myself but i am not sure that that answers my question. In god creating freewill(which has negative aspects because it begets things other than good) he in turn was responsible for negativity and evil. Again how could anything that was perfect goodness create anything other than itself no matter how far down the line of creation. If something is not perfect then obviously the thing that created that is not perfect and so on until you get to the top/god.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: Boundless]
#7748599 - 12/12/07 10:20 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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What your saying is that god created humans who in turn created the evil they live in. If this is true then god actually created something that was imperfect because there was an obvious negative aspect to humans if they chose negativity over positveness.Correct me if i am wrong.
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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EternalCowabunga
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7749615 - 12/12/07 02:22 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Again if God was truly perfect(which i believe the Christian belief system says of him)He would not need to evil as means to an end. If he did then that would again bring us to the original question.
But you don't know what truly perfect is because you are a finite being, as the argument goes - AKA "God works in mysterious ways". Is it not more perfect to have free will with the consequence of making mistakes so they can grow spiritually instead of just having everything handed to them which would make humans pretty lame on their own? But anyway..
These are the best arguments we have. I just did an essay on an exam for this question so I feel confident in saying this. You're right though, there is no answer that will feel "good enough", and I suppose this is where faith comes in. I myself do not believe in the Christian God or any God, I've chosen to believe that if there is a God he is ineffable and so it's useless to try and comprehend him in the finite mind.
p.s: what is the argument that voltaire makes in candide? isn't it that everything works out for a greater good? well that's what the main character said anyways, maybe what voltaire was actually trying to point out through his satire was that it is foolish to look at everything optimistically but humans need hope and it can carry us a long way
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plato
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: EternalCowabunga]
#7752311 - 12/13/07 12:57 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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What he was pointing out i believe was that it was foolish(and a-motivational) to think everything is perfect because it is and could have been no other way. Things are as they are and cannot be worse so therefore things are good? That was my feeble attempt to put words to my thoughts, hopefully as i mature philisophically that will change
-------------------- enlightenment is the emmergence from self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inabiltity to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when it's cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidiance from another. -Immanuel Kant-
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Seuss
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Re: How can pure goodness create something other than itself [Re: plato]
#7752611 - 12/13/07 05:32 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I haven't read any of the replies as I don't want to bias my reply.
Quote:
It is my belief that pure goodness(for lack of a better word) has not the ability to create anything other than good without suffering the loss of its perfection.
Pure goodness cannot exist without something relative to reference. This is an artifact of duality. By definition, pure goodness implies there is impure goodness, or less pure goodness, or something other than pure goodness.
Quote:
How can the pure goodness of the Christian god have created anything other than perfect goodness.
I consider this a mistake in interpretation. Whatever existed before reality existed outside of duality thus concepts of good and evil did not exist. To illustrate this point, Bereishith starts with Bet rather than Alef.
Quote:
The principle of the omnipresent and perfectly just god allows no room for evil or injustice. When humankind and consequently freewill were created, the choice to do bad or good was introduced. This of course led to the inevitable choice to do "bad".
Again, a mistake in interpretation, trying to define a creator in terms that man can understand (e.g. duality).
Quote:
So my question now is: Is that perfectly good god now not perfect because bad has come from his hands? I.e. Can a potter be a perfect potter if a pot he created is not perfect
The confusion exists because you are viewing creation with dualistic eyes... a fish trying to understand the nature of dry when dry doesn't exist in the world of the fish. Although in our eyes, good and evil are different, at another level, they are the same.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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