I asked here:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/more-than-300-killed-in-saudi-hajj-stampede/page/2#post-7198097

… about “god’s will” and how incidents do / don’t fall into that category. I’m shifting it out into a separate thread so as not to disrupt the original.

Note: despite my well-documented atheist leanings, this isn’t intended to be Yet Another Theist Bashing thread, rather, I’m just trying to understand / learn so please keep it civil.

Ta.

if it is god’s will then he’s a bit of a git and I’m don’t get why anyone would worship someone/thing like that

Ok, so the most common defenses that I’m aware of* are theological skepticism and the unknown greater good and especially the imperative for free will.

Theological skepticism
Basically, god is ineffable, we cannot know what the will of god is and how an individual event fits into it. It may appear evil to us but in the objective it may be part of a plan which is good or even be good in and if itself. We simply can’t know.

Greater Good
Evil could be a necessary consequence of creating a greater good.

Free Will
If we consider that doing good is one thing but choosing to do good is better – or that it’s impossible to do good without the possibility of doing bad – then free will is a necessary part of producing a maximally good world. With free will in the world all bad is explicable – even the seemingly arbitrary “natural evil” like childhood disease can be explained away by appeal to the free will of evil spirits.

Salvation
Alternatively you could take the greater good to be brought about by salvation or the possibility of entering an afterlife. I was never convinced by this but some people argue that the existence of the possibility of salvation and heaven compensates for the suffering on earth.

There are other responses – some people deny that evil exists for instance – but those two are the most common.

Sorry if this is a christian-centric version, I don’t know to what extent this relates to Islam.

*a few undergraduate philosophy of religion modules at uni…

I’m of the opinion that by blaming things on God, in whichever flavour, it takes the heat off of people. Want to bomb crap out of folk because you’re mental blame one god, want to drive down busy roads on steep hillsides in the dark with no lights on blame another god, want to do all manner of things to all sorts of people blame yet another god. Fact is people are mostly crap and will use anything to take the blame away from themselves.

What about deja vu?

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

– King James Bible “Authorized Version”, Cambridge Edition

If God if omnipotent then we can’t have free will.

What about deja vu?

Just a glitch in the matrix.

If God exists he’s a **** undeserving of worship.

Just a glitch in the matrix.

Now unglitched.

Simple really,1 John 5:19
You just have to forget what the main stream Christian religions teach (lots of tradition and man made ideas and philosophy) and read what the bible actually says.

If God if omnipotent then we can’t have free will.

Why?

If God exists he’s a **** undeserving of worship.

She thinks you’re a ******* **** of a ****, too.

God?
An imaginary friend for adults..

What tyres for hajj?

Simple really,1 John 5:19
You just have to forget what the main stream Christian religions teach (lots of tradition and man made ideas and philosophy) and read what the bible actually says.

The Bible is a creation of man put together a significant time after J the C was crucified. You’re just picking a different tradition and set of man made ideas to follow.

Cougar – Moderator

……. this isn’t intended to be Yet Another Theist Bashing thread

But you won’t be moderating it if things just happen to drift that way…

I expect he (or she) is just ‘moving in mysterious ways’

As an atheist, there’s nothing wrong with giving this stuff a little more thought than “God’s a ****!!!111!1” which makes you sound like a 14 year old.

But you won’t be moderating it if things just happen to drift that way…

I considered it (and was halfway through deleting the first nobby comment before I reconsidered). But I’m even less of a fan of censorship, figured you lot could self-police / ignore. Slippery slope, that (and arguably an abuse of power on my own thread).

I think what they do is fall back on the fact one cannot know what gods will is and one must just have faith that the deity has a plan that we are too simple to see

Corinthians 13:12King James Version (KJV)

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I know of no real logical manner to reconcile it because god is all powerful all loving and all knowing

Given this god either chooses to not intervene or does not love us enough to intervene.When it happens at an event like the Hak rather than say at a KKK gathering its pretty hard to see his /her/its working so some sort of fudge has to occur. St thomas of Aquinas wrote on this if you really care enough to read it.

If God if omnipotent then we can’t have free will.
Why?

Because god can remove it
Do you have the freedom of choice to ride if I can stop you on a whim?

FWIW if we dont have free will and god decides then god is the author of sin .
ON balance its better for them if we have free will given to / taken by us when we ate the apple.

Cougar it just another area where IMHO one has to suspend your intellectual faculties as there is no reasonable satisfactory answer beyond shrugging and going trust in god whilst being incapable of explaining gods will

Do you have the freedom of choice to ride if I can stop you on a whim?

Yes, we both do.

edit: employment law aside, my boss can fire me at any moment and yet I still have a role to play in determining whether I’m in work on monday.

Thanks, Cougar, for opening up the second thread.

I would begin by saying that I don’t think that any of the questions we raise on STW can ever really be satisfactorily answered on STW, as good as it is, but I certainly think it’s worth the banter. Well, in light of some of the comments above, not everything is worth the banter, but…

The idea of God’s will, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, is that existence itself, and the laws of existence, are his will. Mathematical realities, such as Pythagorean theorem and the Golden Ratio might be seen by some – on the basis of their apparent universality and, in the case of the latter, the geometric beauty – as examples of God’s mind in existence. [Please note: I DO NOT suggest that this – or anything like it – might act as some sort of PROOF of GOd’s existence!]

That said, the idea of God’s will is not – as is so often construed – that he would simply impose himself on the very existence he is behind. Rather, existence simply unfolds the way it does according to itself. This includes suffering.

From a [Christian] theological point of view, suffering is the result of humankind having thrown a spanner in the works of existence, and so throwing off course what existence might have been; but then God takes on suffering itself (in the person of Jesus), and so transforms suffering.

This means that, while suffering endures as a reality (God would not re-set a course that creatures had set for themselves, and so take away their freedom), the effect of suffering is transformed.

So, little Johnny may pull through an operation, and give his parents the inspiration to ‘thank God’, or he may not pull through an operation, and so give his parents the inspiration to curse God. Either way, God’s function in the situation is to have given the mind to humankind for medicine in the first place, and to redeem the situation for the better whether Johnny lives or dies.

In the end, though, there is no easy answer to your question. It is the very question that vexes everyone who has ever experienced suffering, and there is simply so much philosophical and theological ground to cover in a forum post, that it would be almost impossible to address every possible angle.

But I am happy to try.

Yes, we both do.

So you have free will but I can over ride your free will and enforce mine?

I would argue your ” free will” is entirely what I decide to allow

What you choose is immaterial as only what I decree happens.

If a god does exist, and everything that happens happens for a reason, then what possible reason could there be for my wife and I losing our third child at the weekend?

I was pretty agnostic when I was younger. I’m rapidly falling into the “he’s a ****” camp.

God would not re-set a course that creatures had set for themselves, and so take away their freedom

God does do this as there are miracles [ if you are a christian] which are this very thing
God intervening and taking away freedom.

Respectfully, what you call difficult is inconsistent to the point of intellectual incoherence
Its why you need to fall back on faith

Isn’t “Gods Will” just the religious version of “Sh*t happens”????

What you choose is immaterial as only what I decree happens.

Only if you think that your granting me the choice is valueless. As I pointed out above there’s reason to think that that’s not the case.

Isn’t “Gods Will” just the religious version of “Sh*t happens”????

Not really, no. HTH

Only if you think that your granting me the choice is valueless

Who granted you choice? I said I decide and you accept someone has to grant you it [ so they can remove it] and you still think you have it. Its contradictory and illogical.

We cannot have a situation where you have free will but someone can remove it as it is then , de facto, no longer free as it requires someone elses ascent.
Imagine you can marry who you want if I let you is not free will.
Or I can post what I want here but cougar/mods can remove it

Its not worth debating , its not free someone has to let us do it , and I dont know what you are trying to get at tbh.

Junkyard – lazarus

Given this god either chooses to not intervene or does not love us enough to intervene.

The argument (not that I am especially interested in it) would run:

1. God in his goodness, creates something good.
2. It is more good to be free than to be bound, so what God creates is free.
3. God’s creation uses its freedom to turn away from God.
4. It is antithetical to God’s goodness to override the very freedom that he has instilled in his creation in the first place.

Analogy:

In the middle of Cardiff is the beautiful Roath Park. In the middle of Roath Park is a lake. Now, early one summer morning, before anyone has headed off to work, and the swans and geese on the lake are still sleeping, and there is not so much as hint of breeze, you wake up and go for a very quiet, contemplative stroll around the lake.

You are enjoying the absolute peace of it, when all of sudden, you see me coming over the road to join you. I have been out all night, and am just stumbling home, still somewhat drunk. I see you and shout, and at the same time, cast my mostly empty can of Carling into the lake.

With that, the peace is broken. The sound of my vulgarity echoes around the park, the swans and geese stir and start to flap about, and below the surface of the water – well beyond our seeing – even the water is disturbed. Now, you will remember from GCSE science that, in a vacuum, a wave will continue if there is nothing to stop it. Well, the ripples of the disturbance on the surface permeate the water underneath so that even the fish feel it.

The only one responsible for the disturbance is me, but now everything in the vicinity of the lake – things and creatures we both see and do not see – are affected. And now that it has started, it continues. The first of the commuters have started to drive down the surrounding streets, followed by the first children with their parents coming down the pavements. In fact, one or two of the little boys pick up some gravel, and throw it in the already-disturbed water. They are not doing anything bad; they are simply responding to stimuli and acting according to their nature.

But now you can probably see what I am getting act. From a Judeo-Christian point of view, suffering enters into the world (first made good) through the actions of human beings. Thereafter, nothing can really stop it, as that would reduce the freedom that made creation good in the first place. What can be done is that the chaos is mitigated, and Christians believe that this is what God undertakes in the Incarnation. But what would be antithetical, is if God simply descended and put a stop to the very physical laws that he authored in the first place.

Its not worth debating

That won’t stop you humping it to death though, will it?

Its not worth debating , its not free someone has to let us do it , and I dont know what you are trying to get at tbh.

People have argued this for thousands of years. If you think you’re able to dismiss it that easily then you’re not understanding the discussion.

edit: I think that’s me out. I don’t care enough to argue with a big hitter.

“Free will” is merely a philosophical construct with no scientific evidence to support its existence.
All experiments to determine the nature of free will/conscious decision making have shown that even in the simplest situation, such as “deciding” when to flex a finger are detectable by electrical brain impulses an average of 0.8 seconds before the subject has “made the choice”.
This may be a fallibility of “the reductionist scientific method” but as that’s the yard stick most people use to evaluate “life” you have to consider that “free will” is as much a matter of faith as “God’s will”

Junkyard – lazarus

God does do this as there are miracles [ if you are a christian] which are this very thing God intervening and taking away freedom.

Excellent point. And there are a number of approaches that some philosophers would take to the question of miracles.

In one respect, there are indeed times when – from a religious point of view – a miracle is the only way to explain something, and why it is granted at that given point in time, no one really knows. A miracle is an almost entirely subjective experience.

Then again, a miracle – which we often describe as ‘supernatural’ – might also be interpreted as ‘natural’ – that is, an aspect of nature that we do not normally perceive simply manifesting itself in a given instance.

Take the example of Fido, the two-dimensional dog.

Fido lives on a two-dimensional plane with a bunch of two-dimensional creatures. I can see Fido, because I am the one who cut him and all of his fellow two-dimensional mates out of the construction paper.

One day, I place my foot in front of Fido’s two-dimensional snout and then quickly remove it. Fido is startled, and thinks he must have had an hallucination. But then I do it again, and he is convinced he has experienced a miracle. He goes off and tell his two-dimensional mates.

The thing is, what Fido doesn’t know, being that his perception is limited to the two dimension, is that their is a universe beyond him that is comprised of more than two dimensions, and that what he experiences as a miracle is actually just a bigger natural reality than he is normally aware of.

The analogy works when you remember that physicists tell us that the universe is likely comprised of – what is it? – something like 11 dimensions?

That won’t stop you humping it to death though, will it?

We both do our thing, yours is to enter threads to tell the participants how low your opinion is of them or the thread, where as i just choose to not enter threads I dont care about just to whinge at the participants. I will let you decide which is the more noble choice.

Thereafter, nothing can really stop it, as that would reduce the freedom that made creation good in the first place

then god is not all powerful and you just have to accept that their are limits to gods power.

If you think you’re able to dismiss it that easily then you’re not understanding the discussion.

or you are not arguing it well.
You claim you have free will and that I can remove it and restrict your choice
That is clearly not free will it is choice with limits. Insulting me or my understanding wont change that.

FWIW i am trying to give up the personal stuff and turn the other cheek so I will withdraw from the thread and leave it to others – wander off to rugby thread to explain to the CPT how little I like it 😉

When folk spout God at me, I am reminded of this, and why I cannot reconcile the existence of God, or if they do exist, why they deserve our worship instead of our loathing…….

I don’t know where I saw it, but there’s an Internet meme doing the rounds……

Gods don’t kill people, People with Gods kill people.

FWIW i am trying to give up the personal stuff and turn the other cheek so I will withdraw from the thread and leave it to others – wander off to rugby thread to explain to the CPT how little I like it

….Inch’Allah

the more noble choice.

Seriously?

As you have said yourself, take time away from arguing endlessly in a copy’n’paste frenzy. You’ll feel a lot better for it, I hope.

I hope, Smudge666, that you are not suggesting anyone is ‘spouting God at you’. We are discussing a question raised by a forum member by putting forward ideas and disputing them in turn.

I have always found it hard to swallow simple statements like those of Attenborough (and Fry, and others), as if they in themselves were enough to knock down thousands of years of human thought about the divine. I mean, they are legitimate enough to express. But they can hardly be considered fatal to all notions of God. In, I might add, precisely the same way that I don’t think anything I say in some pithy way on here is bound to convince anyone that God exists.

It is all just part of legitimate human discourse.