faclonwhirr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faclonwhirr) wrote2010-04-04 04:22 pm
faclonwhirr) wrote2010-04-04 04:22 pm
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A thought occurred to me as I was pondering the impossibility of a divine being that is both all-powerful and all-compassionate (or all-loving, depending on your translation) given the world we have now, which is far from free of suffering. After all, if such a being existed, everything would be perfect for everyone, all the time, with no exceptions. I was discussing this with someone last night who came up with some nonsense about how it could still be possible for a loving entity to stand back and do nothing while the object of their affection suffers. This made me rage quite a bit, as does any instance of people not understanding that words mean things. The last instance of this phenomenon was when someone said something along the lines of "No, I'm not forcing you to use cultural relativism, I just want you to see things from the perspective of that culture and the history that led up to it!" In this case though, it would be something more like "No, he doesn't hate you, he just wants to see you suffer!" And the point for the idea that such an entity wants to see people suffer is a very strong one, were I to possess the power to remove everyone's problems and make their lives perfect in every way with but a passing thought, and I continually decided not to do this, what would you think of me? Were I to possess the same mentality and morals that I do now, I would think of myself as the most horrible person alive. Refusing to exert the most minimal effort to prevent anything bad from ever happening is, in my opinion, precisely the same as causing everything bad that happens to happen. Only a truly malevolent being would do such a thing.
At some point in that train of thought (and now I'm getting to the point of all this, finally) I remembered the old "Lord, liar, or lunatic" option for what people thought of Jesus. This set of options leaves out one very interesting possibility: What if Jesus, and by extension, his father, the god of Abraham, were all three? This stems from an earlier conversation from a friend of mine who felt that the god of Abraham may have been a bitter outcast from a larger pantheon. Suppose this bitterness led to the train of thought that he was better than all of those other gods, that indeed he was all-powerful? Were he to contact any of the people who would become his prophets, he would tell them no differently. And here we come to another idea that has been said before my writing this; the mentality that the god of Abraham is like an abusive spouse, who pretends to love fully while at the same time threatening torment for any disobedience. It becomes far more pathetic, though, when the possibility is brought up that this god has the capacity to neither reward nor punish those who obey or disobey him; that Heaven and Hell are merely figments of his twisted imagination.
At some point in that train of thought (and now I'm getting to the point of all this, finally) I remembered the old "Lord, liar, or lunatic" option for what people thought of Jesus. This set of options leaves out one very interesting possibility: What if Jesus, and by extension, his father, the god of Abraham, were all three? This stems from an earlier conversation from a friend of mine who felt that the god of Abraham may have been a bitter outcast from a larger pantheon. Suppose this bitterness led to the train of thought that he was better than all of those other gods, that indeed he was all-powerful? Were he to contact any of the people who would become his prophets, he would tell them no differently. And here we come to another idea that has been said before my writing this; the mentality that the god of Abraham is like an abusive spouse, who pretends to love fully while at the same time threatening torment for any disobedience. It becomes far more pathetic, though, when the possibility is brought up that this god has the capacity to neither reward nor punish those who obey or disobey him; that Heaven and Hell are merely figments of his twisted imagination.