The trilemma all gods face

[Wootah]

Hi all,

It just seemed like a lot of people on the site were not familiar with the trilemma all gods worth following face. This is the trilemma of is the God good, is it just and is it loving.

So what's the issue.

If the God is good then it is just. If it is not just then it is not good.
If the God is just then it cannot be merciful. if the god wants to show mercy on someone then it is not being just. If it wants to be just then it is not being merciful.
If a Good is merciful then it is not being just and nor is it being good.

No god outside of God resolves this trilemma. For instance Allah is claimed to be just and merciful but never explains how it is being just or merciful when it shows mercy on someone. Worse since we know Allah is claimed to be merciful then we know Allah is not just or good. If a God is not good then there is nothing to trust and so why does anyone follow Allah? What proof is there that Allah actually is merciful.

So in Christianity the trilemma is resolved.

Mankind's sins require justice.
God justly sentences us to hell.
God also loves us and so pays for our sins.
Those that wish to accept that payment for their sins are able to justly go to heaven.
In this way God shows that he is good, just and loving.

Obviously the floor is open to disagreement or refinement of the above.

[mwtech]

So the only proof for God is God, which just sucks for everyone who never sees him. My entire childhood of being a raised by Christians, and actively being a Christian as a teenager I never saw God, never felt God, never heard God. The only reason I believed is because I was always told he existed and looked for logic to back that up. Eventually, my looking for logic lead me to the opposite conclusion. There is no logical reason to believe in God.
The only way to see God is if you are looking for him AND you eliminate all other logical explanations for what you find.

[1213]

[Replying to post 1 by Wootah]

Just can be seen also by this way:
God is just, he judges all the same way, righteous into eternal life, others to second death.

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Mat. 25:46

And I think it is good, if only righteous have eternal life, because I have understood that they have right understanding and they want what is good and therefore they are suitable to live forever.

[Divine Insight]

And to posit that God needs blood sacrifice is to imply that He is no better than bloodthirsty Pagan deities who need appeasement.

Exactly. And this also gives us sufficient reasons to conclude that the Hebrew mythological tales are themselves nothing other than a continuation and expansion of the same previous "pagan" superstitions.

In other word, Hebrew mythology is no different all. It is just another "pagan" myth. To even pretend that it is "special" or "non-pagan" is itself a falsehood.

I don't see where the biblical stories of God are any different at all from any other pagan myths in terms of being anything special or more believable. It's basically the very same superstitions. The very idea that it should even be treated differently is unsupportable to begin with.

And we both believe as ethical Abrahamic Monotheists that He IS better, don't we?

And this is a statement that I simply cannot believe you have even made.

How can you believe that the Abrahamic God is better than these myths of Gods that require blood atonement when the Abrahamic myths are filled with precisely this kind of superstition. Especially with Christianity where the concept of a blood atonement as a "sacrificial lamb" is brought center-stage as the very focal point of Christianity in Jesus as the Christ who became the sacrificial lamb of God to pay for the sins of man.

Yet here you are talking about this religion like as if you can dismiss all of this and pretend that it isn't even applicable, and continue to talk about an "Abrahamic God" that you personally believe is "Better than this".

It seems to me that all you are doing is rejecting the dogma of Christianity whilst simultaneously pretending that there can be a God associated with it that has nothing to do with the claims of this dogma.

This would be no different from saying that you believe in Zeus but you don't believe that he is anything at all like he is described to be in Greek Mythology.

It's like you are saying, "I believe the God is real, but the dogma is false, so I simply choose to believe that God is better than the dogma".

All you seem to really be doing is creating a model of a God in your own mind that you totally approve of, and pretending that your personal creation can somehow be related to this dogma that you disapprove of overall.

I just don't understand how you can do that, especially in terms of convincing anyone else that it should be taken as meaningful.

It seems to me that you would be much further ahead to simply say, "Yes I believe there is a God, I just don't believe that it is like the God described in the Bible".

That would make far more sense.

I actually do that myself to some degree. I'm willing to embrace the idea that it is plausible that some sort of "God" exists in some very mysterious way. We may even ultimately be this entity like the Eastern Mystical philosophies suggest. I don't pretend to know what "god" actually is, or that it actually exists. But I'm totally open to the possibility.

But I see absolutely no need to support Greek mythology or Hebrew mythology in order to take this position.

In a sense I agree with you Elijah John. If a god exists, I would expect it to be better than that. In fact, in some eastern mystical philosophies it would not even be necessarily to say that god would need to be "better" than they describe because in many of those philosophies everything is indeed completely justified in terms of morality.

So it seems to me that if you want to support a God idea that is better than the Abrahamic picture why not just seek out a spiritual or religious philosophy that already described a better God?

That seems to be a far better way of dealing with the situation than to continue to support the idea that the Abrahamic God is real, but you just disagree with the Abrahamic stories of this God.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 23 by Divine Insight]

Well, I do see a distinction between the Hebrew God conception and that of their Pagan neighbors.

The idea that the Hebrew God is ethical, requires no human sacrifice and could not be depticted with idols is enough for me to believe He is the true, Living God. Those were quite advanced ideas at the time, still are.

And even the practice of animal blood-sacrifice is preached against by the "Old" Testament prophets to a degree. Look at my signature verse from Micah, and El Code Monkey did a great thread quite a while ago with many references that indicate that the Hebrew God PREFERS mercy, obedience, repentance, thanks and praise to blood of ANY kind. This is what I call the prophetic school of the Bible, and which I believe John the Baptist and Jesus were both adherents of.

Paul, with his substituionary blood atonement theology was a throwback, imo.

This in contrast to the preistly school, the two were often, but not always, in conflict, as the references in El Code's thread demonstrates. The priestly school required blood, the prophetic pointed the way to non-sacrificial means of forgiveness and atonement.

For me, these are the two MAJOR conflicts of the Bible, and where the Bible contradicts or conflicts with itself, we are challenged to take sides. And I choose what I see as the more rational and humane position.

And as I have indicated to you before, the reason I do not choose an Eastern philosphy (though I greatly respect Taoism and Confusicanism) is because the Judeo Christian is MY heritage, and feels like home to me. And I do not want to yeild to the Paulists and the trinitarians in their attempt to (what I see as )"steal Jesus" from his true Jewish Monotheistic heritage.

They worship an innocent man, from my point of view, who never asked for any of this.

And why don't I just dismiss the Bible entirely? I think the Bible is redeemed by it's good and beautiful parts.

[JoeyKnothead]

I consider Wootah a good person, a friend, and where I carry on here is for impact, only I think it important to do it...

From the OP:

So in Christianity the trilemma is resolved.

Mankind's sins require justice.

Sounds to me like we have a qualimma, where none can show God has an opinion on human doings.

God justly sentences us to hell.

To such a god, I say go to hell.

I will not play the common Christian game of threats and slanders.

NOR DO I COTTON TO A USER'S USE OF A BLANKET STATEMENT TO ACCUSE ME OF DESERVING IT!

Show you speak truth!

Show your threats and slanders are anything but the product of! if not delusional thinking, then some downright goofy of it.

I challenge anyone to show a god is so "loving" he'd send ya to Hell for watching the lady next door put on her bathrobe, while ya shake hands with, well, it ain't a hand.

God also loves us and so pays for our sins.

Good. Then he'll be happy spending an eternity in Hell.

Those that wish to accept that payment for their sins are able to justly go to heaven.

I have no desire to hang out with folks in Heaven I don't care to be around while here on Earth.


Now we run into the pentlimma - the complete and utter failure of the Christian to show his religious claims are truth.


editorated ' cause of a slashulational error in a quotater.

[Divine Insight]

For me, these are the two MAJOR conflicts of the Bible, and where the Bible contradicts or conflicts with itself, we are challenged to take sides. And I choose what I see as the more rational and humane position.

You see this as a challenge to take sides between various authors and stories in the Bible. I see these inconsistencies as evidence that there is no divine God behind it. Why would a truly divine God allow his stories to be corrupted? Especially if he expects humans to take them seriously in any way.

And as I have indicated to you before, the reason I do not choose an Eastern philosphy (though I greatly respect Taoism and Confusicanism) is because the Judeo Christian is MY heritage, and feels like home to me. And I do not want to yeild to the Paulists and the trinitarians in their attempt to (what I see as )"steal Jesus" from his true Jewish Monotheistic heritage.

Just for the record we obviously view "heritage" in dramatically different ways. I view myself as a child of the universe, not of any particular culture. I have also always identified as being an "Earthling" first, and an "American" or whatever second.

So cultural heritage has no place for me in the bigger picture of the creator of the universe and humanity in general. I simply go by the philosophies that make the most sense, I don't care who came up with them.

They worship an innocent man, from my point of view, who never asked for any of this.

Well, I am open to the idea that Jesus himself, (assuming he actually existed) may not have been responsible for much of what was written about him. So I don't hold Jesus personally responsible for the resulting Christianities.

Although, if the creator of the universe was actually behind this whole thing, then I see no reason why he shouldn't be held accountable for all of it. Including the myriad of twisted versions of Judaism, Islam and the Christianities.

So even though it's easy to let Jesus off the hook as a mortal man, it's not so easy to understand how a supposedly all-wise creator could have been involved with this religion at all.

And why don't I just dismiss the Bible entirely? I think the Bible is redeemed by it's good and beautiful parts.

It's my view that the good parts aren't all that hot, and certainly not to the point where they offset the bad parts. Besides it's seems extremely problematic to me to become involved in a religion where I only accept the parts I think make sense whilst rejecting all the rest.

At one time I was hoping to become a preacher of Christianity. This was way back before I realized just how horribly screwed up the Bible truly is. It was my hope that I could learn about it, it would make sense, and I could then teach it with confidence. But as you well know that's not possible.

The only way to "salvage" the biblical picture at all is to toss out major parts of it and reject quite a bit of it in favor of trying to just focus on the tid bits that seem to make sense.

But that's no way to preach the Bible. All I would be doing at the point is preaching my own personal opinions of how I wish the Bible would have gone.

Look at yourself. You have even come to reject the divinity of Jesus as "The Christ" in this story. You suggest that he was just a normal mortal man potentially with prophetic insight from God. That is so removed from the standard Christian picture that most people wouldn't even consider it to be Christianity at all.

For me, going down that path simply wasn't a realistic option. Especially when there are other religions and spiritual philosophies that make far more sense. I'm going to reject those simply because they didn't originate from what I consider to be "My Cultural Heritage"? That doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me. If there is one creator who created all of us then we all have precisely the same "Heritage" no matter what we might believe.

Therefore every religion on planet earth is your "heritage" whether you realize it or not.

[ttruscott]

...

Show you speak truth!

Show your threats and slanders are anything but the product of! if not delusional thinking, then some downright goofy of it.

I challenge anyone to show a god is so "loving" he'd send ya to Hell for watching the lady next door put on her bathrobe, while ya shake hands with, well, it ain't a hand.

...

I cannot prove the truth that you seek but I can explain you have missed the mark in your understanding of what sends people to hell.

Christianity as I understand it suggests we don't go to hell for sins we do, we go for self creating ourselves as eternally evil, a devil or demon. This is because sins we do are all of equal and ultimate disvalue but only some people chose to become demons by rejecting YHWH as their GOD and rejecting HIS promises and warnings as the selfish manipulations of a false god.

Sin does not put us in hell, the rejection of salvation puts us in hell.
If someone can be saved, they will be saved.

Peace, Ted

[Zzyzx]

.

Christianity as I understand it suggests we don't go to hell for sins we do, we go for self creating ourselves as eternally evil, a devil or demon. This is because sins we do are all of equal and ultimate disvalue but only some people chose to become demons by rejecting YHWH as their GOD and rejecting HIS promises and warnings as the selfish manipulations of a false god.

Sin does not put us in hell, the rejection of salvation puts us in hell.

In other words, a god is proposed to have created "hell" for all who refuse to "accept" (or worship) him. Is that what you claim to understand of Christianity?

The promise of rewards and threats of punishment "after you die" is a primary selling point of many religions, including Christianity -- playing on human hope and fear.

[Haven]

[Replying to post 23 by Divine Insight]

Well, I do see a distinction between the Hebrew God conception and that of their Pagan neighbors.

The idea that the Hebrew God is ethical, requires no human sacrifice and could not be depticted with idols is enough for me to believe He is the true, Living God. Those were quite advanced ideas at the time, still are.

Really? You're convinced a god exists because he is slightly more "advanced" (in your opinion) that polytheistic gods worshiped by Israel's neighbors? Without evidence, no concept--regardless of how advanced it is--can be demonstrated to actually exist.

Paul, with his substitutionary blood atonement theology was a throwback, imo.

I agree. Christianity would be, in my opinion, so much better without Paul's regressive theology.

For me, these are the two MAJOR conflicts of the Bible, and where the Bible contradicts or conflicts with itself, we are challenged to take sides. And I choose what I see as the more rational and humane position.

Good.

[Divine Insight]

The idea that the Hebrew God is ethical, requires no human sacrifice and could not be depticted with idols is enough for me to believe He is the true, Living God. Those were quite advanced ideas at the time, still are.[/color]

Really? You're convinced a god exists because he is slightly more "advanced" (in your opinion) that polytheistic gods worshiped by Israel's neighbors? Without evidence, no concept--regardless of how advanced it is--can be demonstrated to actually exist.

Exactly my thoughts as well.

In fact, I was thinking about starting another thread entitled "A Perfect God". And simply ask the question, "If we could construct a picture of a perfectly moral God would that be reason to believe that one exists?"

IMHO, there are spiritual philosophies that can be constructed that allow for a perfectly moral God. But does that mean that such a God must then exist?

I don't see why it would. Just because we can imagine a philosophy that seems plausible is no reason to believe that it must then exist.