is 'believing (against the evidence) that God is good' is a very good psychological protection mechanism from despair?

[Wootah]

Hi all,

It occurred to me that when everything is going badly in life that 'believing (against the evidence) that God is good' is a very good psychological protection mechanism from despair and nihilism.

Without believing in a good God, there is really no reason to believe that life should not be the way it is.

Does anyone want to give some reasons for or against this?

[Diogenes]

Without believing in a good God, there is really no reason to believe that life should not be the way it is.

This seems like another way of saying "Not believing in God = belief in reality."

[TRANSPONDER]

Without believing in a good God, there is really no reason to believe that life should not be the way it is.

I do not see how it is evident that GOD has to be seen through the filter of "Good or Evil" any more than one has to see the so-called "Problem of Evil" if one is to accept the notion of a mindful creation re the universe, specifically re life on Earth.

"It is what it is" and attaching 'good' or 'evil' to what is, simply muddies the waters.

One can understand that life should be the way that it is without having to also understand that "God is good" - or for that matter, that "God is evil".

If life is what it is - why struggle then?

Why indeed? in my teens, I grappled with this problem, after I'd realised that none of the religions are likely to be more true than any others (1) and so I postulated that there might be a mind controlling the universe, but not us. Not a personal god, not with a plan for us, and in fact a Deist -god. We were, effectively, as on our own as if there was no god there at all. So, if there was no Plan for human life, was there no meaning for human life? Was there no purpose? If not, why live at all? Why not just stop living?

I can still remember the phrase that came to me: "I went to the cliff and looked over and decided that I didn't want to jump." For that personal and instinctive reason, I considered topping myself and simply decided I didn't want to. Having come to that conclusion, I asked 'So what do I do with my life?' The answer was, 'Whatever you want'. The rush of freedom that came with not having a divine Plan I was supposed to follow was amazing.

Since then I have worked out or seen worked out the rebuttals of the arguments from morality, Awe and wonder and nihilism without God, but essentially it's still what I realised then - that human life is its' own value and the meanings we decide on are worth more than some plan or rules imposed by someone else, even if it wasn't an imaginary mythical being.

(1) Obviously I'd accepted the Gospel story but just rejected the miracles as we tend to do. That was a bit superficial, and digging deeper came some decades later, but the point was, I rejected the Gospels as proof of a god or religion.

[JehovahsWitness]

Why struggle then? Isn't the reason we struggle because we do not agree that life should be the way it is and we struggle to achieve different outcomes?

And therein lies evidence of a loving God. As I often say, "In the world of no water, there can be no thirst". Our thirst for justice and deep dissatisfaction when we see injustice is evidence humans instinctively sense moral imbalance and yearn that it be rectified. But from where does this come? It could not evolve by itself without something in its environment as a motor, and if the world is what it is then from where does the desire for it to be different come?

Do you yearn for sjbd#°¤☆6? No because "sjbd#°¤☆6" has no meaning in our world. I cannot develop a desire for that which is outside of my world unless I am shown that thing or it is programmed into me. We should see cruelty and injustice and feel no more than a hungry lion does in a stray gazelle, if we don't , there is an outside force at work.

[TRANSPONDER]

Why struggle then? Isn't the reason we struggle because we do not agree that life should be the way it is and we struggle to achieve different outcomes?

And therein lies evidence of a loving God. As I often say, "In the world of no water, there can be no thirst". Our thirst for justice and deep dissatisfaction when we see injustice is evidence humans instinctively sense moral imbalance and yearn that it be rectified. But from where does this come? It could not evolve by itself without something in its environment as a motor, and if the world is what it is then from where does the desire for it to be different come?

Do you yearn for sjbd#°¤☆6? No because "sjbd#°¤☆6" has no meaning in our world. I cannot develop a desire for that which is outside of my world unless I am shown that thing or it is programmed into me. We should see cruelty and injustice and feel no more than a hungry lion does in a stray gazelle, if we don't , there is an outside force at work.

That is NO evidence of or for a Loving God (name you own) or even one that is malevolent. It is evidence for a world that was not made for us, and we have to deal with it as best we can, first through adaptation and then through seeing what human ethics perceives as wrong and we struggle to find ways of making it right.

Sorry, but religion has not always or even often been in the forefront of improving human condition, but rather prefers to throw its' weight behind abuses and evils because it does very well out of it (and rarely more so than in current America). I'm not going to point the pinger here, but we are only too well aware of cover ups of abuses in religion where abuses are not actually approved by it (public punishments in Islam, for instance).

As explained before and I will continue to do so, it makes more sense and fits the evidence better if evolution (biological and social) is behind all of this and not a god, loving or hateful. And nobody promises that science or human logic will solve all our problems, but we have really got to stop hoping that some god or other is going to descend on the clouds and make everything a utopian paradise. Apart from those shot in the back of the head and tossed on the burning heap of Hinnom.

[1213]

...It all depends on what we see and sometimes what we choose not to see.

I think God is the only good, but it seems to depend on how one defines "good" and it looks like subjective opinion only.

[brunumb]

...It all depends on what we see and sometimes what we choose not to see.

I think God is the only good, but it seems to depend on how one defines "good" and it looks like subjective opinion only.

It also depends on which parts of the Bible to ignore or bend to breaking point in order to make God appear to be good. Everything about God is subjective opinion.

[William]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #22]

TRANSPONDER:...so I postulated that there might be a mind controlling the universe, but not us. Not a personal god, not with a plan for us, and in fact a Deist -god. We were, effectively, as on our own as if there was no god there at all. So, if there was no Plan for human life, was there no meaning for human life? Was there no purpose? If not, why live at all? Why not just stop living?

I postulated differently, and it took many years of my life to learn the way I currently look at this situation I am [and apparently everyone is] involved within.

1: There might be a mind controlling the universe
2: There is a mind controlling me [my own mind]
3: There is no reason to believe that the mind controlling the universe is incapable of interacting with my own mind controlling me.
4: How to give the universal mind an opportunity to interact with me.
5: Religion and its main holy-books did not provide anything through which I could discover the way in which to achieve this interaction as it offered only mediums - foremost their own holy-books - but also laws, rituals, belief systems, preachers et al - none of which enabled me to make any actual and vibrant connection with this supposed universal mind.
6: It was almost accidental that I did find a way in which to make that connection, so deeply shielded from human awareness that it is, in the main, because of [5].

As a result, I have no choice but to reject the idea of the Deist GOD as something which opposes the idea of a personal GOD, because I have found that idea to being untrue.

As well, I do so on the grounds that it is not logical that any GOD-mind which controls the universe but not humans within said universe, is saying that the GOD-mind does not actually control the whole universe, but has left humans to control themselves, even that they are part of what -altogether - constitutes "The Universe".

The very nature of The Universe shows us that it is capable enough to accommodate the idea of allowing humans to feel that they make their own choices, especially if they are intent upon either depending on religious medium or intent on the belief that it is not possible to make said connection - individual mind to GOD-mind.

The purpose of this universe may well be nothing more than allowing for the opportunity for this to maybe happen for each individual who experiences it.

One has to want to do so, of course...

[TRANSPONDER]

Thank you for that information. I can only comment that, for myself, I couldn't rule out that any methods I used to convince myself that I was contacting some Cosmic Mind would be subject to serious question that I wasn't simply fooling myself and I'd have to have it do some pretty prophetic stuff to convince me. But you are welcome to believe what you like.

[William]

One doubts that there is mindfulness involved in the processes of evolution and throws out reasonably-sounding grounds for rejecting the notion - in this case - by loosely incorporating the idea that such a thing would have to be accompanied by evidence of a prophetic nature.

By applying such loosely defined rule of approach, one is seeking to control the relationship before the relationship can even form. This is related to the idea of "dressing The Ghost through the use of imagery" in that the ground-rules inhibit the way in which the relationship might form between the individual mind and the vaster universal mind of the cosmos.

Thus the possibility of connect and communion effectively becomes dead in the water. The door remains locked and deep introspection remains an unapproachable and indeed unwanted thing.

{SOURCE}

[Wootah]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #8]

Cool link. Seriously.

Judging God is as old as the first sin.

When Eve took the fruit Adam watched as judge testing whether God was a liar or not.

The book of Job is basically the long form of this question.