If there were a God....

[liamconnor]

The god of the o.t. is often criticized here; the criticisms launched suggest what we might call his 'negative' or 'opposite'.

If there were a God, he would do what ever was in his power to establish the status quo...i.e., pick the best time period under your ideal political leader and impose that ideal upon the entire world........a god who could achieve that would be an actual God.


Suppose such a God. Would that meet your "definition of God"?

Granted, there would still be poverty and murder and corruption; but not a whole lot. And at least there would be laws against these, even if they were not followed perfectly.

Is that all we mean by heaven?

[Willum]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

Well if there were an OT God, and it were omnipotent I would expect it to have an influence on the world everyday.

I'd expect despite constraints of freewill, and any other apologetic arguments - even being held true, that this creature's will would rapidly change the world to what it desires.

and I see no alignment between global trends and the Bible at all.

I do see plenty between the globe and evolution as proposed.

[Bust Nak]

The god of the o.t. is often criticized here; the criticisms launched suggest what we might call his 'negative' or 'opposite'.

If there were a God, he would do what ever was in his power to establish the status quo...i.e., pick the best time period under your ideal political leader and impose that ideal upon the entire world........a god who could achieve that would be an actual God.

No, if there was an omni-max style god there could not be any time period other than the ideal period with no need to pick anything; there could not be any political leader other than the ideal political leader with no need to pick anyone; there could not be any need to impose any ideal because there could only be the ideal.

Granted, there would still be poverty and murder and corruption; but not a whole lot. And at least there would be laws against these, even if they were not followed perfectly.

If there is such a god, there could not be any poverty murder nor corruption. There would not be any needs for laws as such because things would already be ideal.

That is what I mean by heaven.

[Divine Insight]

Would that meet your "definition of God"?

That's a tough question because there are more than one type of "God" that can exist.

God doesn't need to be one specific thing.

My main definition of what I mean by 'God' would be the creator of our universe. Period.

There are many different things this could be:

1. It could be a pantheistic type of entity that actually becomes the universe.
(in that case were are this 'God', at least in part.

2. It could be an single sentient entity that designed our universe to exist in some sense separate from itself.

In the case of #2 God could be either "good" or "evil" or a bit of both.

However, an 'evil' God is not compatible with the O.T. right? Even though many things the O.T. God does often seem to be 'evil'.

In that case the O.T. appears to me to be describing a God that is in contradiction with its own supposed character.

3. In keeping with my definition of a "God", God could be a entire higher dimensional species of entities.

Why would it need to be a single entity. My definition only requires that 'God' created our world. It doesn't really say anything about what the God itself would need to be like.

4. And of course, by my definition it's possible that there is no 'God' at all.

In other words, there is no sentient entity that purposefully created our world.

5. I'm not sure if there are other possibilities since I appear to have covered all possibilities above.

It may be possible that some type of sentient entity or entities exist that created our world that I can't even begin to imagine. But even in that case I can't see that helping the O.T.

~~~~~~

Now let's examine your question from a slightly different perspective:

Would that meet your "definition of God"?

Now let's assume that God is a single individual sentient entity who created our world and is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

Well, in that case, God has just been "defined" in what God must be.

All I can do at this point would be to offer my views on what I feel an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent entity would do.

To make a potentially long post as short as possible let me just say that I wouldn't expect such a God to behave as described in the O.T.

If you are truly interested in how I would expect such a God to behave I would be more than happy to elaborate. But for now, it should suffice to simply say that I wouldn't expect it to behave like the God described in the O.T. That behavior is totally opposite to the behavior I would expect from an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

If there were a God, he would do what ever was in his power to establish the status quo...i.e., pick the best time period under your ideal political leader and impose that ideal upon the entire world........a god who could achieve that would be an actual God.

...




Those emoticons demonstrate my utter confusion at this OP. Where the heck did you get this idea from?
It's not something I'm familiar with. Has any atheist ever said anything approaching "If God exists, really exists, he would have had {Insert Politician Here} impose his (the politician's) ideals on the world"