God Question 2

'Is God a nice person?'
this is the one that I wish I had done better psychoanalysis on or whatever, because then my ramblings may have actually had some impact. I'm thinking something along the lines of Miyamoto Masao's 'Straightjacket society' where he psychoanalyses Japanese beuracracy and discovers Japan is essentially a masochistic child.
Or the questionable analysis in 'the corporation' where they assess the classic corporate structure (a corporation is an entity with the same rights as a person but not the same liabilities) that we discover corporate structure is in essence psychotic. And yet a lot of the CEO's interviewed in the documentary come off as quite progressive and sympathetic.
So that be that, here's the equation as I see it, and George Bush with the whole 'the strong should protect the weak' notion. If you have two kids and one is bigger and stronger than the other. then we would naturally have a greater expectation of the kid that is bigger. He would be by virtue of his natural advantage endowed with an expectation that he wasn't to press this natural advantage and exploit the situation.
So I would have supposed that if someone was so much bigger, and stronger and more powerful as to be omnipotent, then they would be required above all others to conduct themselves morally. Particularly if they then made the claim that they were the very teacher of morality.
Why then would God in the Judeo tradition make women property, if it is not moral? nor have an objection to slavery? nor indeed selling one's own daughter into sexual slavery? nor have a problem with gambling in the form of Job, a bet with the devil weather an abused follower would remain faithful in defiance of reason.
Just like the Cardinal sins, or seven deadly sins are the path to damnation for a mere mortal such as myself, so too should God's treatment of job be his own sentance. But this raises other ethical questions that I can't answer, I believe but am not too familiar, that god used somewhat of his omnipotence to restore Job to a good condition, if his omnipotence removes all consequence to his action, simply because the power is such that he can merely remake any wrongdoing, what insentive does god have to behave. And coming back to Uncle Axle's question of yesterday's post, why is it observable in the world that suffering is so distributed. If God can 'undo' suffering, why does it exist in the first place? again are we experiencing the beta version of existance, were God isn't anywhere near as omnipotent as believed (and once you conclude god is not omnipotent you may as well be an athiest) and is struglling with natural disasters. That happen to wipe out mayhaps sinful populations, but also believers (in the form of Hurricane Katrina, or if you are islamic just look at Indonesia) and innocent children.
If god is omnipotent then we must assume we all exist in some breathing space before God remakes the universe to be perfect at some time of omnipotent convenience.
But then their are the accounts were God deliberately set about killing people, such as in Exodus when the Judeo god killed the first born sons of the Egyptian capital (not sure if it was also Cairo back then), even his warning shots in the forms of the proceeding plagues where the equivalent to the sawing off of the ear, before dousing in petrol of the cop in Reservoir dogs, namely cruel and excessive.
Firstly Moses could have called on God to perform one specific miracle as a warning shot. Then set clear and definite terms and consequences that would reach only those whom were responsible.
Furthermore God entrusting such power to the judgement of Moses, is by rights the same as handing a child a handgun, unless one presoposes that god created Moses specific for the task. Without returning to the question of why he created the Egyptians to thus serve as adversaries for his chosen people, why would he have created the suffering of slavery for his own chosen people.
Whatever which way you look at it, God was pretty slow to liberating the slaves.
Furthermore the bible whilst used for the inspiration for the emancipation of slaves, has more often much like all other religions been employed to overcome the inate sense of morality in all of us. That is, the bible was much more instrumental in the administration of slavery than it was in its destruction.
Nor is one of the ten commandments 'though shalt not enslave' one notes, but rather 'though shalt not kill' and the extensive commandment on 'not covet thy neighbours wife, nor ass, nor cattle...' which I can see that if you reduce a cast of people to property status weather they be women or african slaves, it infact endorses slavery and damns emancipation.
Something put powerfully clear by Huckleberry Finn when he decides: I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll GO to hell."
What he is talking about is defying his upbringing, which teaches that black people are property and that freeing a black man is stealing, his own personal conviction is that Jim 'the runaway nigger' is the most ethical person he meets in his journeys.
Frankly Huck's dilemma should be the fundamental moral choice we all take.
Moral experiments consist largely of choice exercises.
The best known one is the train tracks, that is that you are standing by the switch lever for some tracks and you notice some kids are playing on the tracks, a train is coming and won't have time to either warn the kids nor stop in time to save their lives, you can switch the tracks, but you notice a cleaner is there who may be killed as well. Decision for most people is to switch the tracks and kill the old cleaner thereby doing the greatest good by the greatest number (a number of children) though I still fill bad about this, as the cleaner gets no say in his own fate nor has he done anything wrong. Sometimes to be honest I kind of lean towards killing the kids, because they shouldn't be there. However sense and experience tells me the cleaner and most people would probably put themselves in the line of fire to stop a tragedy.
There's other variations such as when you can drop yourself onto the tracks, which I'd do, or whether you drop your fat friend onto the tracks which is a surprise to him. And still other situations, such as when you are the doctor who has one perfectly healthy patient and five terminal ones that could be cured if they recieved your patients excellent organs. Which in essence is the same as the train tracks but gets the opposite response, most people say the ethical thing is not to steal the healthy patients organs.
Then if you really want to get unsavory, there's the smother the baby questions aswell. If you want to take the 'moral sense' test then click on this link.
The point of the fact of the matter is that it seems according to research, and the ability to judge future performance by past behaviour, something religion doesn't fully embrace, that most people have a good sense of morality without being exposed to a particular religion nor any.
So the question being, to an omnipotent entity, one who passes judgement and yet is not judged, who is more likely to have taught morality? One not beholden to ones own rules is also not internally consistent? Should God be moral?
Aha, but then I neglect the one trump card, God was ultimately moral by giving humans a choice (though not all, elst why create heathens, then make being a heathen the greatest sin there is but thats yesterdays news).
Anyway cybernetics is in favor of choice as well, one central concept of cybernetics is that the component with the most choice is what controls the system.
If God is in control of everything, or omnipotent it suggests he also has a lot of choice in what he does, for most moral experiments, the things with no choice, we make no moral judgement on.
For example, the runaway train, or the cleaner of the tracks, or the patients don't have any choices in the matter therefore we can't evaluate them morally.
So God gave us the choice, to choose to be moral or not. However firstly, it is clear that not all retribution is directly related to moral choices we make. Except maybe if you are watching the news in Vanuatu or Indonesia I'm told.
Nor would I consider it moral, for someone all knowing, all powerful, and all seeing to make preemptive strikes on a general population such as the Boxing day Tsunamis even if it was the entities knowledge that 'down the track' it was for the best.
Omnipotence to me implies that such unsubtle measures aren't very omnipotent at all. Like a really bad surgeon removing an arm instead of just removing a suspicious mole.
Furthermore again, why nothing to wipe out the nazi movement? or Ghenghis Kahn, a heathen? or Stalinism, Maoism or British Imperialism?
These are the questions that build up, which all fall down because of God's ultimate retribution.
That is, becase of the moral choices (among others) we make in life, god will treat us to one of two outcomes, eternal bliss, or eternal damnation.
Catholicism offers some grey area, no doubt reflexively. At any rate though let's see exactly what that choice is, and alas all I have is questions.
Dogs don't have moral choice do they? Do dogs go to heaven? do dogs have a soul? if not what is the purpose of their existence, in God's scheme? why create such natural phenomena if it is irrelevant to the afterlife? is the afterlife of more or less consequence than the 'hear and now'? If so why create a test? if not so why create a test?
Overwhelmingly, compared to animals, or anything else in the universe (possibly including heathens) that is not presented with the opportunity to choose or subsequently not choose god, how are humans better off?
Before the existence of choice, what awaited human beings? oblivion or eternal bliss, or eternal damnation.
I'll look at all three, oblivion, if entry into the afterlife and not simply, death everlasting is contingent on sentience and choice in faith then on the balance of things, we would be better off to enjoy a limited engagement trying to make the most out of life, and dying into oblivion. Furthermore without sentience we'd be part of the scenery in essence, thus unable to value eternal bliss or damnation so it wouldn't matter. Oblivion is preferable to the choice god offered. Second, if eternal bliss is what awaits a mechanical worshiper, one deprived the opportunity to deviate then this is the free ride, giving such a worshipper choice is of no benifit to the worshipper and only serves to the god's ego. At best because the god loses out on population in paradise it is mutually detrimental and may become some kind of masochism, at worst it is immoral.
Lastly, if damnation is what remains for the mechanical worshippers because they cannot choose (heathens again) then ultimately, this is immoral, because they are being punished for something they didn't have a choice in. So whichever way you look at it, giving people a chioce to obey, rather than just forcing them to obey, is immoral. Oblivion doesn't care because it cant value bliss over damnation, bliss means one is only given an opportunity to fail, not succeed and damnation is cruel on its premis not its result.
Why give people choice to believe in God? and if they choose wrong be damned for it?
George Orwells 1984 explains quite nicely

Blind obedience is not enough, for unless someone is suffering, how do you know they are obeying your will and not their own?

the moral choice for an omnipotent god is to as far as I can suppose, bring the greatest good to the greatest number.
Judeo god falls down easy, for it is unquestionable that he is not omnipotent, otherwise there would be no Satan, no hell, no damnation. What moral purpose could they serve what does God gain by incarcerating Satan rather than obliterating him? what is to be gained by having some evil demi god wanting to win over the population. Why account for souls either side of the line, what would an omnipotent entity gain? And without them you get the Batavia thing happening that is that nothing is bad, as all things originate from god, and thus all desires.
My belief that morality is inherent probably means less evil would be done under such a system anyway.
But alas, then there's the ultimate moral imperative on God spoken by Bertrand Russell: I can't seem to find the response but it was when asked by an interviewer what he would ask god if he died and found himself at the pearly gates 'why God did you not make yourself apparent?' and that's as much needs saying. Why does god make it so necessary to take him on faith, what sick twisted immoral test, to provide no evidence that one exists, no evidence whatsoever, but at the same time to place a requirement of faith upon each's salvation. There is no good reason why one should acto one way or another, and thus in the absense of any satisfactory proof, which even were it to be covered up by some middle person would create the same moral issues as the creation of heathens in the first place. Why possess us of reason in which to choose or not choose god, then possess us of senses that tell us the world is not what any religion says, that the nature of the universe cannot be percieved by our senses and taught from the same book that teaches us God? in any case, in any religion both cannot be satisfied. Unless our reason possesses us of the ability to pick and choose from a holy book.
So fundamentally, my questions lean me towards concluding that an omnipotent god is immoral, and that a god that is not omnipotent is simply powerful, and if we get to relative power questions I think we all agree, morality is to be expected of power.
For example, George Bush has a lot more power (definition ability to do or change) over a lot more people than me, and people certainly expect morality of Bush more so than me. Indeed just about everyone more powerful than me is raised or damned on their morality by public sentiment.
God can only gain exception from such judgement by virtue of omnipotence, in that he is so powerful he can define what morality is.
But by reason that means that either there is morality for god, and different morality for me, or an omnipotent being is immoral. and if we can't follow god's moral example, what value is he to us? what purpose or value does he bring?
How can we be saved? If god's own morality is inscrutible, or his power limited does he not become just another force of nature?
Bertrand Russell again 'To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.'
Of course theres another explanation or answer to this question, can you think of it? 'Is God moral?'