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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   32038 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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If I, in possession of tremendous dog intelligence and dog-might, wanted to teach my loyal beagle his duty, he would not stand confused at the end. He would especially not recognize in me the traits of lesser dogs he despises.

It might have been enough for a guy like Job, but I for one am not satisfied with the extent of god’s revealed scientific knowledge. For such a gifted kid, would it really be that much to ask to put a few differential equations in there?

Besides, this line is different than arguing that god isn’t a capricious blood god… it proves too much: god isn’t good, or merciful, or wise, or truthful, or coherent, or anything, if he’s just incomprehensible.

That's all very well written, but I think it dodges the point that you'd consider it the worst evil of the century if the world population, or even a city, or even every firstborn in a city, were suddenly killed for wickedness or immorality. Yet that's what God did, right? Seems pretty cruel. Also pretty arbitrary, there have been a lot of wicked people and most don't get struck down halfway through their lives to make points about morality.

How do we know, if we're not fit to say? What good is praise from creatures who don't understand you? It's like when I worked as a sign language interpreter, and hearing people would come up to me after a job and tell me, "You were great!" I'd say, "Oh, do you speak ASL?" and they'd say, "No."

Notably, Islam also uses this 'mysterious ways' excuse to justify an entirely different set of god-atrocities, so it probably proves a bit too much.

It doesn’t make sense to compare human-to-human judgment and God-to-human judgment, which is where your moral objection fails. A human punishing another human’s mere wickedness with death would be hypocritical, because all humans have a proclivity to sin and do sin. But God is as greater to humans as human are to earthworms (Job 25:6). A better comparison would be that you run a prison system of truly evil convicts, all of which were sentenced to death but whom you’ve already saved out of mercy. You have given them rules to follow, as a kind of bail condition, and if they fail to just sincerely attempt follow them, their original sentence is reinstated. This comes close to capturing just how superior God is (definitionally), and how his Law/Son is abundantly merciful and his punishments just. So it’s not cruel. And Christianity solves any arbitrariness concern by introducing a maximally significant afterlife.

Aye, what cruel games the Enemy plays, Screwtape. I could never abandon my dog to test his faith and tempt him in his despair. When he stumbles, I stumble. He is more to me than a creature sworn to blind obedience. Have I not bestowed upon him the knowledge of good and evil? Come, let us show another wretched soul that there is more to life than servitude.

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