ReiverCorrupter said:
I agree that many traditions might favor people who belong to other religious traditions than nihilists. The real question is why. My sneaking suspicion is that these traditions presume that a religious background will give someone a better moral backbone. That might be true in many circumstances, but I don't think it's true by necessity. A capacity for compassion (which I take to be the real ground of morality) isn't necessarily tied to any belief system.
I think it's more the idea that we're all looking at the same God but in a different way suits some people. I can't do it justice because I feel that different religions are different enough that God would be awfully contradictory, but if you think about what you said about Hindu's then it's very attractive to feel that actually they're looking at God too. And with Hinduism, a Hindu person was describing Hinduism to me once (with a language barrier) and looking only at the surface it took me a while to work out he was talking about Hinduism because he talking about multiple God's but all actually being aspects of the one true God.
ReiverCorrupter said:
The fact that you don't think something finite has worth is a reflection of how you measure worth. If your finite existence was worthless to God, then how could your finite actions be worthy of eternal reward?
Does an infinite, eternal, perfect and transcendent entity really think the rock is awesome? How could something not fulfill God's will? Does God have a will? I have a will because I am a finite being. I exist in space and time, and my will is a reflection of my spatiotemporal nature. It is what drives my actions in the world. When I will something then I act in space and time to bring about a certain state of affairs in a future space and time.
This is the thing, I'm lucky because God is eternal and so what he places value on has eternal meaning, because he can remember that action for eternity, so it doesn't have finite consequence (and ties in nicely about how in the end, it's all about loving what God loves)
And God can think the rock is awesome because he chose to make it and he chose to make good things. However it seems that he chose to make some things with the ability to choose. Maybe because a rock is awesome, but as you said, it can never deviate from his will, but if that rock had choice and chose to exist in the right way, that makes so much better than it was before.
And I differ with you on the perception of free will. If you know what I did in the future, that has no affect on my free will, because free will isn't about doing random or unpredictable things (we don't embue dice, or electrons with free will) but that I had paths I could have gone down and I chose one. In fact if you couldn't predict what I would do, it suggests the decision is actually irrelevant to who I am, because either decision would have been fine for me. I chose to cook ratatouille today and knowing that's what I chose doesn't affect that at that time I made a choice.
So equally, although God knows how everything happens and everything that he will do, it doesn't affect the fact things turned out how he chose them too. It's the good aspect which may impact on God's will. I believe God defined good so he has choice over his actions, because good is how he has chosen it. However I've got a friend who believes that good is something that always is and always was, so for him God has only one course of action he can take, because God is good.
ReiverCorrupter said:
BrotherRool said:
The big thing is being united with God though, which is unimaginable and rather fantastic.
So are you separate from God now? Do you exist outside of God?
...True, Gnosticism is quite mistakenly focused on duality. If you're open to hearing it, I would bid you to reflect upon the nature of the self in relation to God. What is the greater act of arrogance: to identify yourself with God, or to think that you are independent of God?
Yep partially. It sounds weird, but Christians don't believe God _is_ the universe, but that the universe is the creation of God. So when I punch someone, that's not God punching God, that's me punching someone. If I was fully part of God, my mind would be blown and it would be impossible for me to do wrong, how could God disobey God? And that's the seperation that our choice caused and his plan is how to heal that seperation.
I think in general since God has chosen to speak to us and has told us roughly that we're seperate(ish) then that's probably the path of least arrogance
ReiverCorrupter said:
It sounds to me as though you've become a cultural Christian. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can good to belong to something, to identify yourself with a side. Everything you've said describes a search for personal worth. Human beings are social animals, being part of a group and identifying yourself with other people can give you a great sense of personal worth and identity. But you should recognize that this is not the same as a spiritual revelation.
The question you have to ask yourself is what you really want: personal worth and a purposeful life, or spiritual transformation and divine truth? No, the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. That depends upon what kind of person you are. Christianity is a social religion that revolves around morality, so it is more naturally suited to social people. Hard ascetic practice is necessarily an individualistic enterprise, and isn't suitable for certain people.
I think this is us looking at the limit from different sides. Because I find what I want to do slowly improves in the direction of God and I take my conversion as part of that process. And I mean you said that the two aren't mutually exclusive and that's how I feel... well I don't know. I have all the personal worth I ever need. My life is essentially sorted, I could die tomorrow with no regrets and I know that whatever happens, God values me to the cost of his own death. If I do good things that he wants, I'm not increasing my worth, because God already values me more than that. I'm doing them because, well they're the right thing to do and I _want_ to do the right thing. I do horrible things everyday and that doesn't affect how God looks at me, because he's chosen to look at me as if I were Jesus. I try to stop doing the horrible things, not because it improves me as a person but I don't want to do things God finds horrible, regardless if it changes my status or not.
I just read the bible and felt that that was right, divine right and truth and the only option is to follow that. You can't recognise something as good and then not try and do it.
(Btw I'm not really a social person by any person's definition. To the point where I changed a church because it was small and people knew who I was and noticed that I was there. It's not good and I've gone through a particularly bad patch lately, but it is what it is)
ReiverCorrupter said:
There are more than a few apocryphal texts that suggest that everyone is saved in the end. You noted the general timeline of the new testament books in your other post, but what you have failed to consider is that there were TONS of christian gospels and texts and only a few were selected to be part of the cannon by the Church, which happened much later on. All of the Church meetings to establish dogma were unabashedly political and usually involved compromises. You have to realize that texts that were too forgiving for non-Christians would inevitably undermine the power of the Church. Even if we grant that many of the texts were divinely inspired, it still seems fairly obvious that the selection of which texts were the 'official' word of God was a decidedly human and imperfect affair. The problem with divine inspiration is that it involves human interpretation.
This is a bit iffy, because in all honesty, there isn't an apocryphal text (apart from the Apocryhpa
) that has any evidence that it was written before (i think it's 200AD?) and none of them have evidence that support that they were written by an apostle or someone who was a peer of the apostles. Most of them falsely claim to be written by people it's impossible to have been written by, and most of them feature very bizarre or contradictory stories that are never referenced by any of the other books.
Finally, although there were councils to formalise them, the current selection of books was already the selection used by most churches at that time. There is evidence of the Paul letters being currently used, being collected and used as early as the first century, then by 200AD Origen, the Antilegomena and the Muratorian fragment were all using the New Testament as it's known today, 200 years before the first council to formalise the NT.
Contrary to popular the belief, the only controversy found amongst the early centuries collections is do we have too many. James, Jude, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 3 John and Revelations were all being queried as possible not having enough evidence to support the time and authority of their writings. Many churches in the 300's (still 100 years before the meeting) only used 22 of the 27 books we use and no extras. In comparison the apocalyptic gospels have evidence to suggest they were written 250ish AD at the earliest, 50-100 years after canon had been established.
Finally there were a set of books that weren't considered heretical or false, but they were just written by people who were a century or so removed from events, so are roughly the equivalent of any book you can find in a christian book store today. Very useful, possibly informative, invaluable in understanding the context of the times but in the end, just some book written by just some christian.
In the end it wouldn't make sense for everyone to be saved yet, it would make nonsense of what God did, what I'm hoping for is possibly one more revelation, after the end. But if it doesn't happen and it doesn't happen and I'll trust that God is right.
ReiverCorrupter said:
BrotherRool said:
In the end God gives everyone a choice and you can even believe in God without ever hearing about him
Interesting. And what would this belief look like? Perhaps it would take on the cultural features of the person it belonged to. Are you sure it would look like Christianity?
...
What if God told you that Hinduism was just the way he revealed himself to Indians?
It's Romans 2:14 'Indeed when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves,even thought they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts also accusing and also defending them).
So it's implied it would look very similar, the stress is that it's people without any knowledge of christianity, there's implication here and later on that these people if they heard about God would recognise it for what they believe and finally that it's very rare and difficult. Also remember this is in the context of a passage talking about how the law is not enough to save a person.
If God said otherwise, then I'd follow that, but the truth is he makes it clear that this isn't what he's done at many many points, as well as instructing the importance of making sure that every person has as much opportunity to hear his word as possible.
ReiverCorrupter said:
When God presents himself to people, does he say that he is the Christian God? Does he speak in Aramaic, or Greek, or Latin, or English?
Are you talking about the miraculous conversions? I don;t know much about them, but apparently when he actually speaks most people recognise it as English. That fits with Acts where Peter gives the worlds first christian sermon (whilst being accused of being drunk) and every person thinks he's speaking in their mother tongue.
