Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Thoughts on God

Some background, first: I was raised Evangelical Lutheran, to give some context when I talk about God. I sang in choir for quite possibly seven years (I don't remember exactly how many), which is what gave me my singing voice, of which I'm proud. Confirmation, alla that. And yet I'm never really certain about God. Never have been.

I'm a very concrete guy. Seeing is believing, feeling moreso than seeing. God isn't either. Plenty of good arguments against, all of which are based in pretty strong logic. I generally like logic--things making sense is good.

But I really think I want to believe in God. It'd be nice, for one thing. God knows I want there to be something after all this. There's some good arguments for God, after all. And I've yet to be presented with a completely ironclad argument against. Granted, the triple combination of omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent is a bit tricky. But let's think about it. What can I conclude about God?

I've been told a number of things about him, all of which could be untrue. It could be equally untrue that the Second World War ever happened, since I never saw or felt that either, but generally speaking I've been told enough about that that I can conclude there must be something to it. Same applies to God.

God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. God is benevolent. YET: bad things happen. Human physiology features some shitty-ass design. Evolution is a thing, the world is much more than six thousand years old, and much science has proven that the universe is effectively a giant chemical reaction.

All well and good. But, a number of points remain.

Firstly is that free will exists. Predestination is bullshit, John Calvin was wrong on that score if nothing else. We can conclude free will exists because we can conclude it. Since God is omnipotent, we can therefore conclude that this is by design--God wants us to have free will, and to make our own decisions. We can also extrapolate that this isn't necessarily something that's always been true of God--Old Testament testifies that God really, REALLY cared what people did and thought at some point. Then this changed, at some point in the four hundred years between the Sack of Jerusalem and Jesus' day. A mellowing.

This segues nicely into the second point. God is omnipotent, omniscient. But what about perfect? Islam would argue yes, and I have much respect for Islam, but I'm not so sure. Humanity is made in God's image, and humanity is ABSOLUTELY not perfect. Look at the construction of the elbow, or the inner retina, or the hilarious ways brain chemistry can fail catastrophically. An omnipotent creator presumably could create a perfect being if they wanted to. What's more, gods being wrong is big in a lot of theologies, and presumably since God changed from laying waste to cities and killing assloads of people in the Old Testament to forgiving all sins through belief in the New, God can be argued to change. So God can be reliably said to be accurately reflected by his people, which suggests that God is not perfect.

Which continues to the third point. God and evolution--do they jibe? A contingency point here is taking Genesis as allegorical instead of literal, which absolutely all of science screams to be the case. Evolution as a process could then be argued to be the result of intelligent design. A long chain of predictable, if not 100% predictable and thus predetermined, events in a long scientific observation stretching back 13 billion years to one inexplicable event.

Let there be light.

The Big Bang is generally agreed upon as the current scientific jumpstart theory, but precisely what caused the primordial soup to catch light and blow up into a universe is unknown. It's beyond our knowing. Sound familiar?

There's millions of more points that could be taken and argued, but these three are big ones and these are the answers I have so far. So if God is benevolent, why do bad things happen? Because humanity has free will--we're not dolls in the most elaborate dollhouse ever. Bad and good things happen because we want them to and bring them about, not because God mandates them from the Heavenly Control Room. God himself covered that he was going hands-off in Jesus' day. It makes sense to me.

Is Jesus divine? I have no goddamn idea, I'm not starting into that one yet. No opinion, currently leaning towards yes based on prior party line.

One final thought: is Revelation worth anything as prophecy? Fuck no. Revelation is as allegorical as Genesis and has already happened, referring to the predicted collapse of Rome. Remember that it was written when Christians were still a prosecuted cult. The Bible may be holy writ, but the core text is TWO THOUSAND YEARS OLD. Context in history is so incredibly crucial. In conclusion, God is not telling Michelle Bachmann to do anything and it will take a lot more than socialized medicine to end the world.

EDIT: Can't get enough thoughts. Old Testament is "good" history but unless you're a Jew you don't need to follow its rules. New supersedes Old. The New Testament has exactly one Commandment: through belief in God & Christ, you are saved. Follow that shit. You want more? Code of conduct specifically? Check out this shit, I call it the Golden Rule: TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WISH TO BE TREATED. Straight from J-Man himself. Buddhism, Jainism, and all the Abrahamic religions share variants of that thing. Give it a try some time, it's pretty rad, and it'll make you hell of friends.