Gertie wrote: ↑January 18th, 2023, 5:21 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 18th, 2023, 9:58 am
Gertie wrote: ↑January 16th, 2023, 1:33 pm
So for me the notion of 'God' has to be meaningful in some profoundly important way, say in terms of purpose or goodness.
Yes, I think the 'purpose' of God is to offer a role model, and thereby offer some guidelines by which we live our lives. That's my opinion, of course, but I think that's why we have God(s); whether or not God exists, She still exerts this guiding role for those who believe. She doesn't have to actually exist for the guidance to be — and continue to be — useful and valuable.
I'm sure many believers would have difficulty with the above. This is just the way *I* see it.
Yes I agree that's a god worth the title. Otherwise you're revering power for its own sake, might is right, which doesn't sit well with me and is dangerous. Or it's just another word for physics, volcanos, the sun, love, whatever, which we already have words for.
God as exemplar has risks too of course, without good evidence it leaves us open to bias - “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” - Anne Lamott.
Good people tend to want relatable, good gods I think, and if such a god exists we are in-credibly lucky. Paul's pitch which so influenced and universalised Christianity was to see Jesus as perfect exemplar, who showed the right way to revere god via emulation, proven by the resurrection. (But with the faith caveat replacing good works/scriptural law as the new criterion for reward and punishment).
I appreciate what you are both saying and it clearly relates to the modern concepts of god. The problem is, of course, that such a perfect exemplar is first of all out of reach and up on a pedestal, which is where the church after Constantine wanted him. The idea of Jesus as a brother, and as a “firstfruit” (which according to the Bible belong to God), meaning that others will follow, if they are of the same mind as Jesus was, was thereby pushed aside, because it would mean that the leaders of the church would be expected to “empty themselves” and take the form of a servant, which was less attractive than wielding power.
The idea of an all powerful god was primary for people in power of course, and the whole story that the New Testament is playing out, that God sends a baby and a suffering servant instead of a warring messiah, especially one that suffers himself to be crucified, is promptly ignored, and the avenging judge that comes at the end of the world is what all the pomp and splendour in the cathedrals and churches portray. “Yes you might have killed him, but he will take revenge!” is far removed from the man who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
There is so much that is at odds with this teaching, especially when you realise that many of the people that the church burned at the stake were suffering servants, who were later recognised as holy people, and who had struggled with the contradiction that the catholic church portrayed. Christianity turned revered healers into wicked outcasts, and although in ancient civilizations in the Middle East it was often women who practiced the holiest of rituals, were trained in the sacred arts, and as priestesses became known as wise women, who made house calls, delivered babies, dealt with infertility, and cured impotence, they have been some of the earliest manifestations of what came to be known as the witch.
It is this past that influences our ideas of religion in the West today, and consequently our imaginations of what may be called God – or what causes an almost allergic reaction to religion. Even in America, in 2019, only 36% of 18- to 34-year-olds attended church at least once or twice a month, but that has fallen to just 26% now. Only 22 percent of Western Europeans attend church at least monthly, despite a telephone survey with more than 24,000 participants from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom showing that the median percentage of the population of Western Europe identifying as Christian was 71 percent.
I believe that many of that 71% are nominal Christians, meaning they were baptised, but have no affinity to their church. In the protestant church, the “confirmation” of young people has often been celebrated as the ceremonial farewell to the church. This is hardly surprising because if the church is sincere about the Gospel teaching, it contradicts modern society, and if it conforms its teaching, it has nothing to say. God is about as communicable as the “flying spaghetti monster”. I believe that true Christianity is as difficult to communicate as good philosophy, and is really a minority issue.
"A philosopher among common people, Socrates says earlier, is “like a human being who has fallen in with wild beasts and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficient as one man to resist all the savage animals.” His situation is extremely dangerous, because he knows truths the rest of the world is determined not to hear," says Adam Kirsch in The Republic of Plato. We know what happened to Socrates, and Jesus, and his followers ...
