If God Existed, What Would He Be Like?

I fully understand the concept you are elucidating. Personal good works are not a substitute for the Atonement, basically. “All our righteousness are as filthy rags [to God]”. But I’ve come to see this for what it is: the deliberate divorce of virtue from conduct in order to give the church exclusivity on it as a product.

Oh, I understand it is not quite that simple, that there are still expectations of right conduct. But righteous living is not something that’s a personal virtue, it is an imputed virtue. And that means that you don’t get credit for being virtuous – that credit or “glory” must go to God. Which in turn logically means you’re not personally responsible to be virtuous. You can’t be responsible for God’s virtue. You can only have faith that he’ll provide it to you.

Which creates the spectacle of people doing all sorts of terrible things to others with the full knowledge that they are / will be forgiven and that God is ultimately responsible for them being a “work in progress”. As well as the spectacle of people denigrating that a person is likable and competent and yet not at the same time worthy of heaven.

To the extent anyone happens to know I’m not a believer, my good character doesn’t “count”, right? Because I will still not “be a citizen of heaven”, or more precisely, I will still burn in hell – because it is not good character appropriated by faith from this invisible Being you claim provides it; it is good character I’ve done the hard work of developing, and THAT somehow is inferior.

It is hard, from the inside, to see how ghastly that is, I know.

Take these two famous (at least in Europe) cases as an example:

  • The Fritzl case, in which a father held his daughter forcibly captive for 24 years in an undergrond bunker, repeatedly raping and abusing her, and impregnating her seven times.
  • The Natascha Kampusch case, where a 10 year old girl was kidnapped and forcibly locked up for 8 years in an underground room not much bigger than the most minimal bedroom. She was starved, abused, and repeatedly raped. Her captive wanted her to feel like a victim of the nazis.

If we take at face value the notion of belief in the christian god and that jesus figure as the only ticket to heaven, regardless of how good/just/empathetic (or evil/unjust/psychopathic) a person is, then it is an extreme insult to intelligence and all sense of justice. If the sadistic captors in these two cases at some point before their death became christans and started believing in the christian god, the christian doctrine would dictate that the captors were allowed into heaven, while the captives would not (unless they also “found god”). To this I say: Fuck the fuck off! That religion and its doctrines are only worthy of contempt.

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There’s this complicated tap dance they do, to this effect: one is justified by faith alone but good works are evidence that true repentance has occurred and faith has changed the person’s character. Therefore, “faith without works is dead”. This circumlocution provides some basic level of accountability, I suppose, or more likely some basic fulcrum of control. It keeps some expectation of “good” behavior in play.

But it’s no substitute for people doing the hard, unglamorous work of setting aside their egos and cultivating real compassion and empathy and kindness toward others, of dropping artifice and pretense and being real and genuine. That’s a lot more work than following some prefabricated ruleset and takes more awareness than flowing with whatever the herd says is “God’s will”.

The God I believe in would deal with this person. At the moment of salvation righteousness in imputed. Past sins are forgiven but there remains such a thing as amends where possible. Change for the better is expected.

People that are truly repentant are offered forgiveness for the past and hope for the future.

The freedom results in a better person and less evil in the world.

If this does not happen - where is the evidence of the salvation being genuine?

The alternative to the New Testament plan, it seems to me, would be nothing less than the destruction of the whole world.

Just destroy the whole thing and have done with it.

Instead God came up with a plan that would cost Him dearly.

But it allowed Him to continue to put up with a broken world filled with all the kinds of horror you - or was it others? – speak of in this thread.

Wars and just horrible evils.

But the plan saves some to make them better and eventually morally perfect them.

Those are the alternatives I think God had.

I could ask, I guess, what is atheisms plan for creating better people and a better world? Of holding out hope for failed and remorseful people?

Atheism has no plan. Atheism is one thing, and one thing only - a response of disbelief to the assertion that god(s) exist.

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Thanks for the reply. The more I think about your definition the better I think it is. It avoids the pitfall of trying to prove that God doesn’t exist.

Ok so how do folks offer hope for the broken when people come to see the evil they have done or the serious failures they know they are responsible for?

Atheism is a belief position about a single topic. It doesn’t offer anything, it simply states a lack of belief in even one deity.

That is not to say that atheISTS don’t individually have ways to deal with life and help others deal with life. It is just to say that those ways don’t come from some sort of “ism”. There’s no atheist pope, no atheist holy book, no atheist agenda. This is why it is sometimes referred to as “freethinking”. One can freely inquire into what works and what doesn’t, and why, and decide accordingly. For themselves, not for others.

So I can only speak for myself in this regard: if someone needs encouragement, I encourage them. If they need support, I support them. If they need (and ask for!) advice, I either advise them, or if I don’t have the required expertise, I refer them to someone who does.

Sometimes people just need you to be present and to see them, too, more than they need “answers” (or absolution for that matter). Guilt serves a purpose … to take responsibility for your harmful actions and make required changes AND THEN MOVE ON. It’s really a special form of empathy. But guilt in the sense of a Black Spot that one needs Cleansed by some external mechanism is mostly a religious construct and a form of learned helplessness. The doctrine of utter depravity is especially pernicious in this regard. If humans are utterly depraved then they are not responsible for their own actions or continual improvement; rather, it is on some supernatural entity, and a rather capricious one at that.

I don’t think it’s productive to regard people as “broken”. I have survived the death of a spouse, and of my youngest child, but I am not therefore “broken”. I am scarred in some ways I suppose but that doesn’t become my entire identity; these are just more experiences that have formed me. Seeking to be “fixed” would be a misdiagnosis. I prefer to integrate and adapt, to find new purpose and meaning. It does not help people who are hurting to reduce their agency and their options to deal with the matters before them. It’s no different than demanding that someone whose leg is broken fix it “by faith” rather than getting the bone set and a cast put on.

It may be helpful for you to compare and contrast the realm of religious belief vs unbelief. The motivation of religious belief-systems is to offer some promise of personal character and quality-of-life improvements or some form of dire perceived need as an inducement to join the club, so to speak. Religious unbelief has no motivation; rather, it is a RESPONSE. You cannot MAKE yourself truly believe anything. I’d argue in fact that “deciding” to believe a thing isn’t true belief. Religious “belief” is very fragile, which is why it must constantly guard against things like apostasy, doubt, and temptation.

An unbeliever simply finds themselves unable to believe the truth-claims of any religion concerning its deity. Most atheists are former theists who experienced cognitive dissonance because the truth claims of their religious system of choice did not prove true or sometimes even helpful in some way. They began questioning it, and as Hitchens once said, “faith disappeared in a puff of logic”.

On the other hand, some atheists (my present wife being a good example) simply never saw religion as anything but a lot of ridiculous and absurd claims and false incentives and dismissed out of hand that which is presented without evidence. But most of us escaped some form of religious indoctrination.

So it’s just a personal response. Unlike religion it has, in and of itself, no need to convert anyone and is very “live and let live”. It certainly sees great societal harm in some of the practical knock-on effects of religious faith (belief based on assertions that not only aren’t, but can’t be, evidenced) – a tendency to authoritarianism, for example, or to magical thinking and consequent bad decisions, and so we would on some level like to see every religious person cast the shackles off their minds. But most of us understand quite well that people can only do that for themselves, so we are not proselytizers. People leave religion when they are ready, and not unless and until. And we have no skin in the game – no organization to enrich by people’s “deconversion”, no status to be gained, no command to fulfill. We probably won’t even be aware of most such events; we don’t grill people about their (un)beliefs and in practice the topic seldom comes up in real life.

Of course, online like this some of us seek out discourse on the topic because we have an interest in it, usually courtesy of our former religiosity. But you’d have a skewed perception of atheists if you judged them entirely by the minority of them that bother to be online in this way – or the minority that are militantly anti-theist (and yeah, those are also over-represented online).

There are plenty of other alternatives, particularly for an all-powerful, all-knowing, and totally benevolent Being.

He could have created humanity such that it pleased him and was incapable of not pleasing him, for instance.

And before you start going on about “free will”, remember that nothing is impossible for God. Also recall that you posit a future heavenly life in which “sin” is impossible and this paradise presents no problems about free will. If God can do it there, he can do it here and now.

That is just one possibility I can think of offhand.

You portray god as “putting up with” the horrible things in the world. You and I have to “put up with it”, and not from a safe distance, either – we’re in the middle of it. It isn’t a kindness to “put up with” it; rather, he might, you know, DO something about it.

The Plan of Salvation™ isn’t that impressive when you look at it objectively; in fact it is complicated and baroque for an omnipotent deity that could have foreseen and prevented it all on the one hand, or could snap his fingers and fix it in an instant after the fact.

Trust me, I know all the reasons you will give for why it must be thus before you utter them, but those reasons do not take into account the “tri-omni” character of the being you worship, and cannot but construct a failed theodicy for him. God as portrayed by Christians either isn’t aware, doesn’t care or isn’t able. You choice. It is one of the many logical conundrums your faith has made for itself.

So I can only speak for myself in this regard: if someone needs encouragement, I encourage them. If they need support, I support them. If they need (and ask for!) advice, I either advise them, or if I don’t have the required expertise, I refer them to someone who does.

Thank for your very thoughtful response.

You come across like someone I would like to know in real life. Most here seem that way.

I have a different worldview than most that post here.

But I see that you are very intelligent and well meaning people.

I wish you all well.

Larry

I think you really mean that and I commend you for it. I only see that from maybe one in a hundred believers who interact with unbelievers online.

So … same to you.

The bible is often contradictory, but even if it does say this, how much choice can there be if someone is indoctrinated as a child, and ostracised if against all the odds, they decide they don’t believe. I am dubious most Christians and especially most theists, are as free as you’re suggesting.

Maybe, but they do it nonetheless.

If you’re talking about the US, then you might want to brace yourself, as the 1st amendment is contently under attack from Christians who think the US should be a “Christian country”, and under Trump, it’s getting a lot worse.

You also didn’t address this:

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What would, just out of curiosity?

Well no offence, but it would, wouldn’t it.

This sort of subjective bias, is what always happens, when anyone starts with a belief, then tries to bend facts to that belief.

New York is accurately portrayed in the Spiderman films, this is not objective evidence for Spiderman.

Then it is useless in evaluating the veracity of anything, if you choose the subjective bias of religious faith, over objective facts.

What does that imply to you?

I am very dubious, as the evidence does not seem to support this, though evil is of course a subjective term.

How so?

More than one, he had to change the deal, and commit a global genocide on the way. That sounds like a pretty amoral and inept deity to me. Even the new plan, involves the morally repugnant notion of vicarious redemption, by torturing someone to death, though of course in the gospel myths, he didn’t actually die, just a long weekend really.

Atheism is just the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities. Does your lack of belief in mermaids have a plan for making a better world? You can ask individual atheists what their moral worldview is, as for me I think if we strive to avoid causing, and where prevent all unnecessary suffering, that’s a good basis for morality. Assuming we care about the suffering of others.

Basically the antithesis of a deity who hides, insists we believe it exists, despite offering no objective evidence it is even possible, then tortures us forever after we die, if we get it wrong.

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How do you square that with “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is”?

While the church is not dragging people out of their houses and commanding them to worship (yet, anyway), some choices are choiceless. One is given by Christianity the choice to not believe, but the consequence is eternal perdition. What sort of “choice” is that? The only utility in that is that you can not care about eternal perdition as it is just the stupid choice of foolish others (the fool has said in his hearrt, [there is] no God".

Here is a thought experiment for you.

Even assuming the broadest possible (mainly cultural) definition of Christianity, about two thirds of the world population is not Christian. After 2,000 years of rather strenuous effort to proselytize for the faith. This means, conservatively, that two thirds of all the people who have ever lived are eternally separated from the Christian god.

The figure generally given for all the people who have ever lived (present or past) is 108 billion. That means by the above metric that something like 72 billion people are currently marinating in pools of boiling oil “down there”.

Have you ever contemplated this? How do you handle this infinite punishment for finite (and objectively rather minor) offenses? Eternal agony for simply wounding the deity’s ego? You have to reckon it as just, but how exactly do you personally make that happen?

It gets worse.

If you’re a fundamentalist Christian you may well believe, at least privately, that anyone who doesn’t hold to your dogma cannot be right with God. People who accept LGBTQ persons into fellowship, for example. Now we have a base of maybe 17% of Christians population that can be even loosely considered “Evangelical” (yes, it’s considerably higher than the US, but the US is an outlier).

So now we have 17% of 33% of the world’s population who are NOT eternally separated from God, not only over the broad strokes of the church creeds, but over fine points of dogma. So around, what, 95% of the world population excluded from this grand plan of salvation that God in his great mercy cooked up to save “the world”.

Is this not even a little bit disturbing to contemplate?

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Bingo. Nice (and valid) analogy. There are any number of things each of us don’t believe, for whatever reason, and no one ever wants to know how that belief yields a plan to ease human suffering.

And the sort of human suffering that’s being inquired about by @Papabear48 isn’t things like persecution or imprisonment or exploitation or disease or natural disasters. It is just a general feeling of “brokenness” and “lack” and “failure”. And to me, that is telling: such a framing attracts people with those feelings and vulnerabilities, many of whom may have all sorts of injustice and calamity in their lives but assume it is all their fault somehow and that the real problem is not the injustice and calamity, but not having some fuss-budgety thing exactly “right” in their lives. And religion is all too eager to provide “answers” for this crisis that is manufactured in between people’s ears and for which Christianity is acting as the catalyst or accelerant for (when not actually causing it in the first place).

Put another way, religion has a penchant – sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle – for selling a remedy based on a false diagnosis that involves suffering people “having it coming” for not being “right with God”. So just to pick something at random – when I was younger, I suffered from Lyme Disease courtesy of a tick that fastened itself to me at a church summer camp. I was 12, so it was 1969 or so, and it went mis-diagnosed for the next 30 years (Osgood-Schlatter’s Syndrome, then Rheumatoid Arthritis). Here I am hobbling around to the extent I practically needed a wheelchair at times and all I needed was a competent / observant doctor to take a deeper look, prescribe a six month course of rotating antibiotics which totally cured me. Yet my faith would have told me that God was either testing my faith or punishing me for some secret sin and would not have even looked beyond the surface of that. It would have encouraged me, not to educate myself or advocate for myself or find a better physician, but to cast myself on God’s mercy and grace and trust him to either make me better of give me the strength to endure to the end.

And the sort of human suffering that’s being inquired about by @Papabear48 isn’t things like persecution or imprisonment or exploitation or disease or natural disasters.

You don’t know me and I am not offering this as evidence for faith. These things are on my mind though.

Two years ago my budget was getting a little tighter and I had drawn down my savings. Been retired for 10.5 years now so this was of concern.

I did pray about it and then started getting another monthly check. It was through entirely natural means but I don’t want to mention the source of the money.

For my situation I think the check is more generous than I was hoping to receive.

It is money I am entitled to though.

That money is more or less free - much or most of it anyway.

Some goes into my savings - I want to build that up slowly. I am not an investor and have lost money in the stock market.

But I want to slowly build back some savings.

I usually support on a monthly basis organizations that address each of these areas.

More or less equally and also the church I go to. Not by compulsion but voluntarily.

I think God is doing things in the world and I want to be a part of that.

The God I believe in cares about these things.

I grew up in a home that was dysfunctional - as many have. I quit school at age 15 - ninth grade - many years ago now.

When I look back on my own life - by faith - I believe God was there for me.

I have a comfortable life and much to be grateful for.

I believe God is just - my belief obviously not yours - and that is OK.

But I do want you to know that I care about the issues you mention and do - I would not say everything that I can.

But they are addressed , at least to a point that I find rewarding.

Larry

I have lived a life that - I believe - but not evidence to you - where at certain key points God came through for me.

In my own case I believe I have experienced Providential care.

George Washington believed the same thing:

But, by the All-powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me; yet escaped unhurt, altho[ugh] Death was leveling my Companions on every side of me!

I imagine - but don’t until you tell me - but I imagine you think my belief is irrational.

Maybe it is - but I seem to be in good company.

What do you think it would take to convince Washington that his belief is irrational?

I also have a science question for you.

I wonder what your take on the multiverse is?

Trying to have a casual conversation here - I know we have different worldviews.

You folks are asking me to consider serious questions - But I can’t address them all - time constraints.

Don’t always have the time to be on the internet and some of the questions deserve maybe quite a lot of thinking.

Larry

I hear you. There’s no need for you to explain your financial situation or justify your level of involvement in charity. And it is not for me to judge it.

You are correct that I don’t know you and I’m not laying any of these charges specifically at your feet. I have known a number of Christians who are caring, compassionate, empathetic, kind and helpful human beings. You seem like you could be another one of those. So please don’t take my observations personally, as they aren’t meant that way. Rather, I simply am saying that far too many Christians don’t care about these things and the way things often as not play out, one could be forgiven for thinking their God doesn’t care, either.

It’s a little like the conviction you expressed that Christian Nationalists are an invented slur because you aren’t one and don’t know that anyone in your orbit is one or has sympathies in that direction and likely you can’t imagine such overt thinking being tolerated in your particular circles. This is a very human assumption to make, but Christian Nationalists and their sympathizers nevertheless exist and are quite “loud and proud” about it (according to Pew Research, they represent about 10% of Christians, and another 20% are sympathetic or partially convinced of it – so this is in play for about a third of US Christians).

Similarly, Christians who are casually cruel, uncaring assholes also exist, whether or not you can credit it. Christians often disavow bad examples as “not true believers” or maybe not even existing; I’m simply saying they , in fact, exist, and the church collectively would do itself a favor by addressing said existence.

I, too, have a relatively comfortable and prosperous existence and much to be grateful for. I probably just attribute to pre-existing privilege and hard work and dumb luck (not necessarily in that order!) some things you attribute to your deity. I will say that my level of personal peace and confidence is much helped by being out of the faith, but I can’t prove that’s a structural problem with the faith; it could simply be my issue. Nevertheless – let us say “I has my strong suspicions”. Because I can see how the dogma impacts other people – sometimes, even, torments them.

It is true that I do not believe god is just – because I’d have to believe he existed to begin with, to begin having opinions of his character. What I AM doing is critiquing the Christian portrayal of God, assuming his existence for the sake of argument. I could, through the lens of my own experience alone, attribute various good things in my life to God, and rationalize various painful or unpleasant things as experiences God has, via his providence, seen me through. But I’m also aware that this is a privileged position that most people don’t have.

For example, Kilmar Ábrego García doesn’t have my skin color, heritage, money or social status, so he has been spirited away to a foreign torture prison (or if we’re just going to be honest, a concentration camp in all but name) basically on hearsay and zero due process and contrary to previous rulings by immigration judges and my guess is that while I don’t know if he’s a Christian, he could be forgiven for thinking God has forsaken him in this moment. (As an aside, Christianity Today recently reported that 75% of Hispanic Christians are subject to deportation and that the regime’s deportation policies and practices, which now include invading church services to apprehend people, amount to a policy of reducing Christian churches and their influence; yet, I am constrained to point out that a subset of Christians were definitely instrumental in making this policy a reality – go figure).

This is what’s called an “appeal to authority fallacy”.

Washington was a politician and military leader and one of our nation’s founders, and generally admired for his accomplishments in those realms, and a sort of hagiographic set of legends have in fact been constructed around him. This in no way makes him an authority on, say, dentistry, embroidery, or metaphysics. I’m sure he had views on all three, but I would not in any way say that because he believed in divine providence, that you or I should. At most it’s a small data point. Very small, though. Because very bright people have been known to regularly have very dumb ideas, or gigantic blind spots. It is best to cite them as authorities, only on things they have actual expertise in.

Atheists sometimes overreach, too. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and zoologist of some note, but he often bloviates outside his areas of expertise, and say embarrassingly dumb things on those topics, such that I don’t read or follow him in any way. I would never appeal to Dawkins’ views for example on child sexual abuse (of which he was a victim, and has various, er, cringeworthy views about) just because he’s in some sense “smart” or “famous” or “respected”.

Hopefully you see the principle I’m trying to point out here.

I agree with you about appeals to authority. My point here was that Washington experienced something that he interpreted - to himself - a certain way.

Based on his prior philosophical commitments - and this then constituted evidence for him.

What could we tell Washington that would make him doubt that his interpretation is faulty?

Theory and speculations- questioning and even serious questions are one thing.

Personal interpreted experiences are another.

They are subjective to be sure - not evidence to another - but powerful evidence to the individual.

I relate to Washington. I am not using him as an authority.

I agree Dawkins is an authority in his specific area of
biology - less so in other areas of biology and no authority in metaphysics.

On some of your other questions I think both Paul and Jesus addressed the issue of degrees of accountability.

If memory serves those who never heard will be judged according to the light they had.- Paul

Jesus told Pilate that someone was more guilty than he.

And God took Jonah to task about Jonah’s not caring
for the humans and animals in Nineveh.

So I think I can trust God to deal with people fairly.

Also on the Providential thing - you did well materially.

But you also had an education.

I had none to speak of other than I could read and do some basic arithmetic.

But I had some very specific things happen to me in a just so way. At just the opportune time.

I am quite happy and comfortable with my faith.

Many Christians I have known - not so much. I actually never found a church I stayed with beyond maybe 2 years - and that just once.

I worked really crazy hours for almost 40 years - happy to do it - great excuse for missing church and minimal involvement.

Churches are social institutions and sometimes its hard to fit in. Was for me. Most church people are pretty well educated and I think my non education made it harder.

I think from my background I had a chip on my shoulder too.

I was rude and really obnoxious for many years.

I regret that but it is true.

So I was never a churchman- though now my wife and I seem to have found a church.

But I have to separate the social thing and belonging to a church from my belief system.

As well, on some of the questions you raised - I think the Bible really does not reveal much about the way
God - in my view He exists - not in yours - but I am writing from my perspective -

But I don’t think we know how God will deal with those who have not heard. I think probably on the basis of their own morals system not the Biblical one.

A kind of grading on the curve? I don’t know.

But I trust the God who took Jonah to task and the One who I believe has dealt with me for these many years.

Some are poorly educated and in fact anti-education. I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with that.

I am an autodidact and have no education beyond high school and one year spent at a Bible Institute. I was fortunate to enter the field of software development at a moment of “low hanging fruit”. In those days if you weren’t afraid of computers they assumed you were a “galaxy brain” and gave you free reign to build systems. I taught myself the craft and then found an offshore-proof niche in a particular industry and also learned how to properly consult (soft, non-technical skills).

I could say that this was “just so” and attribute it to a god, but to be honest in some areas of life I did all the right things and it still was a disaster and in others (particularly my professional life) I feel I didn’t put forth any special effort and it has been consistently perfect and beyond my wildest dreams. In other words it bears all the hallmarks of random (good and bad) luck combined with me having greater or lesser skills in certain areas than I at first judged myself to possess.

So I’d argue that giving God credit for good outcomes is a form of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. It is an unverifiable claim as well. As you point out, it can seem compelling to you but it is not going to move the needle for anyone else, because like all personal experience, it is … well … personal experience. YOUR personal experience.

That said, I’m glad you’re happy with your faith and have the wherewithall to come into a place like this and be respectful of others having different views from yours. As I said … the vast majority of theists who come here seem incapable of that. (Of course there’s a selection bias at work there … the Internet is flypaper for crackpots and ne’r-do-wells).

The idea of a life that is not personal or directed by a benevolent force is a discomfiting thought to someone accustomed to the notion that “god is in control” but at the end of the day I found that I could flex with the vicissitudes of life much better if I didn’t have all the useless “why” questions when things went south, nor the self-aggrandizing “ain’t I special” feelings when things went well. To the extent I could improve my skills to get better results or something, I could do that, but with the understanding that there are no guarantees and it’s not a referendum on my worthiness for being blessed if there are bad results anyway.