Spike ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
How can an all loving god not love his navel? I dunno. Needing to create something to love strikes me as self-indulgent.It's not about creating something to love, it's about beneficence. If he has the capacity to give, then being all-loving would imply that he does so.
When you give a gift, is it normally all about you or the person you're giving to? Why do you see it as self-indulgent?
I don't see why an all-loving all-powerful god needs a universe. Can't he just love his navel?
Or just play with sock puppets.
maybe we're all sock puppets but don't know it...
Who is the creation of the universe to benefit? Why is a universe better than no universe? Who suffers from its lack of existence?
I bet ALAPG's mum is tired of telling him to stop fidgeting and to just sit down and keeps snapping at him to love everything like a good little god.
I catch up with 300 Natter posts, there is deep philosophical discussion and I end up debating whether we are sock puppets or navel lint.
eta: sock puppy? wtf?
Yes, but in this context, it equates to saying that he has the freedom not to be all-loving.
Not obviously. One could argue that a world with just God in it is just as morally, aesthetically, and metaphysically good as a world with God and a space-time universe.
I don't see why an all-loving all-powerful god needs a universe.
I have the same question. Also, if God creates the universe doesn't that mean everything is predetermined? Time is a property of the universe so in producing the universe all of time is also created. That implies that there are no moral choices for anybody since God has crafted all events. This also brings to my mind why does the universe need a creator, it seems like then you have to ask who created the creator and it's creators all the way down. To my mind it would be more interesting to have God be a part of the universe since then you can apply the concept of time to God and introduce free will.
But not for us, Cass, the sock puppets. There's just confusion there.
Though ita did make me snork with this:
I bet ALAPG's mum is tired of telling him to stop fidgeting and to just sit down and keeps snapping at him to love everything like a good little god.
I think it's time for me to go to sleep.
It's not about creating something to love, it's about beneficence. If he has the capacity to give, then being all-loving would imply that he does so.
That's pretty much what a lot of philosophically-minded theists argue, although I would take issue with the claim, "If God has the capacity to do X, where X would be some good thing, then God does X", which seems to me to be implied by your last clause, although I might be misunderstanding you.
Who is the creation of the universe to benefit? Why is a universe better than no universe? Who suffers from its lack of existence?
The last question is irrelevant to the benefit of creating one. The answer to the first question, obviously, is the creations within it. The middle question is just a contingent one, which may have relevance to whether one regards this universe as evidence of a loving Creator, but is not relevant to the question of whether an ALAPG would want his creations to have life, and have it more abundantly.
Do you regard your life as a benefit? You have the choice, at any point in time, to continue said life or end it. Some people, of course, do make that choice. Most don't. Even fewer entities of other species make it. Empiricism is entirely the wrong way to go about such a question, but I'm curious what evidence you find to suggest your question is a serious one rather than a debating tactic.
The answer to the first question, obviously, is the creations within it.
Why? I don't think that's obvious at all.
Do you regard your life as a benefit?
A benefit to me? I have no evidence to suggest I'd be worse off if I'd never have lived, nor that I'd be worse off if I stopped living.
Do you?
Does an all-loving all-powerful god create this universe? Doesn't s/he have to create all universes? Would it be selfish not to? Is it munificent to create universes with pain and suffering and death? Is it better to live a short and miserable life than to not have lived at all?
I see nothing convincing me that to love you must create.