Did Gods create gravity, and other questions about the nature of God(dess)(es) and free will

[Rhea]

Reading some other threads got me wondering, spawned in part from the "free will" argument and also why a god would create a satan in the first place.
Do those people believe that their god(dess)(es), who made everything, really made all the things?

Or is there some higher power that put constraints, like a parent who says, "yeah you can borrow my car but there's a 30mph governor on it."

Did the God create gravity?
How about chemical bonds?
Did the god create that humans have to get their oxygen from air and not water (If god _really_ wanted to give me free will, he's have given me lungs and gills, hands and wings)
Did the god create endothermic reactions and the hydrogen bonds in water?
Electrical momentum?

How do the religionists envision this?

 

[Lion IRC]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

 

[bilby]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

Yeah, but Ned Stark still got beheaded, despite trying to do the right thing by everyone.

 

[abaddon]

Did the God create gravity?
How about chemical bonds?
Did the god create that humans have to get their oxygen from air and not water (If god _really_ wanted to give me free will, he's have given me lungs and gills, hands and wings)
Did the god create endothermic reactions and the hydrogen bonds in water?
Electrical momentum?

In a round-about way, yes.

There's an underlying theme in theist talk about nature. Namely, all that dumb matter has to be pushed by a mind. But, after the nudge, it seems to do things fairly independently. Nature's "laws" are laid down by God to guide stupid nature to do what it does. So it'd all be orderly if everything would just do as intended. Disorder comes in via disobedience. Again, somehow minds determine how nature is; it's a weird system where thought's primary over matter.

Matter, the stuff of things like our bodies, is kinda nasty anyway because it's ephemeral -- it changes and decays and, in living things, "dies" -- and anything like that falls far short of the perfection of the eternal stuff (the invisible things of the mind).

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Reading some other threads got me wondering, spawned in part from the "free will" argument and also why a god would create a satan in the first place.
Do those people believe that their god(dess)(es), who made everything, really made all the things?

Or is there some higher power that put constraints, like a parent who says, "yeah you can borrow my car but there's a 30mph governor on it."

Did the God create gravity?
How about chemical bonds?
Did the god create that humans have to get their oxygen from air and not water (If god _really_ wanted to give me free will, he's have given me lungs and gills, hands and wings)
Did the god create endothermic reactions and the hydrogen bonds in water?
Electrical momentum?

How do the religionists envision this?

God everything. God operates the world Going back to William of Okham for example, He states God can do any miracle he desires, but the world does not work by miracles, but by nature, secondary causes. God creates the rules of nature, the secondary causes. Descartes stated that God creates all the metaphysical laws of the world, such as 2 + 2 = 4, and everything else, and could change them if he so desired. This is the way presuppositionalists and people who use the Transcedental Argument For God )TAG) understand it. Theories that were first explicitly laid out by Kant. God creates everything including logic, math, morals, and physics.

Part of the problems of abandoning such claims is then one has to admit the existence of naturalism and a naturalistic world outside and beyond God. If 2 + 2 = 4 for even God, then it is a slippery slope to admitting God is not necessary, that nature is independent of God and does not need God to explain it's existence.

One of the great modern theological debates is God and time. Is God outside of time and created time, which is only an illusion for us?
If so all is, past present and future and God can see it all at once. But if so he created it all at once. There is no temporal A causes B causes C causes D. God decides A will be A, B will be B et al. Including then all acts of moral evil, which God and only God can be responsible for. But if God is inside time and time acts on God, where does time come from, so powerful even God must obey time's rules? Since we know from relativity that time, mass and dimension are dependent of our velocity, it implies then that physics and the underlying metaphysics of the world are outside and beyond God's control and creation.

I think that these problems demonstrate the the perfect being theology of an all power God is rather problematical to say the least.

 

[Tigers!]

Reading some other threads got me wondering, spawned in part from the "free will" argument and also why a god would create a satan in the first place.
Do those people believe that their god(dess)(es), who made everything, really made all the things?

Or is there some higher power that put constraints, like a parent who says, "yeah you can borrow my car but there's a 30mph governor on it."

Did the God create gravity?
How about chemical bonds?
Did the god create that humans have to get their oxygen from air and not water (If god _really_ wanted to give me free will, he's have given me lungs and gills, hands and wings)
Did the god create endothermic reactions and the hydrogen bonds in water?
Electrical momentum?

How do the religionists envision this?

Yes God did create all those things you mention.
Though the brackets at the end of question 3 has me puzzled.I am not clear as to what free will has to do with possessing either/or lungs and gills, hands and wings

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Reading some other threads got me wondering, spawned in part from the "free will" argument and also why a god would create a satan in the first place.
Do those people believe that their god(dess)(es), who made everything, really made all the things?

Or is there some higher power that put constraints, like a parent who says, "yeah you can borrow my car but there's a 30mph governor on it."

Did the God create gravity?
How about chemical bonds?
Did the god create that humans have to get their oxygen from air and not water (If god _really_ wanted to give me free will, he's have given me lungs and gills, hands and wings)
Did the god create endothermic reactions and the hydrogen bonds in water?
Electrical momentum?

How do the religionists envision this?

Yes God did create all those things you mention.
Though the brackets at the end of question 3 has me puzzled.I am not clear as to what free will has to do with possessing either/or lungs and gills, hands and wings

Great explanation without going at all in depth into it. "Yes, God did create those things". Well, okay then! Satisfying answer!

 

[abaddon]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

But he created Lucifer knowing he'd disobey and become Satan. So, isn't that a round-about way of creating Satan?

Did he give Lucifer free will in order to test him? Why is disobeying a failure of the test? IOW, how free is free will if you're given a choice but if you pick the wrong choice it leads to being spurned by God and given an extremely harsh punishment?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

God creates everything. And theologians tell us God is omniscient and knows the future in perfect detail. If so, when God decides to create the Universe, whatever starting initial condition he chooses will result in a Universe he knows the state of in the future. So God has a choice. Create a Universe with a good Satan, or an evil Satan. God makes that decision, Satan has no choice in any of this.

If Satan is evil, and creates great evil in this world, it is God's choice and thus God's fault. And only God's fault.

Many theologians tell us God is outside of time and thus makes all at once, everything to the smallest degree. God thus makes Satan and all Satan's evil acts. If one denies the idea God is outside of time, then we have to explain where time comes from so powerful God must be subject to time. Which raise the question of where reality comes from in all its glory.

 

[phands]

Yes God did create all those things you mention.

Prove it.

 

[phands]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

Absolute alogical cack. If gawd is omniscient (which is also cack), then he knew that Lucifer would go bad, which would mean that gawd's design was fucked-up, and he STILL chose to do it. Sheer lunacy.

 

[Tigers!]

Yes God did create all those things you mention.

Prove it.

You first.

 

[phands]

Yes God did create all those things you mention.

Prove it.

You first.

That's not how it works. YOU made the claim, you have to prove it. I don't have to prove it because it's not true, and you can't prove it for the same reason. I now predict that you will prevaricate, twist, turn, dissemble, distract and misdirect to avoid admitting that you can't prove it.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

satan was good once upon a time. God didn't make him evil.

But he created Lucifer knowing he'd disobey and become Satan. So, isn't that a round-about way of creating Satan?

Did he give Lucifer free will in order to test him? Why is disobeying a failure of the test? IOW, how free is free will if you're given a choice but if you pick the wrong choice it leads to being spurned by God and given an extremely harsh punishment?

Also, Lucifer knew God personally and was aware that he was omnipotent. What was the rationale of picking a fight with him? That's like a quadriplegic rolling up in his wheelchair and saying "Fuck you, Superman - it's go time!" - except that the quadriplegic would have an infinitely greater chance of victory. No matter how valid you think your cause may be, it's a horrifically ineffective way of trying to fight for it.

If Satan's so stupid that he picked a fight with God, why is anyone worried about him?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If I was God, I would give Satan a time out for spreading evil around the world. and I would make him sit in back hole for a million years. until he apologized and promised to stop doing evil. But that's just me. The whole Satan thing makes no sense at all.

 

[southernhybrid]

Even if a person believes in Christianity, I have no idea how you can take the many allegories and myths in the Bible literally. This is especially true in modern times when we know better than to take mythology literally. Mythology is a powerful human invention. I get that. I even understand why it's so attractive and helpful to a lot of people. I just can't understand how people can take that stuff as literal truth. *sigh*

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Even if a person believes in Christianity, I have no idea how you can take the many allegories and myths in the Bible literally. This is especially true in modern times when we know better than to take mythology literally. Mythology is a powerful human invention. I get that. I even understand why it's so attractive and helpful to a lot of people. I just can't understand how people can take that stuff as literal truth. *sigh*

Because if it's not taken literally, the story kind of falls apart. If there was no actual Eden, then there was no Original Sin and therefore the central premise of the Jesus episodes of the series gets lost. Sure, there are eight million ways to retcon a new premise into the story and pretend that this is what it was about all along, but a lot of Christians just plain don't want to do that.

 

[bilby]

If I was God, I would give Satan a time out for spreading evil around the world. and I would make him sit in back hole for a million years. until he apologized and promised to stop doing evil. But that's just me. The whole Satan thing makes no sense at all.

It makes perfect sense in the light of the history of Abrahamic monotheism as a polytheistic religion in which a single god came to dominate to such a degree that all others were eliminated. The mistake they made was to declare their 'winner' omnipotent, not realising that this renders his battles with the other gods illogical to the point of insanity.

There's precious little sanity in having the one and only god get upset about the other gods getting worshippers too; The bible's editors really were just phoning it in a lot of the time - and as the phone had yet to be invented, this was even more sloppy than the phrase implies.

 

[southernhybrid]

Even if a person believes in Christianity, I have no idea how you can take the many allegories and myths in the Bible literally. This is especially true in modern times when we know better than to take mythology literally. Mythology is a powerful human invention. I get that. I even understand why it's so attractive and helpful to a lot of people. I just can't understand how people can take that stuff as literal truth. *sigh*

Because if it's not taken literally, the story kind of falls apart. If there was no actual Eden, then there was no Original Sin and therefore the central premise of the Jesus episodes of the series gets lost. Sure, there are eight million ways to retcon a new premise into the story and pretend that this is what it was about all along, but a lot of Christians just plain don't want to do that.

That's only true if you've a very conservative Christian. There are plenty of Christians who don't take these stores literally. I have known some Christian atheists that found value in the myths, and Christian community, but didn't take any of the stuff as literal truth. God can be a symbol of good and Satan can be a symbol of evil, etc. etc. I understand that people who aren't at all educated don't understand the symbolism, but there are many educated Christians, and some of those take these myths literally. Or maybe they just fake it. I really don't know.

I believed most of the Bible stories literally when I was a child, but to paraphrase the book itself, when I became a woman, I put away childish things. I guess some people simply find a lot of comfort in their beliefs or they fear not believing or the indoctrination worked extremely well.

 

[abaddon]

As atheists like to show, if the story is taken literally then that's when the story falls apart. It can't fit in with what we know of history and science when taken literally.

But a story is fine in itself, because as a story it can defy history and physics. It's only when fundy literalists say it's not a story that they make a problem for themselves. So, let them make this problem for themselves. Is it a strategic move to try to impose it on all Christians? Fewer balloons to pop?

Myths are narratives with symbols no matter whatever the puppets who wrote them intended. Just as with dreams and art, there's more there than intended.

You can ask a painter "What do you mean to convey in this painting?" and whatever he says might be interesting but it's just his own interpretation. And if he's centuries dead and you can't ask, that's just one less POV. The painting stands apart from both its painter and its history, and whatever allegory or symbols found their way in, they're there and interpret-able.

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ETA: I'd said "a story is fine in itself... It's only when fundy literalists say it's not a story that they make a problem for themselves". I wasn't thinking of the ugly values that some stories promote. So, some stories aren't fine. IMV, that's the main problem of many religious stories. Not that they're unscientific or ahistorical so much as they promote hurtful values.