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[dreamer_easy]

Human error invalidates every religion as an accurate picture of God. Discuss.

Comments

Accurate Pictures of God.

[faeriefyre.livejournal.com]

If God is all knowing...

Yet humans have the freedom of choice.

Then how does he know what's going to happen?

How do bad things happen to good people? (My religious brain says that it's God trying to test you like Jonah & the whale or Abraham and Iassac - my real brain says "I don't think so. That's just life!!")

How do good things happen to bad people? Let's ask Karma. Because it seems she's going to have one hell of a payback if you don't deal with your winnings right.. :)

Trish (Adam's girlfriend) - we met briefly at Ant's 80's b'day party.

Re: Accurate Pictures of God.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

The one that gets me is the Tree of Knowledge. Because surely God knows they're going to eat it anyway and therefore is guilty of setting them up for a Fall. And therefore is also guilty of all disease and death etc.

Meanwhile, if eating it gives them a sense of right and wrong, is it fair to punish them for actions taken before they actually knew what "wrong" was anyway?

Re: Accurate Pictures of God.

[faeriefyre.livejournal.com]

I guess it was about learning.

If they hadn't eaten from the Tree... then we'd never be here. The "punishment" was Eve became fertile... and they had to till the soil.. and feel labour and pain...

But it was about time being ready due.... :)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Trish (Adam's girlfriend) - we met briefly at Ant's 80's b'day party.

Just wanted to say - hiya hiya!

[pinkdove80.livejournal.com]

God wouldn't let the right religion be wrong.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

That makes me worry in itself, mind. Because that means God allows a whole bunch of competing and sometimes more attractive religions to exist just to tempt people so they get Damned. What's with that?

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Insufficient parameters.

Which god?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Substitute "The Divine".

I have a horrible feeling I've created a circular argument, because by "God" I mean "the inconceivable, the unknowable".

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

A good argument could be made that the human consciousness is unable to fully comprehend God. Our conception is therefore inaccurate, we can only hope to better it. To do so, we use the tools humanity has always used to reduce error and refine our thinking, such as intellectual enquiry and debate. Which is a fine argument for religious tolerance if you happen to be spiritual and not dogmatic.

I like big buts

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

But - and this is a big but - what if those intellectual tools can never produce an accurate description of God?

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

God does not allow human error in Its creations where Itself is concerned. Which means It has a stunningly scary propaganda tool over us.

So, human errer invalidates an accurate picture of God as something not just self-created by that God. Or something.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Ganesh!

[doctor-sentence.livejournal.com]

"COUNTERFABLE

Six blind men enter a room which contains a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, and a rope. It is unclear what these objects are doing there, but they were not necessarily placed by an elephant."

Patrick Shaughnessy

[bobbain.livejournal.com]

"God" is an invention of the human imagination and as it's been proven that human imagination is fallible it follows that that human fallibility can't invalidate the concept of "God"

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Human error is only relevant to God if God (or similar) exists. I believe religion is based on humanity's capacity for extrapolating human motives from random events, combined with the "random reinforcement" effect; and perpetuated because some forms of religion promoted behaviour that aided the survival, cohesion and expansion of the groups in which they appeared.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mrteufel/

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.
- The Doctor

[cherrypep.livejournal.com]

Human error invalidates every religion as an accurate picture of God. Discuss.

IMHO:

Concept of divinity + human involvement => religion,

where 'religion' is a system or framework of faith and/or practice, right? And the concept of divinity is any abstract concept referring to entities greater than humanity.

Religion is to the divine as socialism is to state ownership of resources, as Soviet Russia was to collectivism and classlessness, as fruit cake is to wheat. It's the endpoint you arrive at when you take the interaction of people and ideas and draw it out to a possible conclusion. I would think that reconstructing the shape of a stalk of wheat by decompilation of a fruit cake would not be a particularly successful enterprise.

This is probably not human error, though; I think it just happens to be the case that ideas 'taste' better when mashed, mangled and mutilated to suit a social context. I'd say 'human nature' and leave it at that.

How odd. I just answered the phone. It was a wrong number - some chap looking for a Mrs Fenric. Gimme that old-time religion!

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

False premise. Religion isn't a picture of God, therefore it can be neither accurate nor innacurate as one. Religion is (to a first approximation*) a human interaction with the idea or the reality of God.

*(Allowing for those religions that don't mention any god or gods in the first place! =:o} )

But nit-picking aside: The picture of God on which a religion (either a group religion or an individual's religious position) is based doesn't necessarily have to be completely accurate for the religion itself to be valid. Which is just as well, 'cos I suspect that, as you say, we are incapable of framing a fully accurate picture of God anyway (which is part of the idea behind "make not for yourselves any graven images" - whatever insight they're created to express, they're only going to mislead you/others about some *other* aspect of God; so why waste time with them?)

In religion as in science, the necessary prerequisite of aquiring a greater understanding is to have the humility to recognise that your current understanding is probably neither complete or accurate. And then to recognise the same things about your *new* understanding, once you've aquired it.

Needless to say, the first evidence of such humility is a remarkable tendency *not* to go around starting holy wars...

My personal opinion:
1. It is not necessary to pass a theology exam to enter heaven; You only need to know enough about the guy who's inviting you in to decide whether or not you trust him and want to be with him. A newborn baby has all the knowledge required. It's *adults* who've been wandering around in the world long enough to get completely confused and mistrustful, and need a few points clarifying just so that they can get past them and get back to the basics: "There's this guy. He loves you. Do you love him?"

2. It takes all of eternity to get to know God completely. Fortunately, he offers us an eternal life in which to do so. =:o}

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

You only need to know enough about the guy who's inviting you in to decide whether or not you trust him and want to be with him.

Half the stuff in the Bible etc makes me think he's a bit shady. Which I suppose is where need for accuracy comes in. Like, did this guy really genocide everyone with a flood because he was having a bit of a tantrum?

A newborn baby has all the knowledge required. It's *adults* who've been wandering around in the world long enough to get completely confused and mistrustful, and need a few points clarifying just so that they can get past them and get back to the basics: "There's this guy. He loves you. Do you love him?"

That's another bit that makes me find God hard to trust, even assuming He's real. That seems a bit sick, in a way, the whole "I shall give you the power to THINK and then punish you for it. Here, have an apple..."

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Serious question - what do you mean by "valid" here? "Functional"? "Correct"?

[cherrypep.livejournal.com]

The picture of God on which a religion (either a group religion or an individual's religious position) is based doesn't necessarily have to be completely accurate for the religion itself to be valid.

Admitting of course that 'incomplete'!='broken', the idea that any superstructure built upon a flawed understanding of something can be described as 'valid' despite a broken set of base assumptions is just... weird, unless the term 'valid' is constrained to a given context.

"Which is just as well, 'cos I suspect that, as you say, we are incapable of framing a fully accurate picture of God anyway (which is part of the idea behind "make not for yourselves any graven images" - whatever insight they're created to express, they're only going to mislead you/others about some *other* aspect of God; so why waste time with them?)"

I might be incredibly naive here, but it seems to me that religions are inescapably and positively up to their necks in imagery. As is divinity. Which is why the Crow gets away with "Mother is the word for god on the lips and hearts of all children." Avoidance of the mechanisms of abstract conceptualisation? I guess now is a good time to point to the Preconceptions Koan (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Folklore/The%20Preconceptions%20Koan.html).

Anyway, I have always preferred CS Lewis' ideas on the subject of god versus religion in 'The Last Battle'. I imagine everybody knows the book, but in short: there's Aslan, god and creator of the fantasy realm in question, and Tash, a nasty god. At one point in the book, a character called Emeth, who happens to be one of the group who worship Tash, meets Aslan. Emeth does not accept Aslan as his god, but Aslan lets him into heaven anyway, saying: "if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted."

This concept takes the major piss out of organised religion, but IMHO makes a lot more sense from the point of view of "make not for yourselves any graven images", since it basically means: this will happen, just treat them as what they are - learning constructs, imagery - the detritus of learning.

[motiveforce.livejournal.com]

Human error is in the assumption, not in the fact.

Complete lack of any provable evidence of any religion's basic premises about the intangible invalidates them as logical or rational constucts.

Which says nothing about the nature or existance of god, merely that any religion that claims to have those answers is illogical and irrational in its claims.

And is thus a product of human error.

So a more acurate statement would be:

"Any religion that claims to have an accurate picture of God is a product of human error."

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"
Complete lack of any provable evidence of any religion's basic premises about the intangible invalidates them as logical or rational constucts.
"

Huh? I think it's my turn to ask you what you mean by "invalidates". Are you saying that until something is proven true, you can't do any logic or reasoning about it?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

... The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. :-)