Replying To Carm's View On God

[Cianna200]

http://carm.org/

 

Is it really fair for god to love Jacob but hate Esau? Carm claims that the christian god is always right and is right to hate sinners (everybody).

[Ellinas]

What's fairness got to do with it?

 

From a fundamentalist standpoint, god is sovereign and questioning his decision is like a pot saying to the potter "why did you give me a cheaper finish than the the pot you made after me?"  (I am thinking of the Pauline "vessels to honour and to dishonour" reasoning).

 

From any other standpoint, it's another myth.

 

Either way, the notion of "fairness" is irrelevant.

 

But to answer your question directly, "no".

[xtify]

http://carm.org/

 

Is it really fair for god to love Jacob but hate Esau? Carm claims that the christian god is always right and is right to hate sinners (everybody).

 

Why would a benevolent, all knowing, all powerful, perfect god create so many things that he hates, anyway?  What's in it for him?

[Ousian]

As Ellinas stated, it doesn't matter. Our standards of "fair" don't apply to a being who is the literal definition of morality. Whatever God does is "fair" by the definition of his nature. God's moral code is not our man's code.

[Roz]

1. I'm going to go ahead and agree for the sake of discussion that "our standards of "fair" doesn't apply to a being who is the literal definition of morality."
2. I'm going also agree for the sake of discussion that "whatever god does is "fair" by the definition of his nature.  God's moral code is not our moral code."

I would still stand by our subjective moral values, our continually evolving moral values.  We humans hammer out moral values every day through repeated discourse.  I prefer that morality, which is reasoned, thought out, and debated with examples.

 

If god's morality is not our morality, and when we humans are confronted with god's actions without god explaining to us why he did what he did (example: god's afterbirth abortions), then doesn't it become "might is right" in our human eyes? 

 

Example:  You believe that your sister will murder your son.  You have clear and concise proof that she will murder your child.  You pre-emptively murder her in advance.  You don't explain to either your family or the authorities why she would murder your kid.  You might well be right, and if you were god, then your nature is always right and always loving.

 

But without explanation, would you (as god) now condemn your family and the authorities and anyone else who would not believe you?  No.  Unless you're the god of the bible.

[♦ ficino ♦]

There's also the problem of language. If "fair" when applied to God has a totally different meaning from its meaning applied to humans, sentences like "God is/is not fair" don't convey anything. By the same token, if the property of God to which "fair" refers is totally different from the property to which it refers in our world, then Godtalk doesn't convey anything intelligible.

 

This is why theology classicly maintained that terms apply to God, not "univocally" (i.e. they don't have exactly the same sense as they do when applied to us), not "equivocally" (they don't have a totally different sense - cuz if they did, they wouldn't mean anything to us), but "analogically." God's love/hate/whatever is like ours in a significant way.

 

A lot of the time, I think Calvinism's Godtalk is equivocal. "God is Love" within Calvinism conveys nothing intelligible, as far as I can see, since the "love" of the Calvinist God is pretty hard to see as love.