Religion does not and never made any logical sense.
(this does not mean it does not have any / also positive use for societies)
Not to get into a debate. If God is so omnipotent and above humans why does he or she have emotions? Like smiting or being upset or wrath?
Submitted 18 hours ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Strider@lemmy.world 20 minutes ago
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Who told you God is omnipotent and above humans? Who told you he or she has emotions, or smites or becomes upset or wrathful?
Any God worth naming as such is so beyond such concepts as to be entirely inscrutable. It’s people that ascribe such characteristics, usually to influence other people. In any case, it comes from an inclination to anthropomorphize the unknown, to rationalize non-human phenomena through a familiar human lens. The conflict isn’t in God, it’s in God’s self-appointed biographers.
RoddyStiggs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
Because god is a delusion used as a means of social control and as an excuse for violence.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I was raised Hindu and omg this is so evident. Dharma and karma are essential in the faith. Dharma outlines your roles and responsibilities in life. Basically, you’re born poor because of your past karma. You deserve to be poor. So don’t overstep your boundaries and stay in your lane. And let the rich and powerful walk all over you because they are more deserving.
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
God has emotions because it is created in man’s image. It’s pure projection sold through propaganda to keep the weak, scared, and stupid under the thumb of the kind of men who wish to rule.
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Less cynically, I believe the argument in scripture is the inverse. Man was created in god’s image therefore we probably inherited a lot of properties of the devine.
StoneyPicton@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
It’s a perfect cover to call people cynics for simply revealing the poor situation we find ourselves in. The denial will never end. This was one of the best sentences I’ve read in a while. Succinct and to the point, thanks.
nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
There is no god.
Sv443@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
not what was asked
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
But it is a possible solution to the postulated contradiction and thereby a valid answer.
snooggums@piefed.world 15 hours ago
There is no god so it doesn’t have feelings. Our fictional stories about god project human things like feelings onto that fictional character.
Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Because it’s nonsense created by humans. Humans came up with these stories, of course they anthropomorphized their deity.
StoneyPicton@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
As much as I agree with the premise, I think you kid yourself when you don’t look at the power structure. While in the earliest of times you could definitely blame the entire race, I’d rather concentrate on the current situation.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
Starts with:
“Not to get into a debate.”Continues with:
" If God is so omnipotent"…🤪
scarabic@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Well, that’s what a rhetorical question is. You’re making a statement, not a query, but the best way to couch your statement happens to be with a question mark at the end of it. I’m not sure this is the best example of one, but at least they made an attempt to label it as such.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 16 hours ago
So first, asking religious questions on the Fediverse is a fool's errand, but that aside: Why not? Hell, if anything it'd be the other way around: An all-powerful being without emotion wouldn't create anything, because they wouldn't gain anything from doing so. Any creation by an omnipotent being would have to be an emotional affair.
richieadler@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
asking religious questions on the Fediverse is a fool’s errand
Why? Because believers don’t like the answers?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 7 hours ago
Because nobody actually answers the question. "Because it's bullshit" is the least interesting, least informative answer you can give to a question like this, and it does nothing except make the commenter feel clever. It gets especially annoying when legitimate answers are buried under dozens of "because God doesn't exist I'm so smart." Now an answer could reject the premise that a creator exists and sitll be interesting, but it'd have to do better than the armchair anthropology everyone here seems so fond of.
StoneyPicton@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
Maybe it was boredom. I mean, when effortlessly power everything sometimes you just need a break.
riskable@programming.dev 13 hours ago
Boredom is an emotion. As is hunger.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
All written accounts of God are produced by humans for an audience of other humans.
In the same way that we might describe a storm cloud as “angry” or a sunny day as “cheerful”, one might apply emotional descriptors to an omnipotent divine force in order to personify an impersonal and abstract force.
Past that, assuming you believe that a divine being is above humanity, why wouldn’t they have emotions? Emotions are a feature of sentience and God is supposed to be a super-sentient creature. If anything, it would experience these emotions more intensely and intricately than its creations. The human rage of a shout or the despair of a cry becomes the earth-splitting eruption of a volcano or the suffocating deluge of a flood.
At the same time, it is the overwhelming longing for companionship that drives God to form life from the void of space. The intense joy in the creative act leads this fundamental superhuman force to tirelessly build an entire universe. The deep and profound pride and love which brings him among his creations clothed in their own form, willing to endure the humiliation of this avatar form in order to enlighten and elevate his divine progeny to his own level.
Absent these primal emotional urges, why would a God choose to be a God at all, and not simply languish within the darkness for eternity, content to the echoing silence of dead space?
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 18 hours ago
Or maybe it’s the other way round: We have emotions because God has emotions.
richieadler@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You posit an unproven and unprovable character as fact and then retreat? Not very fair on your part.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 6 hours ago
So how do you want to define ‘fact’?
etherphon@piefed.world 17 hours ago
Which got me to thinking the other day, after the third day of crazy thunderstorms and tornado warnings in a row, if we were created in god’s image, then what if god’s a moron?
StoneyPicton@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
I’ve been agnostic ever since I heard it 30 years ago but I’m starting to lean back toward atheist because shit’s getting ridiculous.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Humans are created in his image. Morons aren’t.
/s
Rivermoonwolf@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
As St George the Carlin asked, if God is all powerful, why does he need money?
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Because the shit that makes you feel all powerful doesn’t come cheap!
zuckey78@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Who can personify the ultimate? Be wary of those who claim the authority to describe it as such…
VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
Because we apply human traits to God, and because being emotionless doesn’t necessarily indicate being higher than someone else.
In most traditions, God is incomprehensible to humans. Polytheistic religions break God down into multiple Gods or Goddesses with different characteristics, which is how they explain all of the events assigned to God. Lightning happens because of Zeus, etc.
For religions that don’t break God down into different aspects, it’s one of those things that kinda justifies itself. Bad things are happening so God is mad, if God is mad he has to have a good reason because he’s omnipotent. That’s where the faith part comes in.
Abrahamic religions especially have a father/child or teacher/student dynamic between God and humans. A major negative of the Fall of Man was that we had separated ourselves from God and could no longer could wander the Garden of Eden.
The implication is that God knows more than us, and to have faith that he acts for the good of humanity even if we don’t understand in our limited knowledge.
We like to think God cares about us.
Steve@communick.news 14 hours ago
Within the context of a story understood to fiction:
Smiting and wrath are actions. They don’t require emotions exactly. Break the rules, get punished. Fork around on a ladder, find out how fast the ground moves. Not because the ladder is angry, but because you forked up.
Being “upset” could simply be people writing about their own understanding of God. Remember it was all written by people. And not like they were copying words as God literally dictated them. But through “revelation”. They were “given” “understanding”. As in the ideas kind of miraculously kind of popped onto their heads. So it’s all limited to what they could comprehend.
Triumph@fedia.io 17 hours ago
Humans really want to have a reason for things. Any reason, even one that's wrong, is better than no reason. Some things have reasons that are only discoverable after centuries of investigation, but we demands reasons now.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 15 hours ago
Having power over somebody does not exclude you from having emotions. Superman is nearly invincible and a great guy who always does the right thing; but his feelings can still get hurt if people are mean to him, and he still gets angry when people are cruel to each other, such as a human murdering another human. God would be above a superhero, but the same principle applies.
If you are God, the point of creating humanity is because you’re alone, and want to love and be loved. If you spent a lot of time and effort to raise your kids and they grew up to hate you for no discernible reason and did terrible things just to act the opposite of how you raised them to be, you’d be pissed too. Do I have “power” over my kids? I guess. I’m bigger than them and even if they’re adults, you can always pull out a .22 and shoot them if they don’t obey. But that doesn’t solve anything and it’s not very loving is it? I want to raise my kids to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, but also because it benefits us all to act that way reliably, and makes us all happier.
If everyone obeys God just because they have to fall in line or die/be directly punished every time, that defeats the point of making humanity because they won’t love you. Yet maybe it would be necessary to step in if they’re harmful enough to the rest of humanity, hence the smiting. But most religions have an idea that God is trying to move us past the point where he has to step in, or has already stepped back permanently. Maybe God punishes evil after death to facilitate us getting our act together. Or perhaps he simply rewards the good and doesn’t reward the evil. Maybe he experimented a little in the past as to what actually works. Maybe he knew he was justified to punish evil, but didn’t realize the toll it would take on him by hurting your own children until it happened, and that’s why he doesn’t do it anymore.
Don’t @ me in the comments criticizing some specific version of God you have in your head. There’s a million different religions that say a million different things. This is theoretical, answering OP’s question.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
Well, the obvious answer is: if God is so much greater than humans, how would we know? If you’re talking about the Hebrew god from the Christian Bible / Jewish Scriptures, you’re seeing the depiction of God as told through the lens of humans, who often try to be telling other humans about god using the limited vocabulary and imagery available.
God is depicted as being powerful enough that a human not being fully aligned with God but being in God’s presence would lead to annihilation, just like a human approaching the sun would be destroyed — not because the sun was angry, just because of its nature compared to ours.
On the flip side of that, for the biblical God, humans are made in God’s image, which means the species as a whole would reflect God’s character (including the bit about wanting to be the ones fully in control).
scarabic@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Aren’t we as humans proving every year that goes by, that no matter how much power and knowledge you amass, you can still be an evil, childish, asshole? God is just a little further along that dotted line. He’s got all the power and knowledge. This doesn’t make him mature or good.
scytale@piefed.zip 17 hours ago
Because the bible was written by humans. Just like how most aliens in movies have humanoid characteristics, people usually create things in their image.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf 14 hours ago
It’s a little like when a mediocre screenwriter tries to write a character who is supposedly a genius.
Karmanopoly@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Also why did he choose to be a doctor of all jobs?
Apepollo11@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I mean, the red robes and glowing orb do have a certain appeal.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
IQ =/= EQ
fiat_lux@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Omnipotence implies the ability to control emotions (along with everything else). Were God only framed as being omniscient, then your answer could explain it. It’s a bit harder to ignore the gap for omnipotence.
OP’s question is a version of the classic Omnipotence Paradox: “Can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?”, which has had a good couple of thousand years worth of discussion, but no particularly satisfying answers. I doubt lemmy will have a breakthrough, but no harm in trying.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 15 hours ago
Controlling your emotions simply means that you do not immediately react the way your emotions would take you, and that instead you act appropriately to the situation. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have emotions, or that those emotions cannotir should not influence your resolve towards the line of action you decide to take.
I also don’t see how it is related to the rock question (or my favorite alternate, could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat it). There is not a paradox between being powerful and having emotions.
Just for fun, as a stab at the paradox: yes, God can limit his own power or prevent himself from doing stuff because he said he would. Like for example in the Christian religion Jesus came as a human and that severely limited himself. At one point he really wanted to not die but couldn’t do anything about it because that was the path he set for himself and he can’t lie. Same principle applies even if Christianity isn’t “the one”.
I think where people tend to get tripped up with this paradox is that things cannot be simultaneously true. God could make the sky totally purple, but he didn’t, so we’re here with the sky being totally blue during the day. He could make it half purple and half blue, but didn’t do that either. That’s not proof of a lack of power. He could make the rock too heavy, and then he could make the rock not too heavy later, kr himself stronger. This doesn’t disprove anything about theoretical omnipotence. And lastly, presumably things are explained to us in a way we understand. Perhaps God does have some sort of hard limits to power, but as far as we are concerned it may as well be infinite. There’s not much of a point in semantics. The very question betrays our human way of seeing things, God probably does not usually have a body to lift things. Does levitating it “count”? Does moving the earth down count? Does asking someone or something else to do it count? It’s an interesting question that has persisted for a long time, I just don’t think it ultimately means much once you break it down.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
God can’t be described in the terms of man so they give him human like traits to try and understand him. That would be my logical take if I believed in magical sky daddies.
Zephorah@discuss.online 17 hours ago
Religion is a primitive means of governance. Check out the Books of Laws in the Old Testament. This is literal civil code for the time lightly veiled as something mystical.
The problem is, the bigger a population becomes, the less wieldy religion becomes as a means of governance. It’s why cults work but the state of Iran (as one example) is rife with dissension and horrible enforcement laws. Too many people for stable governance via religion. Factions, insurgents, defectors will abound.
yellerbadger@piefed.social 16 hours ago
I don’t think it necessarily follows that omnipotence necessitates lack of emotion.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 11 hours ago
If god is Jewish what did he use to circumcise himself?
muse@piefed.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
Because many people would rather believe that someone is in charge of natural disasters and suffering. Some take it further as a pretense for convincing their peers to remove competitors for resources.
mech@feddit.org 14 minutes ago
Any omnipotent being must be capable of feeling emotions, otherwise that would be a thing they can’t do, making them not omnipotent.