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.
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 3 weeks ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
There is no god.
Sv443@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
not what was asked
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
But it is a possible solution to the postulated contradiction and thereby a valid answer.
snooggums@piefed.world 3 weeks 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.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Starts with:
“Not to get into a debate.”Continues with:
" If God is so omnipotent"…🤪
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because it’s nonsense created by humans. Humans came up with these stories, of course they anthropomorphized their deity.
StoneyPicton@lemmy.ca 3 weeks 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.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
asking religious questions on the Fediverse is a fool’s errand
Why? Because believers don’t like the answers?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Maybe it was boredom. I mean, when effortlessly power everything sometimes you just need a break.
riskable@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Boredom is an emotion. As is hunger.
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’m not religious. But I’m pretty sure they would say that we are created in his image.
So, if we have emotions. I don’t think it’s beyond reason that god might have them as well.
LapGoat@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
tbf in most cases with personal vendettas against religion, the religion started it…
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Maybe, I don’t know. But that doesn’t excuse people taking it out on this guy for just asking a simple question.
It’s called “no stupid questions”. I always thought that also means “no stupid answers”
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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?
mech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Any omnipotent being must be capable of feeling emotions, otherwise that would be a thing they can’t do, making them not omnipotent.
Rivermoonwolf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As St George the Carlin asked, if God is all powerful, why does he need money?
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because the shit that makes you feel all powerful doesn’t come cheap!
AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so heavy even he can’t lift it?”
The Class Clown album was the beginning of the end of my Catholicism
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Or maybe it’s the other way round: We have emotions because God has emotions.
etherphon@piefed.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago
Humans are created in his image. Morons aren’t.
/s
StillAlive@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
then what if god’s a moron?
richieadler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You posit an unproven and unprovable character as fact and then retreat? Not very fair on your part.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
So how do you want to define ‘fact’?
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
If a deity like the Judeo Christian god is real, the reason they have emotion is we have emotion so early people would tie their emotions to them and think they have it as well. Something bad happens and it has to be god being angry and punishing them, because that was the only explanation they had.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Which of the 3000 gods are you referring to?
Cornpop@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because we created god in our image
AngryRedHerring@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Or vanity. “I’m gonna need y’all to show up once a week to tell me how awesome I am”
Tedesche@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People who believe in God have failed to adequately reflect on their beliefs. Religion is fairy tales for adults. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Your question is simply a step on the staircase of rationality.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The main idea is that books like Bible and Quran were sent to humanity so they are made for humans of the time.
The “anger” isn’t supposed to be a literal anger, just how humans identify what happened.
For example most verses about wrath follow with curse or punishment etc, so maybe “wrath” is just what humans call it when God curses or punishes people; and it’s not a literal feeling of anger.
I think there was a similar debate with how some verses say God “heard” or “saw” things etc in the books?
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s all fictional, it can be whatever you want
Triumph@fedia.io 3 weeks 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.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 weeks 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).
itisileclerk@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To be omnipotent first need to exist. If don’t exist then anything after is nonsense, therefore can be portrayed as wild as author’s imagination is.
Strider@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Religion does not and never made any logical sense.
(this does not mean it does not have any / also positive use for societies)
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
It’s a little like when a mediocre screenwriter tries to write a character who is supposedly a genius.
Steve@communick.news 3 weeks 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.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 3 weeks 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.
yellerbadger@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I don’t think it necessarily follows that omnipotence necessitates lack of emotion.
scytale@piefed.zip 3 weeks 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.
Karmanopoly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Also why did he choose to be a doctor of all jobs?
Apepollo11@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean, the red robes and glowing orb do have a certain appeal.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
IQ =/= EQ
fiat_lux@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Don’t forget jealousy!
RoddyStiggs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Because god is a delusion used as a means of social control and as an excuse for violence.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Man, amazing how a lot of religions align with letting the rich be douchebags.