God and our moral sense

If God exists and has the power to intervene in nature, and on occasion apparently uses that power, they [critics of religion] ask, why does God fail to intervene in so many other cases of horrific injustice, cruelty, and suffering? Why, for example, did God allow Agatha to be tortured, abused, and mutilated before miraculously healing her through a vision of St Peter? Why would god allow some to be killed by volcanic eruptions and plagues, while bestowing special protection on the inhabitants of Catania? Why, in any case, does God need to use the powers of an object such as St Agatha's veil to achieve this protection, rather than acting directly to prevent the eruption or the disease in the first place? More generally, why is one person miraculously cured while another of equal faith and virtue suffers and dies? We might say that God moves in a mysterious way - which certainly seems to have been the case if we are to believe the many religious tales of wonders and miracles through the ages - but is that a good enough response? If God created us and our moral sense, then why do God's own ways of acting in the world seem to us not to meet our own standards of what is just and good?

Thomas Dixon Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 56.

The Euthyphro dilemma

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" In other words, does righteousness exist outside of God or does God define what it is?

The Mormon answer has to be that righteousness predates God because Mormons believe that he learned to be righteous while living as a man. God became God heaven knows how long ago and continues to acquire glory and intelligence to this day.

What this means for most Christians is that Mormons are heretical impostors who obviously must deny God's eternal, unchanging status, his omnipotence (how can God be the all-powerful GOD if he is a son of yet another god, and the exact number of gods out there is completely unknown? which god is the most powerful in the end?), his omniscience (does God really know everything if he's just another little scholar in a sort of divinity school?), and his omnipresence (God has a physical body, remember?)

What this means to most Mormons is that they too will one day be gods if they "endure to the end" by continuing to keep the commandments as laid out by the general authorities.

Accepting a god who must abide certain standards of righteousness means God can be measured against those standards, all we have to do is learn them. What Mormons like to ignore is that God very often fails to live up to very basic standards of righteousness. So not only do Mormons end up worshiping a minor god (while Christians claim to worship THE God), they also find themselves with a rebellious god who loves breaking the rules.

The situation is no more tidy for Christians who maintain that God defines and emanates righteousness. The problem here is that righteousness becomes relative - relative to whatever kind of character God is. And what if he's actually evil? What evidence do we have that he's not twisted and malicious?

Heavenly fatherliness #38 - With the times

According to popular wisdom, a good father does not try to maintain some gold standard of his own time - he allows his children to be citizens of their day and age.

Out of date parents and grandparents are an extremely common comic trope. Technology's a bitch to keep up with. Pop culture is impossible. Political correctness is a huge headache. There's a lot to keep up on.

Asking anyone to stay completely up to date is, I think, a very tall order. We spend our whole lives trying to figure life out and by the time we hit a certain age or place in life we like to think we have a certain understanding. We know what we like and what we don't like. We find good things, work hard and made sacrifices to get them. We become interested in preserving what we have instead of deciding what we want. We go through a lot of shit and learn a lot of life lessons. We see people get hurt, hurt a few ourselves, and develop an idea or two about how to be nice. We might even feel clear on what's right and wrong. How are we supposed to give that up? How do we stay loose and adaptable?

Thankfully Heavenly Father's standard of being is an eternal standard. We just don't fully understand those standards, that's why he defines earthly, cultural standards according to the immediate needs of his children - so we can understand them. Kind of. He's a little hard to figure out, as the number of doubts expressed on this blog might indicate.

What we understand to be godly changes constantly. Much of what is considered to be godly is by today's standards horribly unethical. I doubt the whole "eternal standard" argument is a good approach any more. How do we arrive at ethical behavior through observance of  God's standards when they're so clearly man-made?

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #26 - Tolerating mistakes

According to popular wisdom, a good father allows his kids to make some mistakes, however, he makes it clear that repeated irresponsibility won't be tolerated.

 Mormon beliefs about Heavenly Father's tolerance of sin suggest a fairly benevolent god, who will forgive us as often as we repent. Of course, if you don't repent you'll be eternally damned, so it's hard to maintain that the Father is entirely benevolent. His approach is "I forgive you only if you're sorry," and yet he asks us to forgive all regardless of whether or not they ask for that forgiveness.

"I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." (D&C 64:10)

That's called a double standard.

We should also keep in mind that proof of God's forgiveness or of his eternal rage are impossible to find here and now. We have to wait until we die to see how it all plays out. For the time being the Father of the Universe is showing no limits whatsoever as to what behavior he will tolerate.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #18 - Exemplary behavior

According to popular wisdom, a good father leads by example and stands true to set principles and values he would like his children to follow.

At face value this appears to be God's exact nature and attitude: He's perfect and requires us to try to be perfect like Him.

Then again Heavenly Father turns out to be a very mobile target.

Let's start with God's standard for the family if only because a couple of recent posts mention a husband's attitude and behavior toward his wife. His standards for the family are all over the place. Adam gets it on with his own rib, Abraham sires children through a servant, Lot had children with his daughters, David has a shitload of concubines, Jesus says divorce is adultery, Paul says marriage is for the weak, and Joseph says let me fuck your wife/sister/daughter/mother.... So what's the standard? What are we supposed to do exactly? Whatever it is, you won't figure it out from the scriptures. Or from semi-scripture either.

The easiest example of a broken standard is God's disobedience to the commandment to not kill people. He kills selectively at times and at others indiscriminately, sometimes with natural disasters, other times with is chosen people, like when he ordered the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites - men, women, children, and livestock - and then there was that one time he used bears. Children and livestock? These are beings who cannot think critically and don't know any better (it's not like the Canaanite children had any opportunities to learn about and worship the One True God of Israel), so why should they die? Where is God's understanding and mercy? Who cares? Fuck 'em all! He even orders the killing of unborn babies and their mothers. The only thing more vile would have been if he had ordered his murderers to defecate into the victims' mouths or something like that. Then again he once wanted to make children eat shit pies. Jesus didn't exactly set things straight either. He gave us a pretty weird example to live up to when he cursed that fig tree for not having figs out of season. Are we supposed to be like that?  

When it comes to owning slaves the Bible's pretty clear. You can have them! Hooray!

Marriage, killing, and slavery only make up three examples but they're pretty heavy issues, aren't they? Just think how confusing things get once you get down to the small stuff. 

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.