If I were an omnipotent god, or even just a finitely-but-extremely potent one, I'm sure I could do a better job than this, and if I couldn't then I'd deserve to have my deification revoked.
hmmm, interesting. Are you assuming that the purpose of physical creation would be that it works? I would say that a lot of the "design features" are deliberate errors, as it were, with the ultimate aim of revealing people's need for God, i.e. inability to work properly on their own. :)
if people don't see a general need for God (i.e. why is there injustice in the world, why do people mug/rob/kill/hurt each other etc etc) and a personally specific one (i.e. why do my emotions work in this apparently crazy way) then they are likely to blame everything on "other bad people" or deny any problem.
Of course, it would be much easier to just reveal yourself if you were a God like that, but then you have issues with the whole free will thing. If you happen to be an infallible, loving, omnipotent, omnipresent and perfect Deity then revealing yourself only leaves the free will choice of not accepting, loving and worshiping you to..umm..well the really stupid and deeply masochistic i guess.
so, what does one do if one values freely given love?
well, thats all of my ramble-y thoughts and opinions at least. :)
deliberate errors, as it were, with the ultimate aim of revealing people's need for God, i.e. inability to work properly on their own
No, hang on. Those deliberate errors don't reveal people's inability to work properly on their own; they cause people's inability to work properly on their own. (Assuming they do; in fact I for one am able to function in spite of these errors, I just get annoyed about it all the time.) If they are indeed deliberate errors with this aim, they are unconscionable. If I were to deliberately cripple my own children because I liked them being dependent on me and wanted them to remain so forever, you would not react to my action or my motivation with anything less than horror and condemnation, and rightly so.
Of course, it would be much easier to just reveal yourself if you were a God like that, but then you have issues with the whole free will thing
I've always had trouble with this one too, actually. You have revealed your existence to me: I've met you in person many times, I've hugged you, I've helped you wrestle with a recalcitrant superglue tube, and as a result I have plentiful evidence of the fact that you definitely do exist. Yet I can love you, or hate you, or be indifferent to you, or quite like you, or anything in between, as I choose, and nobody would question my free will on the matter.
I honestly don't see how it constitutes a restriction of somebody's free will to provide them with the facts. Indeed, it is often considered to constitute a restriction of somebody's free will to conceal the facts from them! So if a God wanted me to freely choose whether or not to love him, surely he should make his existence obvious, and then I could decide whether I approved of what he'd done to humanity, whether I liked what he did to me, what I thought of his personality and his relationship with me, and whether to love him. The idea that first I have to play cosmic hide-and-seek before I can even be sure he's there seems to me to inhibit my ability to make this choice freely, not enhance it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmmm, interesting. Are you assuming that the purpose of physical creation would be that it works? I would say that a lot of the "design features" are deliberate errors, as it were, with the ultimate aim of revealing people's need for God, i.e. inability to work properly on their own. :)
if people don't see a general need for God (i.e. why is there injustice in the world, why do people mug/rob/kill/hurt each other etc etc) and a personally specific one (i.e. why do my emotions work in this apparently crazy way) then they are likely to blame everything on "other bad people" or deny any problem.
Of course, it would be much easier to just reveal yourself if you were a God like that, but then you have issues with the whole free will thing. If you happen to be an infallible, loving, omnipotent, omnipresent and perfect Deity then revealing yourself only leaves the free will choice of not accepting, loving and worshiping you to..umm..well the really stupid and deeply masochistic i guess.
so, what does one do if one values freely given love?
well, thats all of my ramble-y thoughts and opinions at least. :)
m
No, hang on. Those deliberate errors don't reveal people's inability to work properly on their own; they cause people's inability to work properly on their own. (Assuming they do; in fact I for one am able to function in spite of these errors, I just get annoyed about it all the time.) If they are indeed deliberate errors with this aim, they are unconscionable. If I were to deliberately cripple my own children because I liked them being dependent on me and wanted them to remain so forever, you would not react to my action or my motivation with anything less than horror and condemnation, and rightly so.
Of course, it would be much easier to just reveal yourself if you were a God like that, but then you have issues with the whole free will thing
I've always had trouble with this one too, actually. You have revealed your existence to me: I've met you in person many times, I've hugged you, I've helped you wrestle with a recalcitrant superglue tube, and as a result I have plentiful evidence of the fact that you definitely do exist. Yet I can love you, or hate you, or be indifferent to you, or quite like you, or anything in between, as I choose, and nobody would question my free will on the matter.
I honestly don't see how it constitutes a restriction of somebody's free will to provide them with the facts. Indeed, it is often considered to constitute a restriction of somebody's free will to conceal the facts from them! So if a God wanted me to freely choose whether or not to love him, surely he should make his existence obvious, and then I could decide whether I approved of what he'd done to humanity, whether I liked what he did to me, what I thought of his personality and his relationship with me, and whether to love him. The idea that first I have to play cosmic hide-and-seek before I can even be sure he's there seems to me to inhibit my ability to make this choice freely, not enhance it.