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#1
07-22-2007, 09:17 PM
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How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
Only people who believe in you will be saved. You want to reveal information about yourself in a way such that the rate of conversion of smart and dumb people are equal. Smart people will not be able to deduce, using their superior intellect, that what is being proclaimed about you is the truth. To put it another way, put 1000 smart people and 1000 average people in a room together with a David Sklansky type (who knows the truth) lecturing them, and you'll get the same rate of conversion. How would you go about achieving this?
My point in asking is: we go about trying to figure out using logic what the truth is, but what if God thought that wasn't fair to those people who lost out on the IQ lotto and devised some wily yet fair way to counteract this? 
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#2
07-22-2007, 09:24 PM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
Personally, I think that logic leads to truth - i think that's why we do it. So it doesnt seem sensible (or even possible) to try and ensure that people who are better at logic are no better at finding truth.
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#3
07-23-2007, 12:15 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
"Only people who believe in you will be saved. "
If I'm God why are you making the rules?
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#4
07-23-2007, 12:24 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
[ QUOTE ]
How would you behave as an equal opportunity God? [/ QUOTE ] 1. I wouldn't require belief in me 2. I wouldn't send people to hell. There would be some sort of grading system where a soul ends up according to its "spiritual vibration" (positivity, negativity, generosity, submission to crude desires, etc) 3. I wouldn't intervene in the world at all, to either help or hinder 4. I wouldn't create just one life with just one chance 5. I wouldn't punish nasty people any more than experiencing the depths of their crimes and reaching spiritual understanding. [ QUOTE ] My point in asking is: we go about trying to figure out using logic what the truth is, but what if God thought that wasn't fair to those people who lost out on the IQ lotto and devised some wily yet fair way to counteract this? [/ QUOTE ] The trouble with this rationale is that Muslims don't have a chance in hell. Especially those that believe utterly in the "God - given" Koran via childhood and societal indoctrination and do nasty acts as a result. However much God does contortions with the holy spirit, there can be no fairness unless a hypothetical God drops the requirement for belief, judging people, sending them to hell permanently, and giving them one chance to get it right.
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#5
07-23-2007, 08:20 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
If I could make all the rules, I wouldn't require belief to be saved. I'd save everyone.
Given your restriction that "only people who believe in [me] will be saved," I would use my omniscience and omnipotence to provide for each person a miracle precisely sufficient to guarantee their belief in me. I see no other possible course of action for an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful god.
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#6
07-24-2007, 12:51 PM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
I [censored] with people's heads by putting fake fossil records forbidden trees wars famines and all sorts of other horrors all over the place to test them and if their faith wavered for one second then bam into the fire with you.
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#7
07-25-2007, 03:13 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] How would you behave as an equal opportunity God? [/ QUOTE ] 1. I wouldn't require belief in me 2. I wouldn't send people to hell. There would be some sort of grading system where a soul ends up according to its "spiritual vibration" (positivity, negativity, generosity, submission to crude desires, etc) 3. I wouldn't intervene in the world at all, to either help or hinder 4. I wouldn't create just one life with just one chance 5. I wouldn't punish nasty people any more than experiencing the depths of their crimes and reaching spiritual understanding. [ QUOTE ] My point in asking is: we go about trying to figure out using logic what the truth is, but what if God thought that wasn't fair to those people who lost out on the IQ lotto and devised some wily yet fair way to counteract this? [/ QUOTE ] The trouble with this rationale is that Muslims don't have a chance in hell. Especially those that believe utterly in the "God - given" Koran via childhood and societal indoctrination and do nasty acts as a result. However much God does contortions with the holy spirit, there can be no fairness unless a hypothetical God drops the requirement for belief, judging people, sending them to hell permanently, and giving them one chance to get it right. [/ QUOTE ] So your not sending people to hell, then whats the purpose of this grading system? And since you have a grading system, how do you define "crude desires"? Personally, if i was g-d, i would really look into WHY i created humanity/life. Based on that answer is what actions i would take.
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#8
07-25-2007, 03:44 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
[ QUOTE ]
So your not sending people to hell, then whats the purpose of this grading system? And since you have a grading system, how do you define "crude desires"? [/ QUOTE ] The basic buddhist philosophy of levels of enlightenment seems eminently sensible to me, and how the system would actually work should it exist. It's not a grading system as such, but an internal capacity to exist at various "frequencies" based on choices and spiritual understanding. The closest representation in the movies was in "What Dreams May Come". As for crude desires, these are the earthly things that get in the way of spiritual enlightenment. For example, someone who makes moral decisions based on money isn't really operating a high level of awareness. I guess my main point is that God cannot be "equal opportunity" or moral if he's giving out eternal consequences for finite choices which a person is capable of growing out of. The OP is suggesting that somehow a just God must have inbuilt faith or the holy spirit into people, which doesn't depend on intelligence or worldly experience. However, the number of people born Muslim who remain Muslim throughout their life (and thus rejecting Jesus) is pretty much proof that such a system doesn't exist or where it does it is utterly broken. The same is true if Islam is the one true religion (and not Christianity). God is saving arbitrary hobos like Peter666 just because of where he was born.
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#9
07-25-2007, 08:52 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
Might as well ask how one would behave as an equal opportunity flea. You basically have no idea. What you are all answering is how would I behave as a human with God-like powers.
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#10
07-25-2007, 09:52 AM
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Re: How would you behave as an equal opportunity God?
I find this interesting even without the direct connection to theology. How would you construct an intellectual puzzle in which your probability to arrive at the solution was more or less (in some not-quite-defined-yet way) independent of your intellectual powers? Is this just blatantly contradictory, or are there non-trivial strategies for constructing puzzles like this (or approximations to this)?
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