The Black Vault

humphreys wrote:What if God got so lonely he essentially went crazy and developed an extreme case of multiple personality disorder?

That's not completely opposed to what some believers believe. In the book "Conversations with God" the author supposedly communes with God in the form of Q&A. I don't believe the author's claims are authentic, however, there is one part of the book that did make me take pause.

The author asked "God," why He created anything at all. Why create the universe, people, everything... anything?

And "God" replied (paraphrasing from memory) that in God's state of absolute perfection, He thought it rather a shame that there was nothing or no one to appreciate and witness the sweetness of His glory. He desired to create mankind and all things in order so that His perfection and holiness could be witnessed; even admired. Put simpler, so that He could be glorified. As weird as that sounds, it's a page straight out of Scripture. The God of the bible appreciates being revered, enjoys being needed, and loves being loved and glorified. As vainglorious as that may seem, if God is truly as perfect as is claimed, then He's actually doing all of creation a favor.

frrostedman wrote:

humphreys wrote:What if God got so lonely he essentially went crazy and developed an extreme case of multiple personality disorder?

That's not completely opposed to what some believers believe. In the book "Conversations with God" the author supposedly communes with God in the form of Q&A. I don't believe the author's claims are authentic, however, there is one part of the book that did make me take pause.

You know, I bet that, as heretical as this sounds, the way you doubt "Conversations with God" is the same approach I take with the Bible. I don't find any human particularly infallible when it comes to relaying information about God. Yet just as you probably found some worth, even if slight, from "Conversations with God," I also find some worth in the Bible. In short, your relationship with "Conversations with God" is probably akin to my relationship with the Bible.

I've heard people say that God is bipolar and has MPD before and I'm like wtf?

So a mentally stable, well-adjusted human, one who wouldn't for example wipe out humanity for misbehaving, is more godly than God?

"A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!" -- Mark Twain

Perhaps any being powerful enough to end suffering among humans, say an omnipotent being for example, is necessarily pretty amoral by human standards for not doing so. Unless of course, they ALL have an ulterior motive for allowing suffering. Or maybe there aren't any beings that powerful in the multiverse. The ant isn't whining about us not catering to its every whim, on the other hand.

at1with0 wrote:Perhaps any being powerful enough to end suffering among humans, say an omnipotent being for example, is necessarily pretty amoral by human standards for not doing so. Unless of course, they ALL have an ulterior motive for allowing suffering. Or maybe there aren't any beings that powerful in the multiverse. The ant isn't whining about us not catering to its every whim, on the other hand.

In order for a being to never suffer they would need to be invincible, immortal, and have no emotions, and no feelings. As Picard says, "it's our mortality that defines us".

What does that say about heaven then, khanster?

We are told there is no suffering there, does that mean we will be mindless, emotionless zombies without feeling?

Maybe it is like the nexus portrayed in "Generations" khanster quoted.

The ant isn't whining about us not catering to its every whim, on the other hand.

This is a poor analogy that trivializes suffering. The collective body of ants/people may amount to the same in a spatiotemporally insignificant sense but ants are not people in this world. People are aware of their suffering and think on the implications. We are discussing it here. Ants may feel pain but people definitely do, and much human effort has been to minimize suffering, fairly effectively I might add. Also, keep in mind that rationalizations of suffering as trivial in the "big picture" are as equally meaningless and useless within the world of daily relations between entities, or even abstract groupings of entities. ie. WE still have to live in a place of action and consequence regardless. Even if a God or gods are content and unaffected forevermore, the very thrust of civilization is away from apathy or cosmic indifference and toward cooperative existence with an underlying intent of maximization.