What was before God? (or, Why did He wait so long?)

Here's a question for the religious out there. I'd like to know how you explain the fact that your religion (and I'm not singling out any in particular) has a definite historical beginning?

Christianity is just under 2,000 years old; Islam about 600 years younger; Buddhism around 2,500; Judaism is no more than 3,500 years old. Hinduism is closer to 4,000. As far as I know, no older religion has survived to any degree; the gods of the ancient Greeks, Norsemen and Egyptians have been devolved into quaint myths and legends.

Given that the human race is essentially the same physically (and presumably mentally) as it was tens of thousands of years ago, why were there no monotheistic religions prior to 1,000BC? Why did God 'wait' to reveal his plan until fairly recent times? What was the fate of those 'souls' that perished before your religion existed? Or for that matter, those that lived and died in a country that it hadn't yet reached? Surely, if God is as you claim, He is perfect and all knowing; He can't have 'changed His mind', can He?

Of course, as an atheist myself, I would say that this is because religion is a human construct; that as humanity gained knowledge and experience, they invented gods that also grew to match that knowledge.

I would go further, but I'd be straying from the topic if I did. So I'll limit my questions to those I asked two paragraphs ago.

Any views?

The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, "What does blue smell like?" Blue is not in the category of things that have odor. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created, or come into existence, or are caused. God is uncaused and uncreated - He simply exists.

How do we know this? Well, we know that from nothing, nothing comes. So if there was ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence then nothing would have ever come to exist. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been existing. That ever-existing thing is what we call God.

Here's what most Christians or Jews would believe (though it might seem like a bit of a stretch for an atheist like yourself):

God created the world and universe and whatnot with everything in it and revealed himself to Adam and Eve in the very beginning. If you take that for true, God didn't wait for anything but has been part of the human experience since humans existed. He revealed Himself to Noah and Abraham as well, long before the Jewish religion took a foothold in the nation of Israel. God's been a part of His peoples' lives every step of the way, according to the Bible.

As far as why God "waited" to reveal Himself as Jesus Christ, that's a real toughy, and there's no good explanation because humans can't understand God's reasoning. This is a point where people believe in Jesus because of who He was and what He did, and that's pretty illogical considering the observable nature of the world. It's a leap of faith.

But to bring it more to a common ground, I'll try to answer your question in a secular way as well. The reason these religions didn't sprout until only a few thousand years ago would be because there was no written language until then. God could be rocking with Abraham for his whole life, but there was no way for Abraham to turn it into a major monotheistic religion because he couldn't very easily spread the word without it getting completely distorted. Written language allows for doctrine allows for religion.

Christian,

You addressed the title of this thread, not the questions I asked in my opening post. If gos (and presumably Jesus) have always existed, why no christianity until 30AD (or there abouts)?

Unspar,

A better answer. But still you fall back on the old failsafe of "I don't know that, only god knows that." I'm afraid that that won't wash with us heathens. And, if god is as all-powerful as supposed, why was he limited to chatting with Abraham & Moses? Surely he could have spoken to people all over the world? And why did he tell them something different to what Jesus said less than 1,000 years later?

Here's the Jewish side to this argument... granted I don't believe much in all this myself, but I have often heard the stories. I look at religion through a writer's perspective - not a believer's.

Firstly, you're off with your dates. Abraham "lived" around 3000 - i think it was actually 2700BC - this was the start of a monotheistic religion. However, Abraham and his family later to come were simple nomadic people. they lived life by their beliefs without trying to spread them to others. Meanwhile, the Greeks and Egyptians were spreading their dieties around.

The Jewish belief is that Christianity was a branch of Judiism. 30 AD, Jesus Christ - a Jewish carpener - dies and a buch of people beleive he was then resurected. They then form this whole new faith aroud this man - and his teachings (which he may or may not have). Christiantiy however, remained inferior to the Roman polytheistic religion, until 300 AD (I believe) when Constantine became emperor. He was a believer of Christianity and he began the whole reform.

So that is why the monotheistic beliefs did not enter into the books until very late. As for where they originated.... where did Abraham get this idea. I don't know, no one knows, and you will never get an answer to that question. Maybe there wasn't an Abraham - maybe there wasn't a Jesus Christ as Christians depict him - religious may be manmade (as I believe), but is based upon faith, giving people hope. Those who beleive, turly believe in religion, need not answer your question, becuase they can satisfy themselves with the fate that they have faith in God, God has always been there and that is that.

I think the key, as Unspar very astutely pointed out, is the lack of written language. Someone didn't just sit down and write the Torah and invent Judaism; it was likely passed down through generations as a collection of oral tales. When writing developed, they got written down, and that's the earliest evidence we have of Judaism. The tale of Moses and the Ten Commandments may very well have its roots in a primitive misunderstanding of the first written transcription of these tales.

"Hey, where's Moses?"
"Iunno. But he went up into the hills with a couple slabs of rock a while ago."
"What the heck for? Oh, wait, here he comes. Hey, there's stuff on the tablets now! Moses, what's that you got there?"
"The word of God."
"Ohhh..."
Later that day:
"Hey! I ran into Moses today, and he came down off the mountain, and he had these tablets, and God wrote on 'em!"
"Wow, cool!"

Anyway. The explanation I always heard growing up for Jesus' coming was that after a while people got God's rules all mixed up and started sinning too much again, the way they had when he flooded the Earth. But he already promised Noah he wouldn't kill everybody anymore, so this time he sent a messenger down instead, to set people right. I think the moral of this story is that killing everybody is way more efficient than talking. But then, I didn't pay much attention in CCD.

I REALLY REALLY LIKE THIS QUESTION XAMONAS! First, to CHRISTIAN: The question asked is about God's late emergence in the history of religion - Yahweh was first. Genesis places the Creation to be somewhere at around 10 or 14BC, and according to the available sources X listed, there IS no indication of God or any form of monotheistic practice before that time. I don't see a false assumption anywhere other than what we definitively know from the bible. You just dodged a very direct question. Even if X's assumption was that god came out of nothing. It came out of nothing anyway in judeo-christian text.

UNSPAR SAYS:
"God "waited" to reveal Himself as Jesus Christ..." I don't need to quote further, but his assumption is we are to believe Jesus is god incarnate, which is a whole other issue. There are tons of books on that one.

"This is a point where people believe in Jesus because of who He was and what He did, and that's pretty illogical considering the observable nature of the world. It's a leap of faith." We can all thank Kierkegaard for this "leap of faith" idea, which is a euphemism for "The Absurd." Because the leap of faith says just that: "Even though I know what I know to be absurd, I'm going to believe it anyway." Imagine if we applied this thinking to our daily lives?!

"Of course, as an atheist myself, I would say that this is because religion is a human construct; that as humanity gained knowledge and experience, they invented gods that also grew to match that knowledge."

You are the first one I've encountered who is a self-proclaimed atheist, like me!!!!!!!
Most people love to use the more accepted "spiritual" label. The answer which follows is very reasonable and in line with the history of ideas. Consider that in Ancient Indian philosophy, and later Greek, there emerged the notion of the "One" and the tripartite self, which is why later Christian Fathers (Aquinas) stole Platonism and esp. Aristotlian philosophy, Aristotle, who called the notion of "God" as "Prime Mover" or "Unmoved Mover." Very convenient, isn't it? Yet, there is never any mention of the pre-Socratics and the rest of polytheistic history.

I love the question that started this thread because it does exactly what I said in another thread, taking on Religion at its very foundation. And the question posed here shakes those foundations.

I'm A Heathen, Yes, Yes!!!

To X, God says that He chose Abraham and Moses. He didn't chat up the rest of the world because He didn't want to, or maybe because there wasn't anyone in the rest of the world who would trust Him or listen to Him. That's my best guess, but it's all going to come down to that old "we can only know so much" idea.

To Jon, a leap of faith is not necessarily absurd. It's absurd if you know what you're leaping to doesn't exist. But if you suspect it exists, and you decide to give it a good college try, there's nothing absurd about that. The Theory of Relativity takes a leap of faith (Mass and time changing relative to speed? That's crazy!); Darwin's Theory of Evolution takes a leap of faith (If we evolved from something, what did we evolve from and where did that come from?). There's always going to be some tenet of our beliefs that we can't explain satisfactorily and must take a leap of faith.

As far as the Jesus thing, I was merely trying to explain what Christians believe in terms of God's choice of revelation to mankind. I'm not asking you to believe Jesus is God incarnate; I'm explaining that I do, and if you want to know where Christians come from, here it is.

"Given that the human race is essentially the same physically (and presumably mentally) as it was tens of thousands of years ago, why were there no monotheistic religions prior to 1,000BC?"

I agree that religious beliefs prior to the invention of writing can only be guessed at, so there may have been monotheists from the dawn of humanity.

Another plausible argument is that the shift to monotheism was associated with a social change from a matri-central society to a patriarchal society.

Neither of those views answers your questions from the point of view of any of the "Religions of the Book." From those you will have to be content with the old failsafe of "I don't know that, only god knows that." If you started from a theist position, that would be a sufficient answer. If you don't, no answer that actually involves God is likely to convince you.

"What was the fate of those 'souls' that perished before your religion existed? Or for that matter, those that lived and died in a country that it hadn't yet reached?" There is not much milage in speculating about the fate of souls, whether in this life or beyond. In the religion to which I feel closest, however, the purpose of mankind is to assist God in opposing evil. A person need not hold to a religion or even know about one to fulfil this purpose - all that is necessary is to have a sense of right and wrong. Having this sense, those who try to promote what is right are fulfilling God's purpose, and those who oppose what they know to be right are denying God's purpose. What this means, in terms of the fate of their souls, God alone knows.

This may not bring us much further forward. We do not all appear to have the same view of right and wrong, so you could ask the question, "Why has God not enabled us all to see the correct view (i.e. His view) of right and wrong?" One religious answer is that, within this universe, there is Evil as well as good, and confusion and dissension are products of evil. Your assumption (expressed in such phrases as "if god is as all-powerful as supposed") that any God must, within this universe, be omnipotent, is not necessarily valid. I am comfortable with a dualist viewpoint, not a monotheist viewpoint. I take licence to contribute to this thread from your original post which rather mixed a tolerance of polytheist religions with the monotheist assumptions behind some of the questions.

Muslim perspective...

Allah s.v.t has sent over 120 000 prophets to human beings over the existence of human race. Every nation that existed had a Prophet who was sent to them to reveal God's message. The message was always the same, but it was changed and corrupted over time by human beings. The last Prophet, Mohammed a.s, was sent to be the seal of prophethood; to confirm all other revelations and Prophets, and to correct what was changed by humans. There will be no other prophets until the Judgment Day. So, it is not correct to assume that God waited, or didn't reveal Himself to human beings before, because He has done so from the first human being that He created.

So basically, everything I need to know is in the Koran. And you guys have been trying to tell us this for years! Man, we really have to get our fingers out.
And, let's see... God sent 120,000 prophets loose amongst the rabble... and he only told them tiny little bits of the 'truth'... and he saved all the cool stuff for Mohammed.
Okay.
I need a beer.

Playing Puck the mischievous again, eh Xamonas? You know the answer – because God exists only as an idea. Not only that, but the idea is not a logical one, which is, in itself, turned into a virtue by the faithful. We cannot fathom the unfathomable wisdom of God, end of story. Such illogicality is allowed to run unchallenged because we must respect the views of others.
You say that God is “perfect and all-knowing”. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then there can be no free will. If I have a choice of two shirts to put on, God knows which I will choose. If He does, then I can only choose the one He knows I will choose. This means I do not have free will. If He doesn’t know, then He isn’t omniscient and omnipotent, which means He can’t be God. No one has ever adequately explained this to me. I have been told that “God knows your free will” but this is typical of the evasions of the faithful. If I don’t have free will, then how can I be morally responsible for anything I do? I couldn’t do anything else.

Maybe after Adam and Eve betrayed Him He got mad and decided not to talk to any people anymore, so they got their own weird ideas. After that He only talked to really, really good people, like Abraham, and so the religions began, when more and more good people spread what He was saying to them.

I actually have no idea. I'm an atheist too.

I don't understand why we have these discussions,because the answers to these questions are unattainable.As for me,I will continue to believe in God because it gives me comfort in my existence.I do not know God,nor will I ever,but I refuse to accept that life ends with death.I don't know if we have free will or if we are pre-destined by the plans of God,but I do know that we are beings ultimately created from nothing and we have a conscious choice to choose between right and wrong,and I will try to live as right as possible even if it is certain that God infinitely knows my every thought,choice or action.



And I know that many of you are intellectually superior to me,so please don't rip my brain to shreds.

WOW! that is so deep, i agree with you becasue you don't have to see something to know is there. It's llike air you don't see it but you know it's there, You can't see God but you know he is there becasue of FAITH!!!

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So basically, everything I need to know is in the Koran. And you guys have been trying to tell us this for years! Man, we really have to get our fingers out.

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I didn't say that God only gave bits and pieces to other Prophets, but that those messages were corrupted and changed over time by human beings. The holy Qur'an is the last revelation to the last Prophet, and it contains the same message that was revealed to all other prophets.

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You say that God is “perfect and all-knowing”. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then there can be no free will. If I have a choice of two shirts to put on, God knows which I will choose. If He does, then I can only choose the one He knows I will choose. This means I do not have free will. If He doesn’t know, then He isn’t omniscient and omnipotent, which means He can’t be God.

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God knows everything because He is not limited by time or space. He knows what has happened, what will happen, and what is happening, because the relativity of time does not exist for Him. However, just because He knows something will happen, does not alter the fact that you have free will. He knows what you will decide, not because He is influencing your free will, but simply because He knows the future, and knows what your decision will be even before you yourself make it. There is no contradiction in this at all.

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Originally Posted by Ryduce

I don't understand why we have these discussions,because the answers to these questions are unattainable.As for me,I will continue to believe in God because it gives me comfort in my existence.I do not know God,nor will I ever,but I refuse to accept that life ends with death.I don't know if we have free will or if we are pre-destined by the plans of God,but I do know that we are beings ultimately created from nothing and we have a conscious choice to choose between right and wrong,and I will try to live as right as possible even if it is certain that God infinitely knows my every thought,choice or action.

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There many questions to which there are no answers but we owe it to ourselves to continue asking them. Or perhaps it is just a compulsion that is an attempt to stave off the monumental boredom of everything. You state your position passionately and there is nothing much to be said in the face of faith. For me, to say that it gives you comfort is no different from saying the same about alcohol, drugs or your favourite Teddy bear. I don’t know any of the things you mention either, but I will continue to wonder. The question of free will versus predestination is a tough one. If God does know your every thought, choice or action, then how can you be said to be responsible for any of them? They are already ‘written’ and your behaviour must be compelled by God’s knowledge of what you will do. This comes as a huge relief to me – none of it is my fault; it was God’s will.

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Originally Posted by Amra

God knows everything because He is not limited by time or space. He knows what has happened, what will happen, and what is happening, because the relativity of time does not exist for Him. However, just because He knows something will happen, does not alter the fact that you have free will. He knows what you will decide, not because He is influencing your free will, but simply because He knows the future, and knows what your decision will be even before you yourself make it. There is no contradiction in this at all.

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Of course there’s a contradiction! If God knows what my decision is before I make it, then I can only make one decision – the one God knows. This limits my freedom to choose. You cannot explain this in terms of human reason and logic – you resort to saying that the rules don’t apply for God. I also find it interesting that this boundless, infinite, unfathomable God, this God who is beyond all categorisation, is nevertheless male.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Of course there’s a contradiction! If God knows what my decision is before I make it, then I can only make one decision – the one God knows. This limits my freedom to choose. You cannot explain this in terms of human reason and logic – you resort to saying that the rules don’t apply for God. I also find it interesting that this boundless, infinite, unfathomable God, this God who is beyond all categorisation, is nevertheless male.

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I don't think there is contradiction after all..it's as simple as He knows what our reaction on our life but he just lets us do things our own...Because if we do not have freedom to choose then why will He let YOU respectively make a post here questioning His significance??get it?if He limits you then why we are all arguing on this matter if He can make all choose one belief and faith..this explains how we're having freedom on our ways.And another thing, this topic will go a long way but after all, we still have the same question that won't be answered here...unless we believe that there reallyis the great God...Just wnt to share an answer of a child when his teacher asked that if God really exists where is He?The child said...Do you believe that you are intellectual ma'am?The teacher answered "yes" "Why Ma'am did you see intellectuality?"And this portays the big discusion here.... :brow:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then there can be no free will. If I have a choice of two shirts to put on, God knows which I will choose. If He does, then I can only choose the one He knows I will choose. This means I do not have free will. If He doesn’t know, then He isn’t omniscient and omnipotent, which means He can’t be God. No one has ever adequately explained this to me. I have been told that “God knows your free will” but this is typical of the evasions of the faithful. If I don’t have free will, then how can I be morally responsible for anything I do? I couldn’t do anything else.

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Not only that, but you have no choice about whether to be a believer or not and God knows this, so why would you be punished for it?

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Originally Posted by Ryduce

I don't understand why we have these discussions,because the answers to these questions are unattainable.As for me,I will continue to believe in God because it gives me comfort in my existence.

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What if comfort isn't really what you need, Ryduce?

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Originally Posted by Whifflingpin

"Another plausible argument is that the shift to monotheism was associated with a social change from a matri-central society to a patriarchal society.

Neither of those views answers your questions from the point of view of any of the "Religions of the Book." From those you will have to be content with the old failsafe of "I don't know that, only god knows that." If you started from a theist position, that would be a sufficient answer. If you don't, no answer that actually involves God is likely to convince you.

"What was the fate of those 'souls' that perished before your religion existed? Or for that matter, those that lived and died in a country that it hadn't yet reached?" There is not much milage in speculating about the fate of souls, whether in this life or beyond. In the religion to which I feel closest, however, the purpose of mankind is to assist God in opposing evil. A person need not hold to a religion or even know about one to fulfil this purpose - all that is necessary is to have a sense of right and wrong. Having this sense, those who try to promote what is right are fulfilling God's purpose, and those who oppose what they know to be right are denying God's purpose. What this means, in terms of the fate of their souls, God alone knows.

This may not bring us much further forward. We do not all appear to have the same view of right and wrong, so you could ask the question, "Why has God not enabled us all to see the correct view (i.e. His view) of right and wrong?" One religious answer is that, within this universe, there is Evil as well as good, and confusion and dissension are products of evil. Your assumption (expressed in such phrases as "if god is as all-powerful as supposed") that any God must, within this universe, be omnipotent, is not necessarily valid. I am comfortable with a dualist viewpoint, not a monotheist viewpoint. I take licence to contribute to this thread from your original post which rather mixed a tolerance of polytheist religions with the monotheist assumptions behind some of the questions.

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One cliche afer another.

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Originally Posted by Amra

I didn't say that God only gave bits and pieces to other Prophets, but that those messages were corrupted and changed over time by human beings. The holy Qur'an is the last revelation to the last Prophet, and it contains the same message that was revealed to all other prophets.



God knows everything because He is not limited by time or space. He knows what has happened, what will happen, and what is happening, because the relativity of time does not exist for Him. However, just because He knows something will happen, does not alter the fact that you have free will. He knows what you will decide, not because He is influencing your free will, but simply because He knows the future, and knows what your decision will be even before you yourself make it. There is no contradiction in this at all.

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More cliches.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

I also find it interesting that this boundless, infinite, unfathomable God, this God who is beyond all categorisation, is nevertheless male.

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An anthropomorphic male, interesting, yes, isn't it? And if we were bumblebees, we'd be buzzing away in our hives to the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Bee!

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Originally Posted by chef

WOW! that is so deep, i agree with you becasue you don't have to see something to know is there. It's llike air you don't see it but you know it's there, You can't see God but you know he is there becasue of FAITH!!!

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I swear, I'm moving to the woods! I gotta get away, seriously!

"Of course there’s a contradiction! If God knows what my decision is before I make it, then I can only make one decision – the one God knows. This limits my freedom to choose. You cannot explain this in terms of human reason and logic – you resort to saying that the rules don’t apply for God. "


God knows your free will. He knows what you will decide before you even think it. He knows what you will write next before you even write it. Does that affect you in any way? Certainly not. His knowledge of future has nothing to do with your free will. He didn't tell you to not believe in him, nor did He force you not to believe; He simply knows that you don't believe. I don't know why this is a hard concept to understand. To simplify, let's say you have a child who says "you are welcome" every time someone says "thank you" to him/her. Does you child not have a free will simply because you know the child will say "you are welcome" after you thank him/her? Of course not. And, let's say, you know that when your child is mad, he/she will refuse to say "you are welcome" and will instead look mad. Does your child not have a free will, simply because you know that when it is upset, it will refuse to say that to you? No. Well, imagine all this in a greater scale, and imagine God, who is not limited by time or space, and who knows EVERYTHING. Why does His knowledge affect you? He knows what will happen in the future, and He also knows what your free will will make you do, or not do.

"I also find it interesting that this boundless, infinite, unfathomable God, this God who is beyond all categorisation, is nevertheless male."

He is not male. God doesn't have a gender. Muslims refer to God as Allah; and Allah in itself does not have a gender. It is unfortunate that because of our language limitations we resort to the resources we have, and assign Him a gender simply because we have to refer to Him in some way. It is best to not do that, but it would be pretty hard to talk about God without being forced to refer to him/her/it in that way.

Unless you have something constructive to offer to the ongoing arguments, please don't post. Using cliche, 'put down' remarks do nothing in the way of moving the argument forward.

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Originally Posted by tiny explorer

why will He let YOU respectively make a post here questioning His significance??

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Because he doesn’t exist.

So the answers to Xamonas’s questions, “What was before God? (or, Why did He wait so long?)” are ‘People who needed a God’ and ‘He had to wait for man to invent him.’

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Originally Posted by Amra

God knows your free will. He knows what you will decide before you even think it. He knows what you will write next before you even write it. Does that affect you in any way? Certainly not. His knowledge of future has nothing to do with your free will. He didn't tell you to not believe in him, nor did He force you not to believe; He simply knows that you don't believe. I don't know why this is a hard concept to understand.

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Don’t assume that I find it hard to understand – I don’t. I simply find it impossible to accept. There is a huge difference. Your explanation is a semantic conjuring trick and not even a convincing one. If he knows what I will write, then what I will write must already exist in his ‘mind’, even before it appears in mine. For me to produce something different from God’s knowledge of what I will write is, therefore, a logical impossibility. How is it therefore possible to say that I have free will? You also manage to make God seem rather menacing – as if he is daring me to reject him. What, according to your religion, will be the consequences for me (in both this life and the next) if I don’t believe?

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Originally Posted by Amra

To simplify, let's say you have a child who says "you are welcome" every time someone says "thank you" to him/her. Does you child not have a free will simply because you know the child will say "you are welcome" after you thank him/her? Of course not. And, let's say, you know that when your child is mad, he/she will refuse to say "you are welcome" and will instead look mad. Does your child not have a free will, simply because you know that when it is upset, it will refuse to say that to you? No. Well, imagine all this in a greater scale, and imagine God, who is not limited by time or space, and who knows EVERYTHING. Why does His knowledge affect you? He knows what will happen in the future, and He also knows what your free will will make you do, or not do.

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This is a weak analogy. Firstly, why a child? Secondly, what sort of a human being can only respond “you are welcome”? Are you sure you don’t mean a telephone answering machine? On what basis am I making the assumption that the child will only answer, or refuse to answer, “you are welcome”? I might expect the child to say, "you are welcome" but that doesn’t mean I know it will. Your comparison is not the same as God knowing my every thought and action, unless God simply programs us like robots. That doesn’t seem very much like free will, either.

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Originally Posted by Amra

He is not male. God doesn't have a gender. Muslims refer to God as Allah; and Allah in itself does not have a gender.

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Would you say that Allah has been endowed with predominantly male, female or neutral gender characteristics? I notice that you don’t use ‘She’ but ‘He’. Are they interchangeable?

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Originally Posted by Amra

It is unfortunate that because of our language limitations we resort to the resources we have, and assign Him a gender simply because we have to refer to Him in some way. It is best to not do that, but it would be pretty hard to talk about God without being forced to refer to him/her/it in that way.

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In the end, we come down to the claim that God is unknowable and that human logic cannot comprehend it/him/her/them. If you are happy with the contradictions I see, then that’s your choice. But why is it necessary to assume that lack of understanding on behalf of those who don’t accept those contradictions is the problem? My answer to Xamonas’s question is simple – because there is no God. I have many objections to the idea but picked a simple one on the basis of logic. There is nothing wrong with the reasoning – I am finally beaten by faith, not reason.

As this is a Literature Forum, we might expect people to be interested in human experiences as depicted in Art. Has anyone seen Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog, based on the Ten Commandments? What I see in those films is Kieslowski’s sympathy with the frail and flawed human beings who try to live by those rules. One of the stories is about a Mathematician and his seven-year-old son. Both of them are computer buffs and, with winter approaching, they take various measurements at the lake to calculate when the ice will be thick enough to withstand the weight of the boy. The father (a Professor, if I remember correctly) puts his faith in the capacity of the human mind, in Mathematics and Physics. That’s his faith. But the commandment relating to this episode is “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me". You can imagine what happens. For me, the beauty of the film is not that there is any resolution of the theological issues; it’s in the nature of the depiction of their impact on our lives.

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Originally Posted by emily655321

I think the key, as Unspar very astutely pointed out, is the lack of written language. Someone didn't just sit down and write the Torah and invent Judaism; it was likely passed down through generations as a collection of oral tales. When writing developed, they got written down, and that's the earliest evidence we have of Judaism. The tale of Moses and the Ten Commandments may very well have its roots in a primitive misunderstanding of the first written transcription of these tales.

"Hey, where's Moses?"
"Iunno. But he went up into the hills with a couple slabs of rock a while ago."
"What the heck for? Oh, wait, here he comes. Hey, there's stuff on the tablets now! Moses, what's that you got there?"
"The word of God."
"Ohhh..."
Later that day:
"Hey! I ran into Moses today, and he came down off the mountain, and he had these tablets, and God wrote on 'em!"
"Wow, cool!"

Anyway. The explanation I always heard growing up for Jesus' coming was that after a while people got God's rules all mixed up and started sinning too much again, the way they had when he flooded the Earth. But he already promised Noah he wouldn't kill everybody anymore, so this time he sent a messenger down instead, to set people right. I think the moral of this story is that killing everybody is way more efficient than talking. But then, I didn't pay much attention in CCD.

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Oh Em, you are so priceless. Please write a book right now on the subject, I cannot wait to read it and Mel Brooks will be on your doorstep to publish it.
I being a Jew have never seen such insight! what a girl :lol:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Playing Puck the mischievous again, eh Xamonas?

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Playing? Maybe "I am that merry wanderer of the night." ;)

Interesting point about the gender of god. I always thought that Allah was a masculine word but apparently this is debatable - this from Wiki:

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Many linguists believe that the term Allah is derived from a contraction of the Arabic words al (the) and ilah (deity, masculine form) - al-ilah meaning "the god." In addition, one of the main pagan goddesses of pre-Islamic Arabia, Allat (al + ilah + at, or 'the goddess'), is cited as being etymologically (though not synchronically) the feminine linguistic counterpart to the grammatically masculine Allah. If so, the word Allah is an abbreviated title, meaning 'the deity', rather than a name. For this reason, both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars often translate Allah directly into English as 'God'; this also explains why Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians freely refer to God as Allah. However, some Muslim scholars feel that "Allah" should not be translated, because they perceived the Arabic word to express the uniqueness of "Allah" more accurately than the word "god", which can take a plural "gods", whereas the word "Allah" has no plural form. This is a significant issue in translation of the Qur'an.

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I've got more to say here, but there's been a lot of traffic here since I started the thread, so I need time to digest it all and prepare a response.

Watch this space.

Two more supplementary questions.

If God is eternal and unchanging, why did He:

(a) react to the wickedness of the world of Noah, and to Sodom & Gomorrah, with violent destruction? But to later wickedness with Jesus's forgiveness?
(b) originally 'choose' the Jewish people and protect and defend them, while smiting their enemies? But later on (in the person of Jesus) 'choose' the entire world as his people?

Shouldn't one expect a degree of consistency from an eternal, unchanging being?

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

Shouldn't one expect a degree of consistency from an eternal, unchanging being?

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Not if God is a She. ;)

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Don’t assume that I find it hard to understand – I don’t. I simply find it impossible to accept. There is a huge difference. Your explanation is a semantic conjuring trick and not even a convincing one. If he knows what I will write, then what I will write must already exist in his ‘mind’, even before it appears in mine. For me to produce something different from God’s knowledge of what I will write is, therefore, a logical impossibility. How is it therefore possible to say that I have free will? You also manage to make God seem rather menacing – as if he is daring me to reject him. What, according to your religion, will be the consequences for me (in both this life and the next) if I don’t believe?

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I really don't have anything more to add, and I would just end up repeating myself, because what seems very logical to me, is apparently not at all logical to you. I just don't understand how you can think that your free will is influenced simply by the fact that Allah t. knows the future. If you had the ability to look into the future and you saw everything that will happen, does your knowledge mean that people who acted a certain way were influenced by your knowledge? NO. So, why is it hard to accept that same scenario with God in it? He doesn't influence your free will, He simply KNOWS the future, and by knowing the future, He knows how you will act, because future doesn't exist for Him, as He is not limited by it.

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This is a weak analogy. Firstly, why a child?

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Why not?

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Secondly, what sort of a human being can only respond “you are welcome”? Are you sure you don’t mean a telephone answering machine?

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Call it social norms. :) We act and respond a certain way when someone says "Thank you". I didn't claim the analogy to be great, but it is nevertheless showing that our knowledge of the future doesn't impact the free will of others.

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I might expect the child to say, "you are welcome" but that doesn’t mean I know it will.

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Well, that is the difference between you and God. He KNOWS exactly what will happen, because He is the All-Knowing. However, He is not influencing it. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Can others jump in and clafy this? Does this really seem like a tough concept?

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Your comparison is not the same as God knowing my every thought and action, unless God simply programs us like robots. That doesn’t seem very much like free will, either.

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Knowing and influencing are not one and the same. :D

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Would you say that Allah has been endowed with predominantly male, female or neutral gender characteristics? I notice that you don’t use ‘She’ but ‘He’. Are they interchangeable?

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They are totally irrelevant because Allah doesn't have a gender. As humans, we identify things a certain way, but to understand God, we have to get away from those. However, even if we get away from those abstractlly, linguistically we still have to limit God to what we know. He/She/It is interchageable in the sense that all of them are wrong, and do not describe the nature of Allah s.v.t.

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In the end, we come down to the claim that God is unknowable and that human logic cannot comprehend it/him/her/them. If you are happy with the contradictions I see, then that’s your choice.

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What is the contradiction? WE know God only as much as He told us about Himself. We can't know Him more than that, simply because He is above our comprehension. In the holy Qur'an, Allah s.v.t gave us 99 adjectives that describe Him. We know Him through those, but it is not possible to know Him beyond that, because than we would have to be intelectually above Him. The Creator and creation are not one and the same, and it would be a contradiction if they were.

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If God is eternal and unchanging, why did He:

(a) react to the wickedness of the world of Noah, and to Sodom & Gomorrah, with violent destruction? But to later wickedness with Jesus's forgiveness?

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This is a Christian belief, so I can't really give you an answer. Muslims do not believe that Jesus came to forgive the humanity, nor that he erased their sins. Allah s.v.t has punished different people over the history of human kind, usually those people were punished because of the greatness of their sins.

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(b) originally 'choose' the Jewish people and protect and defend them, while smiting their enemies? But later on (in the person of Jesus) 'choose' the entire world as his people?

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Again, a belief that Muslims do not accept. Every nation that existed had a Prophet who was sent to them. Allah s.v.t didn't put one nation above another, and the only way that people are compared is based on their faith, meaning that those who are faithful are on a greater level than those who are not.

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You also manage to make God seem rather menacing – as if he is daring me to reject him. What, according to your religion, will be the consequences for me (in both this life and the next) if I don’t believe?

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Every human being will enter paradise in the end, except those who committed shirk. Shirk means that a person worships something else, other than the One and Only God. Notice that this implies that every human beings worships something, because worship in Islam means putting something above everything else; submitting to it, so even those who claim to not believe in God, believe in other things that become their deity. They may believe to be gods themselves, self-sufficient in a way, or they may resort to following their desires, or money, or power etc. Even if they do not consciencly claim this, their actions will reveal who their gods are.
So, every human being who didn't commit this sin, which is the greatest sin in Islam, will eventually enter paradise. Those who die with their sins outweighing their good deeds will be punished with hell, but will enter paradise after they have paid for their sins. Those who die as kafir (people commiting shirk) will spend their eternity in hell.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

There many questions to which there are no answers but we owe it to ourselves to continue asking them. Or perhaps it is just a compulsion that is an attempt to stave off the monumental boredom of everything. You state your position passionately and there is nothing much to be said in the face of faith. For me, to say that it gives you comfort is no different from saying the same about alcohol, drugs or your favourite Teddy bear. I don’t know any of the things you mention either, but I will continue to wonder. The question of free will versus predestination is a tough one. If God does know your every thought, choice or action, then how can you be said to be responsible for any of them? They are already ‘written’ and your behaviour must be compelled by God’s knowledge of what you will do. This comes as a huge relief to me – none of it is my fault; it was God’s will.

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But I feel that God's infinite knowledge has nothing to do with free will.Even if he knows my actions prior to them actually occuring,it is still "MY" choice.He is not choosing for me,but being all knowing he is already aware of "MY" actions.It is not a contradiction,because I'm not choosing what he knows.He knows what I'm choosing.It is still "MY" conscious choice.God designed the universe like a clock that has been set,it runs itself and then intervenes only when neccessary."I" am always responsible for "MY" actions.You just don't want to take responsibility for anything,it's much easier for you to say it was God's will.Thats how I see it.


Like I said before I'm only 17 please don't blast my brain into oblivion.

Thanks Ryduce for jumping in. I didn't think it a very hard concept to grasp either, and I don't understand how God's knowledge is in contradiction with our free will...

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

I really don't have anything more to add, and I would just end up repeating myself, because what seems very logical to me, is apparently not at all logical to you.

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No, it’s not that it’s logical to you and illogical to me – it’s illogical full stop. It might be acceptable or unproblematic to you but that is not the same.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

I just don't understand how you can think that your free will is influenced simply by the fact that Allah t. knows the future.

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You cannot understand this simple scenario? There are two pens on the table. One is red, the other blue. I decide to pick up one of them. Perhaps I should have used the scenario of a blonde and a brunette in a bar. :brow: God knows which it will be before I carry out the act. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that God knows that I will pick up the red one. I cannot therefore pick up the blue one. What kind of free choice is that? So if God knows the future, I can do nothing that will cause a deviation from that future. Surely, you can see that free will and a foreseen future are logically irreconcilable?

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

If you had the ability to look into the future and you saw everything that will happen, does your knowledge mean that people who acted a certain way were influenced by your knowledge? NO.

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No, but then I didn’t create that future. Also, those people can only do what is consistent with the future already written.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

So, why is it hard to accept that same scenario with God in it? He doesn't influence your free will, He simply KNOWS the future, and by knowing the future, He knows how you will act, because future doesn't exist for Him, as He is not limited by it.

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It’s hard to accept because you use logic up to a point where it can no longer serve you and then you fall back on saying that God is supernatural. You might just as well tell me that you’ve simply got a hunch that God exists.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

“Firstly, why a child?”
Why not?

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Because you are not comparing like with like. I also think child is a deliberately emotive choice that suggests our relationship with a deity is like that between a parent and a child.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

Call it social norms. We act and respond a certain way when someone says "Thank you". I didn't claim the analogy to be great, but it is nevertheless showing that our knowledge of the future doesn't impact the free will of others.

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No, it isn’t showing that at all. As I said above, the child might be expected to respond in the usual way but that doesn’t mean he or she certainly will. In the case of God’s expectations, we are dealing with an absolute. They are not expectations but knowledge. We can never have knowledge of the future because it doesn’t exist. By definition, it is endlessly deferred. You are freely mixing human expectation with divine, absolute knowledge.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

Well, that is the difference between you and God. He KNOWS exactly what will happen, because He is the All-Knowing. However, He is not influencing it. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Can others jump in and clafy this? Does this really seem like a tough concept?

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Again, it is not a tough concept, merely an illogical one. You seem to assume that by repeating the same point it will eventually become truth. All you are really saying here is that I, a mere human, cannot know but something that isn’t human can. Your argument depends on the existence of a hypothetical being – an omniscient, omnipotent supernatural entity, in which I do not believe.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

Knowing and influencing are not one and the same.

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This is the second time you’ve mentioned ‘influence’, which I was careful to omit from my comments. I’m not suggesting that God influences our decisions. I am merely pointing out that free will and omniscience are irreconcilable.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

They are totally irrelevant …

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If they are all limited and equally wrong, why don’t we hear Allah referred to as she very much? I can’t say that I have ever heard Allah referred to as ‘she’ but many times as ‘he’.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

What is the contradiction? WE know God only as much as He told us about Himself. We can't know Him more than that, simply because He is above our comprehension.

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People used to say similar things about Eric Clapton in the Sixties. The contradiction is between the idea of omniscience and free will. If God is above my comprehension, then my reason will get me nowhere. Therefore, instead of spending my time wondering about the philosophical aspects of his/her existence, I will direct my attention to the morality of the systems that serve him/her here on Earth. That would take us into territory that would be banned on this Forum. I’ll give you a simple example, though. The idea of original sin is repugnant to me. I believe it was thought up to reconcile the idea of an infinitely merciful God with the death of infants. A newly born child is, as far as I’m concerned, utterly sinless. Yet they nevertheless die. How can God permit this (rhetorical)? The answer -even that defenceless babyis full of sin. Horrible idea.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

In the holy Qur'an, Allah s.v.t gave us 99 adjectives that describe Him. We know Him through those, but it is not possible to know Him beyond that, because than we would have to be intelectually above Him. The Creator and creation are not one and the same, and it would be a contradiction if they were.

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A contradiction by your laws, not mine.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

Every human being will enter paradise in the end, except those who committed shirk. Shirk means that a person worships something else, other than the One and Only God. Notice that this implies that every human beings worships something,

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I take it that this is yet another assumption that I must accept as objective fact. You know, people who have had a go at religious belief have been castigated by mods a number of times on this Forum since I have been posting. They are criticised for intolerance. To me, the kind of assumptions you are making suggest there is little room for the faithful’s tolerance of me.

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Originally Posted by “Amra”

because worship in Islam means putting something above everything else;…. Those who die as kafir (people commiting shirk) will spend their eternity in hell.

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I’d better get some flame-resistant books ready then because I want no part of such a system. That is my free will and I exercise it.

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No, it’s not that it’s logical to you and illogical to me – it’s illogical full stop. It might be acceptable or unproblematic to you but that is not the same.

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It is illogical simply because you claim so? That's not an argument; it is simply an opinion.

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There are two pens on the table. One is red, the other blue. I decide to pick up one of them. Perhaps I should have used the scenario of a blonde and a brunette in a bar. God knows which it will be before I carry out the act. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that God knows that I will pick up the red one. I cannot therefore pick up the blue one. What kind of free choice is that? So if God knows the future, I can do nothing that will cause a deviation from that future. Surely, you can see that free will and a foreseen future are logically irreconcilable?

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You need to differentiate certain simple concepts before you make an argument. God is either influencing you, or He is not. He is either influencing your free will, or not. It can't be both. Simply by knowing the future, He is not influencing it in any way. You didn't answer my question regarding this knowledge of future. If you could know the future and would be able to see everything that will happen, do you at the same time have the ability to change it? Does your knowledge of the future affect it in any way? Are the people around you going to act differently simply because you have seen the future? You have to imagine that God knows everything that will happen. In the Qur'an, a lot of times we have verses that talk about the Judgment Day. It says what people will say when they see hell fire, or it tells the story of people talking to each other during Judgment Day. This is because, Allah s.v.t knows already what will happen. The future and the past are concepts known to us, but Allah s.v.t is beyond that. He is not limited by time. However, you confuse predestination with knowledge. Our free will is not affected by His knowledge. He simply KNOWS what will happen, because He is not limited by time. He looks at the past, and the present, and the future as one, not seperate entities. I can see that this may be confusing to you, but if you try to seperate influence from knowledge, you will understand it.

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No, but then I didn’t create that future. Also, those people can only do what is consistent with the future already written.

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He KNOWS the future, we create it. Whatever choices in our lives we make, are because of our free will. God simply knows the future, and hence, knows our decisions.

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Because you are not comparing like with like. I also think child is a deliberately emotive choice that suggests our relationship with a deity is like that between a parent and a child.

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Because they are not alike. God and humans are not alike, therefore, the comparison cannot be between equals. And I havent' used child deliberatly because in Islam we don't have that parent/child relationship with God.

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This is the second time you’ve mentioned ‘influence’, which I was careful to omit from my comments. I’m not suggesting that God influences our decisions. I am merely pointing out that free will and omniscience are irreconcilable.

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Well, they can only be irreconcilable if there is influence. If there is no influence, then they can coexist without any problems. You need to decide whether or not He influences our free will or not. If He doesn't, then tell me why free will and omniscience are irreconcilable?

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If they are all limited and equally wrong, why don’t we hear Allah referred to as she very much? I can’t say that I have ever heard Allah referred to as ‘she’ but many times as ‘he’.

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Because we have been taught by the society to use He for God, even though nothing in Islam suggests that. As I stated before, it is an unfortunate linguistic limitation. To avoid that as much as possible, we use Allah s.v.t to refer to God, because that noun doesn't have a gender, or pluarility.

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The idea of original sin is repugnant to me. I believe it was thought up to reconcile the idea of an infinitely merciful God with the death of infants. A newly born child is, as far as I’m concerned, utterly sinless. Yet they nevertheless die. How can God permit this (rhetorical)? The answer -even that defenceless babyis full of sin. Horrible idea

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The idea of the original sin is not known in Islam. Human beings are born sinless. People do not die because of sin. They die because death is just another part of life. It doesn't happen because of sin, nor does sin influence it. Those who die as children enter paradise without being questioned, because they are considered sinless.

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To me, the kind of assumptions you are making suggest there is little room for the faithful’s tolerance of me.

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There is no compulsion into the religion. You can practice whatever you like. However, as it is in every society, certain things would be regulated to allow the possibility of life among different people of different beliefs. For example, if you would live in an islamic country, based on shariah, you probably wouldn't be allowed to openly preach about atheism, just like you are not openely allowed to preach about communism in a democratic society. If you consider that intolerance, then that is your right, but every society is intolerant in some way to certain groups.

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I’d better get some flame-resistant books ready then because I want no part of such a system. That is my free will and I exercise it.

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And Allah s.v.t already knows it.

Amra,

If god is unknowable, as you repeatedly say, how do you know that he is neither male, female nor neuter? How do you know that he doesn't influence our choices? How, indeed, can you claim to know anything at all about this god?

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Originally Posted by amra

There is no compulsion into the religion. You can practice whatever you like. However, as it is in every society, certain things would be regulated to allow the possibility of life among different people of different beliefs. For example, if you would live in an islamic country, based on shariah, you probably wouldn't be allowed to openly preach about atheism, just like you are not openely allowed to preach about communism in a democratic society. If you consider that intolerance, then that is your right, but every society is intolerant in some way to certain groups.

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"Probably wouldn't"? In many islamic countries, preaching christian religion to muslims is punishable, let alone preaching atheism. I think you are guilty of portraying shariah law as a little more tolerant than it actually is.

And I can quite openly 'preach communism' in my democratic society thank you. I wouldn't, but that is because I find it as flawed and ultimately ridiculous as any other dogmatic philosophy, islam included.

Your analogies do not wash here my friend. Please choose them better in future!

I am only intolerant of deliberate obfuscation such as your own in that quote.