Sunday, March 10, 2013

What Would God Want?

If there's a western God in the way that many of us believe that there is, what would God want?

Why would God want anything?

God seems to be totally outside of the idea of any incentives.  Why wouldn't God lay on the proverbial couch all day?  If God is all knowing and all powerful and created EVERYTHING, why does God care about anything?

God already knows everything and everything that will be.  Why care?  Why does God care?


If the system is a hybrid, if God sets up the conditions and sets things up, then why would God  step in to change them if they weren't going the way God wanted.  It must mean, if God has that power, that God has all power, not just half power to set up games and see how they play out.  If that's the case, God already knows every possibility and has infinite time to play with all possibilities if God wants... I still don't know the reason for God to want, though.

I think the view of God as a CEO is misguided, in other words.  God is often a CEO with eyes and ears and ultimate control, and the company the CEO governs is merely a figment of the CEO's imagination.

Why should we imagine that we matter to God?

If you answer that question with either a) yes we matter or b) no we don't matter, what does that answer have anything to do with how we should act?

To be clear: I want to believe that God cares. I want to believe in God.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting post : ).
Let's assume there is no God. Regardless, wouldn't the same fundamental principles still apply? Do we need God to be a moral people? For some, blind faith is a form of addiction... Not questioning not thinking.

Robin

hmm said...

In other words, Robin, we believe in God and whether or not that belief has a true corresponding reality, the belief itself (if sincere) is important enough to create morality?

In double other words: making God illogical doesn't undo God's importance or sway over us.

Not to mention the fact that some people will use God as a way to be manically illogical.

And yet . . . the idea of God generally and the multiple specific incarnations God has across cultures still manages to divide the shit out of us so that we don't all agree on the same fundamental principles. God works when God incentivizes us toward a path. If God has no incentive to provide more than opaque feedback, feedback which is not distinguishable from human pattern-seeking, I'm not sure why it matters beyond when we tell ourselves that it matters. And if it only matters when we tell ourselves it matters I'm not at all sure it matters when we tell ourselves it matters or why we actually do tell ourselves it matters.