The problem with God's will is that it introduces a logical inconsistency that cannot be reconciled with the tools of the philosopher, the metaphysic or the religious.
Forget this middle path and forget the left hand side and the right hand side, just consider this for a moment.
When it comes to God, really there are only 2 possibilities.
Either God does exist or God does not exist.
Either way the outcome is the same.
Whatever you believe about who or what God is, if God exists, then by definition God's will is inescapable. Because, the only thing that would make a God, "God", is an inescapable will. This is true in every single religion that has ever been.
Ergo if you believe in a God or Gods, then the actions you do in this life have no real impact, you by definition are nothing more than an extension of a God's will. Since you are not an infinite being, but merely an extension of one, you are not culpable for your own actions.
If God exists, then the fault of everything, rests squarely at the feet of whatever you bend your knee to and call God. There can be no punishment for disobedience, because there is no possible way to disobey.
Yet if God does not exist then there is no "higher" morality, no higher authority you are answerable to. This would mean that everything we call morality is merely a subjective construct intended to limit our behavior.
Put another way, if there is no God, then by definition, there can be no punishment for disobedience because there is no possible way to disobey.
These are diametrically opposed viewpoints, yet the conclusion is the same. There is no punishment for disobedience, because there is no such thing as disobedience.
The real question you have to ask yourself here is, "What do you call God?".
If you call the Universe, God then the natural laws of the Universe would be "the will of God".
Yet our Universe is limited. A God with limits is no God. If it exists, it might be a higher level of being, but it is no God. Any more than you are God to ants or worms, or the parasites residing within your own gut.
But perhaps the idea of "God's will" is just backwards?
No matter which way you try to slice it, the idea of God is a bronze age myth. I acknowledge that you might believe you have a personal relationship with something. You might feel like you are saved or redeemed, but the plain and simple truth is the God described in scriptures is a mythology derived from older myths, derived from older myths etc.
The purpose of all of these myths was/is to coerce people into subjugating their own will to the will of a God, who only made his will known to a few "elect", i.e. his chosen people well not all of them, just the priests.
This elite priest class was then free of the need to labor as men do, because people would bring them food and wealth in order to "serve God's will".
Freed of the need to labor, they were free to pursue more intellectual endeavors. Literacy being the first, and eventually math, science, etc.
Once information and truth became democratized, it became readily appearant that this priest class had been lying for thousands of years. But how is that possible if those priests were merely communicating God's will?
A God would not lie and a God would not hide truth. Just as a good father would not lie to his children. So you're left with the inescapable conclusion, that either for thousands of years a pure and perfect God of love and light allowed his "children" to believe lies, or there was never really a God there in the first place.
Followed through to it's natural conclusion, you're left with the realization that religion is actually about power and control over an ignorant populace.
This is as true today as it was in antiquity.
Once knowledge came to the masses though, humanity began to move forward in leaps that can only be called extraordinary.
I think this is very telling.
By opening knowledge up and by using tools such as science instead of metaphysics and superstition to explore the universe, we become closer to becoming Gods ourselves.
If you were to take someone from a mere 500 years ago and drop them into today's world, everything about our world would be viewed not as mere magic, but as the power of God himself.
So that leaves me wondering. What if the seat of these myths actually come to us from a sort of cargo cult?
There is strong evidence to support the idea of a population bottleneck in Homo Sapiens. This bottleneck was so severe that it's possible that not more than a handful of us survived.
So the real question is...
If we can make this much progress in just the 600 hundred years since Gutenberg brought us the printing press, is it possible at some point we were much further along than we are now? Is it possible that the children of the bronze age were actually survivors or perhaps those left behind, and everything we call "God" is really a collective memory of a time when we as a species were much more than we are now?
It begs the question, what has been lost, what has been forgotten?
It also has another, possibly deeper implication.
If we take our current trajectory and we just assume that it holds, then in another 500 years we will have transcended our physical form simply by our own will, using our own technology. We will be able to bend the Universe to our own will to create whatever we want to see. Perhaps we will even be able to transcend the Universe itself, like a dragon hatching from an egg.
In other words, it's quite possible that the reason we can't know God's will is because God has yet to be invented.
It's also quite possible that once we know the will of God it will be because we are Gods. Which is the only way I know to solve the God paradox.
I'd resteem your comment :) love the topic pick and how you have worked together to add up on top of it :) have to say my ideas go along the same lines, although I'm not certain of anything on this topic, I like your dissertation tho nice flow of logic, seems reasonable :) even if you lost me a bit at the end, have to say it's the chicken or the egg question but with many of those :D
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Can't say as I have all the answers or even some of them. But some times I get some decent guesses. :D
Thanks for the compliment! Let me know where I lost you, I can edit and clarify for sure.
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oh I go what you mean, I just don't agree to most of it 1 and 0 by paragraphs, still it's just a quick review so and a / for a middle path :D
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whatever 20% I agree with, your logic is great I just don't like the way of thinking for lots of reasons I'd not devulge into right now, you are missing on the religious side, I doubt you've read the books(I haven't either but I've picked up some )
God and Gods are standards, unreachable by men and there for them to strive for, they will judge you and measure your worth, then you can join their "room" :D so that's my current interpretation of god, he hosted, then gave away the admin rights, and left us to our own devices, keeping tabs maybe who knows :D so the admin :D and since you said Ergo, I can add Proxy :) check it out :)
I would like to read through your post again in depth and explain my reasoning for my disagreement " "
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Feel free! It's why we have a website!
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I tend to take the wisdom of the Buddha on anything metaphysical:
He didn't expound one sentence, one thought on the metaphysical.
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I agree, but my comments are specifically regarding the will of God.
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My wife has been raised in a Jehovah's Witness family and she will point out in the same manner all the absurdities of "god's will". It was a very good commentary on that.
I was always fascinated by that fact of the Buddha, 40 years of teachings and no need to expound on the "life after death, and god's will".
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