Comment by lukan
3 hours ago
"I never quite understood the argument that God should be "perfect""
My understanding from reading the bible while I was still christian is pretty much, that in the older parts, god was indeed not almighty. He was just the god of a desert tribe. And of course a stronger god than the other gods of the inferior tribes ... slowly evolving to obviously the strongest god up to the point that there was only one god. And there can be only one god if he is almighty. Or, so powerful that the difference does not matter anymore.
Anyway, the logical fallacy of the "almighty" thing was the main thing for me to give up on the concept. I cannot accept a concept, that puts me in hell (or heaven), eternal damnation (or salvation) for being who I was made to be, influenced by an environment also totally controlled by the creator.
The christian understanding of the concept of God, is that it is transcendental, i.e. beyond the universe. This means that from the view from inside the universe he must be almighty. A non-almighty "God" is just not a God, according to the Christian definition, it is just yet another thing in the universe.
> a concept, that puts me in hell (or heaven) ... for being who I was made to be ... by the creator.
Why do you think it needs to be an explicit action from the creator as opposed to being just the result of your own actions? When someone loves you, but you really don't love him/her back, that's quite the hell for you. Compared to the state of this being heaven to you, i.e. you do love back, there is no difference in intention or action from the other persons side.
"Why do you think it needs to be an explicit action from the creator as opposed to being just the result of your own actions? "
There is no such thing as "my own actions" if I was created by an allmighty god. And the environment likewise. Then every action would be determined by the allmighty.
It all would be just gods playground to test and reward and punish his creations for being how he (or she or it) created them.
Christianity also assumes free will and non-determinism, yeah otherwise it would be quite pointless. It also includes the possibility of willfully turning away from God, which is not intended by him. If you think of a place where (most) things behave exactly as God created them, that's the story before that apple[0], but guess what, it ended.
[0] ... I know that that is an translation error.
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