God's subjective Perfection?

Question

Isn’t the notion of God being perfect and absolutely just, (as in behaving/deciding), in every situation, basically a rationalization for us and an attempt to placate God, fearing the repercussion(s) if we disagree?

Isn’t the only reason we say that God is Perfect due to the belief that God created us and therefore gets to make the rules? The rule makers’ decisions need not be explained, understandable, logical, or seemingly fair to the ruled.

And then, fearing punishment if not sufficiently credulous, the ruled rationalize that even the most absurd, cruel, and unjust rules are perfectly acceptable, they are simply too ignorant to understand why it’s really a good rule.

Answer 1

I suppose you could be right. I look at it a little differently.

I think only somewhat modern xians have the idea of a god that is all-loving and all-good. Almost no other culture/tradition has attempted to give their god/s these qualities.
Why try at all? I think once one person came up with the idea, it sounded really good and made him better than all the other gods, so everyone else tried to keep that idea going with massive rationalizations.

Answer 2

The idea of a perfect god comes basically from one very, very old source: the idea that something cannot come from nothing.

On the face of it, that is a very innocuous and commonsense statement. If you put eight oranges into an empty basket, you aren't going to find nine in there. Even if you do, it must have come from somewhere, not just magically appeared. But you get problems if you extend this concept out to its maximum possible application.

A person might imagine a variety of gods in his head. But if you want to figure out which god would be the source of all the others, and you ascribe to the above philosophy, then it can only be the most powerful, most knowledgeable, and most perfect one. Because something cannot come from nothing. But this begs another question - where did your IDEA of this omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect being come from? Many religious apologists have argued that it can only come from the one actual entity that corresponds to this idea.

Unfortunately, you've painted yourself into a corner, then. If something cannot come from nothing, and everything else comes from this infinite entity, where did the entity come from? The only way out is to decide that the question is a non-sequitur - the entity couldn't have come FROM anywhere... so it can only have always existed.

So you can see where this whole idea came from. And it all hinges on the concept that something cannot come from nothing. But is that first premise a reasonable one?

If something cannot come from nothing, then no child can ever be superior to his parents. How could he? His good genes could not have come from nowhere. Likewise, if something cannot come from nothing, than all of human knowledge is only decreasing. No student can possibly learn more than his teachers. How could he? Things don't just come from nowhere.

And curiously enough, even though the above conclusions are quite patently not true, you will find many religious apologists trying to defend them anyway, even today. I've held many conversations with Biblical scholars who are convinced that Adam lived a thousand years and we don't because we have 'degenerated' since then. Others try to suggest that everything we know know was actually known thousands of years ago, it was just a little less widely distributed. Plato even tried to argue that all knowledge was inherent, and some people were just better at 'remembering' things from their past lives than others.

To which I say hogwash.

It may be that in the most general possible sense, things do not come from nowhere. BUT things often change from one to another, and sometimes so subtly that they SEEM to come from nowhere. An orange tree makes oranges from sunlight and soil, even if its hard to see it on a human time-scale, and information can sometimes be divined from energy and randomness... it may even be completely natural for this to be so.

None of this, of course, proves that there is no god... I happen to have a number of which I'm rather fond of myself. But it does go a long way to explain why so many people think their gods have certain characteristics. Peace.

Answer 3

1. No, because it is in our best interest to assimilate our highest true nature. We want to be perfect because perfection is better than imperfection.

2. We think that perfection exists, so we call it the same name that the ancients give it, God. Anything without flaw is perfect and good, hence we say God is good. So if justice is good, then God is just, so

3. The most unjust rules ar enot acceptable, because we conceptualize God as being just rather than injust.

As for the world, it is an emanation of the One, which contains Justice as its head, and breaks off into justice and unjustice, both natural and necessary causes of human nature. This synthesis is known as realization, in which we understand the imperfections in life (pain, injustice, unhappiness) in order to realize the true and perfect blessing of life.

Anything that is aware of pain becomes instantaneously in need of the removal of pain. God can be seen as the supplication that removes this pain.

Why is there pain?
Because our bodies are impermanent
Why are they impermanent?
Because we are not God.
Why are we not God?
Because we must realize it first.

Answer 4

Religions try to monopolize God by being the people's conduit to it. Nevertheless, the concept of God as found in many religions tends to be described as "perfect in every way". It does not matter if it created us or not.

I find this concept of a perfect God quite useless in terms of how to apply it to your daily life. If it is so perfect and created you and it controls all the situation around you then what is the point in trying to talk to it, or even ask it for favors?

So my view is that God, by its own perfection, is irrelevant to our daily lives. Therefore the question of its existance is also irrelevant.

Now, if you ask about an imperfect God who favors certain people just because of the group they were born in, or because of their beliefs, then you have a really powerful concept that can help you achieve world domination ;-)

Answer 5

Someone misinformed you. Studying the Bible would serve you well.