God's Will

[eriador]

Hopefully he will do God's will well in his new role.

Hmmmm.... That brings up an interesting question (that might want to be forked off into its own thread). The comment implies that, no matter what, he will be doing God's work, even if he's doing it poorly. Does that mean that whatever he does is God's work. If so, couldn't that be taken as proof that "Man (or Mormons) created God in his own image"?

[Rei]

If you do an assignment poorly, have you truly done the assignment as your teacher desired? Sure, whatever you hand in for an assignment might be the work for that class, but if you do not follow the parameters given, you will lose marks and your teacher will be displeased with your work.

The same applies to doing God's will, whether you do so well or poorly.

[eriador]

That makes sense... but you spoke as if no matter what the president does, it will in some way reflect God's will. However, logically, there are actions in existence that are mutually exclusive: one is the opposite of the other. Let's call a pair of these actions A and B, and define them such that A is "God's will." If the president acts on B, he will not, by definition be doing anything that is God's will.

How can you address that seeming paradox?

[Rei]

If your teacher asks you to write a paper on the nature of change, and for this assignment you hand in a crayon drawing of butterflies, you did indeed hand something in for that teacher, but does it in any way reflect what your teacher wanted? You could argue that butterflies are a common symbol of change, but you would still fail your assignment. It reflects your teacher's will in that you responded to their request one way or another. Beyond that is whether you responded well or poorly.

[eriador]

That's not what I was talking about. I was saying that your "teacher" might want you to plant trees, but instead you go and cut trees down. How can that be reconciled?

Or are you saying that doing anything is in a way God's will?

[Rei]

Only as far as what you do resembles God's exact will.

[eriador]

*clap clap* nice dodge!

It's just that everything you say re-enforces the paradox I see: that God has a specific "will" but that doing ANYTHING is a way of carrying out that will. So even if I do EXACTLY what God DOESN'T want me to, I'm carrying out his will? How does that work? And how do I know that this isn't an indication that "God's will" is just a way of justifying what you do?

(p.s. this might sound like an attack, but it isn't. I have a question, and I don't feel that you're answering, so I'm not pulling my punches as much as I was earlier. I feel like I'm treading a fine line between clarity and avoiding insult. tell me if i fall off EITHER end.)

[suminonA]

eriador, I don't see why do you insist to have your interpretation of what others say explained, without accepting the possibility that maybe, you don't understand the point the others wanted to make.

I find Rei's explanations very comprehensible, and your "paradox" non-implied. Even if you consider an omniscient deity (that could anticipate all future actions), the Human’s free will still doesn’t mean that all the actions of the Humans are the deity’s will.

A.

[eriador]

Okay, I'm thoroughly confused at this point. That leaves a few possibilities:

1) I'm just not getting something that's been clearly explained.
2) You're failing to explain something to me (potentially because I'm not asking well)
3) We think in fundamentally different ways, that cannot comprehend the reasoning of the other.

I'm gonna try once more, and ask a simple yes or no question: Is the president capable of NOT doing God's will?

[Rei]

I suspect some of column A and a bit of column C.

For simplicity, yes, he is capable of not doing God's will. He is capable, as all people, of doing something that is claimed or believed to be God's will, which is in fact not God's will.

[eriador]

Okay... I need some time to mull over my thinking and yours.

I'll get back to this when I have some mature ideas.

Thank you.

[Slim]

On that topic, President Woodruff (4th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) said, "The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as the President of this Church to lead you astray. ... If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place ..."

So, I don't believe that a true prophet can lead the people astray. But what about you original vague question on the degree to how well someone does God's will?

If we look at some biblical examples, Jonah tried avoiding what God told him to do. Then he got eaten by a fish, until he finally repented and decided to go preach against that wicked city. Did he do God's will well? Maybe it is still an opinion. The people repented, so I'm sure they thought he did it well. But he procrastinated his duty, which can hardly be said that he did it well.

Noah, on the other hand, must have been preaching for decades, maybe centuries before the flood, but the only people that managed to come on the arc was his own family. Did he do God's will well? Sure, he preached all that time, but no one repented. The people that were flooded probably didn't think he did a good enough job, while we today count him as one of the greatest prophets ever.

"wellness" is subjective, and as far as "doing god's will" at all, one in such a position would have to have a death wish to do otherwise.

Obviously, I'm discussing my beliefs from the point of view that President Monson is a true prophet. There exists other churches who split off from ours in the past under the premise that the prophet for their time was a "fallen" prophet. But as I disagree, I won't argue their point, and just point it out to show I'm talking about my beliefs, not arguing a point.

[eriador]

Okay! Thanks for that Slim. I think I get your point now.

You believe that President Monson is a true prophet of God
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Prophets cannot go against the will of God (because he keeps them from doing so?)
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President Monson cannot not do the will of God.
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It's all a question of how well he does it.

That seems valid, and addresses the concern I had, as long as one accepts the system of though you're working within. You may be wrong (always a possibility ) but at least you're consistent, which I respect. Thank you.

[suminonA]

Well, now that that was clarified, I have a question (actually, there are more than one):

How are Humans supposed to know a deity’s will? Can they know it unequivocally and then try to carry it out the best they can, or is it only a “post factum” knowledge?

How can other Humans know, that the one claiming to have received instructions from the deity, carries it out according the true deity’s will (all they have is the word of that person for it)? I ask this in the context of accepting the possibility that some specific Humans could communicate directly with their deity, but as a general rule not all believers can (and not counting the non-believers).

Is the power of the deity such as to correct the “bad workers”? In the example of Jonah, even if we take it as a metaphor (I won’t rationally accept that it is factually true), why is it to be taken as a proof that Humans can (know and) carry out the deity’s will? (If it is no meant as a proof, then ignore this last question).

A.

[jotabe]

From my pov, a human cannot carry out God's will unless they renounce entirely to their personality and their own free will and just abandon themselves hoping that God will use up their body.
Because if you retain your own will, you can only carry out someone's will if you understand it. And being the Christian concept of God the one it is, it's simply impossible for a human to understand God's will.

Nevertheless, it's entirely possible for a human to find fragments of the word of God and try to live following them. But, unless God speaks to you into your ear (and we all know it's dangerous to listen to voices only you can hear), the word of God is available to anyone, so it is relatively easy to test if one follows the will of God (that is not the same as carrying out his will).

[eriador]

Wait... explain that last sentence. How does one test?

[jotabe]

When there is a set of writings agreed by a set of believers to be the word of God, then the behaviour of a person, belonging to that set of believers, who wants to follow the will of God should be following those writings.

The difficult point is agreeing which writings are the word of God, and how to interpret them, of course. But well, i assume that all religions/sects have a canonical interpretation of their own scriptures.

In any case, this is secondary, of course... my point is that you cannot set yourself as "carrying out the will of God" because according to the monotheistic religions, the will of God is simply too large for a human to bear.

[eriador]

Ahhh... okay. New question:

How does one even BEGIN to go through all of the stuff that's perported to be God's word? How can one tell the difference between what is actually God's word and what is human fabrication? For that matter, is God's word constant?

For example, the Old Testament (just for example) is full of contradictions and vagaries, to the point that just about any assertion can be backed up. I'd assume that means you'd say that not all of it represents the word of God, but how can we distinguish between the "real" and "fake" (terms are for convenience) word of God? Is there some intrinsic quality that can be seen by anybody? Otherwise, I'd be skeptical.

[jotabe]

That's the tough spot, isn't it? That's why i said each religion/sect. For every possible different interpretetion of a sacred scripture, a new sect springs. Jewish religion was very fragmentated in the past (i have no idea how it is nowadays). So fragmentated that in fact, it bore two separates religions: Christianism (accepting one prophet as the awaited Messiah) and Islam (Arab acculturation and rewriting of the Jewish and Christian scriptures).

Anybody who accepts the peculiar interpretation of their own sacred texts can easily tell if someone acts following the word of God. Obviously, the judgement about if you follow the word of God depends on the religion of the person judging it.

[eriador]

Yuk. Sounds like a mess... though that isn't really changing anything.

So, jota, you'd say that there is no single way to tell "real" from "fake" that anybody could do in the same way. I'd say that's a good reason to throw it all out and start from scratch... so I'm wondering how people defend their given interpretation (not back it up, but how they can logically support their interpretation over others').

(BTW, I wanna say again that I'm not attacking or getting at an attack, which some might expect... I'm just posting up questions I'm asking when I read... don't feel like you have to reply. I don't care who replies... I just want input from people who have a different viewpoint than my own.

[jotabe]

Yeah... that's why it looks like the absolute Truths are the most relative of all truths. They are subjectively absolute, but objectively relative.

[eriador]

So then why are so many people dying for them?

[jotabe]

Because subjectively they are still absolute. And human beings' nature is to act subjectively: we can only really know ourselves, and sometimes, not even that. We must act from inside ourselves... acting from outside yourself takes a mental discipline that is rare to achieve.

[eriador]

Open question:

Is acting on that subjective certainty as if it were objective good or bad?

[suminonA]

Well, I guess it depends on the specific "certainty" and on who is doing the evaluation.

Absolutely everything is relative, haven't you noticed yet?

A.

[eriador]

Lemme rephrase: Do you think that others treating subjective truths as objective is good or bad?

[suminonA]

Well, now it depends on what you mean by "objective truth".

For me "objective truth" is the kind of truth that science has access to.
Subjective truth is the kind of truth religion and philosophy has access to.

Most of the times, the two are not refering to the same "facts", so while there is no conflict between them, one can hold them all to be "absolute".

Confusing the two categories, does seem "bad" to me, especially when there is direct conflict between the separate claims. In such cases, I take the objective truth rather than the subjective version.

BTW, maybe all this would be better worded if you read “knowledge” instead of “truth”.


A.

[zeroguy]

Lemme rephrase: Do you think that others treating subjective truths as objective is good or bad?

Depends on what you mean by "good or bad" I think, but I'd still think "bad" in most cases. "Bad" but necessary; it's just too difficult otherwise. If you try to go through life trying to accommodate for everything you think you "know" that might be wrong (e.g. "I don't know there's not a landmine in front of me; do I want to take the right of walking" for every single step you take), it'd be impossible.

At some point you just accept stuff on faith, and go on. The above is an extreme example, but you just have to pick a point where you stop believing and start considering alternative possibilities. Other people just picked a different point, that's all. Picking that point shirley will be different for each person, and choosing it too far either way has different benefits and drawbacks.

[jotabe]

I don't know. In my opinion, accepting as your own a certain set of religious beliefs (or non-religious beliefs), that is, believing in a certain conception of what goes beyond of physical experimentation, gives a hint on what kind of person you are.

At the end, nowadays, being the religious offer as vast as it is, and being almost continuous, i think that your choices matter than the choices God makes for you.

It's often criticized to take from religions elements you fit with, to elaborate your own personal religion. I disagree with this attitude, if it comes from a wish not to try your own righteousness, if it comes from laziness. But sticking to a religion without doubting, testing it daily, without try to reason every day why your religion is the correct one, is the same kind of laziness. Moral laziness in both cases.

[BeansBrother]

Lemme rephrase: Do you think that others treating subjective truths as objective is good or bad?

That, my friend, is the key question to all of Earth's faith. If someone treats a subjective truth as an objective one, is, in my personal opinion, what sparked all the holy wars, crusades, and all-around PVP (people fighting people) in the world. As a cultural Jew (I believe in the absense of a deity; an atheist), I know "the Old Testament" as well as most good religious Jews (5 years of Jewish day school does pay off). So, when I imply my religion upon others, I assume they know the Jewish Bible as well as I do.

This is treating a subjective truth as an objective truth. But, in this case, it is causing no harm, right? It is just sparking some interesting religious discussions.

But, in the event that a whole nation of a group of people who are of one of the religions of the book (Judaism, Christianity, and/or Islam), then, if the leader of the specified country is ambitious enough, that leader could possibly try to enforce that person/country's subjective truth as an objective truth, where the answer is "yes."