Is God Judgemental?

[Lightkeeper]

Does God judge us? Is God concerned with sin?

[metis]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Does God judge us? Is God concerned with sin?

Not likely according to Einstein and Spinoza, the both of whom were pantheists. If God made all, and if God knew exactly what He was doing, then God made us to do whatever we end up doing.

[evangelicalhumanist]

Originally Posted by metis

Not likely according to Einstein and Spinoza, the both of whom were pantheists. If God made all, and if God knew exactly what He was doing, then God made us to do whatever we end up doing.

That's one way to view it, but I have a somewhat contrarian view. I don't believe God judges us or is concerned with sin (non-existant beings so seldom do, you know). However, I am absolutely certain that there a great many humans out there perfectly willing to use the notion of a judging deity to keep the rest of us behaving the way they want.

They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Limitations of Toleration"

[metis]

Originally Posted by evangelicalhumanist

That's one way to view it, but I have a somewhat contrarian view.

Well, my "contrarian view" is bigger than your "contrarian view" since I don't believe in a God or Gods. So take that!



(Told him, didn't I )

[aged hippy]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Does God judge us? Is God concerned with sin?

If by "God" you mean the commonly-held notion of an omniscient, omnipotent being dwelling in Heaven (such as i was taught to 'believe in' at school) Who demands Worship and Obedience, then i would say yes He does judge us.
He is - after all - a judgemental God.
He is also a vengeful, spiteful God, as well as a mass-murdering God (if the reports of His exploits are anything to go by).


If, however, by "God" you mean the somewhat more civilised concept of god-as-intelligent-cosmos, then no, i don't think that it cares in the slightest about "judging", nor about "sin".

After all, it gave us free will to go our own way. No matter how long it takes for us to find our way to where we should be, the choices are ours to make.
In my opinion.


Peace, Love, & Light.

[Harvey1]

Originally Posted by metis

Not likely according to Einstein and Spinoza, the both of whom were pantheists. If God made all, and if God knew exactly what He was doing, then God made us to do whatever we end up doing.

I don't think this is true. For example, the kind of God I believe in acts in accordance to the situation on the ground. (This is what I love about the OT which I think provides a very realistic notion of God who comes down from heaven to see what the sons of men are doing.)

I think many of the worst assumptions we make of God involve treating God as a human being. A human being, of course, is not just dealing with the circumstances on the ground, but is planning far in the future and sometimes makes mistakes and miscalculations in their planning. We, as human beings, naturally put our image upon God by assuming that this is what God does. Except, of course, we think it is absurd for God to make mistakes (which is where atheists will sometimes argue that God can't exist since a perfect being would never make the mistakes we see in our world--e.g., the problem of evil).

In my view, however, God does not plan or devise some sort of action. Rather, God acts by his being present in history. Once a certain threshhold is reached in the affairs of human beings, God brings judgment to bear on the universe.

Sin is an important feature of God's actions since at some point the sinfulness of humanity passes a certain threshhold, "and God sees the wickedness of man is great in the earth and repents that he made man on the earth," or by "coming down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built," or "God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob."

[arthra]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Does God judge us? Is God concerned with sin?

I believe God is also Merciful and Compassionate and that His Mercy exceeds whatever judgement befalls man... Men are far more judgemental about each other than God is toward man in my view... hence the concept of forgiveness.

"The greatness of His mercy surpasseth the fury of His wrath, and His grace encompasseth all who have been called into being and been clothed with the robe of life."

- Baha’u’llah

(Gleanings # 130)

In the Qur'an it says:

"Is not He the Exalted in Power - He Who forgives again and again?"

found in Surih 39:5

[metis]

Originally Posted by Harvey1

I think many of the worst assumptions we make of God involve treating God as a human being.

Einstein and Spinoza would completely agree with you. Matter of fact, they felt that the concept of a moral God who will reward us for being good and punishing us for being bad is just more anthropomorphizing of God, and Einstein referred to such a belief as being "childish".

[Harvey1]

Originally Posted by metis

Einstein and Spinoza would completely agree with you. Matter of fact, they felt that the concept of a moral God who will reward us for being good and punishing us for being bad is just more anthropomorphizing of God, and Einstein referred to such a belief as being "childish".

I don't think this was Spinoza's view:

E4: DEF. 2. By evil I mean that which we certainly know to be a hindrance to us in the attainment of any good. Ethics

E4: PROP. 28. The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God. Ibid

E5: PROP. 23. The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal. Ibid

E5: PROP. 29, Note. --Things are conceived by us as actual in two ways; either as existing in relation to a given time and place, or as contained in God and following from the necessity of the divine nature. Whatsoever we conceive in this second way as true or real, we conceive under the form of eternity, and their ideas involve the eternal and infinite essence of God, as we showed in E2P45 and E2P45N, which see. Ibid

E5: PROP. 30. Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God.
Proof.-- Eternity is the very essence of God, in so far as this involves necessary existence (E1D8). Therefore to conceive things under the form of eternity, is to conceive things in so far as they are conceived through the essence of God as real entities, or in so far as they involve existence through the essence of God; wherefore our mind, in so far as it conceives itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows, etc. Q.E.D. Ibid

E2: PROP. 40, Note 2 (...) [(4.)] Besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is, as I will hereafter show, a third kind of knowledge, which we will call intuition. This kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. Ibid

E4: PROP. 45, Corollary 1.-- Envy, derision, contempt, anger, revenge, and other emotions attributable to hatred, or arising therefrom, are bad;

E4: PROP. 45, Corollary 2.--Whatsoever we desire from motives of hatred is base, and in a State unjust. Ibid

E5: PROP. 25. The highest endeavour of the mind, and the highest virtue is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. Ibid

E5: PROP. 32. Whatsoever we understand by the third kind of knowledge, we take delight in, and our delight is accompanied by the idea of God as cause. Ibid

E5: PROP. 33. The intellectual love of God, which arises from the third kind of knowledge, is eternal. Ibid

E5: PROP. 34 Corollary, Note. --If we look to men's general opinion, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of their mind, but that they confuse eternity with duration, and ascribe it to the imagination or the memory which they believe to remain after death. Ibid

E5: PROP. 38. In proportion as the mind understands more things by the second and third kind of knowledge, it is less subject to those emotions which are evil, and stands in less fear of death. Ibid

E5: PROP. 39. He, who, possesses a body capable of the greatest number of activities, possesses a mind whereof the greatest part is eternal. Ibid

E5: PROP. 40, Corollary.--Hence it follows that the part of the mind which endures, be it great or small, is more perfect than the rest.

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So, although Spinoza didn't see God as rewarding saints and punishing sinners, he did believe that goodness was self-rewarding by being eternal, and wickedness was self-punishing by being bodily and stuck in a duration of time. Wickedness is being apart from God and focused on negative emotions.

I'm not sure how Spinoza would have conceived of a hell. It's possible, I think, that he would have thought that hell was not having pure thoughts which connected oneself to the eternal world.

[Travis Clementsmith]

My concept of God does not possess humanly attributes such as judgement, or that God does anything. I think those are just ways humans use their highest ideals as a means of relation to something that is un-relatable by such quantifications and qualifications. Judgement is our tool, not God's.

-TC