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Re: Thoughts on Jonah (was Re: Radio Satan) and let me add pharoahto the discussion
On Mon, 3 Jun 2002 TYoder at sschwab_com wrote:
> my dad believed that god is god..and lived accordingly...he said he'd
> never fully understand god..but that was ok. at his funeral someone
> said dad spoke of a bumper sticker that reads "god said it, i believe
> it. that settles it." but that dad changed it to "god said it. that
> settles it." as a person given free will...i'm not sure how easily i
> can accept it.
Yeah, I agree. There is a sense in which "God said it, that settles it"
makes perfect sense to me, and if life was just about setting rules and/or
creating the universe, then that *would* be the end of it, yeah. But
supposedly, God wants to enter into a relationship with us, and he wants
us to love him, and if *that's* the case, then our opinions definitely
matter. In that case, whether or not we "believe it" *is* important.
If I may invoke _A.I._ once more, I find myself mulling over Professor
Hobby's remark that God made Adam to love *him*. Hobby seems to think God
wanted people to be mere tools to fulfill his emotional needs, just as
Hobby wants robots to fulfill his own needs. But if what we need is love,
then it's not the sort of thing we can force others to give us. I just
saw _The Thief of Bagdad_ for the first time a couple nights ago, and
there, Conrad Veidt plays the villainous Jafar, a character who can
hypnotize people and perform all sorts of magical tricks, but when he
wants the love of the Sultan's daughter, he knows he cannot force her --
he can coerce her, he can threaten to do harm to her lover, but he knows
he cannot *make* her love him, because then it would not be love. This
sort of theme crops up in scifi and fantasy all the time; the next example
that comes to mind is _Star Trek: First Contact_, where Picard says the
Borg Queen wanted him to give himself to her *willingly*, unlike all those
other Borg drones who were merely assimilated against their will.
Consider also the scene in _Star Trek: Generations_ -- which echoes many
moments in earlier episodes, I'm sure -- where Kirk says that life in the
Nexus, a sort of paradise where everything is exactly as he wishes it,
would be unsatisfying, because there would be no element of risk to it;
when Kirk's horse jumps over the ravine, there is absolutely no danger of
the horse tripping or Kirk falling off its back; the whole point of making
the jump is to overcome this danger and get a thrill from doing so, but
without this danger, there is no thrill, for Kirk. Similarly, it is only
by relinquishing control of us, and by allowing us to surprise him, and by
taking the risk that we might not love him, that God can enter into any
sort of authentic relationship with us. Some time ago, a friend of mine
said we create art to understand ourselves better, and I replied that if
we are works of art, or signs of God's creativity, then perhaps God
created us in order to understand himself a little better, too -- that is,
instead of creating us to fulfill selfish needs of his own, as Professor
Hobby seems to think, perhaps God creates us to open himself up a bit
more, and to become more authentic through interaction with us. This is
not to say that God can't set limits on our behaviour or whatever, and I
certainly don't think our opinions automatically trump God's, but I do
think he's more open to feedback than some of his creations think.
> i live in a conservative area...and many preach hell-fire &
> brimstone..and that questioning the bible is a sin. but i can't accept
> that...i can't accept that god put us on this earth with this ability to
> question & doubt...and didn't allow us the freedom to exercise it.
Agreed.
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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