God is a coward

[jack]

Sorry, not really. (Well, not necessarily. Uh, I mean, I didn't have any reason to say that, other than as a humorous example of a controversial subject. Argue amongst yourselves if you so wish, but don't blame me. Just look at this bracket, it's amazing how many words saying nothing takes up :))

Where is everyone? My "inbox" has been nearly unclogged of lj updates recently -- have you all become productive or something? Have you all moved to chiark or myspace?

ETA: OK, that seemed to work :)

Comments

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

cartesiandaemon is a coward.
∴ cartesiandaemon is God?

I ought to go and be productive...

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

But that would be analogous to the syllogism:

A Siamese is a cat.
Minsky is a cat.
Therefore Minsky is a Siamese.

(He isn't, although he does have some Siamese ancestry; he's the fine-looking chap in the icon.)

MU

[simont]

If you define a coward as somebody who is unwilling to accept personal risk even when it's sensible to do so in big-picture terms (either for the general good or for their own longer-term good), and you define God as somebody who is incapable of being placed at personal risk at all, then one might very easily argue that the statement is actually meaningless...

[simont]

Very disturbing glowing green eyes in that icon. Either your cat is a 1970s Doctor Who villain, or there was a curious lighting effect involved :-)

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

It was the flash. I could have tidied it up with the red-eye reduction in Paint Shop Pro, but it rather suited the icon to leave it as it was. :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think that may have been the point... :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Though I'm voting for "android" :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I am not Bertrand Russell, I am a free atheist...

Re: MU

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Jesus.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Want comments on your LJ? Simply throw in some bad maths...
Though "look at my cat" also works well as a strategy ;-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

You're right. Somehow my pride always prevents me doing so deliberately, however careless I am... :) And I don't have a cat. Ooh, wait, I had an idea.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Can anything omnipotent validly experience fear, and therefore cowardice?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, probably not.

But it could have irrational fears -- plenty of people are scared of things they don't really need to be, from depression, to large and small phobias, to simple and complex misunderstandings.

It could fear for responsibility -- if you run a universe of sapient beings, even if you can reconfigure it at will, can you make them both happy and non-puppets?

You're omnipotent, if this extends to yourself you could let yourself fear to make a point -- some people would argue Jesus *did* do that :)

[mhw.livejournal.com]

"look at my nonexistent cat"?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL. Yes, I need a "black cat in coal cellar" icon. Probably with some kind of obligatory Schrödinger pun, I suppose.

[simont]

And what made you jump to the conclusion that I was talking about the Christian God, eh? I kept it perfectly general and provided a specific definition of the axiom a god would need to satisfy for my conclusion to apply. Arguing that one particular god doesn't satisfy that axiom doesn't invalidate my argument :-P

On the other hand, it's also arguable that you haven't even convincingly done that. Jesus willingly stayed in Gethsemane and accepted not merely a risk but a certainty of being put to horrible death, but then again he did rise bodily from the dead, and one has to assume he had some idea in advance that that was going to happen. It certainly doesn't seem to me that that shows the same kind of courage it would show if you did the same thing, although I suppose there's still some undeniable courage in facing up to the pain even if you know there won't be permanent death at the end of the experience.

(I remember atreic saying this very eloquently in an LJ post within the last few months, quoting Common People – "if you called your dad he could stop it all" – but sadly my usually reliable mechanisms for tracking down elusive LJ posts have failed me on this occasion.)

[simont]

Aha, found it. Sadly, it's friends-locked.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

And what made you jump to the conclusion that I was talking about the Christian God, eh?

(a) Because most people on my journal usually *are*

(b) I wasn't, I was offering a counter-example, when refuting any specific instance is quite sufficient.

OK, OK, I'm sorry. I think Jesus is an interesting study, but I was being flippant rather than actually dismissing you. My short answers are *always* flippant, which is a bad habit, but if I really mean something I'll screed in favour of it :)

More serious points:

* I have heard conflicting opinions from people exactly how much Jesus was supposed to know about his God-ness during his life. Was it mostly faith, like for everyone else, but he correctly had a lot of faith? Did God talk to him and explain everything? Did he know everything God knew? All his life, or slowly revealed?

(atreic's quote describes what used to bother me, I can't remember if she had a conclusion, unfortunately, do you have a link? The thing people who have expressed an opinion to me on this have come nearest to agreeing on is that whatever the answer is, it is obvious and written in the bible, and I should have known it already from having had a basic knowledge of Christianity :) I apologise -- I know I know some people with a greater understanding, but I haven't talked to you about it :) )

* Regardless of what apparently happened in the bible, it *could* have happened with Jesus not knowing instead. Would that count?

* I admit this doesn't by any means completely answer the question you posed. Incarnation may not really apply, or there may be other ways it could be meaningful even if it never really comes up -- eg. if that personality *could* be non-omnipotent, how it *would* act.

[passage.livejournal.com]

Chesterton claimed, in the context of the cross, that Christianity was the only religion which added courage to the virtue of the creator.

(I'm not going to tell you whether I agree with him or not, because when it comes to Chesterton I quote him purely because he is so incredibly interesting, rather than because I've actually reached an opinion on what he says).

Foul!

[passage.livejournal.com]

Oh be fair, if you're going to be pedantic about other's posts, then you have to at least put your posts at a level of accuracy. Obviously there is at most one God, so if Christianity is correct then there's only one candidate on offer.

I think you might want to talk about 'conceptions of God' or 'theories about God' and then argue for the existence of a theory of God where he is a coward. Of course at that point all the sting is removed. A lot of attacks on religion turn out to be perfectly harmless if you stop and make them logically consistent.

[simont]

Er, huh? Who says there's at most one god? Certainly at most one of the conflicting accounts of god(s) is true, but some of those accounts involve more than one god, and I expect there are some pairs of accounts which are mutually non-exclusive so their gods could coexist if necessary.

then argue for the existence of a theory of God where he is a coward

Again, huh? I was under the impression that I was arguing the statement "God is a coward" to be potentially meaningless, not true. Which of us has misunderstood the other?

[simont]

I was offering a counter-example, when refuting any specific instance is quite sufficient.

A single counterexample would be sufficient if I had claimed that all (possible) gods were always immune to all personal risk, but all I claimed was that if you believe in that kind of god then some consequences follow, and that isn't attackable in the same way.

Not knowing is certainly an interesting point, and arguably does refute my claim that nothing immune to personal risk can meaningfully display courage or cowardice, since if it doesn't know it's immune to personal risk then it will still behave as if it weren't. To what extent this was true of Jesus is not a question I have a great interest in exploring in great detail :-)

If I'd added omniscience to my definition of a god, it would have closed that loophole. It would also have solved the problem of Jesus by defining him to be either not-God-in-that-sense or not somebody to whom you could meaningfully apply quantifiers of courage (and you get to choose which you prefer).

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Jesus willingly stayed in Gethsemane and accepted not merely a risk but a certainty of being put to horrible death, but then again he did rise bodily from the dead, and one has to assume he had some idea in advance that that was going to happen. It certainly doesn't seem to me that that shows the same kind of courage it would show if you did the same thing, although I suppose there's still some undeniable courage in facing up to the pain even if you know there won't be permanent death at the end of the experience.

Mmm, one could argue that from within the Christian tradition, belief in the Resurrection of the body means that we would be showing similar courage.

quoting Common People – "if you called your dad he could stop it all"

But he doesn't. He chooses not to. He chose to act and sticks with that choice. Does going through something which you could have avoided for the sake of other people more impressive/courageous/whatever?

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

* I have heard conflicting opinions from people exactly how much Jesus was supposed to know about his God-ness during his life. Was it mostly faith, like for everyone else, but he correctly had a lot of faith? Did God talk to him and explain everything? Did he know everything God knew? All his life, or slowly revealed?

It's a difficult one and one I'm not sure we have the information for. In the gospels there are moments -- the visit to the temple (my father's house); before Abraham was, I AM; the I AM statements -- when somthing of that knowledge is there but we don't know his thoughts. He would have known his history, the story of his birth, that he was called to something. John the Baptist is another interesting case in this. He also grew up with a vocation from a miraculous birth. Samuel similarly has a vocation from his childhood (so does Samson but that goes a bit wrong). You also have Phillipians 2:6 with its talk of his self-emptying which shows an early way of trying to get our heads around this one.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

but all I claimed was that if you believe in that kind of god then some consequences follow,

Conceptions of God amuse me. I was reading a book yesterday (Awesome God by Sara Maitland) which describes various different pictures of god/gods including an inuit one who is well-meaning but incompetent and so the priest's job is to keep the god asleep. The most important moral precept is not to fight as the noise will wake him up and he'll cause chaos!

Too often, in debates about God's existence (in the abstract) a certain type of God is assumed without going into ideas of revelation.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think I may have misread a quantifier. If you want to say the concept *could* be meaningless, then I agree. Some interpretations of Jesus just mean it isn't automatically so.

To what extent this was true of Jesus is not a question I have a great interest in exploring in great detail :-)

LOL. Good call.

If I'd added omniscience to my definition of a god, it would have closed that loophole

OK, that could work. There are still difficulties -- eg. do I know the future? If so, do I have 'free will'? If not, am I potent at all? :) -- but there could be things to which courage doesn't really apply.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

(I'm not going to tell you whether I agree with him or not, because when it comes to Chesterton I quote him purely because he is so incredibly interesting, rather than because I've actually reached an opinion on what he says).

LOL. That's the sort of comment I like.

Hmmm. That is an interesting point, it describes the point well.

Though I would expect some traditions to have non-omnipotent creators, the sort who are just the chief of the gods and ride around on a big horse at the forefront of battle showing as much courage as anyone else :)

Re: Foul!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Please don't fight, guys, we're all mathmos here :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with your confusion.

Though, I think maybe the point is that if it were the case that God being a coward were meaningless, then so would God being brave -- so could be viewed as either a good or bad thing if you were so inclined?