[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1306722209' post='4817335']
One cannot independently assess God's actions, because He is infinitely greater, wiser, more powerful, etc. than you are. To posit that you, or any other imperfect mortal, can understand the motivations and actions of such a being are almost necessarily false, and is pretty much the greatest possible height of pride.
I've heard this argument so many times and each time I hear it I cringe. Last time was in
this video where the subject compares us to pots of clay questioning the motives of the potter. But here's the thing, we're not pots of clay. We can think and reason. It might be fairly puny reasoning compared to some hypothetical omniscient deity, but it's still a world away from an inanimate object.
Let's assume that god is real, and he (directly or indirectly) caused humans to turn out roughly the way we are. We constantly hear how god granted us free will. Ok, if the gift of free will is so important, surely the ability to reason and more importantly
to question is equally important. Otherwise we are simply exercising our free will based on faulty judgement.
The other argument I've heard is that we're like children compared to god, and children even though they are sentient must sometimes be made to do things they don't like for their own good. Fair enough, but if you parent a child in this way without explaining your actions,
you're a bad parent. "Because I say so" is never a good response, not to a child and certainly not to an adult.
You say that to think we can understand gods actions are "the greatest possible height of pride"; on the contrary, I believe to
not try to understand gods actions is the height of moral cowardice.
[/quote]
I never said that we were pots of clay, or inanimate or any such thing, so we can let that go.
I'll agree that the abilities to question and reason are important; in fact, I think that those are the very things that make us human, and are the proper behaviors of mankind (I'm non-religious, by the way). But the idea that the exercise of free will is necessarily good because our ability to reason is inherently good I don't agree with. Some people reason badly, and so they do in fact exercise their free will based on faulty judgement. The ability to reason in no way dictates or even suggests that your reasoning will be good or correct.
And explain stuff to your kids all you want. I agree that that's an important thing to do for a lot of reasons. But you don't sit a toddler down and explain the dangers of drowning to him or her. You keep the kid away from the water, or you supervise them pretty minutely to keep them safe. You don't trust a toddler's free will to combine with their reasoning abilities to equal safety.
But the gap between children and adults is not very similar to that between god and anything else. "Because I say so" is a cop out for a parent, even if the child fails to understand the reasons for actions regardless of effort. But the rules for the omnipotent creator of the universe are going to be a bit different than for me talking to my kid.
As I said above, I think that the ability to think and reason are the pinnacle of humanity. If you believe in god (as large an assumption as anything else), then go ahead and speculate as much as you can. It'll be good for you, and worlds better than not bothering to do so. But to think that you will reach the
objectively correct conclusions is as hubristic as you can get. And that means that certitude is never going to be part of the equation for you in theistic reasoning.
[quote name='ChaosEngine' timestamp='1306726045' post='4817344']
Let's assume that god is real, and he (directly or indirectly) caused humans to turn out roughly the way we are. We constantly hear how god granted us free will. Ok, if the gift of free will is so important, surely the ability to reason and more importantly to question is equally important. Otherwise we are simply exercising our free will based on faulty judgement.
Not only did God endow us with these qualities, he created us
in his image.
[/quote]
...which means what, exactly? I could trot out the standard replies (so does god have two kinds of genitals?), but the statement itself is subject to my critique. Regardless of how literally you take the Bible, or how strongly you believe that it is a faithful transcription of the Word of God (in the sense that you don't think it was diluted by human misunderstanding, translation, etc.), you are still making tremendous assumptions about what that line means and what the implications of it are.
Is it a physical thing only? Is it the capacity for love and goodness? It's certainly not power or wisdom or knowledge. Per the creation story, god didn't create mankind with the ability to know good from evil, which is arguably one of the more important strands of theology. It's definitely going to be the cornerstone or moral reasoning.