Does God make mistakes?

Jesus was more than a prophet, he was and is the very incarnation of God Almighty

 

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That was the Islamic perspective.

 

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That is news to me, according to Islam Jesus was just another prophet among many, the last and greatest prophet is Mohammad , peace be upon him

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But in I believe that Jesus was the greatest godman that ever lived, peace be upon him also

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A standard explanation is that a person has free will and they are able to do a number of things. If they rape someone, chances are that in their next birth they are born as someone who will be raped. So chances are that at least some of those babies that are raped, are actually people who themselves have been rapists in their previous lifetime.


The question then is whether we think that God is loving, if He allows for people to do such things to eachother; whether He is loving if He set up the workings of the Universe by the laws of karma and reincarnation.

 

So the actual question here seems to be "Which religious tradition is the one and only right one?"

 

Doreen,

No I'm not.
Rape, is rape, regardless of age, period. And we need to get pass
the emotional aspect of it in order to further our discussion.
And that's the second time you've made an unwarranted assumption. :bawl:

The baby is a body inhabited by the soul.
The soul being conditioned accepts the body as the self, and the body
is that of an innocent baby. Innocent because it is unable to act, or make
coherent decisions at that time.

Again, you refer to a particular stage in the persons life (baby), instead of refering to them as a person.
If that individual soul has, while inhabiting the body of a human, raped, then that soul may have to experience the pain and suffering it has bestowed, so that it can repent. Either that, or repent while in the offensive body.
I can see the logic in that, yes.

jan.

 

No, it was more a reaction to arguing with Abrahamists (I think) and then having LG come at the issue from what I think is another, quite different viewpoint. IOW his post seemed to me, locked into my own experience of the thread as I am, as if his arguments fit with the context of my responses to the others. Let me try to think of an example....

I am discussing, say, politics with a Republican, me coming more from a left wing perspective, and someone criticizes my responses to the Republican from a Buddhist perspective. Let's say a critique of political investment per se. In the course of the discussion it might even seem like the Buddhist's criticism supports the Republican position, whereas they may have even less in common. I think sometimes we who are open to knowledge beyond what the scientists and their groupies here are have a tendency to defend other paths that are open in parallel ways. I think, without being conscious of it, I took LG's post as part of that and also as something that would confuse me if I did not take steps to keep the (what seemed to me) two discussions separate. It became easier for me simply because I wrote this reaction out a few times. So in a sense it was a practical issue. I am not sure I want to make a case that 'one should' do what I was suggesting, but I think I said this to keep my own head clear about what was happening. IOW I might have ended up thinking that LG's no doubt intelligent critical line was relevent to a discussion of the Abrahamic God in ways that it wasn't.

 

I can't see why you were comparing the experience of rape between adults and children then. This seems irrelevent. The same, one worse than the other. It make no difference in relation to your responding to the baby example. IOW you went off on a tangent. I clearly misunderstood your motivation.

OK, can that soul deserve rape?

This sounds more Buddhist or Hindu. I thought we were talking about the Abrahamic God. A baby cannot have raped someone already in the Abrahamic traditions.

 

A standard non-Abrahamic explanation. Again the thread began with reference to the Abrahamic God and those traditions. That is the version of God I thought I was discussing with people. And this is also the God that is presented often as a loving father who is omnipotent, etc.

which now seems to be the universe jan is also discussing. I can adjust, but I thought we were looking at the abrahamic God.

That said, it is a commonplace in discussion of Karma to say that if one is raped now this is a kind of balancing for 'sins' of the past. Imagine if this is incorrect. That the people who get raped tend to be the same souls. Likewise the rapists. That there is not this nice shuffling back and forth. This balancing pattern is not the one I have noticed and experienced, nor is it the one people I know have either. I think there have been very strong emotional and even political reasons why the standard version of Karmic is taken as a given and I think it needs another look. I think people need to actually remember their own past lives and see if what they have been told is correct.

 

OK. So Jesus was a soul that was materially untainted and thus he could suffer for another's sins. At the same time I got the impression you were saying that it is being tainted by material reality that opens the soul to suffering period. Have I missed something?

Well there was probably some direct cross-pollinization. I think he went there.

 

Of course she thinks that, using Doreen's own words, she has "moved past a scientific agnosticism into claims about what (she) cannot know."

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Your god is a psychotic murdering egomaniac.

Consider him judged.

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An adult life.

From kindergarten or elementary school?

Be very careful, adolescence is coming your way.

 

When you do finally reach puberty, you can enjoy a beard too.

 

Yes, the perspective on insanity is not limited to Christianity.

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Something can seem to be a mistake when one is limited in perspective... not seeing the whole picture. If you zoomed in close enough to certain parts of a Davinci masterpiece I'm sure it could be made to look as if an amateur had painted it and that it was random and meaningless... and you'd still be looking at the same masterpiece...

I would imagine that the perspective of a god, assuming they exist, is very large and so their actions are vulnerable to misunderstanding to those with a narrower perspective.

A feigned action can lead to certain desired consequences. If we were dealing only with the intentions of a human, with a human perspective and with the powers of a god, I guess it would be hard to justify, in any circumstances, the rape of a child. If there is a bigger scheme to things, a bigger pattern or greater goal, then these acts of suffering might serve some greater purpose that most aren't aware of. And I am NOT saying that if I saw a child being raped that I wouldn't do anything... I most certainly would, but the existence of such perverseness and callousness does not prove that there isn't some greater purpose.

A diamond is forged from the blackest coal.

 

Yes, I am having the same problem with LG's stance here.

 

The idea is that different (groups of) people in different circumstances receive different revelations about God, according to their abilities.
So these revelations can not simply be applied anytime anywhere by anyone.

To give an illustrative example: In times of war, there is usually martial law enforced. This sort of law is unacceptable in times of peace. In times of war, martial law is simply the best that law can be, even though from the pespective of peace, it seems cruel. In times of war, it simply is not possible to maintain teams of forensics, investigators, lengthy trials and such in order to satisfy justice, because there is a bigger danger present, namely being invaded by another country.

The Christian revelations came in times of great distress: famine, war, persecution, general crisis. When his house is on fire, a man just does not have the capacity to ponder theological intricacies, but just needs a few simple, powerful thoughts to see to it that he brings himself and his family into safety.

I think it all depends on the kind of arguments you prefer or allow for believing in something.

If your preference are empirical arguments, then you cannot actually believe in anything, as empirical evidence is always inconclusive.

Pragmatic or moral arguments for believing in something, however, do not suffer from this flaw. I think it is safe to say that people usually believe in this or that on the grounds of pragmatic or moral arguments, and not empirical ones.

For example, most governments of this world believe in world peace and invest great amounts of money and other resources toward that goal.
There is absolutely no empirical evidence that would indicate that world peace is even possible or what it would take to achieve it. From an empirical standpoint, it thus makes no sense to believe in world peace.
But it is demoralizing to not believe in world peace (or some version of it), and people believe in it, on the grounds of pragmatic and moral arguments for believing in world peace (given that there are no empirical ones).

It would be demoralizing to believe in, for example, such an unbalanced version of karma as you suggest above.

 

If God doesn't make mistakes then there is no god.

 

One thing I like about LG's and Jan Ardena's approach that they do not box the communication into the tenets of just one religious tradition.

At first, I was quite confused by that, and insisted that sense be made to me simply about the Christian God, within the Christian tradition, without introducing any concepts extraneous to it.
But to understand Christianity on such terms, I think one has to be a Christian first.
Otherwise, demanding that Christianity be explained on Christian terms implicitly makes one a Christian (albeit an unwitty/unwilling one) - and as such one counts as converted; and it is impossible to convert someone who is already converted (again, unwittingly/unwillingy, implicitly converted without being aware of it).

An alternative approach is to take or presume a stance that is able to contextualize the individual religious traditions (which is what LG and Jan have been doing).