this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Here's my take.
Whether "God" is all good, all knowing, all capable, or all something else is an irrelevant question. It presumes "God" has motivation to demonstrate any of these "all"s in a way we could comprehend, and I'm not talking about the Futurama idea "when you're doing it right, they won't be sure you've done anything at all" deal.
I mean that "God" is gone. Packed their shit up and moved on, when exactly they'd have done this is up for debate, but for relatability's sake I'll say after the ascension of Jesus.
"Jesus died for our sins.", this phrase references Jesus's cleansing the human race of original sin, the frustrated children of young earth creationists accuse this notion of "God" forgiving humanity for trying to learn things, but since the Torah is intended as a metaphorical text, I take the meaning of what Jesus cleansed humanity of as "sins of the father."
Basically, "God" made humanity, and then left when humanity gained self awareness and individuality. The point of any religion they'd have placed on earth, or any messenger they'd have sent would be to model good behaviour for the people they appear to, and then to leave those people to learn to choose to behave themselves, not for fear of punishment or for promise of salvation, but because doing the right thing in a moment is just the right thing to do, and that alone merits doing it.
So the chain of development is "God" makes the world and the beginning stages of humanity, at some point "God" takes the training wheels off by making every individual responsible for their own actions rather than to be tied inextricably to some ancestor's will or legacy or crimes, "God" leaves to give humanity the free will to choose goodness for goodness' own sake rather than out of some command to do so.
In other words, if there's a great and powerful creator, they're obviously not here to intervene for their own law, and that'd probably be by design if their intention was for us to exercise our own free will in a moral manner.
Regardless of if the shoe fits or not mythologically, I feel like the "do right for right's own sake" is a proper enough "final imperative" in a free will model of the world.
You're essentially positing the deist possibility, where an all powerful entity created existence and afterwards just left it to its own devices.
Certainly what'd make the most sense to me given how much of the observable world doesn't work in any other scenario besides one with no creator at all.
Note that I'm not saying I believe it in a spiritual sense, just that if I had to accept that a creator was responsible for the universe, that the above description is what would make the most sense to me given what can be observed in the current world.
I'm not concerned with you belief or lack thereof.
The way you explained yourself, I thought you'd find it interesting to know that such position towards the problematic of belief as a whole as a name.
Spinoza considered that was the only creator reasonable to exist.
Do you happen to know the name of this belief? I'm kinda in the same boat. It's possible that god exists, but I don't know that we can ascribe any human moral agency to it.
Deism
And I resist at calling it a belief. Makes more sense as a form of philosophy, as a search for knowledge and understanding of what is, through reason, not dogma.
Oh very interesting. Thanks