Thursday, July 24, 2008

The logically inconsistent God

The concept of a personal God is logically inconsistent in many ways. Perhaps the most inconsistent is the concept of afterlife punishment. Think about it from God's perspective, you create the universe and set these little beings on a planet with the whole point of judging them after they die - when you created these being, you already knew what the results would be because you are omnipotent. So, whats the point of the exercise? To show how powerful you are to the little beings? Surely God could have done that by simply appearing directly to the little beings.

The fact is that the punishment philosophy only appears to be logical from the perspective of the little beings - and not God. For God, the answers are already worked out - why bother with the process?

Furthermore, by engaging in the process, it means that God forces himself into letting people go to Hell? If God can forsee this, then doesn't that mean that God voluntarily chose to cause some beings to go to Hell? From his point of view, that seems a bit "ungodlike".

Theists will generally argue that its all about us "little beings" - but isnt that a bit anthropocentric? Furthermore, the concept that God may have morally sufficient reasons for sending people to Hell necessarily requires that he is prepared to expend some human life for other human life. Doesn't that negate the oft-held view that God loves everyone? He knows that he must sacrifice that life before he created the universe - surely an all-loving God could get it to work out without having to sacrifice anyone to Hell. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Of course, this point of view doesn't enter the mind of a person that thinks that they are going to be saved - which is just selfishness really.

At the end of the day, the punishment point of view only makes sense only if God was the product of a human mind. Since most religions (Christianity, Islam etc) make the punishment concept a fundamental principle of their faith - doesn't this lead to the conclusion that those religions are the product of the human mind as well.

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