johnson1010 wrote:We got on to this from the question of whether religion is child abuse. I would say yes when it promotes ideas that are known to be false, but no when its teachings are evidence based, such as the principle that God is love.
Evidence based. Exactly what evidence? The few sentences, out of thousands, you choose to select to support your position while hundreds others contradict it? If we are going by evidence, then surely the great mass of vengeful, petulant, jealous, petty, foot-stamping outweighs the few begrudging snippets of love. If we seek evidence for what "love is" then perhaps we should consult a scientist?
Hi Johnson, fair questions, but quite complicated. In reading the Bible, Jesus and Malachi caution us that we need to separate the wheat and chaff, that there is a lot of rubbish mixed in with a saving message. Clearly, Jesus argues that the nature of this saving message is that God is love. For example, his calls to love your enemies, love your neighbours, and love God with all your heart, mind, soul and spirit, are premised on a theory of the nature of God, and are said to be the foundation of the law, transforming the ancient Mosaic teachings of hatred and exclusivity.
The Gospel of John takes this further with its suggestion that Jesus was the incarnation of pure love. This theory of the nature of God as love, in my reading, suggests that human society can progress if we are completely honest and relate to each other through love, meaning a respect for the intrinsic value of all life and its complex inter-relationships, recognising the sanctity of all nature. The forgiveness that results from such honest love is presented by Jesus as a way to dissolve the hatred which is the ordinary instinctive human reaction to things we don’t like.
Regarding whether this has any evidentiary basis, the question can be posed as to which theory of God improves the world, and which theory makes it worse. John’s equation between God and love is compatible with the teachings Jesus describes as most important. Rather than positing a metaphysical entity, the teaching that God is love says that divinity is encountered wherever we find love. You are right that this Foreigner question, ‘I want to know what love is’, is a scientific problem, especially given that love is such an amorphous quality. My view is that taking “God is love” as the saving message of the Bible gives us a scientific tool to assess the merits of other Biblical claims.
I say this is scientific because it starts from a theory that is compatible with science, defining God as the underlying quality that all love has in common. I know it is hard to escape from the false idea of God as metaphysical entity, but that is what is implied by this equation. You might ask, if that is all there is to God then what is the point? My view is that if love is the wheat within the chaff of the Bible then it is very useful to isolate and analyse this central teaching to assess what Biblical ideas are redeemable.
Taking this method further, the problem is what are the consequences of human failure to love? Hatred is like a cancerous tumour in the world, blinding people to the potential for cooperation and improvement and sowing the seeds of delusion and abuse. The beauty of the ethic of forgiveness is that there is always scope for recovery, as long as those who are forgiven understand their error. Where people march on an adamant path of delusion even a God of love cannot save them.
Christianity is what it is. The bible is what is written within it. Your position may be "God is love". But that does not reflect the majority of what is written in the bible.
Again, your comment is very partisan. The Bible clearly states that the law of love replaces the law of revenge, in its main central text, the Sermon on the Mount. That is why Christians separate the Bible into the New Testament and the Old Testament, precisely because the new teaching of Christ is centred on a new ethic of love. The church has failed to live up to this ethic, but it remains the inspiring vision at the source of Christianity.
I have spoken with many christians. Many of whom have not put in the thought about their belief that you have, RT. I certainly credit you for doing that work when so many i talk to simply do not. But clearly, "God is love" is A position, one of many, that can be made from the language in the bible. Not the central, most prominent, most easily understood, or most obvious position the bible takes. You are super-imposing your world view over the one used in the bible. Do not mistake one for the other. I imagine we would all be better off if the world had taken your stance, but it has not.
No, in this context I am not super-imposing, but drawing out what is already there but has been neglected. I agree with you that “God is Love” is hard to understand, but that does not diminish its centrality to gospel theology.