Speaking of which, here's another game. I have jsut been playing Kongregate the past few days. None of those Angry Birds Cliche shit. No no no, not withstanding the mechanics of the game, it is quite an interesting game. But people have to know. There are better games. There are games that brings about more fun. There are games that bring about more excitement. And sometimes, reflection.
A game where melancholia is the key and isolation the issue. Pretty special, this game. It made me think. Games that make people think is always good. Because games like these are different to everyone. It incite different responses; reactions to them are different. There are people who find the game boring. If so, let me know. Find it interesting and fun? Let me know too. It's always interesting to note those who thought of the game differently as do I.
And now as I try to frantically stop typing and head back to work, I realise I DO have something I can put up. Something I wrote on the bus. This was my reflection after a Student Development Lesson ended. To those unaware. an SD lesson is where the school teaches you morals in the form of guiding critical thinking. Sometimes, it is relevant; other times, it's plain irritating as they spout cliche moralistic viewpoints. Critical thinking is a malleable form of thought process, not a specific staggered instruction list. It is often impossible to teach. Learning by yourself reaps better results, as do everything important and impactful in life.
{It's pretty boring. Just prepping anyone first}
The problem of pain has been a prominent one whether we considered it in the doctrine of Christianity or in the contemporary agnostic context. For pain pits in it the most detrimental proofs of God's non-existence; at the same time, it shows one of the strongest and paradoxical proof in the annals of the Bible.
Let us first set out the context of the argument for God.
1. God loves us.
2. God is all powerful and all knowing.
3. God is good.
And the question of pain stays. Why are we experiencing pain if God loves us? Obviously, the Bible find it self-evident that God's love for us justifies the need to show us pain. Thus, carrying on that line of thought, pain is good. God is good and has to teach us to follow his definition of good. Hence, pain. Christian theology explains pain as a way where we learn from our mistakes. It emphasises our free will that is presented to us by God. That we are not following God's specific instruction. Rather we are like a loyally trained termite to a human master. We are small, insignificant but we are not wholly predictable. This is similar to the termite who is trained to flip and spin. The master, all powerful human being, controls much of its action but not its minute movements. The human can choose to kill the termite but will be hard pressed to command the termite kill himself. If so, God will no longer be the being we assume He is.
Another theory comes to mind- that God can but does not want to. Then we must question- why this misgiving? Why hand us free will when you know we will make mistakes? It follows that He would want humans to have the best of everything when he creates us. And so God makes us in his image, which is the closest to perfection as singularly possible. For God exists alone and without companions or equals. This is not the question of subjectivity, as would what many atheists might think. For what is subjectivity than the allure of committing to the idea of multiple viewpoints? With only one presence, perfection is simplistic and singular. The second and his much more precious gift is that of free will. God has free will. That or he is subjected to the same rules as us. Of non free-will and is but a lowly creature crawling on a plane higher than us, but lower than a truer God. The third option is not mentioned by me due to the laughable nature of it: that we have free will and God does not. Unfortunately, that would signify our superiority. If He truly exists, being more lowly than us is or course, not an option. We turn our focus on the two points. Are there multiple Gods in a hierarchical tree? Our current Christian God, Father of all, slow to anger, kind etc, certainly did not seek to inform us. But a few clues, unnoticed, shows otherwise. Jesus was treated as a man till he ascended. His apotheosis was gradual, with disciples and stories of miracles and sacrifices. If he was made into his rightful status, a powerful deity, he was done so by God. Complete with free will of course.
Jesus, forgive my blasphemy, is a human. But let me extend my definition of a human. A human is not just a physical entity. It is an ideal, a spirit representative of God trying to create a "master of birds" and "tamer of lands". We are His piece of perfection and superiority. We are His creation. Humans mean just that- his best creation. By the same line of reasoning, Jesus was created. Because, at first, there was nothing. It took God six days and no one helped Him. Jesus, free will and all, is our better. He is a more perfect human, complete with a superior sense of morality(defined by God of course). He has powers we possess not; does that make him any less human? Yes, if you consider a mentally handicapped child inhuman. He sits at the right hand side of the Father and this is also the strongest perception of his inferiority. Jesus, a human, suffered the most in the Bible. He felt pain to no uncertain degree yet he was willing to endure them. He was our better but he had a name. Jesus Christ. The existence of God was just that- all names given would be nothing but an insulting label. We dare label our creator with self-thought names. We have not the temerity to carry out such an action. "God" was enough, a status, not a name.
God is all powerful and all knowing. Now, we seek to define what truly means to be all knowing. He knows every happenings that had happened and will happened. Or perhaps that is flawed. He remains ignorant about our future(and even that is debatable) but has the correct moral code that should, ideally, govern human beings. We are wrong and he is right. For if the status of all-knowing fails to show why our sins were truly evil and our goods good, then God cannot be always right. He is then a flawable creature.
3. God is good.
And the question of pain stays. Why are we experiencing pain if God loves us? Obviously, the Bible find it self-evident that God's love for us justifies the need to show us pain. Thus, carrying on that line of thought, pain is good. God is good and has to teach us to follow his definition of good. Hence, pain. Christian theology explains pain as a way where we learn from our mistakes. It emphasises our free will that is presented to us by God. That we are not following God's specific instruction. Rather we are like a loyally trained termite to a human master. We are small, insignificant but we are not wholly predictable. This is similar to the termite who is trained to flip and spin. The master, all powerful human being, controls much of its action but not its minute movements. The human can choose to kill the termite but will be hard pressed to command the termite kill himself. If so, God will no longer be the being we assume He is.
Another theory comes to mind- that God can but does not want to. Then we must question- why this misgiving? Why hand us free will when you know we will make mistakes? It follows that He would want humans to have the best of everything when he creates us. And so God makes us in his image, which is the closest to perfection as singularly possible. For God exists alone and without companions or equals. This is not the question of subjectivity, as would what many atheists might think. For what is subjectivity than the allure of committing to the idea of multiple viewpoints? With only one presence, perfection is simplistic and singular. The second and his much more precious gift is that of free will. God has free will. That or he is subjected to the same rules as us. Of non free-will and is but a lowly creature crawling on a plane higher than us, but lower than a truer God. The third option is not mentioned by me due to the laughable nature of it: that we have free will and God does not. Unfortunately, that would signify our superiority. If He truly exists, being more lowly than us is or course, not an option. We turn our focus on the two points. Are there multiple Gods in a hierarchical tree? Our current Christian God, Father of all, slow to anger, kind etc, certainly did not seek to inform us. But a few clues, unnoticed, shows otherwise. Jesus was treated as a man till he ascended. His apotheosis was gradual, with disciples and stories of miracles and sacrifices. If he was made into his rightful status, a powerful deity, he was done so by God. Complete with free will of course.
Jesus, forgive my blasphemy, is a human. But let me extend my definition of a human. A human is not just a physical entity. It is an ideal, a spirit representative of God trying to create a "master of birds" and "tamer of lands". We are His piece of perfection and superiority. We are His creation. Humans mean just that- his best creation. By the same line of reasoning, Jesus was created. Because, at first, there was nothing. It took God six days and no one helped Him. Jesus, free will and all, is our better. He is a more perfect human, complete with a superior sense of morality(defined by God of course). He has powers we possess not; does that make him any less human? Yes, if you consider a mentally handicapped child inhuman. He sits at the right hand side of the Father and this is also the strongest perception of his inferiority. Jesus, a human, suffered the most in the Bible. He felt pain to no uncertain degree yet he was willing to endure them. He was our better but he had a name. Jesus Christ. The existence of God was just that- all names given would be nothing but an insulting label. We dare label our creator with self-thought names. We have not the temerity to carry out such an action. "God" was enough, a status, not a name.
God is all powerful and all knowing. Now, we seek to define what truly means to be all knowing. He knows every happenings that had happened and will happened. Or perhaps that is flawed. He remains ignorant about our future(and even that is debatable) but has the correct moral code that should, ideally, govern human beings. We are wrong and he is right. For if the status of all-knowing fails to show why our sins were truly evil and our goods good, then God cannot be always right. He is then a flawable creature.
