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Why does God get angry?

Last of the Fraggles

Illuminator
L
Joined
Nov 9, 2006
Messages
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Well for the atheists I suppose the answer is a short, he doesn't because he's not real but, ignoring the obvious, and taking the stories at face value can anyone comprehend why God gets downright pissed off with people at times?

He knows what is going to happen and he has the power to stop it at any time so why the heck does he get angry with what people do after the event?

Right from the very start, he creates Adam and Eve and tells them not to eat the apple knowing fine well that they will. He created them to do it. He knew it would happen. Then he punishes the whole of humanity after the event.

Seems a bit convoluted, no?

I'll create 'perfect' beings but design them in such a way that they will render themselves imperfect after about 2 minutes then I can punish the lot of them for all eternity.

He's a funny bloke that God. It's almost as if someone just made the whole thing up after a big night in the pub.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
It's almost as if someone just made the whole thing up after a big night in the pub.
Click to expand...

Well, you pretty much answered your own question there. If you've thought about this idea long enough to realize that simply making it all up is a possible (and certainly most likely) conclusion, why not make the next step and simply accept that the answer really is that simple?
 
Cello Man said:
Well, you pretty much answered your own question there. If you've thought about this idea long enough to realize that simply making it all up is a possible (and certainly most likely) conclusion, why not make the next step and simply accept that the answer really is that simple?
Click to expand...

Oh, that step was made a long time ago. What I was trying to get at is how do believers manage to reconcile all this stuff in their head.

If God is as described then clearly all this nonsense in the middle between creation and game over is just a big waste of time. The Bible should just read 'God knew what he wanted, he did it, he was happy'

The rest of it is really just God making hoops for himself to jump through even though he already knows that he can jump through them whenever he wants and what will be the result when he does.

You'd think someone would have managed to make a better story than this in 2000 years?
 
Because He doesn't like the way people are using His gift of "free will". So sometimes He takes it back by doing things that you have no choice in.

Indian giver.
 
Tricky said:
Because He doesn't like the way people are using His gift of "free will". So sometimes He takes it back by doing things that you have no choice in.

Indian giver.
Click to expand...

But he knew exactly how we would use it when he gave it to us. He knows everything before it happens. He knew how it would all end before it even started.

I can't even think of a 'real-world' analogy for how tremendously, incredibly, unbelievably stupid all this is if any of it were true.

Hmm...I never realised before, but those 'I'm with stupid -->' t-shirts are actually little religious symbols just like those daft fish things people put on their cars to show you where to ram them.
 
Depends on the god you are talking about. Thor gets angry for different reasons that Loki does. I guess you're talking specifically about the christian version of a god though, right?
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Well for the atheists I suppose the answer is a short, he doesn't because he's not real but, ignoring the obvious, and taking the stories at face value can anyone comprehend why God gets downright pissed off with people at times?
Click to expand...
You may was well ask why Bigfoot lumbers around campsites or why UFOs land in cornfields and sodomize farmers. Or what the hell the Tooth Fairy wants with all those teeth (and where does she get the money from?) and how Santa's elves replicate the most popular toys right down to the Made In Japan stamp.

Imaginary beings often have conflicting and inscrutable personality traits. Especially when they are created as haphazardly as God.

-Squish
 
Last of the Fraggles,

If God prevented man from evil he would be vicariously living through man. What would be the point of that?

Gene
 
It was something that I pondered from time to time when I was a believer and it would bother me. I would say cognitive dissonance keeps a person from thinking much about it. It's easier to comprehend god if one anthropomorphizes god. In which case god is a just and noble being with the capacity for anger.
 
Yahweh is a patriarch. Also, I've heard it observed that while polytheistic religions emerged in societies based on crop agriculture, monotheistic religions emerged in societies based on domesticated animal agriculture. Hence all the references to sheep, lambs, flocks and - most tellingly - shepherds in christianity.
As a father and shepherd figure, Yahweh has unquestionable dominion over humans, but sometimes has a hard time getting them to act the right way; feed from the right trough, graze from the right bush, be home before midnight etc. Children/flocks suffer from a depressing stupidity and lack of organisation. They clearly need to be told what to do. Led. Herded. Part of what the biblical stories where Yahweh goes ballistic communicate is not just his superiority but also humanity's inferiority. If Yahweh gets angry, well that's our fault, not his. We're just so damn ornery. Tsk. These stories are intended to remind believers of their place; humans are like clueless children/stupid animals and therefore need god.

Where Yahweh is presented as something that seems to contradict this - omniscient, omnipotent - that is to remind believers of something else surely just as important to Yahweh's worship. And, presumably, the religious authorities.

It reminds me of the sort of gradually accumulating inconsistencies that crop up in fictional TV series, that are subsequently pounced on and analysed by rational, though somewhat obsessive, fans.
J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Babylon 5, used to have a stock answer at conventions to placate such over-analytical fans who would ask questions like "How fast does a Starfury travel?!?!". He would reply, "It travels at the Speed Of Plot."
His point being that if, in a given story, he needed a ship to take two days to reach a location for dramatic effect, it would take two days. If in another story he needed the same ship to zoom to the rescue in the nick of time, it would arrive heroically in the nick of time. As a storyteller he was not obliged to establish objective consistencies in excrutiating detail for everything he invented.

The development of a character like Yahweh is similarly freed from that obligation by the writers' need to make him fulfil core purposes relating to a variety of human behaviour. Consistency was not a priority. Something of an understatement perhaps.
This mentality I'd sum up as: "God is whatever he is required to be to maintain this world view."

Religious believers will, to varying degrees, wrestle with this sort of biblical retcon. But the most important thing, which conveniently trumps rational scrutiny of the subject, is pulling out the aspect of god appropriate for any given subject or any given occassion. Their notion of Yahweh is a sort of raw narrative material to be drawn on to cement their opinions, not a clearly defined concept.
Some believers are better at drawing on it than others. The best become sermonizers like Haggard etc. who become patriarchal shepherds in their own right. "Four legs good....two legs be-e-e-e-tter!"

The point is: rationalism doesn't enter into it, it merely gnaws worryingly at the edges from time to time.
Though there are exceptions like RandFan, for whom rationalism has eaten right the way through.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
He knows what is going to happen and he has the power to stop it at any time so why the heck does he get angry with what people do after the event?
...
Right from the very start, he creates Adam and Eve and tells them not to eat the apple knowing fine well that they will. He created them to do it. He knew it would happen. Then he punishes the whole of humanity after the event.
Click to expand...

Why would you go, especially literally, from stories written about peoples' perceptions of god(s)?

But one could just say the exact same thing about no god(s). Watch:

---
Why is the evolution-driven universe so angry? Evolution is the most biologically powerful thing we know of, and it has the power to stop all the bad things that harm humans, so why after all of these billions of years has the bad stuff not been evolved away?

Right from the start, modern humans evolved with many malfunctions. Why is evolution punishing us?
---
 
T'ai Chi said:
Why would you go, especially literally, from stories written about peoples' perceptions of god(s)?

But one could just say the exact same thing about no god(s). Watch:

---
Why is the evolution-driven universe so angry? Evolution is the most biologically powerful thing we know of, and it has the power to stop all the bad things that harm humans, so why after all of these billions of years has the bad stuff not been evolved away?

Right from the start, modern humans evolved with many malfunctions. Why is evolution punishing us?
---
Click to expand...
No, you can't say that, because that's attributing the Universe with intelligence and emotion, for which there is zero evidence. It's called anthropomorphisation.

The Judeo-Christian God on the other hand (which is what the OP was about) is always portrayed as intelligent and fickle, getting angry at people for doing things it made them do, e.g. hardening Pharoah's heart and then killing all the firstborn of Egypt because Pharoah's heart was hard.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Well for the atheists I suppose the answer is a short, he doesn't because he's not real but, ignoring the obvious, and taking the stories at face value can anyone comprehend why God gets downright pissed off with people at times?
Click to expand...

Well, given anger is an evolved emotion designed to scare away other life forms so you can get the food, the women, whatever, maybe scare away someone angry at you trying to get your food, your women, your body as food, etc., and thus only works hand-in-hand with the emotion of being scared, this seems like a bizarre property for an infinite being. Why does he need to get angry at someone? Isn't a cold sheer announcement that whoever does X goes to Hell sufficient?

And why would God even be capable of getting angry? Are there other gods about his level who can get scared that he can cow down with his anger? Wouldn't this suggest that "our" god also can get scared? But why would a god be scared of anything? He sees the unfortunate events to come, and has the power to stop them, so why would he get scared?
 
Even some of the early Christian sects wrestled with this problem; unable to reconcile the vindictive, testy, murderous OT God with the peaceful and merciful idea that they were supposed to promote.
At least one sect decided that the OT God was an insane, rogue god, who had created the world in a cosmic mistake!
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Well for the atheists I suppose the answer is a short, he doesn't because he's not real but, ignoring the obvious, and taking the stories at face value can anyone comprehend why God gets downright pissed off with people at times?...

...He's a funny bloke that God. It's almost as if someone just made the whole thing up after a big night in the pub.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that flashback to my conversion to atheism.:D

But seriously, how do people reconcile these contradictions? Not very well going by my observations. I've seen some amazing mental gymnastics performed in the interest of explaining how a perfect, infallible, all knowing, all powerful, and all loving god could create a universe displeasing to himself and then justly blame the creation for its faults.

I find the existence of any gods to be extremely unlikely. But I find the existence of the Judeo/Christian/Muslim God to be one of the least likely of the many possible gods for this very reason. I could more easily see a deist's remote god as existing than the profoundly self-contradictory god of Abraham.
 
I (strongly) suggest reading Robert A. Heinleins' Job: A Comedy of Errors for interesting explication on this matter and other religious considerations!!!
 
because of threads which question the will and personality of god.

Stop it right now! ooga booga ooga booga
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
But he knew exactly how we would use it when he gave it to us. He knows everything before it happens. He knew how it would all end before it even started.
Click to expand...
Depends on who you ask. Some Christians regard "omniscience" as "knowing everything that has happened or is happening", but not "knowing the future". Some don't even go that far.

Speaking only from what I have heard from the religious (mostly Christian) people I've talked to, God has allowed us free will. Even if He knows what we will do, He still doesn't like it. (We'll ignore for now the incompatibility of free will with perfect knowledge of the future.) It arises, IMO, from the need that many religious people have for a God that does it all, but still allows room for people to be at fault, otherwise, the concept of "sin" is meaningless. The fact that these traits are mutually incompatible with each other is shoved under the carpet of cognitive dissonance.


Last of the Fraggles said:
I can't even think of a 'real-world' analogy for how tremendously, incredibly, unbelievably stupid all this is if any of it were true.
Click to expand...
Don't be so hard on them. We've all believed stupid stuff at some times. I'm betting most of us still do. Realize that religion is an important thing to so many people in the world. It may even be hardwired into our genetic code. (There is a lot of disagreement about this). Even if this is not the case, it is still true that the social pressures are quite strong for religious belief. They are so strong that they overwhelm logic and knowledge. Religious people will even admit this if cornered. I've heard Huntster and others say something equivalent to "God doesn't have to obey logic or physical laws." Somebody said once, (sorry, can't remember who) that you cannot use logic to cause a person to change a decision that was not based on logic.

IMO, we atheists should not press so hard for people to accept something that they are not emotionally prepared to accept, regardless of how frustrating it can be. We should instead work toward showing them that we are nice folks too in spite of our lack of belief. That way, when people debate with an atheist, they won't automatically think we are the tool of the Devil.

Last of the Fraggles said:
Hmm...I never realised before, but those 'I'm with stupid -->' t-shirts are actually little religious symbols just like those daft fish things people put on their cars to show you where to ram them.
Click to expand...
I'm assuming this is a joke. My wife has had her car vandalized by religious zealots. (I'm assuming it was them because they ripped her "Darwin fish" off and smashed it to tiny bits). I really don't want us to be like that or even perceived like that. It's not logical.
 
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