For the theists among you: can God lie?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Why Believe God?
- Thread starter Jayhawker Soule
- Start date
Brilliant! God can't lie because the Bible, which you believe is inspired by God, says that God can't lie. I'll bet you got an A+ in merry-go-round 101. 
Deut. 32.8 said:Brilliant! God can't lie because the Bible, which you believe is inspired by God, says that God can't lie. I'll bet you got an A+ in merry-go-round 101.
Sorry, I can't remember that far back.
Had you had my experience, you would have no doubt!
I got a glimpse of him. I know!
He won't come looking for you, You will have to search for him.
Shalom U'vrachot/Peace and blessings.
What a spoiled and petulent brat you worship!Ronald said:
you don't even understand what your talking about do you, asking if god can lie. god is not a human being or nothing you can imagine so stop thinking of him as one he is not this old guy with a white bread sitting in the sky. you people just dont get it like even thinking that god walks as a man among us. no mortal brain can raelly grasp who he is, because he is infenent and we (humans) are not.
Was that a "Yes" or "No"?matelk said:
Green Gaia
Veteran Member
What we call "God" is ultimate truth. "God" cannot lie, just as "God" cannot be jealous or angry. These are human emotions and actions, "God" transcends these things.
Ceridwen018
Well-Known Member
I like that definition...'god' as the ultimate truth--it's more of a Taoist perspective.
Well, according to the bible, god can get angry, be happy, be sad, kill people, send other people to kill people, bet on things, talk, etc. No one's trying to say god is human here, we're just wondering if another human characteristic can be applied to him, because it seems that so many others have already.
If no one can 'grasp' who/what god is, how did the theory of god come about in the first place?
Pah
Uber all member
God certainly condones and uses the lie. Whether or not you can call him a liar is moot in this example because others do the lying in his name and his approval. 1 Kings 22:21-22. and 2 Chronicles 18:21-22
But God does deceive (is that a lie?) Jeremiah 20:7
And admits to deception Ezekiel 14:9
And is said to give strong delusion that a lie may be beleived 2 Thessalonians 2:11
I'd say, by Holy writting, God is a liar.
-pah-
But God does deceive (is that a lie?) Jeremiah 20:7
And admits to deception Ezekiel 14:9
And is said to give strong delusion that a lie may be beleived 2 Thessalonians 2:11
I'd say, by Holy writting, God is a liar.
-pah-
No. What you call "God", you call "ultimate truth". It's very nice of you to share your beliefs, but I'm more interest in knowing your reasoning behind those beliefs.Maize said:
So, your answer is that "God" cannot lie because "God" cannot lie. That is rather underwhelming.Maize said:
Do you intend to preach or reason? By the way:Maize said:
- Ex 34:14 - For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name [is] Jealous, [is] a jealous God:
- 2Ki 17:18 - Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.
Two questions:Maize said:
- You preach that God cannot be jealous or angry because they are human emotions. Is it equally true that your God-construct cannot be pleased, loving, compassionate, interested, etc, those also being human emotions?
- Why did you find it necessary to shift the topic? Neither lying nor the ability to lie is an emotion, human or otherwise.
Green Gaia
Veteran Member
Deut., I think you have me confused with someone else. I never preach. I shared my answer to the question, you don't like it? Fine.
Green Gaia
Veteran Member
I'm not willing to share my reasoning, it might sound too preachy for you.Deut. 32.8 said:
For me, "God" is not an entity. Show me a non-entity that can lie.
Those are verses from the Bible. I am not Christian, so your reason for posting them to me is confusing, unless you are going to preach the Bible to me.
I don't preach. If my answering a simple question with what I believe, makes you think I'm preaching, then that's your problem.
Yes.
Sorry.
Good response - I stand corrected.
Corban
Member
The only way God can be understood is by revelation from God, so we must use what He has given us to understand Him. These must be taken by faith, they will not be proved, except individually to us as the spirit of God speaks to us. So no God cannot lie, how do I know that? God told me, and i have chosen to believe Him. If you do not believe in God, then it is pointless to argue His attributes. It sounds as if you lack that belief, so don't worry about a question that is a few steps deeper in the logic line, start at the beginning and let's talk about whether or not there is a God, if we have not argued that point and have not found common ground on which to base further steps along that line, it is pointless to argue anything beyond that, there will always be large gaps in differing reasons when the foundation for those reasons have not been established by both groups. So first, what is your belief about God, does He exist? let's start there, then we can go forward.
Corban
Member
(Q) said:
certainly not, i do not have a perfect knowledge of God, i have faith in Him, meaning i have learned through personal study about His attributes, His spirit has guided me in that to distinguish what was right and was false. This is a process we all must go through, and this is the purpose of our lives, to learn to distinguish good from evil and to choose the good. We will after this life be judged by the choices we make, God will guide us through these choices, but the choice is ultimately ours. Jesus said if any man will His will we will know if it is true or not. When we accept a principle as truth and live according to it, if it is true it will bring good, we will see that it is good and our faith in that thing will increase, we will then accept new truths and by the same process can come to see that they are true and our faith will grow. It is a process of growth, we are here to grow, that comes by making decision, decisions can only exist when there are choices and a distinction to be made. If God made it perfectly clear to everyone what is true and forced us to live that, we would not grow, because the decision would not have been ours. So i can not prove to you what i know is true. i can only tell you what i believe and invite you to live it and ask God, and find out for yourself if it is true. It is each persons individual responsibilty to judge for themselves, then after this life we will be judged by those decisions we made
Katholish
Member
If God exists, what is He? He is the uncaused Cause, the source of all being. From this alone it can be prove that if God exists, He cannot lie. If God is the Source of all things, He either created truth or is Truth. I would argue that Truth is an attribute of God. We can discern 3 levels of Truth: Moral, Logical, and Ontological.
1) Moral Truth is further broken into veracity, which is the agreement of speech and thought, and fidelity, which is the agreement of action with speech.
2) Logical truth is the agreement of thought and things as they are in reality.
3) Ontological truth is the agreement of a thing with the idea of a thing.
I will start on the bottom and work my way up.
3) God possesses Ontological Truth because if He exists, He is the cause of all things. He created all things, even the item of the thing, in essense, it would be His knowing it, having that idea, that gives existance to a thing.
2) God possesses Logical Truth, because as I have already said, He would have to be the cause of all things that Exist, the author of existance itself in fact, and as such, there would be nothing about what He authored and created that He does not know. This is the reason that we also say that God would have to be omniscient if He exists.
1) In some sense, I should think that God's possession of Moral Truth is proven by His possession of Logical and Ontological Truth. If it is an attribute of God to know perfectly everything as it is in reality, could He speaking contradition to this knowledge? In other words, would God have veracity? This is in a sense one of the more important questions in this topic as it addresses whether or not God could say something that is not truth, i.e. if He could lie. However, God could not have the ability to act in conflict with His own nature. As I have already argued, it is the Nature of God to possess truth logically and ontologically, the one thing necessary to take the step to say that God has perfect veracity is that God's Will and Intellect are perfectly united. Thus God could not Will what is in opposition to His truthful Intellect. How do we know that God's Will and Intellect would be in perfect unison though? Namely, because by nature of being the uncaused Cause, God is Existance itself and is hence perfectly Simple, and has no "parts" otherwise these parts would have to be created... etc. God's unity of operations means that He could not speak what was not inaccord with His Intellect which has already been shown to possess Logical and Ontological Truth. Thus God could not lie.
From this, it is easy to show that fidelity would also be present in God as if God spoke something, it would necessarily be true, and hence it would be done. In essense, it is God's perfect knowledge of His own creation that ensures that what He speaks will necessarily be done. God therefore have both Veracity and Fidelity, and consequently possesses Moral Truth.
God has all three levels of Truth, Moral, Logical, and Ontological.
1) Moral Truth is further broken into veracity, which is the agreement of speech and thought, and fidelity, which is the agreement of action with speech.
2) Logical truth is the agreement of thought and things as they are in reality.
3) Ontological truth is the agreement of a thing with the idea of a thing.
I will start on the bottom and work my way up.
3) God possesses Ontological Truth because if He exists, He is the cause of all things. He created all things, even the item of the thing, in essense, it would be His knowing it, having that idea, that gives existance to a thing.
2) God possesses Logical Truth, because as I have already said, He would have to be the cause of all things that Exist, the author of existance itself in fact, and as such, there would be nothing about what He authored and created that He does not know. This is the reason that we also say that God would have to be omniscient if He exists.
1) In some sense, I should think that God's possession of Moral Truth is proven by His possession of Logical and Ontological Truth. If it is an attribute of God to know perfectly everything as it is in reality, could He speaking contradition to this knowledge? In other words, would God have veracity? This is in a sense one of the more important questions in this topic as it addresses whether or not God could say something that is not truth, i.e. if He could lie. However, God could not have the ability to act in conflict with His own nature. As I have already argued, it is the Nature of God to possess truth logically and ontologically, the one thing necessary to take the step to say that God has perfect veracity is that God's Will and Intellect are perfectly united. Thus God could not Will what is in opposition to His truthful Intellect. How do we know that God's Will and Intellect would be in perfect unison though? Namely, because by nature of being the uncaused Cause, God is Existance itself and is hence perfectly Simple, and has no "parts" otherwise these parts would have to be created... etc. God's unity of operations means that He could not speak what was not inaccord with His Intellect which has already been shown to possess Logical and Ontological Truth. Thus God could not lie.
From this, it is easy to show that fidelity would also be present in God as if God spoke something, it would necessarily be true, and hence it would be done. In essense, it is God's perfect knowledge of His own creation that ensures that what He speaks will necessarily be done. God therefore have both Veracity and Fidelity, and consequently possesses Moral Truth.
God has all three levels of Truth, Moral, Logical, and Ontological.