Is it Plausible to Think of God as Angry?

9-10ths_Penguin said:

But what would distinguish a god from a sacred or divine object? Generally, a god is just a grander version of a human being.

Take prayer: the whole concept of prayer is based on the idea of talking to gods like human beings.

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I found informative the Buddhist practice of prayer flags. They are put into a windy place, until they gradually dissolve in the elements, and so the good intentions put into them will disperse and go throughout the universe.

Similarly, prayer can be offering up truth, intention, feeling, into the universe in total and/or the depths of your own being.

Vinayaka said:

I'm not sure, actually. It varies from person to person, and the entire concept of 'God' is quite different in monistic or Vedanti c schools than from the west. For me personally it is the underlying energy flowing through all form, and the Primal Cause which is beyond all form, time and space. I don't see any anthropomorphism there. I think that calling it God came about from western their lens, and not having a very good word for it, so they gave it the God label. Many Indian scholars would probably declare Brahman as an untranslatable concept, so 'God' wouldn't be their choice.

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While to be honest the God word doesn't really occur to me much within myself anymore, I think that it makes that plenty of people, unrealised and realised alike, have chosen to use the word God in English as they would others in Sanskrit and Indian languages, because it's showing people that it's the same transcendent-immanent that people are to relate to.

Even Gurudeva did it, it seems! Talked about God to people who would understand best with that word.

sealchan said:

When God has wrath does He hurt people as a result?

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That depends upon what you mean by hurt. God does not hurt people for no good reason. God's wrath has to be justified and it has to be in accordance with Justice. God is like a good parent who punishes and disciplines his child out of Love and Wisdom.

Sunstone said:

Is it plausible to think of a god -- any god -- as feeling or experiencing anger, or is that just an anthropomorphism?

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Well, most if not all deities are defined as being anthropomorphic, so I suppose so. However, the fact that all of them are defined as having emotions and attributes of humans is a good clue that humans created them.

Kirran said:

Even Gurudeva did it, it seems! Talked about God to people who would understand best with that word.

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Indeed, although at least half the time it was both ... in combination as in 'God Siva'. Language certainly has been a challenge for many. Lately Boss and me have been using 'energy' a lot. So we go to koyil to feel energy, not to see God.

Kirran said:

I found informative the Buddhist practice of prayer flags. They are put into a windy place, until they gradually dissolve in the elements, and so the good intentions put into them will disperse and go throughout the universe.

Similarly, prayer can be offering up truth, intention, feeling, into the universe in total and/or the depths of your own being.

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I was talking about prayer in the context of gods: a god that's prayed to is a god who the person praying expects to hear and comprehend prayers. If it's an intercessory prayer, the person also expects God to be capable of acting on those prayers. There's a lot of anthropomorphism built into those expectations.

Jumi said:

God? No. Any god? Yes.

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Assuming you mean the god of Abraham who appears in the Bible.

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Sunstone said:

Is it plausible to think of a god -- any god -- as feeling or experiencing anger

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yes, of course. anger is god's too.

Trailblazer said:

That depends upon what you mean by hurt. God does not hurt people for no good reason. God's wrath has to be justified and it has to be in accordance with Justice. God is like a good parent who punishes and disciplines his child out of Love and Wisdom.

“This judgment of God, as viewed by those who have recognized Bahá’u’lláh as His Mouthpiece and His greatest Messenger on earth, is both a retributory calamity and an act of holy and supreme discipline. It is at once a visitation from God and a cleansing process for all mankind. Its fires punish the perversity of the human race, and weld its component parts into one organic, indivisible, world-embracing community. Mankind, in these fateful years, which at once signalize the passing of the first century of the Bahá’í Era and proclaim the opening of a new one, is, as ordained by Him Who is both the Judge and the Redeemer of the human race, being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. God, the Vigilant, the Just, the Loving, the All-Wise Ordainer, can, in this supreme Dispensation, neither allow the sins of an unregenerate humanity, whether of omission or of commission, to go unpunished, nor will He be willing to abandon His children to their fate, and refuse them that culminating and blissful stage in their long, their slow and painful evolution throughout the ages, which is at once their inalienable right and their true destiny.” The Promised Day Is Come, pp. 4-5​

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How can one distinguish this divine and righteous discipline and the greater amount of indiscriminate suffering God allows through the works of humanity and nature?

Why didn't God put the smackdown on the Nazi party as they deployed the final solution? Sounds like an opportunity too big to miss.

Hubert Farnsworth said:

Well, most if not all deities are defined as being anthropomorphic, so I suppose so. However, the fact that all of them are defined as having emotions and attributes of humans is a good clue that humans created them.

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The reason humans have these emotions and attributes is because God has these emotions and attributes. That is a good indication that God created us in His image and likeness.

Trailblazer said:

The reason humans have these emotions and attributes is because God has these emotions and attributes. That is a good indication that God created us in His image and likeness.

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Then what does it say about God's mental state given all the human suffering caused by His good creation?

sealchan said:

How can one distinguish this divine and righteous discipline and the greater amount of indiscriminate suffering God allows through the works of humanity and nature?

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God allows it because God does not override our free will decisions. Free will is sacrosanct.
Humans are responsible for the vast majority of suffering because of the free will decisions they make.
Nature is the way it is because God made it that way. Some things we cannot fully understand.

This world was never intended to be a paradise. That comes later after we die.

sealchan said:

Why didn't God put the smackdown on the Nazi party as they deployed the final solution? Sounds like an opportunity too big to miss.

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God does not intervene just because He can. God does forewarn, but since the kings and rulers did not heed the warnings of Baha'u'llah and change their ways, WWII happened with all its ensuing consequences.

Trailblazer said:

God allows it because God does not override our free will decisions. Free will is sacrosanct.

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Try, with your free will, to blast holes through a brick wall with laser beams shooting out of your eyes and then tell us again how God doesn't override free will.

Trailblazer said:

God allows it because God does not override our free will decisions. Free will is sacrosanct.
Humans are responsible for the vast majority of suffering because of the free will decisions they make.
Nature is the way it is because God made it that way. Some things we cannot fully understand.

This world was never intended to be a paradise. That comes later after we die.

God does not intervene just because He can. God does forewarn, but since the kings and rulers did not heed the warnings of Baha'u'llah and change their ways, WWII happened with all its ensuing consequences.

“Be warned, be of them who reflect… O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.” Proclamation of Bahá’u’lláh, p, 39​

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I think that it doesnt make much sense for someone to say that God has the same emotions as human beings because a human father or mother would not stand by and watch as so many of their children suffer at the hands of the natural world or the hands of ones siblings. This just doesnt add up.

And of course why would a perfect God need His Son to act as an intermediary...it seems to me that something is slipping here and it reminds me of the whole flood story and Noah. It doesnt seem to me that God is up to the job of being our heavenly parent, or at least not one who we might understand as omnipotent and omniscient.

I'm certainly not convinced.

IMO we ascribed these emotions to God but they are a limited and finally inaccurate way to think of God. He is not omnipotent, but He is powerful enough to have created the Universe. Clearly God must be operating under constraints...that is the only condition I can see for preserving God's humanity.

sealchan said:

I think that it doesnt make much sense for someone to say that God has the same emotions as human beings because a human father or mother would not stand by and watch as so many of their children suffer at the hands of the natural world or the hands of ones siblings. This just doesnt add up.

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So you're saying that the world around us is inconsistent with a loving god?

Vinayaka said:

Indeed, although at least half the time it was both ... in combination as in 'God Siva'. Language certainly has been a challenge for many. Lately Boss and me have been using 'energy' a lot. So we go to koyil to feel energy, not to see God.

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Or "the Self-God"!

I guess I hardly really talk about it with people. Or if I do, it's with people with whom this is so assumed that it hardly takes saying any words to refer to what you're obviously talking about.

So I kinda refer to things internally with feelings or ideas, not verbally.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

I was talking about prayer in the context of gods: a god that's prayed to is a god who the person praying expects to hear and comprehend prayers. If it's an intercessory prayer, the person also expects God to be capable of acting on those prayers. There's a lot of anthropomorphism built into those expectations.

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I dunno man, I reckon there's plenty of overlap. Often people use anthropomorphic language to refer to their feelings just cos it's easier.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Try, with your free will, to blast holes through a brick wall with laser beams shooting out of your eyes and then tell us again how God doesn't override free will.

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I never said that we can do anything we want to just because we have free will. I only ever said that we are responsible for the choices that we make and the ensuing actions.

Our free will is constrained by many factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. How free we are varies with every given situation we find ourselves in. However, we have the ability to make choices within parameters. Otherwise, we would just be at the mercy of our past experiences and our heredity. If humans did not have free will how could we be responsible for our actions and held accountable in a court of law?

God can override free will if He wants to, but we can never know what God is "doing" so we can never know if or when God intervenes. God knows what will happen before, during and after it happens in our world, because God is All-Knowing, but God does not cause things to happen. We cause things to happen by the free will decisions we make.

This is a complex subject and it is related to fate and predestination. Everything is predestined but we create our own destiny by the choices we make. God has foreknowledge of what those choices will be but God does not make our choices for us. So in a sense we are acting out what God knows we will act out.

Kirran said:

Or "the Self-God"!

I guess I hardly really talk about it with people. Or if I do, it's with people with whom this is so assumed that it hardly takes saying any words to refer to what you're obviously talking about.

So I kinda refer to things internally with feelings or ideas, not verbally.

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I'm the same re not talking. Even with other sishya, we generally have much better things to talk about. That stuff is about relationship, feeling, and beckoning. .Most certainly there is never anger in it. However, I do admit that some of my Sri Lankan friends due to being raised in Catholic schools, do feel that God might be angry.

sealchan said:

I think that it doesnt make much sense for someone to say that God has the same emotions as human beings because a human father or mother would not stand by and watch as so many of their children suffer at the hands of the natural world or the hands of ones siblings. This just doesnt add up.

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God has emotions but they are different from human emotions because God is not human. As humans, we cannot understand what it means for God to be angry. All we have are the scriptures that say God has wrath.

You cannot compare God to humans. God is not going to do what humans do when they see suffering of other humans because God is not human. God has a will but God does not ordinarily intervene in our free will because gave us all free will to act on our own behalf.

sealchan said:

And of course why would a perfect God need His Son to act as an intermediary...it seems to me that something is slipping here and it reminds me of the whole flood story and Noah. It doesnt seem to me that God is up to the job of being our heavenly parent, or at least not one who we might understand as omnipotent and omniscient.

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How could an immaterial God come to earth and do what Jesus did? God uses Intermediaries such as Jesus because they are both human and divine so humans can relate to them and they can speak as we do and write things down that we can read. Humans cannot ever understand God directly because God is too far above us, exalted beyond our comprehension.

sealchan said:

'm certainly not convinced.

IMO we ascribed these emotions to God but they are a limited and finally inaccurate way to think of God. He is not omnipotent, but He is powerful enough to have created the Universe. Clearly God must be operating under constraints...that is the only condition I can see for preserving God's humanity.

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God is operating under no constraints. God is omnipotent but omnipotence implies that God only does what God chooses to do, not everything that He can do and certainly not anything that humans want Him to do.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

But what would distinguish a god from a sacred or divine object? Generally, a god is just a grander version of a human being.

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a deity historical is not distinct from the divine because the divine emanates from the deity or the deity emanates the divine, the quality which makes it a god.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Right: a god is a device that human beings create in order to relate to the universe (or some aspect of it). The whole point is to put a human face on the impersonal and alien.

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Well if you are considering the historical inferences to what deities were/are, then yes these ascriptions are used to gain an understanding of a phenomena. But allocating a deification qualification requires extraordinary proof. Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Samson, all had extraordinary proofs but were not deified (with the exception of Jesus). Theologians allocated that their acts emanated from the divine but they themselves were not divine there is the distinction versus Zeus and the pantheon would be considered divine entities.

Now given our understanding of the world today would primordial aliens with superior technology be considered gods to us? Perhaps. But for some of us with deductive reasoning we could ascribe to these ancient beings, beings that are superior and technologically advanced. This is distinct from gods because of the key quality of mortality. divine beings do not die because they are incorporeal, they are not composed of any material substance in this world.

Sunstone said:

Is it plausible to think of a god -- any god -- as feeling or experiencing anger, or is that just an anthropomorphism?

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Projection. i am not sure that fits under even anthropomorphism.

I could write, "nature is incredibly angry with us and crops will fail, massive deathes will follow if we do not listen to nature."

That's probably it THE most accurate way to explain god in a contemporary way written about thousands of years ago with some stories going back possibly 12 20 thousand years ago.

Funny scientists are basically saying exactly the same thing without the angery personified nature because science is emtionally disconected from nature generally. That emotional disconnect is considered "rational" and has been around a long while in science. But Is it really? Is it not too an anthropormorphic projection of a particular kind, generally speaking that is also called reductionism is it not?

I find the 16th century scientific philosophy justifiying emotional dissconnect from nature as NOT being actual science, and the "scientific" daily diet we are fed today and what many pretend to be "reasoned" science, is actually A joke. ITS NOT SCIENCE, its actually , just personal expression or anthropormorphism of a particular kind. So what.

Sometimes poetry is the clearest language badly understood. Its far easier to badly understand nature.