Can God Experience Pleasure?

[SalixIncendium]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

 

[Kenny]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

Yes, I believe He does.

I'm not sure that I am attribuing human qualities to God, but rather God attributed His qualities into man.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Yes, I believe He does.

I'm not sure that I am attribuing human qualities to God, but rather God attributed His qualities into man.

I'm assuming you're reply has basis in Genesis 1:27, which I anticipated ITT.

If my assumption is correct, and if He attributed His qualities unto man, why do we have sociopaths, murders, rapists, and other miscreants roaming the earth?

And while I'm anticipating a Satan reference in upcoming posts, I'll preempt them by asking why He would introduce such malevolent attributes to mankind, or question the relevance to the OP.

 

[Kenny]

I'm assuming you're reply has basis in Genesis 1:27, which I anticipated ITT.

If my assumption is correct, and if He attributed His qualities unto man, why do we have sociopaths, murders, rapists, and other miscreants roaming the earth?

Good question and, yes, I base my viewpoint on Gen 1:27.

For the answer to your question, I would also base my views on that source. Satan has an influence and is the root cause of sociopaths, murders etc. Jesus would say it this way, "It is the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come to give life and that more abundandly.".

If one isn't serving God, then one is serving a god of rebellion.

 

[Vouthon]

No, the traditional doctrine holds that God is defined by divine impassibility: which means that he is not affected by emotions like we are, as in changing from a state of pleasure to one of grief or pain.

See:

Impassibility - Wikipedia

Impassibility (from Latin in-, "not", passibilis, "able to suffer, experience emotion") describes the theological doctrine that God does not experience pain or pleasure from the actions of another being. It has often been seen as a consequence of divine aseity, the idea that God is absolutely independent of any other being, i.e., in no way causally dependent. Being affected (literally made to have a certain emotion, affect) by the state or actions of another would seem to imply causal dependence.

The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that God is impassible. The divine nature accordingly has no emotions, changes, alterations, height, width, depth, or any other temporal attributes. In Catholic doctrine, it would be erroneous and blasphemous to attribute changes or emotional states to God, except by analogy. Thus scriptural expressions which indicate "anger" or "sadness" on God's part are considered anthropomorphisms, mere analogies to explain mankind's relationship to God, who is impassible in his own nature. Some objecting to this claim assert that if God cannot have emotions, then God cannot love, which is a central tenet of Christianity. However, Catholics would point out that love is not an emotion except in a secondary sense, and is far more than simply a changeable emotion. Furthermore, the human nature of Christ expressed emotional love as well as possessing the timeless, unconditioned "agape" of God.​

 

[Sunstone]

I don't think god experiences pleasure or pain.

For one thing, those two are not only anthropomorphisms, but for god to fully and therefore authentically experience them would mean god might even be subject to their full effects on us -- very much including their effect of distracting us from true love for others. How absurd that would be! And if god does experience them, but not fully experience them why not? Isn't that equally absurd?

I mean, it seems to me that we humans so very often start out loving someone, but then all too soon we unconsciously shift to loving the pleasures they bring us. We so seldom immediately notice the shift, but it's still there. Afterwards, something happens, such as the nominal object of our love looks at another man or woman with appreciation in their eyes or voice. Suddenly, we are jealous! Not empathetic and happy for them that they have experienced a moment's delight, but jealous.

Yet let's ask ourselves: What are we really affirming, really loving, when we feel jealousy? Isn't that ourselves?

And if we nevertheless conclude we are still loving them, then how is that "loving" in any way significantly distinguishable from simple emotional dependency?

Or on a perhaps more concrete level, how is that jealously at all like the lightness of spirit we felt when we first met them? Where has that lightness gone only to be replaced by leaden jealousy?

That god could fully experience pleasure, with all that implies, is simply absurd.

 

[Woberts]

I can confirm that the only god that matters* does have feelings.

*Yes, I'm talking about the FSM. Deal with it.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I can confirm that the only god that matters* does have feelings.

*Yes, I'm talking about the FSM. Deal with it.

Apathy doesn't count.

 

[Trailblazer]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

Scriptures of various religions do indicate that God can be pleased, but what does that mean? We also know from scriptures that God can love and have wrath and can forgive, but we cannot understand how God does that since the intrinsic nature of God is unknowable.

While the Bahá'í writings teach of a personal god who is a being with a personality (including the capacity to reason and to feel love), they clearly state that this does not imply a human or physical form.[2]Shoghi Effendi writes:

What is meant by personal God is a God Who is conscious of His creation, Who has a Mind, a Will, a Purpose, and not, as many scientists and materialists believe, an unconscious and determined force operating in the universe. Such conception of the Divine Being, as the Supreme and ever present Reality in the world, is not anthropomorphic, for it transcends all human limitations and forms, and does by no means attempt to define the essence of Divinity which is obviously beyond any human comprehension. To say that God is a personal Reality does not mean that He has a physical form, or does in any way resemble a human being. To entertain such belief would be sheer blasphemy.[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God in the Bahá'í Faith

 

[Kenny]

And while I'm anticipating a Satan reference in upcoming posts, I'll preempt them by asking why He would introduce such malevolent attributes to mankind, or question the relevance to the OP.

He... Satan?

 

[SalixIncendium]

He... Satan?

No. He=God in my post.

 

[Kenny]

I don't think god experiences pleasure or pain.

.

If Christians are correct in that Jesus is God, then He does and has experienced pleasure and pain (just a thought)

 

[SalixIncendium]

If Christians are correct in that Jesus is God, then He does and has experienced pleasure and pain (just a thought)

So God experiences human attributes only when in human form?

 

[Katzpur]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

Yes, God can experience all of these things because He is not just some invisible force that fills the universe, He is my Father in Heaven. He is like my earthly father (who was pretty wonderful himself), except that He has all of the attributes of an absolutely perfect parent. I can't imagine a parent who had no emotions, who was never happy or sad or angry or forgiving.

 

[Kenny]

No. He=God in my post.

I'm not sure I quite understand so let me assume I do.

It wasn't God who introduced it in as much as Satan was first without rebellion. Adam was suppose to maintain the order of keeping Satan out of the Garden but chose instead to heed and follow Satan.

 

[Katzpur]

Adam was suppose to maintain the order of keeping Satan out of the Garden but chose instead to heed and follow Satan.

This is kind of off-topic, but how'd you come up with the idea that it was Adam's job to keep Satan out of the Garden?

 

[Kenny]

So God experiences human attributes only when in human form?

Perhaps I over simplified it. Forgive me.

No... I believe He felt the pain of separation/divorce when Adam chose to follow another spirit. But the physical pain.. (just an assumption in as much as the Bible is not specifice)... yes since there is no pain in Heaven.

 

[SalixIncendium]

...He has all of the attributes of an absolutely perfect parent.

What brought you to this conclusion?

 

[SalixIncendium]

Adam was suppose to maintain the order of keeping Satan out of the Garden but chose instead to heed and follow Satan.

Wasn't the serpent already in the garden (assuming the serpent was Satan) when Adam and Eve were given the choice of whether or not to eat the forbidden fruit?

 

[David T]

In a recent thread, it was suggested that God can be pleased by one action over another.

Can God experience pleasure? Can God be happy? sad? angry? forgiving?

Is it productive in your faith to attribute human qualities to God? Why?

"Yes I have thought it over quite a lot. The answer is 42"