The authority of God is sui generis, and quite beyond human understanding. God is "beyond" spacetime reality and all categories of human thought. He is not subject to the order of creation which He created. There are some who say (as you do) that God is "vengeful," "inflicting infinite consequences" on human miscreants. To me that is a caricature; for God is Love, Truth, the Good, Justice -- at least these are the descriptors that a faithful Christian who responds to His call of love and grace attaches to Him. Perhaps your understanding of the JudeoChristian tradition is a tad superficial, King? Have you ever really bothered to "study" it? Or ever allowed yourself to be drawn by God's love for you?
In short, I think some of your assumptions may not be too well founded. Which maybe is why we're having such a difficult time understanding each other. For one thing, I don't know what in the world you want me to "try again." Please be more specific, King!
Thanks for writing!
I hope you don't mind me jumping in on your conversation, but I wanted to comment on the above.
I concur with your assertion that God isn't vengeful, but probably for much different reasons. One of those reasons is that I disagree that God is not subject to order, and I also disagree that God is beyond space-time. My personal feeling is that God is subject to order because God IS order, and God is not beyond space-time, but rather underlies it. I sometimes think that both religious philosophers seeking to determine the nature of God and scientists seeking a "Theory of Everything" are stumbling towards the same goals. I believe that the reason things work the way they do is because we have a fundamental order to the universe, perhaps someday identifiable as God.
I think I came to this conclusion after a summer intensive course in Dante. I was reading Sagan's "Contact" concurrently with studying the Divine Comedy. We were discussing the means by which souls arrive in hell, according to Dante, and had come to the conclusion that the Inferno suggests not vengeance, but a certain degree of determinism. That is, similar perhaps to binary code, if you are at 0 when you die, you go to heaven, or if you are at 1, you go to hell. Your own actions determine your setting. Of course, it's more complicated than that, but that's the gist.
Between that and Sagan's idea that messages have been embedded in numbers like Pi got me thinking that maybe the numbers aren't the signifier, but the actual signified. The reason that things like evolution of species (to segue briefly back to the topic of this thread) work so beautifully is due to the fundamental order of things that holds the universe together. An order that I do not believe was created by God, but that actually is God.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
ok, let's cut to the chase: without carrot and stick, no god (real or dreamed up) could hold any sway over humans, or make us consider what he/she/it/they mean by right and wrong. The J/C God supposedly has the ultimate carrot and stick: Heaven and Hell, and, according to his PR boys, *constantly* refers to these imposed consequences in order to impose upon man a code of right and wrong. the entire bible backs me on this, so, no: this "assumption" is certainly not "in error"
by the way, you contradict yourself.
you say: "God is "beyond" spacetime reality and all categories of human thought. He is not subject to the order of creation which He created."
you follow this with: "There are some who say (as you do) that God is "vengeful," "inflicting infinite consequences" on human miscreants" - clearly suggesting that these (quite scriptural) traits cannot apply to the God of scripture.
and then: "To me that is a caricature"
followed by: "God is Love, Truth, the Good, Justice"
these are no more or less a charicature than "vengeful, jealous, punitive, and wrathful"
and all are human words in a human tongue used to describe a human understanding of human concepts.
so, really, pleas: make up your mind - is God beyond "categories of human thought" or not?
This may be true but it is of no use to scientific inquiry. The same argument has been made for nearly all proposed deities; none of them are part of science for this reason. It fails to even distinguish among the competing deities. Scientific inquiry is by its own nature restricted to what humans can understand.
Likewise such an idea is of no use in political of legal decisions. "God told me to do it," is not and excuse for any action. The legal system judges (or at least ought to judge) actions, not philosophical beliefs of the actors.