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From: bch@unc.UUCP (Byron Howes )
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: More on the premises
Message-ID: <6609@unc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jan-84 02:02:54 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.6609
Posted: Tue Jan 17 02:02:54 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jan-84 06:32:03 EST
References: <499@ihuxn.UUCP>
Organization: University of North Carolina Comp. Center
Lines: 38

What we are banging against here is a fundamental dichotomy in western
religious philosophy.  On the one hand we have those, whom you seem to
represent, who renounce human judgement in the face of G-d's majesty.
(What reply can I give thee, I who carry no weight?  Job 40:4)  This
is certainly in the tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam 
(and probably Zoroastriansim.)  On the other we have those, like myself,
who stand by the human principles they have been taught and insist
on judging our gods.  Certainly the intellectual traditions of the
Greeks, Romans, Celts and Germanic tribes.  This doesn't add anything
but certainly indicates that many before us have been here before.

My response to the initial question, "What right have we to judge
G-d?"  was twofold:

(1) We have the right to judge because we have been given the right
to judge and asked to use it.  At all points in the Bible man is asked
to discern right from wrong, good from evil, sin from blessing, truth
from falsehood.  That we are capable of judgement is sufficient to 
give us the right to judge.  (Before flames incinerate my terminal
let me say that judgement means merely that, the intellectual process
of discernment.  It does not follow that the capability to do anything
is equivalent to the right to do anything.)

(2) "So G-d created man in his own image; in the image of G-d he
created him; male and female he created them." (Gen. 1:27)
What does that mean?  Certainly that does not mean physical image.
Certainly that does not mean with all the omnipotence and omniscience
of G-d.  It may mean in the sense of goodness and righteousness.
"Good" from man's standpoint cannot be all that different than from
G-d's standpoint, nor can evil.

Given that we have both the capacity and the criterion to make judgements,
the question becomes what gives us the right *not* to judge?
-- 

					Byron Howes
					UNC - Chapel Hill
					(decvax!duke!unc!bch)