Nefastos wrote:
That is the path where one believes in greater powers that are ultimately benevolent and/or meaningful. But the deeper I went and the more I experienced the spiritual life, the more the problem of suffering gnawed at my nerves and my heart. Finally I just couldn't believe anymore that all that nightmare hell I experienced both day and night – feeling (astrally, i.e. imagining) the pain of the people tortured and killed by the other who didn't even know what they were doing, &c. &c. – was "for something better", or that it could be necessary by any means. Karma was not the answer, for usually the payback of pain only makes people more & more selfish, broken and less altruistic. God, even the esoteric God – Logos, or by whatever name we would call him/it – was therefore impotent, completely inhuman and void of compassion, evil, or all of these. I saw no hope, only the endless insane spiral of torture, where no death would bring end.
[...] Regardlessly, that was the point I inverted my rose-cross, because I no longer believed that the suffering down here is meaningful to the extent we (all beings, not just humans) experience it.
If we'd like to discuss this like poor
scholastics, even if there ever was some all-powerful creator of nature and power always needs according to it's essence something that doesn't have power in the same degree, since otherwise it would be impossible to work this power on anything. Gives the here assumed most high power of God, it had to have something right from the beginning, which was weaker in comparison and could be worked
on by God's force. Accordingly this something needed to be something which is
not the all-powerful God, but something weaker. Now, according to the assumption, God had only a limited set of choises to be himself in his all-powerfulness. Being able to choose even
absolutely freely supposes something which can be chosen, when something other is rejected. This way there was some options for God, i.e. to
destroy the weaker permanently and lose His all-powerfullness, since power could then not be
worked and would be an imaginary power without actual possibility, or destroy the weaker perdiodically. If it was destroyed and created again periodically, we'll only face the same problem. Even if it was destroyed supposed to be destroyed only temporarily, God wouldn't anymore have anything with less power than Him to create it again from. This could be prevented, if that something weaker destroyed was already
nothing, but if it already was nothing, destroying it wouldn't change anything and would only show God's powerlessness over it, since His power would alter it at all in any way by trying to destroy it, and since nothing wouldn't be destroyed by God's power it also wouldn't be weaker than God. In another way God could use his power only passively, i.e. as an eternal
chance of doing something, but that way He's power would be unused and if it's unusable, when there's the possibility for using it, God's power would be
worse than using it, i.e. it would be
better not to use this power. If God's all-powerfulness was so bad that it shouldn't
ever be used, it even be
absolutely bad, since only that power is absolutely bad, which should
never be used on any occasion, even if it was
possible. If God is the
all-good, how could his power be absolutely bad? The only solution for God to be absolutely powerful and good, is the use of His power and not the repressing of it. So, this something had to be worked with, even though it was weaker than God. It doesn't matter here if it's supposed to be a part of God or something besides Him, e.g. like the body of a thinking man, whose mind has control over the body, since if God was like mind and body, it would be said that He's all-powerfulness was his mind and the weaker was body, which would lead only to divide God to God's head and God's body, and the all-powerful creator would be God's head. Since God in his all-powerfulness was also all-good, he used his power on the weaker one, which was also from the beginning and which an all-mighty God would not destroy, since it would have deptrived him of his all-powerfulness as if it was better it was not, even though only those things are better not being, which are
bad. Because of this, God's all-powerfulness in it's all-goodness
had to be used on the weaker and not to destroy it, but as the goodness of God's power. Since this weaker should by all-powerful and all-good be
altered and not destroyed, it had to be made something it
still wasn't. I've sofar mentiod the weaker other, but it's also an important point, that it should also be worse than God, if God was ever to use His power to alter it for good, which is befitting for an all-good God.
There would now hypotethically speaking be some options to consider the particular way of creating. Either (a.) God would instantly make the weaker as powerful as He is, but then He'd lose his all-powerfulness, since the other would be as powerful and neither would be all-powerful. If (a.1.) the other of these two most-powerful was also created all-good, both's power would be useless, since it couldn't ever be used and what can't ever be used is totally useless and good
for nothing wouldn't befit these all-good Gods. If (b.) the other was instantly created all-powerful but less good, God would again lose He's all-powerfulness and besides Him would now be something worse He can never alter, i.e. an
eternal most-powerful God more evil than all-good most-powerful God. There would eternally be more evil as powerful as God. This is hardly the
best way to create, since God's all-power would then be for no good and created eternal evil. The third option (c.) is, that God
instantly creates something all-good, but not as powerful as Him. Then (c.1.) He's possibility of using His power would again end and further use would be for no good, but how could this be with an all-good God? If (c.2.) God
instantly created it less-good and not as powerful as him, but then His power would not have done anything good, but only more evil for all eternity. There's only a few options left. If God (d.1.) made the weaker become ever weaker
gradually it would eventually change into nothing and since nothing isn't anything, but good is something, God's power would be used for nothing good. If (d.2.) God made the weaker gradually become ever more powerful, it would eventually be as powerful as God and neither would be all-powerful. It wouldn't here change anything, if the weaker was at the same time made gradually better or worse, since both would be most-powerful, the bettering rendering all-powerfulness in the end useless not befitting either's all-goodness, and the worsening would again end with eternal eving being created, rendering God's all-good incompatible with His all-powerful. Same kind of reasoning could be made for other cases, i.e. a gradual change which has a limit would in all cases lead to an all-good God's power being
finally good for nothing.
There's only one option, which consistentlty befits an all-good and all-powerful creator and that is the eternal bettering of the weaker, of which some will also stay worse than others. The weaker as a
whole must
never reach static eternity, regardless of it's creation being worsening or bettering, since either options would eventually render God's all-powerfulness not good. This means, that
eternal creation is the only option befitting God's all-good all-powerfulness. Of course, it also has to be eventually eternal
betterment , since eternal gradual worsening would create eternally more bad than good, which would render God's creation eternally worse than it could have been, even though He had the choise to make it eternal gradual betterment. If God is also all-wise, He doesn't choose blindly a creation which contradicts He's all-powerful all-goodness, i.e. as all-powerful, all-good and all-wise, the only option for God to create, is the eternal bettering of the creation, which is eternally weaker and in parts worse than Him. In this way God's all-good all-powerfulness is used in it's
only consistent way, i.e. bettering gradually and eternally the weaker and worse. It would be worse to change even temporarily back the bettering alteration, since it temporarily contradicts God's all-goodness in creating, even though we here assume God to be
eternally Himself, i.e. all-good, all-powerful and all-wise. From this follows, that God can't use His all-powerfulness to worsen creations gradually getting better, even though this will eventually deprive God from
some of His all-power, but consistent with all-goodness, since He couldn't anymore consistently use his power on creatures if they all are
alreadygradually bettering, or even instantly all-good. The only option left is, that God is all-good, all-powerful and all-wise in keeping His creation weaker than Him, although He might still gradually or instantly make
some them all-good, but not
all of them, since then His power would in the
end be good for nothing. The only solution then is, that an all-powerful, all-good and all-wise God must choose a larger or lesser portion of the original weaker other, and better this portion either simultaneously or gradually to be
all-good in the end, i.e. eternally. Besides this, there must also be a third portion, which consists of the ones
eternally made better, but never all-good, either gradually or instantly. This group also divides to two portions: those bettered instantly as worse than all-good and those bettered gradually to be worse than all-good. More could still be said, but at least it seems proven, that even
scholastically thinking an
eternally all-powerful, all-good and all-wise God must create something worse than all-good and eternally have something weaker than Him. An all-powerful, all-good, all-wise eternal God would never contradict Himself by creating something exactly like Himself, but He must by His divine atrributes only to create weaker things and some of them even eternally worse than others. Such a God can't even in the give up His all-powerfulness, since that would imply that He wasn't all-good to begin with. Worse creatures or accidents worsening them, or both must always be created, since without them God's all-power would again be good for nothing although it's one of the all-good God's
eternal attributes and consistently is eternal even from the beginning.