User talk:The Goddess Maratrea

RationalWiki is no fun any more. sterile^talk 02:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Ha ha, very funny

Ha ha, very funny. But you need to work on improving your Maratrea-impersonation. You have got some aspects of her personality wrong. For starters, smiting my page. Unlike the God of the Old Testament, Maratrea doesn't do smiting. Why would she? If you aren't doing the right thing, it's because she's making you to not do the right thing — she is all-powerful. Of course, she may "smite" you still, e.g. maybe you'll get run over by a bus, but that's not because of what you've done in the past, that is to bring about what is needed in the future. You have this Old Testament image of God, and are imposing that on Maratrea, even though she is very different.

And then, you have her angry at me for believing in God. But God = Goddess. Maratrea is God and Goddess. She is not inherently-gendered, in her ultimate nature she is before and after every gender; but we are free to conceive of her as whatever gender we wish (male or female). Now, the preference in Maratreanism is to use "she" rather than "he", "Goddess" rather than "God" — primarily because, motherhood is a better metaphor than fatherhood for her relationship to us, for as our bodies come out of our mother's bodies, so do our souls come out of her soul — but it is not an absolute preference. In particular, when one wants to emphasise in the discussion what Maratreanism has in common with other religions (e.g. belief in a deity), rather than its unique aspects, then in that circumstance the term God has some advantages over Goddess (at least in this culture.)

And "Bow before me, and pray that I forgive you"? Maratrea doesn't forgive. Whatever we do, we do it because she tells us to do it. We perfectly obey her every whim. Is she going to forgive us for doing what we are told? She doesn't need to. Now, we do need forgiveness from ourselves, and from one another, and she can help us gain that, but we don't need any forgiveness from her; none is required, none is on offer.

As to this, you haven't got it there either, but I'll save that for that page.

Try harder next time (if you don't lose interest before then) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:38, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Haha very funny now here are twelve thousand words about why your joke is wrong.--^talk 08:06, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe because it's a pretty lame joke? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 08:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I command you to stop writing long, boring diatribes all over this wiki. Obey me! The Goddess Maratrea (talk) 12:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

If you were really Maratrea, you wouldn't have to command me, would you now? You'd just make me. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

So is Maratreanism kind of like Calvinism? --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 18:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

In some ways, yes. But it is universalism, Calvinism without reprobation, a Calvinism in which everyone is predestined to salvation. From TULIP to Universalism is not very far, just replace the L with another U. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

What about murderers, rapists, perverts, etc. Are they predestined to salvation too? --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 20:53, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they do. Although, they may go to hell first, but hell is only of limited duration, then they get into heaven. Even Hitler gets to go to heaven in the end, although I reckon Hitler has probably got a few million years of hell ahead of him. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

But I find myself arriving at the same problem I have when I consider the Christian God: why would your goddess send people to Hell for doing what she wanted them to do? If she controls everything than why would she make people be evil in the first place and then damn them for it? I'm not criticising your religion, I'm merely curious. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 15:22, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Why do we have to wait? Why couldn't she have made this life a little better. Every time I see children dying of starvation because yet another natural disaster has hit the horn of Africa I wonder what sort of sick omnipotence would allow this. Jack Hughes (talk) 15:45, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

@LetThemEatCake: why would your goddess send people to Hell for doing what she wanted them to do? - well, hell is maybe not the best name for what I believe in, but I use it for the sake of convenience in communicating. Maybe the term purgatory might be a bit better. To answer your question: Maratrea does not send people to hell to punish them. It would not make any sense to punish them for obeying her. But, I believe her goal is to coax/seduce all souls into voluntary reunion with one another and then ultimately with her. Now, there are various obstacles in the way of that; but among them, is the obstacle of wrongdoing. Will Breivik's victims agree to become one person with him? One doubts that very much. But this is part of what hell seeks to change. Hell is perfect justice for the victims. In hell, Breivik will experience first hand what it will be like to be shot or blown up, or have that happen to a dear friend or family member. This is done, not by hurting him anew in the same way, but by exposing him to exactly the same pain - the experiences, feelings, thoughts of his victims (both those he hurt, and their loved ones), are played back to him precisely the same, in a sort of immersive virtual reality experience. But, because the pain he caused was finite, the pain he will know in hell is finite, and through this trial he will be transformed into a new being. The real purpose of hell is to change the way he feels about his victims, and the way his victims feel about him, as a step along the road to the willing merger of their souls; for the merger of souls is the work of heaven.

@JackHughes: Why couldn't she have made this life better? Well, she could have made a perfect world, but if she did none of us would ever have been born, different people would have been born instead. Maybe, in another universe, she has made a perfect world; but for us to exist, she must make a world filled with imperfection. And she loves us, not just as persons-in-general, but as particular persons. Thus, loving us, she creates the evils necessary for our existence. You speak of dying children, but it is only because my older siblings died that I exist - it seems very likely to me that a world in which they lived I would never have been born; even if they had never been born, I still very much doubt I would be. But, what is true for me, is true for everyone, just maybe for me more immediately obvious. Even if the world was only slightly better, that would be enough for someone she loves to not exist. Now, you may not believe this account of mine - but if it is true, would it not solve the famed problem of evil? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a variant of the "God works in mysterious ways" tautology. This must be the way god wills it because this is the way it is. Therefore god must have willed it. And then we get to But, what is true for me, is true for everyone, just maybe for me more immediately obvious. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Of course, you are a prophet crying in the wilderness and all around you people are blind to your truth. It's so obvious now! Jack Hughes (talk) 10:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

No it's not. "God works in mysterious ways" claims not to know why God does the things God does, just that it must be for a good reason. This answer claims to know why God does the things God does. So they are very different answers. You misunderstand what I mean by "what is true for me, is true for everyone, just maybe for me more immediately obvious". I'm not talking about my beliefs about God here, I'm talking about the fact that in a perfect world none of us would exist. In a world without war, without murder, without rape, without torture, without genocide, without pain, without disease, without death, without famine, without tyranny, without oppression, without injustice, without poverty... neither you nor I would have ever been born, we would not exist. That is what I say is true for everyone, but I think clearer to me in my personal circumstances. This isn't a variant of "God works in mysterious ways", it is actually a theistic version of Nietzsche's doctrine that "All things are in love". Without evil, we do not exist; so, when we condemn God, or the universe - the issue remains even if one is an atheist; this article (thanks to AD for making me aware of it) makes the good point that the answers are still hidden even if we believe in God... “Why?” is not very different from Job’s “Why, Lord?” - for the existence of evil, then we are really condeming the existence of ourselves, we who are evil's children. Ultimately, I see the problem of evil as our inability to love ourselves, in the way in which Nietzsche's Übermensch would. But I believe God loves us even as we fail to love ourselves. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

So, for us bears of very little brain...

• We must have evil/suffering otherwise we couldn't exist. This implies that any existence must involve evil and suffering. Therefore the afterlife, as promised by your goddess involves evil and suffering. In fact, as we can only exist in this world then the afterlife is going to be pretty much the same.
• Of course, if the afterlife is going to be different - heavenly, for example - then this implies that the goddess can create a world different from this one, and, presumably, better.
• So why do we have to wait? Why can't we have the afterlife 'up front'?

Jack Hughes (talk) 13:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

"This implies that any existence must involve evil and suffering." - any existence for us implies evil and suffering at some point. People other than us could easily exist in a world without suffering, but we can't.

Therefore the afterlife, as promised by your goddess involves evil and suffering. - The afterlife needs evil and suffering, and it has evil and suffering; but not in the afterlife, in what comes before the afterlife, in life. So heaven is free of evil and suffering, but for us, we can only get to heaven via a world of evil and suffering; others might get there without it, but we can't. We are born evil, and will be saved from that evil, but we can't be born good. Heaven is what it is because of who is in it, so without an evil world before it, heaven would not contain who it does, hence heaven would not be what it is. Yet, though heaven needs evil, it needs evil outside of it not in it. It lacks evil in it even as it depends on it outside of it.

In fact, as we can only exist in this world then the afterlife is going to be pretty much the same. - this world could become perfect tomorrow, and we would still exist. But it can't become perfect a century ago, or we would never be born. And, this is why for now evil continues - the evils of tomorrow are not necessary for my existence or your existence, but they are necessary for someone's. But in death, the world becomes perfect for us, even as this world remains in evil, until the end.

this implies that the goddess can create a world different from this one - yes, she can, and maybe she even has (as a parallel universe). But, we shouldn't care about worlds she could create which lack us, we should care about worlds she could create that have us in it. Some of the former can be perfectly good, but all of the later are filled with evil.

So why do we have to wait? Why can't we have the afterlife 'up front'? - because our suffering gives life to others. Through our pain is purchased the existence of millions to come. She loves us, but she loves them also, therefore despite loving us she hurts us for the sake of her love for them, just as she hurt others whom she loves for the sake of her love for us. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 20:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Let Them Eat Cake: But are we doing what God wants us to do? We're not dolls, you know. We have free will. Free creatures must have the possibility of going both wrong and right, otherwise they aren't free.

But a society of free souls could not exists without a relatively independent and 'inexorable' Nature; a fixed nature of matter implies a possibility, though not a necessity, of evil and suffering, for not all states of matter will be equally agreeable to the wishes of a given soul. A "corrective" intervention by God in the laws of nature, which would remove the possibility (or the effect) of pain and abuse, while clearly imaginable, would eventually lead to a wholly meaningless universe, in which nothing important depends on man's choices. --Idiot number 57 (talk) 16:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

A good point but by that reckoning, why do we need God? --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 19:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well. Miracles are rare, though, as they should be. But that question is silly - I don't think we "need" God in sense you mean it at all. We are created by Him and everything about us should be strictly defined through Him and Him only. --Idiot number 57 (talk) 19:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

@57: I have a different understanding of free will from you. It sounds to me like your view of free will is absolute, either you have it or you don't. For me, free will is relative, you can have more or less, and how much you have depends on the standard you are measuring against. For example, I have free will whether or not to use heroin, and the heroin addict has free will in that matter too, but obviously the heroin addict has a fair bit less free will than I do when it comes to deciding whether to use heroin. On the other hand, faced with a choice between chicken and beef for dinner, I would say the heroin addict has just as much free will in that matter as I do. When we say we have "free will", we generally mean our will is free from any unusual detriments, like addiction, mental illness, drugs, or mind control rays. But, here we are measuring free will against an everyday standard; suppose we measure free will against a God who has absolute power over the universe. We might conclude, we have free will measured against an ordinary human standard, but lack it measured against a divine standard. These two positions are not incompatible - since God's power over the universe is absolute and unchanging, that power does not constitute an unusual detriment. Thus, I believe, that while we have free will in an ordinary sense, we lack free will with respect to God.

I also believe, following some of the Reformers, that God has two wills - a secret and revealed. The revealed will tells us "Don't do X!", the secret will meanwhile says "Do X!". This does seem contradictory, but I understand the revealed will as a subset of the secret - the revealed will is God's will relative to the end of the final triumph of the good (without reference to which particular persons exist to participate in that triumph, which is the particularity of the triumph); the secret will is God's will relative to other ends, such as the end of the existence of particular persons. Within the secret will, some of these other ends override the end of the revealed will, while within the revealed will those other ends are absent, and hence do not override anything. Though for now these wills are contrary, in the last days they are unified and become identical.

Which also means I take a very different approach to theodicy than you do. To me, the existence of evil is not a consequence of free choice necessary for meaningful existence; to me, choice is not free against God, and the existence of evil is a consequence of God's love for particular persons. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

"Whatever we do, we do it because she tells us to do it. We perfectly obey her every whim." So all the evil in the world is your Gods idea because we are all meat puppets ? cool religion. Is she maybe related to Mara, god of the the Marags ? 67.72.98.45 (talk) 01:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC) (yes I am ignoring ceiling cat again)

She creates all evil, but she does so out of love for us. She has no particular connection to the work of David Eddings. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 02:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

You have been cooped

RationalWiki:Chicken_coop#The Goddess Maratrea (((Zack Martin)))^™ 03:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, silly proto-prophet. I am omniscent. I alreay knew that! The Goddess Maratrea (talk)