Sadly, humans are capable of rationalizing terrible things, including: The Inquisition, Fascism, Slavery, etc…
Individuals think they will act morally or rationally. But we’ve plenty of proof that large groups of individuals are capable of terrible things in the name of a “greater good”.
Spong describes Biblical texts like the one in the OP as “Sins of Scripture”–actually the title of one of his books. He claims there is a loving God in the Bible if you strip away such texts and understand the historical context, realizing that you can’t follow everything recommended by ancient tribal people.
For a bishop, he’s taking a fairly radical viewpoint.
Frankly, I don’t find that the God of the New Testament has any better credentials as a 21st century Western liberal (that is what we’re talking about, isn’t it?)
Condemning people to burn in hellfire eternally for their sins is not a concept of punishment I could agree with. It savours a little of the three-strikes law, come to think of it, which I’m also against.
Jesus too comes across as rather condemnatory and unforgiving of alternative life-styles. Money-changers need to feed their families too, big guy!
The claim that God is good is simply unfalsifiable in a way that claims about mundane people are not. No amount of experience with a purported atemporal being of an incomprehensible nature suffices to give even an inkling of what its real motives are. Like most theology, the theologies of God character simply suffer from lack of imagination, not any logical boundaries.
“Monster island isn’t really an island, it’s actually a peninsula!”
Sure. But still I must make my best moral guess, which is that his morals are evil and wrong. Why should I think otherwise? Because he tells me he is good?
If you’re saying the Bible was written by people with no input from any god, real or not, and reflects their primitive morals, fine. If one believes the Bible is divinely inspired, and the word of god is really the word of god, then the moral advancement of its writers means nothing, since God’s morals should be perfect and unchanging.
In the former case, one should not use the Bible as justification for any current moral decisions - input, maybe, but final word, no. In the latter case, one needs to explain why we should be following the moral code of a monster.
BTW, the Greek Gods never seemed to be held up as moral paragons - they were just very powerful guys. So that analogy doesn’t work well.
The question is answered in the thread title: “Believers, why are you sure that god has the right moral values?” The answer is that we believe. Belief is not a matter of logic or evidence or collection of data. It is a matter of a feeling in one’s soul. I don’t know why God created the Universe and I agree that it seems strange that He would require us to worship him. It seems illogical. But in my heart, I believe it to be true. People who are perplexed by what they see as inconsistencies and logical fallacies in Christianity don’t understand this. Basically, if you don’t believe, you can’t understand the mindset of those of us who do.
I’ve been a Christian my whole life. The aforementioned passages in the Bible have always troubled me. But I believe that they fit into God’s plan in some way that I don’t understand. That’s (to me) a decent summary of a definition of Faith.
This argument won’t get old so long as hundreds of millions of people think the god of the Bible sets morality, while ignoring the monstrous things he orders.
The choices are:
I go for the first option myself.
So, if a voice you were convinced came from God told you to kill someone, would you?
Yes.
God designed the universe, not from scratch, but from NOTHING. He made each atom by hand, and designed the rules of physics, and set them in motion in a way that He could know where each and every one is at any moment of time - uncertainty principal my ass - He knows both the position and velocity of every partial at every moment of time. He designed neural networks, a super computer that we all are using inside our heads and bodies. He knows each and every nerve impulse, and it’s effect. He knows how thought neural networks will interact with our selves and environment. He know the date and time that everyone was conceived and the date and time of each and every death.
And you ask how such a being could not set up a moral code for us?
Might doesn’t make right. I’ll decide for myself what’s right and wrong. God has to conform to my morality. I’m not conforming to his.
Please believe me when I say I’m not trying to be in t he least bit patronising or condescending but…do you really believe this, or am I being whooshed?
Hello, Mayo. This is God speaking. I have chosen to use the poster known as Diogenes the Cynic to communicate my message to you. My message is this…send all of your money to Diogenes the Cynic. His email is in his profile. If you do not do as I command, you will burn in eternal flames.
That is all.
Omnipotency does not destroy personality. A person with knowledge may use it for good, or for ill, depending on what they want. Why should God be any different? Why are you willing to submit entirely to the moral code to a being who, whilst powerful and knowledgable, has motives we cannot understand?
Mayo Speaks:
I want to thank you for your good answer. I would like to ask you a more specific question.
Now, god has several times ordered the killing of every single inhabitant of some town.
Let us now say that you are in the situation that you are in the town. There are many thousands of people, and you have a machine gun, and you are able to kill them all. God orders you to do so.
If you will bear with me, allow me to assume that god then immediately forgot about it. I know this is impossible in your eyes, but try to assume it for the sake of argument. He orders you to kill the people, but he doesn’t know whether you did it or not.
Will you then kill all the people? There are crying babies, mothers clinging on to them, innocent children, and so on. You can allow them all to live. The only argument for killing them, is your belief that god’s order was just. Would you do it?
Nice try, but I don’t believe you. And this sort of mockery of religion tends to annoy me. I’m not saying that I don’t get your point, or that I can’t take a joke, I’m just calmly asking you to stop. I’d appreciate it. I get comments like this all the damn time, and they grate on me. Sorry if this sounds a bit mean.
Besides, I don’t know how to get all of my money into the computer to send. The floppy drive only accepts four or five bills before becoming hopelessly clogged.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking. But I do believe that every order God gives is just. The problem is that I’ve never seen a burning bush or heard a voice from above. But if God unambiguously ordered me to destroy a town, I would try to do it. I’m imperfect, so I can’t say for certain whether or not I’d chicken out at the last minute. If I did, I would consider it a sin and repent and ask for forgiveness. And I would of course feel terrible after killing all those people. But God demanded it, so I did it.
If you’re asking if I would carry out the order if God gave me conflicting instructions, then the answer is no. I wouldn’t kill one man, let alone thousands, unless I was positive that I was doing God’s work. If I got conflicting instructions, then I’d pray for guidance and wait for it (guidance, that is).
All that being said, I don’t think that you all need to worry about God telling me to destroy your towns. In my 19 years, God has never revealed anything to me unambiguously, and I don’t expect Him to start soon. While I have no doubt that God is indeed God, that the Bible is His Holy Word, etc., I do have doubts about. God’s communication with me. I’m probably about to switch my major from computer engineering to mathematics. I’m doing this because I THINK that God has been telling me that that’s what I should do. (I say “think” as opposed to “believe”, because I reserve “believe” for things that I have no doubts about.) I’m not 100% sure that God wants me to be a math major, however. And I’m never sure. It’s kind of like Voodoo or astrology: I look for signs, and interpret them as best I can. I believe that God uses the world around me to communicate with me and it’s up to me to interpret it. And the more drastic the “instruction”, the more evidence I need. And to kill someone, I’d need pretty direct evidence. (Clouds parting, bushes burning, etc.) But if I was sure, I’d do whatever I was told.
Hope all that helps.
Yes and no. What I stated could be a interpertation of my personal beliefs about God (which would be too long to go into here), but does make the same point to the OP as I would make with my beliefs.
People are free to use knowledge as they are able to do so. They will use that knowledge one way or another, or disregard it.
So the question is how do we know God is good, by His very nature He defines good and evil and if He wants to set good = to Himself that’s what it is, much like in computer programing you set x=14, that’s what it is.
Now you get into the issue of is God’s ‘good’ the same as what man sees as ‘good’