Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament..."

Great Debates
1

I’m busy reading Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion”, and I came across this paragraph:

Now, I’m a born-again atheist (since we, in fact, were all born atheists :wink: ), but when I read this passage out loud to my SO, it struck me that it was quite an indictment of the Abrahamic God, and being a Doper, I called out loud, “Cite?” All I got was an odd look from my SO.

My Bible knowledge is dangerous to say the least, and so, could someone spare me a lot of work by pointing to a Biblical reference/story for each of these adjectives? (I’ve listed the adjectives below, and inserted my Sunday School recollection)

jealous - “Thou shalt have no other God but me”?
petty -
unjust -
unforgiving control freak -
vindictive -
bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser -
mysogynistic -
homophobic -
racist - “the Chosen People”?
infanticidal - I think I recall someone was told to barbecue his son?
genocidal - Sodom and Gomorrah?
filicidal -
pestilential - Something about locusts?
megalomanical -
sadomasochistic -
capriciously malevolent bully-

2

I’m far from a Bible expert either, but for genocidal, certainly you have to start with Noah’s flood. Not only does God wipe out every human on earth but Noah’s family, but also every single animal on earth except those lucky pairs aboard the ark.

Regardless of your views on the innocence of man, how many newborn babies and young children were drowned in the flood? What could they have been guilty of? What about all the pregnant women (who, if the right-to-lifers are to be believed, are carrying human beings). How could a fetus be guilty of sinning against God and thus deserving of death?

And what about the animals? How could the destruction of untold millions of land, sea and air creatures be justified on the grounds that humans are sinful? What did they do to deserve it?

3

Dawkins gives several of his own examples as the book progresses. Read on in The God Delusion to see.

However, I found his examples eye opening enough that it made me wonder if anyone has put together a compendium of “heinous behavior by God in the Bible”. It would be a handy reference and a good read.

A couple of examples that Dawkins does describe: I didn’t realize that there are two versions of the story of Lot. In both of them, a male visitor or visitors come to the house, and the residents of the community are so hot for fresh meat that they just have to come to the house and get some from the new dudes. In the Lot version, he offers up his own daughters as a substitute for the dudes, but fortunately that does not come to pass. Instead, Lot gets to leave with his family, except that his wife is wiped out because she is curious about the fireworks behind her. Lot and his daughters go off to a cave where, on subsequent nights, they know their father (apparently without his consent) and become pregnant by him. Nice.

The other version, I don’t remember the name of the “protagonist,” but he offers up a daughter and a female companion of the visitor. They do go out, and are so thoroughly and roundly known by the ass-horny residents of the town that the female companion of the visitor dies on the doorstep of the household. Upon discovering her in the morning, the visitor decides that she must be cut up into pieces and sent to different parts of the country. Nice.

4

Thanks Runestar, I’d forgotten about the flood.

Hentor, thanks, I’ll keep an eye out for the examples.

5

As I recall, that was one of the funnier passages of TGD. Wasn’t that the same place when Dawkins relates the story of a chatty English bloke whose buddies gave him a bible to read to shut him up. With the result that he read it as entertaining fiction, uttering exclamations of amazement like, “This God is really a shit!” :smiley:

6

Certainly heinous acts, but I don’t see where God comes into the situation, apart from in that he didn’t stop it.

7

That’s the one. :smiley:

8

I think the story of Lot covers a substantial portion of these; my favorite bit is where he offers up his two virgin daughters to the crowd of would-be rapists in Sodom–to do with what they will–if they will not bother the strangers whom he apparently knew to be angels that he took in, and the later transformation of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt or fire while escaping the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (mysogynistic, homophobic, sadomasochistic, vindictive). There’s also the cleansing of the Earth in the Great Flood, where only Noah and his family, and a select few of animals were saved (bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, unforgiving control freak, pestilential, genocidal), Abraham pressured to sacrifice his son Isaac (infanticidal, filicidal, megalomanical), and the destruction of the Tower of Babel (jealous, petty, unjust, capriciously malevolent bully).

And that’s only in the first, albeit the nastiest (save perhaps for Job) book of the Bible (including the Book of Jubilees as the “Lesser Genesis” in the case of the Babel story). The God of the Old Testiment makes Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin look like Girl Scouts on a cookie-selling campaign.

Oh, of course, this is all “allegorical” and not to be taken literally. What moral lesson you are supposed to discern from a man sacrificing his child at the behest of an unseen voice, or giving his daughters to an unruly mob to be raped is unclear to my feeble imagination, but according to Christian interpretations of the Bible these are just, pious men who leave an example to be emulated in the service of your faith. (I can’t speak to Jewish or Islamic intepretations of these stories, but I would assume they’re along somewhat similar lines, though my understanding is that in the Talmudic tradition the stories of the Torah have always been viewed in a nonliteral sense and often as cautionary tales rather than strict moral fables.)

The New Testament God, in comparison, is sweetness and light (except for the bit of sending his own son to be slaughtered for everyone else’s sins, a guilt-making headtrip worthy of a Borderline personality) and the apocalyptic warnings of Revelations.

I have to agree with Dawkins on this point; I can’t think of a single figure in fiction who is more consistantly bloodthirsty on such a massive scale. Heck, even the succession of brutal English kings weren’t as viscious on such a scale as the OTG.

God sent the strangers (who were, in fact, angles) to Lot specifically to test his virtue, which apparently included sacrificing his children for strangers (a repeated theme in the Bible). Nice job, that.

Stranger

9

Jealous- I think the jealous god cite leaves out a more relevant section of that quote, where God actually states flat out that he’s a jealous God (which raises the interesting issue of whether there are non-jealous Gods)

10

I’d say this passage has a little of both:

Some kids make fun of his bald head and he asks God to do something about it, so God has a bear kill them. Overreact much?

I’d also suggest reading the book of Job, wherein most of your questioned points are illustrated.

11

Governor Tarkin. The OT God does have a more diverse line of interests, but he didn’t blow up a whole planet just to show that he could.

Edit: And thanks for explaining the Lot situation, SoaT.

12

Yeah, but Tarkin had a reason; he had to have those blueprints. God smites, scours, plagues, and floods just because he can, or because some people have offended him by getting on with the wrong sort of other people.

Stranger

13

Others will surely take issue with my interpretation of the following verses. Others, still, will take issue with the very idea of ‘profiling’ God using a document so internally inconsistant as the Bible. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a shot:

Jealous - Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.

Petty - Leviticus 7:20 “But the soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings, that pertain unto the LORD, having his uncleanness upon him, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.” - This verse basically states that people who eat unclean animals (pork, seafood, etc…) are forbidden to eat the flesh of peace offerings made to God. If they do, they are to be banished. Seems quite petty to me. Also, Second Kings 2:23-24 tells the story of the unfortunate children mauled to death by bears for making fun of the prophet Elisha’s bald head. You can’t get much more petty than that.

Unjust - Exodus 4:11 “And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?” - In other words, people are afflicted with disabilities because God has made them that way.

Unforgiving control freak - At God’s behest, Moses provides water for his followers by striking a stone with his staff and miraculously bringing water to bear from it. However, Moses didn’t give God the credit for this little miracle and, in response, God denies Moses entry to Paradise. Considering all the good things Moses had done for God up until this point, I think God acted in a very unforgiving manner. On the other hand, God did forgive the Israelites for worshipping the Golden Calf while Moses was off getting the 10 Commandments.

Vindictive - cf. The 10 Plagues visited upon the Egyptians. The Bible specifically states that God willingly hardened the Pharaoh’s heart to prevent him from releasing God’s chosen people from bondage until the full weight of God’s wrath could be visited upon his people.

Bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser - The Great Flood.

Mysogynistic - Leviticus 15:19 “And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.” - Menstruating women are to be sequestered for seven days because…well, because.

Homophobic - Leviticus 18:22 - “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Racist - “The chosen people”

Infanticidal - cf. The 10 Plagues again, specifically the final one, in which God sent the angel of death to kill all the first born of Egypt.

Genocidal - The Great Flood again. Also, as you noted, Sodom and Gomorrah.

Filicidal - Not sure about this one. Filicidal means to kill one’s own son or daughter. God didn’t do that until the New Testament and even then Jesus was described as an earthly incarnation of God and so his divinely mandated crucifixion can’t really be called filicide. Suidice, perhaps, but not filicide :slight_smile:
However, in Genesis God does command Abraham to kill his own son to prove his loyalty to God, so he does command others to commit filicide. Still, I don’t think God himself commits filicide in the Old Testament so I think Dawkins is wrong on that one.

Pestilential - 10 Plagues again.

megalomanical - Deuteronomy 6:10 “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” - This quote, perhaps, more than any other, makes clear just how vigorously the God of the Old Testament wants heresy expunged. I would suggest only a megalomaniacal deity would punish heresy with death.

sadomasochistic - Don’t know about this one.

Capriciously malevolent bully - Umm, all of the above?

If this description of God bothers you, bear in mind the operatinve word in the Dawkins quote is ‘fiction’ and, at the end of the day, none of this really matters anyway :slight_smile:

14

But blowing up Alderaan didn’t get him the blueprints. He used the threat of doing so to get Leia to tell him where the Rebel base was; she lied, but he thought she was telling the truth. Exploding the planet was just to let word get around that they had the Death Star.

Sorry about this hijack, everyone.

15

for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me. (Ex. 20:5)

God himself says that he’s jealous – so jealous, in fact, that he will not only punish those who worship other gods, he will punish their descendants down to the 4th generation.

Examples of all these things are innumerable.

God frequently orders the Israelites to eradicate entire populations and is extremely intolerant of Israelites marrying foreign women.

Women are pretty much property in the OT. Women are required to marry their rapists. Women who are raped in the city are to be put to death. The Israelites are sometimes commanded to rape the women of conquered cities. The list is endless with this one.

If God thinks homosexuals should be beaten to death with rocks, that’s kind of homophobic, is it not?

Not just that, but the ethnic cleansing of Canaan.

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (I Samuel 15:2-3)

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Numbers 31:16-18)

The second one is nice. They are told to kill the little boys but keep the little girls alive to be sex slaves.

Here’s another one:

“Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.” (Isaiah 13:15-16)

Again. Kill the children, rape the women.

Remember that little flood?

Also, the ethnic cleansing of Canaan.

There are occasions where God says people should kill their own children, and I’m not talking about Abraham and Isaac. You’re supposed to kill your kids if the entice you to worship other gods, for instance.

Not sure what he meant by this one. There’s a lot of pestilence in the OT.

Well, duh.

I don’t kno what Dawkins meant by this one. I’m not aware of anything in the OT which I think would characterize God as sexually sadistic or masochistic. He’s cruel and capricious and massively violent, but I don’t think the text shows him taking any sexual pleasure in it. He’s just a rageaholic.

Have you ever read the OT?

16

I’m starting to sound like a bridegroom with his long list of personal thank-you’s, so I’ll just say “thanks everyone” and leave it at that.

Dio, on preview, to answer your question, nope. I turned my back on Christianity a very, very long time ago. Five years in a RC convent was enough to put me off reading anything even remotely biblical.

17

Dennis McKinsey does what I think is a decent job. Check out Biblical Errancy, it takes some searching to find specifics, and some of his babbling is :rolleyes:-inducing.

ETA - he used to have a book called “The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy”, fun read but it’s mostly the website in book form.

18

Yeah, I guess you’re right; he was just getting his jollies by showing off the new toy. Now I’m having visions of The Ten Commandments with Peter Cushing standing in for Charlton Heston. It’s pretty awesome, actually.

Stranger

19

My question is, “Which ‘God of the Old Testament’ is Dawking (and the assorted divine-character analysts in this thread) talking about?”

[ul][li]The one in Genesis, who evidently hangs out with selected people like Adam and Abraham (“Hey, wife! Put a couple more beers in the cooler. God’s coming over this afternoon to shoot some pool and chill out!” ;))[/li][li]The one in Exodus who moons Moses because seeing his face is death?[/li][li]The one in Ezra who has issues with Jews taking foreign wives?[/li][li]Or the one behind the Ruth story who evidently favors such marriage, to the point that he derives his chosen king David from a line with two of them in sequential generations?[/li][li]The one who wants the Jews to maintain purity by avoiding contact with the Canaanites?[/li][li]Or the one who calls Cyrus and claims to be the God of all people, in the later chapters of Isaiah?[/li][li]The one in Job for whom Satan is the special prosecutor/investigator?[/li][li]Or the one who makes war against Satan?[/ul][/li]
Bottom line: Dawkins and people here, all of whom ought to know better, are playing the evangelicals’ game by assuming, “If God exists, the entirety of the Bible gives an accurate account of what He says, does, and thinks – even where it contradicts itself.”

Which is always fun … if you regard the thing as total fiction. For anyone trying to get a handle on exactly what went on in Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish history, though, it’s a remarkably stupid assumption.

Much like the ones the fundamentalists are ridiculed for making.

20

Polycarp, I could be wrong, but I think the idea of this thread is to debate how God is described in the OT. Now, you’ve presented a case which suggests we shouldn’t take it literally, that there are contradictions which suggest this view is correct, and so on. That’s fine. I’m sure most people on the board would be right there with you in saying we shouldn’t take the OT literally.

But this thread is about that contradictory, literal God. You suggest we’re talking about a total fiction; and we are. Look at Dawkin’s words quoted by the OP; he’s talking in terms of pure fiction.

Certainly it would be wrong to pull up quotes from the Bible, take them literally, and then say that shows all Christian thought is wrong. But it seems perfectly reasonable to me to take parts literally and use them to characterise a literal interpretation of God’s actions in the OT. How else would you do that? I see the point you’re making, but I just don’t think the acts you’re admonishing us for are happening here.