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

Great Debates
101

Yeah but God made a deal with Abraham and if his descendants break the deal they get punished. The bible doesn’t say anything about making a deal with the Egyptions.

I’ve heard this same lame excuse used in regard to God giving the Promised Land to Israel even though it was already settled by others. Strange how that seems to keep happening.

This is, of course, situtational ethics. The old “everybody does it so we’re just going along with the group.” That’s hardly the way the pace setters in morality act.

102

Yup.

103

But convenient. “God/Yewah/The Big Fuzzy Teddybear told me that he wants me to have your car. So hand it over.” I’m being facetious, of course, but scarcely more justification has been used to justify any number of campaigns, crusades, and wholesale slaughters.

Stranger

104

You misunderstand how other tribes were viewed. There was no issue with them having other gods, that is accepted, and the Bible seems to move from the other gods existing, while being inferior, to only God existing. Remember, the Egyptian priests could do tricks also. Tribes that were nasty to Israel got a bade mention, and their asses kicked (sometimes) while those friendly got a good mention. Things evolved from Israel losing because God couldn’t deal with chariots, to losing because someone, somewhere, didn’t listen to the priests.

As an example, Ruth made Naomi’s god her god, but that didn’t involve denying the existence of her former god. It was more like changing political parties, or getting citizenship in a new country.

105

Not that it matters at this point, but Hentor seemed to think (although he expressed reservations) that the site was really for children. I was just pointing out that it wasn’t. The link at the bottom of the web page (“Pants Aflame,” or something like that) take one to pages where the intent of the authors is perfectly clear.

106

Yes, but that’s because God is the God of the Israelites, so if you mess with Israel, you mess with the God of Israel. There doesn’t have to be a deal with the Egyptians, because God only cares about the Egyptians in as much as the way they treat the Israelites. It’s the same way as, when you were a kid, you might have beat up a bully who was picking on your little brother. You didn’t have anything against the bully particularly, other than that he picked on your little brother.

Well, the lesson would be that if the Canaanites wanted to hold onto the land, they should have gotten stronger gods. And as for the whole treatment of women thing, the bible is over 3000 years old…you can’t compare the way it looks at women to the way we look at women today. It’s an apples and oranges sort of thing. Our values are different than the values of the bible, so of course the bible’s values seem wrong to us.

107

That’s the whole point, though; if the values (or what passes for them) espoused in the Bible aren’t relevant in modern civilization (and thankfully so) then why should a belief system based upon them be held in high regard?

Stranger

108

David, I’d like to seek some clarification, because what you’re describing seems to me to be neither Situation ethics nor Situational ethics, but rather some sort of cultural relativism that Fletcher’s idea was perverted to stand in rationalization of.

With regard to the several-times-repeated question of how I uncover God in Scripture, I’ve been thinking, quite long and hard, about the answer. It’s one of those things that is very clear to oneself but difficult to put into words to express to another without being misleading. I do apologize for the long delay in answering that.

109

For the most part, it’s not. What is held in high regard are modern Judaism and Christianity, both of which use the bible as a sacred book, and both of which operate under the myth that they use the belief system expressed in the bible, but which, in reality, operate under thoroughly modern belief systems, and selectively pick bible passages that support their worldview, and ignore or rationalize those that don’t.

This isn’t unique to Judaism/Christianity…all religions do it, and all societies do it. That’s what myth is…taking past events and finding ways to make them relevant to the current world.

110

Pffft. The Egyptians did no wrong. God made the Pharoah prevent the Israelites from leaving and then punished all of the Egyptions because of it.

If you egged the bully on to beating up your little brother and then beat up the bully because of it would you be justified?

Are we supposed to respect this mode of operation?

Well maybe I got the terminology wrong but a skunk by any other name … My point was that excusing the Bible’s allocation of women to subservience or giving rules on how to sell you daughter into slavery on grounds that it was the common practice at the time is equivalent to defining away the problem.

111

You haven’t actually read the Bible, have you? :smiley:

Seriously though, are you saying that the hundreds of thousands of infants that Jehovah either personally killed (Ex. 12:29, Lev. 26:22) or ordered killed or raped (Nu 21:35, Nu. 31:17 too many others to list) were picking on Jews, or idolaters?

Your entire argument is actually perfectly circular since on the OT anyone who wasn’t a Jew was immediately a worshipper of false gods. IOW every non-Jew in the entire world was fair game for being slaughtered and/or raped. The idea that any non-Jew who wasn’t an idolater was ignored in the Bible is nonsense because by definition all non-Jews were idolaters (with a few trivial exceptions such as the Samaritans).

112

Just wanted to comment on this “held up as a model” business. I think it may be important to keep in mind that there are differences between what a good (or evil) God would do, and what a good (or evil) person would do. (That’s why we sometimes criticize a person for “playing God.”)

113

I need to modify this statement at tad, in fact quite a tad. On thinking a bit more I remember that in response to the orders of the Pharaoh, the Egyptions did opress the Israelites out of fear that they wer becoming too numerous and strong.

114

I don’t see what the difference is. Could you elaborate? I thought the “playing God” criticism was more about not getting into areas that God acts in; creating/destroying life being the biggie. Sort of like citizens vs. cops; only the police have the authority to detain someone. The only difference I can think of is in terms of power; obviously a god would more options than a lowly mortal.

In role model terms, I thought one of the big ideas of Christianity (for example) is to use a god as a role model; WWJD?

115

The problem with this of course is that it justifies absolutely any baheviour by God and makes it impossible to separate the “true” God from the Devil, any random God or just the ramblings of some deranged psychopath masquerading as a prophet. Sure Jehovah demands rape, torture, paedophilia, genocide, mutilation, infanticide and animal cruelty. And sure he is vain, stupid, lazy, cruel, vicious, ignorant and priggish.

But a god can do and be all those evil things and still be good.

The probelm is that you have left us with no standard by which to judge good, beyond “Good is what God tells us explicitely to do”. Even when God via his prophets tells us to rape and murder small children it’s still good because it is god doing it. It is totally self-referential and can be used to justify absolutely any behaviour at all.

In short you’ve tried to rebut Dawkins’ argument that the god of the OT is cruel, immoral and genocidal by simply defining anything god does as moral and kind and culturally sensitive even when it patently is not.

If we are allowed to indulge in this sort of silliness than all religions and atheism are better than Judeo-Christianity, simply because I define good as being what Judeo-Christianity isn’t without any refernce to any sort of moral standard. It’s silly and it in no way allows us to judge the morality or truth of anyhting ever. It is the most extreme form of moral relativism.

116

Well, okay, I probably should. Blake seems to be misinterpreting the point I was trying to make.

Earlier in this thread IIRC someone took God to task for destroying all those people and animals with the flood in the Noah story, so let’s take that as an example. If you or I caused a natural disaster that killed lots and lots of men, women, children, and animals, that would pretty clearly be an evil act. Why is it different in God’s case?

Well, for one thing, God’s the Creator. A person who creates a painting or a story or a spice rack has a right to destroy their own creation if they think it’s no good. God, as Creator, has certain rights over his creation that we mere creatures don’t have.

Then there’s God’s omniscience. A God who sees all and knows all that he needs to in order to judge perfectly, will know for sure whether someone is truly deserving of death and destruction; we limited humans don’t. He’ll also know what, if anything, happens to their soul after their body is destroyed.

Those are points in God’s favor, so to speak, but points can also be made against—like, If God’s so powerful, couldn’t he have found a “better,” more compassionate plan of action? (i.e. what you said about power.) And if God’s creation is no good, why did he make it that way?
And I don’t want to overstate the difference—there is indeed overlap between what goodness means for God and for people—and I certainly don’t want to imply that there is no standard of good and evil that can be applied to God. Because God is, indeed, described in the Bible in terms like just, merciful, compassionate, etc., that are clearly part of human goodness. And because humans are supposedly made in God’s image. And because we don’t want to worship a God whom we can’t think of as good, and beautiful, and worthy of worship. And because people tend to become like what they worship/admire/look up to. So I very much think “Is the God of the Old Testament good, or evil, or what—and why, and how?” is a worthwhile and important question.

You can’t take someone as a role model if they’re playing a completely different role.

I’m no historian, so I may be wrong, but my impression is that, in ancient, pre-Christian times, it never would have occured to people to take God as a model for their own behavior, or to apply the same standards of morality or goodness to God as to a human being. (Heck, they might not have even applied the same moral standards to a king as to a peasant.) It would have been as nonsensical as judging a man and a baby and a lion and a caterpillar all by the same moral standards. It was Christianity, with its idea of God made man, that gave us a God who could show us by example what it meant to be a good human being.

117

Except that the examples you use are unliving objects, not people. Does a parent have the right to kill his/her kid with an axe just because the parent made him ? No, and God has no more right to kill his creations than I would.

So all the people supposedly killed in the Flood deserved it ? That’s the “evil babies” argument; that the babies who died in the Flood died because they were evil babies.

118

No it doesn’t! God *is * the explanation the “tribal elders” gave for where we came from and what makes the world tick!

Of course it’s all a fiction. I’m not debating that. Nor that the ancient stories didn’t arise of economic and political necessity. The Bible is nothing more than the written and edited form of a centuries-long oral tradition. Dawkins’ demonization of it makes it seem like some satanic force.

119

Oh, piffle. These claims could justify any behavior whatsoever, not only directly by a god, but by his assigned proxies, prophets, and designated crusaders, and indeed has been used to justify many a bloodbath in the name of Holy Justice. As Blake says, this is moral relativism run amok. Far from undermining Dawkins’ arguments, your giving illustration to them.

And yet these standards, and the book that contains them, are held up as the prime basis for the Christian religion. You can pick and choose all you like, or interpret the hell out of what it “means” that Lot’s wife was struck down for idle curiosity, but in the end, there is no consistant moral message (certainly not one of charity or benevolence), nor is the God of the Old Testament in any way consistant with the reformed, benevolent, sorrowful God of the New Testament, and yet no explanation is offered for this. In any case, the statement quoted in the o.p. still stands without refutation; the Judeo-Christian deity, as presented in the Old Testament, is “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a mysogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” It makes no difference if you claim that this is, in his role as the Creator, his right, or if he knows something that the rest of us don’t know, is a compilation of the recollections and views of different authors, or whatever other rationalization you want to present.

Stranger

120

You mean the God that invented the most morally abhorrent idea that anyone has ever imagined: eternal neverending torment?

Yeah, the “you can’t understand God” argument is, I don’t think people realize, a self-defeating one. The less you can “possibly” understand the true purposes and motives of God, the less you can ever claim that his purposes are moral.