Short answer- the Old Testament God sometimes deals in “rough justice”- it may seem excessive but it’s related to the offense. While enslaving the Israelites was a bad thing for the Pharoah to do, what really ticked off God enough to set in motion the events resulting in the Exodus was the slaughter of the Hebrew male babies by throwing them in the Nile. So what happens? One Hebrew couple put their baby boy in the river- in a little boat within site of Pharoah’s compassionate daughter. She brings him into the royal household… he becomes the Deliverer, and God’s first plague- the Nile & water sources become blood. The blood of the baby boys comes back to haunt Egypt. Each plague strikes at a deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Finally, the circle comes round with the Tenth Plague- the death of the Egyptian Firstborn- the avenging of the death of the Hebrew baby boys. You might not like it. We look at it & feel disturbed because we’ve filtered it through two millenia of Christian teaching of mercy and compassion. But there is a poetic symmetry to it all.
Is there any documentation that the story bothered the ancients at all?
I’m not sure, since I think the “killing babies was the only way to free the Jews” is a lot more convincing than “breaking a taillight was the only way to notify someone that he had a kid.” Couldn’t he just have written a note and put it on the windshield? Or made a phone call? Or sent a certified letter saying, “Hey, your dad is this guy. Here’s his number?”
I am talking about one of the gods commonly worshipped on planet Earth at the moment…the god of the Bible.
What else would I call it except “the god” or “a god?” How about considering me also rather than just yourself? If it you want to call it GOD…do so. You will never get any static on that from me. But I am an agnostic. There may be a GOD. And I certainly do not want to insult the notion of that GOD by suggesting that the god described in the Bible (I do capitalize that word) is that GOD.
If you take that as an insult, you are making a comment about yourself…not me.
In other words, the only people who can inquire about this story, according to you, are people who think there is but one god?
Fact is…no intelligent reading of the Bible would suggest that the Bible claims there is only ONE GOD. The Bible merely requires the Hebrews to worship the god of Abraham to the exclusion of all other gods. It demands that there be more than one god.
So I am not sure of what your problem is. I am trying to discuss this politely and rationally…no matter what you think.
It has merit for the reasons I’ve given. And considering one of my questions is: Why would you possibly want to consider this god to be GOD…it has more than “merit”…it is absolutely necessary to the substance of that question.
I thought the Wonderfalls vignette was off topic…and not worthy of comment.
The Bible story tells us that the god wanted the Hebrews released from captivity. Now if you are saying that torturing people and slaughtering innocent babies was necessary to get that done…well, you are going to have to live with that. If you do not think it was “necessary”…then it was “unnecessary.”
I think if the god were actually GOD…IT could have accomplished the release much more quickly using methods without all the slaughter.
I certainly am not. If there is a GOD…I sure as hell hope it is not the god described in the Bible, because I consider that god to be a loathsome creature.
I have no problem whatsoever with you thinking there is a GOD. There may well be one. But, as I have stated…I cannot fathom why you would want that pathetic god to be your GOD.
I wouldn’t say “I don’t like it.” Actually I would say I find it disgusting and barbaric beyond reason…a disgusting thing that no sane person would find fitting or appropriate…unless it were committed by someone or something so dreaded that the only way to deal with it is to find ways to make it seem okay.
If someone like Saddam Hussein had done that same thing to exact compliance with a request…you would have (rightly) consider him to be a murderous, savage, barbarian.
The god was being murderous, savage, and barbaric…and it was all unnecessary.
Nope.
Fact is, I don’t have any documentation that it bothers many people like you right now either.
Suppose his actions could only be explained by visualizing a tesseract, a cube extended into four dimensions. As we know from analogy, just as a square has four lines, all on the outside, and a cube has six squares, all on the outside, a tesseract consists of eight equally-sized cubes, all on the outside. If you could visualize a tesseract, you would immediately understand how events seemingly unrelated to each other are connected across time and space, and understand the necessity for these deaths.
But you, being puny and three-dimensional, simply lack the capacity to comprehend this in a visual way. And your inability doesn’t prove he’s not all-knowing. It proves only that you’re limited.
Put another way, calculus exists. The mere fact that I cannot explain calculus to a horse in words that he understands does not render calculus non-existent.
Yes, you think that. But you only think that because, as Doc Brown complained about Marty, you’re not thinking fourth dimensionally. I’d explain it to you, but we don’t have words in English to capture the inter-relationships across four spatial dimensions. If we did, and we had brains to comprehend it visually, then it would all make sense.
So you trotted out a 6 year old TV show to make the story of Passover more understandable, and yet I can’t understand the 6 year old TV show because I can’t visualize the tesseract?
But you must attempt to teach calculus to the horse in the first place to show that it cannot be done. If you assume without evidence that something cannot be done, then all you have proven is that you refuse to do it, and nothing more.
My hypothesis is that if humans had the capacity for this level of understanding, it would be self-evident to them; no “teaching” would be necessary. Watching a chess game, an unschooled observer may ask, “Why did that man just resign?” The grandmaster knows immediately why the resignation happened.
And if this were a human being…Idi Amin, for instance…would you be reaching this far for a justification or a rationalization for why it might be necessary?
Honestly, I am not trying to break balls right now. I am trying to understand something much more mundane than calculus, quantum mechanics, or the “intersection of events on the tesseract.”
Most theists I know want to assume there is a GOD. They almost all want also to assume the GOD IS kind, loving, caring, just, peaceful, and understanding.
So I ask…why would they try to shoehorn all that into making the god of the Bible that GOD…when it would be so much easier to simply say:
That god is a monster…almost certainly invented to combat the monstrous gods of the enemies of the ancient Hebrews. That is not my GOD.
I don’t want to make you defensive, Bricker…just informative.
Why is it necessary not only to suppose (guess, believe) there is a GOD…to “believe” that one is “necessary” or “more likely than not to exist”…
…and also to “believe” that the god described in the Bible is that GOD?
In fact, to torture the spatial analogy further, you can understand a cube easily. In fact, you can draw a cube on a piece of paper. But notice something: when you do, you distort it. Your “cube,” as drawn, is actually only two squares, not six. The other four shapes are really parallelograms, aren’t they? But you readily accept the drawing of the parallelogram as a two-dimensional representation of a square, in perspective.
The six-year-old TV show explanation is like that: a distorted representation of the concept; not the actual concept, but one that maps reasonably well onto the actual concept.
Of course, my hypothesis is that this is as far from “mundane” as one can get.
Yes. Certainly I do, in any event.
Because I have additional evidence on which to rely, evidence that I cannot share with you because it’s not evidence of a sort that is readily shareable.
As I hinted above, your skepticism makes perfect sense. I agree with you: based on the information available to you, the God described in the Bible is NOT likely to exist. The evidence points strongly the other way. Occam’s Razor almost demands it, in fact. The proper take is: there is insufficient evidence in support of an extraordinary claim. Therefore, absent additional evidence, I assume that claim to be false.
Your hypothesis presupposes without evidence that your god, if he exists has a good reason for doing what the Bible claims he does. Now, if your god exists, did what the bible claims, and has no rational explanation, then there is noting to explain, and thus nothing at all for us to understand in the first place.
My point is that the ancients understood the rough justice concept. We’ve been softened, in part by our Christian culture, so that we do not.
And actually the none of the Ten Plagues bother me. Nor do the Coming Seven Vials.
Now, the slaughter of the Canaanites & Amalekites does bother me to some degree, though I can also understand the reasons behind it. Also, while Jesus speaks of the Siege of Jerusalem as the Great Tribulation and outpouring of God’s Justice, I also know He wept over it, and reading the descriptions by Josephus, I understand why.
You mean like the hundreds of millions of fertilized eggs (babies in your parlance) who die in miscarriages? God is indeed number one in the abortion business.
Back on track, if you have done as many seders as I have, you’d be aware that the Pharaoh had rationally decided to let the Hebrews go (the plagues were very convincing) before God had hardened his heart against it. God was pulling his strings.
Another thing is that the readings have no joy or celebration about the deaths of the firstborn. In my Hebrew education, no one ever attempted facile excuses for God’s actions. We give thanks that we are spared, but we don’t try to explain it. In fact there is a special service firstborn sons are supposed to go to for this. I went right after my bar mitzvah, I’m not sure if you are supposed to go every year or not. It was not well attended.
The most interesting thing about the story is it contradicts the position that god does not reveal himself in order that we may believe using faith. I agree that a lot of the story is about God showing his power in ways that are not really necessary, but more for the Hebrews than for the Egyptians, I think.
The second most interesting thing is that we needed to invent an enslaved past for ourselves. I don’t know how much of the story came into being after the Babylonian Captivity, and how much before.
I think a more Biblical plot would have had her taking a gun and blowing the head off the priest. The investigation reveals the unknown child and mother, and it turns out his substantial estate goes to them, saving them from foreclosure and homelessness.
Or were you equating a broken tail light with the slaughter of thousands?