Strawman. Geisler’s argument isn’t that the babies already WERE wicked. Rather, he proposes that they would grow up to be wicked. In other words, their death was not a punishment for their alleged wickedness; rather, it was a way to prevent further wrongdoing, and to spare these children from becoming corrupted.
It’s not as simple as that. He will sometimes stop evil, but will sometimes allow it to continue. We don’t always know why this occurs, and we may never know.
That’s another strawman argument. It’s not that God has a different definition of good or evil. Rather, it’s that he is not bound by the same exact rules – just as a parent is not bound by the same moral rules as a child. As an omniscient, omnipresent being, God is presumably qualified to make certain judgments whereas human beings are not, especially in matters of life or death.
I think it’s rather arrogant to claim “I know what kind of judgments an omniscient being should make, and doggone it, your God fails that test!”
I’d like to see a biblical cite for this argument. All I could find was a reference to revenge.
Doesn’t say anything about anybody growing up to be evil. It’s retribution for an earlier battle. Please provide biblical evidence that those infants were ordered killed for any reason other than revenge. If you can’t, the repulsive nature of this god stands.
Concerning the whole “only god can decide what is good” line of thinking - it is pretty worthless. So if god decides that torturing all living and aware things for eternity would be good and entertaining than we shouldn’t question that action? If god decides that every man on the planet should find the closest woman and rape her and then kill her - then this isn’t evil cause only god can say what is good? If god asks us to burn babies as a sacrifice than this is good because god said so? If god asks me to slice someones throat and then cook them and become a cannibal, then this is good because only god knows what is good? If god orders me to rip off Newton Meter’s head and kill his children then this is moral because god said so? Bullshit. Certain things are evil no matter what. The ends does not justify the means. And in this case, the end is supposedly god destroying everything. No, I understand what the word loving means and the god of the bible does not qualify.
There is a such thing as morals and most of us have them. Gods actions are either in line with morality or not. To change the definition of morals to fit god makes the words useless. Just like that book and that god.
Racism is wrong.
Genocide is wrong.
The murder of infants is wrong.
The murder of women who are not virgins is wrong.
The murder of disrespectful sons is wrong.
The murder of people for committing adultery is wrong.
If you disagree with the above statements than I consider you to be barbaric, repulsive, and I hold you in the highest contempt. I dare you to try to defend any of the above actions in a thread without bringing up religion and see how well you do. You’ll get a new one ripped and probably a couple of pit threads. But you mention god and now all of these things magically don’t have to be wrong because we aren’t smart enough to understand. Bullshit. Shame on any of you who think there could ever be any proper reason for any of these things. Join the civilized world and give up on this barbaric mythology as being true. You make the world an uglier place when you justify the actions of monsters who would murder children.
One more of my favorite quotes from that disgusting book:
Real fuckin’ nice. God orders the death of any woman who had sex (which he supposedly designed them to want!), but says “Hey, keep the virgins for yourself. Enjoy!”. So much for womens lib. I really hope this bastard meets a horrible end if he exists and really behaves this way. Especially since men don’t get killed for not being virgins. Nothing like a double standard. So god is an evil, chauvanistic, racist, genocidal mad-man who orders the infants of children. Sure. :rolleyes"
One more of my favorite quotes from that disgusting book:
Real fuckin’ nice. God orders the death of any woman who had sex (which he supposedly designed them to want!), but says “Hey, keep the virgins for yourself. Enjoy!”. So much for womens lib. I really hope this bastard meets a horrible end if he exists and really behaves this way. Especially since men don’t get killed for not being virgins. Nothing like a double standard. So god is an evil, chauvanistic, racist, genocidal mad-man who orders the infants of children. Sure. :rolleyes:
Again, I don’ t think you’re paying attention. Geisler’s is merely proposing this as an explanation. That’s quite different from saying that the Bible explicitly teaches that the infants were killed to prevent them from becoming corrupted and spreading future evils.
Now, the Old Testament does say that the Amalekites were punished for their evil, but such statements are clearly meant to be general. It’s like saying that the Germans tormented the Jews, or that the Jews rejected Christ. Do such statements mean that every single German or Jew committed these deeds? Obviously not… and similarly, saying that the Amalekites were punished is a general statement which does not imply guilt for every single person therein.
Again, you’re misrepresenting that position. What’s worse, you’re deliberately asking what would happen if God were to decide on an evil course of action. That’s a subtle example of circular reasoning. You are postulating evil intent on God’s part, which is quite different from merely evaluating his actions after the fact.
Besides, it seems to me that you’re sidestepping the issue. Can a finite human being claim to accurately judge the actions of an infinite, omniscient diety who transcends time and space… one who can look into the future, and who knows what would have happened if the Amalekites had been allowed to live?
Actions which appear grievous may have some higher purpose that human beings don’t understand. This can be difficult to accept, I know. I myself nearly committed suicide a while back, due to a great tragedy in my life, and I questioned whether God was involved in my life. Thankfully, some caring individuals talked me out of that, and I now I know that there was a greater purpose behind that tragedy. There were circumstances going on that I had no inkling about.
Nothin’ like killing people and taking any woman you want. Repulsive. Any literalists care to try to defend this order? By the way this is contradictory to my earlier quote in which god wanted the non-virgin women killed. The soldiers should be allowed to grab any lady they like according to the supposed gods instructions.
His proposal has no evidence to back it up and is therefore useless and baseless.
I would say the statements are pretty damn specific. I don’t think it is clear at all that these statements do not mean exactly what they say.
It doesn’t just say that they were punished. It says that god SPECIFICALLY named men, women, infants and animals as the targets of this barbaric attack. What other persons are there that were not men, women, or children???
Hold it there. So you are saying the things that I mentioned ARE evil courses of action? So can I infer that you agree there is a range of actions that are evil even if god makes them? What would qualify?
And they may not. What reason is there to assume that they do? OK. Kill the kids - there must be a higher purpose. Allright - rape the women - there must be a higher purpose. Commit genocide - there must be a higher purpose. Weak ass bullshit.
It amazes me that people expect me to accept that I can’t know what is good or evil concerning god, but they somehow can know for sure what his true nature is and that it must be good. If I can’t call him evil cause of not enough data, you can’t call him good for the same reason. All we can use are human standards - and by those he is an evil dickhead who people should be ashamed to worship.
Hmmmm. The punishment for rape (as long as the woman is not betrothed or married) is a fine and you have to (get to?) marry the woman you raped. Sounds real nice for the woman. Great god you folks have got yourselves.
burden of proof
In the case of this debate, I was refering to the bible as the “new idea.” (So what if its 2000+ years old?) I should have been more clear. Anyway, in science (I take it from your name that you’re into science) one does not accept a theory, postulate, or law to be true until it has been proven. If we look at the bible we see lots of evidence against it (historical misinformation, contradictions, etc.), but very little empirical evidence substantiating its contents. Thus, there is no reason to accept it, in my opinion.
definitions
Lets look for a moment at two of the Commandments.
Seems pretty straightforward. Or maybe, he only meant “…adultery on Tuesdays, between noon and two (Eastern stardard time), and oral doesn’t count.”
Notice that here God was nice and specific. By looking at this rule we know exactly what’s a no-no.
So the question is, why shouldn’t my “interpretation” above be accepted? The answer is that God, is generally pretty clear about what he means, and only gets specific when he needs to. So, we can see that unless needed, god is trusting that we know what the words mean and is going by that definition. Thats why he (or whoever wrote this, rather) defined what a graven image was, but not adultery.
When we see god say something like “Hey, I’m god, and I’m merciful” we know that he know’s that we know what he means and isn’t using some arcane definition.
So, to say that he is using our definitions in one part, but using some other, personal definitions somewhere else without telling us would be a contradiction in itself (or at the very least, damage his credibility.)
In other words (since I realize what I’m saying is pretty nebulous), if he speaks with his our definitions in one place, why would he start using his own elsewhere, and not tell us.
Because it’s a stupid question. Are you asking them to imagine a world where the bible is not literally true and tell you what kinds of falsehoods it might contain? Or are you asking them to imagine a world where the bible is literally true and tell you what kinds of falsehoods it might contain?
If the former, then any contradiction at all will do. If the latter, then there is no possible contradiction.
Another possibility is that there are just no biblical literalists following this thread, so you’ll have to ask elsewhere. They’re not as common as you want to believe, capturing one it the wild is actually quite tricky.
Qwertyasdfg, I think the problem is that we’re not using language in the same way. I’m not suggesting that God wakes up and decides to use American Heritage instead of Webster’s as his dictionary. I don’t want to venture too far into epistemology and ontology, mostly because I’m a logician and not qualified, but here goes.
Consider the distinctive aroma of coffee. I’ve got a cup before me now, yum. The aroma is quite familiar to many of us. Yet, I cannot accurately describe the aroma using natural language. That is, I cannot describe it in a way that would cause someone who has never smelled coffee to know what I meant, or to recognize it if the smelled it later. I can try to use analogies or metaphors to describe it, relating it to other aromas. I might choose to say it smells “roasted”. Does that mean it smells like roast turkey? Or roast garlic? Not really. In fact, coffee just smells like coffee smells.
If we can’t describe something as simple and commonplace as this, how can our language cope with God? I think you are completely wrong in your intuition that God ought to be the easiest thing of all for us to describe. When we speak of God, we can only do so by using analogies and metaphors (my previous paragraph was just such an analogy). And the nature of analogical discourse is that it fails more than it succeeds.
Take “God is our father”. We mean that God shares many characteristics of a human father. However, the analogy can be pushed too far. God is not a human father, and the analogy fails to describe the totality of God.
The thing about analogies and metaphors is that though they explicitly declare that something is like another thing, they implicitly declare that there are differences. That is, if the two objects were identical, we would not need analogy. This is important, and I will return to it.
If we listed all the characteristics of human fathers, how would we know which ones to ascribe to God? That’s an excellent question. The answer is that we must use other analogies to assist. We might say that God is king. He rules us through inherent right, we owe him allegience, he has the authority to make and enforce rules. But kings are often arbitrary, and don’t always govern with the best interests of their subjects. Leave aside for a moment whether you think God behaves that way :). We temper the analogy of the king, by saying God is a father, or a shepherd, or a lamb.
So if God is a shepherd and God is a lamb, is that a contradiction? In fact, if God is like a father but not like a father, is that a contradiction? My answer is no. If you said coffee didn’t smell like roast garlic, and that was a fatal contradiction, I would have to claim that the flaw lies not with the coffee, but with either the analogy or your understanding of it.
So why doesn’t God use more precise language? Well, can a metaphor always be reduced to literal definitional statements? I think that it can’t. It may well be the case (in fact it seems likely) that God is not expressible by a laundry list of literal statements and we can only approach him analogically. There is also the idea, due to Calvin (I believe), that God accomodates our understanding when he speaks to us. He appears bodily in the Old Testament, and commands some apparently brutal things, because that was the language that those tribes would respond to. This idea nicely accounts for differing ideas of God in the bible. You may be offended by it, but I’ll point out that it freed religion to coexist quite happily with the natural sciences (and, that I’ve probably butchered the theological idea of accomodation).
“God is loving”. When we say that, we mean: “God is like loving”. And when we say that, we mean: “God is like loving in some ways, but not all. He is likewise not like loving in other ways”. You may insist that if God is loving and God is not loving, then it is a contradiction in God. But again, the problem is either with the analogy (it may well be that “love” is not the most appropriate way to describe God, though I disagree), or with your understanding of the analogy (I hope you are willing to admit this possiblity).
That’s why “God is loving yet not loving” appears to be a deal-breaker to you and Czarcasm, but is so casually accepted by myself and others.
Now, your criticism should be: if we want to say that God is loving, then he must embody at least something of what we consider loving in our everyday discourse. Otherwise, the term does not apply. I think he does. To be specific, for “God is loving, yet he put to death the first born of Egypt” and “God is just, yet he put to death the first born of Egypt”, it must be that putting to death the first born of Egypt is absolutely incompatible with what we mean by loving and just.
What about love? Consider a loving, compassionate doctor. A patient of his who is three months pregnant is diagnosed with cancer. If she does not receive radiation treatments immediately, she will surely die within a year. If she undergoes the treatment, she will surely lose the baby. The woman elects to have the treatment, and the loving doctor performs it! Is it possible that the doctor could be loving and compassionate and still knowingly cause the death of a child? (You will have to adjust the story if you do not believe that the fetus is alive, and I am making absolutely no comment whatsoever on abortion by this clumsy example).
What about justice? Consider a fair and just judge who is called to sentence a murderer. The man is undoubtedly guilty, and his crimes were heinous. Yet he is a loving single father with two young children and no close relatives. By sentencing the man, the judge will be knowingly throwing his children into (separate) foster homes, where they will possibly suffer and certainly be deprived of knowing their father. Yet the judge sentences the man! Is it possible that a wise and just judge could cause innocent children to suffer for the misdeeds of another?
Before anyone trots out the old “you advocate murder and genocide”, let me add that I am merely demonstrating that I think there is not a necessary inconsistency, not that I’m positing any actual explanation for God’s behavior (or even admitting that such behavior actually occurred).
How about we stay in this world and merely utilize the subjunctive and the conditional. Something along the lines of, “IF [there’s a clue that it’s going to be subjunctive] the Bible were [yay, were is subjunctive!] to say [Thing 1] in one passage and [Thing 2] in another passage, THEN that WOULD [Hello, Mr. Conditional] be an example of a contradiction. However, thanks to the Will of the Lord, such a contradiction does not exist.” I want someone to fill in Thing 1 and Thing 2.
And is it really such a stretch to suppose that JThunder and JubliationTCornpone are inclined to believe that the Bible is 100% true? I suppose it’s possible that they’re merely posting what other people offer as defenses, as an academic exercise… if that’s the case, then I apologize for making assumptions. However, at one point (Page 4 or 5), JTC said that he’d answer this question, but he was too busy for the time being. Note that he did not say, “This question doesn’t pertain to me, as I don’t see the Bible as 100% true.” So I think I’ll stick with my premise that there is at least one (and possibly two) Literalists following this thread.
Sorry, I understand the subjunctive to be a form of modal discourse; and I immediately assume a possible worlds semantics.
The problem with the question is that the literalist doesn’t think the bible is free of contradictions because it just doesn’t happen to contain any contradictions. The literalist starts with the belief that the bible is the received word of God.
Imagining a contradiction in such a book is difficult. How did the contradiction get in there? Did you slip it in when you reprinted the book? Then you could use anything you wanted. Or is it the word of God? Then it’s not really a contradiction, after all. It could say that God was all one color, and later say that he was multi-colored, and there would be an explanation.
I think that this thread has shown that biblical literalism is pretty much indefensible in the end if you wish to maintain a reasonable moral code. So others opt for the “Well SOME of it is true.” line of thinking. How can you tell which parts? Pray? See what others think? Trust your inner feelings? Sounds like so much wishful thinking to me. There is no EVIDENCE to back any of it up.
It seems most likely that all of it is the work of babylon so to speak. Written by men for several purposes: Cash (think collection basket), power, and to keep people from killing and stealing from each other. This final goal is a noble one - maybe making up lies was the only way people could see to end barbaric behaivior thousands of years ago. I would certainly hope that by now (or at least soon) we can know to be good people through truth instead of old lies made up by primitive hairless apes.
Newton Meter:
I don’t understand what would lead you to think that when god describes himself, he is using analogies. For example:
I think we all know what God means by saying “jealous.” If he needed to make it clear, then he would. Certainly an omniscient being could tell if his audience would get what he was saying. What reason would anyone have to assume that he was drawing an analogy to anything? Likewise, if I were to say “I am jealous.” you would know what I’m talking about.
If god wasn’t speaking in terms we could understand, that would totally undermine his purpose, since nobody would know what the hell he meant.
If however, god was to say “I am the Lord your God. I smell like coffee.” that would be a different story, since he would be drawing a comparison (a similie to be specific.) But even then, we would develop expectations based on this (assuming we knew what coffee smelled like. If we didn’t then he would have to be more specific, or pick a different comparison.)
WRT the “loving and not loving” argument, let’s consider this: Hitler loved Eva Braun (possibly.) Does that excuse the Holocaust, or mean that describing Hitler as “loving” (without specifiying who was being loved) would be the most accurate term?
Let’s also look at your example of the Passover killing of first borns. As far as I know, the aim of this was to punish the pharoahe and his cohorts. If god was omnipotent, couldn’t he have been just a tad more accurate about his target, rather than killing every single first born that didn’t put lamb’s blood on thier house? So, he intentionally killed thousands more than he had to. Would common, sane discourse regard any regular person who did this as loving?
The impossibility of describing him any other way.
You think? Are you insisting that all others must think the same as you? Or are you willing to allow that they might think differently?
Of course not. But what if that person were incapable of lying and also said “I am loving”? Then something’s got to give.
That is, there’s a whole train of assumptions that makes this a contradiction. To resolve the contradiction, you have to reject a few of those assumptions. Fine, you’ve made a good case for that. You haven’t made a good case for insisting that everyone should reject the same assumptions you have.
Perhaps it’s too late to try to dispel the myth of “biblical literalism”, but I will try, ONE MORE TIME.
There is no such thing as a literal, uninterpreted, reading of the bible. It doesn’t exist. Even if you found the original texts and placed yourself in the proper historical context; when you read the bible, it goes in through your brain, where it mixes with all the other stuff in there.
What you have is different readings of the bible, some more literal than others. Some are extremely literal, some are extremely non-literal. Some people have, as a goal, as literal a reading as they can produce.
What this thread has shown is that your particular very literal and naive reading of the bible, coupled with your particular literal and naive idea of God as the invisible mean old man in the sky, added to a whole host of your assumptions and leaps of logical reasoning can produce an indefensible moral code.
What you’ve failed to demonstrate is that there is actually anyone in the world who holds this worldview you’ve invented. I think that would be crucial to any arguments based on it.
It might be nice if your opponents would believe what you want them to believe dalovindj. Then your case for being the superior form of intelligence would be as slam-dunk as you think it is. Unfortunately, people tend to believe what they want, not what you want.
And as far as I can tell, you’re one of those primitive hairless apes, too.
