I agree. Fromesiter, take note here. To say that we are incapable of judging God is, um, sheeplike. Because an entity has the power to do anything it wants does not guarantee that its actions are good, even if it’s yelling, “I’m doing this for your own good!” whilst dealing out the genocides or whatever. See what I’m saying? If God does exist, and is good, isn’t it all the better that we question God’s actions and try to divine (so to speak) why God saw those actions as appropriate?
How do we develop any sense of morailty and justice without deciding what is good and what is evil? And if we wish for that morality to align with God’s, it seems to me that we should take note of how God has demonstrated morality.
To buy into quixotic78’s #1 would be to throw in the towel and say that Might = Right. I, for one, ain’t willing to do that. I’d much rather question an omnipotent being about said being’s actions than simply accept genocide as a good way to solve problems.
Back to the OP: I think dlb’s comments are excellent. I don’t accept the Bible as the undiluted Word of God. I think it’s a great record of humanity’s dealings with God, resulting, generally speaking, with insight growing over time. God, therefore, did not evolve from a jealous, war-minded god among many gods to a loving, merciful and forgiving Omnipotent; God is and was always wholly Good, we just couldn’t (and still can’t) really conceive of that. Our existence seems shaped by our limitations-- how much money we have, how long we live, who we know, what drugs we take, what tragedies befall us. It’s very difficult, then, to even get a glimpse of eternity in any sense.
I guess it all comes down to the deeper question: Why is there suffering? I say this because i believe every day disasters (earthquakes and the like) were attributed to God, along with motivation for wars, racism, genocide, and murder that was never anything more than human-driven. The idea of Free Will more or less answers the latter set, but as for disease and disasters, I dunno (obviously).
The more I write (and I’ve edited out a bunch, I promise!) the further I wander away from the OP. I’ll try to stay pithy and concise from now on. Heh.
Sorry, I can’t pick a perfect age at which people are able to determine right and wrong. I imagine some people with severe mental retardation are never able to. But I guarantee you that a 1 month old child is not evil. Babies don’t even know their own environment. Likewise, I guarantee you that sheep are not evil. I sincerely hope that this is not part of a larger point, like “If you can’t define an age when children are capable of making moral decisions, you can’t state unequivocably that the children that the Israelites killed were innocent, so the genocide is justifiable!”
Now, here’s a question for anyone who has defended the genocide of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Amalekites, etc.:
Would you even consider defending any other instance of genocide in history?
For example, if someone came to this message board trying to defend the slaughter of 6 million Jews*, would you listen patiently and debate rationally when he pointed out that:
The Jews had betrayed the Germans in WWI. (see Mein Kampf)
Jews were so evil, they kidnapped and drank the blood of Christian children. (Numerous medieval manuscripts)
The Jewish children and women had to be killed too, because the entire Jewish society was “tainted” with the evil of those betrayers.
By killing the Jewish children before they reached the age of accountability, the Nazis had ensured that they will go to Heaven, whereas letting them live would have caused them to grow up to be hellbound, non-Christian heathens.
Had the children been allowed to live, they would have grown up to sabotage Germany again, costing more innocent lives.
God clearly supported the Nazi cause. (Nazi uniforms were adorned with the words “Gott ist mit uns [God is with us].”
I have a feeling anyone making such an argument would not only not be tolerated, but would be banned from this message board faster than he could bat an eyelash. Lest you think this is solely a Jewish issue, I think anyone defending the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, or the European genocide of the Native Americans would be equally reviled.
And yet, somehow, when it comes to the Holy Bible, anything goes. All logic, morality, and decency is thrown out the window. If God wants to slaughter three times as many people as died in the Holocaust, fine. If people are praised for smashing infants’ heads against rocks, fine. If God asks one man to kill his son, and allows another to kill his daughter because of a stupid oath he made, fine. If God kills priests for burning the wrong incense, fine. No questioning, no critical thought, just blind acceptance. God is too great for us peons to understand. God is a morality unto himself. You can’t judge people of a previous era by modern standard. Etc.
I realize this is highly inflammatory, but it’s not a rhetorical question. I’d really appreciate an answer from everyone who views the Biblical genocide as being even slightly less repugnant from other famous instances of genocide in history.
*=Hitler has already been mentioned in this thread, so fuck Godwin’s rule.
If I might add to your excellent post, Opus, let me point out that CMkeller has already excused the genocides on the grounds that some of the people killed were homosexuals, and therefore had to be exterminated for their “evil.” This is, to me, nauseously offensive. We live in a society where plenty of people are killed, in this day and age, simply for being homosexuals- and CMKeller has stated that doing so is a praiseworthy act. How, then, is CMKeller any different from the neo-Nazis who praise Hitler for “serving God” by exterminating homosexuals?
Let me also state that if I came up with a new religion today, and said that Mothizar revealed the Scriptures to me in which Mothizar told our ancestors to exterminate homosexuals, kidnap and rape girls, etc. people would describe such a religion as a form of Satanism, because clearly Mothizar is an evil supernatural entity (and therefore a demon,) and moreover the religion would involve the inversion of evil and good traditionally associated with demonolatry. This is why I describe people like FoG as “devil worshippers.” It’s not meant to antagonize them; I just find it morally offensive to call people “devil worshippers” only when they refer to the devil as “Satan,” while calling other devil worshippers “Christians” when, through a bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, they call the devil “Jesus” or “Jehovah.” Personally, I think maybe we need to be more willing to call a spade a spade, and that’s why I try to treat apologists for genocide the same regardless of whether the Jews are the victims or the murderers. Maybe if enough of us did it, the devil worshippers would wake up to what they’re doing.
Ben and Opus1, that is a little harsh there. Paradoxically, you are correct about Christians worshipping Satan. I meant in that Satan is embodied as the ‘ruler of the world’ and ‘Prince of Darkness’. A Satan, or dark opposer, is needed to be a contrast to God’s Holy Light. Otherwise, everything is all light and all right. But unlike other pantheons, the separation becomes such that all acts by the Prince of Darkness is considered evil, while those by God are good, even if they are similar acts. Which leads to the OP.
But Ben, you missed one the best opportunities to advance the theory of evolution and reconcile it with the Bible: namely that of the evolution of God and how he is perceived in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The way it was written, He starts out as a vengeful war God, then tends to mellow out as the eons passed, doesn’t He? He even gave the people a human king, even though it would mean that He becomes more distant from his chosen people as a result. Also more importantly, as time goes on it expands on the concept that God is more forgiving of man’s trangressions, which culminates and becomes the embodiment of God’s son Jesus.
Well, I for one meant to be harsh. Genocidal apologists really fry me.
Sorry, but this just totally confuses me. God and Satan do the same things, but if God does it, it’s good, and if Satan does it, it’s bad? Please explain further.
This has got to be a joke. “Evolution” in the biological sense has to do with natural selection, mutations, shifting gene pools, etc. It is not simply “change.” God’s progression from vengeful war god to forgiving softie has the same relationship to evolution as does Hamlet’s character development. Should we say that Hamlet has now been reconciled with evolution because its main character changes, just like the Bible’s main character changes?
Not to mention the fact that in the Old Testament, God just kills people. By the time we get to the New Testament, he tortures them for all of eternity for thought crimes. Not exactly what I’d call moral advancement.
I’ve been staying out of this whole debate, but let me just point out that it’s Christianity, not Judaism, that’s developed the doctrine that condemns people to eternal punishment if they don’t believe what the religion teaches. To quote Mark Twain, from his “Letters From the Earth” (actually, I’m quoting Satan)
“it is believed by everyone that when [G-d] was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous and cruel, but that when he came down to earth, he became the opposite… sweet, gentle merciful, forgiving. He was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament… Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine that popular sarcasm by the light of the hell which he invented.”
I’d also like to point out that Judaism is hardly alone in massacring people of other religions and saying G-d commanded them to.
Cap, in the OT, the trangressions were to be put to death on the spot.
Opus and others who propose evolution: You are the ones who say that macroevolution is culmination of a long series of microevolutionary processes, in biological and sociocultural sense. Small changes lead to bigger ones. Yet you call it a joke when I point out such an evolution in the mindset of a people in relation to God. Sigh. This is not merely a Hamletain transformation. This is about a people searching a way to better themselves, to return to God’s grace. A really cruel God would have totally abandon them in time of need as they abandoned Him.
Anyway, God in the NT does give an out: Salvation through Jesus. The interpretation of that is in dispute I do admit. And there is the concept of forgiveness that you have not addressed.
Sorry, small hijack. Capacitor was somewhat right in his statement about evolution, but somewhat wrong.
According to dictionary.com evolution is defined as:
1.) A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.
a.) The process of developing.
b.) Gradual development.
3.) Biology.
a.) The theory that groups of organisms change with the passage of time, mainly as a result of natural selection, so that descendants differ morphologically and physiologically from their ancestors.
b.) The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
4.) A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.
5.)Mathematics. The extraction of a root of a quantity.
So really any gradual development is evolution. Though It is not the definition that the creationists are going on about, AFAIK.
But I do agree that there is not enough of a change in God to warrent “a different and more complex or better form”. (Aside from the local diety to a universal “everywhere at once” type of diety)
Well, certainly in the somewhat looser meaning of “change over time”, yes, there has clearly been an evolution in the way people conceive of God. One problem is that this hasn’t been a smooth change all in one direction–as has already been pointed out, with the God of the New Testament we have the introduction of hellfire; and the God of organized Christianity has at times been used to justify assorted atrocities. Still, there has clearly been an evolution here, and one which has been continuing and maybe even accelerating in the last century or two.
People once conceived of God as a real, personal entity who is “out there”, and who literally ordered them to go and massacre the people who live on the other side of the hill. Then people conceived of God as a real, personal entity who is “out there”, and who came among them and preached love and the brotherhood of man (while also preaching eternal torment in hell). Now, while some cling to the older views of God, many conceive of God as a real, personal entity who is “out there” and who preaches love and the brotherhood of man, and doesn’t really emphasize that hellfire and damnation stuff, which (according to various Christians) has been misinterpreted, and doesn’t really involve eternal agony in a lake of fire, and whatever it is may not even be permanent anyway. All this evolving leads me to suggest that maybe God isn’t a real, personal entity who is “out there”; maybe God is something “in there”, a psychological construct of believers which reflects their own beliefs about the world.
You have my respect, but you do not have the right to do whatever you wish to me. You may be able to do something that I, and many other human beings cannot, but were you the one who created the universe which makes the Schrodinger equation possible? If you had created the universe, and you had made me, then sure, you could do whatever you wanted to me, and I would feel it your right, not that I would enjoy it.
And, BTW, I’m not a fundie.
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Where’s his spiritual scriptures? Where’s his church? Where are his documented acts of godliness?
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Ah yes, but God used such key words as “thou” and “thy”, not “you and I” or “our”. God tells us to live as he so commands, any justice will be divied out by Him, and as such, if he feels that genocide is a fitting punishment, then, well, He’s the omnipotent guy so I’ll go with His descision.
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Well, considering that he is a character set in a time frame not of our time, but rather ahead, I can’t say as to whether or not he did exist, but yes, he was portrayed as an evil character.
Instead of simply declaring our comments to be “harsh,” I think it would be better if you addressed them substantively. Why is a neo-Nazi praising Hitler for killing homosexuals any different from CMKeller praising Joshua for the same thing?
The reason people thought you were joking is because you completely misrepresented evolution. As was pointed out to you, there’s more to evolution than “things change.” Moreover, if God hadn’t changed, would that retroactively have made evolution false? If God uses evolution to create the world, does that force him to change later?
You can use the same logic to prove all kinds of things. Like, obviously the Holy Trinity is true. Why? Because there are three branches to the US government. The theory of Relativity is false. Why? Because God’s morality is absolute. I believe that the argument you made is formally known as the argumentum ad non sequitur.
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You mean like when people need him in Hell, but unfortunately he’s abandoned them because they didn’t have the right opinion on matters of historical opinion?
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the fact that God created the universe implies that any evil he commits is really good. How does your conclusion even remotely follow from the premise? One might as well prove that genocide is good because chicken tastes good with broccoli.
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I didn’t say you were- I merely pointed out that you were using a common argument of fundamentalist demonolaters.
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Why should GOD have to provide you with these things? Who are you to question GOD? Did you create the universe? No. Jim Jones did.
Do you have any more impudent questions?
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The problem is that by your argument, anything God does is automatically good, just because. We can’t point to any action God did and use it to prove that he was evil, because you find some way to make it good- if only through “might makes right” or non-sequiturs about how he created the universe. The God of the Bible even breaks his own promises, but no doubt you find that to be a moral good as well.
What if a supernatural entity created a universe full of children purely so that he could sexually torture them? Is there ANY conceivable way that a supernatural entity with the power to create universes can be evil, in your book?
Or suppose Jim Jones really was God. Would it still be evil of him to assign pedophiles to childcare duty just to see what would happen, just to torture both the pedophiles (who were trying to reform) and the children?
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There you go again- might makes right. How much might do you need? If I can rape someone, does that justify doing so? If I can destroy a planet, does that justify raping someone? What if God could do almost everything- he could do anything at all but say “toy boat” three times quickly. Would genocide still be good, then?
To quote an earlier statement of yours:
“we need to believe that He exists to make determinations about the OT”
If you don’t believe that Alex exists, how can you make determinations about his morality?
Well, theoretically, but IRL, prosecution of a capital crime was more complicated. How does this address my post, though? G-d in Christianity seems a lot harsher than G-d in Judaism. Admittedly, there’s less of that rain of fire/plague of boils aspect (even though Revelation has a lot of that), but there is a definite “If you sin, even once, you deserve to go to Hell, and only by Jesus dying can people get out of that”
Actually, it’s a variation of Issiah’s argument. G-d created us, therefore we belong to Him and He can do whatever he wants to us, without any considerations of morality coming in. It’s like if I carved a statue. If I then decided to destroy that statue, it wouldn’t be an immoral act…it’s just a statue, it doesn’t have any rights, and I’m under no obligation to make sure it doesn’t get damaged.
I’m not saying I agree with that argument…that’s just the argument I think he was trying to make.
I think that’s a fair request, even though it lifts from Chaim’s list of immoralities a single item, homosexuality, known for its tolerance here, rather than one of the other items, like beastiality, that might not make as effective a banner for the charge. I spent most of my early life of faith on precisely this issue. As I was beginning to discover God’s Love, it became increasingly urgent to me to find out why He broke so bad on so many people so many times. I think Chaim’s interpretation pretty much boils down to, “Well they deserved it. Look at all the warnings they got and all the times they thumbed their noses.” That’s fine for Chaim, but for me, as a Christian, that notion was unsatisfactory, given Jesus’ admonition that we are to forgive transgressions not once, not twice, but over and over and over.
I’m thankful for modern philosophy and my father’s ancient wisdom which, combined with prayer and meditation, led to my revelation that the universe is amoral. Being careful not to divide the world in two, I can see why an atheist might disagree. Where else will the atheist derive his morality other than from the universe? Therefore, although my interpretation of the topic is quite different from Chaim’s, I won’t be surprised when Ben’s head explodes and he starts furiously tapping the keys to vent his categorical incredulity. That’s fine.
But from my view, these are nothing but atoms that we’re talking about here. Collapsed waves. Burps and farts in the fabric of space-time. Nothing of consequence. Mortal things happening to mortal stuff. In the context of an amoral universe, when a man is killed, whether by the hand of Hitler or by the hand of Joshua, an amoral sequence of events is set in motion, wherein electromagnetic particles discharge into fields. It’s the same phenomenon physically as a pig running headlong into the sharp edge of a rock. Man dies. Pig dies. Same same. Any morality that is applied to this, derived from the stuff that the man and pig are made of, is patently arbitrary. Is the man any better than the pig? Is the pig any better than an ant? Is an ant any better than an amoeba? Is an ameoba any better than the dirt we trample under our feet? Is life something sacred?
My philosophies and my father taught me that there is a metaphysical Spirit, and that it is the only substantive reality. This knowledge became experience when I began to worship Jesus. Any children who have died, whether by the hand of Hitler or by the hand of Joshua — or by nobody’s hand at all, like our little grandson — are alive and well and living in Paradise. Any innocents who were slaughtered, any oppressed who were slain, any sufferers who were murdered, nothing of consequence happened to them except that they became, for the first time, alive. These paltry billions of years, this trivial expanse of galaxies — these are not even a blink. Not even a blink. They are nothing.
Yeesh. Attempt to start a thoughtful debate on the inconsistency of believing that G-d, as defined in the OT, is good and loving and some acts of apparent cruelty on his part, and it turns into a dumping ground for the SDMB atheist attack squad.
I’m not taking the bait. I spawned this thread from another one in order to answer this question, posed by Opus1, with examples:
And that’s just what I’m going to do. Red herrings like the fact that the OT’s view of homosexuality is not the same as that of 21st-century American society’s will not be addressed. The fact is that if it is defined in the OT as evil, then G-d’s punishing that evil is not an act of gratuitous cruelty, but of justice.
Opus1:
The issue of why children, infants, and other innocents might suffer is a general question not related specifically to the flood or the Canaanite nations. I’ll address that later in this post. However, Ben restates that question in a different way that speaks more to the point I want to address up here:
That kind of depends on to whom you ascribe the failure. G-d, being omnipotent, could force people to act good, but that’s contrary to what he wants to really happen in the world, which is for people to choose good of their own free will. However, I suppose you could say that in those instances, he failed to make good the compelling choice over evil.
Well, there are several ways I could answer this question. Amongst those ways are:
I could do the stereotypical Jewish thing and answer your question with another question - if the commandment had been to do it through mass sterilization rather than mass killing, would you really think that was much better?
You say that many genocides in history were inspired by the OT. I challenge that claim. We’ve seen plenty of genocides and ethnic cleansings during this century, but none of these perpetrators justified them by saying that the OT commanded it done to some very specific nations. In fact, the OT makes a point of saying that such practices are to be the exception, not the rule, only to be applied to specific nations due to their offenses. Deuteronomy 20:10-15 -
Destruction by sterility would not be effective in wiping out the society in question, because as long as they live, they could disseminate their ideas and morals (or lack thereof). The whole point of the eradication, according to the words of the OT, was because these societies were so corrupt that their continued existence would allow this corruption to spread. This would be true if they were sterilized as well.
Now, why the infants as well, those who never learned about their culture? (Note: please do not respond to this paragraph without having read what I say below about the general subject of children suffering.) Why even the animals, in some of these cases? Because leaving intact any artifacts of those cultures, unliving or living, is likely to arouse peoples’ interest in learning about that culture and, eventually, imitating it.
I could probably think of more than that, but this message is long already and I’ve hardly begun to respond to this huge thread that sprung up. Back to Opus1:
Well, then, (to paraphrase), if you don’t believe the crime, why believe the time? If you’re willing to knock a few points off what the OT says that society was like, then why not knock a few points off what it says about the destruction that followed in its wake, and your sense of crime-punishment proportion can be satisfied?
See above, and see below.
It may sound trite to say this, but yes, it is something only G-d can do. While human beings are capable of sitting in judgement over individuals, only G-d had the necessary scope and perspective to sit in judgment over a society.
Just to make the point, let me bring up one of the OT examples that you (curiously) left out: Sodom and Gomorrah (and three other cities), in Genesis 18. These cities’ society was so nasty that G-d decided they had to be destroyed. We get a glimmer of this when we see that when the angels who came to visit Lot, the townspeople gathered at his door, demanding that they been handed over to them for rape.
However, in the conversation G-d had with Abraham on the subject, Abraham determines that if that society contained ten righteous people amongst them, G-d would spare them. That’s all G-d requires - that a society be capable of producing ten righteous people - to not carry out that kind of punishment.
How could a human jury determine this sort of thing? Quite frankly, one couldn’t. G-d could.
As I recall, they did so after consulting not with a prophet of G-d, but Micah and his idol. Sort of shows the OT view of what those who allow idolatry to enter their lives eventually come to.
No, from what I’ve been able to look up, it doesn’t say anything explicit. The Rabbis have many candidates for what might have made G-d angry at the people that time, chief amongst them their participation in the rebellion of Sheva son of Bichri, but nothing clearly stated.
David is an excellent king and leader, and is doing his best to spare his people from serious disaster. He did not know before taking his wrongful census that G-d/Satan tempted him to do so as a vehicle for punishing the Israelites he was angry at.
There’s plenty of evidence in the texts that after Josiah’s death, they slipped back to the idolatrous ways of Manasseh. Here’s one quote - 2 Chronicles 36:14-16
Normally, no. But we’re not talking here about seduction for the sake of personal pleasure. This was an organized campaign to make the Jews fall out of favor with G-d. Numbers 31:15-16 - “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he [Moses] asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people.”
“Sex toys”? I think not. They either became slaves, or they became wives, with all the rights that a born-Israelite wife would have. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 describes the process that a soldier who is smitten with a captive woman must go through in order to make her his wife. It forces him to see her in an “unpretty” state, forces him to watch her mourn for a month. It forces him to spend that time cooling off his passions for her and to evaluate her as a human being, and specifically not as a sex toy.
I just checked out your link, and quite frankly, I’m not impressed. To the compilers of that list, it seems to me that anything short of strict vegetarianism is cruelty.
I’d stick with a definition of cruelty as doing harm to people for no apparent reason. My point in this thread is that G-d always has some justification for acts which we consider cruelty on his part.
Gotcha. I’ll have to look that one up.
It’s getting late, and I’ve hardly even begun to make a dent in this thread. I’ll try to post more tonight, including that thing about child suffering that I had intended to do in this post. Stay tuned.
I won’t respond to most of Lib’s post, because I frankly don’t know how. His world-view is so diametrically opposed to mine, that it is totally alien, and I haven’t been able to even begin pondering it. He dismisses atoms as mere “burps and farts,” and totally accepts the Reality of Spirit (both with capital letters). Personally, I’ll stick to things (atoms) I can interact with, observe, and to an extent, understand. I can’t even perceive Spirit in any meaningful sense of the word… and that’s supposed to be Real?
I would specifically like to comment on this nugget by Lib
I’m more of an agnostic than an atheist, in that I don’t deny “Spirit” or whatever could exist, but this sentiment of yours is nevertheless offensive and ignorant. I derive my morality from two things: (1) society and (2) my conscience. Neither of these are negated if this life turns out to be all that there is, if your Spirit is total crap.
I had more to say, but I see cmkeller posted, and I’d really like to hear what he has to say.