Is God a tyrant? (If he exists)

[SnakeLord]

Oh I'm sorry, he also apparently spoke a lot. I can mention many other people who do the same, including David Koresh. Although, I don't remember David Koresh spending half his time complaining about tax collectors.

What else am I missing?

How did he put himself on trial? It's a farce... He got strung up, died, and then ressed from the dead, laughed at everyone and fucked off home. If I could res from the dead, I'd make that trick part of my weekly routine.

 

[JustARide]

I don't know if it struck anybody as curious at all, but all these calamities ("evils from God" as people would have it) have one common characteristic: they were natural disasters.

Yes, funny you mention that. They all seem like natural disasters. Natural disasters. Hmmm. Now, someone of a more scientific mind might say that is a hint that those events were, in fact, only... natural disasters. Imagine that.

Does it sound like something beneath the cities might have had something to do with the rain of sulphur?

Well, that's a more likely scenario than a big invisible dude in the sky doing it anyway.

All these disasters follow the same pattern: God warns people impending disaster and the seriousness of sin, and yet they persist. There is always a chance to escape or postpone His judgement.

OK, 1. Exactly how did the children who were slaughtered because of their "evil" pagan parents have a chance to escape?

2. You're obfuscating. The debate here is whether or not God acted as a tyrant. Are you saying that, if Saddam Hussein had warned dissidents he was going to torture them, his behavior would not have qualified as tyrannical? We're talking about punishment fitting the crime here. We're talking about fairness - not whether or not God fired warning shots.

My point is, the evidence that "encriminates" the God of the Bible in these events are, specifically, that Israel is in some way involved, and generally that sin is in some way involved. It's easy to use these events as "proof" of God's cruel rulership, but forget that they were no worse than those we see today. The worst of them all - the flood - has left so little trace that many people doubt it even happened. And yet accounts of a great deluge is found in hundreds of cultures world-wide, all associated in some way with their cultural deity.

So a flood killing every living thing except Noah and his floating theme park is "no worse" than what we see today? What event in recent history is even comparable to that? Are pillars of fire regularly coming down from the sky? I work at a radio station news department and I must say, pillars of fire would easily top any local six o'clock newscast.

Also - If other cultures make mention of a flood (and you are correct that they do), but attribute it to some other God, what makes you so sure it was your God who did it in the first place? You can't mention other mythologies only when it suits your case. And isn't it more likely that, if some flood did occur, it was, as the language hints, a natural disaster interpreted by different societies as the wrath of their respective gods?

What these events are, is exactly what they seem to be: exceptions to God's rule - exceptions prompted by sin.

Exceptions to God's rule. What a handy explanation for things you have no way of defending.

But without the ingredient of faith, they are nothing more than religious accounts of the everyday suffering we see around us every day of our lives.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

To those people who wanted Job to hand over his visitors for sex, it might have been a normal and acceptable form of initiation - how do you know how bad it was? If Job offering his daughters to them in stead was even remotely acceptable even to a "righteous" man, I'd say it was pretty bad. How threatening were the Amalekites to God's promise of delivering the Israelites into Canaan?

A normal and acceptable form of initiation? "Here, rape my daughters, as is customary." Geez. If the Bible said God had beamed down to Earth and raped 5-year-old girls for the "glory of the kingdom," I bet you'd have an excuse for him.

And if my memory serves me, at the time God ordered the wholesale slaughter of every Amalekite man, woman, and child, the Amalekites had not been at war with the Isaelites for 100 years. But I suppose they may have been a threat, in the same way Iraq was a "threat" to the United States.

I guess if I believed donkeys and snakes talked, it wouldn't be too hard to convince me to go to war either.

Josh

======================
"It's just a ride." - Bill Hicks :m:
======================

 

[MarcAC]

Just a quick interlude.
2. What about the process of learning and growth is better than being created as fully realized? 2a. In this sense are we then greater (at least in potential) than god who does not have the capacity for growth?
Curiously,

~Raithere

Interesting, however, I think the answer is somewhat obvious. The question would seem to hint at the notion that since God has, or... would have... for those who don't believe... a capacity for growth... he has the ultimate power... and their is no power... or... growth... which will get you to a stage past God's, no matter how you look at it. No analogy is perfect, but, I think the Proud Muslim kind of looked past this... little hiccup.

God might not have the capacity for growth in power, but I do, however, think that God is dynamic, not static. Therefore God can facilitate change.

 

[MarcAC]

Thanks for your thoughts MarcAC.
How do you mean when you say we have to reach a certain stage spiritually before we can become like God. Do you mean ascertain perfection of our intent and our morals or that we would actually have significant control over anything.

Both. Significant control over ourselves.

I've never seen it stated that we become God's after a certain period of time.

Me neither

Again, do you believe we become God-like (ability wise) at the end of the spiritual road.

To an extent. To me God will be infinitely powerful. Start counting from 1... when you get to infinity... then you'll know the measure of God's power. I'm still counting... so I don't know what my abilities will be if I am to become more like God in terms of being able to control my environment

A perfect God is definitely hard to explain. For me a perfect God would hold the virtues which I aim towards achieving while being all-powerful. These virtues of mine include selflessness, a strong sense of equality and an intent to do good and help others.

Then believe. What's you problem? Sense of equality depends more on you, not God.

And what has free will been able to do for us?

Makes us do what we want to and go where we want to... even if we choose heaven or hell... still our choice.

According to Christian's it all basically boils down to believing in God or not. Whoever believes in him gets his reward and whoever disagrees/disbelieves in him is sent to eternal damnation.

Reward... damnation... you can look at it that way... or you can just say we go where we choose to go. We can choose to believe... we can choose to disbelieve.

Sounds like a master beating his slaves to me. The slaves can choose not to do as he wishes, but that doesn't mean the slaves don't get their beating at the end of the day. Too bad the slaves have a chance to rebel.

My problem with this analogy is this; I would assume, that the slaves won't want to do something that is detrimental to their health... etc. So your slave master is one evil vindictive bastard. However, what does God tell christians to do? Love your neighbour... that's the general idea. So you can choose to love your neighbour... or you can choose to hate your neihgbour, burn his house and land, rape his wife, steal his children, kill his dog, etc. The question now is, what is so difficult about that choice? Your stated virtues seem to agree with love for your neighbour. What's your problem with God then? Believe.

 

[SnakeLord]

However, what does God tell christians to do? Love your neighbour... that's the general idea. So you can choose to love your neighbour... or you can choose to hate your neihgbour, burn his house and land, rape his wife, steal his children, kill his dog, etc.

What if your neighbour burns your house, rapes your wife, steals your children and kills your dog? Would you still be walking around with this 'love thy neighbour' ideal in your head? Or would you, (of course), instantly fail what god has told you to do. All of us are the same, some just 'snap' a little easier than others. So you can thank your eternal reward down to your tolerance levels, which isn't a choice - it's genetic/upbringing based. However under a certain set of circumstances every single human would fail. Therefore doesn't the whole thing come down to luck? Luck that your wife doesn't get raped etc? These ideals of god are based upon circumstance, not concious decision making.

The question now is, what is so difficult about that choice?

I think you'd need to experience a mentally ill person doing unspeakable acts to loved ones in order to answer your question. You too would fail, and possibly face eternal damnation not because you sat down and made a choice but because you were showing love by protecting your family. It's a no-win situation when it comes down to the crunch.

Here's the scenario:

You come home - wife is being raped by a guy with a sharp knife, who would happily kill you and her. Do you..

A) Tell him you love him as god commanded, and let him continue - thus not really showing love to your wife or..

B) Help your wife, and thus not showing love to the guy as god commanded

I guess you'd call that the choice heh?

 

[JustARide]

Makes us do what we want to and go where we want to... even if we choose heaven or hell... still our choice.

So, submit to the tyrannical God and go spend eternity praising him. Or deny him and go suffer forever. A choice, yes, but sort of like the choice killers sometimes give people in the movies: "So where would you like it? In the chest or right between the eyes?"

Reward... damnation... you can look at it that way... or you can just say we go where we choose to go. We can choose to believe... we can choose to disbelieve.

See aforementioned Bill Hicks quote. "Thank you for giving, Lord... for all those options!"

So you can choose to love your neighbour... or you can choose to hate your neihgbour, burn his house and land, rape his wife, steal his children, kill his dog, etc. The question now is, what is so difficult about that choice? Your stated virtues seem to agree with love for your neighbour. What's your problem with God then? Believe.

Ah, I can see you're living in a nice, tidy, black and white sitcom, where all choices boil down to simple solutions. "Love your neighbor... or hate your neighbor." Should you ever decide to join us in the real world, you may be shocked to find that the vast majority of life's challenges rarely present such stark answers. Go encounter some catch-22's and get back to me on that one.

Josh

"It's just a ride." - Bill Hicks :m:

 

[Raithere]

The question would seem to hint at the notion that since God has, or... would have... for those who don't believe... a capacity for growth... he has the ultimate power... and their is no power... or... growth... which will get you to a stage past God's, no matter how you look at it.

This boils down to the proposition that god is infinite, which is fine as far as it goes but it still doesn’t really answer my main thrust. PM’s assumption is that there is some value in growth but this is only true for that which is incomplete, not fully realized. The question remains; why were we created incomplete?

Typically, the counterpoint is that we were made incomplete so that we could have free-will but this has some interesting ramifications.

One is that God must then find that free-will is more valuable than correct action. But religious proscriptions seem to countermand this valuation, particularly as they are often declared absolute both in scope and consequence.

God might not have the capacity for growth in power, but I do, however, think that God is dynamic, not static. Therefore God can facilitate change.

It’s another interesting question, isn’t it? If we presume that God is omniscient and omni-benevolent we run into further problems. For if God knows everything and always chooses the best course of action then his course must be set from the beginning. In essence, God would not have free will. The only alternative is to lessen these constraints.

~Raithere

 

[Jenyar]

The question remains; why were we created incomplete?

Acts 17
27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.'

One is that God must then find that free-will is more valuable than correct action.

Correct action is entirely dependent on free-will. Doing the right thing because you have the choice is what righteousness is all about.

It?s another interesting question, isn?t it? If we presume that God is omniscient and omni-benevolent we run into further problems. For if God knows everything and always chooses the best course of action then his course must be set from the beginning. In essence, God would not have free will. The only alternative is to lessen these constraints.

Since when is there only one "best" course of action? Doesn't it depend on circumstances, and doesn't circumstances change with choice and free will? We do have a say in how God does things, He is able to respond to us. If that weren't the case, wouldn't sin have clinched our fate?

 

[Jenyar]

Yes, funny you mention that. They all seem like natural disasters. Natural disasters. Hmmm. Now, someone of a more scientific mind might say that is a hint that those events were, in fact, only... natural disasters. Imagine that.

It's not the scientific mind that would use the word "only" - it's the unbelieving mind.

OK, 1. Exactly how did the children who were slaughtered because of their "evil" pagan parents have a chance to escape?

The children of the flood and the wars were victims of their parents' indiscriminacy, as is often the case. Might I ask you what you think about abortion? Is it always unjust for children to die? The "children" that were rescued were God's children - in fact, if justice was determined by sin, sparing Noah would be the unfair act, which we commonly call "mercy". But they were spared because of their faith in God. It permitted them to escape a disaster that would have claimed their lives otherwise. God promises life - that might or might not include physical safety, but it's a sure way to survive His judgement.

2. You're obfuscating. The debate here is whether or not God acted as a tyrant. Are you saying that, if Saddam Hussein had warned dissidents he was going to torture them, his behavior would not have qualified as tyrannical? We're talking about punishment fitting the crime here. We're talking about fairness - not whether or not God fired warning shots.

I'm not obfuscating. Isn't your contention that God acted as a tyrant based on the "evidence" of these accounts? (if they are, I might add, it would be alittle hypocritical since you don't really believe God was involved there any more than He is involved in wars and natural distasters today).

Saddam Hussein was neither fair nor merciful. He did not promise justice nor gave the impression that he was able to provide it, even to his own people. America played God and Saddam's innocent "children" suffered. God has a history of providing for those who have faith in Him. Sometimes the crush just runs a little narrower, and those not covered by His mercy are caught in his anger.

So a flood killing every living thing except Noah and his floating theme park is "no worse" than what we see today? What event in recent history is even comparable to that? Are pillars of fire regularly coming down from the sky? I work at a radio station news department and I must say, pillars of fire would easily top any local six o'clock newscast.

We don't need nature to match our cruelty. We already know nature is indiscriminate about who it kills, we don't expect it to pick and choose. People, on the other hand, are the true tyrants:

1. The government of the Ottoman Empire deported two-thirds or more of its estimated 1-1.8M Armenian citizens during WWI. They were forced into the deserts of present-day Syria, and most died due slowly to starvation and dehydration.

2. The Nazi genocidal actions against the Jews, the Roma, etc.

3. During WW2, the government of Croatia killed an estimated 200-350K of its internal Serbian citizens.

4. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia killed 31% of its own population, approx 2 million people.

5. In Rwanda, between 500k-1M of the Tutsi ethnic group were killed by the Hutu ethnic group.

6. 3.3 million people have died since 1998 as a result of the war in the DRC
(source: Christian Thinktank)

Is any kind of death "fair", whether from natural or human causes? Is it even fair that you are alive at all? Against what do you measure fairness on this scale? Your personal morality? What authority do you have about how nature (or God) should work, except your own moral intuition? The real question is whether you think justice is exclusive to human life - or more specifically, to your own take on human life.

How do you know what is necessary for the redemption of mankind? Did you know the flood prefigured baptism? The world was baptised during those 40 days and nights. What should make you think is that Noah and his family were the only ones who survived it. The Bible seems to say that death is a natural event, under God's control in the sense that survival can only come from Him. You could extend this to say Hell will come naturally to all people, and only God can save you. If the flood was a lesson to us, it's one way to important to dismiss as "just a natural event".

Also - If other cultures make mention of a flood (and you are correct that they do), but attribute it to some other God, what makes you so sure it was your God who did it in the first place? You can't mention other mythologies only when it suits your case. And isn't it more likely that, if some flood did occur, it was, as the language hints, a natural disaster interpreted by different societies as the wrath of their respective gods?

I'm glad you see the discrepancy. It is only faith that "incriminates" God, and it's possible to have faith anything. People no doubt blamed fate and many things besides. But the Bible puts the flood in a larger context, where God is Creator and preserver of a life that would endure eternally. If you have faith in nature, then what happened was perfectly natural. Maybe not fair - only God is fair - but nothing more than you would expect from a natural disaster.

A normal and acceptable form of initiation? "Here, rape my daughters, as is customary." Geez. If the Bible said God had beamed down to Earth and raped 5-year-old girls for the "glory of the kingdom," I bet you'd have an excuse for him.

You missed my point entirely. That was an indication of the state of things. It wasn't right, but then Lot wasn't 21st century middle class American either. On whose kind of values was your country built, those of Sodom and Lot, or the values God wanted to preserve? It's easy to criticize out of an easychair something someone else had to fight for. Read the rest of Lot's story - he was hardly a model citizen in any case - yet his life was preserved. Once again: that was the real "unfairness".

And if my memory serves me, at the time God ordered the wholesale slaughter of every Amalekite man, woman, and child, the Amalekites had not been at war with the Isaelites for 100 years. But I suppose they may have been a threat, in the same way Iraq was a "threat" to the United States.

I guess if I believed donkeys and snakes talked, it wouldn't be too hard to convince me to go to war either.

Your memory didn't serve you very well. I'll try to relate the sequence of events as concisely as possible, to put things into perspective for you:

8 The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. (Ex.17)
11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. (It was only with God's help that they survived).
17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. (Deut. 25)
"Because a hand was against the throne of the LORD , the LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation." (Ex.17:16)

Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. (Judges 6:3)
...the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands? (Judges 10:12)

47 After Saul had assumed rule over Israel, he fought against their enemies on every side: Moab, the Ammonites, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. Wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them. 48 He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.(1 Sam. 14)

6 Then he said to the Kenites, "Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt." So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites. (1 Samuel 15)

PS. Some children must have survived Saul's slaughter, because lo and behold, we hear from them again in David's reign:

1 David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, 2 and had taken captive the women and all who were in it, both young and old. (1 Sam 30).

Not a very nice lot. It seems the situation was more like if Saddam had actually outnumbered and threatened the USA in their own country. You see, you don't have the luxury to assume the moral high ground when you actually have to choose on whose side you are on...

 

[Raithere]

Acts 17
27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

For what purpose; a game of spiritual blind man's bluff? This might be acceptable if at the end of the game we all pull off our blindfolds and yell, "There he is!" Instead we're supposedly playing the game on a precipice.

You're working from the same basic assumption that PM is; that there is some inherent value in being incomplete.

Correct action is entirely dependent on free-will.

No, it's not. A machine may be constructed to always do the right thing.

Doing the right thing because you have the choice is what righteousness is all about.

This doesn't explain anything. Yes, we appear to have the freedom of choice. Yes, we are told that God to wants us to behave 'righteously'. But if it were more important to behave righteously than to have free will God could have made us automatons. He didn't. Therefore God values our free choice over our good behavior. But then why threaten and punish us for using that ability? If I tell you that you can exit a 50th floor apartment through the elevator or the window what kind of a choice is that?

Since when is there only one "best" course of action? Doesn't it depend on circumstances, and doesn't circumstances change with choice and free will?

While it might appear this way to us, there are no changing circumstances for God, he already knows what's going to happen. For him, it already has happened.

~Raithere

 

[MarcAC]

What if your neighbour burns your house, rapes your wife, steals your children and kills your dog? Would you still be walking around with this 'love thy neighbour' ideal in your head?

Of course. As far as I can see only a stupid misguided idiot would do anything less, knowing the pain which he felt. If you don't you'll end up causing the same pain that person caused you. What's the point in that?

Or would you, (of course)?, instantly fail what god has told you to do.

It hasn't happened to me, but reread what I typed above.

All of us are the same, some just 'snap' a little easier than others. So you can thank your eternal reward down to your tolerance levels, which isn't a choice - it's genetic/upbringing based.

Upbrining... or whatever you want to call it is littered with choices, and the choices we make determine who we become at the end of the developpmental road.

However under a certain set of circumstances every single human would fail.

Says who? What circumstances? You speak stereotypically, and I usually discourage that, because it narrows people's focus.

Therefore doesn't the whole thing come down to luck? Luck that your wife doesn't get raped etc?

No, I don't think so. See below.

These ideals of god are based upon circumstance, not concious decision making.

Here... I can just say you believe what you want... I don't believe what you believe. However, there are no choices to be made if the situation doesn't exist where you have choices to make. They are based on both circumstances and conscious decision making.

I think you'd need to experience a mentally ill person doing unspeakable acts to loved ones in order to answer your question. You too would fail, and possibly face eternal damnation not because you sat down and made a choice but because you were showing love by protecting your family. It's a no-win situation when it comes down to the crunch.

I doubt a person who cannot make decisions objectively will be looked at equally with people who can.

Here's the scenario:

You come home - wife is being raped by a guy with a sharp knife, who would happily kill you and her. Do you..

A) Tell him you love him as god commanded, and let him continue - thus not really showing love to your wife or..

B) Help your wife, and thus not showing love to the guy as god commanded

I guess you'd call that the choice heh?

No. You are looking at it in 'black and white' even though you seem to be trying to 'reveal some colour'. Obviously, you show love to your wife by trying to stop the sick bastard. You show him love by forgiving him... who knows what circumstances led him to doing such a thing? God is a God of Love, there is justice in love. It is all a consequence of free will. Read the Hick guy's post. You'll get the idea. Consider this; if the guy had the love your neighbour ideal he might not have done it in the first place.

 

[MarcAC]

For what purpose; a game of spiritual blind man's bluff? This might be acceptable if at the end of the game we all pull off our blindfolds and yell, "There he is!" Instead we're supposedly playing the game on a precipice.

You're working from the same basic assumption that PM is; that there is some inherent value in being incomplete.

No, it's not. A machine may be constructed to always do the right thing.

Yes, we appear to have the freedom of choice. Yes, we are told that God to wants us to behave 'righteously'. But if it were more important to behave righteously than to have free will God could have made us automatons. He didn't. Therefore God values our free choice over our good behavior.

Why do you focus on one or the other? Why not both? As I said in some previous post, the process of development, of evolution; dynamic processes are apparent everywhere you look. Some of the hardest plastics out there are made from material which you have to subject to great heat and pressure before it attains the property of hardness. Without free will I doubt we would be self aware.

But then why threaten and punish us for using that ability? If I tell you that you can exit a 50th floor apartment through the elevator or the window what kind of a choice is that?

The only ones that the construct allow. You live in the hotel, you either stay there and burn or, exit... one way or the other. The question is are there any other viable possibilities? You can choose to believe, disbelieve... orrrrr... what?

While it might appear this way to us, there are no changing circumstances for God, he already knows what's going to happen. For him, it already has happened.

But what is the significance of this to you? However, as I said, I believe God is dynamic, and thus can rxt to change.

 

[JustARide]

It's not the scientific mind that would use the word "only" - it's the unbelieving mind.

I was going for an Occam's Razor kind of argument here, as I later made mention of what is more "likely"... a natural disaster or an invisible guy in the sky who kills children with bears and hates gay people taking revenge on humanity?

I doubt the scientific mind would go with the later explanation.

The children of the flood and the wars were victims of their parents' indiscriminacy, as is often the case. Might I ask you what you think about abortion? Is it always unjust for children to die?

Though I would label myself a progressive in most matters, I am not a big proponent of abortion. It seems like simply another human rights issue to me. So, yes, you're correct. The world is patently unfair. Innocent people suffer for no good reason whatsoever daily.

The "children" that were rescued were God's children - in fact, if justice was determined by sin, sparing Noah would be the unfair act, which we commonly call "mercy". But they were spared because of their faith in God. It permitted them to escape a disaster that would have claimed their lives otherwise. God promises life - that might or might not include physical safety, but it's a sure way to survive His judgement.

I like your placing of "children" in quotes. Telling.

You seem to have an almost Calvinist bent to your thinking here (the "we are all shit and deserve nothing less than eternal suffering" kind of feeling). Christians seem to have a very dim view of life, indeed. Humanity sinned and now the only thing (rightly) keeping us from everlasting torture is the "mercy" of a loving God.

Let me ask you a question. Should children who were born (and often died) in Nazi concentration camps be "thankful" for their lives? Should they be happy that they were permitted time to live? If they were born to Jewish parents and died very early, should they go to Hell for not being little Christian babies? Exactly where does the "thankful" part come into the equation?

Yes, here on earth, children unjustly suffer for their parents misdeeds. That is a situation I would hope God would <i>solve</i>, not <i>worsen</i> by ordering massive wars, where the only guarantee is that innocents will be killed. As Bertrand Russell said, "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

I'm not obfuscating. Isn't your contention that God acted as a tyrant based on the "evidence" of these accounts? (if they are, I might add, it would be alittle hypocritical since you don't really believe God was involved there any more than He is involved in wars and natural distasters today).

Yes, I'm saying, based on the evidence of Biblical accounts, God is a tyrant; therefore, I do not believe. What's hypocritical? We're talking about the Christian God here. My beliefs are of no concern.

If natural disasters happen for no particular moral reason (my contention), then we need not concern ourselves with them (religiously speaking). If, however, the Bible is true and God does enact some of these disasters, then yes, there is a moral problem here.

If the World Trade Center had been blown down by wind and rain, then you would not see any moral outrage at the jet stream. The difference is, conscious entities (human beings) made the choice to bring that great suffering on people. The Bible says God consciously chose to bring about suffering on masses of people, without respect to their age, gender, or culpability (unless, once again, you believe Amalekite babies were guilty of hating the Isrealites).

Saddam Hussein was neither fair nor merciful. He did not promise justice nor gave the impression that he was able to provide it, even to his own people. America played God and Saddam's innocent "children" suffered. God has a history of providing for those who have faith in Him. Sometimes the crush just runs a little narrower, and those not covered by His mercy are caught in his anger.

I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you condemning the American invasion for the innocent suffering it caused, or applauding it as God working through American foreign policy?

You're saying some of Saddam's people were innocent. And yet they were killed. How exactly is that "providing" for them? Or are you saying, by virtue of being Iraqi (and likely non-christian) that they deserved to be "caught up in His anger"?

We don't need nature to match our cruelty. We already know nature is indiscriminate about who it kills, we don't expect it to pick and choose. People, on the other hand, are the true tyrants.

No argument there.

Look. There are two possibilities: 1) Natural disasters are not the work of the Christian God, or 2) Natural disasters can be the work of God. Since you are arguing for #2, I'm engaging you, based on the Bible accounts that you ostensibly believe.

I'm not arguing whether natural disasters or human actions are more horrible. They are both horrible. We're agreed.

I'm asking, simply, whether or not God creates catastrophes that, were they commited by regular humans, we would dub them tyrannical. You called natural disasters "indiscriminate." I'm asking how (if you believe that God caused massive natural disasters in the Old Testament) those disasters were not indiscriminate? You seem to be saying God kills discriminately and justly, based on who has faith in Him. How is the flood of the OT discriminate?

Is any kind of death "fair", whether from natural or human causes? Is it even fair that you are alive at all? Against what do you measure fairness on this scale? Your personal morality? What authority do you have about how nature (or God) should work, except your own moral intuition? The real question is whether you think justice is exclusive to human life - or more specifically, to your own take on human life.

You are absolutely correct. I have no authority with regards to nature or God. I possess only my personal views. And here's the newsflash: So do you. I will concede that I could be entirely incorrect. Maybe those babies deserved to die. Maybe humanity should be flooded out every once in a while. Maybe people who don't happen to profess belief in one wacky god over another do deserve eternal suffering.

All we can do - right here, right now - is try to create as peaceful a world as humanly possible. And yes, we disagree on how to achieve that goal. But nevertheless, it is all we can do with the short time we are given.

It is my contention that, if we are to sustain a world where human rights are respected, that we must come to terms with what we do not know. Religion is a giant collection of everything we don't know for sure, but are willing to kill each other over. Right now, Israelis and Palestinians are killing each other over a little chunk of desert land that - if religion did not exist - no one would give a shit about.

So, I humbly base my ideas of justice on what mankind has learned thus far. I form conclusions, however flawed, based on observations of the world and the great thinkers who have left their legacy of knowledge.

This means I can envision a world (though improbable at best) where the indiscriminate violence of war is eradicated. I can say things like, "Children should not be murdered."

Ironically, it is Christians who must adopt a relativistic morality. They must say, "I believe killing children is wrong... unless God did it in the Old Testament. I'm sure he had good reasons." And because you believe in the possibility that God may order war on earth, you must be ambivalent when someone like Osama bin Laden kills in the name of God. Because, after all, how do you know God isn't really behind him?

So, yes, I believe the world will be a safer, less violent place, when people stop believing that any past or future wars, conflicts, catastrophes, and prejudices are/were endorsed by God.

How do you know what is necessary for the redemption of mankind? Did you know the flood prefigured baptism?

I don't really give a shit what the flood "prefigured"; bin Laden can say 9/11 "prefigured" America's imminent baptism by fire. It was still an atrocity. Innocent people suffered. Case closed.

What should make you think is that Noah and his family were the only ones who survived it.

Um, because the whole "take two of each animal" thing kind of hints at a future need for repopulation. Either way, I think we could agree that a 40 day flood drowned quite "indiscriminately."

The Bible seems to say that death is a natural event, under God's control in the sense that survival can only come from Him. You could extend this to say Hell will come naturally to all people, and only God can save you. If the flood was a lesson to us, it's one way to important to dismiss as "just a natural event".

Back to old "we are all shit and deserve to die" attitude. Maybe Christians just suffer from latent self-esteem problems.

Yes, death is a natural event. So, since we're all going to die anyway, would you rather us just repeal all the murder laws and let everyone go crazy? If God's judgment is all that matters, why not go hog wild?

I'm glad you see the discrepancy. It is only faith that "incriminates" God, and it's possible to have faith anything.

Yep.

People no doubt blamed fate and many things besides. But the Bible puts the flood in a larger context, where God is Creator and preserver of a life that would endure eternally. If you have faith in nature, then what happened was perfectly natural. Maybe not fair - only God is fair - but nothing more than you would expect from a natural disaster.

A larger context, eh? That larger context being: "This flood was intentionally caused by a big, angry invisible dude in the sky." So, the idea that God is just fucking with us doesn't bother you at all? Oh well.

You missed my point entirely. That was an indication of the state of things. It wasn't right, but then Lot wasn't 21st century middle class American either.

And so he is excused?

On whose kind of values was your country built, those of Sodom and Lot, or the values God wanted to preserve?

Um, democratic values. Supposedly anyway. As far as the "values God wants to preserve," your guess is as good as mine. But that still doesn't make it any more than a guess. And I'd hate to bank the next war on a "guess." (WMD, anyone?)

It's easy to criticize out of an easychair something someone else had to fight for. Read the rest of Lot's story - he was hardly a model citizen in any case - yet his life was preserved. Once again: that was the real "unfairness".

Who is fighting for what exactly? Would the world have ended if Lott had given up his two guests? I find that hard to believe.

Indeed, Lott is a perfect example of the inconsistency of the Bible God's judgment. Remember, innocent Amalekite children deserved to die. Lott, the drunken ass, deserved to live. What a God.

8 The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. (Ex.17)
11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.

Moses sounds strikingly like Gandalf. I never realized.

OK, rather than type this out, I'm going to let Thomas Paine explain my objection:

"What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus 18 ...had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward, should be put to death."

History is made up of slaughters "in the name of God." A quick look around today should be enough to show you that, in fact, these conflicts are usually the result of two perennial favorites: ignorance and opportunity. God's blessing on the whole mess is assumed by every side. As the saying goes, "Religion can be described as the notion that God is always on the side of the Government."

It seems the situation was more like if Saddam had actually outnumbered and threatened the USA in their own country. You see, you don't have the luxury to assume the moral high ground when you actually have to choose on whose side you are on...

No, actually, it's worse than the situation with Iraq - as the Amalekites were being punished for a four century year old grudge. Not the relatively fresh grudge of a son determined to get the man who threatened to "kill his daddy."

Funny. You know what I often think of as "the moral high ground"? Not endorsing war at all. But what do I know... our economy would probably take a hit if we didn't ship so many arms all over the world Taking sides is, after all, quite profitable.

Josh

It's just a ride. - Bill Hicks :m:

 

[JustARide]

Read the Hick guy's post.

Is this a reference to me?

Just wondering.

Josh

"It's just a ride." - Bill Hicks :m: (Hicks being a surname, not a retarded Southerner...)

 

[Jenyar]

Let me ask you a question. Should children who were born (and often died) in Nazi concentration camps be "thankful" for their lives? Should they be happy that they were permitted time to live? If they were born to Jewish parents and died very early, should they go to Hell for not being little Christian babies? Exactly where does the "thankful" part come into the equation?

Yes, here on earth, children unjustly suffer for their parents misdeeds. That is a situation I would hope God would solve, not worsen by ordering massive wars, where the only guarantee is that innocents will be killed. As Bertrand Russell said, "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

Firstly, I don't have any more authority than you regarding the nature of God, but I have more faith in His love and less faith in our ability to understand whether events that are outside our frame of reference - especially events that happened thousands of years ago - are right or wrong. In fact, right and wrong may be completely inadequate, even irrelevant, judgements to make about things that have expressly spiritual significance. And it's not because of any Calivinistic cynicism that I focus on undeserved mercy - think of it this way: if there were no God there would have been no mercy. Israel would not have survived Egypt, not to mention the Amalekites or the desert ahead of them. God was helping a people fight their way through all the odds, to create a kingdom on a foundation that would last forever. And to the point of our discussion: He did this from within the context of life as we know it.

And you are still confusing this life with God. You suggest a heaven of your own - one where people can achieve what God in your view has failed to enforce. Should the children born in Nazi camps be thankful? No. But are you saying they deserve death? Can a God who is bound by your morals give them hope? Does life allow for the weak to prosper and the strong to uncorrupt itself? Injustice needs to be challenged, and injustice at the time the Israelites left Egypt meant preying on them. If their children were as innocent as you say, why did they still pose a threat 400 years later? It seems you and Thomas Paine didn't read past Ex. 17. It wasn't like the "Spaniards invaded Mexico" - the Israelites had no land, they were exiles; the only way they would find a place to live was if God gave it to them. Much like our existence on earth.

The distinction between children and adults is an arbitrary one if time is left out of the equation. It is entirely possible that God would know what children would become under the circumstances. We can't make that decision - we don't have the knowledge or authority - but God does. It's a poor excuse for any person, and that is why we can never condone wars. Anybody who thinks God is still fighting a war against flesh and blood needs to read the gospels, because they are stuck in the dark ages.

God is on the side of the victory, not the victor or the government. Jesus made sure unfairness and injustice had no power over anybody, but He did not take it away. He exposed all the violence and injustice in the world, took it on himself and displayed it like a mirror. He showed us that inequity is a human trait and that its result is fatal. Religious wars like the conflict in Israel or Bin Laden's hajj are the result of people don't believe the victory has already been gained.

But blaming religion for disturbing the peace is just a lazy effort at isolating an impossibly complex problem, and I hope one you are willing to look further than "belief in a deity" if you want to do anything about it. Proposing to eradicate one system of beliefs is no different than eradicating another. It's like blaming education, commerce, or even freedom, for all the evils in the world. As far as injustice and hate is concerned, any "god" will do.

If natural disasters happen for no particular moral reason (my contention), then we need not concern ourselves with them (religiously speaking). If, however, the Bible is true and God does enact some of these disasters, then yes, there is a moral problem here.

If the World Trade Center had been blown down by wind and rain, then you would not see any moral outrage at the jet stream. The difference is, conscious entities (human beings) made the choice to bring that great suffering on people. The Bible says God consciously chose to bring about suffering on masses of people, without respect to their age, gender, or culpability (unless, once again, you believe Amalekite babies were guilty of hating the Isrealites).

I follow your reasoning. The presence of intelligence and will equals moral responsibility, and moral responsibility precludes causing suffering in any form, least of all death.

Unless suffering or death is not the ultimate moral crisis. Death is inevitable, but nobody ends up in hell who does not belong there, not Jewish babies nor innocent Iraqis. But we don't get to decide who deserves death or not, who goes to hell or not. We would like to, but if it was even remotely possible, the death penalty would not have been nearly so problematic. After all, justice demands an eye for an eye - that is what's fair - what is human and godly is mercy. You demand the right to expect mercy from a benevolent God, but you're not ready to admit that mercy might not always be an option. Sometime the baby must die for the mother to survive, or the mother must die for the baby to survive. Are you saying we should always save the mother, even if the baby has no hope to live more than a few months without her?

The circumstances under which God flooded the world, killed the firstborn of the Egyptians, and ordered Israel to annihilate the Amalekites, were such that only God was able to make those decisions. No human could have survived any of those situations; a flood that covered the known world; suppression under the power of Egypt; a war against "the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples [who] had settled in the valley, thick as locusts" (Judges 7:12); yet Israel did every time - and that is why God's actions seem so unfair to you. If any of those events claimed the lives of the Israelites, you wouldn't have complained, in fact, nature will have run its course as expected, and Judaism would have had no foundation. What the Bible introduces is a foreign will - the will of God. Is it unfair that He provided salvation to those who trusted Him as their Saviour? God didn't save them from Himself - He saved them from something humanity would have to get used to: a world of diseases, disasters and wars, where nobody fears God or realizes that only He can ensure survival.

I'm asking how (if you believe that God caused massive natural disasters in the Old Testament) those disasters were not indiscriminate? You seem to be saying God kills discriminately and justly, based on who has faith in Him. How is the flood of the OT discriminate?

It is discriminate in who God saved. Floods and wars continuously flow over the earth, and countless people die without hope. To put it succinctly: if God did not have a hand in the flood, Noah would not have survived it.

Disasters will continue to ravage the planet, until at last the sun burns out or our natural resources run out or a meteor strike the earth again, and people will always hope they come from God, because at least then there would have been hope that it was discriminate. Some will say people died because of God and others will say people lived because of Him, but everybody misses the point. What God saves us from is death, not disasters. You don't have to die first to know whether you are saved from death, but you will die whether you know it or not. It sounds grim, but this knowledge isn't powerless - many people, including myself, can tell you how the story of Israel are repeated in their lives every day.

I'm afraid I don't follow. Are you condemning the American invasion for the innocent suffering it caused, or applauding it as God working through American foreign policy?

You're saying some of Saddam's people were innocent. And yet they were killed. How exactly is that "providing" for them? Or are you saying, by virtue of being Iraqi (and likely non-christian) that they deserved to be "caught up in His anger"?

I'm saying that neither America nor Saddam are God, and neither seems to be ultimately right or wrong. It is a prime example of why wars happen. You can blame Bush, Saddam or God, but who does the fighting? If Bush were 100% correct about the threat Iraq/Afghanistan posed, and if Saddam/bin Laden had even more power to kill and terrorize the West, including you and your family, would turning the other cheek still preserve peace, would God's will still be sovereign? Snakelord's example about the neighbours is also relevant here. When the cheek you are turning is threatened, you have a right to defend your right to turn it, so to speak. And if God's plans for humanity are threatened, I would expect Him to defend it. When something is wrong, one is supposed to right it.

It's when humanity loses touch with God's will that He seems like the tyrant, when we are actually looking in the mirror of what our lives are like without Him. Because with Him we are Noah, we are Israel, we are the people who having nothing to fear, not even death by His hands.

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;
I will surely defend my ways to his face.
Indeed, this will turn out for my deliverance,
for no godless man would dare come before him! (Job 13)

 

[Raithere]

Why do you focus on one or the other? Why not both? As I said in some previous post, the process of development, of evolution; dynamic processes are apparent everywhere you look.

MarcAC, you're looking at the situation as it is and do not seem to be considering that it might have been different, which is my point. Development and evolution is only valuable for that which is less than it might be. I'm trying to get at the underlying reasoning as to why God would want things the way they are.

The only ones that the construct allow.

Exactly. Why?

But what is the significance of this to you?

None, as far as I can see. As far as I can discern the only impact religion has is psychological and sociological. And I'm not particularly impressed with the results.

~Raithere

 

[JustARide]

Firstly, I don't have any more authority than you regarding the nature of God, but I have more faith in His love and less faith in our ability to understand whether events that are outside our frame of reference - especially events that happened thousands of years ago - are right or wrong. In fact, right and wrong may be completely inadequate, even irrelevant, judgements to make about things that have expressly spiritual significance. And it's not because of any Calivinistic cynicism that I focus on undeserved mercy - think of it this way: if there were no God there would have been no mercy. Israel would not have survived Egypt, not to mention the Amalekites or the desert ahead of them. God was helping a people fight their way through all the odds, to create a kingdom on a foundation that would last forever. And to the point of our discussion: He did this from within the context of life as we know it.

Look, I have no way of knowing the true implications of any event anymore than anyone else. However, the Bible, as it stands, seems to merely record the struggle of a people, who happened to believe God was on their side. This is NOT unique. How many cultures around the world cite God as the impetus for their wars? Hell, George W. Bush is doing it as we speak.

This idea that God "favored" a particular race of people for a select portion of history is absurd. "Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." Sounds like a grudge to me! (Notice it was not the Amalekites, but God who swore to keep on fighting them "generation after generation"...)

So, let's say God's "mercy" hadn't existed. The Isaelites were somehow slaughtered. Time passes. Jesus comes and dies to save all mankind. What's the fucking difference?

And you are still confusing this life with God.

How so? The Bible says all these things actually happened (or at least that's how many interpret them today). I'm asking if they were justified. (And were they to happen today, what would our reaction be?)

You suggest a heaven of your own - one where people can achieve what God in your view has failed to enforce. Should the children born in Nazi camps be thankful? No. But are you saying they deserve death?

No. I'm saying they should have liked to have never existed at all. They had, quite literally, nothing for which to be thankful.

Can a God who is bound by your morals give them hope?

Yes, by not causing more war.

Does life allow for the weak to prosper and the strong to uncorrupt itself? Injustice needs to be challenged, and injustice at the time the Israelites left Egypt meant preying on them. If their children were as innocent as you say, why did they still pose a threat 400 years later?

I'm saying they likely did not pose a threat, but that people needed rationalization for their actions. Of course, if you read something written by and for the Israelites, then every Amalekite deserved to die. I'm asking you to use a little common sense. Have any babies threatened you lately?

It seems you and Thomas Paine didn't read past Ex. 17. It wasn't like the "Spaniards invaded Mexico" - the Israelites had no land, they were exiles; the only way they would find a place to live was if God gave it to them. Much like our existence on earth.

So, when we invaded this country (once again, ostensibly, to "have a place to live" where our freedoms would not be infringed by Britain, and, of course, to Christianize the "savages" along the way), we had every right to do so?

The motivation behind colonialism is rarely divine. Most of the time, it has to do with profit, not God. Every colonizer believes God is "providing" for them. It's a handy rationalization for just about anything.

Early pilgrims in the "New World" may have thought that God "gave" them this land. The reality is, of course, that they took it, murdered and drove off the residents, and we celebrate Thanksgiving (the one happy moment we had with the natives before slaughtering them). This is a pattern throughout history. Check it out sometime.

The distinction between children and adults is an arbitrary one if time is left out of the equation.

Well yeah, children will grow up to be adults, if that's what you mean. And since children are just future-adults, should we not have special laws protecting them?

And hell, as long as we're leaving time (an entire dimension) out of the equation, why don't we go ahead and assume it was a two-dimensional cartoon world back then too?

It is entirely possible that God would know what children would become under the circumstances.

Ah, another convenient rationalization. (A divine version of the one used for "preemtive war" actually.)

So, just hypothetically, entertain this thought for me: Imagine if the Israelites had slaughtered the Amalekites, but saved as many Amalekite children as they could manage to keep and feed. Let's say those children were then raised in the Israelite community rather than among the "evil" Amalekites. Is your contention that those children would STILL have grown up to be the same horrible haters of God?

Not likely. Children, most often, adopt the ways of the culture around them, especially if it's all they've known since infancy. Therefore, if God had wanted, he might have actually saved some of those children, but he declined. Why? Probably just because it's easier to go ahead and kill everything, huh?

If the children of bad parents always turn out bad, why do we even bother with foster homes then?

We can't make that decision - we don't have the knowledge or authority - but God does. It's a poor excuse for any person, and that is why we can never condone wars. Anybody who thinks God is still fighting a war against flesh and blood needs to read the gospels, because they are stuck in the dark ages.

Interesting. So, you'll admit that a God-ordered "flesh and blood" war today is a poor excuse. OK. I guess I'm just wondering why something that is a poor excuse today was a good excuse a few thousand years ago.

God is on the side of the victory, not the victor or the government.

But the victors will always claim God is on their side. So, how exactly do you know which "victors" are lying and which are telling the truth? Read any Amalekite-written histories lately? How did they view themselves?

Go back and read what the Japanese government told the soldiers who bombed Pearl Harbor. It's strikingly similar to the rhetoric we hear out of Washington today. ("We have to attack before they do," etc.)

And I'm not mixing up my stories here. I'm only pointing out that the Bible is inherently biased (as all nationalistic writing is), therefore, the whole "God was on our side" argument seems a little hard to swallow. People have been using that argument forever.

Religious wars like the conflict in Israel or Bin Laden's hajj are the result of people don't believe the victory has already been gained.

Yes, in other words, exactly the same reason people were fighting in Biblical times. And the same reason they will keep fighting. And fighting. And fighting.
And fighting.

But blaming religion for disturbing the peace is just a lazy effort at isolating an impossibly complex problem, and I hope one you are willing to look further than "belief in a deity" if you want to do anything about it. Proposing to eradicate one system of beliefs is no different than eradicating another. It's like blaming education, commerce, or even freedom, for all the evils in the world. As far as injustice and hate is concerned, any "god" will do.

I agree. Which is why I do not advocate the violent removal of any "system of beliefs." Instead, I sit here and debate with you, openly, hoping you might see that religions tend toward conflict, and that believing in vengeful gods does not help.

As far as violence is concerned, of course religion is not always the cause. Sometimes it's the backdrop. Sometimes the catalyst. Sometimes the facilitator. Sometimes the excuse. Sometimes the means to an end. Sometimes the victor. Sometimes it actually works for peace (albeit rarely)!

But people's ideas do evolve. We do not live in the Dark (i.e., Christian-ruled) Ages. Some attitudes in the U.S. have changed for the better (civil rights, equality of the sexes, etc.) - but they have done so, usually battling opposition from religion. I am merely pointing out trends.

I follow your reasoning. The presence of intelligence and will equals moral responsibility, and moral responsibility precludes causing suffering in any form, least of all death.

Thanks

Unless suffering or death is not the ultimate moral crisis. Death is inevitable, but nobody ends up in hell who does not belong there, not Jewish babies nor innocent Iraqis.

How do you know that? What in the Bible would lead you to believe an innocent Iraqi Muslim is not in Hell?

People go for the liberal interpretation when it suits them. Nothing in the Bible even hints at the idea that believers in any other religion will go to Heaven (so we know what the other choice is), but Christians, today, talk like it does. Why? Because it bothers them to think that God throws innocent Muslims in Hell.

Cite for me the scripture that suggests that a good Muslim person can get into Heaven.

You demand the right to expect mercy from a benevolent God, but you're not ready to admit that mercy might not always be an option.

I expect not to be suddenly slaughtered for no good reason. That doesn't qualify as "mercy" - it qualifies as common decency. And yes, I demand that innocent babies not be murdered. Am I really asking God to go out of his way there? Not to murder children?

Let's say you have kids. Do you consider it an act of "mercy" that everyday people don't just suddenly kill your child?

Also, God seems to take an awfully strange interest in very specific events and places, doesn't he? If we look at the Bible, we could easily assume God just didn't really give a fuck what was happening in China - only the Middle East. Why the obsession with real estate?

Sometime the baby must die for the mother to survive, or the mother must die for the baby to survive. Are you saying we should always save the mother, even if the baby has no hope to live more than a few months without her?

You're talking about biological events that no one seems to have any control over. That is NOT comparable to a big, angry dude in the sky actively killing children in war. If someone (i.e., God) DID have control over those biological events, then the situation would be different.

Women have miscarriages too - I don't blame the woman. You know when I would blame the woman? When she takes out a knife and stabs her defenseless child (and what do you think happened when the Israelites fought the Amalekites?). That's a conscious choice. So, when God intentionally orders genocide, yes, something is wrong.

The circumstances under which God flooded the world, killed the firstborn of the Egyptians, and ordered Israel to annihilate the Amalekites, were such that only God was able to make those decisions. No human could have survived any of those situations; a flood that covered the known world; suppression under the power of Egypt; a war against "the Amalekites and all the other eastern peoples [who] had settled in the valley, thick as locusts" (Judges 7:12); yet Israel did every time - and that is why God's actions seem so unfair to you. If any of those events claimed the lives of the Israelites, you wouldn't have complained, in fact, nature will have run its course as expected, and Judaism would have had no foundation.

Where have I indicated that I did not care for the Israelites? I'm talking about avoidable atrocities here, no matter who they befall. I know you believe (because the book tells you) that all these things were unavoidable. Read Bush's last State of the Union speech. Iraq was "unavoidable" too.

My point is that people lie. Books lie. Leaders rationalize. Armies invade. And everybody thinks God is on their side. You can hear people saying it even today. "God was with our soldiers in Iraq." I hate to break it to you, but you know why we defeated Hussein in Iraq? Big fucking weapons.

If God's actions were prejudiced, and based solely on preserving one culture he happened to like more, then yes, something was deeply wrong there.

What the Bible introduces is a foreign will - the will of God. Is it unfair that He provided salvation to those who trusted Him as their Saviour?

Nope.

And the next question is, "Is it unfair that he advocated barbaric acts of violence against defenseless beings who had no way of even expressing their trust or distrust of Him?"

Yes.

God didn't save them from Himself - He saved them from something humanity would have to get used to: a world of diseases, disasters and wars, where nobody fears God or realizes that only He can ensure survival.

Yes, he saved them, by perpetuating war. What if he had just turned the Amalekites into pillars of salt (as he's shown he can do) and let the Israelites pass? What if he had spared the women, children, and animals? What if he had simply erected an invisible barrier to keep the Amalekites from attacking them?

Your problem here is that you're saying God has magical powers, but only uses them selectively. It's like the recent Lord of the Rings film... I was watching "Return of the King" and noticed the scene where Gandalf uses his staff to ward off the Nasgul (showing my nerd colors now, huh?). Now, toward the end of the film, the Nasgul are whipping up on the good guys yet again, but Gandalf doesn't use those powers then. I'm thinking, "What the fuck?"

Likewise, if God is this magical foreign power introduced into history, and he really wanted the Israelites to have a pad, then why not achieve that without resorting to Stalin-esque tactics?

It is discriminate in who God saved. Floods and wars continuously flow over the earth, and countless people die without hope. To put it succinctly: if God did not have a hand in the flood, Noah would not have survived it.

If God had not had a hand in the flood, there wouldn't have been any fucking flood!

Are you saying the Bible is incorrect when it suggests that God caused the flood? That was the feeling I got. Just checking.

Yes, natural disasters happen all the time. I would hope God doesn't intentionally add to them.

I'm saying that neither America nor Saddam are God, and neither seems to be ultimately right or wrong. It is a prime example of why wars happen. You can blame Bush, Saddam or God, but who does the fighting?

Um, the people who are told to go fight.

If Bush were 100% correct about the threat Iraq/Afghanistan posed, and if Saddam/bin Laden had even more power to kill and terrorize the West, including you and your family, would turning the other cheek still preserve peace, would God's will still be sovereign?

Yes, if Bush was 100% correct, fine. All I'm saying is that it helps to be a little skeptical when people rush to war (and they do rush, don't they?), when they say God is with them, when they start talking about grandiose visions of moral clarity, when they say it is "unavoidable"...

I'm not saying every war is unjustified... just the vast majority of them. And I would hope we could greatly reduce the number of wars we fight by being more reasonable, letting go of this God complex, and seeing the world for what it is.

I've said this to this Christians and they tell me, "There will always be war. The Bible says so."

And that attitude will be the end of us all, mark my words.

It's when humanity loses touch with God's will that He seems like the tyrant, when we are actually looking in the mirror of what our lives are like without Him. Because with Him we are Noah, we are Israel, we are the people who having nothing to fear, not even death by His hands.

Well, that's very touching, but I'm talking about one simple thing: Does the Bible version of God truly stand for love or not? You are clearly finding a great deal of symbolic meaning in the barbaric acts committed in the OT. I'm really glad they get you up in the morning.

Call me crazy, but I would hope God is not just a big, all-powerful version of us, who is irrational, vengeful, at times, peaceful, prone to outbursts, and prejudiced. I give God more credit than that.

You know why people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King inspire people? They were not only right; they were uncompromising in their reluctance to engage in violence. They believed in something better, something progressive. The Bible God strikes me as wholly un-progressive. He is a hold-grudges, eye-for-an-eye, kill-three-of-theirs-for-every-one-of-ours kind of deity.

I see where you're coming from. I understand why you believe God did these things, and why you find them consistent with his character. I guess I'm just saying that the Bible, like everything else, is likely a biased, human document, written by people who believed anything good that happened to them (along with anything bad that happened to their enemies) was from God. That's not uncommon. In fact, it's the rule.

Looking at the bigger picture (and hoping for a better future for mankind), I would like us to get beyond these ancient, narrow pictures of gods, who wage war and take sides. It didn't help anyone then, and it doesn't help anyone now.

Josh

PS - If the debate slows or stops the next few days (assuming we feel like continuing lol), it's because I'm going to be rather busy and likely won't have much time to respond. Hey, thanks for the lively discussion though .

It's just a ride. - Bill Hicks :m:

 

[Jenyar]

I appreciate your efforts to make me sweat a little All the reading has been taking up some of my work-time as well, but I'm trying not to skimp on my answers anyway.

So, let's say God's "mercy" hadn't existed. The Isaelites were somehow slaughtered. Time passes. Jesus comes and dies to save all mankind. What's the fucking difference?

It made all the difference, I would say. Why did Israel expect a Saviour in the first place? Because they had reason to, they were promised one, and they were confident God kept His promises. And all because of their history with Him. Jesus was the continuation of a promise of salvation that started in their history, following a path of faith through Israel and into the rest of mankind. God is interested in a personal relationship with people of His choice. It matters to Him that those who belong to Him survive. The Bible is a testament that they did - and that they will. If it was so important for God to establish and maintain continuity, then it's too much to assume He would let go of what He started. When He almost did, it threatened the whole of creation, not just Israel.

As you've pointed out, God does not seem interested in the wars and peoples of say, China or America, or in the biological evolution of life for that matter, but that's only if you believe the Bible represents all there is to know about life (which we both know isn't the case). But it is all there is to know about the Source and nature of our salvation. You do not expect to know someone else's parents as well as your own, and for long time, God was someone else's God, even to the Israelites. To be sure, "sin" is not much more than the alienation between God and mankind.

Yes, by not causing more war.

You think God causes wars? God certainly regulated the way the Israelites fought theirs, but as a culture they weren't so unique in that respect, as I'm sure you're aware. In fact, Israel's defeats seem to feature more strongly in their history. God was simultaneously their worst enemy and their best ally. They weren't offered much opportunity to be under any illusion about who controlled their destiny.

And I'm not mixing up my stories here. I'm only pointing out that the Bible is inherently biased (as all nationalistic writing is), therefore, the whole "God was on our side" argument seems a little hard to swallow. People have been using that argument forever.

And I'm pointing out that it's a flawed argument. The Israelites might well have had reason to believe that, considering their history with God (I don't see many other "Bibles" around - the closest is the Quran, which is supposedly based on the same history). But things have changed since 2000BC.

Yes, in other words, exactly the same reason people were fighting in Biblical times. And the same reason they will keep fighting. And fighting. And fighting.
And fighting.
...
Interesting. So, you'll admit that a God-ordered "flesh and blood" war today is a poor excuse. OK. I guess I'm just wondering why something that is a poor excuse today was a good excuse a few thousand years ago.

May I quote you to yourself? "But people's ideas do evolve. We do not live in the Dark (i.e., Christian-ruled) Ages. Some attitudes in the U.S. have changed for the better (civil rights, equality of the sexes, etc.) - but they have done so, usually battling opposition from religion."

It isn't only the Christian ages and American attitude that has changed. The wars of the Israelites were very much a battle against religion - the religions of idolatry, injustice, addiction, immorality and slavery, among others (everything the laws and the prophets opposed). That battle has been faught, and with the coming of Jesus, won. Their is no other way to God simply because all other ways have been defeated. People are fighting the wrong war if they fail to recognize the religious significance of Jesus and the changes He heralded.

People like you and me are now on the front lines of a moral war, except you don't seem to wonder why you attach any authority to moral behaviour at all. If natural evolution has made humanity into a warlike race, why do we regard peace as an ideal? And why do we expect God to be the ideal of those ideals? That's why I say one shouldn't confuse life with God - it will make you expect wars to end and death to disappear as if nature and man were "God", and set us up for disappointment. Instead we are God's soldiers against what really threatens us. Job was a prime example of the importance God attaches to our faith. Whatever form evil takes, we are supposed to resist it. In Israel's day, on a small scale, it was present in the Amalekites - today it is much more sinister. Humanity was united under Christ as citizens beleagured by a universal injustice. One that has claimed even God's life. If not on the cross, then in the concentration camps, hospitals and the battles we fight everyday. If God is for us, not even death can stand against us - but killing another human being is like shooting your own allies.

How do you know that? What in the Bible would lead you to believe an innocent Iraqi Muslim is not in Hell?

People go for the liberal interpretation when it suits them. Nothing in the Bible even hints at the idea that believers in any other religion will go to Heaven (so we know what the other choice is), but Christians, today, talk like it does. Why? Because it bothers them to think that God throws innocent Muslims in Hell.

Cite for me the scripture that suggests that a good Muslim person can get into Heaven.

In the first place, to which religion did Adam, Henoch or Abraham belong? They were saved by faith in God, and faith alone. But their resurrection was only made possible thousands of years later (on earth, since to God we are "two dimensional") by Jesus. The battle they fought was only won then. What let's anybody end up in hell is not their religion, but their faith. So I have no idea who God might have called to Him, or from where. But I do know that only Jesus can guarantee my salvation, because He is the means of it.

I think this quote might be relevant to you as well:

Romans 2
13For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

Yes, he saved them, by perpetuating war. What if he had just turned the Amalekites into pillars of salt (as he's shown he can do) and let the Israelites pass? What if he had spared the women, children, and animals? What if he had simply erected an invisible barrier to keep the Amalekites from attacking them?

There are no precedences for any of those solutions, and no reason to expect them from God. Sure, God might theoretically have shown mercy to the Amalekite women and children - just as, say, the American GI's might have shown mercy to the woman and children in the incident depicted in Rules of Engagement - but for some reason, He didn't. What reason do you have to assume they were not engaging in hostilities themselves, or even that the Israelites had the resources available to adopt them? As you might have read, they were under siege from all directions. My guess is that even their own women and children suffered. In war, everyone suffers. But as I have said - the cultures and conditions were as different as they are obscure. What happened wasn't a pattern, and it certainly wasn't genocide. (I still urge you to read the discussion at Christian Thinktank since they go into a lot more detail than I have time for).

Your problem here is that you're saying God has magical powers, but only uses them selectively. It's like the recent Lord of the Rings film... I was watching "Return of the King" and noticed the scene where Gandalf uses his staff to ward off the Nasgul (showing my nerd colors now, huh?). Now, toward the end of the film, the Nasgul are whipping up on the good guys yet again, but Gandalf doesn't use those powers then. I'm thinking, "What the fuck?"

Likewise, if God is this magical foreign power introduced into history, and he really wanted the Israelites to have a pad, then why not achieve that without resorting to Stalin-esque tactics?

I think this might be at the centre of the issue. God seems to interfere very little in the ordinary course of events (even in the Bible, hundreds of years often pass between miraculous events). If miracles were everyday events, people would expect life to somehow "favour" them if they believed in God. The result is obvious: faith would be a free ride. This isn't God's intention at all. The harsh reality is that life favours nobody, while the message is that God favours faith. The other harsh reality is that God does not have to play by our rules, even when our rules are derived from His. We come face to face with the strictness of God's demands on two fronts.

The attack on the Amalekites seems more like a test of Saul's faith than a malicious act aimed at an enemy. Saul was doing what he did best. I don't want to add too much semantics here, but the word used for "destroying" the Amalekites means "a total giving over of things/person to the Lord". It was similar to God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but Saul disobeyed. As such it was an introspective event, crucial to the recogniztion of Israel as God's people, and of God's authority over them.

I will elaborate: Saul was the first king of Israel. The history of this office is important to note:
6 But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD . 7 And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

Saul was the first person supposed to carry the full authority of God on his shoulders, including the authority (and responsibility) to exact God's judgment. In essence, Saul was taking over God's leadership over Israel, at least in the eyes of the people, to "fight their battles for them". The Amalekites were the first victims of what happens when we try to establish God's kingdom on earth on our conditions.

Gandalf would have known the consequences of interfering with life better than those who do not have the power to interfere with life and do not understand the consequences of doing it - even less the power to orchestrate the consequences to any advantage. But would the people have fought at all, if they thought Gandalf would provide the vicotry for them? If they wished to survive just the Nazgul, maybe Gandalf would have been enough, but if they needed the bravery required to defend their city to the death, maybe Gandalf would never be enough.

Jesus restored God's kingdom by becoming the king nobody wanted - the King that God once was. It wasn't a reign of power and conquest, as Israel came to expect (no doubt with the campaigns of Saul and David in mind), it was a spiritual kingdom. As Jesus said: if His kingdom was like one on earth, his disciples would have taken up swords and fought for it (as indeed they were willing to). Saul was the living example of what happens when we wrest power and authority from God's hands, Jesus was the living example of what it means to restore it. I wish I could explain it more eloquently, but hopefully you've been able to follow my thoughts.

If God had not had a hand in the flood, there wouldn't have been any fucking flood!

Are you saying the Bible is incorrect when it suggests that God caused the flood? That was the feeling I got. Just checking.

Yes, natural disasters happen all the time. I would hope God doesn't intentionally add to them.

I don't really wish to complicate the matter further, but I have to add another "two dimensional" aspect at this point. I appreciate your patience... we live in a sequential world of cause and effect, and we can't get around it. We have to invent concepts like luck and fate (and I won't deny it, gods) to help us cope with the consequences of such an existence. All the concepts we create fit into this scheme of things, but somehow it doesn't explain the way God seems to work. He was behind the flood yet it was a natural disastr like any other. He was behind the war yet it was a war like any other. He created life yet death comes to all people. It all forms part of the mystery of sin, that even the Bible doesn't explain properly.

I'm not the pedantic type, so I'll just speculate based on experience and my understanding of the Bible: If God did not cause the flood, it would still have happened; let's say the Strait of Bosphorus would still have cracked open at a weak spot in the earth's crust and let the water of the black sea out on the greater part of the civilized world, or all the other floods that prompted tales of heroes and divine interventions would also have happened as nature would have it. Like most miracles, nothing out of the ordinary would have happened except that what did happen was not ordinary in any sense we have come to expect from nature. There would have been no Noah, no Gilgamesh, no Uthnapshin... no God. Only nature, only people choosing kings and waging wars.

But please don't think I'm saying the Bible's YHWH-biased people oversestimated their God's involvement in their life. As I've said, they had every reason to believe God controlled every aspect of their lives. And I don't hesitate to say, so do I. God doesn't cause or condone car accidents and senseless killings, but He does "contain" them. He minimizes their destructive power, He comforts their survivors, He restores life when there seems to be no hope left for restoration.

 

[JustARide]

I appreciate your efforts to make me sweat a little All the reading has been taking up some of my work-time as well, but I'm trying not to skimp on my answers anyway.

Thanks for the effort.

It made all the difference, I would say. Why did Israel expect a Saviour in the first place? Because they had reason to, they were promised one, and they were confident God kept His promises. And all because of their history with Him. Jesus was the continuation of a promise of salvation that started in their history, following a path of faith through Israel and into the rest of mankind.

I would say any oppressed race anywhere seeks (if not outright expects) a saviour, whether divine or not. "Hope dies last," as the saying goes. If God had wanted to, he could have come as a Mithraic deity or whatever suited the time period.

After all, could it have ended any worse than cruxifiction anyway? (I know - here's where I get the long speech about prophecy, importance of the sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda.) By the way, lots of races feel they are "promised" something. Divine promises are more handy because, like a War on Terror for instance, they can be claimed without any evidence.

As you've pointed out, God does not seem interested in the wars and peoples of say, China or America, or in the biological evolution of life for that matter, but that's only if you believe the Bible represents all there is to know about life (which we both know isn't the case). But it is all there is to know about the Source and nature of our salvation.

If this salvation is of universal concern, I don't think it's a stretch to say God should have at least fucking mentioned the rest of the world. God must have known (by at least observing our modes of interaction) that favoring one race of people over another will inevitably end with catastrophe.

Look at the Holy Land right now. Why is it one of the most violent places on earth? Because three different groups of yahoos believe God "promised" them land.

I would chalk this up to bad parenting skills on God's part. After all, what happens if a parent puts all his/her attention toward one child and completely ignores the other?

You think God causes wars? God certainly regulated the way the Israelites fought theirs, but as a culture they weren't so unique in that respect, as I'm sure you're aware.

Yes. When a group of people believe God ordered them to war (as the Bible says), then yes, God is the facilitator of that war. "Regulated" is a pretty euphemism for "commanded." We are told God ordered every man, woman, child, and animal killed. What am I missing here? That he needed the Jewish people to survive? That he had some divine plan? That horrendous violence was necessary in order to make them work hard for their faith?

Horsepucky.

Rome Statute of the International Court

* (iv) Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
* (v) Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

Women and children are not military objectives. God ordered a war crime, as we define it today. (I can sense the coming counter-argument... "Ah ha! But this was 2000+ years ago, long before the statute on war crimes.") But let's be clear - I'm asking why time period should have any bearing on the moral actions of God.

Slavery was slavery 2000 years ago. Salvery was slavery 200 years ago. If God supported it then and opposes it now, he is nothing but a reactionary deity, likely the result of people's prejudice amplified to the highest level.

(I don't see many other "Bibles" around

Religions have a way of "erasing" past writing, especially of other religions they deem a threat. This is why we have only a handful of gnostic writings, even though those beliefs were likely widespread at some points in history.

It isn't only the Christian ages and American attitude that has changed. The wars of the Israelites were very much a battle against religion - the religions of idolatry, injustice, addiction, immorality and slavery, among others (everything the laws and the prophets opposed). That battle has been faught, and with the coming of Jesus, won. Their is no other way to God simply because all other ways have been defeated. People are fighting the wrong war if they fail to recognize the religious significance of Jesus and the changes He heralded.

I expect people to change - not an omnipotent God.

Why exactly did God need animal sacrifices at one point, and now he does not? Well, this is an easy one. Early religions included animal sacrifice. Men grew out of that phase, ergo (I finally got to use that word! Yay!) God grew out of it as well.

The Bible charts mankind's evolution, not God's. The more we learn, the less we believe in religious bullshit. At one time, people with mental diseases may have been termed "possessed." Today, in some cases, we have a pill that can calm them right down. Hence, we see fewer people putting stock in demons, etc. (At least in other industrialized nations. America seems to be lagging behind in this department....)

People like you and me are now on the front lines of a moral war, except you don't seem to wonder why you attach any authority to moral behaviour at all. If natural evolution has made humanity into a warlike race, why do we regard peace as an ideal? And why do we expect God to be the ideal of those ideals?

I have no idea why this world is based on competition, war, survival of the fittest, etc. Ask God that one.

Why is peace our goal? Because we have learned it is better than war. Well, some of us anyway.

BTW, should we not also resist religion when it too becomes "evil"?

In the first place, to which religion did Adam, Henoch or Abraham belong? They were saved by faith in God, and faith alone.

Um, nothing had fucking happened yet! There was not exactly a multitude of religions to sample.

But their resurrection was only made possible thousands of years later (on earth, since to God we are "two dimensional") by Jesus. The battle they fought was only won then. What let's anybody end up in hell is not their religion, but their faith.

Pure semantics. Religion. Faith. The Bible clearly states that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Only. If you believe that, then you must engage in some really heavy lifting when it comes to apologetics.

Hell, even different sects of Christianity disagree on what salvation requires. How can you believe in something you can't even define? What exactly should I have faith in? You can cherry pick any Bible verse you want. The Bible can be used to support/defend/oppose/condemn virtually anything, because like most religious texts, it is vague, contradictory, and the work of several divergent interests supposedly colliding into one coherent vision. Hence, we have liberal Christians welcoming gay marriage, while conservative Christians outside wave banners reading "God Hates Fags." So much for consensus on what is to be believed.

So I have no idea who God might have called to Him, or from where. But I do know that only Jesus can guarantee my salvation, because He is the means of it.

You can't say only faith (in some vague form of your god) saves and pretend this allows for religious differences. Either Jesus is the only path to salvation or he is not.

Romans 2
13For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

Wonderful. What if I obey the law but deny Christ? Contrast those verses with: "I am the truth, the way, and the light. No one comes to the father but through me." Should that have an asterisk? (*Unless you obey the law. Then you'll be fine.)

Sure, God might theoretically have shown mercy to the Amalekite women and children - just as, say, the American GI's might have shown mercy to the woman and children in the incident depicted in Rules of Engagement - but for some reason, He didn't.

"But for some reason, he didn't." THAT is the crux of this argument.

When Saddam Hussein was fighting Iran (and those he felt may be sympathizers), he ordered a chemical attack on his own people in Hallabja. He could have restricted his attack solely to militarized forces that were attacking him. "But for some reason, he did not."

That "some reason" - whatever it is - is enough to get any leader convicted of war crimes.

What reason do you have to assume they were not engaging in hostilities themselves, or even that the Israelites had the resources available to adopt them?

I assume babies and animals were not engaged in hostilities. Why? because they're fucking babies and animals.

I have no idea whether or not Israelis had the means to support any of the children, but let's think logically here. They just raided a small community (otherwise, why would there be women, children, and livestock present?). It is likely these people had supplies, food, etc. What were the women and children living on before the Israelites came? Something. Seize the supplies and feed the women and children. Would that have so difficult? Would that not have been more "merciful" and Christ-like?

As you might have read, they were under siege from all directions. My guess is that even their own women and children suffered. In war, everyone suffers. But as I have said - the cultures and conditions were as different as they are obscure. What happened wasn't a pattern, and it certainly wasn't genocide.

genocide n : systematic killing of a racial or cultural group

Once again... Kiling every Amalekite man, woman, child, and animal = genocide.

If US soldiers in Iraq had been given those orders, what would we call it?

The other harsh reality is that God does not have to play by our rules, even when our rules are derived from His.

Then God is, by definition, a tyrant. And a hypocrite.

He tells us to be merciful, yet he is not.
He tells us to turn the other cheek, but he does not.

God holds us to a higher standard of behavior than he holds himself.

The attack on the Amalekites seems more like a test of Saul's faith than a malicious act aimed at an enemy.

I don't care the attack may have been testing. Christians seem awfully attached to stories where God takes such a special interest in individual people that he couldn't give a fuck about everybody else.

This is probably why America remains so steadfastly religious while its industrialized counterparts head into agnostic territory. Americans love the individual, rugged hero (the one God cares about). Just look at our movies; they always concentrate on a select few people - the chosen, good-looking ones - and proceed to glorify their roles. Screw everybody else. Amalekite women and children were merely extras in the production, to be killed in the background. The Amalekites died so that something symbolic and great might happen in Saul's life, that he might pass some divine test. Please.

Gandalf would have known the consequences of interfering with life better than those who do not have the power to interfere with life and do not understand the consequences of doing it - even less the power to orchestrate the consequences to any advantage. But would the people have fought at all, if they thought Gandalf would provide the vicotry for them? If they wished to survive just the Nazgul, maybe Gandalf would have been enough, but if they needed the bravery required to defend their city to the death, maybe Gandalf would never be enough.

Well, that's a long way of saying, "Um, I don't know."

Look, Gandalf used his power sparingly because the book and script called for that, in order to maintain the suspense. I suspect this happened in the Bible as well. Just when it looks like all is lost, you send in the deus-ex-machina as a pillar of fire or a parting sea. And you're right; if you overuse those devices, welcome to Snoozeville.

I can accept it in Lord of the Rings because exists as fantasy, contrived in a manner that offers maximum drama, suspense, etc. Authors of the Bible were no doubt aware of these techniques. Throw in some magic and people will flock to hear it. Tell it like it was... and, at best, you'll make it on Now with Bill Moyers.

Jesus restored God's kingdom by becoming the king nobody wanted - the King that God once was. It wasn't a reign of power and conquest, as Israel came to expect (no doubt with the campaigns of Saul and David in mind), it was a spiritual kingdom. As Jesus said: if His kingdom was like one on earth, his disciples would have taken up swords and fought for it (as indeed they were willing to). Saul was the living example of what happens when we wrest power and authority from God's hands, Jesus was the living example of what it means to restore it. I wish I could explain it more eloquently, but hopefully you've been able to follow my thoughts.

No, your explanation is quite eloquent. I don't buy it, but it's eloquent.

I'm not the pedantic type, so I'll just speculate based on experience and my understanding of the Bible: If God did not cause the flood, it would still have happened; let's say the Strait of Bosphorus would still have cracked open at a weak spot in the earth's crust and let the water of the black sea out on the greater part of the civilized world, or all the other floods that prompted tales of heroes and divine interventions would also have happened as nature would have it. Like most miracles, nothing out of the ordinary would have happened except that what did happen was not ordinary in any sense we have come to expect from nature. There would have been no Noah, no Gilgamesh, no Uthnapshin... no God. Only nature, only people choosing kings and waging wars.

Yes, those are all elements of a good story. I agree that believing all this would certainly add a more magical element to life, but I'm afraid your initial proposition (about luck, fate, etc.) pretty well covers your idea of God as well.

The Israelites added a divine twist to their story. I see no more reason to believe their tale than to believe in Vishnu, Buddha, or Zeus. As Stephen Roberts said, "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

God doesn't cause or condone car accidents and senseless killings, but He does "contain" them. He minimizes their destructive power, He comforts their survivors, He restores life when there seems to be no hope left for restoration.

May I quote you to yourself as well? "We have to invent concepts like luck and fate (and I won't deny it, gods) to help us cope with the consequences of such an existence. All the concepts we create fit into this scheme of things..."

I'm sure it's nice to believe in an invisible being in the sky who wants to "minimize the destructive power" of car crashes, but for the rest of us, I'm afraid wishful thinking doesn't cut it. So, add as much divine baggage to war as you want; it's still war. Put as much polish on genocide as you want; it's still genocide.

Here's one question I always ask Christians: Hypothetically, what would it take - what atrocity, base crime, torture, unfathomable act of cruelty on the part of God - to make you question the Bible?

If a verse of the Bible read, "And, for mere amusement as He was bored with His creation, the Lord took the innocent babes, who dared to cry in his presence, and brought on them the pain of a thousand deaths, ripped the very flesh from their living bodies, cooked them alive, devoured their souls, and then sent them spiraling into the pits of Hell so that they might be raped for eternity by the eight-dicked worm of Satan," would you sit back for a second and think Hmmm, maybe this isn't the word of God?

Or would you go to work, formulating a complex explanation... of how "babes" really meant something other than "babes" and that "crying" was symbolic of their hatred of God... and how the whole episode "prefigured" the virgin birth?

Just curious.

Josh

It's just a ride. - Bill Hicks :m:

 

[Jenyar]

I would say any oppressed race anywhere seeks (if not outright expects) a saviour, whether divine or not. "Hope dies last," as the saying goes. If God had wanted to, he could have come as a Mithraic deity or whatever suited the time period.

After all, could it have ended any worse than cruxifiction anyway? (I know - here's where I get the long speech about prophecy, importance of the sacrifice, yadda yadda yadda.) By the way, lots of races feel they are "promised" something. Divine promises are more handy because, like a War on Terror for instance, they can be claimed without any evidence.

God came as no other than Himself, or "I am" - He was a foreigner to the pantheon of the day, like Baal and Asherah, and He purposely established His authority over them. People had forgotten their creator, even if they retained the "idea" of Him. To God, the purity (holiness/separateness) of those who followed Him from those who followed the imaginations of the rest of the world was paramount. His promises were essentially beacons along which Israel needed to travel to reach the intended destination (and they frequently missed them).

Of course all cultures can hope for a saviour, but not all cultures have reason to expect one. This shows the importance of the Bible. Divine promises are good and well, but they need to be confirmed. Even the test of a prophet was whether his prophesies came true or not. But the point is moot anyway, because it seems you have chosen not to believe that any God's promises have been fulfilled anyway, in other words, you don't believe the rest of the Bible - so your case against God is circumstantial.

If this salvation is of universal concern, I don't think it's a stretch to say God should have at least fucking mentioned the rest of the world. God must have known (by at least observing our modes of interaction) that favoring one race of people over another will inevitably end with catastrophe.

Don't confuse choosing with favouring. Besides, the Bible makes it abundantly clea that the whole world is involved from the start. A very simplified scheme of the Bible would look like this:

Gen. 1-11: God is directly involved with the world, but they unanimously reject Him (culminating in the dispersion at Babel).
Gen. 12 - Malachi: God chooses the faithful Abraham to establish a kingdom that would once again recognize God. He remains involved with the world through Israel.
(cf Genesis 12)
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
New Testament: God is involved through the faithful:
(cf Ephesians 3)
6This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

Israel wasn't chosen at the cost of other nations, but for their benefit. They would be instrumental to God's plan for the world, and God's involvement with both Israel in specific and the world in general culminated in Christ. God would accomodate the rest of the world through Israel by using them as an allegorical, religious and physical example - the same reason that Christ established the church (they are collectively called "Zion").

Leviticus 19
33 " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Look at the Holy Land right now. Why is it one of the most violent places on earth? Because three different groups of yahoos believe God "promised" them land.

I would chalk this up to bad parenting skills on God's part. After all, what happens if a parent puts all his/her attention toward one child and completely ignores the other?

They are three different groups of people assume too much and believe too little. It shows exactly what happens when you refuse to accept that Christ has made any difference. In any case, to see the conflicts in places like Ireland or Israel to merely a religious matter is a gross oversimplification of a very complex problem. There are terrorists in religious and secular circles (like the Black-eyed peas say in their song).

Yes. When a group of people believe God ordered them to war (as the Bible says), then yes, God is the facilitator of that war. "Regulated" is a pretty euphemism for "commanded." We are told God ordered every man, woman, child, and animal killed. What am I missing here? That he needed the Jewish people to survive? That he had some divine plan? That horrendous violence was necessary in order to make them work hard for their faith?

Horsepucky.

You're ignoring the context to facilitate your argument. As I've said, the Israelites lived in a special relationship with God. They had universally accredited prophets and their generation witnessed more than a few large-scale miracles. The Amalekites instigated and continued to wage a war of killing and plundering non-combatants for at least 400 years. None of the miraculous defeats by the Israelites convinced them that they were up against not just them but their God as well. They "lived by the sword". When the Kenites received Saul's warning any Amalekites who feared the invasion would have left as well. The Amalekite city was their stronghold, and was "devoted to God for destruction" (cf Lev. 27:29).

The prerogative was God's and only God's. Nobody after Christ can claim that God ordered a religious war, since Christ was quite literally the final word.

Rome Statute of the International Court

* (iv) Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
* (v) Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

Women and children are not military objectives. God ordered a war crime, as we define it today. (I can sense the coming counter-argument... "Ah ha! But this was 2000+ years ago, long before the statute on war crimes.") But let's be clear - I'm asking why time period should have any bearing on the moral actions of God.

You're just using a limited form of the argument I used, "we know better now than they did then". By what authority do you propose our present statute on war crimes to be eternally valid? And what gives it its authority? If you go by the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, even taking the women and children prisoner would legally count as genocide.

On the other hand, God has both the knowledge and authority to decide when and whether judgment is warranted or not. While in our limited knowledge even considering killing women and children is always inexcusible, because we simply can never know the extent and consequenses of a person's actions - let alone a whole culture, or a whole planet. God does not measure guilt only legally (the Law was just our "schoolmaster"), but morally as well, and quite probably far beyond even our limited understanding of what morality is. In the end it comes down to this: God is not a human being - He created human beings. We have a limited perspective, which is only barely sufficient to judge ourselves by, and I propose nowhere nearly sufficient to judge God by.

"...the only case we have in the bible of something approaching genocide is in the book of Esther. Haman, a prominent official, develops a plot in which the internal people will be allowed to attack, kill, and plunder the internal Jews in the nation. This is very close to genocide, and it is quite ironic that Haman is called an Agagite, and said to be an Amalekite by Josephus in Ant. 11.209." (Agag was king of the Amalekites).
- from Shouldn't the butchering of the Amalekite children be considered war crimes?

Slavery was slavery 2000 years ago. Slavery was slavery 200 years ago. If God supported it then and opposes it now, he is nothing but a reactionary deity, likely the result of people's prejudice amplified to the highest level.

The issue of slavery is another debate (specifically about the generalization of the term), but I get your point: A God of absolute morals should apply His morals absolutely, no? But what about His prerogative to judge, to punish and to show mercy? You don't take the human factor into account at all, and God has to (or more accurately, chooses to). If God simply did not allow anything that went against His moral preferences, what would humanity be - what would "freedom" consist of? Contrary to your statement, God is not reactionary to our whims. There was a clear and avoidable path that lead to the destruction of the flood and Amalekites. Nineveh is good evidence of this fact, and even God's discussion with Abraham about Sodom.

Religions have a way of "erasing" past writing, especially of other religions they deem a threat. This is why we have only a handful of gnostic writings, even though those beliefs were likely widespread at some points in history.

So you propose the rule is that a minority will always eventually eclipse the majority? I think a better explanation is that "writing" was an expensive and time consuming activity reserved or kings and the literate. The threat posed by any ancient ideology wasn't based on its writings but on its accessibility and evident authority. Your example of gnosticism isn't very apt, either, since they parasited on Christian and Jewish mysticism. In contrast, Christianity didn't rely on fear or special mystical insight. Oral tradition held more authority than written material. The Bible survived as a text because it represented centuries of tradition, not because it supressed other texts. Nothing prevented the survival of other traditions but their own lack of momentum. A momentum the Bible atributes to "God's word".

I expect people to change - not an omnipotent God.

Why exactly did God need animal sacrifices at one point, and now he does not? Well, this is an easy one. Early religions included animal sacrifice. Men grew out of that phase, ergo (I finally got to use that word! Yay!) God grew out of it as well.

The Bible charts mankind's evolution, not God's. The more we learn, the less we believe in religious bullshit. At one time, people with mental diseases may have been termed "possessed." Today, in some cases, we have a pill that can calm them right down. Hence, we see fewer people putting stock in demons, etc. (At least in other industrialized nations. America seems to be lagging behind in this department....)

I agree with you about this kind of progression. In Biblical studies it's called "revelational history". This is how the progression of Satan from snake (in Eden) to accuser (in Job), to the antichrist (in Revelation) is understood. In the beginning of the Bible, "God" is the nebulous and mysterious elohim, then He becomes known as the concrete YHWH and by the end of the Bible He is the complex and all-encompassing Trinity. The same with the concepts of death and hell. The Bible was written in mankind's language, trying to express God's will. God does not change, but the language describing Him and his actions does, and so does our understanding. A Christian can no longer read the Old Testament without knowing what was known by the New Testament, and has become evident since.

I'll use your example of sacrifices, which is a very interesting study to make, by the way. Sacrifice was a commonly understood activity, but it took on a greater significance in the revelational history. It prepared the context for understanding more complex situations which clarified what God meant with sacrifice. They were to learn what is was about their sacrifices that God valued. Compare these two verses:

Isaiah 66:3
But whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig's blood, and whoever burns memorial incense, like one who worships an idol. They have chosen their own ways, and their souls delight in their abominations;

Mark 12:33
To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Pure semantics. Religion. Faith. The Bible clearly states that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Only. If you believe that, then you must engage in some really heavy lifting when it comes to apologetics.

Hell, even different sects of Christianity disagree on what salvation requires. How can you believe in something you can't even define? What exactly should I have faith in? You can cherry pick any Bible verse you want. The Bible can be used to support/defend/oppose/condemn virtually anything, because like most religious texts, it is vague, contradictory, and the work of several divergent interests supposedly colliding into one coherent vision. Hence, we have liberal Christians welcoming gay marriage, while conservative Christians outside wave banners reading "God Hates Fags." So much for consensus on what is to be believed.

That Jesus the only way to salvation is what defines being Christian. Not "just because", but because of His special place in the revelational history. Everything that went before and after Christ culminates in Him. In a sense, it's like saying, from Europe, the English Channel is the only way to England. There simply is no other way to bring the two ends together. There are many ways to one end and many ways to the other - but to guarantee salvation, there is only One.

People will try to use the Bible to justify or condemn virually anything. What you should have faith in is that God has initiated, continued and fulfilled His intention of redeeming everyone to Him. The focus should be on what Christ achieved, not on what people were saying or doing while He was achieving it. People who just condemn homosexuals ignores God's history of redemption. People who use the Bible's words about homosexuality as an excuse to condone their immoral behaviour similarly ignores God's will.

If you want the Bible to do the thinking for you, you are once again setting yourself up for disappointment. God taught us the importance of obedience, showed us our flaws, forgave them, and then ordered us to love.

Wonderful. What if I obey the law but deny Christ? Contrast those verses with: "I am the truth, the way, and the light. No one comes to the father but through me." Should that have an asterisk? (*Unless you obey the law. Then you'll be fine.)

Remember what I said about revelational history? One thing we learn through Israel is that obeying the law completely is near-impossible at worst, and insufficient at best. The law mentioned in Romans are not Moses' laws, but those morals you are so dependent on to show that God was in the wrong. Those very morals point toward God's will. They are so strong that you even feel confident enough to judge God himself by them, yet I'm sure you have experienced even in your own life they carry only a tentative authority over your own actions. They show that you know what is required.

But if God judges you by those requirements, will He find that you meet them?

I have no idea whether or not Israelis had the means to support any of the children, but let's think logically here. They just raided a small community (otherwise, why would there be women, children, and livestock present?). It is likely these people had supplies, food, etc. What were the women and children living on before the Israelites came? Something. Seize the supplies and feed the women and children. Would that have so difficult? Would that not have been more "merciful" and Christ-like?

They raided their stronghold. That's why there were women and children present. They did not do it for financial or social gain - they were forbidden to. Those who had faith in their soldiers staid there to be killed, the rest left with the Kenites to start a new community of looters and plunderers, by all the evidence.

genocide n : systematic killing of a racial or cultural group

Once again... Kiling every Amalekite man, woman, child, and animal = genocide.

If US soldiers in Iraq had been given those orders, what would we call it?

Every man woman and child in the city was killed (1 Sam. 15:5). It's like hitting a bunker bin Laden is hiding in, except that there are women and children inside with him. Does that grant him immunity? Have you seen Rules of Engagement? If the GI's were given those orders by an insider - someone who knew that the women and children weren't innocent and that it would actually save lives to kill them, the insider would have been a hero, not a tyrant.

Then God is, by definition, a tyrant. And a hypocrite.

He tells us to be merciful, yet he is not.
He tells us to turn the other cheek, but he does not.

God holds us to a higher standard of behavior than he holds himself.

God was not the one threatened by the Amalekites, remember? It was a personal attack against Him, but His people were suffering. Mercy was extended, and you know it. It did not include the true aggressors, but they had 400 years to decide whether they would live in peace or not.

Here's a thought. You are besieging God's plan, right? I mean, you won't accept Him as your saviour, and you won't believe any warning about His judgement from the Bible or from me. If God does one day judge you according to your own moral code (or better, a universal moral code, like love), would you expect fairness or mercy? If you say mercy, what prevents evil from entering heaven and making it just another day on earth? Should God lower His standards to accomodate Amalekites and so that you can feel better about Him, or uphold them so that heaven might exist?

Here's one question I always ask Christians: Hypothetically, what would it take - what atrocity, base crime, torture, unfathomable act of cruelty on the part of God - to make you question the Bible?

If a verse of the Bible read, "And, for mere amusement as He was bored with His creation, the Lord took the innocent babes, who dared to cry in his presence, and brought on them the pain of a thousand deaths, ripped the very flesh from their living bodies, cooked them alive, devoured their souls, and then sent them spiraling into the pits of Hell so that they might be raped for eternity by the eight-dicked worm of Satan," would you sit back for a second and think Hmmm, maybe this isn't the word of God?

Or would you go to work, formulating a complex explanation... of how "babes" really meant something other than "babes" and that "crying" was symbolic of their hatred of God... and how the whole episode "prefigured" the virgin birth?

Here's my answer. The Bible contains all kinds of atrocities and evils. It represents mankind as we know it. I would not expect it otherwise. Yes, I would question the Bible if it presented God as sadistic or malicious.

But it doesn't, and it remains for you to prove God is consistently tyrannical by nature, is not keeping His promise of life and salvation to by any standards, or that it is historically impossible to expect either love or mercy from Him.