When God slaughters innocent babies, He is “good.”
In a post entitled “A Seriously Warped Moral Compass,” Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism relates a discussion he had with an evangelical fellow. The topic? Hosea, chapter 13, a Bible passage in which God promises that for the crime of disbelief, the city of Samaria’s “infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” This is one of those many Bible passages that the anti-abortion demonstrators refuse to display on their signs as they march in front of clinics.
I’ve often been in discussions similar to the one described by Ebonmuse. Such discussions are highly predictable, actually. They all lead to the same conclusion. The fundamentalists all end up insisting that whatever God does, He is still “good” or “just.”
Here’s how the encounter of Ebonmuse with his fundamentalist acquaintance:
“You’ve said that it’s perfectly okay for God to command genocide. You’ve said it’s okay for him to condemn people to be tortured for all eternity because they had some sincere doubts about his existence. And now you’re saying it’s perfectly okay for him to order the slaughter of pregnant women and their unborn children! So what would you consider immoral? Is there anything you think he can’t do and still be good? Is there any act - anything at all - that a good god would never command?”
For the first time, a shadow of disgust passed across John’s face. “Yes. A good God would never say that it’s okay for people to be gay. Homosexuality is disgusting and unnatural and God would never permit it.”
Here’s how I see it. Either God is not “good” or one can still be good even though one slaughters babies. Now, maybe those babies (some of them being unborn babies) were morally deficient and “had it coming,” but I doubt it.
In my heathen view, babies are not capable of doing anything capable of earning the death penalty. In the meantime, we’ve got a language problem. If fundamentalists keep insisting that God is good when He kills babies, we’ll just have to advise all of the dictionary makers that there is a new definition of “good.” We’ll call it “good #2” (or something like that) and it will mean something like this: evil, depraved, morally obtuse and dangerous. Once this new definition of good (#2) is commonly accepted, we can start using it commonly. For instance, if someone sticks a gun in your face to rob you, you can say, “Hey! You’re good #2!”
Here is how Ebonmuse ends his post:
People such as this have a seriously warped moral compass. They have their priorities precisely backwards, they are obsessed with precisely the wrong things. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg once said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
As long as fundamentalists can’t shake off the effects of the LSD they apparently take, they rest of us will just have to understand that they give God a free pass, morally speaking. He gets all the credit but none of the blame. Although He’s sometimes good, he’s often good #2. He’s always “just.” He is incapable of doing evil even when he’s busy slaughtering innocent babies. And perhaps it is because God is so good (#2) that the fundamentalists are “inspired” to be good (#3), namely, they (sometimes) refrain from killing and stealing because they’re afraid that God might be good (#2) to them too.
BTW, I’d highly recommend that you check out Ebonmuse’s site. Lots of thoughtful analysis and good clear writing.
He comes at the topic of religion from many angles, always with new fruitful observations. Here’s how he describes himself:
Part-time computer hacker, part-time freethought activist; optimist and skeptic rolled into one; a poet at heart but a scientist at mind; a thorough-going atheist who admires religious music and architecture. I contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman put it. And anyone who suggests that I’m only an atheist because of a dysfunctional family or a bad experience with church gets fifty lashes with a wet noodle blessed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
[Note: This is not the original version of this post. While I was correcting a typo, the original post got “eaten” by an airport Internet connection].
Mindy,
We are all bigots in the eyes of other specific people if we consider that people can and do have different values that don’t agree with each other.
The extent of our being labeled then as a bigot stems from how we try to convince other people to take our side or the highway.
I really think I try to respond in less bigoted ways than those who hold values different from mine, but I might just be fooling myself to agree with my friends (mutual bigots) for that matter.
Thanks for tracking that down, Stacy. Karl, once again you’ve got your basic facts wrong.
Mindy, I think you misunderstand the “Let Go and let God” part of the 12 step program.It does not mean one must give themselves over to religion. It is betted summed up in the short version of the “Serenity Prayer” ( which is actually a rephrasing of an ancient koan). The original koan translated to something like:
A serene man accepts that which he cannot change.
A strong man changes that which he can,
And a wise man knows the difference.
This saying predates Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer by several centuries. Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” adds much to this concept and is an excellent encapsulation of the Christian Existentialist philosophy, upon which the 12 step program of AA is based.
The idea expressed is that a person can only be responsible for his or her individual actions, and that it is not possible to be in total control. One should not bear the responsibility of events beyond the scope of his/her control but should learn top live with it.
Karl, A bigot is a person who attributes a set of stereotypical characteristics to people based solely on a small subset of observable characteristics. It is obvious that the character Archie Bunker in the old sitcom “All in the Family” was a bigot. Most viewers failed to realize that Micheal Stivic (a.k.a. “Meathead”) was also a bigot.
No, Karl, you are wrong. Bigotry is defined by Merriam-Webster as ” a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices ; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.”
You and other religious zealots treat gays with hatred and intolerance. That is bigotry. Fighting against ignorance is NOT bigotry. Insisting that Christians leave non-Christians alone to practice whatever belief system they hold is not bigotry. Insisting that all religions should be able to be honored with out one religion being held over the others is not bigotry. I am in favor of any and all religions being observed by the believers of each - without any of them insisting that others are less.
You hide behind your incorrect assumption that homosexuality is a choice, so that you can lump it in as one tenet of a belief system and feel free to teach against it, rail against and discriminate against it. But you are wrong. And until you have spent time with gay people and talked to them at length and made a real effort to understand who they are, you have absolutely no right to insist that what you think you know about them is true. That is absurd.
Your bigotry is based in the same kind of thinking as used by those who defended slavery as acceptable because Africans and their descendants were “less than” on the humanity scale. They based that on no real qualifications at all, just a physical difference as slight as skin color. But back then, those who disagreed were met with the same vehement ignorance as you display about gays. And until those who would discriminate base their bigotry on something more than an “ick” factor, I will continue to rant about it. And call it as I see it, which is what I did when I called you a bigot.
My assessment stands, and no, I do not believe that we are all bigots. I don’t believe that most Christians are bigots. Just some of you.
Niklaus
I agree with your analysis of both Archie and Meathead. As you stated, “Most viewers failed to realize that Micheal Stivic (a.k.a. “Meathead”) was also a bigot.”
I admit to the values I prefer, and try to hold to, which includes not saying I’m tolerant of some people but not others. To me that indicates an accident waiting to happen from not checking one’s own blind spot.
I guess Mindy needs to label POTUS Obama as a bigot as well. I essentially hold the same views concerning gay marriage as he does. At least, I think I do.
The most insidious bigots will not admit that they could possibly be bigots because they are fighting against the ignorance of others. They assume their own biases aren’t based upon anything other than the correct perspectives concerning matters which are essentially opinions and interpretations.
I will grant you that if Obama has based his civil-union statements on a bias like yours, then yes, he is a bigot. I have a feeling, though, that he is playing politics. Do I agree with him? No. But do I understand his need to play politics and advance a more fair agenda slowly? Yes. I can see that it would fail otherwise.
You can call me a bigot, Karl, even an insidious one, but if you are saying that my belief that gays need to be treated completely equally under the law is based on opinion and interpretation, you are wrong. Sorry, but it is not my opinion that gay people just ARE who they are. That is simply a fact.
Niklaus, you may be correct. I just know that in my experience, I have seen several people jump into religion as if it were another addiction, and they still have a very hard time living a productive life. I also know that AA has been incredibly successful for an awfully lot of people, but I don’t believe it is the only way to recover from alcoholism, either.
Erich–Note that God’s prophet, Moses, orders rape and enslavement, in addition to massacre. BTW, I quoted only 3 passages out of many. Here’s a site which has collected many others:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm
I think everyone should read the Bible. It’s an excellent argument for atheism.
Stacy: Definitely should be rated R for excessive violent and gratuitous sex.