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, thats not true, God is the supreme being and creator of everything, with power like that He demands and deserves respect. He is more like the parent which lays down the rules for his children and expects them to obey. When the rules are not followed the child will be punished. The parent and God aren't making you bend to their will, but if you break the rules that they have laid down, consequences must result. In Noah's time before the flood, the people were warned about the flood, they CHOSE not to listen to Noah. God only found Noah and his family following Him, like the one good child out of the rest of the children who disobeyed. The consequence of the disobedience in this case was death.
John: I've got a bridge to sell you too.
Karl, I don't recall anyone saying that God loved smiting. I acknowledge it was a "this hurts me more than it hurts you" scenario – as I said, like the abusive parent. Doesn't change a thing. Erich said that when God killed the innocents, the story was told as if it had been the only "right" choice he had.
And that is pure nonsense. I am firmly convinced that fervent believers convince themselves of the "truth" of Biblical stories not because their hearts are completely open with love, but because they are merely afraid *not* to believe.
And that is very, very sad.
Does anyone think that those who give guns or any other weapon for that matter to others and authorizes them to kill (according to the rules of engagement) has not potentially sentenced these people to their own deaths.
This is the nature of military conflicts and even the nature of patrols by officers of the Law.
By your reasoning a parent/tribe/nation must not have a warped sense of hatred for their own children even their infants when they who are participants in a military conflict do so from the "safety of their own homes."
America in many ways is wrong whenever there are non-military or civilian casualties during a time of war.
We make no bones about it, we do not like attacking combatants in their "safe houses."
Americans seek to limit these types of outcomes.
Terrorist would as soon destroy an entire nation of non-combatants and call it just. They would presume to be able to hide in the safety of their homes and risk the lives of innocents to prevent moral people from being able to confront/dialog with them.
I see the same behavior here on DI.
No one wants to answer my question out in the open – you seem content to snipe and snark from your positions of smugness and then blame others for the damage that "religion" has wrought.
God does not take joy in seeing those who oppose Him come undone; it is sick perverse people who rejoice over the misfortune of others.
In German that's called Schadenfreude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
Tony writes:—"The bible is stories. Written by people. People make shit up! People making shit up are rarely internally consistent."
Uh, hold on a moment, Tony. I write fiction. I make shit up. The fact is, a fiction writer—one who is honestly writing fiction—finds that the work must be more internally consistent than so-called reality. Fiction, in fact, has to make more sense than reality, or it wouldn't accomplish what it is set out to accomplish. It is one of the paradoxes of the Bible that its very inconsistency argues, in an admittedly backhanded and somewhat perverse way, for it being Not Fiction.
But then we have to determine what it is. A mish-mash of history, myth, pedagogy, hagiography, and fiction, along with a good deal of propaganda. The inconsistencies seem to be a consequence of the writer of one book not reading the other books, or reading only parts of them, or trying to adapt bits of previous books for their own purpose, not realizing that at some point in the future the whole thing was going to be collected into an anthology that would be required to make sense.
Just saying.
Sorry you missed it Mindy But both Eric and Hank are sadists towards a God they don't believe exists
I quote Hank,
"You are a bald faced liar.
The bible (at least the OT) not only condones, it rejoices in the wanton destruction of people."
John: what?
So you conflate 'God' ordering the death of many people (including innocents) to the very human acts of war that we carry out as nations?
You state We do not like attacking non-combatents in their "safe houses"
Who the hell suggested any such thing? You then go on to a neo-con hawk-like diatribe about terrorism.
Lets get one thing straight. Soldiers 'choose' to join the military (at least in the US and UK and most other western nations). The know that part of that choice may require service in a war-zone, with the fairly high possibility of injury or death.
Soldiers are the physical agent used to enforce power (or previously agreed treaties) when diplomacy fails to work.
You may notice that most on the non-hawks opposed a war in Iraq, not because of some liberal panty-waisted squeamishness about sending kids to die – but because it was unjust and unfounded. Diplomacy had been ignored. Sending kids to die stupidly and unnecessarily is stupid and unnecessary.
But that's human frailty and failing. Lets get to God.
God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving. Surely such a god could help his followers craft a diplomatic message that would convince anyone of his truth. Hell – we expect more from a junior diplomat, never mind a supreme being!
Instead, your loving, knowing god, simply washes his hands and claims that he 'must' do these things. Why?
You god is a petulant authoritarian old fart who demands obeisance from every single person, and who takes any slight as a mortal insult and demands vengeance and retribution out of all proportion.
Schadenfreude – like most other Christians I don't think you really know what the word means (but you do engage in unfounded schadenfreude quite a lot – I recall something about Katrina…)
Erich holds this about the matter
"The fundamentalists all end up insisting that whatever God does, He is still “good” or “just.”
Eric must of course not hold to this as Erich is no fundamentalist qualified religious one).
Erich must hold God (If God exists) to be culpable for creating enemy combatants who use human shields to defend themselves. Erich must also hold God responsible and a sadist for not keeping people's evil nature more in check.
He must be especially happy to think that God is really so heavenly minded He is no earthly good – # 2 sense of course.
Karl
Quote fail: that was me. Tony. Not Hank. Not Mindy. Tony. (It says so right above the text you so lovingly copied and pasted)
And I do believe that god gloated and rejoiced – because he is the embodiment of his people and THEY rejoiced. Surely if such were not warranted, god would have smote them for such behavior?
Mark
I know – but I did say 'rarely'. There are many (famous) authors who fail that simple test. But the issue with the bible is not that it had 'an author' but 'many authors'.
Individual authors suffer enough difficulty to craft a story that is internally consistent (I'm sure you;ll agree). For multiple authors it is even more challenging (without a very strong editor and backstory).
The bible is simply, as you say,
May god is just a really crappy editor?
Sorry Tony, but the misfire was on purpose to show that attribution can't be transferred from one person to another, it can't be transferred from a group of people to their leader (or their "god" unless you believe God is somekind of a social consciousness as do some humanists), nor can it be transferred from the created to the creator.
This showed you that people get upset when this is done to them. It probably bothers God that what others know of Him comes through a filter of the sinful perspectives of other people and not directly from a first hand relationship/dialog with Him directly.
God would sure be a sorry sight, as well as fickle, and most unpredictable and capricious if God got assigned all the attributes of the men that people believe put words in God's mouth.
Not every interpretation of the Bible is correct, especially the ones that only look for reasons to disbelieve its message concern the character of God.
The Bible was written by men, however not all of the words, emotions and personal perspectives expressed in it can be directly attributed to God. There are numerous occasions when sinful accounts are clearly labelled as such. There are others occasions in the Bible where God's perspectives may only be discernable and understood to those seeking to know more about Him and His ways.
When the Bible comments upon the nature and character of God it is correct. When people assume God is like sinful men who refuse to acknowledge that God's ways are higher than their own, the only thing left to accept/prove contradictions concerning what God says about Himself is to bring the character of God down to fit into the likeness of sinful men.
John – apparently I missed your question. What is no one answering out here in the open? Ask again – I'll give it a shot.
Karl – there are so many things wrong with what you say it's hard to know where to begin. First, how exactly is Erich or Hank or anyone else a "sadist?" Are you saying because they refuse to believe in your god that they are being sadistic towards God? Or is it sadistic towards you? Because in the former, well, it's hard to be sadistic to something that doesn't exist. So even though that god exists in your worldview, s/he/it does not in Erich's or Hank's, so it would be utterly impossible for either of them to be mean to it.
In the latter case, I'd just have to say that you really haven't a good grasp of the meaning of sadism, because disagreeing, even vehemently, does not a sadist make. Even calling you names is not sadistic. Immature, perhaps, yes. Unkind, even. But sadistic? Oh, please. Get over yourself.
If your god is the omnipotent, omniscient creator of everything, then of course He made the enemy combatants. That's not Erich holding your god culpable, that is Erich insisting that your message be consistent. Which it very often is not.
As for Tony, he said that the BIBLE rejoices in the wanton destruction of people. Which it does. But of course, since it was written by people, we can assume that the authors merely took editorial and creative license and only meant that the folks who did not get smited were the rejoicing ones, not God. He surely felt very awful for all those he smote. Even though by then, of course, it was too late to do a darned thing about it. Uh-oh, then we have that "word of God" vs. "fable or parable" conundrum again.
Smiting, by the way, would definitely fall under the "sadistic behaviors" umbrella, so when Erich or anyone else calls your god (at least the OT version) sadist, well, yeah. That's kind of pointing out the obvious, don'tcha think?
Lastly, I will thank you to never, ever call Erich a sadist again. I might just take up smiting myself if you do. He saved me this last weekend, yet again. I'm still working on the post describing an event of a few weeks ago, and now I have another event about which to write. On both occasions, Erich rose far above what would be expected of a friend and truly made the difference between a completely untenable situation for me and a manageable pain-in-the-arse situation. I am blessed beyond measure to have such friends as him and his wife in my life, and you can argue with him all you want, but don't call him something he is not. THAT is simply not acceptable.
And, by the way, when I say I am blessed, I mean that. I just don't mean that your god had a hand in it, so please don't run off and misquote me.
Mindy: I'm honored by your kind words, you who always make time for others. But, really, you've GOT to stop getting burglarized!
Karl – I'll take your points in turn. It may be instructive (to me, at least)
So… what? Of course attribution can be transferred if that attribution is implied in the context and the content. "John said" is direct attribution. Valid but open to debate (do you have independent verification of that statement?). Christians tell us that the bible is the 'word of god', and that although written by men, the words are god's. That is attribution. Sorry if this is confusing for you.
So you can't have it both ways. Either the bible is the received word of god, in which case it IS god's word directly, not attributed through some transfer mechanism – or it's fiction. Or it's some amalgam.
Your choice – I'll take it either way.
Now you presume to speak for god?
That aside – doesn't everything you know come through filters of one form or another. Many of our cognitive biases are established early, and reinforcement of those early biases through group behaviors can make it challenging even to agree on 'facts' let alone interpretation.
Regardless – you claim that god 'speaks to you' directly. How wonderful for you. But how do you know this? I have an aunt who claims that her brother talks too loudly in his sleep and it keeps her awake at night. Unfortunately her brother has been dead for almost fifty years. Should I believe her too? Perhaps send round the ghost-finders to uncover my sleeping and loudly snoring uncle?
Well — most of those behaviors are in the bible. No-one is doing anything other than reporting. If we choose to 'cherry pick' negatively – it perhaps balances your overly positive cherry picking. Regardless – the words are the words as written. No-one (other than the biblical authors) is making stuff up. There is no need.
In other words – the only correct interpretation is one that ignores the bad stuff – or suggests that those 'bad' parts are nothing more than 'lessons' or 'parables'? You strain my credulity, sir. No-one 'looks' for reasons to disbelieve. And the character of god is laid out clearly for all to see (in your preceding paragraph : fickle, unpredictable, capricious. but you forgot authoritarian, angry and temperamental.
I have absolutely no problem with this statement. especially the caveat 'not all' meaning that some of the words must be gods. We then get to the next part.
In other words – you need a secret decoder ring before you get to understand the really really super secret message in the bible? Great plan for getting the word out. Does that help much when proselytizing? I'd love to tell you what this really means, but I can't until you join and undergo the training
So far so good. So god is jealous (no graven images and all that), demanding (sacrifice your first born to me), capricious (I won't speak to the people, but I will give you these tablets of stone)
And then the house comes crashing down.
What you really mean is that whenever a statement is made, supported by your book, that paints god in a negative way – that's wrong. That's trying to bring the character of god down to that of sinful men.
OK. I still don't understand your point. What I get is this
The bible is, or is not, the word of god.
The bits that appear to be negative aren't about god at all (even if it seems that way).
You need to be a proper christian to interpret the bible correctly.
Anything bad is not really about god.
Can you make up your mind, or at least let us know which bits are really the word, and which bits are allusion and fiction? It would help, truly. If I understand what you're saying we should just strike most of the OT, and also a whole swathe of the NT where there's talk of the rapture and suchlike (vengeance is mine, and all that)
Thanks.
Sadism is a human characteristic and when it is attempted to be applied to the one true God (if one exists of course)reveals the true intents in the heart of the accuser.
It reveals how an individual would treat his/her own adversaries if he/she were given authority/license and opportunity.
One's own mental picture of the God they truly serve comes out bright and clear in how they project these traits onto the one true God(if of course He exists).
Many atheists claim to have no God so the only thing greater than they themselves is a belief in science/evolution/humanism which truly is a sadistic understanding of destiny/fate.
I can't tell for absolute ceratin, but I can detect in many atheists that if it came down to the place that a final solution to the quandry of faith between science/evolution/humanism and theism, many atheists would likely choose the extermination of the theists.
Just a gut response. I could be wrong.
Takes one to know one? Karl, is this really the best you can do? That would make all criminal prosecutors into murders.
Quoth the mighty sage Karl:
"I can’t tell for absolute ceratin, but I can detect in many atheists that if it came down to the place that a final solution to the quandry of faith between science/evolution/humanism and theism, many atheists would likely choose the extermination of the theists.
Just a gut response. I could be wrong."
Not just wrong.
You, sir, are an idiot.
If you actually believe that we'd exterminate religious people in such a manner, then clearly you've been reading too many Old Testament stories. Extermination of one's enemies wholesale is the Yahweh method of conflict resolution.
Good lord – to think that you presume to teach other people's children!
*shudder*
That thought never occurred to me until I read Karl's inane comment.
Just kidding!
But Erich, the question remains: WHICH inane comment? An old saying involving the comparitive visibility of a forest in relation to the trees comprising that forest comes to mind.
Hank. Karl's lowest low was when he suggested that non-believers aim to kill the theists. How utterly bizarre to suggest such a thing. Maybe it was an attempt to distract us from the baby-killing God of the Old Testament.
This is becoming unproductive on all points.
On the attribution aspects of character. Where do you place the limit of what is implied in the context and content? Do people rejoicing after a won battle mean the soldiers who killed other soldiers have a sick sense of their participation, or are they suppose to enjoy what they participated in? To soldiers we hope they take it seriously as a job, one with life and death consequences.
I have no problem seeing God having to make such decisions which will result in judgments being acted upon. If it is possible for men to try their best to keep personal feelings out of the job they need to do, why shouldn't we expect that God would be able to keep his actions from being swayed by personal whim and blowing winds.
You can believe all you like that the God of the Old Testament is a different one form the New Testament.
I see the process of mankind maturing in their understanding and knowledge of who God is as changing. This did not change or shape God according to their image of Him. People gradually caught on to what the attributes of God really were and slowly they came to understand that the God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament.
Karl says: "Sadism is a human characteristic and when it is attempted to be applied to the one true God (if one exists of course)reveals the true intents in the heart of the accuser.
It reveals how an individual would treat his/her own adversaries if he/she were given authority/license and opportunity."
To which I say: BULLSHIT.
Karl, that is utter nonsense. I recognize the actions ascribed to God – the smiting stuff – as evil, vengeful horrible things I would NEVER do to my worst enemy. His actions were sadistic. If they had actually been the actions of an omnipotent being, that is. Which they weren't, but your book says they were, so they were. And they were sadistic. I don't care how much power and license I were given, I would not in my wildest nightmares kill an entire population. Period. I am so effing sick of you sanctimonious religious "Christians" ascribing ulterior motive to behaviors by others who don't worship as you do. It is ugly, disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. I believe with my whole heart that were Christ to return as you believe he will, he would be most disappointed in the behavior of those who profess the most loudly to follow him. Poor guy, to have one's message so awfully muddled must really be frustrating.
Mindy, if I was Christ I think I would've returned a long, long time ago and given some of these death-eaters a good solid talking-to and, possibly, a spanking.
But expecting such people to be ashamed of themselves for their bigotry, prejudice and distasteful morality is a little unrealistic. Apparently, when you're a good little fundamentalist, the laws and judgements and proscriptions you hang on others don't apply to you. Indeed, when you're a fundamentalist, the beam in your eye is but a stick with which to beat the unworthy.
Karl
I just got an email from some guy called "Mort Eckis". He was complaining that you just won't let up on beating him. He'd like you to stop, please.
Thanks.
If I can recall, God also passed judgement upon His own people when they too disobeyed Him. Gods laws and rules apply to all people in the NT not just those who werent His chosen people.
My question which I did not mention earlier, was that if God takes such pleasure in the smiting, where then is the proof? because it sure is not in the pudding or any thing you have yet said.
Mindy,
Not to contradict, but look at it this way: today, when some idiot kills a bunch of people, and says in his defense "god told me to do that" we don't blame god. We recognize that this nutjob is just using that as an excuse to indulge his own sick acting out of a psychotic state.
So you have a tribe full of roaming nomads who decide to move into a territory, slaughter everyone, and take it for themselves. They win and claim that "god told us this was our land." Why wouldn't we look at that the same way? Excuse-making? The difference is, somebody wrote it all down that way and some other people decided that the god these folks were referring to actually exists and that the credit is correctly placed for all those deaths. Which is kind of what a lot of us have been arguing about here for a long time, that this god person doesn't exist except in the minds of those who claim to follow him. They act, it comes out in their favor, god gets the credit. They act, it blows up in their faces, god gets the credit for punishing them for hubris.
If we then turn around and blame this god for the actions of those who follow him, doesn't that kind of contradict the thesis that these stories, loosely based on real history, are distortions? In short, bullshit?
John writes:—"My question which I did not mention earlier, was that if God takes such pleasure in the smiting, where then is the proof? because it sure is not in the pudding or any thing you have yet said."
It's a bit of a red herring to be trying to establish what "pleasure" Yahweh experienced. According to several instances, though, Yahweh supposedly condoned or even ordered merciless slaughtering. Whether it "pleased" him or not is beside the point; by my reckoning that makes Yahweh pretty much as Mark Twain characterized him: "If there is a god, he is a malign thug."
Sticking to Mark Twain for another quote, this is from his War Prayer, and pretty well sums up my feeling about the martial character of Yahweh.
Here is a short poem that may give you all a little more perspective of how I approach the matter.
On Attribution
The judge in courtroom B that day,
Heard the verdict from the jury say,
The glove did not fit, we must take no action.
But still many displayed grave dissatisfaction.
The leaders of the counter insurgency complained,
Hoping civil courts their views sustained.
The wrongful deaths must be revenged,
Society will crumble unless avenged.
The sacred scrolls were studied anew,
For proof their assumptions were true.
But alas they found no guile to attribute,
Except for what they assumed of the brute.
The beast has transformed before their eyes,
But none dared say they believed lies.
They just knew God was smiling with glee
While the Israelites dance by the Red Sea.
Even though God has told them and directed
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
Any judge can then be called a thug when he gives the sentence that is recommended by the legal system in which any specific crime was committed.
What bothers people about the God of the Bible is that to them He appears to be biased towards the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews/Christians, take your pick.
My only answer is that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him and His true character and attributes. He's not biased against certain people because we all are faithless at times. He rewards positive faith in Him and understanding of what He really has in His heart concerning people.