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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:

Instead of ranting at God, why not reserve all your anger for those who are heinously evil?

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
So far, you haven't answered that.

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You likely believe two things. First, that God is bound by your morals. As you can tell me that I'm immoral if I kill someone innocent, so you can tell God that He is immoral if He kills someone innocent. But that is simply a non sequitur. Whether one believes that God is a moral agent or not (I don't, by the way), there simply is no reason why what is good for you must be good for God. If spiders were free and intelligent agents, would it be correct to condemn a female spider as murderess and cannibal if she eats her male partner after copulation? No, that would be imposing morals fit for a human being on a spider. But a spider is not a human being. Much less is God (as God) a human being.

Second, you believe that your morals can limit you even over and against God. Killing an innocent is at least always wrong for you, even if perhaps not for a spider or God Himself. And that remains so even if God says otherwise. But God is not like your boss or commanding officer who tells you what to do in a way that you can refuse (even if it perhaps would cost you dearly to refuse). God can rearrange your moral system as easily as anything else in the universe. And indeed He has arranged your moral system in the first place (by various means). Whatever moral grounds you are planting your feet on now, ready to defy God, it is provided by God. If He really wants to move you, then He's simply going to move both you and the moral grounds you stand on.

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The baby Amorite was not innocent to Joshua. What evil could that baby have done then? Simple, belonging to the Amorites. This sort of thing has been, is, and always will be a part of the law God has written on our hearts.

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
Just to pick up on these two paragraphs: I don't buy either particularly, for the simple reason that we humans - uniquely among God's Creation and therefore unlike Ms Spider - are made and formed in His image, therefore something - I would suspect and hope quite a lot if not all - of His moral nature would have rubbed off and been imprinted upon this imago Dei. So, sorry, but if killing an innocent is always wrong for me, then I submit it must be always wrong for God too.

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Nobody really knows how many innocents God has killed, but probably billions. (If one believes that human life begins at conception, then many billions.) "But no, He didn't kill them, because He didn't stand there to swing a sword and chop off their heads." We are talking about an immaterial Spirit here, whose "job" is to cause everything in the ultimate sense. Systemic death, like all those zygotes that fail to implant or those newborns that succumb to disease, is on His table. In fact, scripture is pretty clear that He ordered human death as primary punishment for Adamgate.

As for the image and likeness thing: who says that this primarily concerns human morals? It's not like your foot or your bowel movements or even the way you think have been created in His image and likeness. All this is obviously false. And it is pretty damn clear that most of human morals are totally meaningless when applied to God. How could the Creator steal? How could He commit adultery? Etc. The way most people think about God, He becomes a particularly nice and powerful human soul which in the Incarnation made an appropriately embodied guest appearance on earth. But that's just plain rubbish.

But hey, I don't mind in general if people muddle along with an anthropomorphic god. We all muddle along spiritually, just in different ways. But if you put God in the dock, then you are upping the ante. And knowing the true identity of the accused is a prerequisite for any meaningful trial.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Originally posted by Russ
I for one do not rant at God; my ?anger? disgust ? outrage ? is at the twisted idea of God that you are putting forward. If God were as evil as you portray Him to be - wiping out whole tribes of people as "punishment" for disobedience - why would any decent person want anything to do with Him ?

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Originally posted by Robert Armin
You and EE seem to me to be making a strong case for atheism here.

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:

But then, of course, there is the question: but what about the innocent children? Funny, isn't it? I've never heard this plea come from someone committed to pro-life.

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Originally posted by Russ
Whereas anyone with any insight knows exactly where the impulse to genocide comes from. Not from God, the source of all good desires and all just works, etc. But from human nature. The sort of human nature we see at work in conservative politics - the politics of fear of strangers. The same people who want tough immigration controls, who want people to carry guns, who make a fetish of law and order and then seek to use the forces of law and order to enforce conformity to social norms. Those sort of conservatives - well, genocide is just a little further down that road.

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The reality is that these parents were morally responsible, and they, in fact, murdered their own children by deliberately provoking God's necessary judgment on themselves and their families.

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These judgments are truly vile and disgusting. I think this, and God thinks this as well. But I know who was responsible for them. Not the one who reluctantly had to execute the judgment.

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
"Necessary"? According to whom?

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"Had to"? Who was forcing Him?

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Answer: moral reality.

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Sadly, some evil people are not persuaded to repent by means of argument. So, after much patience, mercy and forbearance, their influence has to be destroyed in the most regrettably extreme way. It's reality, I'm afraid.

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
You and EE seem to me to be making a strong case for atheism here.

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Originally posted by Matt Black
Such was one of the arguments of the medieval Inquisition.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I can see that anyone who has a problem with authority is going to find it difficult to be a 'person of the Book'. They'd either have to be an atheist or a deist. (We don't hear much about deism these days, do we?) Animism holds that God is Creator but not Judge, so that might be possible.

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But 'murder' only makes sense if there exists a valid law by which this form of killing is declared to be illegal. According to what you have written (in your earlier response to my post) you admit that your understanding of morality and justice is your own. So presumably your judgment of 'mass murder' is also entirely your own?

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While I accept that the biblical accounts of the so called 'genocides' are difficult, it must be borne in mind that all of them are acts of judgment in response to evil. For example, the Egyptians murdered new born Hebrew children, a fate from which Moses escaped thanks to the cunning of the Hebrew midwives. You seem to have overlooked this particular iniquity.

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In a moral universe, evil has consequences, and widespread evil attracts the judgment of God. Why should God be blamed for these judgments, and not those who provoked them?

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We can have some inkling as to the extent of evil of the nations which were subject to so called 'genocide'

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We can draw an understanding from these events, but it is mistaken to assume that we must somehow try to replicate them.

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You say: "it seems to me that you must believe that there are crimes for which genocide - the deliberate slaughter of an entire race or tribe of men, women and children - is a morally right, just and proper punishment."

These should be substituted with "were" and "was" respectively.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
We are talking about an immaterial Spirit here, whose "job" is to cause everything in the ultimate sense. Systemic death, like all those zygotes that fail to implant or those newborns that succumb to disease, is on His table.

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In fact, scripture is pretty clear that He ordered human death as primary punishment for Adamgate.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I can see that anyone who has a problem with authority is going to find it difficult to be a 'person of the Book'. They'd either have to be an atheist or a deist. (We don't hear much about deism these days, do we?) Animism holds that God is Creator but not Judge, so that might be possible.

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That's an interesting point. Maybe I'm an animist then. My own feeble religious experiences never seem to involve a sense of judgement, so I tend to discount it. A lot of the harsh judgement in religion strikes me as a kind of super-ego thing - an internal critic, who gets projected (mafia-boss-like). Oh hang on, what's what Freud said.

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Originally posted by Boogie:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
We are talking about an immaterial Spirit here, whose "job" is to cause everything in the ultimate sense. Systemic death, like all those zygotes that fail to implant or those newborns that succumb to disease, is on His table.

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Yes, this can't be disputed, death is part of life for all of us, not just zygotes and newborns.

So by 'immaterial Spirit' are you saying that God does not care?

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In fact, scripture is pretty clear that He ordered human death as primary punishment for Adamgate.

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I can't even begin to believe this. I would rather throw out the whole of scripture than believe that God would re-set the whole system for a failing (our failing) that was within the system.

Death must have been there from the beginning, and it must have been necessary - or we don't have a God of love at all.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I can see that anyone who has a problem with authority is going to find it difficult to be a 'person of the Book'. They'd either have to be an atheist or a deist. (We don't hear much about deism these days, do we?) Animism holds that God is Creator but not Judge, so that might be possible.

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That's an interesting point. Maybe I'm an animist then. My own feeble religious experiences never seem to involve a sense of judgement, so I tend to discount it. A lot of the harsh judgement in religion strikes me as a kind of super-ego thing - an internal critic, who gets projected (mafia-boss-like). Oh hang on, what's what Freud said.

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On the other hand, though, 'God' as perceived by animist spirituality isn't interested in human affairs, and couldn't be said to 'love' us. (I must admit that my knowledge of animism isn't very deep. I'm sure it comes in many varieties.)

In Christianity, God's love goes along with his law-giving and punishment; but also with his mercy. There's no need for mercy if there are no laws to be broken, no need for mercy if there's no judging process.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Yes, a Darwinian theodicy argues that death and pain are highly beneficial to animal life, although obviously also not pleasant. But pain is an important warning signal, and probably inevitable within evolution; death is vital as a way of recycling. In fact, probably they are both inevitable within any system of evolution. I'm not saying that God created them, since I don't know, but that they are not incompatible with a loving creator. I guess it buggers up original sin and so on!

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's as if you cannot have mercy without no mercy. Is that right?

I was comparing it with parenting, where traditionally therapists argue that we need 'good enough' parents, but not too good, as this will wreck the kids. In other words, it's important to fail kids. I guess that's a bad parallel, since God does not fail us!

I suppose the degree of harshness perceived or believed, about God, varies a lot, from the idea of no hell, to lots of hell. This is what is often said to be a projection of my inner critic - so we actually enjoy the spectacle of punishment, I suppose, or we need to see it enacted.

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Originally posted by Boogie:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Yes, a Darwinian theodicy argues that death and pain are highly beneficial to animal life, although obviously also not pleasant. But pain is an important warning signal, and probably inevitable within evolution; death is vital as a way of recycling. In fact, probably they are both inevitable within any system of evolution. I'm not saying that God created them, since I don't know, but that they are not incompatible with a loving creator. I guess it buggers up original sin and so on!

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They are inevitable in the world as we see it through our own front doors. We have death and pain here and now, they are clearly visibly necessary and inevitable.

It's the explanation as to why we have them that bothers me. Either way it is a painful system, but if it's necessary and inevitable then we can accept it imo - IngoB reckons it was a re-set position at the 'fall'. Which makes even less sense as God could have chosen any number of different 're-boots' for his beloved creation if that were true.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's as if you cannot have mercy without no mercy. Is that right?

I was comparing it with parenting, where traditionally therapists argue that we need 'good enough' parents, but not too good, as this will wreck the kids. In other words, it's important to fail kids. I guess that's a bad parallel, since God does not fail us!

I suppose the degree of harshness perceived or believed, about God, varies a lot, from the idea of no hell, to lots of hell. This is what is often said to be a projection of my inner critic - so we actually enjoy the spectacle of punishment, I suppose, or we need to see it enacted.

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Well, I suppose that mercy is only meaningful if there's also the possibility of no mercy. Most of us understand this concept quite well - we have courts of law, and lawyers who accept the notion of mitigating circumstances. After all, what's the alternative to this kind of judging process? Utter indifference? You mention parents, but even parents aren't utterly indifferent to their children's wrongdoing. They may not employ smacking, but good parents who love their children still try to instruct, correct and punish them, as they see fit.

The Bible sees the setting of boundaries, and the dispensing of the appropriate punishment, or of mercy, for infringing them, as the acts of a loving parent, not a bad one. But as with child rearing, we all have different ideas of what's 'appropriate' behaviour for God!! The smackers and the naughty-step advocates are ranged against each other, with accusations of inadequate parenting flying back and forth!

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Originally posted by Russ
EE,

Do you not realise that the more you "defend" God using every cliched justification for evil that every Hollywood villain has ever uttered, the worse you make Him out to be ?

Seems like you don't worship goodness at all, you worship authority.

I hope something happens to change your heart.

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Originally posted by Martin PC....
Although way before ultimately He is responsible for not intervening.

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Even if He is the best-case liberal God

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And without people making up stories about Him.

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So far so good?

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Originally posted by Jamat:
Israel arose from the ashes of the holocaust something Mr Wiesel could not foresee; but God could and did. He is outside time.

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Originally posted by Erik
As far as I can remember God gave his law to Israel while in the desert and not to the other groups. How can God punish a group of people for breaking his law when he had not given his law to them (giving it to Israel instead)?

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Originally posted by Jamat:


The consequence for us is that even if we were not created beings, his workmanship, we would be unable to put him on trial. To the contrary we should fear God. He has in fact got our species on trial. Trying to turn this on its head will not save us in the final round up. We must humble ourselves, repent of our obscene arrogance and throw our selves on his mercy. The mercy he has shown us in Christ's invitation.

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Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
...one that is perfectly OK with killing whole nations just to make a point or send a message to those who remain.

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No, not just to make a point or send a message, but to eradicate evil.

By the way... if God is such a bastard, and if he really doesn't exist and is therefore just a made up concept, doesn't that tell you something about the perverted mind of man? After all, if this is the case, then this "bastard God" must have been a projection of "bastard minds". Doesn't make the human race look much good, does it?

Or if you think that God does exist, but is still a bastard, then that means that we, his creatures, must also be bastards, being the product of a bastard creator.

Whichever way you look at it, if God is guilty, then we go down with him!

And if, perchance, you argue that certain human beings are immune from this judgment, being atheists, then you may like to set out the objectively valid moral code which exonerates such people? A subjective moral code, of course, exonerates nobody, being entirely solipsistic, and certainly cannot be used to pass any judgment on God.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I embrace ALL of the above. My response to the sublime Wiesel is that that is a modern, post-hoc response applied inappropriately YET ... with deep, deeper, deepest justification to the, increasingly strange library we call the Bible.

I come from 45 years of justifying the pragmatism/violence of a violent/pragmatic God: His ways aren't our ways, His ends - which are the best case for us - justify His means.

Which, Karl: The Liberal Backslider, would make your response to Zach82 most appropriate.

I have voiced here, in fear believe it or not, perhaps because of my acceptance of the pragmatic violence of God, that in Christ we have the apology of God, if we need it. "Are we even now?".

And weaving back, semi-coherently as is my aging wont, none in the narrative as it developed got to Wiesel. Evidence of his highly evolved, modern view.

And coming back atcha Karl: Liberal Backslider: In that narrative, by the time we get to murdering God in our psychotic fear, it isn't because of any of the points Wiesel makes.

But I have finally all but submitted to postmodernism and am comfortably uncomfortable there.

We cannot know.

I DO know that creation is impossible without meaningless, inappropriate, disproportionate, random, unjust suffering for ALL concerned.

I do know that all will be well and that as those Jews would have said "God is great and God is GOOD". Better than that, which is just SOOOOO Augustineanly heretical, "God is good.". He has NO greatness beyond His goodness and His goodness is only meaningful to those who experience it.

Us psycho monkeys. Which include Sodom and Gomorrah, the Moabites, Amelekites, Jews of 70 AD Jerusalem and 1943 AD Treblinka.

I'd love to believe what you say no prophet, now more than ever as Brian McLaren has made it more, most but not fully credible to me, as credible as it's ever going to get, that God has ALWAYS been like Jesus in all of His dealings with mankind. That our pre- and post- incarnational narratives of a violent God are just that. Ours.

In Job, in Satan, throughout. To be understood postmodernly.

But the weakness of postmodernism is that it INSISTS that God is truly Marcion, as IngoB points out. It insists that we know the Father through the Son. AS the Son. As if He were. Despite the fact that in the post-resurrection apostolic narrative the Holy Spirit assassinates Christian and Jew alike. So only God the Holy Spirit kills ? And what about the Killer God of the Old Covenant, who kills in terribly exquisite detail, YHWH, Adonai, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I Am That I Am, I Am. Jesus.

The problem with that insistence is that God the Killer is immensely ... credible. And that if the narrative is NOT purely mythological, He is Killer from beginning to end in the name of our salvation. Pragmatic.

And it gets worse. There is no other way. Just as ther obviously isn't to suffering.

Which, of course, which is now why I'm a pacifist. Although I don't know whether God does violence or not, Jesus didn't. Which is affecting me VERY personally and beyond, at the sharp end, right now.

Might start a separate thread on that.

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Originally posted by Martin PC etc....
gel, EE and IngoB are just projecting: denying their own negative attributes, inadequacies, failure to understand God and themselves by ascribing them to others. They speak AT themselves, at their own doubts, confusion, cognitive dissonance by dissonance reduction, not us.

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Originally posted by Martin PC....
...your much self declared intellect...

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Like I said: I am only elaborating on what the Bible says. You seem to have a problem with the Bible. Only you know the reason for that.

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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Happy to alleviate you of your presumption and ignorance, to be used to illuminate you EE. Your colloquial ignorance too perhaps. Concerning your failure of your much self declared intellect and its logical capabilities anadromously.

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3. Attack the issue, not the person

Name-calling and personal insults are only allowed in Hell. Attacks outside of Hell are grounds for suspension or banning.

4. If you must get personal, take it to Hell

If you get into a personality conflict with other shipmates, you have two simple choices: end the argument or take it to Hell.

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I have no problem with the Bible whatsoever EE. Apart from reconciling the narrative of God the Killer with the pacifist God incarnate. Which cannot be done and therefore doesn't have to be.

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