Is a god who orders the killing of his children a monster?

[_maklelan]

A "God" who adapts our principles--like how without being an "adaptable God?"

I've explained this several times and no one has bothered to respond. If I have a child and I change its bedtime, is my ethical framework changing? Am I adapting?

What about we 'adopt' "God's" principles? "Gravity et al" have to do with the workings of "God" and were introduced into the character of "God" by Jesus as he taught of "God's" unconditional gifts of all things essential to life. I think it demeans "God", and agrandizes man, to use the Daddy-Daughter humanoid relationship... However, a person choses as they will.

Jesus used those exact metaphors.

I think it's a little more involved than that, and I think his commandments keep his children ahead of the curve, which I believe is ultimately intended to influence society, either bringing them closer or bringing their iniquity to overflowing, as it were. I don't agree that this perspective contradicts the nature of God as outlined in the scriptures and the words of the prophets.

"I don't agree..." Are you willing to consider?

If someone were to introduce an argument free from false inference and assumption I sure would.

It appears that You believe in a capricious, manipulative, end-justifies-means "God"??

No, not at all, but you are examining my argument from an etic standpoint and using eisegesis to fill in what you perceive to be holes with ideas that make you feel good about rejecting my premise. I don't feel that way at all.

Interesting that we are both familiar with scripture and stuff, yet come to different conclusions...

And you don't think educated people have disagreed before?

That some think "God" uses "iniquity" to teach morality seems totally inconsistant with the teachings of Christ. I know some teach that to be the case. However, there i have to say they are teaching abominations that defile the nature of "God" and leads humanity into darkness, IMSCO.

And I believe that people who would call all death "iniquity" or "abominations" are being a little reductionist.

There seems to be considerable disagreement with your "God" concept, as i understand your proclamation?? Maybe you could be more specific? A "God" of order, and unconditional grantor of consequences to all laws physical or spiritual; or a "God" of magic and favouritism?

A God of order who gave people their agency. Simple enough.

I suggest our vision/understanding of "God" directly affects the spirit/'vibes' we emanate, and the activities that engage us:

Positive vibes lead to constructive justice, and advancing higher causes. With hope in the future and faith in our divine natures to meet successfully the challenges of reality, humanity advances. OTOH, with negative attitudes feeding our fears and insecurities we shrink from the responsibility of our stewardship and wait for Armagedon to bring what we did not use our "God" given capacities to achieve.

What you believe you achieve. As i understand THE guy, "Seek, ask and find!" Warm regards, Roger

I have done just that and am perfectly happy with my conclusions, and with life.

[_Sam Harris]

I apologize for having promised to leave you all alone only to return again to the fray, but there are people on this board who make it worthwhile to keep at it. My question addresses an issue brought up by one Duwayne R. Anderson. You're probably aware that his work has been reviewed by FARMS. There's a thread about it on the MAD board. I began to read the review and was struck by the inconsistency that catalyzed this gentleman's apostasy. He says he was annoyed by the Lord's command to Moses to kill. After brooding over it he says this:

I finally decided that I simply had two choices. On the one
hand, I could accept the story as written, and conclude that
Moses was doing God’s will. In this case, I would be forced
logically to reduce God to a butchering monster. My second
choice was to retain my concept of a benevolent God, full of
goodness and virtue, and conclude that Moses was either a
false prophet or that the historical record had been seriously
corrupted.

I'm aware that many agnostic and atheist (and many believing) people feel the same way about this issue. The question is a common one: How can a God who purports to love us and be good command someone to kill? Some people, in their quest to find an answer, make this problem a lot more difficult than it has to be. I'd like to provide an explanation that helps to aleviate the concern and puts such an action in its proper moral context. My thesis statement is basically that there was absolutely nothing wrong with God commanding Moses to slaughter others.

One gift from God that he has said he will never take away from us is our agency. Good and bad people alike will be allowed to do as they please for a long time yet to come. In allowing this agency, God places his people in interesting circumstances, and sometimes his commandments take into account the social and political contexts in which his people live. I believe his commandments to kill from the Old Testament come in a surprisingly common context from which we are too far removed to fully appreciate. We retroject our 19th, 20th, or 21st Century ethics into a time period when those ethics are quite literally useless, and here's why:

Imagine you live in 2nd Millennium BC Mesopotamia. You live in a small village along the Euphrates that barely eeks out a living from its agriculture and the sporadic trade caravan passing through. A far off village has grown because of nearby natural resources and is growing beyond its capacity to feed itself. This growing city has begun to pillage neighbors to be able to feed its growing population and maintain its capacity for specialization (a carpenter or bronze craftsman doesn't have time to grow crops for his family, so he's got to trade with someone who does. When all your people are craftsmen, who's gonna grow the crops?). The pillaging is getting closer and closer to your village, and you've got to militarize or be destroyed. You have a problem, though. Your farmers can either grow food for your village or they can fight, but they can't do both. You have weaker neighbors who have plenty of food. What do you do? Your choices are to 1) try to negotiate, 2) let your town and all its people be destroyed, or 3) militarize and destroy your neighbors and take their food. Negotiating is absolutely out of the question. You have nothing to offer them except for your food, and why would they trade when they can just kill you? A market economy will not exist for thousands of years, and not even the Greeks could figure out that helping the other guy will ultimately help you. Negotiating is out of the question. Letting your town get destroyed is absolutely out of the question. You only have one option, and that option was played out thousands of times throughout the ancient Near East for centuries. In the ancient Near East you can be a jerk or you can be dead. Today it's easy to turn the other cheek. Generally our pride is the worst thing that gets hurt when we do, but back then if you turned the other cheek you died. Period. Moses was commanded to kill because leaving competing cultures thriving as you try to squeeze into the land in the Near East was not a possibility.

My conclusion is this: today killing another group of people is bad, but 3,500 years ago it meant your kids got to live, and your head didn't end up as decoration in some guy in Mari's garden. If you think God's a monster for having ordered the death of others then you're left with a loving God who prefers your death, because he's not gonna save your butt from absolutely everyone else in the continent just because you want to be the bigger person. A rudimentary understanding of the ancient Near Eastern socio-political context makes the apparent contradiction in the morality of the Old Testament God utterly disappear.

Your thoughts?

I think you just gave an accurate portrayal of Ancient Near Eastern life. To me, the key is placing God in the proper context. I don't think that God had everything to do with each and every miracle/tragedy ascribed to him. However, back then, what other reason could you give?

[_maklelan]

No. But all I have to go on is what I have in me now.

Do you feel that a better understanding of human history might change your perception of what their values were and what they could possibly have been?

This seems two edged. I understand you point about culture and God working within the moral maturity level of wherever a society is, but then this seems like God is awfully limited.

I see it as God working with people who are limited.

And let me premise everything by saying I believe there is a God. Just who He is and how he works is what I am wrangling with. I do not have many answers so I am just tossing out some thoughts.

So, if God expects me not to kill and to treat those around me a certain way, can I not expect for constancy He do the same?

I think this line of thinking is fallacious, and I think a metaphor may help illustrate. I will use the metaphor of a father and a child, not to frame our relationship with God necessarily in that light, but to illustrate in what kind of context rules for subordinates are created. Does a father tell an infant or toddler to not defecate in public, or to chew with its mouth shut? No, he does not. Why? Because the child has different capacities and whichever stage of development it might be in, it is only able to understand and fulfill so much. Does this mean those rules also do not hold true for the father? Of course not. Teenagers hate to hear "Do as I say and not as I do," but in certain circumstances it is perfectly appropriate and often necessary. Should a parent who instructs his pre-adolescent not to engage in sexual activity live by the same rule? Of course not. Different circumstances and different environments require different sets of rules that in no way reflect the personal ethical standards of the rule maker. Throughout all of this has the father changed morally? No.

The logic of most people here is to think that if God commands someone to kill then he must condone murder, but two things must be considered. One, the commandment not to kill utilizes a linguistically different verb than God's commandments to kill, and thos verbs had and still have very important distinctions that are not easily transmitted in English. Second, does a father ever tell a child to do something he himself would never do? Often. Bathe with a sibling, for instance. you can think of more on your own. What I hope this helps to illustrate is that you cannot derive God's personal ethical framework from observing his rules for his creations. To think that you can is fallacious.

I am sorry but your metaphors are weak and seem like cherry picking. I may not stop sex with me wife while I teach my teen not to have sex but I certainly am not condoning I have sex with whomever. I teach them not to smoke or drink, and I do neither. I teach them they will die if they run in front of a moving vehicle and so will I. I am sure if I gave it time I can find similar example. For me it till stands that God should act towards his creation at least as moral as he wants us to be. In many cases in scripture it does not seem he does this. OF course this is why the God of strict Calvinism is fits that God of the Old Testament. He is capricious and does whatever he really wants and since he is God, Holy and Sovereign we little pots of clay are blasphemous to question it.

My metaphor wasn't meant to insist that God's commandments are never consistent with his ideals. If I am cherry-picking then you are as well by picking out things you teach that you abide by as well. I never said that was the case with everything, but the "do as I say and not as I do" principle can and often is perfectly proper.

I must here insert that I have of late wondered if the God of strict Calvinism really does make sense. We are not really God's children at all. But we are His creation. And because He is Holy, the First Cause, etc. as well as Sovereign, whatever He does is right. We as His little pitiful creations are really just pieces of clay that he can dash to bits on a whim. To God, we are no more then a small any that we may crush without a thought as it scurries across our table. Thus, any mercy he gives us we ought to be just so happy about it. If he uses Pharaoh to prove a point and hardens pharaoh's heart, well tough cookies for Pharaoh.

So like the saw cannot complaint against that mover of the saw so we cannot complain against God. Now, this God still seems pretty capricious to me, but hey, if he is really out there and is really this awesome entity outside time and space and he feels like letting 250,000 of His sentient, feeling emotional creations be wiped out by a BIG WAVE, who am I to complain. I am just happy if he has mercy on littlie ole me.

I happen to feel very differently, but I know this was a common sentiment for centuries.

You feel very differently but many others still believe this. Why are you right and they wrong?

I didn't say they were wrong, I said I felt differently. I'm still allowed to do so, and I intentionally avoid telling people they're wrong for a reason: they may not be. At this point, however, I feel my conclusions are better for me.

One would think that God could intervene in this not only to preserve such a people but to set and example to the others.

He could if his intentions and perspectives were the same as ours, but in that his perspective would be much larger and include the afterlife, would it be reasonable to think that he has reasons that perhaps we don't comprehend?

Is stating that we cannot comprehend a way out of things that really are not rational and may prove that the God of the Old Testament and even of Christianity may not be real?

I didn't say we couldn't comprehend a way out, I said his way out may have escaped us.

Well first on Hitler's part, second on God's. God intervened to move the Smith Family, Why not intervene and take Adolf out?

That's a good question, but it also works for one person who was saved by a blessing and another who wasn't. We don't know God's reasons, but I think it presumptuous to weigh them and find them lacking based solely on our own ethical standards and world view.

Why? Is this not sticking our head in the sand?

I prefer to call it faith. I've been convinced by certain experiences that God loves me, so I don't really feel it necessary to constantly worry about whether he's making the right decision or not.

Well God has intervened to heavily influence others agency. He killed many in a flood and took away their agency. He took away the children's agency as well. Why not Adolf's?

He ended their lives, which he never promised not to do. agency becomes moot at that point.

By killing them he took away their agency.

[/quote]

So if God ever lets anyone die he's breaking his promise? I've certainly never come across this theory in all the theology that has existed since writing was invented. Do you really think that this is so, or is it just a way you've thought up to try to counter my argument? God told us we'd die. He told us that while we're alive he won't take away our agency. "This life is the time to prepare"; "The night comes soon in which no man can work." You're throwing up a red herring.

[_harmony]

So if God ever lets anyone die he's breaking his promise? I've certainly never come across this theory in all the theology that has existed since writing was invented. Do you really think that this is so, or is it just a way you've thought up to try to counter my argument? God told us we'd die. He told us that while we're alive he won't take away our agency. "This life is the time to prepare"; "The night comes soon in which no man can work." You're throwing up a red herring.

Jason, I'm not sure what Mak's getting at here, since he's now conflating dying with killing. From what I can see, you never said God was never supposed to let someone die. There's a difference between letting someone die and killing them. I'm surprised Mak isn't able to differentiate between the two concepts. One is actively making something happen, the other is letting it happen on its own. Unless a person believes that God kills everyone who dies, I don't see the connection.

[_asbestosman]

Jason, I'm not sure what Mak's getting at here, since he's now conflating dying with killing. From what I can see, you never said God was never supposed to let someone die. There's a difference between letting someone die and killing them. I'm surprised Mak isn't able to differentiate between the two concepts. One is actively making something happen, the other is letting it happen on its own. Unless a person believes that God kills everyone who dies, I don't see the connection.

One is homocide and the other is manslaughter (possibly worse if you have the power to prevent it as God does). Both will get you in trouble.

[_Jason Bourne]

So if God ever lets anyone die he's breaking his promise? I've certainly never come across this theory in all the theology that has existed since writing was invented. Do you really think that this is so, or is it just a way you've thought up to try to counter my argument? God told us we'd die. He told us that while we're alive he won't take away our agency. "This life is the time to prepare"; "The night comes soon in which no man can work." You're throwing up a red herring.

In the case of the Flood God killed them. I am not srguing that he said we would never die. Of course he did. But in the case of the flood he killed them. Many of them died an untimely death as a result. Remember he told Noah that he was repenting of creating man, and he wanted to destroy them. Thus he cit of many that perhaps may have repented. Thus he took their agency from them.

[Guest]

Jason, I'm not sure what Mak's getting at here, since he's now conflating dying with killing. From what I can see, you never said God was never supposed to let someone die. There's a difference between letting someone die and killing them. I'm surprised Mak isn't able to differentiate between the two concepts.

Or perhaps you're again just making assumptions.

One is actively making something happen, the other is letting it happen on its own. Unless a person believes that God kills everyone who dies, I don't see the connection.

I'll point out how convoluted this gets when you try to distinguish between the two. Give me two examples of an event that you call God letting someone die, and two examples of an event that you call God killing someone.

Sorry, I had to edit that, I accidentally wrote the same thing twice.

[_maklelan]

In the case of the Flood God killed them. I am not srguing that he said we would never die. Of course he did. But in the case of the flood he killed them. Many of them died an untimely death as a result. Remember he told Noah that he was repenting of creating man, and he wanted to destroy them. Thus he cit of many that perhaps may have repented. Thus he took their agency from them.

But Noah preached for 200 years that they needed to repent and join him or they were going to die. Anyone could have repented. They had 200 years to choose and they rejected the option.

There is a story about a man who is sitting on the roof of his house during a flood. A boat comes by to take him away, but he says he's confident that God will save him. A helicopter comes by to save him but he says he's confident that God will save him. He dies in the flood and goes up to meet God. He asks why God didn't save him and God said, "Hey, I sent a boat and a helicopter!"

Was that man murdered by God? God gave him opportunities to be saved, but he rejected them. God didn't even let him die--he tried to save him. With Noah God did the same thing. He decided on an event that would come in the future and he sent out his man to save as many as would come. They all chose not to, and they died in the flood. It is the same thing. God didn't murder them, he didn't even let them die; he gave them a way out and they didn't take it.

[_harmony]

Jason, I'm not sure what Mak's getting at here, since he's now conflating dying with killing. From what I can see, you never said God was never supposed to let someone die. There's a difference between letting someone die and killing them. I'm surprised Mak isn't able to differentiate between the two concepts.

Or perhaps you're again just making assumptions.

One is actively making something happen, the other is letting it happen on its own. Unless a person believes that God kills everyone who dies, I don't see the connection.

I'll point out how convoluted this gets when you try to distinguish between the two. Give me two examples of an event that you call God letting someone die, and two examples of an event that you call God killing someone.

Sorry, I had to edit that, I accidentally wrote the same thing twice.

I thought you weren't talking to me.

God letting someone die: Ruth 1:3

God killing someone(s): Gen 7:21-23 and Exodus 14-28

[_maklelan]

God letting someone die: Ruth 1:3

You don't even know the nature of that death. For all you know he could have been smitten by a thunderbolt from heaven. I meant a death that you can actually evaluate. Please try again.

God killing someone(s): Gen 7:21-23 and Exodus 14-28

Gen. 7:21-23 - As has already been pointed out, God gave the people 200 years to accept his invitation to not die. He said a flood was coming and he offered salvation to all who wanted it, so those who rejected him he merely let die.

Exodus 14-28 - Would you mind be a little more specific please?