The bit in 1 Samuel where God commands Saul to kill all the Amalekites is the bit of the Bible that I just can't do anything with. That's not God.
As far as the Flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah go, I think one has to buy the premise of the story that a) if there were anyone there who didn't deserve to die God would have either spared the city or put them on the Ark; b) they weren't ordinarily selfish but absolutely deserved death.
Now in the real world, not mythological, there would be at the very least children who wouldn't deserve it.
Approach one: this is mythology. They don't have children; they're fictional characters.
Approach two: midrash it. Maybe God had made them all barren as a warning a generation back. Maybe they killed all their children or sold them into slavery which is what prompted God to think they needed to be destroyed.
None of that is the plain meaning of the text. But one aspect of the plain meaning of the text is that it leaves a lot unsaid.
The power of the text is not that it provides answers. It's that it provokes questions. It's morally wrong to sacrifice your son to your God. But existentialism and all modern thought influenced by it, which is most of it, springs from asking the question, what follows if one supposes that on just one occasion it was the right thing to do.
But as a modern liberal, I don't believe anyone deserves to die and the very least I expect of a god worth believing in is that he has better moral values than I have. I accept the whole buying the 'premise of the story' but in the story God is the villain.
And if it's mythology we can accept that none of it is true and the characters are inventions but I'm not sure that's what the authors want us to believe.
There appears to be two views:
One view holds that God is morally accountable for His actions.
The other holds, or appears to, that the very nature of the human/God relationships means humans cannot hold God morally accountable.
Each view is incomprehensible to the other.
As per Dafyd, it's mythic/symbolic. That raises the issue of how much is symbolic, but it doesn't mean that all of it is. Nothing wrong with cherry-picking.
If "we" don't "enjoy" it, then "we" aren't doing it out of some perverted vindictiveness.
Crimes carried out in the name of duty or "just following orders" are still crimes.
@KarlLB's objection (and I'm open to correction on this) doesn't appear to be that God's behaviour is a crime, but that it reveals him to be a vengeful pervert. However, meting out judgement does not in and of itself constitute a crime, nor does it say anything immediately to whether the judge in question takes perverse pleasure in meting it out. Whether the judgement is fair, proportionate, etc. is a valid question, but not the same one.
If "we" don't "enjoy" it, then "we" aren't doing it out of some perverted vindictiveness.
Crimes carried out in the name of duty or "just following orders" are still crimes.
@KarlLB's objection (and I'm open to correction on this) doesn't appear to be that God's behaviour is a crime, but that it reveals him to be a vengeful pervert. However, meting out judgement does not in and of itself constitute a crime, nor does it say anything immediately to whether the judge in question takes perverse pleasure in meting it out. Whether the judgement is fair, proportionate, etc. is a valid question, but not the same one.
But given the nature of this "judgement" and the indiscriminate nature of its administration, an equally important one.
There appears to be two views:
One view holds that God is morally accountable for His actions.
The other holds, or appears to, that the very nature of the human/God relationships means humans cannot hold God morally accountable.
Each view is incomprehensible to the other.
I don't know about incomprehensible, but certainly I would say that in the absolute, humans can't hold God morally accountable. To me that seems obvious. How can the creature hold the creator accountable? (That's not the same thing as saying that God has no morality, though, or that it's corrupt or perverse).
But given the nature of this "judgement" and the indiscriminate nature of its administration, an equally important one.
I don't think it's quite as indiscriminate as you might think.
I think we're probably stretching the narratives in question to their limits, but to me the point of characters like Noah, Lot, Rahab, Ruth, &co is to say that God's action isn't indiscriminate. In much the same way that Achan didn't get off the hook either at Jericho. The point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story is to demonstrate to Abraham that God's judgement isn't indiscriminate, as Abraham feared. It might look like it to us, but God's standard of justice certainly seems to have satisfied Abraham at the time and in context.
There appears to be two views:
One view holds that God is morally accountable for His actions.
The other holds, or appears to, that the very nature of the human/God relationships means humans cannot hold God morally accountable.
Each view is incomprehensible to the other.
I don't know about incomprehensible, but certainly I would say that in the absolute, humans can't hold God morally accountable. To me that seems obvious. How can the creature hold the creator accountable? (That's not the same thing as saying that God has no morality, though, or that it's corrupt or perverse).
Because I don't regard God as my creator? Also Mary Shelley had something to say on this in Frankenstein.
I've not read it either, but the story is generally well-known. Frankenstein created the 'monster' but on seeing how loathsome it was, he rejected it. The monster, seeking only its creator's love, then turned against Frankenstein and destroyed, or attempted to destroy all that Frankenstein loved. Moral of the story, if you're not prepared to love what you create then don't create it.
But given the nature of this "judgement" and the indiscriminate nature of its administration, an equally important one.
I don't think it's quite as indiscriminate as you might think.
I think we're probably stretching the narratives in question to their limits, but to me the point of characters like Noah, Lot, Rahab, Ruth, &co is to say that God's action isn't indiscriminate. In much the same way that Achan didn't get off the hook either at Jericho. The point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story is to demonstrate to Abraham that God's judgement isn't indiscriminate, as Abraham feared. It might look like it to us, but God's standard of justice certainly seems to have satisfied Abraham at the time and in context.
If so, God's standard of justice stinks. I don't want a God who thinks killing children because their parents' alleged shortcomings is justice. He can fuck right off.
Well bugger me E! And Dafyd. All those years I was the only one here justifying God the Pragmatist (i.e. Killer) and you appear to be coming out only for me to have become a raving liberal.
Tell me it isn't so and you're both just doing literary analysis of the text and the minds behind it?
But as a modern liberal, I don't believe anyone deserves to die and the very least I expect of a god worth believing in is that he has better moral values than I have. I accept the whole buying the 'premise of the story' but in the story God is the villain.
Either Frankenstein's Monster is justified in turning against Frankenstein, or, Frankenstein and his intended do not deserve death. But not both.
As a good Guardian reader I too am against the death penalty. But that's partly because I believe it doesn't deter and in the real world there's always a chance of rehabilitation. On the other hand, I'm not an absolute pacifist: I don't think the German staff who plotted to assassinate Hitler were villains. There are reasons for thinking assassinating people is a bad idea but I think in some cases they turn on unintended consequences or universalisability.
Cutting an essay on the ethics of punishment: there are cases in fiction where I think you can portray good people killing people as justified.
And if it's mythology we can accept that none of it is true and the characters are inventions but I'm not sure that's what the authors want us to believe.
What the author wants us to believe is neither here nor there. An author's control over the text is limited to the actual words they incorporate into the text. If the author doesn't want the text read in a certain way then they need to rule that out while they are writing.
If a work of art is any good you can get more out of it than the author was able to or wanted to put in. Most authors and artists I know find that inspiring.
Deuteronomy 20:16-18 has God commanding genocide. Are you drawing a distinction between commanding genocide and carrying it out? Because the same argument exonerates Hitler.
No, I'm drawing a distinction, firstly, with respect to who is commanding it.
Divine command theory is bollocks. It robs words and ideas of all meaning.
EDIT: it seems to me that we're looking for ways out of the logical contradiction formed by the ideas that God is good, God commanded a thing, and the thing is evil. My take is to break the middle idea (so God didn't command the thing). Eutychus seems to be trying to redefine the latter. Karl, I think, is pointing out that the latter two imply the former is false, quite rightly in my view.
This might not be the textbook definition of the Einstellung effect,* but it certainly follows the same path.
*
Einstellung refers to a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist.
No, but I notice that you haven't addressed several objections that I've raised, in particular the objection that against this interpretation of "nationalist manifesto for genocide" we have recurring stories from Genesis to Revelation reminding us of God's avowed intent to bless all nations (did you find who it was with whom God was first referred to as YHWH yet? If you're correct, why on earth would the writers do that?).
There is more than one way of trying to get to grips with the "genocidal" declarations of the OT, but if one takes the biblical statements that God ordered the destruction of entire populations at face value, then it does not seem unreasonable to me to also take at face value the rationale that this is an enactment of his judgement - not a purely arbitrary gesture because they are "not us", which is what I think is usually understood by genocide. And note that at every turn, from Noah onwards, there are people who escape that judgement.
Fuck me. Are you really justifying a handful of people escaping/being let off as not being genocide? Then the Nazis didn't commit genocide either.
It is entirely reasonable to say that God commuting genocide because he thinks it is justified still makes him a bastard. Hitler thought he was justified. Stalin though he was justified, Mao though he was justified, Pol Pot thought he was justified...
The bit in 1 Samuel where God commands Saul to kill all the Amalekites is the bit of the Bible that I just can't do anything with. That's not God.
As far as the Flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah go, I think one has to buy the premise of the story that a) if there were anyone there who didn't deserve to die God would have either spared the city or put them on the Ark; b) they weren't ordinarily selfish but absolutely deserved death.
Now in the real world, not mythological, there would be at the very least children who wouldn't deserve it.
Approach one: this is mythology. They don't have children; they're fictional characters.
Still doesn't work as it still engendered bad behaviour in Christians.
Approach two: midrash it. Maybe God had made them all barren as a warning a generation back. Maybe they killed all their children or sold them into slavery which is what prompted God to think they needed to be destroyed.
None of that is the plain meaning of the text. But one aspect of the plain meaning of the text is that it leaves a lot unsaid.
The power of the text is not that it provides answers. It's that it provokes questions. It's morally wrong to sacrifice your son to your God. But existentialism and all modern thought influenced by it, which is most of it, springs from asking the question, what follows if one supposes that on just one occasion it was the right thing to do.
The text is too bloody open to justify the "It's just asking questions" approach. Real people were tortured, died and are still impoverished because people found the answer that justified such behaviour in those questions.
But as a modern liberal, I don't believe anyone deserves to die and the very least I expect of a god worth believing in is that he has better moral values than I have. I accept the whole buying the 'premise of the story' but in the story God is the villain.
Either Frankenstein's Monster is justified in turning against Frankenstein, or, Frankenstein and his intended do not deserve death. But not both.
Of course it is both. The monster is justified in turning against Frankenstein, but the family didn't deserve death. It can be argued that Frankenstein himself did not deserve death either, but he does deserve blame for the problem.
As a good Guardian reader I too am against the death penalty. But that's partly because I believe it doesn't deter and in the real world there's always a chance of rehabilitation. On the other hand, I'm not an absolute pacifist: I don't think the German staff who plotted to assassinate Hitler were villains. There are reasons for thinking assassinating people is a bad idea but I think in some cases they turn on unintended consequences or universalisability.
Interesting, but Hitler's would-be assassins didn't create him, foresee his actions and have the power to prevent them.
I'm sorry, I see I missed a couple of posts upthread, and I'm falling behind in my ability to respond to them all.
@Martin54 I'm not trying to justify what I read, I'm trying to make sense of it.
To me the options are: God doesn't exist; God exists and is a bastard; God exists and is good. I personally can't make any more intellectual headway with the first two options than with the third, and, speaking for myself only here, if the biblical narratives present me with problems in that respect, then I'm inclined to think the problem is at my end (this thread is certainly making me think I can do more work on the problem).
My personal preference would be for the massacre narratives not to be there, but they don't provoke the strong reaction in me they obviously do in @KarlLB, I really don't feel qualified to call God to account for them according to my standards, and I find admitting the possibility that there's something going on there that's beyond me more reasonable than rejecting the rest of what I understand about God because this particular aspect doesn't conform to my expectations.
@lilbuddha details of the narratives aside, if God is essentially good, it automatically follows that unlike Hitler and co., he is justified in what he does.
What has the creator loving or loathing their creature got to do with whether or not the creature is entitled to hold its creator morally accountable?
I don't think this line of argument works. It may be internally consistent, but it is incompatible with assigning moral attributes to God even in an analogical sense.
Depends on what you mean by relatively modern. Certainly none of the stories in the Canterbury Tales are meant to be taken as factual accounts.
The actual stories are tales told by the pilgrims, but I think we are meant to believe that these are a bunch of pilgrims going to Canterbury.
Why do you think that? Do you think the wrapper story in the Decameron is also meant to be believed? Why? Were people at the time so dense that they couldn't realize it's just a story? Seems a bit of Chronological Snobbery to me.
What has the creator loving or loathing their creature got to do with whether or not the creature is entitled to hold its creator morally accountable?
I don't think this line of argument works. It may be internally consistent, but it is incompatible with assigning moral attributes to God even in an analogical sense.
If we get our moral sense from God, it follows that his moral sense would mirror ours.
@lilbuddha details of the narratives aside, if God is essentially good, it automatically follows that unlike Hitler and co., he is justified in what he does.
But that is bullshit. One doesn't find a conclusion and then fit the facts to follow it. But even starting with the premise that God is good, there is the option that much of the bible is bullshit. Or at least poorly represented by its authors. Which freakin makes the most sense.
Depends on what you mean by relatively modern. Certainly none of the stories in the Canterbury Tales are meant to be taken as factual accounts.
The actual stories are tales told by the pilgrims, but I think we are meant to believe that these are a bunch of pilgrims going to Canterbury.
Why do you think that? Do you think the wrapper story in the Decameron is also meant to be believed? Why? Were people at the time so dense that they couldn't realize it's just a story? Seems a bit of Chronological Snobbery to me.
My starting position on any story is that I'm supposed to believe it. Even if it's obviously fiction my assumption is that the author wants me to engage with the work as though it is true. That makes it difficult for me to engage with some kinds of fiction, particularly fiction written within and extolling a different morality to my own.
Now, I haven't read Chaucer since school, but I think he was using each tale to illustrate something about the character of each pilgrim telling it. For me, that only works if I believe the pilgrims are actual people.
I'm about the start Martin Amis's Money and although it's a satire my starting position is that Amis wants me to engage with John Self as though he were a real person.
E. Mate. God said stone your delinquent children. Or maybe He'll just set bears on them if you bring them to His attention. That homosexuality is a capital abomination. He stopped slaughtering Israel when Phinehas ran a honeymooning couple through. Admittedly they used defaecation in their rituals. They were all cannibal, baby sacrificing shit bags after all. The OT is full of shit. Sooooooo. God is that pragmatic? I've got to roll back 20 years? If He says kill babies, take sex slaves He must have a good reason? He's just this guy? Reminds me of a superb Private Eye cartoon from 50 years ago as B52's start saturation bombing New York, a guy in Central Park says to another, "I'm sure the President knows what he's doing.".
You don't see Him evolving? That Samuel acted in good faith in ordering Saul to kill every living thing? Because that's what God what would want. Had a friend who did that in Indonesia.
Has this always been there mate? Why didn't you back me up?!
I think I started this line on the assumption, and I think I said it was an assumption, that things in the OT happened pretty much as described in terms of who ordered what.
The alternative I see is not so much God evolving as God gradually educating his people and the arc of OT-NT reflecting that. I'm not sure that convinces me, though, and I can already hear @KarlLB complaining that he should have educated them a damn sight faster, and probably complaining about Revelation too.
Either way, I'm more comfortable with assuming my knowledge is imperfect than with throwing God out because the narrative offends my 21st century sensibilities.
I can't imagine Jesus condoning genocide as the concept is understood today. I don't see him explicitly refuting the bits of the OT being qualified here as genocide. From this I conclude that my understanding is faulty somewhere along the line.
People reject God because he doesn't conform to their expectations in lots of respects, not just the slaughter recounted in the OT. Part of the argument at the beginning of this thread was effectively "well if God was God he'd heal everybody, innit?".
My starting position on any story is that I'm supposed to believe it. Even if it's obviously fiction my assumption is that the author wants me to engage with the work as though it is true. That makes it difficult for me to engage with some kinds of fiction, particularly fiction written within and extolling a different morality to my own.
Reality does not work like a novel. It has less plot. Fictional characters are more representative than real people. Our attitude to fictional characters would be sociopathic if they were real.
Now, I haven't read Chaucer since school, but I think he was using each tale to illustrate something about the character of each pilgrim telling it. For me, that only works if I believe the pilgrims are actual people.
People don't usually tell stories to illustrate something about their character. If you that is your general theory of how real people tell stories then you're reading stories not as being about made-up real people but as being about the emotions and other self-expression of the storyteller, which is another matter. If that's not your general theory of storytelling then reading the stories that way means that you're aware of Chaucer assigning tales to characters. The character of each pilgrim is based on their role or profession rather than on their individual idiosyncracies.
I'm about the start Martin Amis's Money and although it's a satire my starting position is that Amis wants me to engage with John Self as though he were a real person.
Amis just wants you to admire the construction of his sentences.
I can't help you with shock and revolt caused by your parsing.
Well you could try not excusing genocide.
If God did it, it is good: QED.
I mean thinking that the authors put it in to justify their won behaviour, like humans do, is completely ridiculous. Better to believe that our morals derived from God aren't his morals. Which is totally rational.
My starting position on any story is that I'm supposed to believe it. Even if it's obviously fiction my assumption is that the author wants me to engage with the work as though it is true. That makes it difficult for me to engage with some kinds of fiction, particularly fiction written within and extolling a different morality to my own.
Reality does not work like a novel. It has less plot. Fictional characters are more representative than real people. Our attitude to fictional characters would be sociopathic if they were real.
Now, I haven't read Chaucer since school, but I think he was using each tale to illustrate something about the character of each pilgrim telling it. For me, that only works if I believe the pilgrims are actual people.
People don't usually tell stories to illustrate something about their character. If you that is your general theory of how real people tell stories then you're reading stories not as being about made-up real people but as being about the emotions and other self-expression of the storyteller, which is another matter. If that's not your general theory of storytelling then reading the stories that way means that you're aware of Chaucer assigning tales to characters. The character of each pilgrim is based on their role or profession rather than on their individual idiosyncracies.
I'm about the start Martin Amis's Money and although it's a satire my starting position is that Amis wants me to engage with John Self as though he were a real person.
Amis just wants you to admire the construction of his sentences.
Some misapprehensions there.
Of course reality is different from fiction. I never said it wasn't. But when I read fiction I engage emotionally with the characters and want things to work out well for them. Unless they're the bad guys in which case I don't. Even though I know the author is pulling their strings, the story only works for me if I engage with the characters. Actually, I probably emotionally engage more with fictional characters than I do with real people.
I agree that people don't usually tell stories to illustrate their character, but the stories Chaucer gives to each character do exactly that. Anyway, Chaucer only cropped up because mousethief mentioned him and as I've only read two of the tales and that was forty years ago I can't comment further. I would say that fictional narratives we are meant to read as though they are real didn't really begin until Robinson Crusoe and is mainly a feature of fiction post 1800.
I think I started this line on the assumption, and I think I said it was an assumption, that things in the OT happened pretty much as described in terms of who ordered what.
The alternative I see is not so much God evolving as God gradually educating his people and the arc of OT-NT reflecting that.
Have you either raised a child or observed this? One teaches simple lessons, then complex, but remains consistent in intent.
Your version would be telling a toddler to bash their playmates, but then telling a teen to mediate, rather than do violence.
I'm not sure that convinces me, though, and I can already hear @KarlLB complaining that he should have educated them a damn sight faster, and probably complaining about Revelation too.
Either way, I'm more comfortable with assuming my knowledge is imperfect than with throwing God out because the narrative offends my 21st century sensibilities.
First, I'm not convinced it does offend your sensibilities. Though I cannot know your mind, your posting doesn't indicate it. Not with how you justify the atrocities.
Second, if God is progressively educating, the 21 sensibilities are at his guidance, therefore outrage at his past behaviour is what he wants.
I can't imagine Jesus condoning genocide as the concept is understood today. I don't see him explicitly refuting the bits of the OT being qualified here as genocide. From this I conclude that my understanding is faulty somewhere along the line.
People reject God because he doesn't conform to their expectations in lots of respects, not just the slaughter recounted in the OT.
Irrelevant. People reject, and accept, God for all sorts of reasons, doesn't make the slaughter OK.
Part of the argument at the beginning of this thread was effectively "well if God was God he'd heal everybody, innit?".
If God has the power to heal, but doesn't do it for everyone, he is a bastard. A separate thing than if he is god/exists. And it is not a random or pre-chosen assumption, it is a rational position based on a common Christian presentation of God.
If God has the power to heal, but doesn't do it for everyone, he is a bastard. A separate thing than if he is god/exists. And it is not a random or pre-chosen assumption, it is a rational position based on a common Christian presentation of God.
I think we can agree that belief is not just a matter of rationality.
I think I started this line on the assumption, and I think I said it was an assumption, that things in the OT happened pretty much as described in terms of who ordered what.
The alternative I see is not so much God evolving as God gradually educating his people and the arc of OT-NT reflecting that. I'm not sure that convinces me, though, and I can already hear @KarlLB complaining that he should have educated them a damn sight faster, and probably complaining about Revelation too.
Either way, I'm more comfortable with assuming my knowledge is imperfect than with throwing God out because the narrative offends my 21st century sensibilities.
You, like Lamb Chopped and many others here, can do no wrong Eutychus. You know that. Meaning that no matter how divergent our epistemologies now appear to be - and I looked to you for leadership in that AND STILL DO - and because of it, we have to thrash this out.
I was the sole champion here of God the Pragmatist for at least a decade. Now you appear to be saying the same. That God did tell Samuel to order the extermination of the Amalekites being the epitome. So what moral authority does this God have? And what good did any of it do? Why did He bother? And when did He start? The Flood? Babel? Sodom and Gomorrah? The Exodus? Or 'just' in the historically normal events of... genocide.
What was His Culture strategy? And when is He coming back to finish what He started? Killing us to save us.
I don't know what you mean by "doing no wrong", but I most certainly can be wrong, and I'm not here in any capacity to provide "leadership". And with that in mind, I don't feel under any obligation to "thrash this out" to anyone's satisfaction in particular. What you see in print here is me ploughing my own furrow at my own pace.
==
With that in mind, here's where I've got to.
Moral authority: to my mind, if God is God, he cannot help but have moral authority. That seems to me pretty much to be a defining characteristic of a God.
It also seems to me that goodness is a pretty defining characteristic of God, especially inasmuch as I understand evil to be essentially negative (hat-tip to CS Lewis, again): evil needs raw material to rob, kill, destroy, distort. I can't conceive of evil as a first principle.
In short, I think there are good reasons to believe God is, and that he is good. (Certainly, as far as I'm concerned, the reasoning is no worse than the reasoning that he is bad or non-existent, but I'm not aspiring to convince anybody else here in that respect).
So, assuming (big assumption for the sake of this thread) that the Bible is God's written revelation, what do we do with the "awkward bits"?
1. It seems to me legitimate to posit that there are aspects of God's purposes and morality that we can't understand or that may even look repugnant from our perspective. Essentially, I find this is where I stand (NB I'm not sure that makes God a pragmatist). I accept that for someone like @KarlLB this is a real and fundamental difficulty, but it honestly isn't such a big one for me, and I note @Gamma Gamaliel says much the same on the other thread, so I'm not alone.
Note - and this is important - that God's action can appear repugnant well before we get to the likes of "genocide"*: for @lilbuddha, God not healing everybody if he has the power to do so is enough to prove that he's a bastard. Indeed, as noted before, the Bible has plenty of instances of people who reject God because he did not conform to their particular expectations, right into the NT. "Blessed is he for whom I do not become a stumbling-block".
2. It may be that what we read in the OT is more a reflection of the prevailing beliefs in the culture into which God revealed himself than of what God himself is like. Maybe we need "more light to break forth from God's word" in this respect. Certainly the way I read the OT has changed over the years. And as has been said I think that's a feature not a bug, the Scriptures are there to provoke questions, not provide a systematic theology.
However, while I find this approach attractive in terms of how I read the Bible, it doesn't really solve this particular problem, because of these other repugnant (to some) things about God's behaviour - e.g. non-universal healing. And even if we're only concerned with the OT, invoking this as an explanation runs up against the objection I put in Karl's mouth: why did God take so bloody long to educate us, and at what human cost?
That's why I lean back in favour of (1) here, but I hope it's clear this doesn't mean I necessarily embrace a literalist reading of the bad bits of the OT. I simply don't know what to think, but that hasn't (yet) been sufficient grounds for me to reject Scripture or a belief in God.
###
*A note on genocide:
Loss of multiple lives by violent means is clearly horrific to us even without intentionality whatever the context, and that's a problem right back to the Flood, literal or symbolic.
That said, I'm really uncomfortable with copy-pasting contemporary terms and standards back onto a text like the Bible, because it seems to me very difficult at this distance to judge something so culturally and historically remote, even before we come to consider the literary difficulties in properly understanding the narrative about it.
For me, this concern isn't just to do with matters of faith. I'm uncomfortable about any trial that takes place long after the fact, and the more the social and cultural context has changed, the more uncomfortable about it I am.
I'm not saying the victims were not real victims or that the desire for justice is wrong, but I find such trials (or the commentaries on them) often reek of self-righteousness and finger-pointing by people I suspect would not have thought twice about acting in exactly the same way as the defendants had they been there at the time, whether it's passive collaboration in Nazi war crimes or sex with minors. Neither of those things are right, but I suspect neither looked so wrong decades ago as they are made to look now.
An important aspect of religious faith is the thought not that everything is apparently alright, but that everything is alright in the end despite appearances. All shall be well, says Julian. Therefore, any religious faith worth having is going to maintain that things are fundamentally good despite the appearance otherwise.
Hope is one of the three virtues.
An important aspect of religious faith is the thought not that everything is apparently alright, but that everything is alright in the end despite appearances. All shall be well, says Julian. Therefore, any religious faith worth having is going to maintain that things are fundamentally good despite the appearance otherwise.
That, by itself, is not the screwed up part. It is affirming that the shitty, deity/belief controlled bits are fundamentally good.
As in "We don't understand why God killed babies, but it must be good."
Not sure about reasoning for the non-existence of God, Eutychus above, as I was weaned on the reverse, that the reasoning for God's existence, was dismal. Reasoning that he is bad is rather niche, Stephen Law has put forward the Evil God challenge.
The evil God idea is different from being a bastard, as it implies that God is inherently evil, but ingeniously allows some good, in order to trick us, and other reasons. Stephen Law describes it online.
Comments
But as a modern liberal, I don't believe anyone deserves to die and the very least I expect of a god worth believing in is that he has better moral values than I have. I accept the whole buying the 'premise of the story' but in the story God is the villain.
And if it's mythology we can accept that none of it is true and the characters are inventions but I'm not sure that's what the authors want us to believe.
Big deal. The babies on the ends of the swords are still just as dead.
One view holds that God is morally accountable for His actions.
The other holds, or appears to, that the very nature of the human/God relationships means humans cannot hold God morally accountable.
Each view is incomprehensible to the other.
Crimes carried out in the name of duty or "just following orders" are still crimes.
@KarlLB's objection (and I'm open to correction on this) doesn't appear to be that God's behaviour is a crime, but that it reveals him to be a vengeful pervert. However, meting out judgement does not in and of itself constitute a crime, nor does it say anything immediately to whether the judge in question takes perverse pleasure in meting it out. Whether the judgement is fair, proportionate, etc. is a valid question, but not the same one.
But given the nature of this "judgement" and the indiscriminate nature of its administration, an equally important one.
I don't know about incomprehensible, but certainly I would say that in the absolute, humans can't hold God morally accountable. To me that seems obvious. How can the creature hold the creator accountable? (That's not the same thing as saying that God has no morality, though, or that it's corrupt or perverse).
I think we're probably stretching the narratives in question to their limits, but to me the point of characters like Noah, Lot, Rahab, Ruth, &co is to say that God's action isn't indiscriminate. In much the same way that Achan didn't get off the hook either at Jericho. The point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story is to demonstrate to Abraham that God's judgement isn't indiscriminate, as Abraham feared. It might look like it to us, but God's standard of justice certainly seems to have satisfied Abraham at the time and in context.
Because I don't regard God as my creator? Also Mary Shelley had something to say on this in Frankenstein.
I've not read it either, but the story is generally well-known. Frankenstein created the 'monster' but on seeing how loathsome it was, he rejected it. The monster, seeking only its creator's love, then turned against Frankenstein and destroyed, or attempted to destroy all that Frankenstein loved. Moral of the story, if you're not prepared to love what you create then don't create it.
If so, God's standard of justice stinks. I don't want a God who thinks killing children because their parents' alleged shortcomings is justice. He can fuck right off.
The monster is justified in turning against Frankenstein because Frankenstein denied it love.
Tell me it isn't so and you're both just doing literary analysis of the text and the minds behind it?
As a good Guardian reader I too am against the death penalty. But that's partly because I believe it doesn't deter and in the real world there's always a chance of rehabilitation. On the other hand, I'm not an absolute pacifist: I don't think the German staff who plotted to assassinate Hitler were villains. There are reasons for thinking assassinating people is a bad idea but I think in some cases they turn on unintended consequences or universalisability.
Cutting an essay on the ethics of punishment: there are cases in fiction where I think you can portray good people killing people as justified.
What the author wants us to believe is neither here nor there. An author's control over the text is limited to the actual words they incorporate into the text. If the author doesn't want the text read in a certain way then they need to rule that out while they are writing.
If a work of art is any good you can get more out of it than the author was able to or wanted to put in. Most authors and artists I know find that inspiring.
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Fuck me. Are you really justifying a handful of people escaping/being let off as not being genocide? Then the Nazis didn't commit genocide either.
It is entirely reasonable to say that God commuting genocide because he thinks it is justified still makes him a bastard. Hitler thought he was justified. Stalin though he was justified, Mao though he was justified, Pol Pot thought he was justified...
@Martin54 I'm not trying to justify what I read, I'm trying to make sense of it.
To me the options are: God doesn't exist; God exists and is a bastard; God exists and is good. I personally can't make any more intellectual headway with the first two options than with the third, and, speaking for myself only here, if the biblical narratives present me with problems in that respect, then I'm inclined to think the problem is at my end (this thread is certainly making me think I can do more work on the problem).
My personal preference would be for the massacre narratives not to be there, but they don't provoke the strong reaction in me they obviously do in @KarlLB, I really don't feel qualified to call God to account for them according to my standards, and I find admitting the possibility that there's something going on there that's beyond me more reasonable than rejecting the rest of what I understand about God because this particular aspect doesn't conform to my expectations.
@lilbuddha details of the narratives aside, if God is essentially good, it automatically follows that unlike Hitler and co., he is justified in what he does.
Why do you think that? Do you think the wrapper story in the Decameron is also meant to be believed? Why? Were people at the time so dense that they couldn't realize it's just a story? Seems a bit of Chronological Snobbery to me.
My starting position on any story is that I'm supposed to believe it. Even if it's obviously fiction my assumption is that the author wants me to engage with the work as though it is true. That makes it difficult for me to engage with some kinds of fiction, particularly fiction written within and extolling a different morality to my own.
Now, I haven't read Chaucer since school, but I think he was using each tale to illustrate something about the character of each pilgrim telling it. For me, that only works if I believe the pilgrims are actual people.
I'm about the start Martin Amis's Money and although it's a satire my starting position is that Amis wants me to engage with John Self as though he were a real person.
You don't see Him evolving? That Samuel acted in good faith in ordering Saul to kill every living thing? Because that's what God what would want. Had a friend who did that in Indonesia.
Has this always been there mate? Why didn't you back me up?!
The alternative I see is not so much God evolving as God gradually educating his people and the arc of OT-NT reflecting that. I'm not sure that convinces me, though, and I can already hear @KarlLB complaining that he should have educated them a damn sight faster, and probably complaining about Revelation too.
Either way, I'm more comfortable with assuming my knowledge is imperfect than with throwing God out because the narrative offends my 21st century sensibilities.
I'm trying to decide whether I'm more shocked or revolted that anyone would take that view.
Well you could try not excusing genocide.
People reject God because he doesn't conform to their expectations in lots of respects, not just the slaughter recounted in the OT. Part of the argument at the beginning of this thread was effectively "well if God was God he'd heal everybody, innit?".
I'm out.
People don't usually tell stories to illustrate something about their character. If you that is your general theory of how real people tell stories then you're reading stories not as being about made-up real people but as being about the emotions and other self-expression of the storyteller, which is another matter. If that's not your general theory of storytelling then reading the stories that way means that you're aware of Chaucer assigning tales to characters. The character of each pilgrim is based on their role or profession rather than on their individual idiosyncracies.
Amis just wants you to admire the construction of his sentences.
I mean thinking that the authors put it in to justify their won behaviour, like humans do, is completely ridiculous. Better to believe that our morals derived from God aren't his morals. Which is totally rational.
Some misapprehensions there.
Of course reality is different from fiction. I never said it wasn't. But when I read fiction I engage emotionally with the characters and want things to work out well for them. Unless they're the bad guys in which case I don't. Even though I know the author is pulling their strings, the story only works for me if I engage with the characters. Actually, I probably emotionally engage more with fictional characters than I do with real people.
I agree that people don't usually tell stories to illustrate their character, but the stories Chaucer gives to each character do exactly that. Anyway, Chaucer only cropped up because mousethief mentioned him and as I've only read two of the tales and that was forty years ago I can't comment further. I would say that fictional narratives we are meant to read as though they are real didn't really begin until Robinson Crusoe and is mainly a feature of fiction post 1800.
Your version would be telling a toddler to bash their playmates, but then telling a teen to mediate, rather than do violence.
First, I'm not convinced it does offend your sensibilities. Though I cannot know your mind, your posting doesn't indicate it. Not with how you justify the atrocities.
Second, if God is progressively educating, the 21 sensibilities are at his guidance, therefore outrage at his past behaviour is what he wants. Irrelevant. People reject, and accept, God for all sorts of reasons, doesn't make the slaughter OK. If God has the power to heal, but doesn't do it for everyone, he is a bastard. A separate thing than if he is god/exists. And it is not a random or pre-chosen assumption, it is a rational position based on a common Christian presentation of God.
You, like Lamb Chopped and many others here, can do no wrong Eutychus. You know that. Meaning that no matter how divergent our epistemologies now appear to be - and I looked to you for leadership in that AND STILL DO - and because of it, we have to thrash this out.
I was the sole champion here of God the Pragmatist for at least a decade. Now you appear to be saying the same. That God did tell Samuel to order the extermination of the Amalekites being the epitome. So what moral authority does this God have? And what good did any of it do? Why did He bother? And when did He start? The Flood? Babel? Sodom and Gomorrah? The Exodus? Or 'just' in the historically normal events of... genocide.
What was His Culture strategy? And when is He coming back to finish what He started? Killing us to save us.
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Disclaimer:
I don't know what you mean by "doing no wrong", but I most certainly can be wrong, and I'm not here in any capacity to provide "leadership". And with that in mind, I don't feel under any obligation to "thrash this out" to anyone's satisfaction in particular. What you see in print here is me ploughing my own furrow at my own pace.
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With that in mind, here's where I've got to.
Moral authority: to my mind, if God is God, he cannot help but have moral authority. That seems to me pretty much to be a defining characteristic of a God.
It also seems to me that goodness is a pretty defining characteristic of God, especially inasmuch as I understand evil to be essentially negative (hat-tip to CS Lewis, again): evil needs raw material to rob, kill, destroy, distort. I can't conceive of evil as a first principle.
In short, I think there are good reasons to believe God is, and that he is good. (Certainly, as far as I'm concerned, the reasoning is no worse than the reasoning that he is bad or non-existent, but I'm not aspiring to convince anybody else here in that respect).
So, assuming (big assumption for the sake of this thread) that the Bible is God's written revelation, what do we do with the "awkward bits"?
1. It seems to me legitimate to posit that there are aspects of God's purposes and morality that we can't understand or that may even look repugnant from our perspective. Essentially, I find this is where I stand (NB I'm not sure that makes God a pragmatist). I accept that for someone like @KarlLB this is a real and fundamental difficulty, but it honestly isn't such a big one for me, and I note @Gamma Gamaliel says much the same on the other thread, so I'm not alone.
Note - and this is important - that God's action can appear repugnant well before we get to the likes of "genocide"*: for @lilbuddha, God not healing everybody if he has the power to do so is enough to prove that he's a bastard. Indeed, as noted before, the Bible has plenty of instances of people who reject God because he did not conform to their particular expectations, right into the NT. "Blessed is he for whom I do not become a stumbling-block".
2. It may be that what we read in the OT is more a reflection of the prevailing beliefs in the culture into which God revealed himself than of what God himself is like. Maybe we need "more light to break forth from God's word" in this respect. Certainly the way I read the OT has changed over the years. And as has been said I think that's a feature not a bug, the Scriptures are there to provoke questions, not provide a systematic theology.
However, while I find this approach attractive in terms of how I read the Bible, it doesn't really solve this particular problem, because of these other repugnant (to some) things about God's behaviour - e.g. non-universal healing. And even if we're only concerned with the OT, invoking this as an explanation runs up against the objection I put in Karl's mouth: why did God take so bloody long to educate us, and at what human cost?
That's why I lean back in favour of (1) here, but I hope it's clear this doesn't mean I necessarily embrace a literalist reading of the bad bits of the OT. I simply don't know what to think, but that hasn't (yet) been sufficient grounds for me to reject Scripture or a belief in God.
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*A note on genocide:
Loss of multiple lives by violent means is clearly horrific to us even without intentionality whatever the context, and that's a problem right back to the Flood, literal or symbolic.
That said, I'm really uncomfortable with copy-pasting contemporary terms and standards back onto a text like the Bible, because it seems to me very difficult at this distance to judge something so culturally and historically remote, even before we come to consider the literary difficulties in properly understanding the narrative about it.
For me, this concern isn't just to do with matters of faith. I'm uncomfortable about any trial that takes place long after the fact, and the more the social and cultural context has changed, the more uncomfortable about it I am.
I'm not saying the victims were not real victims or that the desire for justice is wrong, but I find such trials (or the commentaries on them) often reek of self-righteousness and finger-pointing by people I suspect would not have thought twice about acting in exactly the same way as the defendants had they been there at the time, whether it's passive collaboration in Nazi war crimes or sex with minors. Neither of those things are right, but I suspect neither looked so wrong decades ago as they are made to look now.
Hope is one of the three virtues.
As in "We don't understand why God killed babies, but it must be good."
(ETA although in view of your comment, maybe I don't need to?)
Yes, I wasn't suggesting further arguments, not being a masochist.