29 May 2011

Yet Another Inadequate Attempt to Deal With the Deepest Questions of Existence

Religious 45 Comments

I don’t know what else to do, except to constantly acknowledge the absurdity of a punk guy in his 30s spouting off Sunday blog posts on such weighty matters… Now on to business:

I think it’s safe to say that beyond the sheer implausibility of some of the Biblical accounts (feeding 5,000 people with some loaves and fish, bringing people back from the dead, parting a sea in order to escape Pharaoh’s army, etc.), perhaps the biggest problem atheists/agnostics have with Christianity is the seeming unfairness of God, in particular His depiction in the Old Testament. So I want to try to get you folks to see the analogies and considerations I’ve developed to help make sense of it, because of course when I read passages like those in the beginning of Jeremiah 15, it gives me the heebie jeebies too. It’s no joke to say I fear the Lord.

So here are some points to consider:

===> I’ve said it often before: The only reason it even occurred to me to try to understand, “How could the God of the Old Testament be infinitely good?” is that Jesus thinks He is (here and here). There is nothing irrational or “unscientific” about me deferring to someone (namely Jesus) who is clearly my better in this type of judgment.

My younger brother did graduate work in mathematics and the area he was going into (before he changed career course) he obviously knows far better than I do. So if he and I were attending a talk by a world-renowned mathematician lecturing on that area, and the famous guy said some things that I thought were violations of linear algebra, but my brother assured me the guy was right–I would assume I was wrong. Or at least, I would try really really hard to understand how something that seemed so obviously wrong to me, could be right. I wouldn’t merely take their word for it, but I would really go over my own reasoning since it would be so odd for them both to be so cosmically wrong. Well, same thing with goodness, Yahweh and Jesus.

===> At first this point is going to sound flippant and perhaps absurd, but if so it’s because atheists/agnostics have a hard time imaging the implications of the existence of the Christian God. Here goes: If such a Being exists, then whether you die from a heart attack, an earthquake, a Nazi gas chamber, or an angel of death…in all cases it is correct to say that God killed you. He is omnipotent; nothing happens that is inconsistent with His will. The reason you die a certain way, is that God designed it to happen that way.

So all of the stuff that seems monstrous in the Old Testament–with God ordering the Israelites to slaughter infants, for example–is not a reflection on God’s morality. Now you can still argue that it was a terrible example for Him to teach His people, and I think that’s quite a valid objection to raise. But my point is, whether those pagan infants died at the hands of Joshua’s sword, or from “natural causes” 100 years later after a lifetime of peace and prosperity, in both cases “God killed that person.” So it’s simply incorrect to recoil in horror at the first method and say, “Oh my gosh, your sick God kills innocent babies!!” To talk like that shows that you are not taking seriously the hypothesis that there is a Being who created the entire universe and designed the course of history from the beginning. (This reminds me of a funny bit Ricky Gervais had in a stand up special where he criticizes insurance companies for withholding payment after a freak storm. “I mean, if you believe in God, then everything is an act of God!”)

===> I think when we shudder at how God talked (through the prophets) to the ancient Israelites, we are forgetting just how savage the people in those days probably were. Think of it like this: In our own recent history, we can see quite clearly that there is a general trend for people to become more civilized with each succeeding generation. Now it’s true, there are countervailing trends of course. But I’m talking about stuff like treatment of minorities, or even civilians in times of war. As much as I am horrified by the stuff Bush and Obama have done, we don’t have the equivalent of the Japanese internment camps of World War II. It would take a heck of a lot more to get the American public to tolerate something like that nowadays. (Don’t get me wrong, they might, if nail bombs start going off in Walmarts across the country.) But c’mon, in general, you probably think you are “fairer” or whatever with your kids, than your parents were with you. But that’s not a knock against your parents, because they in turn were much fairer with you, than your grandparents were with them. The point is, every generation tries to correct the mistakes it perceives in the preceding one.

So now run the process in reverse. Can you possibly imagine what uncivilized savages people must have been, in the days when the Old Testament prophets were speaking out? Not that these examples will shock libertarian atheists, but just to give a sense of what I mean: When Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, the people who had just been rescued from Egypt with a series of miraculous plagues, and who had seen the Red Sea part before their very eyes decided to create a golden calf to worship. And then, part of the “backsliding” through the years would be having sex with pagan prostitutes at their religious temples. These aren’t minor slips; this is crazy stuff.

Now then, is it so surprising that God would talk to those people in a manner that sounds a bit harsh to us? Listen to your friends talk to their 2-year-old sometime. Then imagine if they talked that way to their 20-year-old children. What is perfectly acceptable when it comes to disciplining the former, would sound outrageously dictatorial for the latter.

So I think it’s a similar thing with the way God deals with people over the generations. Early on, He had to be a thundering authority figure, because that was the only way to get through to those people who were basically ignorant of the multitude of sins they were committing daily. But over time, we matured and were finally ready to understand the example of Jesus. And then those of us who have grown up in a culture imbued (however imperfectly) with His teachings have an even greater advantage. We all still sin, but it’s of a different type because now we know so much better that what we are doing is wrong.

To lend support to my claim that the God of the Old Testament was just as much of a “nice guy” as Jesus, when that’s what was needed to teach a person, look at the ending of the book of Jonah. To refresh your memory, after spending three days in the belly of a fish (or whale in some translations of Jesus’ recollection of the event), Jonah goes to Ninevah and tells the people God is going to blow up their city for its evil ways. The people repent, and God spares them. Jonah is mad and here’s what happens:

Jonah 4

1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!”
4 Then the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the LORD God prepared a plant[a] and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. 7 But as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. 8 And it happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
9 Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

And he said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!”
10 But the LORD said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?”

I love that last phrase–the Lord is asking, “You even want me to destroy that perfectly good livestock?!” So it’s clear, the God of the Old Testament is fully aware that killing infants is a serious thing. For whatever reason–and I confess I don’t have a great answer for the cynics–giving those orders to Israelite warriors was the right thing to do in that situation, whereas with Jonah, God is instructing him in ways that sound more pleasing to modern ears.

(And no, this isn’t situational ethics: Again, on standard libertarian principles, God owns everything in the universe, so He has the right to do whatever He wants to His property. If you don’t like that argument, then I’ll repeat the one from above: If you say God is a murderer for telling Joshua to kill people, then God is also a mass murderer for telling microbes to kill billions of other people throughout history.)

===> Last issue for tonight: People bristle at my insistence that Jesus is the way of salvation. Now when Jesus says “no one comes to the Father except through Me,” that could actually mean a whole lot of things. It could mean (a) you need to explicitly “accept Jesus” by name, or it could (b) almost be a tautology in the sense that if anybody is saved and gets to be with the Father in heaven, the only way he or she could have done it is through Jesus, since Jesus and the Father are one.

For now, I will just say that there is clear Biblical support for some people going to heaven who came before Jesus and thus couldn’t have accepted Him as their personal Lord and savior in quite the way that a modern evangelical would want, just to be on the safe side. Specifically, if anybody is in heaven, it is Moses and Elijah. When Jesus took some of His apostles up a mountain, He was transfigured before them and those two appeared, talking with Him.

Now it’s true, prophets in the Old Testament referred to the coming Messiah, and so in that sense you could say (for example) that King David (of Goliath fame) “accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and savior.” But this seems to open the door to what the critics of Christianity want, when they worry that “good, holy people” in some jungle might die without ever learning about Jesus, and then what happens to their souls? I’m not saying I know. I’m just pointing out that the Bible clearly indicates that some people before Jesus’ time “got into heaven.”

45 Responses to “Yet Another Inadequate Attempt to Deal With the Deepest Questions of Existence”

  1. zee says:

    this is an interesting theory, but i dont know if i’m convinced. after all, don’t christians raise the same types of objections against the muslim prophet that atheists/agnostics do against biblical history? surely the same arguments could be used in their favor as well. after all, weren’t the ancient arabs quite barbaric people as well, throwing their baby girls into wells and such? so what’s wrong with muhammad and what he did then?

    • bobmurphy says:

      I don’t know much about Islam. I will say that when I’ve heard some smug Christians mocking it as a “peaceful religion” because of all the violence in the Koran, I want to say, “Hey guys, have you read the Old Testament?”

  2. JimS says:

    I think your basic question boils down to God’s unfairness as perceived by some or why is God unfair?

    First off, only two know what is in on’es heart, the individual and God (sometimes I wonder how aware the individual is). We may perceive something as unfair, but not being privy to what is in one’s heart, how can we truly say?

    Secondly, as I understand it, God is the potter and we are the clay. The potter is free to do what ever he wishes with his creation. Given the burden of original sin, and the fact that we are all sinners, I find the inverse puzzling; why are we not all suffering horrible things and horrible deaths? I almost always think, any time something bad happens, Wow! that could have been worse. Nearly always, an adverse situation has helped me grow stronger or better in some way.

    Some suffer more because of the paths that have been chosen, some because they seek to take on the burden of other’s suffering (I’m thinking of Bonhoeffer’s “Ethics”), and some because God just deems it so, I’m thiking of Job.

    Bottom line, I do not perceive any unfairness, mostly because we do not know the full score, we don’t know the debt, we don’t know the plan.

    JimS

  3. A. Tawfik says:

    I agree with Jim on this one. I think the issue atheists/agnostics have with some of the stories they read in the Bible comes down to not understanding that a Supreme being in being all loving must also be all just. A Just God cannot reward unfavorable behavior and at the same time reward favorable behavior (see the stories of Lot and countless others in Numbers brought against those that rebel against Covenant given to Moses).

    I think one must also look at it from the perspective of you do have a choice in life whether to rebel or not to rebel against the wishes of God…now God is always there to embrace you when you turn to Him so it does become our choice in the end. I’m not saying this to be preachy I’m just pointing out that we cannot look at God’s punishments as something without prior action from humans. God knowing your behavior does not presuppose humans having free choice and will, as well. Think of it as God knowing all possible outcomes and possibilities (e.g. there are countless number of things you can go and do this instance but you chose to do one action with a particular intention; God knows the choice you made AND all other possible choices you made). For those who say we do not have free will and choices just look at the temptation of Jesus in the desert in Luke.

    I had never thought of the language God used to talk to the Israelites as an explanation for the power “fire and brimstone” language of the Old Testament. Interesting thought…..thanks Bob!

    Summary: Humans have free will.
    Humans choose what to engage in (can ask for guidance from God to guide them to the appropriate/best path).
    God’s punishment is a response to transgressing/rebelling against God’s will.
    Therefore, God’s punishments are reflections of God’s Justice and of human transgression.

    -Ahmed

  4. Avram says:

    Surely a pacifist can see the difference between letting someone be harmed and harming someone themselves.

  5. Major_Freedom says:

    I’ve said it often before: The only reason it even occurred to me to try to understand, “How could the God of the Old Testament be infinitely good?” is that Jesus thinks He is (here and here). There is nothing irrational or “unscientific” about me deferring to someone (namely Jesus) who is clearly my better in this type of judgment.

    If you can’t think yourself rational enough to make your own judgment concerning a supernatural God, then how can you think yourself rational enough to make your own judgment concerning God’s supernatural son who will himself make the proper judgment? If you can’t understand God, despite what is written of God, then how can you claim to understand Jesus on the basis of what is written about Jesus?

    This response I made is almost identical to the popular response to those who support democratically elected governments on the basis that the common man, the average Joe, are irrational and incapable of knowing the “important matters,” so they have to defer their minds and their reason to the bureaucrats in the state: “Well, OK, but if people are too stupid to take care of themselves, then how can they be intelligent enough and rational enough to know what it takes to be an “effective” government, such that they know who to vote for and for what reasons?”

    Here, you’re moving the focus one step back (or forward, depending on your point of view) without solving the initial problem. You say you cannot understand God, despite what is written, so you defer to Jesus. But then what makes you think you can understand Jesus on the basis of what is written about Jesus? The (literary) undefended foundation for your defense/support of God is just quickly moved to an undefended (literary) foundation for your defense/support of Jesus. If you claim to be rational enough to understand Jesus on the basis of what is written about Jesus in the Bible, then surely you should be rational enough to understand God on the same basis.

    I notice you do this bait and switch very often when it comes to defending Biblical arguments/accounts. You provide a plausible, superficial-like answer to the question(s) or issue(s) at hand, but then if one really thinks about your answers, you more or less beg the question and just move a claim one step into the background where it remains unsupported.

    My younger brother did graduate work in mathematics and the area he was going into (before he changed career course) he obviously knows far better than I do. So if he and I were attending a talk by a world-renowned mathematician lecturing on that area, and the famous guy said some things that I thought were violations of linear algebra, but my brother assured me the guy was right–I would assume I was wrong. Or at least, I would try really really hard to understand how something that seemed so obviously wrong to me, could be right. I wouldn’t merely take their word for it, but I would really go over my own reasoning since it would be so odd for them both to be so cosmically wrong. Well, same thing with goodness, Yahweh and Jesus.

    Here, you’re claiming to be not be an adequate enough mathematician to know advanced mathematics, but you’re claiming to be an adequate enough judge of mathematicians to know who to defer to. Not explicitly, but it would have to be implicitly, in order for your judge of character to be credible. After all, it is possible that your brother made a mistake, or is not a very good mathematician in general. You can’t point to his degree as justification, because then you could not ever say Krugman is wrong. But because you know economics, the arguments you make against your opponent(s) ARE credible.

    If you don’t understand advanced mathematics, then your judgment of who to defer to about mathematics, is not any *more* credible than your defense of the mathematical arguments the prof made that your brother says is right, for that is what you are doing, indirectly, by moving it one step back.

    Now, the fact that your deferment to your brother about what the prof is saying, his judgment, and hence your argument, may be true, but it is still the case that strictly speaking, your position has no solid standing in itself. Not unless YOU know and understand advanced mathematics, will your judgment be in and of itself credible.

    I mean, I am sure that you get annoyed at Krugman’s acolytes on his blog who defer *their* judgment to Krugman, even though you know Krugman said something that was wrong/inaccurate/etc. I am sure that if you saw them say things like (metaphorically, or implicitly) “I don’t know a whole lot of economics, but because Krugman has a PhD, a Nobel Prize, and his own NYT column, I will defer to, trust, and thus accept what he says, rather then those non-Nobel, non-NYT column Austrians” that you will at least think woah, what misguided souls they are! It’s not true that having an advanced degree necessarily makes one right!

    At first this point is going to sound flippant and perhaps absurd, but if so it’s because atheists/agnostics have a hard time imaging the implications of the existence of the Christian God.

    Paging Dr. Freud. Is this not a subconscious admittion that the implications of the Christian religion are flippant and absurd?

    You’re right. I do have a VERY hard time imagining (let alone accepting) flippant and absurd ideas. Yet I must say that the same confidence and mental conviction that you have in knowing at the outset that if the government raised the minimum wage to $1 million an hour tomorrow, and the Fed did not print any more funds to enable an equivalently growing nominal demand for labor that would make the lowest marginal market rate at least $1 million an hour, that the rate of unemployment will go up, before the government actually goes out and does this so that you can physically observe it, and the same confidence and mental conviction that you have in knowing at the outset that if the government seized control and ownership of the economy’s means of production, and there were no capitalist economies to refer to, then the government would not be able to rationally calculate costs because there would be no price system, before the government actually goes out and does this so that you can physically observe it, these convictions and certainties that you have are based on your ability to put all your support on logical truths that cannot ever be broken, no matter when and where someone attempts to break them. Objective reality is necessarily logical.

    Now, before you try to weaken and cast doubt on this position by referring to the allegedly illogical assumptions made in highly speculative fields of inquiry like quantum mechanics, please note that nothing that can be said about quantum mechanics can violate the logical law of non-contradiction. If a quantum physicist says something allegedly illogical like “this particle/wave is in more than one place at once” or “this particle/wave interferes with itself” etc, then even the quantum physicist will think you are being crazy if you suggested that quantum mechanics shows that (sub-atomic) reality is both consistent with these quotes, *and* it is not consistent with these quotes, *and* that reality is sometimes consistent with these quotes, whereas other times it is not. Any time a quantum physicists uses the terms “is” or “and” or “not”, that physicist is, at least implicitly, presuming reality is logical in that it follows the law of non-contradiction.

    So when you say things like “the EXISTENCE of the Christian God”, then you are claiming that the Christian God is logical and follows the logical law of non-contradiction, and the law of identity. The Christian God is “this” and NOT “that”. Hence, if you propose illogical arguments (which in your mind you hold as what the atheist/agnostic would consider to be illogical), then they necessarily cannot refer to a concept that you have claimed is logical (Christian God).

    Here goes: If such a Being exists, then whether you die from a heart attack, an earthquake, a Nazi gas chamber, or an angel of death…in all cases it is correct to say that God killed you. He is omnipotent; nothing happens that is inconsistent with His will. The reason you die a certain way, is that God designed it to happen that way.

    If the universe, because it is claimed to exist, necessarily has a designer who plans it, then by that same logic, because the Christian God is claimed to exist, it too necessarily has a designer who plans the Christian God. (Oh my, could the designer and planner of the Christian God be human?) If you can claim that God does not have a designer, and that no thinking concept plans God, then I can claim that the universe does not have a designer, and that no thinking concept plans the universe. If you say I am wrong, then I can say that you are wrong for the same reason. If you say God is by definition not created by anything prior, then I can say the universe is by definition not created by anything prior. If you say one can believe that God plans according to his will, but nothing plans God, then I can say one can believe that humans plan according to their will, but nothing plans humans. If you say it is illogical that the universe can be taken as a given, then I can say it is illogical that God can be taken as a given.

    So all of the stuff that seems monstrous in the Old Testament–with God ordering the Israelites to slaughter infants, for example–is not a reflection on God’s morality.

    That initial “So” does not follow from the prior statement that God is omnipotent and plans everything. If God is omnipotent and plans everything, then the logical “So” must be that everything that happens, including God ordering the Israelites to murder infants, is a morality of God. If a thinking, and thus moral entity (e.g. me) murders a man, then murder is a reflection of that thinking and thus moral entity’s (e.g. my) morality! That’s what morality IS. Morality is a direct function of what we try to do with or to other thinking entities, given their own desires for themselves.

    What you are doing is heroically trying to minimize or make disappear the monstrous beliefs that early Christian theologians held, in order to defend the monstrous Christian theology from criticism.

    Now you can still argue that it was a terrible example for Him to teach His people, and I think that’s quite a valid objection to raise.

    Wait, are you questioning the Christian God’s will? If God plans everything you do, indeed, everything we all do, then it is silly to label anything that he does as “terrible”, as if his plans for what happens is immoral and wrong. It’s almost as if you are using your own judgment or something 😛

    But my point is, whether those pagan infants died at the hands of Joshua’s sword, or from “natural causes” 100 years later after a lifetime of peace and prosperity, in both cases “God killed that person.”

    Oh, so then Christians should not try to stop anyone killing either themselves or anyone else, nor should they stop anyone from hurting anyone else, nor should they stop anyone who tries to eradicate the Christian religion by killing every last Christian on Earth, nor (and this last one is funny) should anyone, including you, try to correct anyone about the Christian religion! Everything is according to God’s will. You can’t say that your alleged will is in accordance with God’s will but myself and all other atheists’ wills are not.

    As Ricky Gervais’ said in his closing one liner at the Golden Globes, “I would like to thank God for making me an atheist.”

    You can’t say the Devil is making me say this. You can’t say that I am choosing to deny God. If EVERYTHING that happens is according to God’s will, then he created atheists who do not ever want to believe in illogical, nonsensical concepts like God! Is anyone’s head spinning? It should, because as soon as your mind goes into I accept God mode, all logical bets are off, because you’re starting off on an illogical foot.

    So it’s simply incorrect to recoil in horror at the first method and say, “Oh my gosh, your sick God kills innocent babies!!”

    I know what you’re trying to do, but you can’t temporarily accept the atheist position to make any argument about a Christian God concept. You made yet another non-sequitur “So.” If you claim God killed those babies, then I CAN “recoil in horror” that God killed those innocent babies, *and* I can also NOT “recoil in horror” that an old man died of natural causes. The reason why I can say this is because my position is that ANY thinking entity that purposefully kills innocent babies is immoral, evil, and I can recoil in horror at this thinking entity. I don’t have to accept that God exists, temporarily in my mind, before I can conclude that this is an evil act. Even if this evil thinking entity is supernatural and planned it all, it is still evil. It is evil because killing innocent babies is inherently evil.

    If you want to define that what God does as morally good, and God plans everything, then there cannot be any such thing as evil. Evil would not even be a meaningful concept. It would be relegated to the netherworld of non-existence. If God created everything, and plans everything, and everything God does is not evil, then that logically presupposes that all existence is good, and all non-existence is evil. But then you would have to drop the concept of morality from your lexicon as well, because morality hinges on the possibility of doing things differently than how they transpired, and if things cannot transpire any other way because God plans everything, then everything that happens cannot be said to be either moral or immoral. Events would just be. A person who acts to kill innocent babies, and succeeding, should be viewed with the same shrugging of one’s shoulders, and the same lack of any moral judgment, as a person who acts to stop such a murderer. In other words, both killing and not killing innocent babies would be equally amoral actions.

    It is intellectual permissiveness to conclude that murderer A killing an innocent baby A is according to God’s will, but murderer A being stopped by defender C, is according to God’s will. If God decreed “thou shalt not murder,” and God plans everything, then humans have no free will, and humans murdered according to God’s will, and thus God violated his own thou shalt not murder commandment, and any murderer who goes out and starts murdering innocent babies, then he would be doing what God planned for him to do.

    Imagine a murderer of innocent babies was standing trial, televised, and he called upon you, Bob, as a witness, and you found yourself accepting his request. Would you testify in court, in front of the entire courtroom, that this murderer of innocent babies was only doing God’s will, and so it doesn’t matter if he is set free, or if he sent to prison, you would simply go along with whatever decision is made? What if the judge is a Christian as well, and he suddenly “came to his Christian senses” (note, I use the term “senses” in a pejorative way) that it is wrong to purposefully try to stop murderers of innocent babies, and just let whatever happen to happen, where if he is set loose, then meh, and if he is sent to prison, then equally meh? What if this murderer lived right next door to you, and he told you that your child is next? Would you simply let him murder your child because if your child is murdered, God willed it? As I am typing this, I realize the utter nihilism and absurdity inherent in not thinking, not using logic, and just accepting that a text is true and then trying to “figure it out.” No wonder religion is so old. It is IMPOSSIBLE to “figure out”, logically, what is inherently illogical, if you take it as logical and then try to logic from it. Only if you start with logic, then try to understand texts, can you hope to understand them. You will never understand anything if you accept it as is first, then try to logic about it after, all the while holding in the back of your mind that it is true. If what you accept at first is illogical (and yes, the Bible is illogical because it contains CONTRADICTIONS) then you cannot ever succeed in using logic to turn the Bible into a logical text. All you could ever do is identify its illogicality, or accept it.

    To talk like that shows that you are not taking seriously the hypothesis that there is a Being who created the entire universe and designed the course of history from the beginning. (This reminds me of a funny bit Ricky Gervais had in a stand up special where he criticizes insurance companies for withholding payment after a freak storm. “I mean, if you believe in God, then everything is an act of God!”)

    Woah, you cited Ricky Gervais too. Weird.

    Anyway, so what if talking like that shows you are not taking seriously that there is a Being who created the entire universe and designed the course of history from the beginning? Is not taking God seriously inherently wrong? Only if God exists can you say not taking God seriously is wrong.

    I think when we shudder at how God talked (through the prophets) to the ancient Israelites, we are forgetting just how savage the people in those days probably were.

    I think you just forgot your own position that God planned them to be savages.

    Think of it like this: In our own recent history, we can see quite clearly that there is a general trend for people to become more civilized with each succeeding generation.

    Civilized? What does that mean if God plans everything? Everything would have to be civilized by definition.

    Think of it like this: Religion has in recent history been in retreat, and science and secular morality have been advancing. People become more civilized when they understand morality is up to them and that they should not just accept evil in the world on the basis that God did it all. By rejecting the religious nonsense, people identify evil and STOP it, because they no longer consider murderers of innocent babies as acting in accordance with God’s will, but by his own will as a human. But this is all just a cruel joke on Christians and all other adherents of non-existent concepts. It’s all really because God is becoming more, uh, well it can’t be “moral” because then that would imply that we are judging God’s plan, so we would have to say God is becoming more “moral” according to God’s own judgment, through us humans, which we are deluded into thinking is our own judgments.” /s

    Now it’s true, there are countervailing trends of course. But I’m talking about stuff like treatment of minorities, or even civilians in times of war. As much as I am horrified by the stuff Bush and Obama have done

    But you CAN’T be “horrified” at what Bush and Obama have done! You just said above this:

    “But my point is, whether those pagan infants died at the hands of Joshua’s sword, or from “natural causes” 100 years later after a lifetime of peace and prosperity, in both cases “God killed that person.” So it’s simply incorrect to recoil in horror at the first method and say, “Oh my gosh, your sick God kills innocent babies!!”

    If Bush and Obama have only acted the way God planned for them to act, then you can’t be “horrified” at ANYTHING they do now or did do, or ever will do. EVERYTHING they do is according to God’s plan!

    we don’t have the equivalent of the Japanese internment camps of World War II. It would take a heck of a lot more to get the American public to tolerate something like that nowadays.

    All it would take for the American public to tolerate something like that nowadays is for them to fully adopt your metaphysics, and believe that God plans everything, and that humans plan nothing. Then, a few of society’s evil human planners, who know this, and only want power, can take advantage of the public who cannot stop evil. And wouldn’t you know it? That IS what most of America has in fact done. America is perhaps the most Christian nation on the planet, and look at all our liberties that the deistic, secular, and agnostic founding fathers have fought for, that are being violated and eradicated almost every day! Do you have any idea why this country has become less free? It’s because too many people have become too religious.

    Unfortunately, we have two main religious groups in this country who are attacking our liberties from both of the (unjustifiably divorced) civil and economic fronts.

    On the one hand, we have believers in God violate our civil liberties in the name of fighting Muslim evil. On the other hand, we have believers in central planning violate our economic liberties in the name of fighting capitalist evil. There is very little that separates organized religion from organized socialism. Both are based on a rejection of (secular) natural order in the name of living in accordance with some non-existent concept, God in the former, and the truth of the majority’s opinion in the latter.

    Many religious conservatives tolerate being spied on, tolerate torturing Muslims, tolerate killing babies overseas, tolerate the Patriot Act, because they view the world through a religious “God versus the Devil” lens, and think like dark age Crusaders. Did you know that Karl Rove, and the other neoconservatives, wanted to rouse up the Christian right, and utilize their religious views as a weapon, to get them to support invading the middle east, on the basis of “Christians versus Muslims”? I bet nine Christian conservatives out of ten would say they support the US government’s war on terror, war on drugs, etc. I bet nine Atheist liberals out of ten would say they do not support them. But that isn’t all that great, because Atheist liberals are tolerant of the war on capitalism and free markets.

    (Don’t get me wrong, they might, if nail bombs start going off in Walmarts across the country.) But c’mon, in general, you probably think you are “fairer” or whatever with your kids, than your parents were with you. But that’s not a knock against your parents, because they in turn were much fairer with you, than your grandparents were with them. The point is, every generation tries to correct the mistakes it perceives in the preceding one.

    You can’t say they were mistakes, if God planned them, and God omnipotent. Mistakes are only meaningful to acting species who are not omnipotent.

    So now run the process in reverse. Can you possibly imagine what uncivilized savages people must have been, in the days when the Old Testament prophets were speaking out? Not that these examples will shock libertarian atheists, but just to give a sense of what I mean: When Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, the people who had just been rescued from Egypt with a series of miraculous plagues, and who had seen the Red Sea part before their very eyes decided to create a golden calf to worship. And then, part of the “backsliding” through the years would be having sex with pagan prostitutes at their religious temples. These aren’t minor slips; this is crazy stuff.

    Yeah, and some people were even so crazy as to “decide” that they decide anything while believing that God plans everything, and crazier still to decide that killing innocent babies is nothing for us humans to fret over, because just like old people dying of old age, it’s all God’s plan.

    Now then, is it so surprising that God would talk to those people in a manner that sounds a bit harsh to us?

    YES, because if God planned everything, then he’s talking harsh to his own omnipotently planned beings. A bit weird to be omnipotent and consider anything you plan to be acting badly. If you can just omnipotent your way to doing anything you want, instantly, then it would be illogical to have an omnipotent plan, know exactly what’s going to happen from beginning to end (if there is one) and then speak harshly to the beings you created earlier on in your plan, and speak nicely to the beings you created later on in your plan. The earlier you would just be a bully, for you would have created beings, humans, to speak to harshly, whereas you create other humans to speak to nicely. If I called you a stupid moron idiot, then that would have to be according to God’s will then wouldn’t it? Thus you are someone who God must have planned to have spoken down to like that. Also, if I say to you that you are not a stupid moron idiot, but a lucid, trenchant, and brilliant thinker, then God must have planned you to be spoken up to like that. But then which one is the “right” speaking? Both? They can’t both be right, because they contradict. You can’t be both a moron and brilliant. You can’t have contradicting attributes about you. So which are you? If God is telling you that you are both a moron and brilliant, through me, who must be speaking in accordance with God’s will, then clearly God is contradictory and nonsensical, because he is saying contradictory and nonsensical things, through me, to you.

    Or, you know, what could actually be taking place is that I myself am choosing to say these things, that I am not doing what a non-existent concept planned for me to do, that planning is what we humans do, and that I do what I plan to do.

    Listen to your friends talk to their 2-year-old sometime. Then imagine if they talked that way to their 20-year-old children. What is perfectly acceptable when it comes to disciplining the former, would sound outrageously dictatorial for the latter.

    You’re speaking as if the human race is a single human that grows from infancy to maturity, where God talks down to “infant us” humans in the past, but talks up to “adult us” humans in the present. But the Bible is the same friggin text. It’s the same (alleged) history from around 4000 BC to around 200 AD. If anything, it can only be a history of the way God spoke to an iota of a blip of a smidgeon of human history, if you consider the fact that modern man, homo sapiens, have been on this planet for around 250,000 years. It cannot be “acceptable” for God to have treated his own creation harshly in one age, but nicely in another age.

    It makes no sense to plan that you’re going to build a length of road over time, and as it is being (correctly) completed, you “talk down to it” in the initial lengths, but then, after some arbitrary moment, you “talk up to it” in the subsequent lengths. If you planned the whole thing from start to end, if you have the omnipotent power to create it, if you can “see” the exact future construction of the road, then there is no reason to think negatively about it initially, then positively about it later on. There is nothing present to change one’s view from one opinion to another that contradicts it in an omnipotent plan that you omnipotently plan in both the initial and latter stages of construction.

    So I think it’s a similar thing with the way God deals with people over the generations. Early on, He had to be a thundering authority figure, because that was the only way to get through to those people who were basically ignorant of the multitude of sins they were committing daily.

    But he (allegedly) planned them to be that way. You cannot claim that God had to be a thundering authority to deal with his earlier creations, whom he planned in totality, but not a thundering authority to deal with his later creations, whom he also planned in totality.

    In reality, it wasn’t God that was a thundering authority, it was humans who were thundering authorities over other humans. You just read about these thundering authority figures in ancient texts.

    If you take what humans do as according to God’s plan, then, if you’ll excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, but there is no difference between the thundering and murderous authority of the Pharoah over the Israelites in circa 2000 BC, and the thundering and murderous authority of Hitler over the Jews in circa 2000 AD.

    But over time, we matured and were finally ready to understand the example of Jesus. And then those of us who have grown up in a culture imbued (however imperfectly) with His teachings have an even greater advantage. We all still sin, but it’s of a different type because now we know so much better that what we are doing is wrong.

    Again, if God planned the universe from start to (indeterminate) end, then there is no maturing. It’s all a given.

    To lend support to my claim that the God of the Old Testament was just as much of a “nice guy” as Jesus, when that’s what was needed to teach a person, look at the ending of the book of Jonah.

    And to lend support to my claim that the God of the Old Testament was an evil and malevolent entity, look at Deuteronomy.

    Should we ignore the evil to pretend something is good? Or should we take both the evil and good, and conclude that the something contradicts itself?

    To refresh your memory, after spending three days in the belly of a fish (or whale in some translations of Jesus’ recollection of the event), Jonah goes to Ninevah and tells the people God is going to blow up their city for its evil ways. The people repent, and God spares them. Jonah is mad and here’s what happens:
    Jonah 4

    THAT is what you consider to be what a “nice guy” does? Threaten thousands of people with death unless they believe a story you tell? WOW.

    I love that last phrase–the Lord is asking, “You even want me to destroy that perfectly good livestock?!” So it’s clear, the God of the Old Testament is fully aware that killing infants is a serious thing.

    So serious that he plans for it to occur?

    For whatever reason–and I confess I don’t have a great answer for the cynics–giving those orders to Israelite warriors was the right thing to do in that situation

    It was right to kill innocent babies? I’m speechless, Bob. See, this is exactly what I am referring to when I say that Sundays is when logical Bob turns into illogical Bob. You just defended an order to kill innocent babies. Do you have any idea how sick and evil that sounds to non-Christian ears?

    whereas with Jonah, God is instructing him in ways that sound more pleasing to modern ears.

    Modern ears like abstentions from threats of genocide precisely because there are enough modern ears that have adopted secular moral principles that directly contradict one set of the Bible’s moral principles that are inherently evil, namely friggin genocide! To the extent that modern ears are not Biblical literalists, they conclude the secular morality that genocide is evil.

    (And no, this isn’t situational ethics: Again, on standard libertarian principles, God owns everything in the universe, so He has the right to do whatever He wants to His property. If you don’t like that argument, then I’ll repeat the one from above: If you say God is a murderer for telling Joshua to kill people, then God is also a mass murderer for telling microbes to kill billions of other people throughout history.)

    On standard libertarian principles, God does NOT “own everything.” Only in standard Biblical accounts, and other religious accounts, does God own everything. On standard libertarian principles, only humans are owners. That’s why we don’t grant ownership rights to microbes over humans, and why we seek to own our own bodies and declare unwanted microbes to be invaders who we have a right to exclude from our bodies.

    I am not saying God is a murderer, because I don’t believe in God. But if YOU say that God exists, THEN I can say that your God is a murderer, not only for killing innocent babies, but killing any living thing whatever. When I recoil with horror at the notion that God kills innocent babies, it’s from a basis of secular moral principles. When I do not recoil with horror that God kills old people with “natural causes”, it’s also from a basis of secular moral principles. You see, I cannot think of judging any action from any other basis. I cannot use an illogical and contradictory foundation as a basis for judging anything. So you can’t call atheists and agnostics out for pointing out that God is evil for killing innocent babies, as if they believe that God exists. They (we) are only taking your arguments and showing you how evil such a concept would have to be if it does in fact exist. They (we) are not pretending to ignore God killing old people with “natural causes”, call it secretly good and expected, and then use the killing of innocent babies as a straw man against believers of a non-existent concept called God. We are saying that from a secular morality foundation, God is evil because God kills innocent babies. PERIOD.

    Do you remember that argument you made about me having to be less confident and realize I am not perfect? Remember how you argued that it doesn’t matter if I live a good life, helping little old ladies cross the street, and so on, because I could never allegedly live down to, I mean live up to, Jesus?

    Well, I’ll just send that right back at you: It doesn’t matter if your God also helps little old ladies across the street. It doesn’t matter if your God plans for some people to live until they are 100 years old. Stop thinking that your God is as good as libertarian principles. Your God kills innocent babies, and so your God is evil. Your God has to look in the mirror and realize that it is not perfect, and that it does not live up to standard libertarian principles. Your God should be humble, and admit that it can be wrong. Your God should not be so confident.

    Last issue for tonight: People bristle at my insistence that Jesus is the way of salvation. Now when Jesus says “no one comes to the Father except through Me,” that could actually mean a whole lot of things. It could mean (a) you need to explicitly “accept Jesus” by name, or it could (b) almost be a tautology in the sense that if anybody is saved and gets to be with the Father in heaven, the only way he or she could have done it is through Jesus, since Jesus and the Father are one.

    Or, it could mean that any humans who do not accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior will not get into heaven, which means God has, by latest counts, condemned over 3 billion of the world’s existing population to an eternity of torture, and he is getting even more bloodthirsty, because the number of Christian believers relative to other religious believers has been declining. Hey, that provides a motivation for Christians to convert non-Christians doesn’t it? It’s poyfect. It’s got a built in radicalism! And when the whole world is Christian, then God will start murdering people because they aren’t Christian enough. Up comes a new thread of religion, where instead of Christianity breaking apart from Judaism, there’ll be neoChristians breaking apart from Christians, in order to explain why there is still evil in the world, and why God is still killing innocent babies!

    And the same ridiculous cycle continues, generation to generation, illogical belief to illogical belief, where prophecies are made, they fail to transpire, and that leads to new religions, and new prophecies. This time 10,000 years into the future. 1,000 years is too short. May 21st, 2011 was waaaaaaay too short.

    For now, I will just say that there is clear Biblical support for some people going to heaven who came before Jesus and thus couldn’t have accepted Him as their personal Lord and savior in quite the way that a modern evangelical would want, just to be on the safe side. Specifically, if anybody is in heaven, it is Moses and Elijah. When Jesus took some of His apostles up a mountain, He was transfigured before them and those two appeared, talking with Him.

    cAn I asK whAt Is WitH tHe MISplaCed capITal LeTterS? Does capitalizing “Him” and “He” give a sense of grandeur and cosmic certainty that is lacking with lower case h’s?

    It reminds me of Hegel and his followers who capitalized all of their unintelligible concepts, like “Ungrund.”

    Now it’s true, prophets in the Old Testament referred to the coming Messiah, and so in that sense you could say (for example) that King David (of Goliath fame) “accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and savior.” But this seems to open the door to what the critics of Christianity want, when they worry that “good, holy people” in some jungle might die without ever learning about Jesus, and then what happens to their souls? I’m not saying I know. I’m just pointing out that the Bible clearly indicates that some people before Jesus’ time “got into heaven.”

    The Bible clearly indicates contradictory propositions. Yes, the Bible clearly indicates that non-Christians got into heaven, but it also clearly indicates that only Christians go to heaven. Instead of treating this as a “puzzle” that has “deeper meaning” if only one “becomes more illogical, I mean religious,” it is better to just reject it as contradictory nonsense.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      aaaaaand I just screwed up the italics. Hopefully the “tone” will convey which are my words and which words I am quoting.

      • AT says:

        Hi MF
        Loooooong response but you brought up some interesting things to think about in there. I have to ask why is killing babies evil to you? (not asking to be tongue and cheek…just curious about that perspective)

        Also, just a quick thought experiment:
        Imagine you were living in the 1st or 2nd century or earlier. Would female infanticide be “evil” in that time period?

        I’m guessing that your moral objection to “God’s terrible/evil” behavior, as you evidence by the Old Testament, has no grounding beyond you being a person living in this time period amongst “civilized people” in a “civilized society”. Had you lived in prior times your definition of evil and moral objections would solely be based on the consensus of your time. Therefore your exercise in logical application has no application beyond your time period and is subjected to the whims of the society’s morality. So I for one am happy the culture today thinks killing babies is wrong!

        P.S. – I totally agree that the “Just because Jesus said so” argument is weak and should be abandoned.

        -AT

        • Major_Freedom says:

          I have to ask why is killing babies evil to you?

          I consider evil to be the initiation of violence/aggression against another individual’s person or property.

          Murdering babies of course falls under this definition.

          Imagine you were living in the 1st or 2nd century or earlier. Would female infanticide be “evil” in that time period?

          Ah, I see why you asked me the first question. I don’t define evil as what “most people believe”, or what “the government’s laws say”. I define evil based on natural law for humanity.

          If I did live back then, then I could not say whether I would consider it to be evil, but from what I know now, I can say that regardless of what I did think, it would still be evil.

          Had you lived in prior times your definition of evil and moral objections would solely be based on the consensus of your time.

          On what basis can you conclude that? My views are not consensus now, so what makes you think they would be if I lived then?

          Consensus is called consensus and not universal agreement for a reason. It’s because not everyone agrees 100%.

          Therefore your exercise in logical application has no application beyond your time period and is subjected to the whims of the society’s morality.

          Yes, it does. Historicism is a flawed foundation. Morality is not, in my view, subjective in the sense that it is whatever the mob opines. Natural law transcends time and place.

          So I for one am happy the culture today thinks killing babies is wrong!

          Culture doesn’t think. Only individuals think.

          • AT says:

            Well I am glad you think morality transcends time and place because I certainly feel the same way.

            The reason why I approached this question of morality from a historical perspective was to illustrate that the conceptualization of Natural Law and nonaggression you presented was not common, especially during the era in Jesus and onward (I’m sure there were enclaves/glimmers of this thought process but on the whole the interaction between people was driven by whims and desires; nonaggression be damned).

            I focused on female infanticide because it was the most common place of abominations, in my view. So during this time humanity needed guidance and the message of this Natural Law needed to be refreshed on this earth; refreshed in the sense that many many prophets came before Jesus all with the same message and a specific message addressing the atrocity of the time. One of Jesus’s great accomplishments was the drive the bankers engaged in oppressive lending practices. Moses, also upholding the Natural Law, stood up with his brother Aaron to the oppressive enslavement of Pharaoh. There are countless other stories.

            So I will not only agree with the beauty and simplicity of Natural Law but argue that without the divine wisdom given to us by God through his prophets humanity tends to degrade into despotic violations of individual free will. We as humans just need to be reminded frequently.

            I also don’t feel you fully addressed my question about why it is wrong to kill babies (or perhaps it was ill-posed). In any case, implicit in your response was you admitting babies have value. Where does the value of a human/baby come from? What is it that makes that baby valuable enough to where someone who violates its Natural right should be punished?

            And as usual I will end on a note of agreement. True cultures don’t think just as governments cannot know what’s best 😉

    • Derek Dixon says:

      *Starts slow clap*

      Hell of a reply, no pun intended.

      • bobmurphy says:

        I had a different take on it. I haven’t read it all yet, but I started losing the zeal to finish when it seemed in the beginning that MF had “proven” that nobody should ever hire a consultant.

        • Jane says:

          That is the kind of flippant shit that makes most if not all of your posts on religion absurd.

          • bobmurphy says:

            Jane, please go re-read MF’s discussion of that point. If his response to my analogy about trusting Jesus on whether the God of the OT were good is correct, then nobody should ever hire a consultant. I mean, if I know enough about the subject to tell if a consultant is good or not, then I don’t need to hire him.

            I’m sorry you find it flippant. I’m being serious.

            • Tel says:

              I mean, if I know enough about the subject to tell if a consultant is good or not, then I don’t need to hire him.

              Not so fast, you presume the non-existence of trapdoor functions. For example, it is relatively easy to calculate a “digest” function for certain data (e.g. SHA1) but quite difficult to find a block of data that will deliver a particular digest value.

              What I’m saying is, that often it is much easier to check an answer for correctness than it is to find that answer in the first place. Thus, consultants can be useful after all.

              As a software engineer I can tell you that people tend to recognize a finished product that they like, even when to begin with they could not even describe what they wanted.

              I can’t figure out exactly this relates to God, but I’ll know the answer when I see it.

              • bobmurphy says:

                Whoa whoa whoa, let’s make sure people understand me: I think it DOES make sense to hire consultants (and interior decorators and carpenters and car mechanics). I also think it makes sense to consult Jesus for His opinion on whether the God of the Old Testament was good or evil.

                But the argument MF used to knock out that last example, I claim would also knock out the other ones. MF says that if I am competent to judge whether Jesus is good, then I should be able to judge whether God of the OT is good. So I’m pointing out that I don’t think that follows.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                MF says that if I am competent to judge whether Jesus is good, then I should be able to judge whether God of the OT is good. So I’m pointing out that I don’t think that follows.

                I am going to be very insistent here. It ABSOLUTELY MUST follow. Only if you know what’s good before judging a particular acting and thinking entity, can you conclude that Jesus was good. It is what you think that is good that underlies your judgment that Jesus is good.

                Well, that same foundation, that same foundation of what you think is good, can also be used to judge whether the character of God is good. You judge it by utilizing the same foundation of goodness that unlderlies your judgment that Jesus was good.

              • bobmurphy says:

                MF then what is wrong with my math analogy? You’re saying it never makes sense to pause before making a judgment on something, when someone whose opinion you respect thinks the opposite of your intuition?

                To repeat, I’m NOT saying, “I think the God of the OT is evil, but Jesus says he’s good, so I must be wrong.” Rather, I am saying that I thought long and hard about it, and then started seeing all sorts of holes in the initial snap judgment I had made.

                Look at my post above. It’s not filled with assertions of, “Jesus said so, Jesus said so, shut up and like it.” I gave various reasons for my view. You may not like the reasons; that’s fine. But let’s be clear that I’m not making an appeal to authority. I’m explaining that I understand why initially the God of the OT seems evil, but upon reflection I no longer think He is, and I trust Jesus’ judgment.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                MF then what is wrong with my math analogy?

                The act of deferring to the argument another whose own arguments can be justified can’t be used as an analogy for deferring to the arguments of Jesus. If you defer to your brother, then, assuming I am a math expert (I’m not) then I would ask for HIS justification, after which I can say yeah, your deferral was correct because he’s right.

                But there is no equivalent to this in the case of Jesus and his arguments about God. You’d only be deferring to just another (supernatural) character in the same text. If you don’t get God by what God allegedly said and did himself, then you can’t get God by deferring to someone else who you say is an expert, because you’d have no idea if what he said was true or not, because there would be no testing of his argument against some rational standard of judgment.

                You’re saying it never makes sense to pause before making a judgment on something, when someone whose opinion you respect thinks the opposite of your intuition?

                I’m saying that the opinion of the person to which you defer has no more standing than your own opinion, if you consider your knowledge on the subject to be lacking. Only if you are knowledgeable yourself on a subject, can your deferral be based on something credible. But of course that is a strange thing to do, because if you did have knowledge about the subject, then you’d probably not defer to anyone else. This is why I don’t consider deferences as providing any more support or truth value than someone who gave their own opinion on the subject.

                To repeat, I’m NOT saying, “I think the God of the OT is evil, but Jesus says he’s good, so I must be wrong.” Rather, I am saying that I thought long and hard about it, and then started seeing all sorts of holes in the initial snap judgment I had made.

                You saw the holes how? Through the words of Jesus? Or through some other means?

                Look at my post above. It’s not filled with assertions of, “Jesus said so, Jesus said so, shut up and like it.” I gave various reasons for my view. You may not like the reasons; that’s fine. But let’s be clear that I’m not making an appeal to authority. I’m explaining that I understand why initially the God of the OT seems evil, but upon reflection I no longer think He is, and I trust Jesus’ judgment.

                I tried very hard to understand what your justification(s) is(are), and I see that every time you do give your justification for why you believe the OT God is not evil, but good, then your justification is what Jesus said about God, or what Jesus did.

                I mean come on, you even said in plain English:

                The only reason it even occurred to me to try to understand, “How could the God of the Old Testament be infinitely good?” is that Jesus thinks He is (here and here).

                Sorry for being confused as heck, but try to put yourself in my position. If I told you “Bob, the ONLY reason why I tried to understand that Mr. X was an OK guy is that Mr. Y thinks he is,” then would you consider my opinion for why I think Mr. X was an OK guy to be what Mr. Y says, or something else? Obviously it would be based entirely on what Mr. Y says.

              • bobmurphy says:

                MF wrote: Sorry for being confused as heck, but try to put yourself in my position. If I told you “Bob, the ONLY reason why I tried to understand that Mr. X was an OK guy is that Mr. Y thinks he is,” then would you consider my opinion for why I think Mr. X was an OK guy to be what Mr. Y says, or something else? Obviously it would be based entirely on what Mr. Y says.

                MF, forget the past. I believe you that you sincerely misunderstood what I was saying. I will start from scratch right here:

                I think I can understand how it’s not evil for God to have done some of the things in the OT, that would clearly be evil if a human did them on his own. For example, since God created the universe and controls everything that happens in it, then in a very real sense He kills every single person who ever lives, not just pagans and those who incurred His wrath. So it is simply ignoring the reality of who God is, to call Him a murderer for those particular passages in the OT that sound shocking at first.

                I have other arguments too. I listed some in this very blog post.

                Now, in an effort to get atheists/agnostics to realize that I’m not completely nuts, I’m trying to show you that I understand your reaction when you read the OT. I myself had the same initial reaction. Now to explain what made me even pursue the matter, it was because this guy Jesus said that the God of the OT was perfect and good. So I thought about how that could be possible, and then started coming up with all sorts of reasons that now appear obvious to me, but not back then.

                So say what you want about my reasons, I am not basing them on Jesus’ authority.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                I think I can understand how it’s not evil for God to have done some of the things in the OT, that would clearly be evil if a human did them on his own. For example, since God created the universe and controls everything that happens in it, then in a very real sense He kills every single person who ever lives, not just pagans and those who incurred His wrath. So it is simply ignoring the reality of who God is, to call Him a murderer for those particular passages in the OT that sound shocking at first.

                But if God planned us all, then nothing anyone could ever do can be considered evil, because everything we humans are and everything we humans do would necessarily have to be a function of what God planned for us to be and do. So that means God killed the Jews during WW2, and God killed defenseless babies, he killed old people, he killed everyone, which means no human chose to kill anyone, and God even created humans who try to stop people from killing, and if they succeed, it’s because God planned it that way, and if they fail, it’s because God planned it.

                In this worldview, how can humans ever do anything evil, if everything that happens is according to God’s will, and by definition everything God does is good? There could be no such thing as evil people. Hitler would be on the same moral plane as myself. Neither of us would be considered as any more evil than the other, because everything we both do is according to God’s plan.

                Is that your position? Sounds topsy turvy.

                I remember you saying that evil is spending eternity in hell, away from God, but if God planned the entire universe, he planned hell. So then all of a sudden, God does evil things. But this contradicts the argument that everything God does is good. So God is both evil and good.

                I have other arguments too. I listed some in this very blog post.
                Now, in an effort to get atheists/agnostics to realize that I’m not completely nuts, I’m trying to show you that I understand your reaction when you read the OT. I myself had the same initial reaction. Now to explain what made me even pursue the matter, it was because this guy Jesus said that the God of the OT was perfect and good. So I thought about how that could be possible, and then started coming up with all sorts of reasons that now appear obvious to me, but not back then.

                All sorts of reasons? Those are what I would like to know. I don’t see any reasons in this blog post that are separate from “because Jesus said so.”

                So say what you want about my reasons, I am not basing them on Jesus’ authority.

                What standard are you using then? I read that it’s Jesus, but you say it’s not Jesus.

                These are the reasons you gave in this blog post:

                1. Jesus said God is good, and I trust Jesus, so God is good.

                2. God plans everything, and God is by definition good, so everything that happens on Earth is good, including what the OT God did, so God is good.

                3. People were “bad” during biblical times, so the “mean” things God did back then, was in fact a good thing, so God is good.

                The first is the only coherent reason, which is why I thought that your position is “because Jesus said so.”

                The second is based on a logical fallacy. You’re just defining that God is good. But if everything that God does is necessarily good, and God is responsible for everything, there can be no such thing as evil. This means that the concept “good” doesn’t have any meaning at all. Good is meant to be distinguished from evil. If evil does not exist, then neither can good. Instead, every act that people do, which means every plan God makes, is an “event”, or some other kind of amoral connotation.

                You can’t claim that evil does exist, in hell, because God would have had to plan hell if he planned everything, including cutting humans off from him in the afterlife, and you said that everything God does is good by definition. Well, that would have to imply that hell is good, Satan is good, you’re good, I’m good, everything is good, which of course means good is just a meaningless phrase.

                Your third reason fails on two levels. On the one level, it contradicts your claim that God plans everything and everyone’s actions. If people were “bad” back in biblical times, then it must have been because God’s plan was “bad” back then, because God planned what they would everyone did then, just as since then, just as now. But this contradicts your second reason, which is that everything that God plans, and thus everything people do, is by definition good. On the second level, this reason fails because even if we forget about your second reason, and assume that people really were “bad” back then, then surely God would be even more vengeful today, because there are more people who are “worshipping false idols”, there are more atheists today than ever before, and if you consider the 20th century, more people were murdered than any other century (which of course is all meaningless if your second reason is reintroduced and God planned it that way and everything he plans is good!).

                So you know what I see? I don’t see someone who used to be a superficial knee jerk shallow and narrow minded thinker who has since seen a deeper meaning in the evil ideas in the OT. What I see instead is someone who used to be a rational, logical thinker when it comes to religious dogma, but for some reason has abandoned logic in the realm of supernatural ideas, and not only that, but eagerly and with great enthusiasm.

                You openly flaunt making absurd contradictions in the realm of religion, whereas if an economist made the same contradictions in the world of economics, you’d be on it like George Costanza is on his latest hijinks.

                I don’t think you’re crazy, I don’t think you’re nuts, I just think that the standard that you use to judge economic arguments is not being used when you judge religious arguments.

                You take a lot upon your shoulders when it comes to leading the charge against bad economics and bad economists, and teaching students, I mean, you’re doing far more than I could do, and maybe being logical all the friggin time gets rather limiting, or whatever. I used to be religious like you, but I went the other way. I used to knee jerk against agnostics and atheists and thought that they just haven’t thought about it enough.

                But eventually, I found religion to be way too limiting. I mean, the idea that God exists, and plans everything, so everything that ever happens on Earth is all God’s plan, and everything that we do, think, feel, and desire, is also God’s plan, and everything that happens after we biologically die is God’s plan, and nothing is evil and everything is good, I mean, that’s way too limiting for me. I might as well just sit down, stop eating, and wait for my death. If that’s what I did, it’s because God planned it. Or I could kill myself. If I killed myself, then God planned that too. If I did anything to anyone, it’s all God’s plan. NOTHING I can ever do will be considered as something I chose on my own recognizance. What a terrible life that would be! Not to mention there is no evidence for the existence of God.

                But this is all neither here nor there.

                What I can say to you that I am absolutely not knee jerking against the OT God, and I am not in a state where I just haven’t “found the light” yet. I’ve been “in the light,” so to speak, and you know what’s there? Absolute darkness.

            • Anon says:

              “…since God created the universe and controls everything that happens in it, then in a very real sense He kills every single person who ever lives…”

              This I understand. So far so good.

              “So it is simply ignoring the reality of who God is, to call Him a murderer for those particular passages in the OT that sound shocking at first.”

              This part seems like a total non-sequitur to me. Why can’t god be a murderer both for flooding the world and drowning everyone (the original global warming) AND for causing people to age and die?

              • bobmurphy says:

                OK if you want to go that route, OK, but then what you are saying is, “I can’t believe God created people in the first place, only to not make them immortal. He actually doesn’t want us to spend eternity in this earthly existence.”

                That is a qualitatively different objection, from saying, “God slaughtered little babies!” Because when we start talking like the former observation, we start realizing the gravity of the situation and how it’s not obvious that it was a “mistake” after all. For one thing, for the people who choose to live with God in the afterlife, they get to spend eternity in paradise. So it’s weird to object that God has the audacity to not make us spend eternity on earth, where we get hangovers and pay taxes.

              • Anon says:

                “OK if you want to go that route, OK, but then what you are saying is, “I can’t believe God created people in the first place, only to not make them immortal. He actually doesn’t want us to spend eternity in this earthly existence.””

                That’s not really my point. My point is that the god that causes unnecessary suffering (death by sword, cancer, Alzheimer’s, eternal suffering in hell etc.) can not be reconciled with the god that is good, loving, and merciful. Furthermore, the god that initiates force and orders others to initiate force on its behalf is evil from the perspective of the victims.

                “That is a qualitatively different objection, from saying, ‘God slaughtered little babies!’”

                ‘God slaughtered little babies’ is simply a statement of fact (according to the faithful). The objection is that slaughtering little babies is neither good, loving, or merciful.

                “Because when we start talking like the former observation, we start realizing the gravity of the situation and how it’s not obvious that it was a “mistake” after all.”

                I’m having trouble following you here. What mistake or non-mistake are you referring to?

                “For one thing, for the people who choose to live with God in the afterlife, they get to spend eternity in paradise. So it’s weird to object that God has the audacity to not make us spend eternity on earth, where we get hangovers and pay taxes.”

                That wasn’t my objection. My objections were that:

                1. Causing unnecessary suffering is not good, loving, or merciful.

                and

                2. Initiators of force are evil from the perspective of the victims (regardless of whether or not rights are involved).

        • Austro-Libertarian says:

          You definitely went wrong with that promotion…

    • bobmurphy says:

      MF,

      Since Jane found my response flippant and turdy, let me spell out why I had the energy sapped out of me from the beginning with your response:

      Here, you’re moving the focus one step back (or forward, depending on your point of view) without solving the initial problem. You say you cannot understand God, despite what is written, so you defer to Jesus. But then what makes you think you can understand Jesus on the basis of what is written about Jesus? The (literary) undefended foundation for your defense/support of God is just quickly moved to an undefended (literary) foundation for your defense/support of Jesus.

      Are you saying it is crazy-talk for me to say, “I trust my brother’s judgment on math more than mine”? I don’t think you’re saying that, because you seemed to have no problem with the analogy as far as it went.

      OK, so my personal value system says that the literary character of Jesus is the most perfect man I’ve ever read or heard about it. He hurt nobody except the authorities with his stinging words. He was full of compassion and mercy for the downtrodden, and he went to his own death to try to save others.

      OK so I have no problem whatsoever saying, “That man is good, and in fact is far better than me.”

      Now, one of the things this man does, is tell us that in his opinion, the God of the Jews is perfect and holy. That is not something I would have had the confidence to say, because there are lots of things that that God did that raise eyebrows to say the least.

      But, because I am so sure Jesus is good, and in fact a better judge of character than I am, I pause. I say to myself, “Either Jesus really ISN’T good, or my initial evaluation of the God of the Jews was wrong.”

      And after much reflection, I start realizing that my initial framing of the question was wrong. So I start to see how it’s possible Jesus is right.

      If you disagree with the above, fine, but you will have to more narrowly focus your critique. Your general observations that “if I can’t judge God then I can’t judge Jesus” simply don’t work. They would likewise “prove” that I can’t hire a carpenter or an interior designer, or that my math analogy about my brother doesn’t work. Yet clearly the concept holds in those mundane examples.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        Well, first off let me say that I didn’t think your response was flippant or turdy at all. As I was writing that part, I had in the back of my mind that exact same “what about consultants” criticism. But I also think the criticism is not justified, because it is talking about a different thing.

        So when you say

        Are you saying it is crazy-talk for me to say, “I trust my brother’s judgment on math more than mine”?

        I will say that no, it’s not crazy talk at all to defer to your brother.

        My point is that should A defer to B when it comes to a particular argument, on the basis that A does not know the subject matter, then the argument that is implied in A’s deferral to B, namely B’s argument, cannot be given any truth value on the basis of the deferral by A. This is because A does not know the subject matter, and so their judgment on which person to defer to, itself becomes suspect, and thus the argument from B cannot be given any MORE truth value or credibility on the basis of the deferment, than is otherwise present in traditional, ratiocination- and evidence-based justification.

        Since we’re talking about something that is allegedly true in reality, then A’s deferral to B does not mean that what B says is justified. The way I said this the first time probably was completely retarded, but that is what I wanted to say. One cannot claim that one’s implicitly accepted argument (from he who is deferred to) is any more justified simply because one deferred to the other as an alleged expert. If one does not know the subject matter, then one’s judgments are not credible, even one’s deferrals.

        Thus, when you say you do not understand God directly, but you trust another person, i.e. Jesus, judgment on the subject, then the foundation for the truth valueness of the implied argument (nature of God) does not all of a sudden go from baseless to based. You could after all be a bad judge of character and expertise, and I mean this not in any psychological context, but rather that you are not knowledgeable enough in the subject matter to know who has good ideas on the subject matter and who does not have good ideas on the subject matter. How can you know who has good ideas and who has bad ideas on the subject of God, if you yourself don’t understand God? That’s my main point.

        It’s like watching Krugman’s bloggers claim to hold the correct argument because “Krugman said so” and they defer to Krugman. Their deferral to Krugman itself has no foundation, because they don’t understand the subject matter themselves. So if they don’t understand economics, then they can’t say Krugman is right.

        Similarly, if you defer to Jesus, then you can’t say Jesus was right about God, because you wouldn’t even know whether or not he is right because you yourself don’t understand the subject matter (God)! Only if you are knowledgeable on the subject of God and can yourself explain it, will your deferral to Jesus (for time or resource constraints, for pedagogical purposes, etc) give Jesus’ arguments justification. This is because your deferral is based on you knowing Jesus’s arguments are right.

        I don’t think I can say this in any more ways.

        So when you say that if I was right, then there would be no consulting, but because there is, I am wrong, I think misses the mark. If A hires consultant B, then whatever B argues cannot be justified simply because B is “an expert.” A’s implicitly accepted argument (argument of B that A hired B to propose/introduce) does not have any standing on the basis of A’s deferral to B. A’s implicitly accepted argument (from B) is only justified if B, or anyone else, can justify it. The mere deferral to B, while possibly a good and possibly a productive decision on A’s part, does not make B’s argument true.

        If A is not knowledgeable of the subject matter in which consultant B operates, then A’s implicit argument through deferring to B is no more founded or justified than A trying to make an argument about the subject matter himself. If A cannot justify an argument because he doesn’t know the subject matter, then his deferral to the consultant’s argument will itself remain without foundation, as if A tried to make an argument himself.

        It is possible that A could not know enough about the subject matter, and B also does not know enough about the subject matter, despite B being hired as “an expert,” because A wouldn’t be able to distinguish a good consultant from a bad one. It is like a frail old widow who knows next to nothing about finances, hiring who she thinks is a good investment adviser, but who is in reality a terrible one, but she has no way of knowing that, because she herself lacks knowledge about the subject matter.

        But people still hire consultants, because they do on average provide gains through specialization in the division of labor. They can save employers time and resources in educating themselves and doing the research themselves. These deferrals do not however necessarily imply that the employer’s choice is a good one, because if they are not an expert in the field, then they would have no way of knowing good consultants from bad ones, until after the fact, which is when the cold hard numbers and results, i.e. the proof, the reason and science, comes in, which most people can understand.

        But such cold hard results and proofs do not come in the case of the bible, of God, or of Jesus. There is just the text of the bible, and that’s it. If one defers to Jesus rather than one’s own judgment about God, then it’s not like Jesus’ arguments about God can be judged by reason and science such that the person who deferred is either vindicated or refuted. Things forever stay in the “B is currently consulting” stage. The performance, the cold hard results, of the arguments of B, are forever delayed into the future, because the bible transcends time. Earthly consulting does not transcend time, which is why consultants can be judged according to their performance, and why it can make sense for people to defer to expert consultants. Consultants whose arguments are judged by the market weeds out good consultants from the bad ones over time, and so on average, someone who is totally ignorant about a subject matter, can defer to experts, and if they pick a consultant/expert whom the market has judged to be a good one in the past, then they will probably get good value for their money in the future.

        So an Earthly consultant’s arguments can be judged according to the effects of their arguments, i.e. their performance, and in this sense, the market process can over time weed out the good from the bad such that someone can blindly defer to an expert, and their judgment is not baseless, because the market process is not baseless.

        When you take Jesus’ argument about God, what you are actually doing is not proving anything about God or Jesus’s argument about God, because you, indeed we all, are not and cannot have any knowledge about non-existent concepts, but you are “testing” many of Jesus’ teachings on Earth, where you can say yeah, this consultant I am glad to have chosen, because his arguments, when put into effect in my life, gives me gains. I think that is why you consider your deferment to Jesus to be with foundation. It has nothing to do with whether or not Jesus’ argument about God are true. It has to do with how well his arguments translates into your Earthly affairs. It’s why you pick Jesus instead of say, Krishna or Horus or Mithra or Zeus.

        But if you’re talking to me, an atheist, and you say that you don’t know God, then so far so good, but then when you say that you will defer to Jesus when it comes to God, then I will say hey wait a minute, if you don’t know God, then how in the heck can you know that Jesus is right? Jesus’ arguments about God have no Earthly tests, like Earthly consultants arguments have tests. How can one confirm that God is [X,Y,Z], and not [A, B, C], through deferment to Jesus? One can talk gibberish nonsense about God and one would have the same foundation as the arguments of another biblical character who speaks clearly about it, to whom you deferred.

        • Dan says:

          Dr. Murphy specifically said he was not making an appeal to authority and then you attack an appeal to authority example of Paul Krugman’s followers?

          I’ll try and give my own example. Now before I had ever heard a negative word about Lincoln I thought he was clearly a good guy. Then Ron Paul goes on tv and gave an opinion that was the opposite of mine. I respect Ron Paul and trust his opinion so I had either gotten it wrong about “honest” Abe or Ron Paul wasn’t what I thought him to be. After reading Thomas Dilorenzo I found that I was mistaken because I was framing the questions in the wrong way and wasn’t taking account of all the evidence.

          Now it would not be right for you to say that I was deferring to Ron Paul’s judgement and I can’t be vindicated because the answer just came from a book. I didn’t understand the subject matter (Lincoln)! Does that mean I can’t differ to Ron Paul or Thomas Dilorenzo or use their books because I was wrong initially?

          • Major_Freedom says:

            Dr. Murphy specifically said he was not making an appeal to authority and then you attack an appeal to authority example of Paul Krugman’s followers?

            If I made an appeal to authority, then denied it, would it make any sense to attack someone who pointed out that I appealed to authority?

            I know Dr. Murphy said he is not appealing to authority, but I still think he is, considering what he wrote and what bases his judgment.

            I’ll try and give my own example. Now before I had ever heard a negative word about Lincoln I thought he was clearly a good guy. Then Ron Paul goes on tv and gave an opinion that was the opposite of mine. I respect Ron Paul and trust his opinion so I had either gotten it wrong about “honest” Abe or Ron Paul wasn’t what I thought him to be. After reading Thomas Dilorenzo I found that I was mistaken because I was framing the questions in the wrong way and wasn’t taking account of all the evidence.

            Aha, but your judgment was verified by the factual research of DiLorenzo. Your judgment hinges on a rational foundation for concluding that Lincoln was not a good guy. This can happen on Earth because people’s arguments can be justified using (Earthly) rationality, evidence, and fact checking.

            Now it would not be right for you to say that I was deferring to Ron Paul’s judgement and I can’t be vindicated because the answer just came from a book. I didn’t understand the subject matter (Lincoln)! Does that mean I can’t differ to Ron Paul or Thomas Dilorenzo or use their books because I was wrong initially?

            You are totally misunderstanding my argument. I am not saying its wrong to defer, forever and everywhere. I am saying that your deferral to Ron Paul would not be justified UNTIL you justified the argument, or until SOMEONE justified the argument.

            If you want to use an Earthly analogy for Murphy’s deferral to Jesus, then what would have to happen is that if you claimed that Lincoln was good, even though we know, through DiLorenzo’s work and through the work of others, that he was not good, then your judgment would have no foundation, and even if you deferred your judgment of Lincoln to Ron Paul, who you trust, then your implicitly accepted argument (that Lincoln was bad) would remain unjustified just as much as your original claim that he was good. It would remain unjustified unless and until you or someone else can justify the argument that Lincoln was bad. But because you did find justification, by reading up on DiLorenzo’s research on what Lincoln actually did, then your analogy of deferral completely collapses and no longer applies to Murphy’s deferral to Jesus.

            Suppose that DiLorenzo’s books didn’t exist. Suppose that all we have is a single text that tells stories about how awesome Lincoln was, and this text, these stories, have no accompanying documentation or evidence. It’s just a bunch of written passages that some people find to be pleasurable to read.

            Now suppose that you thought that Lincoln was good. Then, someone you trusted came along and said no, he was actually bad. Suppose you deferred your opinion to this person, because you just don’t know enough about Lincoln, and you trust this person.

            Is the argument implicit in your deferral (Lincoln was bad) any more credible than your initial claim that Lincoln was good? Certainly not. For all that exists is a text with stories. If you read this text and you cannot conclude with certainty that Lincoln was good, then you cannot possibly conclude that Lincoln was bad simply because the person you deferred to said he was bad. Not until this other person provided justification of some sort, can the deferral have MORE truth value than the original, non-deferred claim.

            Does this make sense?

  6. Anon says:

    “I want to try to get you folks to see the analogies and considerations I’ve developed to help make sense of it…”

    It’s interesting that you use the phrase “make sense of it”, because you also repeatedly admit that you can’t make sense of it.

    “There is nothing irrational or “unscientific” about me deferring to someone (namely Jesus) who is clearly my better in this type of judgment. My younger brother did graduate work in mathematics and the area he was going into (before he changed career course) he obviously knows far better than I do. So if he and I were attending a talk by a world-renowned mathematician lecturing on that area, and the famous guy said some things that I thought were violations of linear algebra, but my brother assured me the guy was right–I would assume I was wrong.”

    Your analogy is flawed. If Jesus told you that 3+5=10 or that all dogs are pink, have wings, and drive cars, would it be rational for you to defer judgment to him?

    The fact that mass murder is evil is a matter of DEFINITION and is not susceptible to sophistic mathematical treatments.

    “Or at least, I would try really really hard to understand how something that seemed so obviously wrong to me, could be right. I wouldn’t merely take their word for it, but I would really go over my own reasoning since it would be so odd for them both to be so cosmically wrong. Well, same thing with goodness, Yahweh and Jesus.”

    As soon as you actually DEFINE “goodness”, you will realize one of two things: your meaning is at odds with the libertarian definition, or your god is not in fact good. Toward that end, I challenge you to actually define the word “GOOD”.

    “So all of the stuff that seems monstrous in the Old Testament–with God ordering the Israelites to slaughter infants, for example–is not a reflection on God’s morality.”

    Why aren’t god’s actions a reflection of its morality? Why is god not to be judged by its actions?

    “…whether those pagan infants died at the hands of Joshua’s sword, or from “natural causes” 100 years later after a lifetime of peace and prosperity, in both cases ‘God killed that person.’”

    Are you actually equating dying by the sword with a lifetime of peace and prosperity? If not, then what is the point of your observation?

    “So it’s simply incorrect to recoil in horror at the first method and say, ‘Oh my gosh, your sick God kills innocent babies!!’”

    Since when is it incorrect to recoil in horror at the slaughter of children? Since when is it not sick to kill innocent babies? Apparently, I’ve completely missed the part where you explain why having your head cut off at a young age is equivalent to 100 years of peace and prosperity.

    “To talk like that shows that you are not taking seriously the hypothesis that there is a Being who created the entire universe and designed the course of history from the beginning.”

    Exactly HOW does taking seriously the intelligent creator hypothesis turn mass murder into anything but evil?

    You claim that god is good, loves humans, has infinite mercy, etc. etc., but when people point out how god orders genocide you resort to the “god has a plan” argument which is supposed to somehow make everything alright. But, god’s PLAN involves genocide. How is that good, loving, or merciful?

    “To lend support to my claim that the God of the Old Testament was just as much of a “nice guy” as Jesus, when that’s what was needed to teach a person, look at the ending of the book of Jonah.”

    If anything, your Jonah quote supports the claim that god was a schizophrenic (or, more likely, that the OT was composed by multiple human authors of varied ideologies). How does it make sense for god to be an overzealous baby-killer on some days and then to wax eloquent about the value of human (and cattle) life on other days?

    “So it’s clear, the God of the Old Testament is fully aware that killing infants is a serious thing.”

    OK, so god can’t get off on the insanity defense. So……god is evil. That’s your point, right?

    “For whatever reason–and I confess I don’t have a great answer for the cynics–giving those orders to Israelite warriors was the right thing to do in that situation, whereas with Jonah, God is instructing him in ways that sound more pleasing to modern ears.”

    Interesting… This is the first time I’ve come across the “For whatever reason…” argument. For whatever reason, I find myself utterly unconvinced that evil is good, black is white, and Vegemite is food.

    “… on standard libertarian principles, God owns everything in the universe, so He has the right to do whatever He wants to His property.”

    I disagree with your conception of rights. Rights are rules of non-interference mutually adhered to amongst a network of rights-holders. Rights are reciprocal. To violate or simply not recognize another’s rights is to negate one’s own.

    Cattle have no rights with respect to the rancher, and the rancher has no rights with respect to the cattle. If the cattle were to revolt, they would in no way be violating the rancher’s rights. On the other hand, if another rancher were to take cattle, that WOULD be a violation of the rancher’s rights.

    If humans have no rights vis a vis god, then god has no rights vis a vis humans, and therefore, “ownership”, “property”, and “justice” are inapplicable concepts.

    “If you say God is a murderer for telling Joshua to kill people, then God is also a mass murderer for telling microbes to kill billions of other people throughout history.”

    Yes, yes, and yes. Now you’re starting to make sense.

    “Now when Jesus says “no one comes to the Father except through Me,” that could actually mean a whole lot of things. It could mean (a) you need to explicitly “accept Jesus” by name, or it could (b) almost be a tautology in the sense that if anybody is saved and gets to be with the Father in heaven, the only way he or she could have done it is through Jesus, since Jesus and the Father are one.”

    You appear to be admitting that no one really knows what hell is or who is going there.

    “For now, I will just say that there is clear Biblical support for some people going to heaven who came before Jesus and thus couldn’t have accepted Him as their personal Lord and savior in quite the way that a modern evangelical would want.”

    If people could get into heaven without Jesus, what function did/does Jesus serve?

    • bobmurphy says:

      Anon, you’re bouncing all over the place. First you tell me God is evil for mass murdering children, then you tell me rights don’t apply to God vis-a-vis humans (so He’s not violating rights then?), and then you say you agree that if God is a murderer for armies killing kids, then He’s also a murderer for having microbes kill people.

      So I really don’t even know what to say. On two of the points it seems you are agreeing with me that there’s nothing especially wrong with God having armies kill people. I assume you don’t think it’s murder if someone dies of old age, right? OK, but God has “killed” that person as surely as anybody else who dies.

      • Anon says:

        “First you tell me God is evil for mass murdering children, then you tell me rights don’t apply to God vis-a-vis humans (so He’s not violating rights then?)”

        Good observation, but the concepts of rights, ownership, property, and justice do not encompass the full meaning of evil. I was using the term in the broader sense of willfully causing unnecessary suffering. So, humans CAN judge god to be evil without claiming to have had their rights violated.

        I would also make the claim that god is evil in the narrower libertarian sense of being an initiator of force. While it is not necessarily the case that an initiation of force violates rights, it IS always the case that an initiation of force is evil – from the perspective of the victim.

        “and then you say you agree that if God is a murderer for armies killing kids, then He’s also a murderer for having microbes kill people.”

        I don’t see the contradiction there. Isn’t there more than one way to commit murder?

        “So I really don’t even know what to say. On two of the points it seems you are agreeing with me that there’s nothing especially wrong with God having armies kill people.”

        When did I say that? You appear to be putting words in my mouth…

        “I assume you don’t think it’s murder if someone dies of old age, right?”

        It’s not murder in the sense of a human murdering another human, but if the death is caused by god, god is morally culpable.

        “OK, but God has “killed” that person as surely as anybody else who dies.”

        Yes, I agree. And one thing that amazes me is that you appear to be claiming that all deaths are equivalent: dying by the sword at a young age or dying after 100 years of peace and prosperity.

        I just hope there will come a point at which you realize that your attempts to justify your beliefs have critically impaired your ability to think like an economist.

        • Tel says:

          Surely “100 years of peace and prosperity” is bad value compared to the millions of years that humans should rightly be living if God hadn’t made them die sooner.

          You only quote 100 years because God has beaten down your expectations so savagely.

          • Anon says:

            Agreed, but I’m comparing 100 years of peace and prosperity to getting killed as an infant. It’s a lot better than that. As far as I can tell, Bob seems to think they are equivalent.

            • bobmurphy says:

              As far as I can tell, Bob seems to think they are equivalent.

              I realize this is going to sound huffy, but so be it: Anon, you know how you and others think it’s so ridiculously unfair that you could “honestly” not believe in God, and then be held accountable for not believing? Well when you say stuff like that, it makes it hard for me to take that complaint seriously. That is not at all what I have been saying, and I suspect deep down you know that’s not what I am saying but it’s an easy rhetorical jab.

              I am saying that if you think God is a murderer for one thing (like telling Israelites to kill babies), then He is also a murderer for having a 100-year-old die of old age. It’s logically possible that people could live 100,000 years like the Jetsons. So what you are viewing as “long life and prosperity” is itself just because God’s constant mass murdering (on your terms) has made you lower your expectations, so that you think someone living to be 100 in the year 2000 BC had a “prosperous” life.

              I mean, I could say to Tel, “As far as I can tell, Anon seems to think that people living to be 100 in 2000 BC, because maybe they got their own outhouse, were prosperous. Wow what an idiot.”

              But I wouldn’t say that, because I realize that’s not what you are trying to say.

              • Anon says:

                I didn’t intend it as a jab. It was more of an invitation for you to clarify your position. That’s why I used the language “As far as I can tell…” and “…seems to think…”. I tried to leave the door open for you to correct me, which you have.

                “I am saying that if you think God is a murderer for one thing (like telling Israelites to kill babies)…”

                I don’t know if murderer is the correct term, but my contention is that ordering humans to kill babies is evil.

                “…then He is also a murderer for having a 100-year-old die of old age.”

                I would say that god is morally culpable for its actions – whatever they may be – and I hope that you would agree.

                “It’s logically possible that people could live 100,000 years like the Jetsons. So what you are viewing as “long life and prosperity” is itself just because God’s constant mass murdering (on your terms) has made you lower your expectations, so that you think someone living to be 100 in the year 2000 BC had a “prosperous” life.”

                Makes sense, but I’m having trouble seeing how this strengthens your case for god being good, loving, and merciful.

                Would a good, loving, and merciful god intentionally cause suffering and death?

                Would a good, loving, and merciful god send people to hell and keep them their in spite of them realizing their error and desperately wanting to go to heaven?

  7. Tel says:

    As per usual, there is one morality for the powerful, and a different morality for the weak. If there is a God, seems perfectly consistent that human morality would not be applicable.

    Then again, if God had a genuine problem with babies being slaughtered, then babies would be made out of something very tough, and bad tasting, probably old truck tyres. Since God made humans such that all of us eventually die, in my books, that makes God not only the biggest mass murderer ever, but also one from which there is no escape. That’s enough reason to be an Atheist right there.

    Of course, only God can see the bigger picture, so maybe all this death serves some higher purpose that is perfectly evident from suitable vantage point… and if you believe that, the climatologist emails only look bad because they were quoted out of context. Oh that’s right, there’s morality for the well connected, and different morality for the poorly connected.

    I think that ultimately Christians who want to keep the idea of God are going to have to give up on omnipotence. Or at least, settle for a mildly watered down omnipotence. Think about this: suppose God can bend the physical universe at will, is God also omnipotent over the laws of mathematics?

    Well, sure God might define that 1+1=3, but humans can also define that, if they want, no big deal. Now the binary number system is the simplest possible digital number system, you only have 0 and 1… could God decide to make a different digital system that would be even simpler than binary? Well God might arbitrarily redefine 0 and 1 to be True and False or perhaps High and Low… but humans can do all those things, and anyhow redefining the symbols does not change the number system. Given that the binary system only has 0 and 1, if you take one away you get 0 on its own. It won’t work as a number system, but could God make it work with his divine will?

    That’s the point of course, mathematics sits outside the physical universe. It’s an abstract system and locked down not by material things but by what is self consistent. Even if I did believe in God, it would be hard to believe in a God who can transcend mathematics. It seems to me that only in the world of mathematics are humans standing on equal footing with not just the Christian God, but with all possible Gods (hmmm, not the Viking Gods who could only count as far as the next Ragnarök or how many hammers am I holding up).

    • bobmurphy says:

      Tel wrote:

      Since God made humans such that all of us eventually die, in my books, that makes God not only the biggest mass murderer ever, but also one from which there is no escape. That’s enough reason to be an Atheist right there.

      No it isn’t. It might be reason for you to reject following Him, but it doesn’t mean you should question His existence.

      Do you believe Hitler existed?

      (I’m not being coy. I find it odd that so many “rational” people who accuse Christians of believing fairy tales often say things like, “Well if that’s the kind of God there is, I don’t want to believe in Him.” And they think that settles the argument for atheism.)

      • Tel says:

        From a purely philosophical point of view, you are right that distasteful things are no more or less believable purely on the basis of preference.

        A lot of Atheists see that Christians believe in God at least partly as a comfort thing, and there’s the whole old man father figure sitting on a bit chair, gets grumpy some times but basically a good guy, kind of outfit. From a personal point of view, belief in God is more than merely a philosophical proposition.

        Sure, I’m a mere human, I forget stuff, muddle things up, come across things that don’t make sense. Even if I did believe in God I wouldn’t seriously expect to fully understand him, but from a practical point of view you would want the belief to have some personal value, in getting through life. Maybe a God that would offer you a bit of assistance would be nice.

        If the best you have to hope for is a totally hands-off non-interventionist God who operates by an unfathomable moral code that applies to him alone and is beyond question of any human… what’s the point? I get no return on the effort of believing, so I choose not to believe. Stuff `im.

  8. Roger Ritthaler says:

    Methinks that Robert Murphy may be suffering from cognitive dissonance: trying to reconcile the old OT (alleged) orders to kill with the libertarian principle of non-agression. Give it up, RM. It won’t work.

  9. Scott says:

    Maybe this post is stale enough that nobody is still reading comments from it, but I thought I’d make a contribution:

    It seems very few of you know much about the background of the Canaanites, or at least you are not bringing it up, and if you ask me it is pertinent to (possibly) understanding the reason(s) God ordered the Israelites to kill them all.

    The Canaanites were Ba’al worshipers. They were polytheists whose principle gods included Ba’al Moloch the Destroyer and Ba’al Zebub, Lord of the Flies and Corruption. Sometimes that is spelled Beelzebub these days. Yes, that name, which those of Christian backgrounds tend to associate with Satan, even though that is not actually what it means.

    Whereas Yahweh asked his people to “walk in justice, atone for sin” etc as an act of worship to Him, Ba’al Moloch, for example, simply preferred children. The Canaanites would build a fantastic bronze idol of Ba’al with a furnace underneath, and periodically would fire it up and toss their babies and children into it. As G.K. Chesterton described, it would be like putting on your Sunday best to go to church and watch the priest roast an infant alive. Except it was worse, because they actually did sometimes hundreds of infants at a time.

    To this day, you can dig up these things in the region. They are known as tophets, and they are full of the remains of hundreds of burned babies.

    So, even if you do not submit to the sovereignty and infallibility of Yahweh, you can at least understand the logic of something like Hammurabi’s code — eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. The Canaanites probably deserved the fate of mass murder at the hands of the Israelites, because they were themselves a society of demon worshiping mass murderers.

    Incidentally, nobody brought up what happened later — the Israelites disobeyed God, sparing the Canaanites, and within a few generations were worshiping Moloch right alongside the Canaanites. You can find injunctions banning this behavior in places like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. That’s why they are there. So, God’s own people polluted themselves with this same behavior. Apparently the demons were too much to resist.

    Also incidentally, Carthage (dark nemesis of Rome) was a colony of Tyrians and Sidonians etc (Canaanites) and worshiped the same gods/demons. And the Romans really did massacre all of the Carthaginians in the third Punic War, before going on to found their vast empire.

    Little historical trivia for ya’.

    • bobmurphy says:

      Thanks. Yes I knew a lot of the above (though I couldn’t have written it off the top of my head). However, I didn’t go that route because the obvious atheist response would be, “So to spare kids from getting burned, the Israelites stuck swords through them? You Christians are nutjobs.”

    • Tel says:

      The Canaanites probably deserved the fate of mass murder at the hands of the Israelites, because they were themselves a society of demon worshiping mass murderers.

      Hmmm, I rather suspect that most of the Canaanites were people far too afraid to put up their hand and ask, “Why are we doing this again?” because in a society with a powerful priesthood that burns babies, it kind of goes without saying that he who asks any questions gets to see his own family in the pot before too long.

      Religious institutions such as the Spanish Inquisition were only a fraction better than the Canaanites demon worshipers (from a humanitarian point of view).

      • Scott says:

        To the first point — we’re not talking about barbed wire fences and machine gun nests, here. If the priesthood was that powerful, it would seem to me reasonable to suspect that the devotion of their followers would have been the source of whatever power they had. And it isn’t as if they had to ‘put up their hands.’ They could have skipped town quietly. Except for the slaves, I suppose.

        Probably, all of that was a natural part of life to them. I doubt many of them much questioned it, in the way most people today don’t much question the status quo. It’s the air they breathe. But the fact that evil has a way of normalizing itself does not change the fact that it is evil.

        To the second — I doubt you would have the same opinion if you could spend awhile living in each place and time. Why don’t you try reading a novel like “Salammbo” by Gustave Flaubert and see what you think? You can read it for free on Google books.

        That is not to say that every single thing that occurred under Christendom in all of time has been perfectly fabulous and straight as an arrow. It just seems to me that the whole of ‘modern decency’ has grown up under the Christian worldview, with a perfectly wonderful concomitant alleviation of material misery. I doubt the modern division of labor would be possible without the example of Christ.

        It is a shame that so many would like to cut the legs out from under it, whether or not they subscribed to Jesus’s divinity or cared much for his followers. Human evil is a powerful and pervasive thing, difficult to drive out. Every tool is a valuable one.

        All things considered, if history is any guide, one shouldn’t expect too much of us. We are, after all, human. I say that the modern world, even with all its flaws, is itself a miracle.

        • Major_Freedom says:

          the devotion of their followers would have been the source of whatever power they had.

          You can’t see how “devotion” can be CAUSED by the power that the priests wielded through the church and the monarchy?

          And it isn’t as if they had to ‘put up their hands.’ They could have skipped town quietly

          At that time, it’s not like they had airplanes, cars, and other vehicles that could quickly transport people away. No, they had horses, camels, donkeys, and their bare feet. Many were probably terrified of leaving because they suspected that they would be branded a heretic, a church denier, a Satan worshipper, etc. The church at that time was not as open to rejection as it is today.

          It just seems to me that the whole of ‘modern decency’ has grown up under the Christian worldview, with a perfectly wonderful concomitant alleviation of material misery. I doubt the modern division of labor would be possible without the example of Christ.

          A modern division of labor society does not require Christian indoctrination, indeed any religious indoctrination.