Understanding God
By His very nature, God is utterly beyond our comprehension. It is very dangerous to try to evaluate God’s actions from a human perspective. For example, recently on Facebook someone commented on my Wall (or whatever we call it nowadays) that the God of the Bible is a genocidal maniac who slaughters children.
Now I understand what would make a libertarian atheist say that to me. (For those who don’t know, I used to be what I called a “devout atheist” in college, and I planned on writing the best critique of the Bible to date, because I thought guys like Paine and Mencken hadn’t done a thorough enough job.) But it really makes no sense at all.
If the God of the Bible exists, then every moment of existence in the entire universe is a direct manifestation of His will. If He hadn’t flooded the world, for example, all of those people still would have died, either from being murdered by other humans or from accidents or from “natural causes.” No matter what, God would have killed these people, if you are going to say He killed them with the Flood.
Thus you’re reduced to saying that you hate God and think He’s a genocidal maniac, because He had the audacity to invent the idea of humans and not grant them immortality. It is literally complaining about being born.
The big problem with the atheist libertarian critique of Christianity is that it takes the actions of the God of the Israelites and imagines they are committed by a very powerful alien, or by a human with amazing technology. Yes, that guy would be a bad ruler.
But the God of the Israelites isn’t a human who has a lot of power. No, it’s more like an author who writes a novel and creates an entire universe in his mind, filling it with characters who live and die, sometimes horribly. Is the author a moral monster because he causes certain characters to do evil things to other characters? Of course not. This is true, even though if the author made a character in the novel become very powerful and start bossing other characters around, then the dominated characters would plausibly call him a tyrant.
Hmm, well how do we decide whether we think the God of the Israelites is good or evil? After all, it’s really hard to even begin to evaluate someone so beyond our nature.
Fortunately, He became a man and walked among us. If you want to dismiss the gospel accounts as fairy tales, fair enough. But to the extent that we analyze them at face value, there’s no doubt that Jesus was the greatest vessel of goodness humanity has ever produced.
Jesus wasn’t a “nice guy,” He was a good man. He showed compassion and gentleness to the powerless, but He had such stinging rebukes of the powerful that they ultimately had Him killed. And let’s not forget that He actually started flipping tables when He saw people turning the temple into a den of thieves.
So if you want to understand God’s character in a way to which we can relate as humans, look to Jesus. There should be no doubt that He is good and can be trusted.
“But the God of the Israelites isn’t a human who has a lot of power. No, it’s more like an author who writes a novel and creates an entire universe in his mind, filling it with characters who live and die, sometimes horribly. Is the author a moral monster because he causes certain characters to do evil things to other characters? Of course not.”
Seems that you’re dismissing the possibility too quickly, as an author who is responsible for inflicting suffering on his conscious, usually helpless characters would be morally responsible for their pain and infinitely guilty were their suffering infinite (as in the case of a particularly stupid or overly smart person who wound up being tortured eternally due to ignorance or heartfelt conviction).
What you’re describing is the plot of Stranger than Fiction: an author who chooses whether to inflict harm on a living, conscious character for her own benefit. It’s difficult to see how Emma Thompson’s character in that movie would not have been a moral monster had she knowingly murdered Will Ferrell for the sake of her novel. And the suffering of innocents in this universe is extraordinary, far greater than what a single IRS auditor would face in death. The existence of prey animals alone indicates a serious problem for people who want to wave off the problem of natural evil with a CS Lewis-style dismissal.
As someone pointed out long ago, if Nature has anything to say about the qualities of its creator, it’s that he must be awfully fond of bloodbaths and mass extinction.
The God of the Bible/lsrael at the time of the genocidal stage was not the monotheistic God at the time of the New Testament. Accusing the God of Christianity of being a genocidal maniac makes as much sense as comparing tenth century crusades to twenty first century Islamic terrorism, i.e. a non sequitur of millennial proportions.
Now, I get the idea that it is difficult to judge God by human standards, but it surely makes no sense to say the God of the old testament is not the same God as the new testament. What happened to the old one? We could say the old testament is just wrong, not divinely inspired at all. You seem to be saying that God has changed.
Even a relatively superficial reading of the Old Testament shows that the Jewish understanding of God grew throughout the OT from a God who was the tribal/family God to a God who was above all gods to the One God. The case for the Jewish people’s belief in multiple gods is also well supported by archeology.
So Jews are continuing to worship a false god?
What an interesting misreading!
A child who loves his or her father knows only the man who plays and occasionally takes on the mother’s chores. He does not make the deeper connection of love by learning that the father’s true sacrifice is when he leaves the child each day to support his family. Because the child does not make that connection does not make the father a “false father.”
You clearly wrote the Old Testament deity is not the same as the New Testament deity so if Jews are continuing worship the deity as per the Old Testament/Torah then they are worshipping a separate deity from Christians. Maybe the Old Testament deity was Baal, Marduk or Ares.
I think we need to clarify – khodge, do you mean that man’s understanding of god has changed, but God has actually been the same all along?
“No, it’s more like an author who writes a novel and creates an entire universe in his mind, filling it with characters who live and die, sometimes horribly. Is the author a moral monster because he causes certain characters to do evil things to other characters? Of course not. This is true, even though if the author made a character in the novel become very powerful and start bossing other characters around, then the dominated characters would plausibly call him a tyrant.” Bob, you’ve used this example in lots of posts, but I don’t see the significance. The reason we wouldn’t blame an author for the suffering of his characters is not that he created them, but rather that they’re fictional and thus don’t matter. So I don’t see how it implies that we wouldn’t blame a creator of real beings.
“Thus you’re reduced to saying that you hate God and think He’s a genocidal maniac, because He had the audacity to invent the idea of humans and not grant them immortality. It is literally complaining about being born.”
-I think this is like Chicago School economists differentiating between anticipated and unanticipated inflation. The former is acceptable; the latter should be avoided unless necessary.
Bob, but what about when God intervenes and makes individuals do good or bad things? I’ll take your point that we cannot evaluate God based on the flood and other such events, and the point that we can evaluate God based on how Jesus behaved as a man. What about the almost sacrifice of Isaac then though? There God directly intervened telling a man to kill his son. That act committed by a man would be heinous and so is the intention to commit this act. I am not a Christian, nor do I know the Bible very well (I know the Bible mostly from the paintings hanging in the museums around the world and popular culture), so no doubt I am missing something here, but what am I missing exactly?
Toby,
I am not going to be coy; I certainly am not comfortable with that part of the Bible (let alone the part where God orders the Israelites to take a city and slaughter people).
For sure, we can say two things about Abraham/Isaac that put it into perspective:
==> God didn’t actually have Abraham do it; He stopped him at the last moment. The point wasn’t that God wanted Abraham to kill his son, but rather, he wanted Abraham to signify that he would sacrifice his most precious possessions to serve God.
==> It’s a metaphor for God who DID send His only Son to die for us. In other words, part of the rhetorical purpose of Abraham/Isaac is to warm people up to the sacrifice that God would make. If you think, “Ugh, I can’t believe God would have required that of Abraham,” then at the very least you should say, “Wow! I can’t believe God let His own Son die in order to save all of us who rejected Him.”
Now, beyond those two obvious points, there are other ones I’m not as sure about. Some people say that the mountain Abraham and Isaac ascended was the same one (hill) that Jesus ascended for His crucifixion, but others dispute that. (I don’t know enough to take a stand. Here’s a discussion thread to show what I mean; I can’t find more authoritative sources right now.)
Another thing that I cannot personally verify (but I have heard Christians say when commenting on this episode) is that child sacrifice was a common custom among pagans of that day. So even though it strikes us as monstrous, it wasn’t so inconceivable to Abraham that his God would demand a child sacrifice, because the gods of other tribes would do similar things. What *was* different was that Abraham’s God stopped him at the last moment, and then (eventually) turned the tables and sacrificed His Son for Abraham’s descendants (and those of the other tribes).
Bob, you wrote “If you want to dismiss the gospel accounts as fairy tales, fair enough. But to the extent that we analyze them at face value, there’s no doubt that Jesus was the greatest vessel of goodness humanity has ever produced.”
I am not sure if it is dismissing it as fairy tales, but how do you accept at face value something which was written specifically by people who idolized Jesus, and which is known to include additions after the fact? If Brad DeLong and Daniel Kuehn wrote the biography of Krugman (which, to the extent that we analyze at face value, there’s no doubt Krugman was the greatest vessel of economics humanity has ever produced) would you just accept it?
Also, what does it mean to say Jesus is the greatest vessel of goodness humanity has ever produced? In what sense was he produced by humanity, being that he is God personified in human form?
Happy Easter BTW 😉
How convenient God is “unknowable” when He is always is defined as “unknowable”. If it is proved that the Multiverse exists does God then become the entity that created the Multiverse now? If it could be shown there are some 10 the power of 500 possible Universes and we happen to exist in the minority of stable Universes do Creationists then say God created the conditions so that some Universes are stable while most are not? Where does it end? Thanks to science it’s becoming clear the “the creation requires a creator” is on par with “there was a unicorn feeding in the front lawn but you just missed it please believe me”.
By the same token – no God doesn’t get a free pass to immorality. Any lord who told a man he should sacrifice his son to prove his allegiance to the lord is immoral, period. It would be morally defunct to say God created Everything therefore whatever He does and says is moral because He created His toys and if He wants to smash some then that’s fine. If God does or command something that is immoral for anyone else to do so then it’s immoral period.
Bob,
First off, thank you for all you do. There are not too many rational economists in the world so thanks for helping to combat the insanity. That said, I have always been disappointed by your regular religious posts. I am an atheist and an anarcho capitalist. I have always found religions of every type to be irrational and dangerous. I rejected Christianity instinctually as a child and was confused as to why grown-ups were believing these stories. I did not know that you were an atheist in you earlier life. I am fascinated by the phenomenon of atheists becoming religious. I can’t wrap my head around how that could possibly happen to a seemingly rational person. I would love to hear how that happened.
Thanks again and Happy Easter. 🙂
“By His very nature, God is utterly beyond our comprehension. It is very dangerous to try to evaluate God’s actions from a human perspective…”
Then proceeds to explain what God is and what God is not.
Including God being a “He”…
From a necessarily human perspective.
I am disappointed Major.Freedom. You are normally so rational and sane. I am bewildered that someone of your intelligence could completely fail to grasp something as simple as how pronouns work in the English language.
I am disappointed that you don’t see how using pronouns in the English language to describe God necessarily entail an understanding God from a human perspective!
Maybe it is even more dangerous *not* to try to evaluate God’s actions from a human perspective?
“If the God of the Bible exists, then every moment of existence in the entire universe is a direct manifestation of His will”
Then this negates the presence of free will. No free will means no sin. No sin means no threat of hell. No threat of hell means no reason for the Plan of Salvation, rendering the actions of Jesus dying on the cross in order to save us from our sins unnecessary because any action we have performed in so-called “sin” were not performed by our own actions and wills alone, because as you said “every moment of existence is a direct manifestation of his will,” or as others might argue “every movement needs a mover.” Ergo our actions are a direct reaction of his influence upon us and the only one that can be held accountable for any good or ill in the universe is God himself.
Oh and one more thing: if we cannot begrudge God for his acts of horrific genocide because the “people were going to die anyway,” then let’s set ALL THE MURDERERS FREE! Because if they hadn’t killed their victims, eventually they would have died anyway!