I really enjoy reading the bible but i just can't get over the cruelty of it. [Spirituality & Religion]
Every time i read something like "And then they burned him and his family alive" or "and they killed every man, woman and child" it just bums me out. How can this be the will of a loving god? That's a hard pill to swallow.
Thoughts?
[c=#BF0000]Edit*[/c][b][i][c=#BF0000]Can you imagine killing even a single little girl? That sweet, round little face looking up at you in terror as you cut her open? Much less THOUSANDS?! And that is what a just, loving, RIGHTEOUS god orders? I can't see that.[/c][/i][/b]
Man, if you're a human being and think yourself incapable of proudly killing a small child under the right circumstances, you straight up don't yourself that well.
Ironically, centuries of aggressive brainwashing in the sorts of religions like Christianity which were permitted by the relative tranquility of the early Pax Romana to blithely feel out what the human condition is like when it takes the absence of constant life-and-death threats to "your people" for granted is pretty much [i]why[/i] (most of the well-adjusted, at least) modern people find child-murder fundamentally abhorrent and return error messages when trying to understanding why anyone would do it.
But yeah, [i]most[/i] of what Christians call "the Bible" was written in times when the suggestion of a forgiving, peaceful, and loving god would have been met by any sane person with the response, "Why would I possibly want to worship a god who won't bring me victory over my enemies?". A few texts in the Ketuvim start to show signs of glimpsing something "beyond" this perennially violent outlook, since Achaemenid times were kind of the start in the Near Eastern world of the necessary rerouting of notions of group-identity away from fervent loyalty to one's own sovereign national polity, owing to the fact that these were largely ceasing to exist outside of rebellious satraps and at least nominal Persian vassals (a general development with which the Assyrian and Babylonian imperialisms earlier in the 1st millennium BC — during the time when most of the so-called "Old Testament" was actually written — had certainly been pregnant, but which had gone unfulfilled because the prevailing "great powers" system could never be satisfactorily broken). This turn away from the ancient style of "spiritual nationalism" was really brought to bloom (and even encompassed the Greeks) with the superimposed gloss and ideal of Hellenistic culture over the Near East, with all the territories and traditions of the ancient nations and powers largely reduced to "objects of play" for Greco-Macedonian armies/navies; it was then brought to perfection somewhat before New Testament times with the general replacement of most interstate annihilation-wars with what was basically a lengthy "ancient Cold War" between Rome and the Arsacids, and all of the sudden you had a bunch of people who couldn't any longer find religious meaning in the cathartic revelry of needlessly destroying what your hated enemy was most trying to protect. People living in any age tend to rediscover this feeling during war, and the inability to reconcile that rediscovery with how "unthinkable" it all is according to the culture they grew up in plays its role in more than a few modern cases of PTSD.
[quote]you straight up don't yourself that well.[/quote]
I think i straight up DO myself that well and i know that i wouldn't murder a child just because someone i loved, respected or feared told me to do it.
But I think your assessment of the bible in terms of the cultural and political environment of the time is a lot more practical than the complete abdication of moral responsibility espoused by those who declare that these things are right because god commanded it.
@Pikachu I fully agree you probably [i]wouldn't[/i], in fact I suspect that even if things become quite dark and unstable you will still probably go to your grave without ever seriously having felt the urge and fully retaining your disgust for the very idea. All I'm saying is you definitely [i]could[/i], same as any of the rest of us.
Yes it’s like when I read the work of atheistic regimes in the 20th and 21st centuries the way they murdered millions of men women and children. I think that is what you should be more concerned with rather than something that happened thousands and thousands of years ago. You appear to be unconcerned with these things though. Modern atrocities move you at all. Shall I tell shall I tell you what I you why? Because you are into point scoring rather than truth. If you are really into truth you would be far more concerned with what’s happening today then what happened thousands of years ago. So why don’t you start getting concerned about kids are starving to death in the world today rather than what happened thousands of years ago? I know so many Christians who are trying to help kids who was starving in the world by feeding them. Why don’t you help the sponsor some of these kids instead of crowing on your little website?
In your own life, RIGHT NOW, someone tells you to love your neighbour and also tells you to slaughter your enemies down to the last child, do you call that person good?
Reading the Bible to you is kind of like abortion to a believer...we don't understand it. The old testament when a nation is killed it was the judgment of God on a wicked nation.
@Pikachu if you didn't believe the first chapter why would you continue? Also, was you reading the bible in the same place the last time you inquired on this issue several months back?
Oh, you would recommend to people that if they don't believe genesis then they should just [i]abandon[/i] reading the bible? Interesting take. Not a good path to salvation perhaps, but interesting.
[quote]several months back?[/quote]
No...i don't think that was me. Although this is an issues that i've had since the first time i read the bible more than a decade ago.
@Pikachu Definitely not a good path to salvation, I would have to agree. I take the Bible as being inerrant at a whole which is why I stated that...I suppose everyone doesn't accept the Bible as I do. I'M also a KJV bible believer. I think newer bibles have been corrupted and have an agenda behind the changes. I retract my statement regarding the first chapter of the bible. Its good that you are reading it. Thats more then a lot of people can say, Christians in majority. I thought it was you that mentioned it before, my apologies if im incorrect.
I know I feel the same its difficult. contridictions about being a loving forgiving god and then killing everyone off . God didnt write the bible though man did.
@Pikachu [quote]Your desperation to change the subject is telling. [/quote]
You're the one sounding desperate, my friend, not me. You're trying to blame God for the same thing that those abortion clinics are doing. You're something else.
@Pikachu yeah it will take a while but im always on so if you message me I'll get it. Just if you wantvto discuss it.
SW-User
God is a righteous God. He gave life and he has the authority to take it, especially when he feels that it's for betterment of mankind. He destroys the wicked.
Having the authority to do a thing is not the same as being morally justified in doing that thing. I have the authority to put down my dog.
[quote]He destroys the wicked.[/quote]
Including babies. Never met a wicked baby, myself.
SW-User
@Pikachu Moral? If there is no God, there is no such thing as morally right or wrong. It's all subjective without God. And you don't believe in God, do you?
There is absolutely objective morality without god. It's easy: what decreases human suffering and what promotes human flourishing. Murdering babies by the thousands objectively promotes human suffering so it is not moral.
But i won't allow you to deflect from the issue. The fact that one has authority to do something does not automatically make that action moral.
I don't think there is any condition under which killing babies by the thousands, tens of thousands or millions is a moral action. And i suspect if you read about Allah or some other religion's god doing it, you would call it monstrous.
@Speedyman Oh, we've grown in our morality too. For one, we no longer celebrate or promote genocide and killing of non-combatants - we try to hide and minimize it out of shame.
Further ahead in the whole "knowledge of good and evil" thing.
@Pikachu same thing. I was listening to the conversation between man and woman with my mother. Even though she was born as a Christian, she too felt the story was ridiculous.
