In a recent thread, I challenged Christians and other believers to explain why their supposedly loving God treats people so poorly. Toward the end of the thread, I commented:
We’re more than 1200 comments into this thread, and still none of the believers can explain why their “loving” God shits all over people, day after day.
If you loved someone, would you purposely trap them under the rubble of a collapsed building? Or drown them? Or drive them from their home and destroy their possessions? [Or stand by, doing nothing, while a maniac mowed them down using automatic weapons?]
Your supposedly loving God does that. Why?
As you’d expect, the Christians struggled to find a good answer. One of their failed attempts was to appeal to the Cross. Fifthmonarchyman, for instance, wrote this:
I just think that the way to understand God’s love is to look at the Cross and not at the latest natural disaster.
That’s fairly typical. Christians do see the Cross as a great symbol of love. Jesus was willing to lay down his life for us, after all. What could be more loving than that?
The problem is that they haven’t thought things through. When you do, the Cross becomes rather appalling. Here’s how I put it in response to FMM:
That’s right. God had the power to forgive Adam and Eve. A loving God would have forgiven them. The Christian God refused to forgive them, banished them from the Garden, made their lives miserable, and then blamed their descendants as if they had anything to do with it.
The Christian God is an unloving asshole. Thank God (so to speak) that he doesn’t exist.
And just to complete the picture, he decides that since Adam and Eve ate a particular fruit — something he knew would happen before he even created them — everyone must be tortured for eternity after they die. (Can’t you feel the love?)
But wait — there’s a way out! This psychotic God is willing to forgive us after all, because he tortured himself to death! He just needed a little more blood and gore in order to forgive us, that’s all. (Can’t you feel the love?)
So FMM comes along and says “ignore the natural disasters, ignore all the ways God torments people, and look to the Cross,” as if the cross were some great symbol of love. It isn’t. It’s the symbol of a creepy God who
a) creates people and sticks them in a Garden;
b) gets the bright idea of putting a tree in the Garden that he doesn’t want them to eat from;
c) blames them for eating from it, even though he knew that would happen before he even created them;
d) blames their descendants, as if they had anything to do with it;
e) decides that everyone must be tortured for eternity, because Adam and Eve ate from a tree that he was stupid enough to put in the Garden;
f) decides that he might be willing to forgive everyone in exchange for more blood and gore;
g) in the ultimate act of self-loathing, tortures himself to death; and
h) with his blood lust satisfied, finally agrees to forgive people;
i) except that even with his bloodlust temporarily satisfied, he’s still an asshole; so
j) he decides that he’s still going to torture for eternity the folks who don’t believe in him at the moment of death, and only forgive the ones who suck up to him.
Can’t you feel the love?
Christians, pause and ask yourselves: What happened to me? How did I end up believing something as stupid and ridiculous as Christianity? Why am I labeling this monstrous God as ‘loving’?
The Holy Spirit is a wondrous thing. It descends on people, making them incredibly stupid. It even makes them forget what love is.
Now, I’m fully aware that Christians don’t all agree on the historicity of the Adam and Eve story or on how atonement works. We can discuss some of those differences in the comments below. But I do think it’s striking that Christians have not come up with a story that makes sense, and that a large number of them unwittingly hold beliefs that paint God as monstrous, not loving, and the Cross as the symbol not of love, but of a petty and ungenerous refusal to forgive until blood is spilled.
The Cross truly is an embarrassment, right at the heart of Christianity.
colewd,
That’s wrong, but it’s a topic best discussed on the other thread, not this one.
If you can evaluate the Bible based on the evidence inside the well, then you can evaluate God’s behavior based on that evidence too.
So please drop the stupid “well” argument.
We can figure out pretty well that it was produced by humans influenced by their cultures and experiences, like other writings.
Which suggests that there’s nothing very transcendent about it.
Glen Davidson
Certainly one can read it that way. (I do.)
question is whether one could establish a positive claim about transcendent reality on the basis of Biblical interpretation without begging the question.
I don’t see how.
On the other hand, the impossibility of doing so also does not license any negative claims about transcendent reality, either.
Hypothetically, I suppose God could have just forgiven sins like writing off a debt rather than sacrifice his son.
The book of Revelation as well as the Gospels describes Jesus as the groom and the church as the bride. There is something beautiful about a man willing to risk his life, to suffer for someone he loves. All the more beautiful that when he dies he comes back to life. That would be incredible material for a novel.
The fact of genders in biology is a beautiful thing. It is the picture God uses to describe indirectly the meaning of the cross.
I once was talking about how senseless evolutionary biology was to explain things like the female spider who kills the male spider and feeds on him after he does his duty to spawn new life in her. This behavior isn’t all spiders. David Berlinski rightly pointed out the ad hoc nature of an explanation that explains such behavior in one species of spider but not another.
There are similar strange rituals throughout nature where the male is sacrificed for the life of the female. About 10 years ago while teaching ID, I related this strange feature of biology to some Christian college students. The girls in the audience immediately understood the significance and tragic beauty of what it symbolized — a male giving up his life for the female.
Keiths mis-interprets the symbolism conveyed, he has the wrong perspective, if he applied more of a romantic and artistic viewpoint, he might actually see something beautiful.
The cross shows how God can take an awful situation and redeem it. There is no great glory without some tragedy. Dramatists and novelists and story tellers and sportscasters understand truths that a lot of dismissive atheists don’t seem to appreciate.
The fact that we don’t seem to encounter it anywhere does seem to provide some warrant to the notion that it’s not available to us.
Absence of evidence can mean something cumulatively.
Glen Davidson
Bill,
Take a step back and really think about this.
You’ve acknowledged that we do receive information down here at the bottom of the well. That information allows us to make judgments, to craft and test theories about the world, and so on.
However, you want to argue that I’m not in a position to judge God’s behavior. His behavior makes him look like an asshole, but I’m not seeing the whole picture. There may be something I’m not aware of — something I’m not seeing down here at the bottom of the well — that explains why a good and loving God does such apparently assholish things.
True enough. It’s logically possible that the big picture looks different. But that’s also true for any other empirical belief that you or I hold, including about the Bible and about meteorology. The “well” argument accomplishes nothing more than to point out that empirical knowledge depends on the (incomplete) evidence available to us. Well, duh!
So what do rational folks do? They base their judgments on the information available to them, despite the fact that the information may be incomplete.
What do Christians do? In most areas of life, they do the same thing. But when it comes to the question of whether God is loving, suddenly that approach gets tossed out the window. Christians can’t tolerate the idea that God isn’t loving, no matter what the evidence says. So they assume that he’s loving and they fight against the evidence (if they even think about it at all).
It’s deeply irrational, and it’s the opposite of what a truth seeker would do. But most Christians don’t want the truth; they want to believe in a loving God, whether that belief is true or false.
It creates enormous dissonance in people like Vincent. You can see that he’s aware of how damning the evidence is, and how hard he fights to find excuses for God’s behavior. I can emphathize. I remember how it felt when I was a Christian struggling to hold on to my faith.
At some point I decided that I wanted to pursue the truth, whatever it turned out to be. If Christianity were true, then great — but I wanted to be able to say “Christianity is true” knowing that I had evaluated the evidence honestly and to the best of my abilities. If I could do that, then the dissonance would be gone, and my faith would be rational. If Christianity turned out not to be true, however, then I wanted to be honest and acknowledge that. The dissonance would be gone in either case. I would be embracing the evidence instead of fighting it.
Well, I did evaluate the evidence (and continue to do so), and of course it led me away from Christianity.
It also led me to give up my goofy belief in a powerful and loving God.
The dissonance is gone now. The world makes so much more sense when you aren’t constantly fighting against the truth.
How so?
There are plenty of atheists among dramatists, novelists, and story-tellers — and among sportscasters, too, I would imagine. For that matter, atheists are perfectly capable of appreciating Scripture for its literary and moral truths, if it has any. (Personally I don’t think there are any deep moral truths in the New Testament that aren’t already to be found in Plato, but that’s just me.)
If all spiders are the same kind ,how do you explain different behaviors? God’s quirky sense of humor?
I think God has a sense of humor and romance. It’s evidence in nature really bothered Darwin, such as:
There are things on human timescales that aren’t so evident. On a longer timescale than just seeing a man die on a cross, one could see him in Glory, then the tragedy makes sense like a great novel with a happy ending.
To that end, here is something that can be appreciated if we have different timescale:
Is the following behavior in the video by chance or design? “Greater love hath no man than to lay his life down for his love.” (paraphrasing something Jesus said, but can be synthesized in many ways from other passages in the Bible.)
If by design, then suffering for a mate is by design, and by way of extension is Christ dying for his bride. Again, the symbolism was not lost on many Christians familiar with the theme of God dying to be with the woman (the church) he loved. I don’t believe such symbols as in this video are accidental:
Nothing says romance and funny better than being devoured.
Or he could die peacefully in bed which also makes a great ending.
Jesus knew God existed for a fact( assuming divinity of Christ) , a greater love might be the sacrifice of oneself without certainly of an afterlife for a stranger.
By extension Biblical approval of same sex marriage?
Why would a organization run exclusively by men be feminine?
Sounds a bit paganistic,fertility symbolism.
keiths,
Your just wrong in understanding my point. Then , probably, wrong about the point that God didn’t bring the flood. Though it was his allowance.
Satan, I think, was the one and God understood that he could only be allowed to destroy things one way.
So in effect only the flood being allowed meant God had the responsibility.
Watch the physics here of motive and action.
vjtorley:
Most Christians believe that God is capable of that sort of counterfactual foreknowledge, so they can’t employ that defense. And if God isn’t capable of that sort of foreknowledge because the level of detail is too much for him, then you are implying a God of rather limited power.
And if you take that position — that there’s a certain level of detail beyond which God can’t make accurate counterfactual “predictions” — then you still need to explain why God doesn’t act to prevent horrors that fall within that limit.
vjtorley:
That rationalization doesn’t work. God didn’t say “they have a plan” or “Saul has a plan”. He said “They will” and “He will”:
keiths:
Vincent:
Yes, and a loving human being could, after seeing that the cat was in danger, act to rescue it. Your God doesn’t bother. So you and your fellow Christians twist yourself into pretzels trying to justify God’s unloving response to the impending death.
In your attempt to get God off the hook, you end up debasing love, turning it into something ugly and grotesque.
To get a good feeling for God’s “love”, watch the following video. Don’t shy away from the part beginning around 17:00. Remember, you’re seeing God’s bountiful love in (in)action — the love you described as “greater than any of us can possibly imagine.”
After you’re done watching it, grab yourself by the shoulders, give them a rough shake, and ask yourself: “What the fuck happened to me? Why am I defending the ‘unshakable love’ of a God who stands by, doing nothing, when a horror like that is unfolding? Is that a love ‘greater than any of us can possibly imagine’?”
Look what religious dogma — and your irrational urge to defend it — have done to you, Vincent.
Believers,
The next time you are in church, pause to remember that Jordanian pilot, Muath Al-Kasasbeh, and his screams of agony. Remind yourselves that you are worshiping a God who watched him suffer an excruciating death and did nothing to stop it.
Then ask yourselves: “Why? Why didn’t he put a stop to it? Why am I worshiping this unloving monster?”
keiths,
Yea, says keiths!
And not only that, why hasn’t God stopped the assholes who have babies who know they will die. All God would have to do is stop the Jordanian pilots mother from being able to conceive. How hard would that be. Just give her a benign tumor in her uterus, piece of cake. Keiths is so angry God doesn’t sterilize more people.
Using your model of Boethian Divine Foreknowledge, how does God enable individuals to attain their ultimate destiny without universal counterfactual knowledge of that individual’s actions and their outcomes?
RoyLT, to Vincent:
Vincent,
Also, how do you respond to my earlier criticism of your model, below?
phoodoo,
Because in phoodoo’s mind, those are the only two choices. Let a man burn to death in a cage, or prevent him from being born. As if no other options were available to the creator of the universe.
So phoodoo’s ‘loving’ God does nothing, and phoodoo sings his praises.
Byers,
I understand your point. I’m just elucidating the consequences.
According to the Bible, God says that he — not Satan — flooded the earth, killing “all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it.”
Therefore, by sheer logic, at least one of the following statements must be true:
You’ve told us that you reject #1. If you are right, and #1 is false, then either #2 is true, #3 is true, or both #2 and #3 are true.
Which is it?
I realize that this is frying your circuits and causing smoke to come out of your ears, but you have no other rational option.
Sal,
So you think the reason there are people being tortured for eternity, rather than being forgiven, is because God likes a good story?
You’re supposed to be defending the Christian God, Sal. Instead you’re just confirming that he’s an ass.
Sal,
Yes, and it would have been the loving thing to do. Why did God insist that Someone Must Pay? And why is he such an ass that he accepted that payment on behalf of the people who believe in him, but not on behalf of the people who don’t? Particularly when the payment was large enough to cover everyone’s debt?
The Cross really is an ugly embarrassment.
But you are saying that the best option. Because people are assholes for having babies that are mortal, so why don’t they just choose not to have them, problem solved.
Oh, I forgot, you don’t want people to choose, right? Then they wouldn’t be such assholes, if they didn’t get to choose?
If nothing occurs without God, He is still on the hook for the babies.
phoodoo,
It must be frustrating to be so impotent at defending your God.
Explain to us how choice would be endangered if God had stepped in to rescue Muath al-Kasasbeh from his horrifying death.
Who says nothing occurs without God? I have no idea what that means. In this world, many people believe we have free will. Maybe you don’t believe that.
Keiths wishes we didn’t have free will, so we wouldn’t be such assholes.
Keiths hates free will.
phoodoo:
Instead of just making shit up, why not rise to my challenge? Explain to us why choice would be endangered if God had stepped in to rescue Muath al-Kasasbeh from being burned alive in a cage.
You’re angry because if God goes around rescuing people from horrible deaths, then you won’t get to choose between Cheerios and Froot Loops for breakfast. How does that work, exactly?
One thing from the OP that nobody has addressed is this:
What’s that all about? Why put the tree there in the first place?
If the paradise myth is taken in a materialistic literal sense then it makes no sense. But if it is taken as a pictoral story of the birth of the human ego then it becomes clearer. The above sentences should not be taken in the manner of a conversation between separate people. If we take “I” to mean the ego then these words take on a different meaning. Through the “I” or ego evil has come into the world. It can never be said of minerals, plants or animals that they are evil, they have no choice but to follow their own nature. But humans, because of their self conscious egos do have choices in the paths they take.
The Lord is the Divine Ego, “I Am That I Am” And when in Genesis 6:7 the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth”, one meaning which can be gained from this is that the spark of the Divine, the human ego, can only reach its true potential by destroying the living substance from which it is born.
In Matthew 10:34 we read: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” That is the consequence of the coming of the ego, the fact that humans have eaten from “the Tree of Knowledge”. This Tree represents the human senses and nervous system which allows us to have our self-consciousness.
You read the Bible in order to pick holes in it, I read it in the hope of gaining understanding. I doubt that either of us will convince the other that our reading is more accurate but I just wanted to give an alternative viewpoint.
What if God is not standing by, doing nothing?
Meister Eckhart says: “God is nearer to me than I am to myself.”
God does not just stand and watch, God is within every one of us, experiencing our pain with us. Be sure that whatever pain anyone on earth is suffering God is there sharing in that suffering.
You may ask, Why put us through such suffering? Well we can remain at the stage of plants which have no choice but to be lead by their nature, or we can experience the spark of the Divine within us which means our progression becomes our own responsibility. And just as we learn by experience that if we touch a flame it causes pain, we only learn to keep to the right path by experiencing the pain that is caused by following the wrong path.
Do you believe the Genesis account should be taken literally? Or do you believe it was written as more of an allegory?
keiths,
Save everyone always keiths, or just save some?
That’s the problem you can’t seem to ponder.
Why don’t you rise to my challenge and tell me why every parent who ever lived isn’t an asshole, according to your standards?
Pretty standard catechism, God is the cause of all things.
You can choose to try to have children
Certainly not libertarian free will.
More accurately I think keiths wonders whether being designed as “assholes” is necessary for free will to exist
Why do you care what keiths feels?
Huh?
keiths says God is an asshole, for making people who must die.
Well, then humans must also be, right?
So just asking if you agree with this crazy idea of his.
Or at least suffer, think that is fairly accurate paraphrase
Humans are not omnipotent, they do not have the ability to change whether people must suffer or children die of painful diseases. In fact most humans do everything in their limited way to eliminate those things.
I get your point but then problem is worse for God.He designed us with the overwhelming hormonal urges to have sex. He commanded us to be fruitful and multiply. He required procreation to occur for salvation . If you are correct He commanded people to be assholes
Let me think about it
phoodoo,
This is not difficult.
As newton just pointed out, loving parents do what they can to make their children happy and safe. Being human, however, there’s only so much they can do. God, however, is not so limited. Despite having far more power, he will stand by, doing nothing, when (for example) a dog eats the head of a living baby.
He’s an asshole.
You reply, “No! He’s not an asshole! He does that because otherwise we wouldn’t have choice.”
When God sees that dog preparing to eat the baby’s head, he decides not to intervene. He just watches it happen — something no loving parent would do. Why? How would rescuing that baby from that dog imperil humanity’s freedom to choose?
And while you’re at it:
How would God’s rescue of al-Kasasbeh imperil your ability to choose your breakfast cereal?
CharlieM:
So you think the Dear Leader (Steiner) got it completely wrong, then. He wrote:
How did Steiner mess that one up so badly, in your opinion?
CharlieM,
That Jordanian pilot experienced “the spark of the Divine”, all right. I’ll bet he would have preferred a bit less Divine Spark and a little more Divine Kindness.
So your thesis is that he needed to be burned to death in a cage, and that this was a gift from God to help him progress spiritually?
That’s fucked up, Charlie.
Let me see if I have this right. keiths thinks the cross is an embarrassment to Christianity because God did not step in to rescue Jesus from his horrifying death on the cross?
No. Read the OP, Mung.
If one expected God to intervene to save us each time something bad was to happen it would affect our choices. We would no longer need to consider the ramifications of our choices. Our environment would cease to shape our decisions It would skew how we exercised our free will.
If it is good for humanity to learn from mistakes ,God constant intervention would be in conflict that good.
So by the logic you are using it cannot both be true that there are allegories in the Iliad and that Troy actually existed.
Have you read anything concerning Steiner’s belief on the location of the Garden of Eden, about the Fall, about the meaning behind the Serpent, the Trees of Life and of Knowledge, the relationship between the name Adam and any single human being?
Even allowing for your incomplete view of Steiner’s accounts of these topics why do you think that it is a bad thing that what he believed at one time or other may have changed over the course of his life? His views changed and he got things wrong, so what?
Anyway enough about Steiner, you still haven’t answered my question. Do you believe the Genesis account should be taken literally? Or do you believe it was written as more of an allegory?
No my thesis is that he was burned to death by the actions of human beings who were exercising their free will and who will be required to take responsibility and account for the consequences of their actions.
I like it.
CharlieM,
So why didn’t God intervene, then? What purpose was served by al-Kasasbeh’s agony? You appear to be backing away from your earlier statement: