Open Discussion With Lnc

[Abiyoyo]

I took a look at that verse. The word for "brother" denotes a kinship. A relative but could be a countryman I suppose ( member of the same tribe by extension). The word for "bondservant" is a slave. It says don't make your kinsman a slave. The next verse says to keep him as a hired man until the Jubilee (which is essentially every 49/50 years and not always celebrated). So slaves exist by this very verse.

 

mwc

 

That was for fellow Jews. The verses above that relate to foreigners( see below). Seems that bondservants (or slaves) were not wanted according to Leviticus, and some of the other Biblical scriptures seem to imply instructions for if they had/obtained bondservants anyhow.

 

 

 

Lev 25:35-39

35 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.

36 Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

37 Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

38 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:

(KJV)

[Abiyoyo]

So what's the difference between the angels and humans?

 

Fleshly desires

 

What is the difference between angels and humans? Angels can disappear, and humans can't. Angels can see God whenever they want, be messengers for God directly(without error), & humans can't. They know who has favor with God, as humans don't know.

 

I don't know : Why do you ask?

[Abiyoyo]

I mean, what is the reason to God wanting or needing humans at all?

 

Caus' we are His children's

So what's the difference between the angels and humans?

 

Are you asking what's the difference between the two, relating to God's children? What happened to Satan, is that what your referring too?

[R. S. Martin]

Forget slavery then, take 1 Samuel 15:3, wherein God orders the killing of small children and babies. Wasn't that immoral?

 

That falls into the God having attributes attached to Him. They said God did it, but did He really? Just like Satan moved David to number Israel in Chronicles, and it's not mentioned in Samuel. Why would God kill infants? The same God that supposedly had protected, followed Israel around in clouds, and tabernacle's, helped them against giants, destroyed Sodom, but first letting the justified escape.

 

See my point.

 

The only people who escaped were Lot, his wife (though she didn't really escape in the end), and his two daughters. All the women and children of those men died. How were they not guilty or not "justified" to use your term?

[Ouroboros]

I don't know : Why do you ask?

Why are creatures like us children of God, while angels aren't?

[Ouroboros]

Are you asking what's the difference between the two, relating to God's children? What happened to Satan, is that what your referring too?

Kind'a. Why would humans be children of God and angels would not? Is it because we're finite? Angels obviously have free will too, since Satan rebelled against God. So it's not free will, or the ability to disobey God. And demons and the Devil will get Hell for what they did, and humans will get Hell for just not believing in God. And when humans who go to heaven go there, they can't sin, because their free will is surgically removed from their souls (spiritual lobotomy?), so what is it that's so special about humans? Angels get to keep their free will, and they are eternal creatures, and they get punished for obvious acts against God, while humans will have their free will removed as reward, or sent to Hell as a punishment for not believing in very vague and strange fairy tales. I'd say the angels got the better deal.

[Abiyoyo]

The only people who escaped were Lot, his wife (though she didn't really escape in the end), and his two daughters. All the women and children of those men died. How were they not guilty or not "justified" to use your term?

 

Stand corrected on that. I thought for some reason their was another. Moving along. I would assume the rest weren't justified because it says God destroyed them...or as we earlier, maybe that's the writers elaboration and story formed within God to describe God. Dunno.

[Abiyoyo]

Are you asking what's the difference between the two, relating to God's children? What happened to Satan, is that what your referring too?

Kind'a. Why would humans be children of God and angels would not? Is it because we're finite? Angels obviously have free will too, since Satan rebelled against God. So it's not free will, or the ability to disobey God. And demons and the Devil will get Hell for what they did, and humans will get Hell for just not believing in God. And when humans who go to heaven go there, they can't sin, because their free will is surgically removed from their souls (spiritual lobotomy?), so what is it that's so special about humans? Angels get to keep their free will, and they are eternal creatures, and they get punished for obvious acts against God, while humans will have their free will removed as reward, or sent to Hell as a punishment for not believing in very vague and strange fairy tales. I'd say the angels got the better deal.

 

I think God would be move forgiving to humans than angels; as they have more knowledge of God?

[Ouroboros]

I think God would be move forgiving to humans than angels; as they have more knowledge of God?

Yeah, one would think so. Considering this view one would conclude that Hell (same punishment as the demons) wouldn't really be fair to humans.

 

I thought about an illustration: A man is in prison. He was put there against his will. He was never part of making the decision to be a prisoner. The prison guard is giving this man an option by presenting two pills for him, just like the Matrix. One pill is red, and one is green. If he takes the red one, he must stay in prison, and be tortured. If he takes the green one, he will be released into a castle with luxury, wealth, and all the big-screen TVs he wants. The problem is: the man is color blind.

 

We are just like that prisoner. We can't tell for sure the truth about God, because we are limited, finite, and subjective. We are in fact colorblind to who and what God is. But we have to make a choice anyway, and if we make the wrong choice, we potentially will suffer.

 

The prison guard knows the dilemma of the prisoner. Is he being fair or just?

[Abiyoyo]

I think God would be move forgiving to humans than angels; as they have more knowledge of God?

Yeah, one would think so. Considering this view one would conclude that Hell (same punishment as the demons) wouldn't really be fair to humans.

 

I thought about an illustration: A man is in prison. He was put there against his will. He was never part of making the decision to be a prisoner. The prison guard is giving this man an option by presenting two pills for him, just like the Matrix. One pill is red, and one is green. If he takes the red one, he must stay in prison, and be tortured. If he takes the green one, he will be released into a castle with luxury, wealth, and all the big-screen TVs he wants. The problem is: the man is color blind.

 

We are just like that prisoner. We can't tell for sure the truth about God, because we are limited, finite, and subjective. We are in fact colorblind to who and what God is. But we have to make a choice anyway, and if we make the wrong choice, we potentially will suffer.

 

The prison guard knows the dilemma of the prisoner. Is he being fair or just?

 

If that were truly the case then I would ask the prison guard to give me the green one since he had both the pills :wink:

[LNC]

Also, you seem to have a problem with the rules that God made, yet you don't have a problem in judging them wrong and, in essence, putting yourself in the position of authority. So, may I ask, who made you god?

 

LNC, if you're just going to cop out and not answer the question then do not even respond. You are basically saying that god's ways are not our own, so who are we to dare and question it. The same old tired, worn out statement that you christians always throw out there. More often than not, you end the statement with the asking of whether or not that person is god. Ken Ham did this to Bill Mayer in 'Religulous' when he fell short of an actual answer to Bill's question.

 

Listen, this is not a cop out. I have said before and I will say it again that I am not interested in a battle of opinions. Before we launch into this I need to know that you have an objective base from which to argue, otherwise, you will give your opinion, you will consider my view an opinion and we won't get anywhere but frustrated. I don't like parmesean cheese, my wife does. We could spend hours arguing about whether parmesean is good or not and not get anywhere since there is no objective basis from which we can argue as to whether parmesean is good. It is a matter of preference. Now, you want to beat God up over these accounts from the Bible, to do so meaningfully you must either show that there is objectively something called good and evil; or that God is somehow subject to a moral standard that is outside of himself and yet, still eternal. In essence, you must show that your standard for judging God is superior and that it has a solid basis form making such judgments. You must also show that God has somehow violated that standard. I haven't seen any of this from any one of you, and therefore, your complaints have not been shown to be relevent.

 

So, it is not I who has copped out, but those of you who are leveling the complaints without standing. I have said all along that if you can show me that you have a solid basis from which to level these complaints, I will be happy to discuss them with you, but if you can't, then the best I can say is "I don't like parmesean."

[LNC]

Or to put it in other words, when I hear the argument that humans can't be good or moral unless God exists, it follows that God can not be good or moral either unless God has a God. Or the alternative is, God can't be said to be good or evil, but only that he can be whatever he wants. This means that goodness, moral, and justice isn't something that is part of God's innate behavior or character, but something that is created by him. This also means that none of these attributes are by themselves completely absolute, since they are made, not just existing. Or we can put it this way, words and attributes can not apply to God (if God exists), especially not the word and attributes we in daily use apply to humans. We can't say "God is blond" or "God had a good day at the office and is happy for his girlfriend moved in with him." Neither can we say, "God is good" or "God is just" or "God is gracious", not if he/she/it is supposed to be the highest existing being of everything. This means, explaining God or making a religion around God, or even worshiping God in the believe he likes it, are all the wrong things to do.

 

That is a common misrepresentation of the moral argument. Theists don't say that a person cannot be good unless God exists, just that there is no objective standard of good unless God exists. Regarding God, he has a nature that would be defined as good and he must act according to his nature. His nature is immutable (unchanging) therefore, he is not acting out of whims of the moment. Another misunderstanding is saying that we cannot say that God is good, just, gracious, etc. We certainly can say these things about God. We recognize these attributes as descriptions of his nature and that nature informs our morality. God acts according to his nature and therefore, we can say that he is good, kind, just, etc. If what you are saying is true, then it would also follow that the accusations made against God of being unjust because you assume him to be guilty of genocide or the such, would also invalid.

[LNC]

I agree. We have to assume that God exists to make sense of the contradictions in the Bible. If the Biblical view is correct then God established justice, much as he established the speed of light and other constants. These constants are beneath God--he could have made them otherwise or made none at all. However, once He creates them, at least from our perspecive, he can only be understood in terms of those constants.

 

So justice is a creation of God, but it's also the tool by which we understand God. But on it's own terms, I think the Bible is a failure because God seems to act in ways that are unjust. I don't expect that God has to always act in ways that comport with human conceptions of justice, but can God's operations in our world so regularly defy the standards that He Himself created?

 

I would agree with some of what you have written and not with some other things. Yes, if God exists, we can attribute justice to him just as we do the cosmological constants, and although we understand God from these things, it is not the totality of our understanding. We have both the book of nature and the book of revelation from which to understand God. Trying to understand him by nature alone will give an incomplete view of God.

 

If the Bible was made up by men (which I am not saying that you argue) then why would it contain these stories that, on their surface, give a troubling view of God? Maybe the problem is that we don't understand God, his standard of justice, or the story that gives us trouble. Maybe there are some details that we don't understand or there are cultural differences that we don't understand. These are just a few possible explanations.

[LNC]

Very true. I think the problem for me isn't that God creates his own laws and give them as dicta to us, but rather that we give him labels and definitions which are for the use of judging character. Saying "God is just" or "good" doesn't render any meaning when they really mean: "Whatever God does is 'just' or 'good'." It's like saying, whatever I find to eat, tastes good, because I say so. And then eat something terrible and even throw up, and saying that tasting terrible really means the same as tasting good. It becomes completely meaningless. If God does exist, God is only what God is, and nothing more, and nothing less. To give God a profile, is to make God smaller. To say God is Jesus, or God is YWHW, or God is this or that, or God demands this thing or that thing to be happy or pleased, is to make God into a being, a thing. So I find it quite silly how hard Christians and other religious people work to prove God by making him/her/it being such-and-such, because how can they know, and if it's true most of the time they end up in paradoxical statements. If God exists, then God can't be explained or described. It's better if they stick to the idea that God can only be experienced, and then leave the debate of trying to define him/her/it.

 

Why is it wrong to say that God is a being as that is how he has been described for millennia? By saying that God is a being doesn't lessen who God is. Now, to say that God is a thing versus nothing is correct in as much as the term is used in this way. It all depends upon the context of how you are using the word as words can have different meanings based upon the context in which they are used. To say that we can know God doesn't mean that we can know him exhaustively, for that is impossible; however, it does mean that we can know God meaningfully. I think that the view of God that you have is more of a existential view to which I would not ascribe. I believe that God is personal and can therefore communicate with his creation in a meaningful way - including descriptions and analogies of who he is and what he is like.

[LNC]

It's possible that God could be like that. And what is the implication of this? I think that it is this: God wants to be called out. He want's us to rebel and to critique him because only by doing so can we be truly loyal. I owe this idea to John Wilcox who wrote a really great book called The Bitterness of Job, where he analyzes the Book of Job from a philosophical point of view. In that book he points out that sometimes the best form of loyalty is open criticism. For example, in King Lear, the Earl of Kent proves to be far more loyal to Lear by his open criticism than the sycophants who merely praise (Wilcox's example).

 

Of course, I don't believe in God, but seeing the question in this light leads to a deeper spirituality (I think) and a better understanding of who we humans are and where we might be going.

 

We are not "rags at the feet of God" as some evangelicals hold, but capabable of some understanding of the divine nature. Thus the Bible asks:

 

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."

 

Psalm 8:4-5

 

I am not sure how your logic follows. Isn't it equally possible to be loyal without rebelling? If not, why not? Job's friends were shown to be fools and unjust in their criticism. Job himself was also shown to have a faulty perspective of reality that God had to correct. That is why in the end Job responded: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

 

Who, by the way, argues that humans are "rags at the feet of God" and from where did they get that idea? I don't see that conveyed in the Bible.

[mwc]

That was for fellow Jews. The verses above that relate to foreigners( see below). Seems that bondservants (or slaves) were not wanted according to Leviticus, and some of the other Biblical scriptures seem to imply instructions for if they had/obtained bondservants anyhow.

 

Lev 25:35-39

35 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.

36 Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

37 Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

38 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:

(KJV)

Okay. So we'll look at even more of this.

 

The new verses you've included are actually verses that may well become relevant today. They're about making someone a slave over debt. Or rather not doing so. If someone, a kinsman, comes into debt you make them a zero interest loan. Other cultures had similar rules and they all pretty much blew them off at some point (the Jews included). It's odd how we can't seem to solve this high-interest loan issue...even with a mandate from a god. Anyhow, you're to treat this person, not as a slave, but as someone from another land. Keep reading and you'll find the rules for them. They weren't entitled to all the same "rights" the Jews were.

 

Then we're just back to where we were. And that is that Jews couldn't really sell themselves to Jews as slaves (there is an exception I'm getting to). This didn't mean that "others" (non-Jews) weren't kept as slaves.

 

So here's an elaboration on all of this from Deuteronomy 15:

12 "If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free.

13 "When you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed.

14 "You shall furnish him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat; you shall give to him as the LORD your God has blessed you.

15 "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore * I command you this today.

16 "It shall come about if he says to you, 'I will not go out from you,' because he loves you and your household, since he fares well with you;

17 then you shall take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your servant forever. Also you shall do likewise to your maidservant.

18 "It shall not seem hard to you when you set him free, for he has given you six years with double the service of a hired man; so the LORD your God will bless you in whatever you do.

Note the piercing through the ear? That marks a person as a slave in this culture. They didn't get it until they actually became a slave proper. Otherwise they avoided that marking on their body. Where it says (in v17) "servant" that is the same word ("ebed") that is translated "slave" elsewhere (here, as in v15 and in Leviticus). As for the "maidservant" that could be a slave proper or a concubine. But they did have to put in twice as much work as a hired worker. They got a little something for their trouble at the end of their "indebted service" but this shouldn't be seen as pay but rather more as a way to keep them from simply becoming beggars, robbers or a burden on society. A little something to get them on their feet.

 

But it's important to note that, as I said, the word "servant" is the same as "slave" in v15. The very same "slave" that the Hebrews were supposed to be to the Egyptians and we're told that wasn't a pleasant life. Or was it? How you view that will decide how you view this. Did they have the easy life in Egypt? If so, then being a slave, or treated kind of like a slave, wasn't so bad at all. On the other hand if you think life under Pharaoh would have been a tad oppressive then this probably wasn't much of a treat either. The option to become a life-long slave isn't an indication because, well, did YHWH himself worry that all the Israelite would run back to remain slaves rather than go play in the desert with him in the Exodus tale?

 

I wrote that whole thing and then I found the verses I really wanted. Isn't that always the case? Rather than erase everything I'll just go ahead and tack it on here since it's the more relevant part and basically addresses everything in one big block of text:

 

Leviticus 25

39 And if your brother becomes poor and gives himself to you for money, do not make use of him like a servant who is your property; 40 But let him be with you as a servant working for payment, till the year of Jubilee; 41 Then he will go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his family and to the property of his fathers. 42 For they are my servants whom I took out from the land of Egypt; they may not become the property of another. 43 Do not be a hard master to him, but have the fear of God before you.

44 But you may get servants as property from among the nations round about; from them you may take men-servants and women-servants. 45 And in addition, you may get, for money, servants from among the children of other nations who are living with you, and from their families which have come to birth in your land; and these will be your property. 46 And they will be your children's heritage after you, to keep as their property; they will be your servants for ever; but you may not be hard masters to your countrymen, the children of Israel.

Be nice to Israelites...but pagans? Round'em up, slave'em away and will them off to your kids. No problems.

 

mwc

[Ouroboros]

If that were truly the case then I would ask the prison guard to give me the green one since he had both the pills :wink:

What if the prison guard refuses to answer the question?

[Ouroboros]

That is a common misrepresentation of the moral argument. Theists don't say that a person cannot be good unless God exists, just that there is no objective standard of good unless God exists.

Isn't that what I was saying?

 

Regarding God, he has a nature that would be defined as good and he must act according to his nature.

What does "innate" mean to you? You're stating one of my conditions. I present two alternative positions, one of them is what you mention here.

 

His nature is immutable (unchanging) therefore, he is not acting out of whims of the moment.

I never said that. If good is an immutable nature of God, then it is an innate property of God.

 

Another misunderstanding is saying that we cannot say that God is good, just, gracious, etc. We certainly can say these things about God. We recognize these attributes as descriptions of his nature and that nature informs our morality. God acts according to his nature and therefore, we can say that he is good, kind, just, etc.

No we can't. Because he can't be judged between two counterpoints where one position doesn't exist. He can't be compared to evil if evil doesn't exist. And evil can't exist, unless God caused it to exist. He intentionally caused evil to exist, and took the opposite position. Was that an act of goodness?

 

If what you are saying is true, then it would also follow that the accusations made against God of being unjust because you assume him to be guilty of genocide or the such, would also invalid.

Obviously you have a problem understanding what I wrote, since I presented two opposite views, and barely touched on the following problems thereof (from both of them). I said neither is true, or neither is false, but both contains problems. And you only confirmed one of the positions I took, by arguing against the other point I made.

 

--edit--

 

Let me see if I get you correct here, basically you are saying that morality is something that is not larger than God, or independent of God, but yet is not created by God. Right? Which would mean, God's character is to be moral and good. He would consider torturing babies to be cruel and inhumane, basically against his nature. Yet, he supposedly would send human beings to eternal torture, and even command slaughter of other human beings in the Old Testament, and even women and children at times. If the absolutely moral God existed, he would not be correctly portrayed in the Bible. So the dilemma I have, is that Christians are the ones using these arguments about God, and reading the "Book" which shows God's character, it just doesn't add up. Either God would be a moral being and not act as the Bible say he does, or he acts that way and is not moral by our standards. In other words, God got his own standards for morality. Morality as we know it and understand it, does not apply to God. What God claims to be good, is not necessarily what we consider good. If God kills a human and torture him for eternity, it is good, not because of some intrinsic value of the act itself, but it is supposed to be good just because God did it. The meaning of what "good" is, loses its value very quickly, if good is whatever God does. Killing babies is good, if God does it. But he won't kill babies, because he's good, which means "good" is when someone does not kill babies, and would be a rule God would follow as a moral agent, just like us. I can't see the third option. I can't see the excuses to be valid. It is either or, and the third alternative as "both-and-yet-neither" just doesn't sit well with me.

[Ouroboros]

Why is it wrong to say that God is a being as that is how he has been described for millennia? By saying that God is a being doesn't lessen who God is. Now, to say that God is a thing versus nothing is correct in as much as the term is used in this way. It all depends upon the context of how you are using the word as words can have different meanings based upon the context in which they are used. To say that we can know God doesn't mean that we can know him exhaustively, for that is impossible; however, it does mean that we can know God meaningfully. I think that the view of God that you have is more of a existential view to which I would not ascribe. I believe that God is personal and can therefore communicate with his creation in a meaningful way - including descriptions and analogies of who he is and what he is like.

So are Muslims right in their view of God? From what criteria you do exclude other religious views and separate them from your own? If a Hindu have experience of Shiva, are they wrong? Or is it that everyone in the world should only trust your personal and subjective experience?

[shantonu]

Forget slavery then, take 1 Samuel 15:3, wherein God orders the killing of small children and babies. Wasn't that immoral?

 

That falls into the God having attributes attached to Him. They said God did it, but did He really? Just like Satan moved David to number Israel in Chronicles, and it's not mentioned in Samuel. Why would God kill infants? The same God that supposedly had protected, followed Israel around in clouds, and tabernacle's, helped them against giants, destroyed Sodom, but first letting the justified escape.

 

See my point.

 

The only people who escaped were Lot, his wife (though she didn't really escape in the end), and his two daughters. All the women and children of those men died. How were they not guilty or not "justified" to use your term?

 

 

This is really not controversial. God kills without much discrimination. Clearly the babies in Sodom would not have been "Sodomites" or whatever. I had not thought of that. I find the order of 1 Samuel more problematic because the individual can sort of "put himself or herself there" and ask "Would I carry out this order?"

 

Also, the destruction of Lot seems more like a natural disaster, whereas the commands depited in 1 Samuel and Joshua have a less morally neutral flavor.

[shantonu]

I agree. We have to assume that God exists to make sense of the contradictions in the Bible. If the Biblical view is correct then God established justice, much as he established the speed of light and other constants. These constants are beneath God--he could have made them otherwise or made none at all. However, once He creates them, at least from our perspecive, he can only be understood in terms of those constants.

 

So justice is a creation of God, but it's also the tool by which we understand God. But on it's own terms, I think the Bible is a failure because God seems to act in ways that are unjust. I don't expect that God has to always act in ways that comport with human conceptions of justice, but can God's operations in our world so regularly defy the standards that He Himself created?

 

I would agree with some of what you have written and not with some other things. Yes, if God exists, we can attribute justice to him just as we do the cosmological constants, and although we understand God from these things, it is not the totality of our understanding. We have both the book of nature and the book of revelation from which to understand God. Trying to understand him by nature alone will give an incomplete view of God.

 

If the Bible was made up by men (which I am not saying that you argue) then why would it contain these stories that, on their surface, give a troubling view of God? Maybe the problem is that we don't understand God, his standard of justice, or the story that gives us trouble. Maybe there are some details that we don't understand or there are cultural differences that we don't understand. These are just a few possible explanations.

 

I am saying that the Bible was made up by men. "Made up" puts a slant on it that I don't really have. I think the men (and possibly women) that wrote the Bible were doing the best they could under the circumstances. The Bible is a valuable storehouse of ideas about the divine.

 

It also contains some pretty immoral stuff (immoral even by its own standards, which you can use as your "universal" standard of ethics). Thus, the Bible contradicts itself because later people are more morally sophisticated than the original authors.

 

Let me give you an analogy. Imagine that Jefferson wrote the Constittution of the United States. Jefferson did write the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that "all men are created equal." But the Constitution allows for slavery and obliquely mentions slavery in the 3/5ths Compromise. Moreover, we know that Jefferson held slaves.

 

Is this a contradciction? Jefferson would not have understood this to be contradiction because he did not see slavery as a moral wrong. We modern Americans do recognize this as a contradiction because we, having the benefit of hindsight, realize that slavery was always wrong.

 

Thus, the reason why the stories talk about a God that says "don't murder" at the same time he says "except for these Amalekite children" is that the authors of the those stories would not have seen a contradiction. Just a Jefferson would have seen no contradiction in owning slaves and the expression "all men are created equal."

 

We, however, see this as a complete contradiction. And we are right because, having learned the lessons of history, we see that God would not have ordered the slaying of children and babies.

[shantonu]

It's possible that God could be like that. And what is the implication of this? I think that it is this: God wants to be called out. He want's us to rebel and to critique him because only by doing so can we be truly loyal. I owe this idea to John Wilcox who wrote a really great book called The Bitterness of Job, where he analyzes the Book of Job from a philosophical point of view. In that book he points out that sometimes the best form of loyalty is open criticism. For example, in King Lear, the Earl of Kent proves to be far more loyal to Lear by his open criticism than the sycophants who merely praise (Wilcox's example).

 

Of course, I don't believe in God, but seeing the question in this light leads to a deeper spirituality (I think) and a better understanding of who we humans are and where we might be going.

 

We are not "rags at the feet of God" as some evangelicals hold, but capabable of some understanding of the divine nature. Thus the Bible asks:

 

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."

 

Psalm 8:4-5

 

I am not sure how your logic follows. Isn't it equally possible to be loyal without rebelling? If not, why not? Job's friends were shown to be fools and unjust in their criticism. Job himself was also shown to have a faulty perspective of reality that God had to correct. That is why in the end Job responded: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

 

Who, by the way, argues that humans are "rags at the feet of God" and from where did they get that idea? I don't see that conveyed in the Bible.

 

It is possible to be loyal without rebelling. My point was that sometimes the most loyal thing to do is to rebel, such as when a soldier disobeys an immoral order from a superior. His disobedience his not disloyalty, but rather a display of true loyalty. This is the lesson of My Lai and other such incidents. Certainly the most loyal Germans were not the ones that obeyed Hitler but those (perhaps too few) who resisted.

[agnosticator]

LNC:

Listen, this is not a cop out. I have said before and I will say it again that I am not interested in a battle of opinions. Before we launch into this I need to know that you have an objective base from which to argue, otherwise, you will give your opinion, you will consider my view an opinion and we won't get anywhere but frustrated. I don't like parmesean cheese, my wife does. We could spend hours arguing about whether parmesean is good or not and not get anywhere since there is no objective basis from which we can argue as to whether parmesean is good. It is a matter of preference. Now, you want to beat God up over these accounts from the Bible, to do so meaningfully you must either show that there is objectively something called good and evil; or that God is somehow subject to a moral standard that is outside of himself and yet, still eternal. In essence, you must show that your standard for judging God is superior and that it has a solid basis form making such judgments. You must also show that God has somehow violated that standard. I haven't seen any of this from any one of you, and therefore, your complaints have not been shown to be relevent.

 

So, it is not I who has copped out, but those of you who are leveling the complaints without standing. I have said all along that if you can show me that you have a solid basis from which to level these complaints, I will be happy to discuss them with you, but if you can't, then the best I can say is "I don't like parmesean."

 

You haven't proven that your version of god and your definitions of "good and evil" are objective. You also haven't proven that "god's nature" can be defined as "good", and that he acts according to his nature.

However, humans have been shown to act according to their nature, both good and bad (evil is a religious term), and that they exist as the basis and origin of morality. Remember, without humans, there is no morality, nor standard to even consider morality.

[shantonu]

You haven't proven that your version of god and your definitions of "good and evil" are objective. You also haven't proven that "god's nature" can be defined as "good", and that he acts according to his nature.

However, humans have been shown to act according to their nature, both good and bad (evil is a religious term), and that they exist as the basis and origin of morality. Remember, without humans, there is no morality, nor standard to even consider morality.

 

To make this simpler, assume that the 6th Commandment is an objectively correct standard of right action. Assume that the 6th Commandment reads, "Do not murder." Yet God also commanded certain people to do murder--for what else could killing children be?

 

Thus God ordered actions that by God's own terms were immoral. The whole edifice starts to crack under these pressures. Do you agree?

[Abiyoyo]

Be nice to Israelites...but pagans? Round'em up, slave'em away and will them off to your kids. No problems.

 

mwc

 

I see your points and also am familiar with these verses. I was just pointing out a simple notion that the basic establishment for slavery in the Bible was extremely different than that of former American slavery; which most Americans thoughts toward slavery are directed.

 

African- American slavery in the United States was the capturing of Africans, which lead to racial slavery, not indentured servants.