Dystheism Or Jewish Submission Or Scriptural Judaism

[rain]

quote" Dystheism is the theological belief that the God of the Hebrew Bible is not fully good and is in fact evil. We believe the God of Israel is a tyrannical dictator who demands submission from all of humanity." unquote

 

I came across this you tube channel this evening and have to say that I agree 100% what this guy says about god of the hebrew bible, although I do not share his beleif that god exists.

 

Have a L@@K !

 

here is his You Tube channel

 

http://www.youtube.c...d?feature=watch

[Guest Valk0010]

I was reading about open theism, and there was this suggestion made, that if god is a maltheist evil dictator then he loses any ability to demand are worship. He is like a king who does nothing but proclaim he is king to establish or prove himself as king.

 

It also makes god no different then the devil.

[rain]

I agree with what you say valk, this guy beleives in GOD and is afraid of him. ha ha ha

[Guest Valk0010]

I agree with what you say valk, this guy beleives in GOD and is afraid of him. ha ha ha

Yep its like agreeing with stalin just so you don't get killed. God as a concept becomes morally bankrupt when its set at that level.

[rain]

funny you mention stalin, he talks about that too.

[Guest Valk0010]

Jewish Submission or Scriptural Judaism (Karaism) is the original form of Judaism as prescribed by God in the Torah. Jewish Submission rejects later additions to the Hebrew Bible such as the Rabbinic Oral Law and places the ultimate responsibility of interpreting the Bible on each individual.

B'nei Mikra Ministries adheres to the theological teachings of Hakham Shlomo Gelobter who is a strict dystheist. Dystheism is the theological belief that the God of the Hebrew Bible is not fully good and is in fact evil. We believe the God of Israel is a tyrannical dictator who demands submission from all of humanity. As a congregation we gather to cry, plead, and beg the Creator to end the suffering and evil he created and to remove His wrath from this earth. We fully believe that you do not have to agree with Gods atrocities, but we must accept and submit to His kingship.

So might makes right, and the arguement from authority fallacy isn't valid according to him. Remind me to punch him real hard the next time I see him, by this he would surely have to agree with me.

[lunaticheathen]

I refuse to worship out of fear.

 

I'm agnostic when it comes to Abraham's god. I believe in many gods, so that one god existing isn't totally out of the question - I've just never encountered him, and the stories don't speak well of him. If he is as evil as he is in scripture, he's not worthy of my worship.

 

Therefore, I do not worship Abraham's god.

[rain]

god is only a memory for me, from when i was under the age of ten. no worship from me.

[mcdaddy]

Why some people just blindly believe in One ancient book as truth and disregard other ancient religious books, is beyond me. Oh, my daddy said this one is true, so this one must be true.

 

Jews are idiots.

 

Just like xians.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

The Dear Leader is always right, and can never be wrong. If I say otherwise, I'll disappear away into the fires. That's the story of the Bible and every personality cult dictatorship.

[rain]

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oop's trying to embed a video

[Eugene39]

I find this guy's perspective very interesting. I certainly don't believe in Yahweh, and have pretty good reason to believe that there isn't a God at all, at least anything that fits the definition that God is described by, especially by the Christians. Having said that, it does seem to me at times that there is Mystery, Fate, etc., that we have no control over, and that both good and bad come from It.

[Kaiser01]

When i tried God for a second time this idea creeped into my head. I believed God existed but i also though so much of what he did was evil, i came to hate the god i thought i was supposed to worship.

[WMDKitty]

I refuse to worship out of fear.

 

I'm agnostic when it comes to Abraham's god. I believe in many gods, so that one god existing isn't totally out of the question - I've just never encountered him, and the stories don't speak well of him. If he is as evil as he is in scripture, he's not worthy of my worship.

 

Therefore, I do not worship Abraham's god.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

I've experienced Bast. I've been poked at by Freya. But I have never encountered BibleGod, and given what I've heard about him, I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

[mcdaddy]

I refuse to worship out of fear.

 

I'm agnostic when it comes to Abraham's god. I believe in many gods, so that one god existing isn't totally out of the question - I've just never encountered him, and the stories don't speak well of him. If he is as evil as he is in scripture, he's not worthy of my worship.

 

Therefore, I do not worship Abraham's god.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

I've experienced Bast. I've been poked at by Freya. But I have never encountered BibleGod, and given what I've heard about him, I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

 

Would you elaborate on these experiences?

[WMDKitty]

Kinda hard to elaborate on -- I'm mostly just running on sense-impressions and feelings.

 

For Bast it was an overwhelming sensation of "warm" and "safe" and "feline". Later encounters have been more specific and symbolic as I grow in understanding, but as a very small child, symbolic shit is just... shit.

 

As for Freya, -that- was a distinct impression of having been poked at with the non-pointy end of a spear. I assume that was a one-off, as I haven't seen her since.

[Eugene39]

Reviving this from the other thread: Eugene said

As far as a God-concept, this probably won't make any sense. Should there be God, It is transcendent. I do not believe in God because God does not follow through on what the religious say that God should be doing. Then, there is the problem of infinite regress. Having said all that, a God-concept that makes some sense is what I recently found out was called dystheism, - a God who is both good and evil, such as is described in Isaiah 45:7. However the problem I have with dystheism is it is connected to the Abrahamic God and I do not believe the Abrahamic God exists.

 

 

Valk said:

If god is a dystheist, then there is no way he could create ethics. Ethics become nonsense. He can't be good and say murder is evil, and bad and say murder is okay and be one in the same being. If he is good at all, then he would automatically avoid the evil part of his nature. Just as say, a good person would want to avoid taking the life of another. So lets assume then, that evil existed in theory pre creation. If god is good at all then, he would want to reduce the existence of evil. That is a situation as in much as the same as we want to prevent evil if we can help it. That would mean not creating the world, because if he had no other option but to create more evil then he can't be good at all. And failing that creating the world would increase the evil in existence which would be against the concept of gods nature being partially good. If he had no choice in creating us he is not god.

 

So if the god of the old testament is totally evil, as I understand the term dystheism, then the laws of the old testament become a matter of evil telling us not do good because, so following the ten commandments would then be following evil if that god is evil. That would means things like murder would be a good. Of course this is a nonsense position because are moral sense if this god actually exist would be attuned at least generally to doing his actions. It also would mean that we would see a reason to murder on a whole rather then only reasons to not murder. It also says in the bible we are like gods, so if that god is evil and we are not evil, we are then not like god. And it isn't so that god can't exist. The god of the bible can't exist with those contradictions being the case cause the god is supposedly logical since logic couldn't be created by illogic. A evil god by this couldn't be abrahamic.

 

Here's a couple of definitions that I'm finding: Dystheism is the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is possibly evil. Maltheism is the belief that God is wholly evil.

 

On to your thoughts on ethics. People who say that God (in particular the Bible God) is necessary for ethics haven't thought it through very well. It is really unnecessary to say that the Bible God is completely unethical. If Abraham had been a moral, ethical person, he would have told God "No" when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac. Some of the later Jewish thinking on this event and others where God asks / is involved in killings is quite interesting. Supposedly God did this and intervened on Isaac's behalf in order to show mankind that the true God does not want fathers to kill their children to appease a god, because that was commonplace at that time in history. Then I have read that God wept as He killed the Egyptians in the Red Sea, because He was forced to kill part of His creation. All this later Jewish thinking is quite foreign to me, given the Christian background I have.

 

What if nature is "God's personality" revealed to us. For example, Jesus said that rain falls on the just and the unjust, which does harmonize with the world I live in. The God which is talked about in Ecclesiastes 8: 14 that "...righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righeous deserve" also harmonizes with the world I live in. However, the Abrahamic God promises destruction to anyone who doesn't follow His rules, and peace and prosperity to those who do follow His rules, as is laid out in Leviticus 26, just to name one passage. So, whenever Abraham's God steps in and stops allowing bad things to happen to good people, then I will spend some time rethinking this issue.

 

I believe that God could be both good and evil. We as people are that way. Back to the idea for a moment that what if nature is "God's personality" revealed. I have seen pictures of a tornado with a clear sky just behind it. In contrast, in Matthew 7: 17 & 18, Jesus says, "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." I completely disagree with Jesus' statement. We all have times where our good side shines through and then times when we act completely selfishly, maybe even in the same hour! Even Jesus doesn't agree with his own statement. He told Peter at one point that he was the rock upon which he was going to build his church (if you buy the Catholic intrepretation of the passage), yet another time he tells Peter to "get behind me, Satan".

 

I think Christianity does a huge disservice to mankind with its belief that we are all born completely corrupt. I find it completely repulsive to teach children that they are born so flawed that God will ultimately reject them for eternity, unless they engage in following their church's religious teachings.

 

Maybe dystheism isn't the word I'm looking for to describe my thoughts on what character God might have, based on what I see. It's just the closest thing I have found so far.

[Deva]

Rain, interesting video. I like this guy because he actually doesn't sugar coat the Bible. Biblegod is obviously not "love" or "all good". Where I cannot agree with him is his choice to still worship or venerate such a god. Giving a god worship purely because he demands it.

 

Biblegod to me is purely a human creation. He acts like a dictator. Also, why the heck would an all powerful, good and evil god care if humans worshiped him? It must be a huge ego problem.

 

I think there probably are gods, but much more mysterious. Most of us, most of the time, cannot discern their motives or their character. What is most true to me now is the Roman idea of gods or guardian spirits tied to places http://en.wikipedia....iki/Genius_loci

 

This idea of gods attached to different places is probably universal and very old. I think in Tibet every mountain had a god, and there are some mountains still considered specially sacred.

 

Some of these gods are malevolent and some are not. Even 3 years ago I would not have said this - I was more or less a pantheist, but I go with my gut impression and my own perceptions as they have developed over the years.

[Guest Valk0010]

Here's a couple of definitions that I'm finding: Dystheism is the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is possibly evil. Maltheism is the belief that God is wholly evil.

I guess I am not sold on the idea of a dystheist god and the bible somehow not being in logical contradiction. A good being, couldn't create evil intentionally, and that runs counter to the god of the bible. As far as maltheism goes, it would be a definite contradiction because, in a sense are moral compass does a 180. It would make murder a just action, which evidence says is not. That makes no sense, if there is actually a god as far as I can see.

 

On to your thoughts on ethics. People who say that God (in particular the Bible God) is necessary for ethics haven't thought it through very well. It is really unnecessary to say that the Bible God is completely unethical. If Abraham had been a moral, ethical person, he would have told God "No" when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac. Some of the later Jewish thinking on this event and others where God asks / is involved in killings is quite interesting. Supposedly God did this and intervened on Isaac's behalf in order to show mankind that the true God does not want fathers to kill their children to appease a god, because that was commonplace at that time in history. Then I have read that God wept as He killed the Egyptians in the Red Sea, because He was forced to kill part of His creation. All this later Jewish thinking is quite foreign to me, given the Christian background I have.

It does to me to, and I think it betrays the existence of there own god. This screams of the kind of behavior I learned about in how the old phrase goes of (Religion's purpose is to explain the explanation or the unpleasant). Such ex post facto analysis doesn't seem to me like would be required if this stuff was more then mythology. This is also the same god that visited personally to Sodam and Gemmorah. So I honestly don't buy it that he had to do anything. If he didn't know what would happen, he can't really be good at all for taking the risk. The guy who hates evil, creates more evil and then does evil. It just screams contradiction to me.

 

What if nature is "God's personality" revealed to us. For example, Jesus said that rain falls on the just and the unjust, which does harmonize with the world I live in. The God which is talked about in Ecclesiastes 8: 14 that "...righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righeous deserve" also harmonizes with the world I live in. However, the Abrahamic God promises destruction to anyone who doesn't follow His rules, and peace and prosperity to those who do follow His rules, as is laid out in Leviticus 26, just to name one passage. So, whenever Abraham's God steps in and stops allowing bad things to happen to good people, then I will spend some time rethinking this issue.

I think my criticism is valid in the light of, true or not true, logically, not, does it feel meaningful. Your walking into subjectivity here so I don't have a lot to say about it.

 

I believe that God could be both good and evil. We as people are that way. Back to the idea for a moment that what if nature is "God's personality" revealed. I have seen pictures of a tornado with a clear sky just behind it. In contrast, in Matthew 7: 17 & 18, Jesus says, "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." I completely disagree with Jesus' statement. We all have times where our good side shines through and then times when we act completely selfishly, maybe even in the same hour! Even Jesus doesn't agree with his own statement. He told Peter at one point that he was the rock upon which he was going to build his church (if you buy the Catholic intrepretation of the passage), yet another time he tells Peter to "get behind me, Satan".

A: You would have to sell me on that being what the bible says (the nature of the world being god's nature). B: From what I have been taught, Peter was being influenced by Satan in that conversation.

And C with the bible being the big book of multiple choice, how does what you say have any bearing on what exactly goodness or even evil is. By your reasoning anyhow, what I have said here about goodness is completely valid. Unless you could show, how a being that is actually good wouldn't want to avoid his capabilities to do evil, then I am not sure how dystheism could be logically valid in regards to the god of the bible. If he is good at all, he would want to avoid any increase in evil. Creating us, flys in the face of that. In regards to maltheism, that countradicts the christian concept of satan and in beliefs without the devil turns what is obviously sound ethics like don't murder into evil preachments, which means you have a contradiction that could only be solved by saying the god of the bible doesn't exist. That countradiction is human action good and bad. If the god of the bible was maltheist we would see way more evil in the world because, things like not murdering would be a evil action. This maybe a case of your sold on this and i am not.

 

I think Christianity does a huge disservice to mankind with its belief that we are all born completely corrupt. I find it completely repulsive to teach children that they are born so flawed that God will ultimately reject them for eternity, unless they engage in following their church's religious teachings.

Well if the god of the bible was dystheist or maltheist, you wouldn't really be able to recognize the difference between right and wrong on these issues. How could god say murder is wrong, he created more opportunities for it to happen! See my point.

 

Maybe dystheism isn't the word I'm looking for to describe my thoughts on what character God might have, based on what I see. It's just the closest thing I have found so far.

Sure there could be a dystheist or even a maltheistic god, but it would make any form of christianity or judaism I know of, nonsense. And the making sense of the bible is like making sense of a 2000 year old acid trip.

[Eugene39]

Sure there could be a dystheist or even a maltheistic god, but it would make any form of christianity or judaism I know of, nonsense. And the making sense of the bible is like making sense of a 2000 year old acid trip.

 

Exactly. I was thinking about what I'd written after I posted it, and by all means, it destroys the Christian view of God. Reform Judaism is a little harder to pin down because they do not dictate what view of God that a person must follow, unlike Christianity. After all, the Jews have always been taught that they are the chosen race, but cannot "fit" that idea against what happened with the holocaust. You might enjoy reading some of the Jewish "holocaust theology" as it tries to deal with the evil that happened to the Jewish people.

[Eugene39]

Valk,

 

Just addressing a couple of things about your reply to my thoughts. First, I do not believe that the Bible teaches that God's personality is revealed to us in Mother Nature. That part of my thought processes sort of bled over from the post-Christian god concepts thread.

 

In regards to dystheism, justification for killing, right and wrong, etc. It's been a little while since I studied the Old Testament "logic" on killing, but as I remember it, it could easily be set up on a flowchart - is this person a Jew? has this person done something worthy of death? (which could be as minor as back-talking your parents), does this person not believe in the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? A fellow Israelite had far more rights than the people from the other nations. God would tell them to completely wipe out other nations - even the babies on many occasions. What I'm trying to say is there was no "set in concrete" rule that is was always wrong to kill someone. A person could positionally be kill-able simply by belonging to a nation that Israel had been ordered by God to destroy. As far as understanding dystheism, a Christian type mind-set that killing is always wrong can't be applied. The God put forth by Christianity is not the God shown in the Old Testament writings.

 

I used to have an article posted on my blog about God's wishy-washiness on killing. In Genesis, he says no murder and that the murderer should be put to death. Then he commands Abraham to kill Isaac. Then in Jeremiah, he is talking about how detestable the heathen nations are because they sacrifice their children to idols, and that he has never even thought of telling someone to kill their kid. Then fast-forward to the New Testament and killing his kid is how the entire world can be justified and made able to be in his presence for all eternity. Your point that the entire killing issue is completely illogical is so true!

[Guest Valk0010]

Valk,

 

Just addressing a couple of things about your reply to my thoughts. First, I do not believe that the Bible teaches that God's personality is revealed to us in Mother Nature. That part of my thought processes sort of bled over from the post-Christian god concepts thread.

 

In regards to dystheism, justification for killing, right and wrong, etc. It's been a little while since I studied the Old Testament "logic" on killing, but as I remember it, it could easily be set up on a flowchart - is this person a Jew? has this person done something worthy of death? (which could be as minor as back-talking your parents), does this person not believe in the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? A fellow Israelite had far more rights than the people from the other nations. God would tell them to completely wipe out other nations - even the babies on many occasions. What I'm trying to say is there was no "set in concrete" rule that is was always wrong to kill someone. A person could positionally be kill-able simply by belonging to a nation that Israel had been ordered by God to destroy. As far as understanding dystheism, a Christian type mind-set that killing is always wrong can't be applied. The God put forth by Christianity is not the God shown in the Old Testament writings.

 

I used to have an article posted on my blog about God's wishy-washiness on killing. In Genesis, he says no murder and that the murderer should be put to death. Then he commands Abraham to kill Isaac. Then in Jeremiah, he is talking about how detestable the heathen nations are because they sacrifice their children to idols, and that he has never even thought of telling someone to kill their kid. Then fast-forward to the New Testament and killing his kid is how the entire world can be justified and made able to be in his presence for all eternity. Your point that the entire killing issue is completely illogical is so true!

I think I have found, that I find myself in alot of morality vs bible god senario's. The reason i say this is because, you have to have a wack understanding of goodness to get around alot of the OT issues. And as well prove the necessity of god's actions. If he had to do it, the deeds could at least be morally defensible and you could save he is at least partial goodness. But you can't. And there is a really basic problem of god creating us knowing right and wrong, and yet a conclusion we make based of that moral compass that is very much correct (the idea of preventing evil when you can) has to be wrong if you believe in the bible god cause he fails to live out that.

 

I guess maybe some people could be sold on dystheism judiasm or christianity, but I can't. Its a contradiction down to a person being both good and evil. The good to be good would have to try its best to cancel out the evil. The god of the old testament doesn't do that one bit, he relishes in it, even if he fakes a little cry that he had to. No he didn't, unless you believe he had no choice but to create the world.