Tolerance For Yahweh

[Llwellyn]

Even if Yahweh exists, we should not hate him, but should tolerate him.  Yes, Yahweh has his curses for all of us ... but it does us no harm to taste them.  If the Bible is true, I have been living under the curse of Yahweh my entire life, and yet the curses have apparently not dampened my joy at all.  I'm pretty confident that his flames have never resulted in any pain for me, and never will.  So, I'm content to continue to have an indulgent tolerance towards Yahweh, his form of existence, and what he makes of his opportunities.  We can respect what makes him happy even if that includes wrath for us.  

 

As William James writes, we must "tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us."  It is easy for an ex-Christian to have a distaste for the idea of Yahweh.  H.G. Wells wrote about Yahweh:  "I hated him while I still believed in him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting to condemn and to "strike me dead"; his flames as ready as a grill-room fire."  To me, this is needless hostility without common human sympathy.  The better approach is avuncular indulgence towards him;  he may mean harm, but he does us no harm.

 

From his perspective, he may believe us to be suffering at his hands, but that's definitely not the way I have experience life from the position in which I stand:  "To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you.  So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life."  Genesis 3 (New International Version).  I'm pretty sure that humans have been living in a paradise of our making, ever since that time.

 

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi Llewellyn, I aspire to be tolerant of individuals.  I have no tolerance for the Yahweh meme and see no reason why that meme deserves it.

 

Just today I was thinking of three major festivals in the tradition of the worship of Yahweh.  Each one constructs "us" as opposed to "them," the oppressors.  The "we" group exist by definition in contrast to some oppressor.  The "we" group is proud of being hated by the nations because of its fidelity to its war god.  And what is the big event in each festival?

 

1. Passover.  The Hebrews are saved from non-existent (i.e. unhistorical) slavery to a legendary Pharaoh.  Every Egyptian family, no matter how humble, loses its first-born.  This is something to rejoice over.

 

2. Purim.  Fewer gentiles are slaughtered, only the wicked Haman.  The Purim pastries are "ozne Haman," Haman's ears that were cut off before he was put to death.  Again, the morally superior oppressed get to gloat over someone else's destruction.

 

3. Hanukkah. The Maccabees slaughter lots of fellow Jews who thought that Greek culture offered some cool stuff.  As if the "haredim" in Israel today slaughtered the secular Jews and then had a festival about it.

 

I think Yahweh and the meme of "we're hated by the world because we keep weird taboos, but the world is evil and Yahweh will smite them" is absolutely reprehensible.  Why is this still going on in the 21st century, when Yahweh's children and their enemies both have nuclear weapons?

 

What did Nietzsche say about it?

[Llwellyn]

Supposing all our various memes were gone -- Christianity, Islam, Platonism, Marxism, so-called "Natural Law," Tribalism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia -- I'm not sure there would be any less suffering, frustration, violence, war, and hatred in this world.  I think each of these memes were more-or-less inevitable in their coalescence, and if these particular ones vanished, they would have almost identical successors take their place.  If their was room for a meme in a human mind, one will spontaneously appear to occupy that place.  Humans love their over-arching theories, especially ones that provide self-aggrandizement and unfair advantage.  Whether they are "supernatural beings" or "social phenomena" -- the God-memes at any rate exist.  

 

The memes are here to stay one way or the other.  Insofar as they have any life -- even derivative -- they can be indulged.  The question to my mind is "what approach is best at managing these memes in the most melioristic way?"  I think that the best strategy of pacifying the earth is to take a direct but non-hostile method of compromise, non-confrontation and co-existence.  To make peace with them is perhaps the most effective way of making them peaceful.  Attack them and their dead bones start jerking back in oppositional response.  What are your thoughts about that proposal?  Also, please tell me what observation by Nietzsche you had in mind!

 

[♦ ficino ♦]

 

Supposing all our various memes were gone -- Christianity, Islam, Platonism, Marxism, so-called "Natural Law," Tribalism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia -- I'm not sure there would be any less suffering, frustration, violence, war, and hatred in this world.  I think each of these memes were more-or-less inevitable in their coalescence, and if these particular ones vanished, they would have almost identical successors take their place.  If their was room for a meme in a human mind, one will spontaneously appear to occupy that place.  Humans love their over-arching theories, especially ones that provide self-aggrandizement and unfair advantage.  Whether they are "supernatural beings" or "social phenomena" -- the God-memes at any rate exist.  

 

The memes are here to stay one way or the other.  Insofar as they have any life -- even derivative -- they can be indulged.  The question to my mind is "what approach is best at managing these memes in the most melioristic way?"  I think that the best strategy of pacifying the earth is to take a direct but non-hostile method of compromise, non-confrontation and co-existence.  To make peace with them is perhaps the most effective way of making them peaceful.  Attack them and their dead bones start jerking back in oppositional response.  What are your thoughts about that proposal?  Also, please tell me what observation by Nietzsche you had in mind!

 

 

Llewellyn, I don't know that you are really being serious.  You think that worship of Yahweh is a rational option?  If not, why play around as though it is? 

 

What actions will this eirenic, peace-making tolerance of ALL God-memes take? 

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows much more about Islam than I.  She emphasizes that jihad "is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education or any other social precondition", but rather, "a religious obligation."  She argues strongly that Mohammed's infallibility seals off the possibility of innovation within the faith and encourages ISIS et al.

 

Militant Islam is a daughter of the Yahweh religion.

 

I propose that, as there are good ideas and bad ideas, there are virtuous ideas and evil ideas.  Some systems of ideas are more evil than others.  Some systems of ideas give rise to social-political systems that carry out those ideas to their logical conclusion.  And then MILLIONS are dead.

 

A moral response is to oppose evil systems of ideas.  That is not the same thing as persecuting individuals.  But evil systems deserve no pass.  I suggest the Yahweh meme is one of them.  (There's lots of wisdom and morality and virtuous aspiration in Judaism.)

[disillusioned]

I disagree strongly with the OP.

 

It certainly seems to be the case that Yahweh's curses have amounted to naught. But, to my mind, this is only compatible with the conclusion that Yahweh does not exist. If he did exist, then he would be all-powerful. Hence his curses would be born out and the only appropriate attitude we could take towards him would be one of fear and trembling.

 

I don't like being told that I must love someone on pain of eternal torment. I have no tolerance for any belief system which holds this as one of its tenets. Hence, I agree with ficino that a moral response to such systems is to oppose them. 

[mymistake]

I've never heard of Yahweh tolerating me.  According to his original followers

 

my only purpose in this world is to have daughters and wealth so that when

 

the Hebrew solders kill my parents, my sons, my wife and me the Hebrew

 

solders will have plenty of loot.  I'm convinced Yahweh doesn't exist and if

 

I'm right then that is a very good thing.

[Llwellyn]

If he did exist, then he would be all-powerful. Hence his curses would be born out and the only appropriate attitude we could take towards him would be one of fear and trembling.

 

If Yahweh is in our environment, as the Christian meme-plex most certainly is, then we can mutually coexist, Yahweh and us, Christianity and atheism.  Not only can we coexist, we must coexist, and we have no other options.  I wouldn't recommend that anyone convert to Christianity.  But I think that atheists should not tangle with the god-memes, but should indulge their continued existence.  In other words, I would recommend that atheists have a détente with the god-memes.  An example of this would be President Obama's assertion that Islam is a good and peaceful religion.  "The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam."  Likewise, President Bush said that "Islam is peace."  The memes can be relevant to humans in two ways -- either by being adopted or being attacked.  It is by opposition, among other human activities, that the systems live.  The memes will never die a final death, but they would fade over time if they became less relevant to humans, including atheists.

 

I don't think that worship of Yahweh is a rational option for anyone.  Christianity is ultimately self-refuting because it undermines logical inference.  Yahweh says that human reason is futile, Romans 1:21, and thus a person literally can have no reason to convert.  If Yahweh's nature establishes morality, then him telling lies may be "good" depending on what may be the authentic expression of his nature.  As C.S. Lewis correctly points out, "This knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight."  To the degree his nature is different from a human, to that degree what he calls "Heaven" will be what we would call Hell, and vice-versa.  This is why even if Yahweh is real, he is no threat to anyone, as a person can judge a threat.  If it is true that "What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight," Luke 16:15, then it may be true that the explanation of why life is so precious to us is because we are already burning in Yahweh's furnace.  We can certainly tolerate the existence of such a God, such a memeplex.

[mymistake]

  In other words, I would recommend that atheists have a détente with the god-memes.  

 

 

You seem to be confused.  Christians are the ones that have been waging war against atheism.  They have lost their power to murder atheist outright.  Yet even today Christians act like it is unacceptable for atheists to admit atheist exist.  New atheism's attitude is "No we will no longer remain silent and we will no longer consent to being misrepresented".  

[disillusioned]

In other words, I would recommend that atheists have a détente with the god-memes.  An example of this would be President Obama's assertion that Islam is a good and peaceful religion.  "The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam."

 

I disagree with this. Islam is not a religion of peace. Sure, there are peaceful Muslims, and I don't make a practice of quarreling with such people. But to say that Islam is, on the whole, a religion of peace is just not true.

 

To the degree his nature is different from a human, to that degree what he calls "Heaven" will be what we would call Hell, and vice-versa.  This is why even if Yahweh is real, he is no threat to anyone, as a person can judge a threat.

 

This is only true if one takes an approach to Christianity that is similar to CS Lewis'. A more traditional approach does not lead to this conclusion. How are we to know which approach is valid? I'm not a Christian, so this isn't my problem to solve. But before we say that we should be indulgent towards Yahweh it seems to me that, at the very least, it should be made more clear what exactly is to be indulged.

 

If, of course, we are not speaking of literal existence, but of the existence of the idea (or meme) of Yahweh, then I still feel that there are forms of this meme which I can tolerate better than others. I believe that those who accept the Yahweh meme and further believe that they know his will are engaging in a very dangerous worldview. I do not think that tolerance is the appropriate attitude to take towards such beliefs.

[Llwellyn]

before we say that we should be indulgent towards Yahweh it seems to me that, at the very least, it should be made more clear what exactly is to be indulged.

 

We are indulging the Yahweh who had the following values for himself, and for his followers:  "I have trodden the winepress alone;  I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.  For the day of vengeance was in my heart, I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground."  Isaiah 63:3-6.  "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.  So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."  Psalm 58:10-11.

 

Christianity, whether true or false, is irrelevant;  as the Bible says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."  Proverbs 14:12, 16:25.  If the right from our perspective is the wrong from Yahweh's, then death from Yahweh's perspective is life from ours.  Biblical curses are humanistic blessings, so I wouldn't care one way or another if they were applied.  The consciousness of humans is the ultimate reference point in all ethical as well as in all other questions.  As Protagoras said, anthropos metron panton.  All forms of Christianity ultimately lead to the same conclusion -- that Christianity as a set of ideas is a wash, neutral, inert.  It is certainly tolerable, whatever it is.

 

Rather than respond to people's ideas and professed faiths, we should respond to what people actually do -- the behaviors that we see exhibited.  If a person commits a mass atrocity, like we saw at the Boston Marathon, then by all means apply the responsive community apparatus.  And better yet to neutralize it before the atrocity happens.  But the important thing is not "what the religion is in itself" but what people do.  Islam is not in the dock, but Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is.  People who actually exhibit  religious violence in North America are actually a very small minority, this activity is barely noticeable.  I think this is in part because of the religious non-aggression pact that we have forged, the live-and-let-live attitude created over time, not least of all by people like William James.

[EyesOpened]

I guess it is all situational L.

 

If you are debating about the existence of any of these so called super humans/ god then i would strongly advise against it. In an way you being tolerant and letting them have that first step to begin with you are kinda setting yourself up for a very long/hard debate.

 

If you are just trying to be polite because it is a family friend situation i guess you could just "let it slide".

 

Thats how i was for a very long time. I pacified someones belief just to keep the peace, but i have seen some very good points on how this could be very harmful.

[EyesOpened]

^^ Heavens Gate might have been a good time for someone to convince one of the followers not to go through with it. It might have saved someones life so they could have looked back on it and seen how crazy it was, but now we will never know. There is a fine line between tolerance and complacency when it comes down to belief.

[mymistake]

Llwellyn, moderate religion looks harmless but it is the very thing that sustains extremists.  If millions of Christians exist a few of them will take it too far.  So thank you very much but I will not pretend that moderate Christianity make sense.  I will encourage Christians to break free of the religion that enslaves them.  When religion has too much power we get the Dark Ages.  No atheist created the Dark Ages though mockery.  Rather it was the Catholic Church following their own agenda that plunged mankind into stagnation.  So no, I will not sit by in silence and allow Christians to harm others.  I will protest.

 

 

[EyesOpened]

+1 MM, (cant up vote yet). That was exactly what i was thinking as well.

 

Look at it like this.

You and a loved one are standing on the edge of a cliff. You have a tangible parachute and your loved one doesn't.

 

You say," hey, you cant jump you will fall to your death".

 

Loved one says " No, god will catch me and put me down safely". (Leap of faith) see what i did there?

 

At this point you have the choice of letting your loved one jump because you want to be tolerant and or say there is no god and you will surely die.

 

What do you do?

[disillusioned]

We are indulging the Yahweh who had the following values for himself, and for his followers:  "I have trodden the winepress alone;  I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.  For the day of vengeance was in my heart, I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground."  Isaiah 63:3-6.  "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.  So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."  Psalm 58:10-11.

 

Christianity, whether true or false, is irrelevant;  as the Bible says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."  Proverbs 14:12, 16:25.  If the right from our perspective is the wrong from Yahweh's, then death from Yahweh's perspective is life from ours.  Biblical curses are humanistic blessings, so I wouldn't care one way or another if they were applied.  The consciousness of humans is the ultimate reference point in all ethical as well as in all other questions.

 

I see what you are saying, but I don't think that the Yahweh myth is inert. This myth (and similar myths) have inspired people to commit acts of mass murder. For example, I don't that the Amalekites would have agreed with the bold. Death is death. Perspective no longer matters. Of course, such actions may be explained as being achieved by human beings working in the name of God, but I don't think that the verses you cited suggest that such humans are gravely mistaken about this being's will.

 

I agree that we should be tolerant towards those who claim to be religious and do not undertake any reprehensible actions. But I disagree that we should be tolerant towards the religions themselves. In my opinion, such individuals have not followed their beliefs to their logical conclusions. I'm happy to be indulgent towards them, but this does not mean that I will regard their belief systems with anything less than disdain. That they do not properly understand their beliefs does not entail that their beliefs are not hideous.

[Llwellyn]

I think I can meet the rest of you in the middle with the following description of how we might handle the meme and the supernatural being:

 

The Supernatural Being.  The being may or may not exist -- anything is possible.  We are living in a "wide open universe without bounds in time or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe with the lid off."  If this universe is as pluralistic as I have a hunch that it is, the existence of Yahweh is almost inevitable, so I'm ready to infer that he exists, here or elsewhere.  Accepting that this being exists, I would treat him as I would want to be treated.  This implies tolerating his existence without seeking to destroy him.  Permitting his action, even his action upon me, where it does nothing that I would be able to recognize as ultimate harm.  This includes tolerating his curses, which, as I say, can be experienced by me as blessings.  In the human moral economy, good conflicts with good, and right with right, so Yahweh's curses wouldn't result in unmitigated bliss for atheists, but his effects could be accommodated for good, as I hope that mine are accommodated for good.  We adapt to one another on terms of friendship and equality, as we do with every other being.  In this sense, we are not opponents of Yahweh, and we do tolerate him.

 

The Meme.  The meme definitely exists.  I think that we should encourage the exercise of freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech that permits a space for it to exist.  Also, I think the meme itself should be preserved as a kind of a "minority report" of what is locally true.  Even if nobody believed Christianity anymore, the Bible and various tract material should be placed into a museum where it should be preserved for whatever purpose we may have for it now, or find for it in the future.  Kind of like the US and Russia keep samples of the Smallpox virus in laboratories.  In these senses, we tolerate the meme.  But in each person's day-to-day life, it would be "best" for them, us, and all of us, if no one believed in the Holy Trinity, and to that end we should continue to speak about atheism in every context in which they speak about God.  We should offer reasons to them, in case they might have an ability to be persuaded.  We should deny any claimed prerogative to push the meme using the authority of the government.  We should teach alternative thoughts to young people.  In that sense, we are opponents of the Meme and do not tolerate it.

[EyesOpened]

I think i understand what you are saying L. Tolerate their belief so we can keep the communicational door open? Am i correct with that part at least?

[mymistake]

 

The being may or may not exist -- anything is possible.  We are living in a "wide open universe without bounds in time or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe with the lid off."  If this universe is as pluralistic as I have a hunch that it is, the existence of Yahweh is almost inevitable,

 

This part is nonsense.  You might as well assert that there must be a father named Darth Vader and a son named Luke Skywalker and the father must have chopped off the son's right arm.  That anything is possible from what little we know right now doesn't mean that those possibilities won't be eliminated if we learned more.  And it doesn't mean that all of those possibilities gain a probability that approaches 1.  Our universe is a strange place but that doesn't mean that 1 + 1 will ever be 3.

 

Simply put, if our planet arose from a natural process then there never was a creator God and thus Yahweh is fiction.  It does not matter if later on a being evolved that was similar to the mythical Yahweh. If that being didn't create us then it is not Yahweh.  Science has figured out how Earth was created by natural means.  Cosmologists can track how our universe has developed by natural means for over the last 13 billion years.  No Yahweh required.  So the Bible is wrong.

 

 

 

 

We should offer reasons to them, in case they might have an ability to be persuaded.  We should deny any claimed prerogative to push the meme using the authority of the government.  We should teach alternative thoughts to young people.  In that sense, we are opponents of the Meme and do not tolerate it.

 

 

 

 

I agree with that.  I am surrounded by Christians and I leave them alone as long as they don't harm anybody.

[Llwellyn]

I think i understand what you are saying L. Tolerate their belief so we can keep the communicational door open? Am i correct with that part at least?

 

That's right -- it seems to me that we should keep the channels of communication open, and should be ready to learn from one another as the need arises.  We may one day become persuaded to the Christian position, even though it seems inconceivable now.  I don't think that my view of the world is complete, or than the Christian arguments are not worthy of consideration.  As Judge Learned Hand wrote, "Opinions are at best provisional hypotheses, incompletely tested.  The more they are tested, after the tests are well scrutinized, the more assurance we may assume, but they are never absolutes.  So, we must be tolerant of opposite opinions or varying opinions by the very fact of our incredulity of our own."  Frankly, the more hypotheses, the better.  Good on them for throwing out there a theory;  good on us for being unpersuaded after considering it.  Each of us has done important and necessary work.  It seems that even Yahweh sometimes joins humans in the game of giving and asking for reasons, when he says "let us reason together," Isaiah 1:18.  But he very quickly leaves the space of reasons.  I say that he is welcome to join us in inquiry if he exists.

[EyesOpened]

That makes sense L. The problem with that for me when engaging in that type of conversation is proof. These conversations go pretty quick for me because the second the word God is brought into it i ask for proof of God outside the bible. Then the word faith usually get put out there and that is when i say i have 0 faith there is a God. Thats where the breakdown in communication starts and sometimes ends the conversatation.

[disillusioned]

The Supernatural Being.  The being may or may not exist -- anything is possible.  We are living in a "wide open universe without bounds in time or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe with the lid off."  If this universe is as pluralistic as I have a hunch that it is, the existence of Yahweh is almost inevitable, so I'm ready to infer that he exists, here or elsewhere. 

Ok, but this view of Yahweh as existing somewhere necessarily seems to me to be in direct contradiction to Yahweh's supposed nature. He is supposed to be supernatural. Thus, it doesn't matter how pluralistic the universe is or is not; if Yahweh exists, He exists beyond it. We can't say that an infinity of universes implies existence of Yahweh in some of them, because Yahweh is not posited to exist in any universe.

 

The Meme.  The meme definitely exists.  I think that we should encourage the exercise of freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech that permits a space for it to exist.  Also, I think the meme itself should be preserved as a kind of a "minority report" of what is locally true.  Even if nobody believed Christianity anymore, the Bible and various tract material should be placed into a museum where it should be preserved for whatever purpose we may have for it now, or find for it in the future.  Kind of like the US and Russia keep samples of the Smallpox virus in laboratories.  In these senses, we tolerate the meme.  But in each person's day-to-day life, it would be "best" for them, us, and all of us, if no one believed in the Holy Trinity, and to that end we should continue to speak about atheism in every context in which they speak about God.  We should offer reasons to them, in case they might have an ability to be persuaded.  We should deny any claimed prerogative to push the meme using the authority of the government.  We should teach alternative thoughts to young people.  In that sense, we are opponents of the Meme and do not tolerate it.

 

I largely agree with this.

[Ravenstar]

I won't tolerate lies. Period.

 

Falsehoods are to be challenged. It can be done respectfully… to a point. Then, whatever it takes. I am of the mind that people are worthy of a certain amount of respect and empathy - we are all human after all, but opinions, beliefs, tenets, positions? No.

 

We would never have progressed without challenging the status quo. I also believe - through a little knowledge of history - that the rejection of catholic tolerance is the very foundation of why we live longer, in better health and with less violence than at any other time (as far as we know) in history. Sorry - but life has been mostly brutal, cruel and short for most of the world's people, over most of history. Yahweh and his peers have been detrimental to that progress for at least 2000 years

 

...though I will grant that there may have been benefit farther back to religions, I'm thinking paeleolithic and early bronze age — when we were first learning to live in larger groups. The structure may have been necessary. But Yahweh is one of the WORST deities ever concocted by the mind of man - he is a representation of the very worst impulses for vengeance and elitism in humans. He has no room in him for the humanity of his believers. No balance for the feminine, Yahweh is exclusive, shaming and brutal.

 

The harm that lies and shame do to the psychological health of humans is unmistakable. Just read the thread in Rants about how 'almost everything is evil'. Some SICK shit foisted on children. 

 

As an atheist I have one life… one very short life, I won't waste it tolerating the intolerable.

[Llwellyn]

This part is nonsense.  You might as well assert that there must be a father named Darth Vader and a son named Luke Skywalker and the father must have chopped off the son's right arm.  That anything is possible from what little we know right now doesn't mean that those possibilities won't be eliminated if we learned more.  And it doesn't mean that all of those possibilities gain a probability that approaches 1.  Our universe is a strange place but that doesn't mean that 1 + 1 will ever be 3.

 

Outside the view of human reason, everything else is nonsense to us.  Human reason at its best regulates itself in its own fashion, but cannot presume to regulate the rest of the vast field.  Logic does not exceed the natural competence and limitations of mere human being.  I agree that it is not worth believing in Yahweh or Darth Vader.  I also agree that it is not worth believing that in some worlds 1+1=3.  This is why I am a confident atheist.  Wherever humans think, the universe is understood according to the laws of science and the laws of logic alone.  This is an inference of reason.