Man overcomes enslavement against incredible odds?!
Or man creates abysmal movie despite incredible odds.
Tom Cruise becomes an actor despite incredible lack of acting skills...
Tom Cruise becomes an actor despite incredible lack of acting skills...Man overcomes enslavement against incredible odds?!
Or man creates abysmal movie despite incredible odds.
RAT BRAIN!
This is kind of how I see a lot of the Old Testament. It's what the people really needed at that time. There is a lot of Law found there -- and it was VERY specific in what to do but not a lot of reason why. Jesus comes a long and "fulfills" the Law. He keeps the Law, but puts it on its head. He shows that people really were missing the point of the Old Testament Law by only doing the letter of the law and really needed to reevaluate what the purpose was behind the laws.
It's certainly reasonable to say that the Bible is the best it can be for its time and circumstances, at least insofar as it makes any sense to take the Bible as a single aggregate at all. (When I think of the Bible independent of the believers that come riding along with it, I do my best to separate it out into its different authorships and the circumstances in which the writing took place.) The different conceptions of divinity and priorities of the authors is the sort of thing I find intensely fascinating. One of the great appeals of myth to me is not so much the stories, though those can be fun, as what the stories tell us about the cultures and worldviews that produced them. Call me an anthropology dork. :)
That does rather complicate treating the whole thing as the product of a single or continuing revelation, though. In fact, it treats the work as no more than the production of humans. I'm ok with that but obviously believers are going to be uneasy. (In fact, conservative Christianity is literally the refusal to do just this. That's what started the movement.) If this part of the Bible is obsolete, only a product of rough times, what others are? If it's full of stories meant to be moral instruction and not straight history (like Aesop's fables, if you will) then how do we sort the one from the other? Anybody today would scoff at a talking fox, at least any adult, but a talking snake is right there in Genesis. (There's also a talking ass, but I forget where. Insert your favorite televangelist joke here. :) ) When we start applying real world knowledge of how things work to the system (which isn't fair on narrative grounds but is certainly fair of us when trying to sort the hard facts from the poetic touches as an academic matter) we come out with fairly little.
There are still good points to be made from the Old Testament.
You've hit on a sort of pet peeve of mine when talking to apologists. They'll not come out and quite say as much, but they're very eager to push all the bad stuff onto the Hebrew Bible's deity (or deities). Anything good in there is anticipation of the Christian Bible's guy (or guys). This has the unfortunate implication that the Jews are some kind of cult of Angramainyu or Asmodeus. Which is why one of the first things generally seen in any Christian-Jewish joint theology statement is a call to cut that out and admit the good bits of both. (The bad bits of both, of course, don't warrant a press release since that could be awkward. Unless of course the bad bits are the point of the press release to begin with in the vein of "we all agree women should stay in the home/we need laws against blasphemy/etc".)
Sure there's good stuff in the Hebrew Bible. Just like there's bad stuff in the Christian Bible. It would be difficult for the works of such a long-lived set of traditions to come out all bad or all good. People certainly don't work that way, however much they can be trying.
I'm not entirely sure if Mykull knew what he was getting into. I really feel for the guy...
Yeah, I had an idea, but thank you for the sympathy. I appreciate it.
But Christians are not supposed to just go to church on Sundays and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done (because it wasn't). Christ told us we'd be persecuted for His sake, but to get out there and spread the Word anyway.
I read Samnell's quotation of Dawkins and was unsure how to proceed. My thoughts were varied, from:
* Is he really interested in a dialogue? Is he just trolling to get a rise out of me? Does that tactic usually work for him? Do other Christians rise to the bait with foam-flecked apoplectic lips?
* That's really sad that Samnell has such a poor opinion of the loving deity (in whom he doesn't even believe) who created him.
* [CENSORED]
* Calm down. Take a couple of days, go back, re-read it, and try again.
WAS vs. IS
PARAPHRASE: I said it was okay at the time. You said, "So, genocide is a-okay?" I said, "No." You said, "You said it was, so you can't say it isn't. You can't have it both ways. So, which is it?"
This will sound passive-aggressive, but I've read that people have appreciated me wading in as a Christian to debate this, so I think it fair to type my emotions along with my post:
I am sorely tempted to type in a very pat you on the head because you're such a child condescending voice the difference between the past tense and present tense. However, I know I'm supposed to fight that evil urge and be more respectful. Like I mentioned, I know that sounds very passive-aggressive, but I don't want you to think that I am taking a hoity-toity moral superiority. I'd be very easy to delete this part now and type the rest of my post in the calm, civil tone I hope to use. But then you'd be none the wiser to what I experience. It is easy to say one is a Christian. I mean, all ya gotta do is believe that Christ died on the cross for your sins, right? But it is so much harder to actually be a Christian. I'm aware that exposing my emotions makes me vulnerable. Hopefully, regardless of anyone's (non)religious bent, "do unto others . . ." is one to which we can all agree?
So, why was it okay then?
It is far more than they had a difference of opinion about deities. These cultures and societies were so depraved and wicked that they needed to be blotted out so as not to corrupt others. They weren't just sacrificing humans, they were burning infants to their gods. So, yes, I have no problem with God ordering the Israelites to annihilate a burn-your-own-baby people.
The natural question that arises is, "Everyone? Dude, c'mon it couldn't have been all of them!" Well, yeah, it could've been and it was. Sodom, for instance. Abraham asks God, "What if there are 50 decent people? Would you spare it then?" And God says, "Yeah, if there were 50, I would spare it." Abraham keeps going down by ten, all the while not recognizing that God has already scouted the place out and there isn't even one decent person worth saving. This is Genesis 18 butchered and hacked up, but I didn't think y'all wanted Holy Scripture quoted at you.
So why isn't it okay now?
Christ, having atoned on the cross for our sins, makes it unnecessary. Before Christ Jesus came, the sins of the world just built up and up. They were covered by the various offerings (palm, wave, unblemished calf), but not washed away, not erased. Christ's salvation, the grace that he offers, is that our sins are erased and remembered no more.
The Free Will to Choose
*furrows brow*
*deep breath*
Could God create a rock so heavy He couldn't lift it?
Of course, He's God and can do anything.
But, then He could go ahead and lift it if He wanted to because He's God.
Deeper: Could God create something to which He doesn't know the answer?
Yes, He's God.
But, then He could know the answer if He wanted.
Yes, humans can't be A and not-A, but we cannot constrain God to our limitations.
When Cain kills Abel, God asks Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" Is God just messing with Cain? Or does He not really know? If He's omniscient, how does He not know where Abel is? But God's senses are better than ours in that "your brother's [Abel's] blood cries out to me from the ground." How exactly does blood speak? Well, it doesn't to us, but apparently God has better "hearing."
So, perhaps God created us as that question He can't answer . . . unless he wants/needs to. He knows all the hairs on our heads, but does He know how many we'll have tomorrow? And then we went and did what we weren't supposed to do by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Samnell listed many things that God could have done differently:
1) Put the tree somewhere else. Removes the choice to eat it.
2) Said it was no big deal to eat from the tree. we would have eaten without knowing we weren't supposed to (no choice) and probably eaten of the Tree of Life as well and then been cursed forever (the flaming sword protecting the Tree of Life isn't God being petty, its for our protection).
3) Made Adam and Eve incapable or eating from the tree. eliminates our free will.
4) Never made the Serpent. eliminates our free will.
5) Made it so the Serpent couldn't talk to Eve, or anybody else. eliminates our free will.
6) Made it so Eve wouldn't listen to the Serpent. eliminates our free will.
Making us do it this way or that takes away the Free Will which is part of the reason we're around. I believe we all prefer to have that free will. I know I do.
But how does that jive with my previous post that God stands outside of Time. That Jesus tabulates the sum total of all sin and then appears 2000 years ago to die on the cross, once for all. Perhaps the sin is/was/will be "wrapped in a box" so that He has it but doesn't know what it is?
Those of you who've read Flatland will see the analogy. Just as 2D man can't understand travel in three dimensions, humans can't understand travel in a higher dimension. Sure, I can conceive that the fourth dimension should be simultaneously perpendicular to length, width, and height, but I have no way to actually "get it."
Similarly, I can't fully understand how God can create humans with a free will that will surprise Him, but won't if He needs to know what's going on, and traverse Time. So I can't fully explain it. But that's the warm fuzzy of faith. One doesn't have to know, one just has to believe. And for those who don't believe, here's the part where you jump up and down saying, "SEE!!! You can't prove it, so God doesn't exist!"
That which lifts me up is a stumbling block to non-believers. WOW! That's pretty convenient isn't it, Mykull? Someone doesn't think like you, so you just fall back on, "Well, I have faith and you don't, so nyaah-nyaah-nyaah?" I know how it sounds. I pray I could share the joy that comes from faith. We all play a game where we pretend that there are supernatural beings, celestial and infernal agents swirling around us, unseen in an epic battle of gods. We strive to make our avatars (characters) powerful enough to join in that struggle.
Maybe I am choosing to pretend that it is not just for pretend. That those things we think are so cool in game actually are. "Then you're a fool," the inner voice speaks in my ear. Maybe. Maybe.
t's not my fault that he was killed. It's not my fault if my great-to-infinity-grandfather ate out of some tree either. I cannot possibly be responsible for actions I had no part in taking, did not take myself, and could not possibly have opposed because they happened before I was born. For your god to hold me responsible, even if all the rest of what you said was a good excuse for holding the people at the time responsible, is a monstrous injustice and I want nothing to do with such a sick creature as to insist upon it and punish me for doing otherwise.
It's not my fault our parents passed a bunch of bond measures that are paid off in 30 years. It's not my fault if my great-to-infinity-grandfather passed a bond measure and that gets passed down generation to generation. I cannot possibly be responsible for taxes I had no part in voting, did not vote on myself, and could not possibly have opposed because they happened before I was born. For your government to hold me responsible, even if the bonds were for good public works for the people at the time to have, is a monstrous injustice and I want nothing to do with such a sick body as to insist upon payment and punish me for doing otherwise.
If I stop paying taxes on those grounds, I'll wind up in the pokey with smokey. It is an easy enough political pill to swallow, so should it be such a difficult spiritual pill to get down. But it is.
Why? How does the sin get passed on generation after generation?
After the Fall, in Genesis 3:21, "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." I know I said I didn't think y'all wanted scripture thrown at you, but I'm not bludgeoning you with it. It was short and I want you to think about it.
"Made garments of skin . . ." WTF, mate?!? God butchered an animal, skinned it, tanned it, and gave it to Adam and Eve? Did He? Or were the garments of skin that He made something else.
Like the dermal layer of actual skin. That the clothing He made for us was our flesh bags. Which begs the question: What were we before? God is not only Love. God is Light. We were created in His image. We were beings of light. Consider Earth. Think of how well we treat our planet. Regardless of (non)religion, I think we'd all agree that as a race, we haven't been the best custodians. Imagine what we would've done after the Fall to the cosmos if we were still beings of light.
The knowledge of Good and Evil isn't something that can be taken back. We know what is right and what is wrong. Children know it without being told. Whether their in a first-world nation or the noble savage's tribe, it doesn't matter. We know about Good and Evil. It doesn't matter that we weren't there. That it isn't our fault what our great-to-infinity grandfather did. What Adam and Eve did can't be taken back. We know it.
But the Free Will comes back. We can choose to do something about it. We can choose to accept the grace that, though wholly undeserved, is freely given. Samnell has focused on the Law. The torture that awaits us for failing to uphold the Law of the OT. It is impossible for us because we are human. The Gospel, however, offers us freedom from the Law that Samnell detests. It is all part of a plan that stretches back to the beginning.
Take the "thou" of the Ten Commandments. "Thou" is second person singular. It refers to one person. While not the original language, it is, I believe, a fair translation. If God is only talking to one person with all of His "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots," why does it have to come to the Israelites from Moses on stone tablets? Because they are prophetic.
The Ten Commandments aren't for us except to show us what we can't do because the knowledge of Good and Evil passed to us from Adam and Eve prevents us. The Ten Commandments are for Jesus Christ.
(1) Jesus Christ doesn't have any other gods before Him.
(2) Jesus Christ doesn't make for himself any carved image, or any likeness to anything in heaven above.
(3) Jesus Christ doesn't take the name of the Lord in vain (as when tempted by Satan)
(4) Jesus Christ remembered the Sabbath Day and kept it holy (like when the Pharisees and Saducees were giving Jesus a hard time for healing people on the Sabbath)
(5) Jesus Christ honors his mother and father (even dying on the cross, Jesus thinks of his mother when he tells John, "Behold, your mother.")
(6) - (10) Jesus Christ doesn't murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet.
No, if God picked the best the world would have been converted. He's omnipotent, so he could make the best. He's omniscient so he knows how. If he's all good and failure has such terrible consequences for us, then he obviously wants to do his very best. Perfect beings do not get to claim they're making the best of a bad situation. He could have made any other situation. He's not a finite mortal bound by the chains of circumstance. Apparently God is big on responsibility when it comes to people who can't possibly be held responsible but never for himself. Typical of tyrants, wouldn't you say?
Yes, I would say. However, He has picked the best way. He sacrificed His own Son on the cross for us. Any of the other hand-waving that you would have deprives us of free will. It's railroading. We don't like it from our DM's and I like it even less in my actual life. Perfect beings do not get . . . Trying to put God in a box is like trying to nail Jell-O (tm) to a tree. He may not be finite, but we are. We may not be seeing a larger scope that we couldn't comprehend even if we did see it. That is an uncomfortable idea for many people. We like to think that we know what's going on, that we're top of the heap. The idea that we might not really have a clue as to what's really "up" with the entirety of all the universe is frightening . . . without trusting that a higher power is on it.
You do not like the way in which the Lord has arranged for your salvation and it doesn't fit with your time schedule. I have attempted to clarify my position, but you appear more entrenched in yours than I am in mine and I do not see me really reaching you, Samnell. You complain about Christians "bugging others about him all the time" while posting in a forum about A Civil Religious Discussion. You are participating in a dialogue about religion and then complain about it bugging you when someone does. I find that queer (old school).
You flatly refuse to believe in the Christian God. Message received, loud and clear. I have already posted that I wrestle with the idea that I may very well be wrong, but that my faith sustains me. This is not a gauntlet throw down challenge, but are you seriously willing to entertain the idea that the Christian God may exist? You can toss out a token, "Oh, yeah, sure" so as not to appear inflexible. But please be honest. Are you so sure of your opinion that you don't really think it even possible? From what I've read from you, I am under the impression that you are so set in your view.
If you've read this far, I thank you. God bless you.
So, yes, I have no problem with God ordering the Israelites to annihilate a burn-your-own-baby people.
You know, I love the Sermon on the Mount, but it's thoughts like this one you've stated that prevent me from ever becoming a Christian. Because experience and reason tell me that committing atrocities never makes a person more noble and good, not in this world, anyway -- no matter who you commit them against. "Annihilation" is never righteous and noble, whether it's against criminals or pagans or innocent puppies or women and children.
Executing a murderer to prevent him from continuing -- pragmatically, it makes good sense. Morally, it might be a lesser-of-two-evils thing, but it's still evil. It's not something to cheer yourself for and feel all superior about. Lying to a liar? Still lying. Genocide against baby-killers? Still genocide. Justifiable? Possibly. Holy and exalted? Hell, no.
For me, it really comes down to is it more likely the apparent inconsistency of god is because I am not a supreme being and can not understand his methods or did man create god and this is a clever ruse to cover up the inconsistencies man put in.
Even if I could see god, I would have problems with him telling me, "Thou shall not kill" one day and turning around the next day and telling me to slaughter an entire nation.
"Don't question me! I am god!!!" is simply not going to cut it with me.
t's not my fault that he was killed. It's not my fault if my great-to-infinity-grandfather ate out of some tree either. I cannot possibly be responsible for actions I had no part in taking, did not take myself, and could not possibly have opposed because they happened before I was born. For your god to hold me responsible, even if all the rest of what you said was a good excuse for holding the people at the time responsible, is a monstrous injustice and I want nothing to do with such a sick creature as to insist upon it and punish me for doing otherwise.
It's not my fault our parents passed a bunch of bond measures that are paid off in 30 years. It's not my fault if my great-to-infinity-grandfather passed a bond measure and that gets passed down generation to generation. I cannot possibly be responsible for taxes I had no part in voting, did not vote on myself, and could not possibly have opposed because they happened before I was born. For your government to hold me responsible, even if the bonds were for good public works for the people at the time to have, is a monstrous injustice and I want nothing to do with such a sick body as to insist upon payment and punish me for doing otherwise.
If I stop paying taxes on those grounds, I'll wind up in the pokey with smokey. It is an easy enough political pill to swallow, so should it be such a difficult spiritual pill to get down. But it is.
This comparison just reminded me of Thoreau. Maybe the only place for a just person living under the Old Testament God's rule is in Hell :P
It is all part of a plan...
and this, reminds me of a certain bat-hating villain... :P
That's really sad that Samnell has such a poor opinion of the loving deity (in whom he doesn't even believe) who created him.
I can not help by comment on this.
If I do not see proof that god exists, I see even less proof that he is loving. Indifferent at best.
Why is it assumed god is loving? If he created everything then his is just as responsible for evil. It seems like mental gymnastics trying to explain how an all loving, all powerful being created a wonderful world and somehow…all on its very own…it all went to hell.
Free will!
So man, with the aid of free will, created evil? That kind of makes us gods, doesn't it?
And just because an entity creates me does not make him good. He an entity creates me just to torment me my entire life, I would not classify that as 'good'.
*sigh* I think the postmonster might have devoured a rather long post I wrote in response to Myrkull. Crap. Anyway, will see if it shows eventually.
It is all part of a plan...
and this, reminds me of a certain bat-hating villain... :P
It reminds me of the Cylons in BSG. :)
BSG was dripping with religious undertones.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I don't have time to post anything significant, but wanted to say that I appreciated your post Mykull. Like Moff, you do your beliefs great credit by taking the time to craft posts such as the one on this page. I am more inclined to take Samnell or CourtFool's point of view, but your tone and style really help me in considering your words, and I thank you for that.
ya think?!
I try not to. It hurts too much.
Why do you ask?
It is all part of a plan...and this, reminds me of a certain bat-hating villain... :P
Do I really look like a guy with a plan?
*sigh* I think the postmonster might have devoured a rather long post I wrote in response to Myrkull. Crap. Anyway, will see if it shows eventually.
And looks like it's gone for good. Crap.
Kirth and CourtFool hit the big points.
*sigh* I think the postmonster might have devoured a rather long post I wrote in response to Mykull.
That's why I copy and paste my posts to a Word document before I submit. Why?
If you were Christian you would have learned this as well.
What do I mean? *chortle chortle*
*ducks rotten vegetables*
Okay, okay, I'll get back to a civil religious discussion.
I just couldn't resist the puns.
Sinful, I know. At least some bad groaners.
"Don't question me! I am god!!!" is simply not going to cut it with me.
You'd probably get lessons, like Jonah did, until you came to understand that He is Lord. Jonah didn't even have to "slaughter an entire nation." He just had to tell Nineveh, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed." Jonah would rather learn a new lesson in pain as he was slowly digested in the belly of the almighty Sarlaac over the next thousand years. Okay, it was just three days in a whale, but it's Friday and I had a good day so I'm feeling a bit daffy.
But let's continue with the "wipe them out; all of them" theme. Most of us play a game where fantasy is the point of the exercise. We're playing Pretend like we did when we were five. We have mechanics now so we don't end up back at:
DICK: "I got you first!"
JANE: "No you didn't, no you didn't!"
The Pretend is still the reason why we're playing.
And I think there are very few of us that bat an eyelash as we slaughter hordes of orcs. I mean, some of them must have been pressed into service. They can't all be Gruumsh level CE, can they? We don't even ask. Orcs were created by an evil god to do evil things and I'm good. And the job of good is to destroy evil.
One of the reasons we enjoy the game is because we are seeking that lack of moral ambiguity. We want there to be black hats and white hats. Yeah, I know; I'm about to get inundated with posts about, "Nuh-uh. In this game . . .," or, "There was this time . . ." I've played in them, too. But I'm generalizing and unless my twenty-four years of gaming experience are wildly different from y'all's, my generalization holds true. (I'm not trying to say I've played longer than anyone else, just that I'm not new to the hobby.)
Yet offer that sort of "they were wholly evil and so God sent dem swimmin' wit da fishes" and I'm met with "it's never okay."
OBJECTION #1: But that's just a game!
OBJECTION #2: The game bogs down too much if we're worrying about contract workers on the Death Star.
And those aren't bad objections, either. I'm just saying that most of us feel pretty good about oursel -- our characters when we stomp out Demogorgon or Kyuss or whatever. Maybe we don't want to acknowledge that such evil exists in the real world; or that we're not as active in stomping it out as our characters are.
As for God creating evil. There's always the, "Can't know the Light without the Dark." If there was no Evil, or, at least, were blissfully unaware of it (as in before the Fall), then we wouldn't have anything to choose between. The KJV of the Holy Bible does have reference to God thinking/doing evil. However, newer, more accurate translations, use words like calamity or disaster. Again, these are judgments brought against evil people. We do not consider the judge evil for sentencing a robber to jail because the judge has deprived the criminal of liberty.
Kirth Gersen believes that genocide for any reason is not holy and exalted. I suppose it depends on what one views the role of Good to be. Often times I hear that the role of Good is to draw the line in the sand and say, "This far, no farther," all the while redrawing that line smaller and smaller as bits get chipped away from the fraying edges.
I'm not saying anyone in the last three pages has posted that; just that it is a commonly held definition of Good's job. I disagree with that definition. Good's role is to destroy Evil. Yep, I zealously, fervent-eyed fanatically said it.
The trouble is, the OT is history. The destruction was the old way. As Cloud William said, "That which is ours will be ours again." But not by using any of the old "weapons." Our weapons to destroy evil are humility, servitude to others, love of our neighbor (who is everyone).
So man, with the aid of free will, created evil? That kind of makes us gods, doesn't it?
And just because an entity creates me does not make him good. He an entity creates me just to torment me my entire life, I would not classify that as 'good'.
We were created in His image. We also had the "help" of a certain serpent. The torment comes from not accepting Jes-- and here's where people's eyes start to glaze over. But Christ does set us free from all of our sins. It is wonderful.
Don't get me wrong; there's still going to be pain, suffering, strife, trials, calamities in life. Believing in Christ is no proof against that. Then what's the point? Storing up treasures in Heaven.
For argument's sake, let's say that I agree that God created evil and should be held responsible.
God had to watch his only begotten Son, who is innocent of the crime of which you accuse God, suffer one of the most brutal forms of execution all the while bearing every single sin ever committed, being committed, and ever will be committed. Even if I agreed with your belief that God created evil, I say that counts as atonement.
Good's role is to destroy Evil.
Even by that definition, god does not seem 'good'. As an all powerful, all knowing being, wiping out evil should be as easy as separating the light from the dark and calling it a day.
We also had the "help" of a certain serpent.
Who god created with full knowledge he would tempt Eve and by extension Adam, who would then give in to that temptation. For me, this only strengthens my point. If a certain serpent is evil and god created him, god must be at least partially responsible.
This is not the same as a gun manufacturer creating a gun which someone uses to kill someone. An all powerful, all knowing being knows exactly what will happen.
Anytime you want to concede god is not all powerful and/or all knowing, then I might buy into the mythology.
God had to watch his only begotten Son, who is innocent of the crime of which you accuse God, suffer one of the most brutal forms of execution all the while bearing every single sin ever committed, being committed, and ever will be committed. Even if I agreed with your belief that God created evil, I say that counts as atonement.
Assuming that is true for the sake of argument, it is god's choice to sacrifice his only begotten son. An all powerful, all knowing being has limitless options. Having someone he cares deeply about (and since this is all part of god's plan, he is at least partially responsible for breaking one of his own commandments) sacrificed seems needlessly painful and hypocritical.
Wipe out evil and there's nothing to choose. Also, wipe out evil and there's no one to choose. We are all sinful beings. We weren't made that way, but its how we ended up.
Those choices are ours.
That God is aware of our choices does not take away from the fact that they are ours.
A lot of people seem to think that God's foreknowledge of an event somehow limits the event and the choice of the individual. This complaint implies that there is an action by God upon a person that negates his freedom to choose. But the nature of what free will is not invalidated just because He knows what we'll choose.
If I serve my cat tofurkey and actual ground beef, I know with 99.999 . . .% certainty that he'll choose the beef (were I omniscient, I'd know with 100% certainty, but it suffices for the argument). But my cat is still choosing the beef all on his own. I haven't influenced him to choose the beef just because I know he will.
god does not seem 'good'.
. . .seems needlessly painful and hypocritical.
But it only seems that way.
Good's role is to destroy Evil.Even by that definition, god does not seem 'good'. As an all powerful, all knowing being, wiping out evil should be as easy as separating the light from the dark and calling it a day.
He does seem to be in the genocide business himself (at least that's what the Bible and Myrkull tell us) and that's evil if anything is evil. So to follow this logic through to the end we must destroy God.
I've got the iron chariots. Can someone else bring the pizza? :)
Samnell, please edit your last post to reflect the difference between my words and CourtFool's.
I do not want there to be any confusion.
You've cycled back to "God ordering genocide is evil and therefore must die."
I already addressed this in an earlier post. The Cliff Notes (tm) are:
God ordering the elimination of wholly evil people is not evil. In our fantasy game, angels don't switch alignment to evil when they kill a demon/devil. It sounds like you're arguing that they should because killing is killing and that's evil no matter what:
He does seem to be in the genocide business himself (at least that's what the Bible and Myrkull (EDIT: There is no "r" in my handle) tell us) and that's evil if anything is evil.
DM: You are all now CE.
P1: WTF?DM: You killed.
P2: Yeah, orcs that were about to butcher helpless elf babies!
DM: Killing is killing and that's evil.
P1: WTF?
P3: Uh . . .
P2: But-
DM: KILLING IS KILLING AND THAT'S EVIL, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO OR WHAT YOU KILL!
P1: WTF?
P2: If you were to kill someone killing your moth-
DM: AREN'T YOU SMURFING LISTENING TO ME!!! KILLING IS KILLING AND THAT'S EVIL! NOW CHANGE YOUR SMURFING CHARACTER SHEET RIGHT SMURFING NOW!
A few of you (CourtFool, Kirth Gersen, Samnell, others perhaps) are of the opinion that genocide is evil no matter who is annihilated, or why, or how many warnings they've had. The inference is you prefer having a society (or societies) that burn babies in fires as sacrifices convincing other societies to do the same (eventually ending the human race) rather than eliminate them. And so, you do not think it is good/holy/exalted to eliminate them. To me, these are evil thoughts (or sorely misguided ones, at the very least).
But you think I'm evil for believing in God as Love, Light, and Good because He ordered the elimination of wholly evil societies (or sorely misguided, at the very least).
I think we have arrived at the point where we just start talking louder and louder over each other. *sigh* I believe my +5 Gauntlet of Holy Bible Thumping is about to get some use.
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Mykull,
D&D isn't real life. (Really didn't think this was necessary but)
D&D is a way for people to live out fantasies where the world is much more black and white. Where there is absolute good and absolute evil. And you can get away with being a racist bastard as long as a) you're a dwarf, b) an elf , or c) the creatures you're being racist about have green skin (or jet black in the case of the drow). This is now how the real world operates.
If you commit genocide in Real World RPG, your character sheet says evil. Otherwise, you're arguing that Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic, Stalin and Osama bin Laden were Good aligned.
Sorry, but it's impossible to take you seriously if you're arguing that the rules of a violent wargame-derived RPG are a good guide to morality.
Also "wholly evil people"? According to whom? As far as I can tell, it's according to the people who committed the genocide. I think they might be a smidgen biased, don't you? According to Osama bin Laden, you and I are wholly evil people who deserve to die.
And yes, if you are advocating genocide, you are evil. No ifs, no buts, no justification. If your God is a loving, just god who wants genocide, then I suggest that you have a very different understanding of the words 'loving' and 'just' than most people.
Mykull,
Here's how I see it: If no human is all good, then it's a fair assessment that no human is all evil. If (as you argue) no human deserves to live based on how good he is, then no human deserves to die based on how evil he is. Sometimes its expedient to kill a person to prevent him from killing first, but it's never good. Unlike fantasy monsters, humans (as you keep telling us) have free will. They have the ability to do good deeds and atone for past evils... but not if you kill them.
D&D is a way for people to live out fantasies where the world is much more black and white. Where there is absolute good and absolute evil. . .if you are advocating genocide, you are evil. No ifs, no buts, no justification.
That sounds pretty black and white to me.
It is far more than they had a difference of opinion about deities. These cultures and societies were so depraved and wicked that they needed to be blotted out so as not to corrupt others. They weren't just sacrificing humans, they were burning infants to their gods. So, yes, I have no problem with God ordering the Israelites to annihilate a burn-your-own-baby people.
Would you explain why your version of absolutism is dandy and mine is not?
I'm advocating ridding the world of societies that were burning babies as sacrifices.
You are advocating allowing them to continue to thrive.
And you are calling God and I evil for it.
I'm talking about genocide against a people who committed atrocities against the helpless and you are deliberately perverting that into saying I support people like Hitler who commit atrocities. That is improper and I ask you to stop.
D&D isn't real life. (Really didn't think this was necessary but
If you have read my lengthy previous posts I know you could not have concluded that I am operating under the delusion that D&D is real life. I'm not sure if this is trolling or if I'll just get the pat "Dude, you're too sensitive" bit? But the jabs are starting to get through (see below)
The point of the analogy is that in considering an act, any act, one must consider the context because it actually matters. Several posters are tunnel visioning on God's order to the Israelites and not looking at the broader scope. By your reasoning, there is no justifiable homicide; all people who kill others should be executed/spend life in prison no matter what. I disagree with the notion that humans can justify their killings but our Creator cannot.
I understand that the idea of a vengeful deity that will punish the wicked is terrifying if there is no way out. How does this jive with God being Love? Now we get into the trinity nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
And, again, we are talking about events that happened a long time ago. For a specific reason. To teach God's chosen people the consequences of sinning. So that we can appreciate all the more the sacrifice that Jesus made for all of us.
So the victors wrote the history. So what? We nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By your rationale, since we won we should have re-written history and ret-conned some battalions in those cities, or an ammo depot or two, to at least make it appear as though we were striking military targets and not deliberately hitting population centers to demoralize the Japanese and see just what would happen to that many irradiated people. Just because the victors write it does not automatically make it inaccurate. The entire OT is the backdrop to the NT. To harp on Law and ignore the Gospel is to miss the whole point.
I keep posting about a continuous history, of which the destruction of certain evil, sinful societies is a part. A part that leads towards Christ's death and resurrection. About how, because of our choices, we decide our own fate. Yes, God is aware of it; but, again, that knowledge doesn't interfere with the choice. And, again, how could we do the good works asked of us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ if there was no Evil?
Yes, God created the Serpent, but we chose to sin. Yes, He knew what we'd do, but it was still our choice. Yes, He could have not done this, that, or the other thing; all of which would have eliminated our Free Will altogether.
Many people desperately try to place a smidgen of blame on God. Because if you could then you can say, "See! It's all His fault! I'm not to blame for my sin, its all God's fault." By accepting our sin and acknowledging that we deserve His temporal and eternal punishment we can ask for the forgiveness that comes from Christ.
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I will be lurking for about at least week to see if the repetitive nature of some of the recent posts dies off.
God bless you all.
I started reading this post but the words are too complicated to understand what you mean. From what I read though, all that came to my mind is this
go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxTACr-lAIA&feature=related
Is that natural law? If I'm up in the frozen mountians with jack and we have no food and no way of getting back alive, is it wrong of me to eat Jack so I can live?
Well the first post as I didnt get through it all. I'm pretty good with academic speak but sometimes it gets above me. BTW I tried to link it but could not. Sorry about that.
A few of you (CourtFool, Kirth Gersen, Samnell, others perhaps) are of the opinion that genocide is evil no matter who is annihilated, or why, or how many warnings they've had. The inference is you prefer having a society (or societies) that burn babies in fires as sacrifices convincing other societies to do the same (eventually ending the human race) rather than eliminate them. And so, you do not think it is good/holy/exalted to eliminate them. To me, these are evil thoughts (or sorely misguided ones, at the very least).
Or merely an artefact of an unclear post on my part... Let's accept that burning babies is evil. Okay, you can ignore it (and thus be a party to it), or stop it. So far, you and I are together. Say you attempt every legitimate means of stopping it (trade embargoes, etc.) and fail; the only option is war. (I'm going to assume you, too, would do that first, and not just pre-emptively nuke them for fun.)
Okay, you go in and topple the leadership, and install a new one that enforces a strict "no baby burning" policy. It may take them a couple generations to catch on, but that's OK. Killing every man, woman, and child of them -- in fact, every single infant that they themselves would have burned -- makes you worse than they are, not better.
Your own concept of free will dictates that these people are not pre-programmed for baby-burning. Therefore, they are redeemable. Therefore, killing them all to the last person simply to sate your blood lust and make you feel all righteous and giddy is, by definition, evil.
Even if they were robots pre-programmed to baby-burning, their annihilation would be a regrettable necessity, not a task that magically elevates you to sainthood. If I take care of a roach infestation, do I hail myself a holy champion of God? Or just regret the necessity?
Ah, but no -- you tell me that I'm the evil one for not glorifying the holy genocide in this case. Therefore, it seems that our definitions of "evil" are not reconcilable with one another in any possible way, or of "good." Your definition of the latter, as near as I can tell, boils down to doing what makes you feel "righteous" -- specifically, whatever you (but not necessarily others of your faith) interpret your book as telling you to do -- without any sense of proportion, scale, or context. My definition involves minimizing the net aggregate suffering to the greatest extent possible.
I also believe that your actions themselves carry moral weight, not merely who you perform those actions on.
Samnell, please edit your last post to reflect the difference between my words and CourtFool's.
I do not want there to be any confusion.
I would, but it's too late now. Sorry. Also sorry about misspelling your name. Myrkul was god of the dead in FR until he got killed. Kirth and Paul got here before me, and handled the major things I would have said. So I'll make a related point.
I am not actually a moral absolutist, though I understand why it might look like that. I'm more or less a secular humanistic utilitarian who thinks the act itself and the circumstances are both relevant when judging morality. Since we can't foresee every possible act and circumstance, to claim a moral absolute is to declare oneself omniscient. That's absurd.
That does mean that, at least potentially, a circumstance may exist which justifies anything. (And conversely that one exists which condemns anything.) So any moral statement requires qualifiers and thus can't really be absolute. We can dress them up in absolutist clothes, but really that's just playing conversational masquerades.
For a long time I fretted over this though because I do have a couple of opinions that seem to me to be more or less morally absolute which I entertained even knowing the frailty of such things. Eventually, however, it occurred to me that the real world is going to produce the kinds of situations where some of these things would be a-ok about three days after quarter to never. They're not really absolutes because there are occasions when they can be violated, but those occasions are so rare in the real world that we can more or less mentally footnote them and forget about it.
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Now let me guess, someone here thinks they should bring back everyones favorite Roman game, Christians vs. Lions? We got it Sam, Christianity is bad in your mind. What the hell happened to discussing how and why we feel a certain way on the topic of religion, or did that stop completly. Kirth, Paul, good to see you guys again, even if we are on different sides of this "topic". I am becoming more and more convinced that my ignoring this thread for the past month or so was the best thing I coulda done for my own sanity. The only regret that I have is that I lack the ability to convey my thoughts when I get in a certain frame of mind, instead I just come across as an angry moron. Have fun guys, I hope that this forum turns into somewhere where we can discuss this in a manner respectful of one another, instead of "you believe in God?, You're so stoopid".
I am becoming more and more convinced that my ignoring this thread for the past month or so was the best thing I coulda done for my own sanity.
+1.
I am becoming more and more convinced that my ignoring this thread for the past month or so was the best thing I coulda done for my own sanity.+1.
{mysterious voice from above:} Garydee and Moorluck... make your SAN checks.
And Kent... [kilmer]"from now on, stop playing with yourself."[/kilmer]
Now let me guess, someone here thinks they should bring back everyones favorite Roman game, Christians vs. Lions?
My entire position here is that that sort of thing is wrong and should not be countenanced. Not even when playing the variant Israel vs. Canaanites with the special foil cover. But if you're complaining about Mykull then I suppose you'd have a point since, to the general astonishment of the rest of us, he thinks that kind of thing is ok as long as God says it is.
We got it Sam, Christianity is bad in your mind. What the hell happened to discussing how and why we feel a certain way on the topic of religion, or did that stop completly.
So far as I can tell, it never slowed let alone ceased. It's not even that I think every species of Christianity is bad, or equally bad, or wrong or false in equal proportions. Is it only ok to discuss our feelings on the matter if we all agree? I didn't think that was the idea, but perhaps I'm wrong.
<staggers in, an octopus attached to his face, and pursued by a strange woman in a coral dress wielding a jellyfish like a whip>
In before the lock!
Hey! Me too.
<Wields jellyfish.>
Uh-oh. Not good....
<Drawing on the hatred and anger of recent posts.>
Rah, raah, raaarrrgh!
<Octopus explodes in a flash of supernatural infernal fire, crumbling to ash.>
Eeep!
<Flees thread in terror.>
Muahahahahah!
<Bellowing with renewed vigour, pursues her out of the thread.>
So is where the party is at?
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It was deeply apreciated, a good thread jack from a good guy. :)
Seconded. I wonder if the Colonel is lurking around these boards somewhere...
