Morality of God

[Quath]

I am curious as how people deal with the morality of God as protrayed in the older holy books. I will post some examples along with their Old Testament reference. I am interested to see if there is a difference in the Christian accounts and Jewish accounts.

What interests me is if people accept some of the cruelities attributed to God, does that create bad morality in that person. As Thomas Paine once said "Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man." An application of this probably can be found in the Holocaust. The Old Testament supports God favoring one race over others and helping that race/tribe to commit genocide against its neighbors.

So here are some examples:

a) In the flood, God kills everyone but one family. Does this mean that the children were evil? Would it have been kinder if God just used a virus to kill everyone to spare the animals? Or made the evil ones infertile? Or kill everyone quickly and painlessly?

b) In Exodus, God hardens Phaorah's heart in 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:4, and 14:8. Pharoah is forced to keep the Israelites as slaves. For punishment against this involuntary action, God sends plagues. The worst of which was to kill innocent firstborns.

c) God commands that non-virgin brides are to be stoned on in front of their father's house. (Why not non-virgin males and why use the hymen test that is not a real test for virginity?) (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)

d) God kills 42 children with 2 bears for calling a man a baldhead in 2 Kings 2:23-24.

e) In 1 Kings 20:35-36, God kills a man for refusing to hit a prophet.

f) God orders a stick gather to be killed for working on the Sabbath. (Numbers 15:35)

g) Joshua is filled with a lot of genocide and destruction. God orders the killing of Ai (8:24-26), Makkedah (10:28), Libnah (10:30), Lachish (10:32), Gezer (10:33), Eglon (10:35), Hebron (10:37), Debir (10:39), Hazor (11:11), and Anab (11:21). They kill every man, woman and child as instructed by God. God even helps out by keeping the sun out longer and knocking down the walls of Jericho. He also throws hailstones in one battle and does more damage than the army.

h) A man stole some stuff from the prostitute of Jericho. So he and his children are stoned and burned for God. God lets them win the next battle for the ritual human sacrifice. (Joshua 7:24-25)

i) In Deuteronomy 22:28-29, a raped virgin must marry her rapist.

j) God lets Satan torture Job just to prove that Job would not turn from Him. It is equivalent to letting your friend beat your dog to test its loyality. Also, if God is omnipotent, then He knew the answer and thus didn't need the test.

k) In 2 Samuel 12:11-14, God punishes David for his adultry. He first threatens to have his wives raped. But He instead punishes David by killing his son with a disease.

l) In 1 Chronicles 21:1-14, God kills 70,000 because David counted them.

m) God kills 185,000 Assryians because their king made fun of Him in Isaiah 37:1-36.

n) In 2 Samuel 6:1-7, God kills Uzzah for touching the Ark when it was about to fall.

I could go on, but I have probably listed too much as it is. Anyway, I would think a lot of this stuff would be considered very immoral by today's standards. So how do religious people reconcile worshiping a God who was attributed with such actions?

Quath

 

[Sacredstar]

Dear Quath

As Thomas Paine once said "Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man."

Interesting well it certainly does have an adverse effect on one's biology, so does fear. Surely only fundamentalists believe in a wrathful, jealous and cruel GOD ?

When I read some of these points on the other thread, my response was 'well the people certainly blamed GOD for a lot! This does seem to happen even in this modern age when there appears to be nobody to blame for extreme adversity. I have known people to lose their faith annd belief in GOD altogether due to tragedy.

From a Christian Spiritualist view we do not embrace that they were the acts or commands of GOD.

Love beyond measure

Sacredstar

 

[dauer]

I am curious as how people deal with the morality of God as protrayed in the older holy books. I will post some examples along with their Old Testament reference. I am interested to see if there is a difference in the Christian accounts and Jewish accounts.

I think you are mostly looking for the traditional approach to these things and I am not a particularly traditional Jew. I will give you some of the traditional answers I know off the top of my head, but bananabrain will have to fill in the rest when he sees this thread.

What interests me is if people accept some of the cruelities attributed to God, does that create bad morality in that person.

From a traditional standpoint, if it seems like a cruelty at first then there is something that we as humans are not understanding. Therefore to a Jew it will not be considered as anything cruel. From my position all of the things that happen in the bible are just other people's attempts at understanding the Divine. As far as morality, for the Jews that has traditionally been defined by the mitzvot, and those Jews who are not traditional and continue to be deeply involved in their religion still use this system as a starting point. The 613 can be found here:

http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

That is just a simple list. They are elaborated greatly in the Talmud.

Jews tend to believe that God is just and merciful, even if it doesn't appear that way at first. Again, check out Moses' encounter as Sinai and what is said there.

An application of this probably can be found in the Holocaust. The Old Testament supports God favoring one race over others and helping that race/tribe to commit genocide against its neighbors.

The idea of chosenness in Judaism has to do mainly with recieving the Torah and observing the mitzvot. It has nothing to do with being better than anyone else. The bible supports this and if you wish I will post up some passages about it.

a) In the flood, God kills everyone but one family. Does this mean that the children were evil? Would it have been kinder if God just used a virus to kill everyone to spare the animals? Or made the evil ones infertile? Or kill everyone quickly and painlessly?

According to one Jewish source, reading beyond the plain meaning of the text, even the animals had become corrupt and were stealing from one another and sleeping with different animals. Also, I forget how long it was, but Noah spent years and years constructing the boat. This was so that people would have an opportunity to ask what he was doing and change their ways. It would not make sense to make the evil ones infertile because that would not give an opportunity for change. Killing everyone quickly would not give everyone the chance to redeem themselves. This way there's a huge boat that must be built and they have plenty of time to find out why.

b) In Exodus, God hardens Phaorah's heart in 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:4, and 14:8. Pharoah is forced to keep the Israelites as slaves. For punishment against this involuntary action, God sends plagues. The worst of which was to kill innocent firstborns.

Pharoah allowed his heart to be hardened according to Jewish tradition. Not sure about the firstborns.

j) God lets Satan torture Job just to prove that Job would not turn from Him. It is equivalent to letting your friend beat your dog to test its loyality. Also, if God is omnipotent, then He knew the answer and thus didn't need the test.

It's really a matter of perspective. This is a book that tries to understand why bad things happen to good people. From the perspective of the authors, if something happens it is because of God. This is the way it is throughout the Tanakh. Look at how conquesting armies are called a punishment from God, because everything is from God and part of the Divine plan. Job continues with this idea.

It's also a matter of how you look at life. If you believe that life is a series of tests and trials, experiences that support the growth of an individual, Job makes more sense. It is an extreme example of this.

I could go on, but I have probably listed too much as it is. Anyway, I would think a lot of this stuff would be considered very immoral by today's standards. So how do religious people reconcile worshiping a God who was attributed with such actions?

Well, attributed is an important word in my case. Because we can say whatever we want about God but that doesn't change Him. I hold that to be true also of scripture. For a traditional Jew they will probably show that what happened was actually understandable although you'll have to wait for Bananabrain to give you a better answer.

But in fact, there is nothing wrong with getting upset with God or challenging Him. Great people in the Tanakh have done it. Like Abraham before Sedom. It is a valid approach.

I really couldn't answer many of those off the top of my head so you'll have to wait until bananabrain comes along, if he's willing to get into your individual inquiries.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

What interests me is if people accept some of the cruelities attributed to G!D, does that create bad morality in that person? As Thomas Paine once said "Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man." An application of this probably can be found in the Holocaust. The Old Testament supports G!D favoring one race over others and helping that race/tribe to commit genocide against its neighbors.

in fact, it does nothing of the sort. your concept of "genocide" is not transferable to a sacred text. i hate it when people start with this, because it's really "have you quit beating your wife?" it suggests that the onus should on me to prove that judaism should be justified in terms of the morality of moderns and that really annoys me. it's tendentious to start with. judaism is command-based. in other words, G!D said to us to do something and so we have to go and do it. it then becomes an issue whether what we are commanded to do can be understood in terms of some kind of spurious equivalent, whereas in fact there isn't one, because we're talking about sacred history. therefore we have to start from the axiom that the Torah is true and that it comes from G!D and that therefore the commands in it are valid, binding and unchangeable. the question therefore becomes "why were we commanded this and how do we carry it out in practice?" now a cursory familiarity with how judaism functions as a religion reveals immediately that the reason we were commanded to eliminate these groups was because they were irredeemably evil in their behaviour and unwilling to change; in fact they would have prevented us from carrying out the rest of G!D's commands, as well as trying to kill us, so basically it was them or us. now, how can i "prove" that these groups were as i have just explained? i can't, because they're not around any more. in fact, because judaism is more concerned with actions, if such a group no longer carried out evil actions, they are essentially extinct as far as the applicability of this label to them is concerned.

to be quite honest, the only evidence that we had to kill these guys and did so is from our own text, so if you believe that these two things took place, there are no grounds for believing that our reasons for doing so were not as stated. in other words, it says that we did what we had to (although, more often than not, we didn't) but you can't believe one thing without the other if both the reason and the action come from the same source.

as for the "morality of G!D", insofar as we can understand it, there are also times when we argue with G!D (as abraham did when trying to prevent the destruction of sodom and gomorrah) or disobey.

perhaps my PoV can be better understood by analogy. in christian mythology, st george kills a dragon. are we going to beat on him for further threatening an endangered species or try and understand what we are being taught? the Torah is not an answer to the question "what happened?" but to the question "how should we live?" therefore the issue is not the morality of G!D but the morality of human beings. and on that point, "today's standards" are really not very much to write home about and, to my way of thinking, the idea that they should attempt to sit in judgement on a sacred text that is arguably the most important document there has ever been is fairly ridiculous.

i'm not trying to stifle debate here, but this thread is starting from a really closed position. the book of joshua is a really difficult text to modern audiences, but selective condemnation feels really wrong to me. i'll respond more when i've got more time.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Quath]

I can understand Sacredstar's and Dauer's position. Basically, it seems to hinge on the idea that God does not censure what people write. If God did, I don't see that He would allow for the New Testament, Book of Mormon or Quran to be written. Since people always look for explanations of events, "God did it" seems to be a common one. For example, David's son may just have been sick without divine intervention and David thought God killed his son. But on the flip side, this leads towards Deism.

the question therefore becomes "why were we commanded this and how do we carry it out in practice?" now a cursory familiarity with how judaism functions as a religion reveals immediately that the reason we were commanded to eliminate these groups was because they were irredeemably evil in their behaviour and unwilling to change; in fact they would have prevented us from carrying out the rest of G!D's commands, as well as trying to kill us, so basically it was them or us. now, how can i "prove" that these groups were as i have just explained? i can't, because they're not around any more. in fact, because judaism is more concerned with actions, if such a group no longer carried out evil actions, they are essentially extinct as far as the applicability of this label to them is concerned.

Well, we can look at it from other perspectives. We know that human DNA is roughly the same across all tribes and races. Therefore, one race is not bon more evil than another. It is all in the culture. So for mercy, God could have spared all the children that have not been taught the "evil" ways and let the Israelis raise them. Killing the firstborn of Egypt seemed to do nothing but to bring misery to a lot of people for no reason. God could have teleported the Israelites out without the need for bloodshed.

to be quite honest, the only evidence that we had to kill these guys and did so is from our own text, so if you believe that these two things took place, there are no grounds for believing that our reasons for doing so were not as stated. in other words, it says that we did what we had to (although, more often than not, we didn't) but you can't believe one thing without the other if both the reason and the action come from the same source.

There are possibilities. God could be fallable, bloodthirsty or nonexistant to explain this history.

as for the "morality of G!D", insofar as we can understand it, there are also times when we argue with G!D (as abraham did when trying to prevent the destruction of sodom and gomorrah) or disobey.

That is an interesting point. Moses frequently argues with God and calms Him down before He kills the Israelites. If God were perfect, He would not need to be calmed down or persuaded since He should know all arguments beforehand.

perhaps my PoV can be better understood by analogy. in christian mythology, st george kills a dragon. are we going to beat on him for further threatening an endangered species or try and understand what we are being taught? the Torah is not an answer to the question "what happened?" but to the question "how should we live?" therefore the issue is not the morality of G!D but the morality of human beings.

That is a tough thing to separate. For example, Christians want to ban homosexuality because God use to say it was good to kill homosexuals. There is no logical reason to stop homosexuality, only religious ones. So in this case, people apply literal readings of the Bible to enact laws on others.

i'm not trying to stifle debate here, but this thread is starting from a really closed position. the book of joshua is a really difficult text to modern audiences, but selective condemnation feels really wrong to me. i'll respond more when i've got more time.

I am curious as to what you think of the other issues of morality such as slavery and ritual sacrifices.

Quath

 

[bananabrain]

For example, David's son may just have been sick without divine intervention and David thought G!D killed his son. But on the flip side, this leads towards Deism.

oh, i agree - it's not good for personal responsibility. i think the episode that is usually cited in this is that of the daughter of jephthah, from the book of judges. the point is rather like that old joke where a guy is waiting on a roof during a flood for G!D to Save him. he turns away a boat and a helicopter, because he's waiting for G!D to Intervene, him having been such a good man etc. when he eventually drowns, he accuses G!D, who then Replies "but didn't you see the boat and the helicopter that I Sent?" basically, from our perspective, there is no place empty of the Divine, but that doesn't interfere with our free-will.

We know that human DNA is roughly the same across all tribes and races. Therefore, one race is not botn more evil than another. It is all in the culture.

a race is not the same as a biblical "nation". that's not how it works.

Killing the firstborn of Egypt seemed to do nothing but to bring misery to a lot of people for no reason.

no reason? four hundred years of slavery isn't a reason? besides, our tradition imputes this plague to pharaoh's arrogance alone - he was given the chance to avert it and he refused, thinking himself more powerful than the G!D of the hebrews. to this way of thinking, it was he himself who is responsible, having been given fair warning of the consequences of his actions.

G!D could have teleported the Israelites out without the need for bloodshed.

deary, deary me. if every baby that ever tried to stick its finger in an electric socket was also 'teleported out', we'd never learn anything. pain is how we learn not to do certain things. this sort of thing is considered by the tradition as necessary exemplification for the purposes of establishing a principle. even so, we are *still*, several thousand years after the event in question, redeeming our first-born so as not to forget the lesson. in a way, we're still paying off on our freedom. we haven't forgotten it. i'm the first-born son of my parents and i fast every year on the anniversary of the tenth plague.

If G!D were perfect, He would not need to be calmed down or persuaded since He should know all arguments beforehand.

sez you. why can't it be a learning exercise for the person arguing with G!D? obviously, G!D would know all arguments beforehand, but the answer is not that G!D isn't omniscient or whatever, but that it was expected that abraham go through a certain process in order to teach us all something about the value of human life and - hey presto - look, here we are thousands of years later discussing the lesson. seems to have worked, eh.

For example, Christians want to ban homosexuality because God used to say it was good to kill homosexuals. There is no logical reason to stop homosexuality, only religious ones. So in this case, people apply literal readings of the Bible to enact laws on others.

unpacking this statement, the first point is that G!D didn't "use to say" anything, according to us. if G!D Says something, it stays Said - we don't consider that G!D can self-contradict, although paradox is a different matter entirely. like i said in the other thread, the fixed-penalty tariff for homosexual anal sex (note, the act, not a 'bannable' status) is, indeed, death, but so is the tariff for violating the Sabbath (by gathering sticks, for example) - and, somehow, the people you're complaining about seem a lot keener on gay-bashing than preserving the Sabbath (or indeed, keeping it on the right day) so you've got a selective application right there, quite apart from the difficulty of establishing a suitable court in which this can be tried, or giving it the authority to sentence capital punishment, which they don't seem to have given any thought to. Divine punishment is not meted out willy-nilly (if you'll excuse the phrase) by slipcover-clad yahoos with dragging-scabs on their knuckles, but by people who understand the laws. now, as for this "no logical reason" - although i know there are plenty of people who can find logical reasons for both points of view. the point is whether "logical reasons" get to interfere with religious reasons and the answer to this issue is that you need a system of laws to work out when an appeal to logic can actually be applied. which the people you're talking about haven't got. so, again, it comes down to the moral abilities of humans.

I am curious as to what you think of the other issues of morality such as slavery and ritual sacrifices.

i have to say that i think you're being selective. we consider pretty much every law to be an issue of morality, whether it is between humans and humans, or humans and G!D, in which case the morality concerned is "we promised to do this for You and it is immoral to break our promise." but this aside, the issue of slavery is an interesting one. for a start, it is not slavery as practised by other civilisations. you can't make someone a slave unless you capture them in a biblically-commanded war, i believe, so mostly it doesn't arise, although i could be wrong about this. once they're a slave, anyway, you have to free them after seven years (and give them a redundancy package) unless they really don't want to be freed. there are loads of other circumstances under which the slave gets his/her freedom and a whole bunch of other rights that he/she is entitled to, which make it rather too expensive to afford slavery. basically it is hedged so as to be practically unworkable in any form that would involve the actual exploitation of the slave, albeit you won't hear about any of this without knowing the Oral Law.

animal sacrifice is another highly complicated area and one which i wouldn't want to make any overarching statements about other than to say i have found my own way to relate to it from within the mystical tradition, largely in terms of what i call the "law of spiritual equivalents", which is from hosea: "we therefore now offer [the words of] our lips in the place of the bull-sacrifices". most of your questions can probably be answered here: http://www.jewfaq.org/qorbanot.htm but i am happy to address anything further.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Quath]

basically, from our perspective, there is no place empty of the Divine, but that doesn't interfere with our free-will.

I think this creates a paradox. If God interferes, it breaks free-will somehow because it changes the future of what would have been. Only deist type god can try to claim that he gives free-will (whatever that really is suppose to be).

a race is not the same as a biblical "nation". that's not how it works.

Is there a good argument for why the Israelites did not take in the children of the other tribes instead of killing them?

no reason? four hundred years of slavery isn't a reason? besides, our tradition imputes this plague to pharaoh's arrogance alone - he was given the chance to avert it and he refused, thinking himself more powerful than the G!D of the hebrews. to this way of thinking, it was he himself who is responsible, having been given fair warning of the consequences of his actions.

I could buy this if God did not also say that slavery was ok. It comes across as hypocracy. Slavery did not seem that good either since you were allowed to beat your slave. Females slaves were kept for life. If a male slave married a female slave, the male slave had to stay a slave fpr the rest of his life to stay with his slave family. So slavery may have been a little better, but it still was a bad thing.

One of the problems with the story is that God punishes the people of Egypt because the israelites are not allowed to go to the desert to worship. Yet, God is suppose to have forced Pharoah to make this decision. So why punish someone for something they have no control over? If God really was mad at the slavery, why not just come in and punish all without the pretense of punishment for another deed?

deary, deary me. if every baby that ever tried to stick its finger in an electric socket was also 'teleported out', we'd never learn anything. pain is how we learn not to do certain things. this sort of thing is considered by the tradition as necessary exemplification for the purposes of establishing a principle. even so, we are *still*, several thousand years after the event in question, redeeming our first-born so as not to forget the lesson. in a way, we're still paying off on our freedom. we haven't forgotten it. i'm the first-born son of my parents and i fast every year on the anniversary of the tenth plague.

I am not saying that God has to get involved in everything. But when He does, why not do so in a peaceful manner? After all, He could either kill a lot of people or avoid bloodshed and teleport the Israelites out. Why did He chose the bloody route?

sez you. why can't it be a learning exercise for the person arguing with G!D? obviously, G!D would know all arguments beforehand, but the answer is not that G!D isn't omniscient or whatever, but that it was expected that abraham go through a certain process in order to teach us all something about the value of human life and - hey presto - look, here we are thousands of years later discussing the lesson. seems to have worked, eh.

I am not sure there is much wisdom to be gained from wondering why God would keep threating to kill everyone and having to be talked out of it when He didn't really plan on killing anyone in the first place. The arguments from Moses were like "Don't do it. You made a promise, remember?" What kind of lesson is God giving with that?

somehow, the people you're complaining about seem a lot keener on gay-bashing than preserving the Sabbath

I agree. Most don't even know that the government set the day of worship for them, not anything derived from their Bible.

animal sacrifice is another highly complicated area and one which i wouldn't want to make any overarching statements about other than to say i have found my own way to relate to it from within the mystical tradition, largely in terms of what i call the "law of spiritual equivalents", which is from hosea: "we therefore now offer [the words of] our lips in the place of the bull-sacrifices". most of your questions can probably be answered here: http://www.jewfaq.org/qorbanot.htm but i am happy to address anything further.

Thanks. I will check out this website.

Quath

 

[bananabrain]

I think this creates a paradox.

of course it does! paradox is central to any appreciation of jewish theosophical approaches to mysticism. in fact, i think a very good case could be made for considering paradox to be one of the essential tools for G!D-consciousness, particularly within judaism. if a person can't deal with paradox, they are never going to understand the way we approach the Ineffable.

If G!D interferes, it breaks free-will somehow because it changes the future of what would have been. Only deist type god can try to claim that he gives free-will (whatever that really is suppose to be).

on the contrary, all possibilities, combinations and permutations by definition exist within the Infinite Divine - but this is not in conflict with our ability to affect our own proximate reality. the paradox actually is that G!D "sees" (in our terms) the entire spectrum of possibility and result that comes from a single human instance of choice. because G!D is outside time in the same way as space, all times are one time, or no time, depending on how you want to look at it - therefore the cause and the effect are indistinguishable in G!Dspace. it's a question of perspective - we can't possibly share G!D's perspective; all we can actually do is experience it filtered through the myriad layers of the mystical interface between the Infinite Divine and us down here in Malkhut of the universe of Assiyah. to put it more precisely, if i give you a yes-no instruction, you have free will to carry it out or not regardless of my continued presence and my knowledge of both possible results.

Is there a good argument for why the Israelites did not take in the children of the other tribes instead of killing them?

look, it's a tough question and i don't know for sure. sometimes, even if it says "they killed everyone, including the camels" or whatever, various commentators find ways to say that it didn't actually happen that way, even apparently blatantly contradicting the plain meaning of the text. i'm not saying that's what happened there, but even from a cursory examination of joshua, judges and so on it is clear that the israelites very often didn't carry out the command - possibly even in spite of what they had been commanded. they even got hoodwinked occasionally, as in the case of the gibeonites. personally, insofar as this issue is something that i spend any time on, i consider that a "nation" was "destroyed" if its values and behaviours were destroyed rather than its people. by that logic, if the children of the canaanites were "taken in", they were "destroyed" as canaanites. either way, it really isn't terribly edifying to me and seems to be of most interest to people that think judaism needs to justify its existence in terms of modern morality, which, as i've said before, doesn't seem terribly impressive to me.

I could buy this if God did not also say that slavery was ok. It comes across as hypocrisy.

i don't see that G!D says slavery is OK. we have laws of slavery, but i'm not aware that we're commanded to have slaves (maybe that's why the biblical israelites weren't allowed to take prisoners!) and in fact there is a blessing for not being a slave which we say every morning. from the point of view of halacha i dare say that the main benefit to not being a slave is that it allows you freedom to carry out G!D's commands.

Slavery did not seem that good either since you were allowed to beat your slave. Females slaves were kept for life. If a male slave married a female slave, the male slave had to stay a slave fpr the rest of his life to stay with his slave family. So slavery may have been a little better, but it still was a bad thing.

actually, i don't think you've all the laws about this, quath. read http://www.torah.org/learning/halacha-overview/chapter73.html for a start. secondly, i think this http://www.jsn.info/Parsha Archive/Mishpatim_5764.htm argument makes a much better case than i ever could for why this question is also a "have you quit beating your wife?"

Yet, G!D is suppose to have forced Pharoah to make this decision. So why punish someone for something they have no control over?

but, like i said in my earlier post, pharaoh *did* have control over this. G!D didn't "force" him to do anything. he could still have exerted his own will.

I am not saying that G!D has to get involved in everything. But when He does, why not do so in a peaceful manner?

i suppose that within that context, if G!D hadn't brought us out of egypt with "a strong hand, an outstretched arm" and "signs and wonders" then nobody - us or the egyptians, or the other people that tried to prevent the will of G!D - would have believed us. justice had to be done, seen to be done and seen to be attributed to the Holy Blessed One and G!D of israel. frankly, G!D not acting visibly any more seems to encourage people to deny the possibility of Divine action!

I am not sure there is much wisdom to be gained from wondering why G!D would keep threatening to kill everyone and having to be talked out of it when He didn't really plan on killing anyone in the first place.

sorry, quath, but we seem to have spent several thousand years gaining wisdom from it, despite your apparent inability to find any benefit. the issue here is probably that this is probably a test of moses and the israelites' faith rather than G!D's commitments. something like "I know I Promised - but supposing I Hadn't? would that change your mind at all?" might be enough to worry most people! you seem very keen, unfortunately, to dismiss something that our greatest minds have spent their entire lives grappling with. i don't see it as G!D's inadequacy, but as our impatience. if i may say so, i'd prefer it if you adopted a less accusatory tone. it is not judaism's fault you don't know how it works. i'm more than happy to discuss these subjects, but i don't see why i should be put in a position which feels awfully like "your religion advocates genocide, slavery, etc etc. defend yourself - if you can!" in my experience, interfaith dialogue works best if it is based on open questioning and doesn't rush headlong into the most controversial areas.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Quath]

of course it does! paradox is central to any appreciation of jewish theosophical approaches to mysticism. in fact, i think a very good case could be made for considering paradox to be one of the essential tools for G!D-consciousness, particularly within judaism. if a person can't deal with paradox, they are never going to understand the way we approach the Ineffable.

This is a very interesting point. I did not appreciate this ealier. In a sense it removes all questions since anything can be a paradox. You can define God as good/bad/indifferent/nonexistant or as any deity ever conceived. It is hard to know something if there are no rules to understand it.

actually, i don't think you've all the laws about this, quath. read http://www.torah.org/learning/halacha-overview/chapter73.html for a start. secondly, i think this http://www.jsn.info/Parsha%20Archive/Mishpatim_5764.htm argument makes a much better case than i ever could for why this question is also a "have you quit beating your wife?"

I have a feeling that slavery was harsher than portrayed here. From what I have read it was ok to beat your slaves and to have sexual slaves. I am sure these people were worked hard.

I guess it sounds a little too much on how America tried to justify its slavery. They were feeding and taking care of an illiterate group of people and teaching them the values of hard work. Some would even bring their slaves into their family as a house negro. Even the Church would point out the Bible passages that supported this including the one that shows one of Noah's children and lineage being cursed to serve others.

I think that is one of the big problems with religion. You don't develop morality, you just accept it. So someone tells you homosexuality is bad and you believe it without question. This makes stuff like slavery more acceptable because morality is based on interpretation of a book as opposed to development from first principles.

but, like i said in my earlier post, pharaoh *did* have control over this. G!D didn't "force" him to do anything. he could still have exerted his own will.

I don't agree. From Exodus 7: 1-5 "Then the LORD said to Moses, "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."

This is repeated many thimes throughout the story.

i suppose that within that context, if G!D hadn't brought us out of egypt with "a strong hand, an outstretched arm" and "signs and wonders" then nobody - us or the egyptians, or the other people that tried to prevent the will of G!D - would have believed us. justice had to be done, seen to be done and seen to be attributed to the Holy Blessed One and G!D of israel. frankly, G!D not acting visibly any more seems to encourage people to deny the possibility of Divine action!

Not sure if that was a good plan because many people doubt a lot of stuff in this story. It doesn't seem to match up with historical records of the Egyptians.

if i may say so, i'd prefer it if you adopted a less accusatory tone.

You are right. I got into debate mode. I will try to be less accusatory.

Quath

 

[bananabrain]

I will try to be less accusatory.

ta! *grins* i don't like getting into strife on websites; it wastes everyone's time.

In a sense it removes all questions since anything can be a paradox.

i'm not sure i agree that anything can be a paradox, although there is a PoV which says that any statement about the Divine is inherently paradoxical since we can never know the Divine. i prefer to look at it as "well, we can't know what G!D actually Wants - except that we have a book that G!D actually gave us that told us" - which, really, doesn't make a lot of sense. i think that's the secret of the biblical phrase with which the jews accepted Torah: na'aseh ve'nishma - literally "we shall do and we shall listen", in other words "well, we'll try it out and then see what we think". there are a multiplicity of levels to this phrase, of course.

You can define G!D as good/bad/indifferent/nonexistent or as any deity ever conceived.

again, i'm not sure i agree with this. i would say that G!D can be defined as 'good' in terms of the Divine Will for us humans, but also as 'bad' in terms of including everything, as in isaiah's "form light/create darkness/do good/create evil". and, of course, the way we talk about the Divine as "Ein" (nothingness) is not a million miles away from the way buddhists talk.... the "any deity" approach is closer to neo-pagan and western mystery tradition approaches, however.

It is hard to know something if there are no rules to understand it.

i agree, but it's important to understand that what we are really knowing is how *we* understand something and that that's what the rules are about, not about the Object of our limited understanding.

I have a feeling that slavery was harsher than portrayed here. From what I have read it was ok to beat your slaves and to have sexual slaves. I am sure these people were worked hard.

well, perhaps it was harsher, but the point is that the Law itself does not sanction harshness or coercive sex, so if that happened it was because people didn't keep G!D's commands - and there's plenty of criticism by the prophets on just those grounds. the point is that the way that the Torah was interpreted by humans was to minimise the degradation of slavery as far as could be done - all but officially, we ourselves are not much better off these days in western society for all we are supposed to be "free". in fact in a lot of ways the label is more of a problem for moderns than the actions concerned.

Even the Church would point out the Bible passages that supported this including the one that shows one of Noah's children and lineage being cursed to serve others.

yes, but i'm not excusing the way so-called christians interpreted the bible to justify american slavery. for a start, they certainly weren't using the Oral Law, which makes the whole thing extremely problematic and indeed nonsensical from a jewish PoV. in fact that's an excellent argument for the consideration of Torah as a system and not as an "old testament". for all the "peace and love" stuff in the NT and the stigmatisation of the Law and the "OT god of vengeance", as far as i am concerned judaism has far less to explain than christianity does - and that's because of the Oral Law.

I think that is one of the big problems with religion. You don't develop morality, you just accept it. So someone tells you homosexuality is bad and you believe it without question.

firstly, like i said before, judaism praises and condemns action, not status. secondly, you could make exactly the same arguments about modern thought, which requires that we "just accept" the supremacy of reason, the individual as ultimate arbiter of right and wrong and so on. axioms remain axioms whether they derive from athens or sinai.

This makes stuff like slavery more acceptable because morality is based on interpretation of a book as opposed to development from first principles.

what i am actually arguing is that there are correct interpretations and incorrect ones and that the Torah itself *is* "first principles" - everything else is interpretation. it doesn't stop people who interpret in error using the Text to justify unjust acts, but it doesn't legitimise them either.

I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you.

yes, but it still does not follow from this that pharaoh has therefore lost his free will to resist the hardening of his heart, all the more so because countervailing arguments are provided (the signs and wonders) to convince him that he is wrong. indeed, i am bound to think that perhaps the hardening of his heart was necessary because otherwise he would have been unable to resist the evidence of the plagues - perhaps the heart-hardening was a gift from G!D to balance the scales and allow him to tip the scales according to his own choice. in other words, it's no way as clear-cut as you suggest.

Not sure if that was a good plan because many people doubt a lot of stuff in this story. It doesn't seem to match up with historical records of the Egyptians.

well, aside from the fact that this isn't actually history, but sacred literature, historians are always very keen on pointing out that history is written by the winners. but by this logic, is it not possible that the egyptians chose to cover up this sorry episode in their historical records in order not to make themselves look bad to their descendants? either both sets of records are suspect, or none. therefore, there is no case for disbelieving the jewish account and accepting the egyptian one simply in terms of evenhandedness.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[iBrian]

historians are always very keen on pointing out that history is written by the winners. but by this logic, is it not possible that the egyptians chose to cover up this sorry episode in their historical records in order not to make themselves look bad to their descendants?

Egyptian contemporary history was effectively a series propaganda statements - from Rameses glorious "draw" with the Hittites, to mass defacing of prior Pharaonic records where shame was associated with the names. David Rohl in "Test of Time" makes an interesting attempt to draw an actual history of Moses from contemporary records, with varying results.

 

[bananabrain]

yeah, except rohl isn't massively popular in the world of historians i believe - too populist and too concerned with reconciling history to the bible. i personally don't believe in reconciling them - they are responses to different questions, but i don't see why they can't coexist without trying to debunk each other.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Faithfulservant]

Quath

Christians want to ban homosexuality because God use to say it was good to kill homosexuals. There is no logical reason to stop homosexuality, only religious ones. So in this case, people apply literal readings of the Bible to enact laws on others.

Quath

This is a generalization and only part true. The belief is that the act of the homosexual is unclean and opens the door for the downward spiral towards a reprobate mind.
For you to say there is no logical reason only religious ones is stating that God is not as logical as we are and that God belongs in a box titled "religious" and should only be taken out on the Sabbath or whichever day he is worshipped. Some faiths take their Bibles or Holy Books literally as the Word of God.

Faithful Servant

 

[iBrian]

Rather than have this thread spiral into a specific debate on homosexuality, I'd like to encourage people to make specific discussions of the topic on homosexuality here: Homosexuality and Religion

http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1057

 

[Faithfulservant]

Ok Brian.. I wasnt intending to take it anywhere close to a homosexuality issue I was replying to a comment he made regarding God and Homosexuality being a Morality of God issue.. I felt his generalization needed to be pointed out to him. My apologies

Faithful Servant

 

[iBrian]

No problem at all, but it's simply one of those subjects that can entirely take over a thread/discussion.

Back to the topic of God and Morality - and as this thread is posted on the Judaism board - then are there specific ways within Judaism that passages are re-interpreted so as to remove inference of cruelty or human fallibility in God's judgements?

Simply because some of the more literalist anti-Christian commenters, such as Dennis McKinsey, love to take some of the KJV translations and re-present them as some form of representation of a demonic God.

 

[alexa]

In my humble opinion, we cannot put God's morality in question without being accused of blasphemy. On the other hand, we can speak about humans' morality and interpretation of the bible as long as you are interested. It may take weeks, months, years, etc.

I believe bananabrain pointed out already about

a race is not the same as a biblical "nation".

. I second that.

 

[dauer]

The way I look at it, any description of God's behavior is just man's attempt to understand God based on the world around him. If it says, "God smote the Hendersons" then this is the understanding of a) God's role in the progression of history or b) God's role in the forces of nature. This would depend on how the Hendersons were smote.

Example:

Tsunami hits somewhere. I as an Ancient Heeb say to myself "Oh maaah LAAAAAWD why did you do such a thing?" And then I would find a way to understand why it happened. When I wrote about it, I would probably write, well, almost midrashically on history so that I would feel better about the incident. Maybe they were bad people who had to die.

Or me and my peeps roll out and bust a cap in another nation to claim their lands for our own selves. As an Ancient Jew I understand that everything happend by the will of God, unquestionably. So when the battle is recorded, I want to reflect Hashem's role rather than take credit for myself. Or, possibly I want to remove responsibility from myself by showing that it is truly in God's will. Either way it is for the same reason. God is present in all historical and natural events. A biblical text ought to reflect God's presence.

Dauer

 

[Sacredstar]

The winner writes the history and the writer usually as a bias.....the question is, is it GOD's presence? My soul tells me some is and some isn't the secret is differientating the two.

The choice; is it GOD of wrath or GOD of love or GOD just IS I AM totally neutral, allowing humanity to exert the greatest gift of all free will.

blessings in abundance

Sacredstar

 

[dauer]

For me, either God is present in everything or God is present in nothing. It makes no sense to me that some things are from God and others are not.

Free will is a complicated issue. We could say that everything is free will and nothing is God, or that everything is God and that there is no free will, or that there is free will and at the same time it is all within a system that has predictable and known outcomes, known to God.

To me, it is the last that makes sense. We have free will, but God is all-knowing. We have been placed where we are for a reason.

Dauer