Was Abraham insane?

How do you know that God was even IN the equation? That's the whole question. Abraham thought the voice in his head was God, but so do lots of people who hear lots of kinds of voices in their heads. Pathless suggests that the test for whether the voice really has anything to do with God is the nature of what the voice is suggesting: a voice saying "Kill your child!" sounds like the same kind of voice that told Berkowitz (for non-Americans: a famous serial killer nicknamed "Son of Sam") to kill people on the street.
 
bob x said:
How do you know that God was even IN the equation?
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Because that is the story, Bob.

There is an allegory here and, whether or not it is a historically factual allegory is of no consequence. You must either read it like that or simply close the book and move on to a more viable premise for bashing Abrahamic faith... like, for instance, that he never existed anyway.

And if he didn't... then the story is entirely allegorical all the same.
 
I am not one of those who thinks the stories are just made up: I assume rather that there actually was a person named Abraham, and that while the texts may not always give accurate biographical data, that actual events are reflected in them; and I am more interested in what actually happened than in what "the story" now says.
 
Cyris Ali said:
Because that is the story, Bob.

There is an allegory here and, whether or not it is a historically factual allegory is of no consequence. You must either read it like that or simply close the book and move on to a more viable premise for bashing Abrahamic faith... like, for instance, that he never existed anyway.

And if he didn't... then the story is entirely allegorical all the same.
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It is an allegory- the son he was to sacrifice was his Double.

-Br.Bruce
 
bob x said:
....I am more interested in what actually happened than in what "the story" now says.
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I guess I see a very fine line between what is sanity and what is not.
Everything we perceive is based on some other perception ...like dominoes it goes, until we find this is all a mass hallucination. Literally.

Even "crazy" peoples' thoughts can be made sense of and unwound to the point where they are no longer so far out of harmony with the rest of the world that they begin to see things in way which is more advantageous to what we call a normal life or, at least, one that is more conducive to a good night's sleep in a safe neighborhood.

Every culture can trace out, through its roots, some sort of human sacrifice ritual.. outright cannibalism even.

If Abraham was crazy.. then we all are. And especially now... considering the amount of children which are sacrificed each day to some bloody crusade.

For me, that is the allegory.
And, ultimately, it wasn't what God wanted.. much less what Abraham probably wanted.
 
A friend has a story, sort of halfway between a "joke" and a "parable":

A man is committed to an insane asylum, and the psychiatrist asks him, "Do you understand why you are here?"

"Sure, because I'm crazy."

"No, because you ACT crazy. Now do you understand when you will get out?"

"When I stop being crazy?"

"No, when you stop ACTING crazy."


SO OK, Abraham was crazy, in a Bronze-Age kind of way, not the same as modern-age crazy but we've always been crazy one way or the other. He didn't act on it, and that's the point.
 
No. The fact of him being willing to kill his own son shows his how far his faith went. I don't think it should be taken literally it was like some kind of test, besides isn't it like God sacrificing Jesus? Like those sacrificial offerings?
 
But all those sacrificial offerings were insanity, and the picture given of God by those who think "God sacrificed Jesus" is insane also.
 
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