(April 2, 2016 at 12:58 pm)KevinM1 Wrote:(April 2, 2016 at 11:51 am)Crossless1 Wrote: Oh, Kevin, don't you know that when contemporary people hear God command them to do terrible things it's because they are psychotic or otherwise afflicted, while the characters in the Bible are sane as hell and just following orders (*cough*Eichmann*cough*)? The Biblical characters' characters and motives must be above reproach to maintain the façade that their national narrative is the word of their god, while the characters and motives of modern-day believers who commit horrible acts ostensibly on behalf of that same god must be questioned and rejected for pretty much the same reason.
Exactly my point. There's no real difference between the people god supposedly commanded to do heinous things in the bible and the people who do heinous things today because they think god is talking to them just like he did to those people in the stories. The only difference is that society has progressed to the point where hearing voices in one's head is a sign of psychosis, a result reached in spite of religion.
Moreover, the bible starts out saying that everything god does is good, and we're just supposed to agree because... we are. Fuck. That. The stories present terrible things, and we're just supposed to go along with it because, nah, man it's cool, god's doing it. It's idiotic in the extreme, and frightening to boot. A horde of idiots who are more than willing to 'just follow orders' because they believe a deference to authority - an authority they believe to be above reproach, which is also terrifying - lets them off the hook.
It's reprehensible and insulting, doubly so because they gleefully defend their lemmingness.
The cherry on top is believers' unwillingness to entertain the notion that much of their beloved OT narrative is likely royal propaganda written and disseminated long after the alleged 'facts'. Contrast the Exodus narrative or the narrative of Joshua with what is currently known by way of archaeology. Look at how Israel and its kings are treated in the narratives that originated in Judah. Then there's the "discovery" of Deuteronomy during the reign of Josiah. It goes on and on.
