JW looking for clarity

[abaris]

God's immorality in the bible - I know this is a favorite of many atheist. I remember Matt from the atheist experience podcast once saying that he is more moral than god because of the things that god condoned in the bible. First of all, if you can be a MORE moral person that implies a moral BEST. If there is a moral best, then that implies absolute morals. And second of all, Matt's point was that even if there was a god he would be proud that he didn't serve him in any way. But then he would kind of be proving the bibles point that men fell away because they thought they knew better... Also, I don't believe that the bible reflects gods ideal condition. I don't believe the mosaic law was a perfect law. But I do believe that it could be argued that the mosaic law was the best possible law for an imperfect system.

You're missing the point here. Yes, god is shown to be a highly vindictive and cruel bastard in the bible and it's not hard to be more moral than this god by simply being a decent person. But the whole thing points in another and ultimately more important direction. You certainly would agree that Zeus, Odin, Isis or Osiris are made up by human beings and they are. But same hold true for the god of the bible. He didn't create humans in his image, humans created him in their's. It's true for every deity that ever existed in the minds of their followers. They all have their very human vices and they all are a mirror of the time and the culture they have been created for.
So god mirrors the moral code of a Middle Eastern half nomadic people from the beginning of the Iron Age. The surprising thing isn't that he turned out the way he's described it's the fact that a lot of people still think we can learn something from these tales.