What if the bible were rewritten?

[abaris]

The earliest concept of Hell we know about is part of Zorastrianism, so Zoroasters probably the one you want.

But don't forget that the english as well as the German words for it have their origin in the germanic goddess Hel and her hangout. There are quite many examples of an underworld although it wasn't so much described as a place of torture, but rather of Oblivion. The Egyptian mythology also had the concept of final judgment with Osiris presiding. If you failed the heart test, you were swallowed by a beast, although as far as I know, this simply meant non existence and not eternal torture.

[Pyrrho]

It amazes me that you can describe him that way and not realize how terrifying he is.  In other words, god needs no moral cover for his actions and can do whatever he pleases and we'd better thank him for it or he'll show us just how many new ways he can make us scream in torment and horror.  And as we see in the OT, he's a needy, emotional wreck just itching for a chance to massively ruin your day.

That's the guy you want to spend eternity with.  And you think he'll never turn on you, for some reason you can't logically defend.  And you don't think there's an argument against god here.  Outstanding.

You are zeroing in on a few of the stories. There are many many places where God shows mercy and a willingness to withhold judgement. Every one of the objectionable stories you are thinking of involved judgement for individual and/or systemic wickedness (which was clearly spelled out prior to the judgment). To support your characterization of God, you would have to show that he did not have the authority to judge wickedness OR that withholding judgement would have resulted in more good (at some point in the future timeline). 

Most of you are missing a very big component. Yes, God is omnipotent, but he has created a world of beings with freewill. Knowing we would choose to sin, he, from the very beginning, planned for a process of redemption (the NT): The Edenic Covenant (Genesis 3:15); Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12, 13, 22); Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7). 

There is a doctrine of God's foreknowledge which I find philosophically appealing: God (with an infinitely powerful mind), surveyed all possible worlds in which he created beings with freewill, and with knowledge of what every being would freely choose to do in any given circumstance, actualized the world with the greatest eternal good.  This includes his interactions, his commands, his answers/no answers to prayers, and of course an eventual plan of redemption.

The God you believe in is either impotent or evil.  The freewill defense is bollocks.  See:

Hey I appreciate it. Thank you. :-) 

I would keep the Christian God. 

I believe God gave us free will and allows nature to take it's coarse. 

A God that talks to us, gives us whatever we ask/want, and immediately paralizes anyone who is about to do something hurtful, sounds good in theory, but I think it would open up a whole can of worms. 

First of all, I can see people getting terribly spoiled, always asking for more and more, never being satisfied, and deeply resenting God when they did not get what they want.

If what you say is true, isn't that God's fault for making people that way?  Any imperfection in a creation is the fault of its creator.  If the creator were perfect, it could create perfect things.  That it does not means that either it does not want to create perfect things, or it is unable to create perfect things.  If the former, then God is evil, because he prefers making bad things to good things, and if the latter, then God is not omnipotent.

Second, I think physically stopping people from doing anything that He does not approve of would cause more harm than good. We would just be like children, always confined to daddy's rules and never being able to grow and learn from our mistakes, etc. 

If God gave us wisdom, we would not need to learn anything.  If we need to learn anything, it is God's fault in making us imperfect.  See above.

Third, having free will means the world is what we make it to a certain extent. A lot of the human suffering is due to corruption of man and we have no one to blame for that but ourselves.

First of all, much of what is wrong with the world has nothing to do with humans having free will.  Think of all of the diseases, earthquakes, etc.  So free will does not explain away evil.

Second, it is not entirely clear that we have free will, nor is it entirely clear that having free will is a good thing.  I will set this aside for the moment, but it needs to be established for it to be reasonable to believe your story.  (That would involve explaining what, exactly, "free will" is.)

Third, is there free will in heaven?  If so, does that mean that evil will exist in heaven?  If so, how is heaven different from life now?  And if there is free will in heaven, without evil, then having free will does not explain the existence of evil here and now.  And if there is no free will in heaven, then it must be better to not have free will, since heaven is better than here.  Isn't it?

Fourth, imagine that you and I are having a picnic together in a large park.  We are conversing agreeably, having some wine and good food.  In the distance, we observe a group of people attacking another person, raping and beating the person.  You say, "hey, we should do something" like call the police on your cell phone, go get help, go and directly help the person, whatever.  I say, "no, we can't do that!  We can't interfere with their free will!"  Now, if that really happened, what would you say of me?  Would you regard me as moral or immoral?  Well, I would be doing what God does.  So are you saying it is right to not help others?  Furthermore, we can see that this does not work anyway as an excuse, because us interfering would not affect whether they have free will or not.  We would only be affecting the outcome, not their ability to make choices.  Likewise, God interfering with outcomes would not affect anyone's free will at all.  They could still will to rape and beat and kill, without succeeding.  So this "free will" excuse really excuses nothing whatsoever.

And:

The Catholic idea is that you don't enter heaven until you are already "perfect", for lack of a better word. We believe the vast majority of us will go to Purgatory where we will really learn to love God (love goodness and love, which is what we believe God is) with a perfect love. 

Once we reach that stage, we go to Heaven. Yes, we will still have free will but at that point we will already have so much love for God and for all that is good, that we won't sin anymore. I hope that helps. Thanks for the respectful dialogue. Let me know if you have any more questions. :-)

Happy to oblige; thank you for the answers.

I think that this means that it is possible to reach a condition where we have free will, minus that part of it that would lead us to do things that would displease god.  I think that the best of all possible worlds is one where we are born/created that way; we get to enjoy god's world and one another, we get to develop as people with unique personalities and skills, and we don't hurt ourselves or one another.  A system that filters out most of us --by allowing us to hurt ourselves and those around us, and to offend god, and to wind up in an eternity of suffering-- can't be the best possible outcome.  Billions of people who were just one or two mental tweaks away from being part of a perfect society will instead spend eternity in misery and torment.  Those who make it to heaven will either bear the burden of knowing that so many were lost, or will not care, or will not be allowed to care.  It's just a poor situation all around, IMO.

I think it's possible to make a world where I can decide to be a painter or a plumber, where I can decide that yogurt-dipped raisins are better than chocolate-dipped cherries (point of fact: they're not) or that I'll pursue a relationship with Veronica instead of Betty, where I can make lots of choices that aren't sinful or harmful.  I think if that world also included a mental block that didn't allow me to pour scalding water on the arm of a three-year-old to "teach him a lesson" that would not be a bad thing at all.  I'd like to live in a world where Eve's poor judgment didn't bring thousands of years of misery and brutal mistreatment of one another, even if it means that her freedom to make catastrophically-bad choices was suppressed just enough.

Even for people who live a good and clean life --who help when they can and seek to help and never hurt-- such a world must be a better option.  There are true stories of mistreatment of people that would make nearly all of us weep helplessly.  I'm willing to trade a world where Ted Bundy never tortures young women to death for one where his freedom to choose to be a monster is curtailed.  If this is the best arrangement that god could dream up, I am sorely disappointed in him.  He created everything, including us.  I think he owes us much better than he has delivered.

[SteveII]

You seem to be confusing anger with acting in anger. There is no indication that God acted rashly or hastily.

But he did act in anger, yes?

You think that God is somehow bound by what we consider just or fair.

On the contrary, I am aware that god is NOT bound by what we consider just or fair.  God is not 'bound' by anything, because no one can challenge his power.  It doesn't matter if his actions regarding Job were just or fair, and this is indeed what god made clear to Job, and what Job finally understood.  Note that when god addresses Job, he doesn't speak of obligations or fairness; he compares his magnificent and near-limitless power to that of the weak little human before him.  Job had no recourse.  God has no obstacles.

Regarding your hypothetical if God created beings without freewill, would he send them to Hell (which is best defined as eternal separation from God). No, that would not be within the character of God being the greatest conceivable being. But we do have freewill, so the burden shifts to us.

So why wouldn't god choose for us?  We have free will because he gave it to us, and apparently the only possible use for it is to get on his bad side, seeing as no human as yet has managed to avoid sin.  Job apparently did all he could to get on god's good side, and he was raked over the coals for it.  I'd just as soon that god choose to save us all than that he leave us foundering in a situation where the vast majority of us will end up suffering eternal torment.  That cannot be the best possible outcome.

I don't recall any passage that would be similar to a human smiting another in anger in an unjustified or hasty manner. Judgment was always declared prior to the consequence. 

The major lesson in Job is that bad things do not happen because of retribution or because God was unaware (the two options that Job postulated for his plight). The running of the universe and all the events from creation to the end of it is a little more complicated and cries of "injustice" are not warranted. Understanding our position in relationship with God is important when discussing whether God is a "murderous prick". 

You simply can't have love without freewill. That's what God wanted for us between each other and toward him.

[Minimalist]

I don't remember Hitler (or any of your other examples) laying out the groundwork that would bring the possibility of eternal redemption for the entire human race--which is how Christians read the OT (it's also what the OT itself claims to be doing).

Hitler was far less of an asshole than your god.




Mein Kampf is Pulitizer material compared to this stupidity.

[Tonus]

I don't recall any passage that would be similar to a human smiting another in anger in an unjustified or hasty manner. Judgment was always declared prior to the consequence.

That he was not hasty in carrying out judgment doesn't mean it wasn't done in anger. The Bible says that god is slow to anger, not that he does not become angry. If his pronouncements are perfect, then we can expect that he will not change the judgment that he arrived at in anger. Otherwise, he would have no cause to become angry.

The major lesson in Job is that bad things do not happen because of retribution or because God was unaware (the two options that Job postulated for his plight). The running of the universe and all the events from creation to the end of it is a little more complicated and cries of "injustice" are not warranted. Understanding our position in relationship with God is important when discussing whether God is a "murderous prick".

My point was that after everything he'd allowed to happen to Job, god humbled him for daring to expect an explanation. Job was confused (justifiably so) to have been treated as he was when he had been an upright and blameless man. God explained to Job that he had no right to expect anything from the mighty lord of the universe. Job was to know his place and be content with that. For all of the rewards that he received afterwards, Job must have spent the rest of his days knowing that his world could easily be turned inside-out again at any time, whether he liked it or not.

You simply can't have love without freewill. That's what God wanted for us between each other and toward him.

I don't see why not. I'm not aware that love is an emotion that we simply choose to feel. If god wanted us to love him, then he could have implemented the best outcome right from the start. Everyone would be saved, everyone would get to know him personally, and everyone would love him for it. Having selected an option that leaves the majority of people on the outside looking in (a fate that god expected, based on Jesus' words about the wide vs narrow path) is not the sort of thing that would engender love. Fear or resentment, perhaps. But not love.

[dyresand]

Let us take every reference to god from the bible and replace it with Hitler, Stalin, Yakubu Gowon, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Kim Il Sung, Brakeman (Oh, I meant Pol Pot), Idi Amin (and cannot leave the women out) Queen Mary I of England, Isabella of Castile, Ilse Koch or any other name that you would care to insert.

Is not the bible a fitting 'history' for any of these people?

Anyone have some better substitutions?

Here is my 1 page rewrite 


All religion is a load of bunk go get a life.