(January 22, 2016 at 4:42 pm)Cato Wrote:

(January 22, 2016 at 3:28 pm)athrock Wrote: I understand your response. It's based upon a powerful emotional reaction.

But not upon intellect and reason.

This is a bullshit reply. Emotion and reason can certainly conflict at times, but they are not mutually exclusive.

As far as I can tell, this thread is nothing more than an attempt to resolve the problem of evil by arguing "who are you to judge?". This hardly merits a response.

The God of the Bible is a demonstrably evil prick. Those deeds that can be labeled good don't change this. This ledger accounting of morality is the same as saying "I know he's a rapist, but he's an all around good guy because he also helps feed the poor".

Redefining evil as the absence of good also doesn't work for you. Evil and good are subjective evaluations of moral behavior on a scale that changes not only over time as cultures evolve but at any given point in time between different cultures. This treatment doesn't even survive superficial consideration from your source:
”For thus saith the Lord; as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them” (Jer. 32:42).

Your only real option regarding the problem of evil is to evaluate as good the behaviors of God that the vast majority of your fellow humans, believers or not, quickly classify as evil. Good luck with that argument.

Clearly, yours is the minority opinion. A few billion people have read the same texts to which you object and arrived at the opposite conclusion - including, btw, former atheists raised by atheist parents. So, don't give me any of the usual crap about all these people having been brainwashed when they were children. 

I get so tired of the atheist apologists (those who actually attempt to explain and defend atheism) in this forum repeating the same empty lines over and over without any evidence of original thought. Common examples of this:

• All believers were brain-washed by their parents. Not.
  
• Any atheist who becomes a believer is simply reverting to the faith he learned as a child. Not.
  
• God is an immoral monster. Not.
  

The God of the Bible is NOT a demonstrably evil prick, and simply stating this as your opinion in this regard does nothing to prove your case.

It's simplistic. An easy way out for you. A way that requires no real thought.

So, I understand its appeal.

And I understand that there are difficult passages of the Bible that believers and non-believers are going to wrestle with. One attempt at this is found in this book:



Might be worth a read. 

The point of all this, Cato, is simply to point out that it is possible to examine the concerns you and others share about God's actions in the OT and arrive at a reasoned conclusion that God is not a prick. 

But that will require courage and effort...and openness to what the implications of your research might be for your view of God.

(January 22, 2016 at 4:58 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: Pharaoh didn't see any signs and wonders, because the Exodus didn't happen.  Jesus didn't do the zombie dance either.  

How are you sure of this?

(January 23, 2016 at 1:03 pm)athrock Wrote: Prostitution and child sacrifice.

So far, the Canaanites sound like wonderful folks.

What's the problem with consensual prostitution? Like, how is that a moral issue at all?

As for child sacrifice... I dunno, maybe you need to go and familiarize yourself a bit with old Jepthah before you start disparaging the worshipers of other gods for that particular act, dude. Bible god is perfectly fine with that so long as the sacrifice is to him.

(January 23, 2016 at 1:03 pm)athrock Wrote:

(January 22, 2016 at 3:45 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Ok, we'll stick with this. I'll take the first link. The abominations of the Canaanites.


One of the first comments is that Yahweh was mad that the canaanites weren't worshiping him. As I stated before, this is one of the reasons he's so angry, and it's not exactly a sympathetic one.


This goes into the fact that Yahweh apparently has issues about sex. Though that seems like a personal problem, instead of a reason to call people who disagree with him evil.

Prostitution and child sacrifice.

So far, the Canaanites sound like wonderful folks.

Well one of which is not wrong, as long as it's legal, taxed, and regulated. the other isn't something Yahweh should be judging them on when he demands the same thing. It makes him a hypocrite.

Since there was no Exodus or Conquest the real question is what kind of fucked up people would invent these stories?  Who were they trying to impress?

(January 23, 2016 at 1:25 pm)athrock Wrote: Imagine that you were one of the Israelites travelling with Joshua. You've been wandering in the desert for 40 years following a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Every morning you eat manna with has formed like frost on the ground. When you need water, Moses strikes a rock with his staff, and bam....water for milions of people and livestock appears out of nowhere.

Your parents and grandparents, all dead now since they were not permitted to enter the promised land because of their disobedience, told you of all that God did in Egypt: the plagues, the passover, the parting of the Red Sea. In your tent, you still have the jewelry, coins and other precious items that the Egyptians gave to your grandparents and parents as they left Egypt.

In the past few weeks, you entered the Promised Land - passing through the Jordan River which God also parted so that the people could walk through on dry land. You saw all this with your own eyes. And for the past six days, you've marched around the city of Jericho every day. Today, you've just marched around the city seven times, you've blown your trumpet, and you've seen the mighty walls of the city fall.

You tell me, rob...in view of all that God has done in the course of your parents' lives, in light of all that you have witnessed in your own life, and given what has transpired in just the past couple of hours, are you gonna believe and obey God's command to enter the city and destroy its wicked inhabitants or not?

Can you not hear/perceive the amount of fantasy included in your post? 40yrs desert, following pillars of cloud and fire, magically appearing food and water. Plagues on command, killing of first born only, parting water(s), walls fall due to walking and sound. And now, after all the magic has been done for you, you are expected to do the killing. Why not just another plague? Just another passover only wack them all? Nope, you had to now take lives. The price for believing.

Quote: Can you not hear/perceive the amount of fantasy included in your post?

Can I put $20 on the answer being "no."

(January 22, 2016 at 6:49 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(January 22, 2016 at 2:43 pm)athrock Wrote: This is a weak argument, and I see it all the time in this forum. "Oh, it's you believers who are trying to convince yourselves." No, Whatever, it really isn't. Believers believe. It's non-believers such as yourself who cling to the notion that God is immoral who must try to explain away rational explanations of God's actions.

IOW, atheists understandably ask hard questions. Believers reply with reasonable answers. Now, the ball is back in your court to deal with the implications of those answers. And simply repeating the questions is not the response of an intelligent man.

I wasn't trying to make an argument.  I'm just pointing out that I and plenty of other atheists do not care about the supposed immorality of God.  We understand that He is a character in a book of fables and as such he can be menacing, good or evil in turns, whatever.  There simply isn't any problem for me since I don't believe and I don't care.  That isn't an argument, it's simply a fact.

Well, I suppose that's fair, but is it reasonable and accurate?

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty that Jesus is just a character in a book of fables?

And, FWIW, the question of God's immorality in the OT is a huge deal to a lot of folks. Cecelia, for example, is beside herself with hatred of God for his alleged sexism. I don't know what may have happened to her in the past to make that her hot button, but there it is. Others here are gay and that's their obstacle. I suspect one person may have even been molested by a priest - though this is just a guess on my part. My point is that people have different reasons for their atheism, and thoughtful discussion of these things might actually remove some barriers. I'm not sure that everyone is emotionally ready to have that kind of conversation, though.

For example, do you suppose that if it could be demonstrated to her satisfaction that God is actually NOT sexist, then a huge obstacle standing in the way of faith would be removed? IOW, if Cecelia looked into the matter carefully and came to the conclusion that God is NOT sexist (but actually the opposite), then might some of her animosity or defensiveness be diminished? 

One other thing I've observed: most of the people in this forum are westerners and they come largely from a Judeo-Christian background. I'm not seeing too many people identifying as former Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists. I'm sure there may be a few here, but not the majority who are clearly coming from Catholic and Evangelical Protestant backgrounds for the most part. This means that they didn't say, "Well, I'm not happy with the Catholic Church's teaching on X, Y or Z, so, God must not exist." People with hot button issue like that usually become Protestant. No, the former believers here seem to have emotional or experiential reasons for their animosity toward God and believers.

Reasoning usually moves the individual in the direction of faith.

Normally, when an account includes a large amount of magic stuff happening, that's a warning sign that it's bollocks.

These accounts, at best, are probably retroactive explanations for why they went and slaughtered a bunch of people. Seriously, how hard is it to make some shit up about god telling you to do it? Or maybe some of them were genuinely deluded and were hearing/seeing things.

(January 23, 2016 at 2:21 pm)athrock Wrote: Reasoning usually moves the individual in the direction of faith.

What's your evidence of this? This seems little more than a bare assertion that you'd like to believe is true.

In my experience, reasoning isn't the deciding factor in which direction it moves you, but rather pre-existing biases and goals do. This seems obviously the case with you and your conclusion here.