(June 16, 2017 at 10:04 am)Khemikal Wrote:(June 16, 2017 at 9:39 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: I think he's saying a command from an unfathomably powerful being would have us reaching for the knife in sheer terror. He's not entirely without a point, people can be terrorized into doing things that would normally be unthinkable for them. In theory, displeasing a reality warper would be a Very Bad Thing. Of course telling what the beast really wants can be dodgy; the Abrahamic God seems to be a trickster.Pretty sure he thinks that we're going to piss our pants and run away, but he thinks that -he- might be scared into stabbing.
While we can certainly be scared into alot of things, filicide doesn't seem to be one of the commonly recurring ones, for most people. I strongly suspect that the reaction "murdered own child" is an outlier in the field of being scared shitless.
Similarly, people who would legitimately, not in some pantomime of their beliefs, but legitimately consider this act as a credible outcome of their having met a god or been told by a god to do it are expressing something that would be terrifying were it not for it;s absolute ubiquity in our culture. Evil as wholesome as apple pie, like always. Their fear or fealty outweighs the value of their child's life, to them - and to say so is taken as a sign of great faith and strong moral character. Rather than consider it abjectly unjustifiable murder, the concept is framed as a difficult choice to make within the overall context of divine command and authority. It takes a strong man to make such a difficult choice, to take such a leap of faith. God, in the narrative, tests his faith by exploiting the weakness of his basic human love for a child. He is rewarded for his obediance, and the implication of having his faith so sorely tested is that he would -not- have been rewarded had he chosen to listen to the better angels of his own nature. The failure condition for this test, was basic human decency. I don't find anything in that to be ambiguous or tricky. God wants obedience.
All of this shit is positively valued in our culture............but from the point of view of a perpetual outsider it just seems like a band of ghouls trying to outdo each other for asslicking.
Yes, it's an utter bullshit state of affairs; when I was growing up I asked one of my parents (I'll leave it at that) what they would do in that situation and was told that yes, they would sacrifice me without a second thought. The takeaway for me then just as much as now is the same: that strip away all the noble language and talk of God's will etc and what it boils down to is the selfish you want to go to heaven and will do anything it takes to get there. That's all that has ever meant to me, and was not a nice message to learn growing up... always playing second fiddle to God. Like wanting to scream... 'I'm here... I'm real... you can see me! but you choose this thing you can't see and can't prove over me'.
