Did God play peek-a-boo?

[The Grand Nudger]

You mean this line?

Judges 1:19 KING JAMES VERSION
And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

I suppose they were viewing their world with their religious glasses on.
So, possibly that war was real and the author chose not to write “the lord was not with Judah”. Of course, he could have written it in a dozen different ways but who knows what lead them to that ^^^^ mess.

Getting their asses handed to them by the guys with iron chariots, one would assume.  A reason just like the ones you describe below. The again, the ot "historians" are well known for being brazen fucking liars..so maybe nothing of the sort ever happened and the person(s) in question full on electively decided that iron was their gods kryptonite - but here again, there are rules to magic. Maybe iron -is- kryptonite to some kinds of gods. They do all seem to have one glaring (and narratively useful) weakness, at least.

The jewish god can’t snap his fingers suddenly and forgive everyone because of a very logical reason: the believer combines the reality that he observes with his imagined god.
Just like me, he notices that life is hard, people get sick, people get a tooth ache, their brother suddenly dies of a heart attack at age 30, painkillers are not available during an operation, their 1 y old suddenly dies, etc.

They combine that reality ^^^^^ with this notion that there is a god that loves humans, cares for them and decided to save them using his son Jesus.
As someone has said “It is funny how christians bend themselves backwards to defend their faith”.

Yes, I have encountered some christians (and some hindus) that claim that all religions are correct and that they complement each other.
I took a guess that they are “modern” and they don’t want to tell their fellow man that their “other” religion is false and that they are worshiping false gods and they are going to hell.

But I guess some are explorers and they look into spirituality, budhism, the power of healing crystals, astrology, etc.

"Some" isn't the word.  The overwhelming majority of american christians, for example, self report as having one or more new age beliefs and their witchdoctors have been pulling the fire alarm about it for decades.  That's the strange gnarly core to satanic panics and purity purges in our lifetimes.  Think about that. Stuff that gets all the way up to a fever pitch in american law enforcement, with sensational claims of ritual abuse and even human sacrifice.... is ultimately driven by too many parishioners in bumfuckistan tennessee doing tarot.

Do you mean around 200 to 500 CE period?

Perfect bracketing, I'd say, yes.  

The Cargo Cult people? I imagine that they are not technologically, scientifically advanced so they are susceptible to believing in just anything.
So when someone comes via an airplane and delivers stuff that has been mass produced using high performance machines, to them it all looks magical since they have not seen the entire infrastructure behind all that.

When you look around at your fellow modern people and notice that they're fundies, how confident are you that the level of technological advancement is a reliable predictor of the level of superstitious belief?  FWIW, the cargo cults didn't build effigies of iron chariots, they built battleships and cvs and strategic bombers.

For a specific example, look no further than the american se (or broadly red areas in general) where historically protestant white cultures are incorporating things like reincarnation, theological race realism, sympathetic magic, "natural cures" and terrestrial authoritarian radicalism into what they mean...when they say "christian".

I haven’t heard about this case.

If you want a picture of what's bouncing around in this demo's head you can watch any christian marketing networks programming for about an hour - or just set notifications for popular publishers.  They know what their flock is so compelled by that..even though they're dirt poor, they'll throw wads of money at it.  That even though their time is scarce, they'll reorganize their lives around it.  If you have a deeply fundy friend or family member (and aren't already swamped with their weird emails) - ask to be added.  For all of it's oddness, it has an internal logic and the community is very much together on that.  That internal logic does make it practically effective, as social organizing, too. Recently, alot of the oxygen has been sucked up by trumpism, prepper apocalypticism, and religious militantism...but magical miracle cures and secret knowledge never went away, and they'll outlive The Great Man himself even in the minds of sedition sympathizing dominionists.

I suppose it's hard to see outside of a functional..and dare I say contemporarily supportive...fundy family, but, like victory over those goddamned yankees and then the world, it's always there in the minds eye for every boy of a certain age in the south. How familiar are you with instantiations of (or beliefs in) sympathetic or ritual magic? Of the notion of gods people in-the-flesh? With intelligent design? With divine command moralities? Of the imperfection of national vessels?

[Ferrocyanide]

It isn’t a matter of conflict. It is a question of “is it reasonable”. Is there a reasonable reason for what he (the jewish god) is doing.
Most people notice these things and so, I imagine LinuxGal noticed it as well.
And when you notice something, then why not mention it.

Even if some people want to claim with absolute certainty that Genesis is an allegory, it doesn’t change the fact that it makes this highly respected and loved god look silly.
If you want to place your god in a made up story, then at least make him appear respectable. More importantly, give reasonable reasons for why things are the way they are.

The Genesis story is certainly not allegory. It was taken as fact by all except for a handful of people who were wondering why their god didn’t create things in an instant.

But, even if you wish to sweep the Genesis story under the rug, what should we do about Jesus?
The same kind of nonsense appears throughout the Bible.

How does turning yourself into a human and spending 9 months in the womb of a women an efficient use of your time?
Are you telling me he doesn’t care? He doesn’t mind wasting his time?

LinuxGal phrased it to imply a conflict (‘Which one is true?’), which is what I was responding to.

I’m not at all sure the concept of ‘wasted time’ applies to a non-temporal Being. If, as we are told, God exists outside of time, there is no possible way for him to waste it. It would be like having an infinite supply of food, but pacing yourself so you don’t run out.

Boru

There would always be a flow of time otherwise, the jewish god would be in a frozen universe.
Also, there is that line about 1000 days is like a day or something like that.

It would be like having an infinite supply of food, but pacing yourself so you don’t run out.

Even if you have an infinite amount of food, it is possible to waste food, not use it efficiently. Efficiency is something that is measurable.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

LinuxGal phrased it to imply a conflict (‘Which one is true?’), which is what I was responding to.

I’m not at all sure the concept of ‘wasted time’ applies to a non-temporal Being. If, as we are told, God exists outside of time, there is no possible way for him to waste it. It would be like having an infinite supply of food, but pacing yourself so you don’t run out.

Boru

There would always be a flow of time otherwise, the jewish god would be in a frozen universe.
Also, there is that line about 1000 days is like a day or something like that.

It would be like having an infinite supply of food, but pacing yourself so you don’t run out.

Even if you have an infinite amount of food, it is possible to waste food, not use it efficiently. Efficiency is something that is measurable.

If you had an infinite supply of food (or anything else), you can be as inefficient as you like. Since the Jewish god has an infinite amount of time at his disposal, ‘wasting’ it would not be a concern. Yahweh can use time, he can’t possibly be concerned about a waste of time.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Jewish god does not, and did not, actually have infinite time. Your objection is sillier than the story itself. That's how fucked up these stories get. An inversion of simple correct thought into a funhouse mirror of superstition and fantasism that frames the convos of people...even when they don't believe. Jewish god, in the stories, is very much interested in, using, and hopefully not wasting, it's adherents time.

Because time, to the constructors of the story, was an actual constant. They were not quantum physicists. All gods were limited by time, all gods considered oppurtunity. Validation must be immanent to be effective.

[Ferrocyanide]

There would always be a flow of time otherwise, the jewish god would be in a frozen universe.
Also, there is that line about 1000 days is like a day or something like that.



Even if you have an infinite amount of food, it is possible to waste food, not use it efficiently. Efficiency is something that is measurable.

If you had an infinite supply of food (or anything else), you can be as inefficient as you like. Since the Jewish god has an infinite amount of time at his disposal, ‘wasting’ it would not be a concern. Yahweh can use time, he can’t possibly be concerned about a waste of time.

Boru

I agree, you can be as inefficient as you like.
You can be inefficient with something even if you have a limited supply of that something.

My point was that efficiency is something measurable and you can still be inefficient when you have an infinite quantity of something.
For example, an engine that burns gasoline very inefficiently + an infinite supply of gasoline.
Having an infinite supply of gasoline does not raise the efficiency of the machine to 100%.

So, according to christianity, the goal of the jewish god is to save humans, he doesn’t want them to go to hell. He wants everyone to love everyone, to not get angry, to share resources.
It sounds like he takes this mission seriously. He takes it so seriously that he wants his son killed.

So, the first question would be, does this god take himself seriously or not?
Does he take the death of Jesus seriously or not? That entire mission about getting killed by the cops, does the jewish god take it seriously?

So, what about the other people? What about the people in foreign lands who hadn’t heard about Jesus? What about the people before Jesus? Are they going to hell?

[The Grand Nudger]

No.

According to magic books, the goal of the jewish god is to save jews and put non jews under the boot of a global totalitarian jewish regime. Love and anger and all of the rest of that shit is inconsequential.

Jewish god -hebrew hammer- thousand year reich. There it is, make of it what you will.

[Ferrocyanide]

No.

According to magic books, the goal of the jewish god is to save jews and put non jews under the boot of a global totalitarian jewish regime.  Love and anger and all of the rest of that shit is inconsequential.

Jewish god -hebrew hammer- thousand year reich.  There it is, make of it what you will.

I think that is what the original religion is about and also the Revelation part about 12 tribes * 12,000 jews/tribe (again, a case where the author tries to hit the magic numbers).

The original christians were jews and looking for a messiah to save Israel from the evil Roman empire.
We live in a natural world and in a natural world, eventually the messiah is going to fail. I imagine there were plenty and that they all failed.
The only way to defeat Rome is having a lot of resources. All wars are about who has the most resources. The most people, the highest birthrate, the most advanced tech, enough food production and energy sources to run the machines and build the machines.

Somehow, europeans joined and modified christianity. So that is the version of god that I am analyzing.
However, it is also possible to analyze the jewish religion and its god bc even there, it is an inefficient god.