Is the Christian God Moral?

[johanvz]

Ok, I don't want to sidetrack this discussion, and not really looking for answers, but here goes...

Johno777, a couple of my thoughts on god's morality.
1. Adam and Eve are punished for acquiring knowledge/the ability to decide between right wrong. Hence, the human race is damned to live in sin forever, and go to hell. They made this one mistake before they acquired said ability.
2. God is omniscient, so he should have known that Adam and Eve and fall for the trap he set by putting the tree in the garden of eden.
3. Why did god create humans only to send them to hell for not worshiping him?
4. If god is omniscient he should have known that stoning people to death for working on sundays will be done in his name. Why did he allow his authors to write this into the bible? Why is the church not deleting these bits now?
5. If the bible is open to interpretation or some sections do not apply to us today, how do I decide what is right or wrong if this is the perfect moral code?
6. If You were an omnipotent god, would you write Commandments 1 - 5 and send people to hell if they did not follow it?
7. If god forbids murder why did he: Murder his own son/himself, his own people, other tribes. Why did we have the Spanish inquisition, etc in his name?
8. Commandment 10 condones slavery and at a push can be interpreted to mean a man owns his wife. Is this moral? Why is this open to interpretation?
9. Rape is not forbidden in the 10 commandments. And many other crimes if you think about it carefully.

I can continue and list a hundred things here that bother me regarding god's morality.

As final thought, the bible is an illogical fairy tale. Please go and read the bible again and judge what is in there to your own moral code(what you think god meant) and decide if what is written there is acceptable to you.

[skeptic griggsy]

 Johanz, Yahweh was so pathological. The writers who just made Him  up were mere savages.
 The whole gambit of Adam's sin on through the Atonement is absurd. No rational being wants such. No rational being deserves eternal praise!
 That is the divine protection racket. John 3:16-18 glorifies hatred of mankind!
 And @ the definitive refutation thread, I show how theists rationalize evil , which compounds Yahweh's evil!

[johnno777]

Johanvz said: "Ok, I don't want to sidetrack this discussion, and not really looking for answers, but here goes..."

Johan, I'm afraid that it will take too much space and time to attempt to answer, in one go, all the questions you listed in your post. I'm willing to try and answer one at a time though, but, if you're not really looking for answers, I don't want to waste either my time or yours.I f, however, you want me to answer any of them, start with what you deem to be the most important and restate it as a single question.Thanks

[Anacoluthon64]

It seems then, johnno777, that you have decided to stay.  Have you any intention of addressing the six objections I raised towards the end of this post?

'Luthon64

[johnno777]

To Anacoluthon64,

I've decided to stay for the time being to debate and answer things from a Christian perspective, with those who have a modicum of civility and respect for their fellow human beings (I thought that that is a trait that humanists are supposed to have), but I won't be engaging with you. You have confirmed, with your last post, my previous assertion, that you are juvenile. Maybe all the vitriol you keep spitting out, comes from you being bitter and hacked off that God decided to characterise Himself as a male in the Bible (must be tedious for you to have to do the "him/her" thing everytime you refer to Him) and that He regularly refers and defers to His Son Jesus, and that He instituted patriarchalism, and that he continously seems to give women a bum rap.God is not P.C., but if you knew Him, and you knew what He really thinks of women, you would calm down and probably even like Him.

Don't flatter yourself by thinking that I don't want to deal with you because I cannot answer your questions. If you really wanted to know answers you could easily just post under a different name and try your darnedest(sic?) to disguise your polemical, ad hominum style.Who knows, you might even get mugged by some common sense and humility,(Oh dear, shouldn't strictly speaking be putting a comma before an and), and mend your ways under your own name, then we can practice the art of the epeeist instead of having a slugfest.

[Anacoluthon64]

It seems to me, johnno777, that you have convinced yourself of something that exists mostly in your own imagination.  You accuse me of several things, not least of which is that I am uncivil, disrespectful, vitriolic, jealous, overbearing, childish and venomous.  All I can say to you is that your view is simply wrong on all counts, an unwarranted and wholly mistaken inference, but I’m under no illusion that anything I say to you will change your mind about your perceptions concerning my modus operandi.

Sure, I’m confrontational when that is necessitated by some unsupported, unfounded and/or unsustainable claim or other.  And that is as it should be because if not I, who then?  This is, after all, a sceptical forum you have decided to come and proselytise on, and one of the primary requirements is that the claimant supplies evidence, reason and/or logic in support of his or her claims – so much so that it appears in the forum’s rules.  Instead, and as near as I can tell, you automatically demand that you be allowed freely to pontificate on the realities of the world, and then cry, “Foul!” before going into a sulk when challenged to substantiate or defend your declarations.

You will perhaps also note that all of your accusations are severely cheapened by the way you have chosen to phrase them: ill-disguised misogyny, an undercurrent of ready violence, churlish airs of superiority, and more.  A reflection, perhaps, of your god-ordained morality?  On the strength of these, I would be similarly entitled to level several countercharges.

If all of the above offends your apparently overdelicate sensibilities, then that is your problem.  Don’t attempt to lay your discomfiture at my doorstep.

Because I think we can all see quite clearly what’s really happening here.

bluegray V, perhaps (some parts of) this thread should be migrated to the “Flame Wars” sub-forum, considering the turn it seems to have taken.

'Luthon64

[Anacoluthon64]

A year-and-a-half ago, Oxford University philosopher AC Grayling had this to say on the matter.

'Luthon64

[ArgumentumAdHominem]

Thanks to everyone for not moaning about where I disappeared to (work unfortunately).  But I think before I go on I must tell you my personal reason why I continue to discuss this topic.  To me it has been an interesting game.  The topic is very limiting by asking "Is the Christian God Moral?" but I have entered into the spirit of it.  In order to post anything in this topic requires that you either wholeheartedly accept that god exists or it requires that you go along with god existing "for the sake of argument".  The latter is, quite obviously, the spirit in which I have entered into this.  In this spirit I feel it is unfair to ask for proof of god's existence (as, strictly speaking, it is off topic for the title of this thread and should be in another thread) and it really does mean that the non-believers have the metaphorical hand tied behind their backs.  The way I see it is that the discussion is really akin to asking "Should Santa Claus write his own name on the naughty list or the nice list" and to this the only answer that has come back so far is "on the nice list of course, because he is writing the list".

The questions which have been asked repeatedly about how god's decrees and actions must be used in judging his morality have not been addressed.  So, continuing in the spirit ...

You say: "I find it odd that the actual date when these "laws of the time" were repealed is a mystery.  Surely the day that god found these laws to be unnecessary there would be an amendment to the bible in order to clear-up any confusion?  The laws still stand in the books (Deuteronomy, Leviticus, etcetera) and no "official" word on when they are amended, it is left up to the followers to decide which laws to adhere to."

Yes, indeed, there was an amendment that is known as the New Testament (or New Covenant). As to an actual date, probably around 34 A.D.

At the advent and subsequent death of Christ on the cross and His resurrection, the juridical power of the Decalogue was neutralised and the additional laws aimed specifically at Jewish society were annulled and supervened by Christ.

What I am trying to point-out is that the old laws are still there in the bible, they were not removed or later listed again (as the ten commandments were) but this time with clarification about which ones stand and which ones do not.  Case in point would be how Leviticus 18:22 has thrown tens of millions of Christians into confusion and contradiction about the morality or immorality of gay people.

The laws that "still stand in the books Deuteronomy, Leviticus, etcetera" are a historical narrative of how God dealt with His people at that time of human history and how they reacted. Just because things ancient things are still present in the Bible, it does not follow that they have paradigmatic demands on all who want to follow the Bible’s teachings.

You really need to educate all Christians about this, because there are so many who are actually reading the old testament for guidance.  They are not reading it in the spirit of an "historical narrative".

But the important point here is that it is a description of how god treated humankind, and we can see that those decrees and actions were immoral.  If you want to persist by saying "that was moral for the time" then you are really espousing a relativistic philosophy that morals must be judged by the times and nature of the world at those times.

You say: "And I put it to you that there is no other kind of law (other than man-made).  God wrote the bible, but through the hands of people.  So we get into the thorny issue of proving that god actually did the writing, because to the rest of us it just looks like another set of man-made laws."

God did not write the Bible ... but He breathed on what they wrote and sanctified it.

Okay, god did not write the bible. So the god-given morality is man-made, you are saying that men wrote the bible.  Even if god was the muse and god sealed it with a kiss it still is man-made.  And here you admit that the brutal, unfair and immoral (by today's standards) laws were approved by god.

You say: "Your statement is unfounded, I could easily say the same thing back to you, that were one to scrutinise any theistic philosophy, no matter how seemingly brilliant, one will always find flaws and errors. The deeper the scrutiny, the more apparent the anomalies. The converse is true when examining atheistic ideas. Many of them, with a superficial examination, may appear to be simplistic or even foolish, but the deeper one peels away layers, the more profound and perfect it becomes, to the honest examiner."

Any and every atheistic philosophy that I have examined has shown, without exception, exactly the contention that I make.

You didn't address my point that the wide-reaching, scathing criticism that you leveled can be applied by both sides.  You are just reasserting it in hopes of a stalemate?

The Da Vinci code is a reasonably contemporary example; not of atheism in this case, but of a man-made construct that seems extremely plausible and academically respectable, but which is built on factual error, lies and a manipulation of smoke and mirrors. (I'm not going there so please don't refer to specifics. We're side-tracked enough).

Mmmkay, this is the way we debate then; say something off-topic, say that it is off-topic (so as not to attract further discussion) and ultimately achieve an unchallenged statement on the record.

Not that it matters, nobody here thinks the Da Vinci code is anything but a steaming stream of hot, runny, "Brown" literature.  And badly written too. It does not seem plausible to me so we really don't need to go there.  And I don't see the connection to morality?  It is man-made, nobody doubts that, but it is not a moral code.

continued ...

[ArgumentumAdHominem]

... continuation

You say: "It's just baseless rhetoric unless you can define the "peeling" of "layers", profoundness and perfection in this context."

In the context that we're talking about, the profundity of the concept, for instance, of "love your neighbour" is not immediately apparent. [...] That is a small example of what I'm talking about.

This whole section doesn't add any weight to your argument because you give an example of profundity which appears to be "interpret it until it applies to more than the words literally say".  In that case there is profundity (interpretation which can be applied to more than the original field) in meme theory, psychology and so on which are antithetical to a god theory.

Correction, that is what Postmodern philosophy says must happen. It states that there is no Universal truth. No truth that is universally applicable to all people everywhere. It also says that there is no Abiding truth. No truth that lasts through all periods of human history. It also believes in relativism and pluralism and states that any moral code or world-view is legitimized by the majority of an autonomous group.

I think that my original statement was an over-use of shorthand.  I really need to flesh this out so that you can understand what philosophy is for.  You are saying that postmodern philosophy requires that there is no universal truth, that it decrees that there should be pluralism.  No, philosophy is descriptive not prescriptive.  Postmodern philosophers are observing the behaviour of human beings and determining that this is the way that it has happened.  They are not a group of people who sit around deciding laws and morals which will be prescribed to the various peoples of the world.  Where is this list of morals that these philosophers have written?  There is no place where it says that "people born in China will adhere to the following laws (in order to be judged as moral) and people born in Africa will adhere to this other list of moral laws".

The self-stated goal and aim of Islam, for instance, is to take over the world.

1 Thessalonians 1:8

[Muslims] are trying to get other Northern African countries by force and have a strategic plan to overcome Western countries (not conspiracy theories). There are already no-go areas in England, where non-Muslims cannot go. Then, as I mention elsewhere, we have the Archbishop of Canterbury who is reputedly the most intellectual archbishop the Church of England has ever had, making a dumb-ass recommendation to the English judiciary that they should assimilate Shar’ia law into the British legal system.

What does this have to do with the morality of the Christian god?  You did say this before and I don't think that you will find any defenders of Islam here. Perhaps you could start a topic under the conspiracy theories section to prove to us that the world domination by Islam isn't a conspiracy theory instead of just putting the words "not a conspiracy theory" in parenthesis?

By the way, it is under Islamic Shar'ia law that female rape victims must be stoned to death.

And also god's "approved with my breath" old testament law in Deuteronomy 22:23,24 where a rape victim who is scared into silence should be put to death.


And finally, just a small correction ...

[To Anacoluthon64 ...] Maybe all the vitriol you keep spitting out, comes from you being bitter and hacked off that God decided to characterise Himself as a male in the Bible (must be tedious for you to have to do the "him/her" thing everytime you refer to Him) ...

As Kenneth Copeland wrote:

People have even argued about whether God is male or female. But the Bible itself tells us that He's both! That's right. In the Hebrew language, all words have gender. They're either male or female. But the Hebrew word 'Jehovah' is both masculine and feminine. He's as much female as He is male and as much male as He is female.

This indicates that 'Luthon's use of "s/he" and "him/her" is actually more correct than using "he" and "him" exclusively.

[Anacoluthon64]

In order to post anything in this topic requires that you either wholeheartedly accept that god exists or it requires that you go along with god existing "for the sake of argument".  The latter is, quite obviously, the spirit in which I have entered into this.  In this spirit I feel it is unfair to ask for proof of god's existence…

Quite so.  After some deliberation, I decided to introduce the point following this inopportune post in order to draw attention to the fact that this entire discussion in any case rests on just such an hypothetical.  The reader will note that the call for such evidence doesn’t appear before this post.

However, in the abovementioned spirit, consider the request for such proof withdrawn from this thread.

'Luthon64

[johnno777]

For Argumentum Adhominum

You say: “What I am trying to point-out is that the old laws are still there in the bible, they were not removed or later listed again (as the ten commandments were) but this time with clarification about which ones stand and which ones do not.  Case in point would be how Leviticus 18:22 has thrown tens of millions of Christians into confusion and contradiction about the morality or immorality of gay people.”

Yes the old laws are still in the Bible, as are reports of incest, murder and rape etc. As I explained before, just because they are there, does not infer that they should be paradigms as to how Christians (or non-Christians) should be living today.

I think that it is important to know that the Bible should not be read piecemeal. It should be read in its entirety. The Bible should also be read with a spiritual enabling from God. We are unable to discern spiritual truths without God enabling us, by His Spirit, to do so.
The K.J.V. tells us in 2Timothy 2:15: “Study to show yourself approved by God” so we need to study its precepts if we want to know more about God and His creation, as well as how we should live on earth.

There is no valid reason for Leviticus 18:22 to “throw tens of millions of Christians into confusion and contradiction about the morality or immorality of gay people”. The New Testament reiterates the very same sentiment of Leviticus 18: 22 several times e.g. Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10.God's thoughts on the matter are consistently clear in both Old and New Testaments.

[johnno777]

For Argument Adhominum

You say: “But the important point here is that it is a description of how god treated humankind, and we can see that those decrees and actions were immoral.”

I think the question that should rather be asked is “how humankind treated God”
I believe that you make a spurious extrapolation from what you say is a description of how God treated humankind, to the position where you can see that those decrees and actions were immoral. Against which moral code did you make the comparison to be able to make the moral judgement which you make? If you feel up to it, maybe you can tell us which of His decrees and actions you found to be particularly offensive and immoral.

[johnno777]

For Argumentum Adhominum

You say: “If you want to persist by saying "that was moral for the time" then you are really espousing a relativistic philosophy that morals must be judged by the times and nature of the world at those times.”

I must agree with you that most of the Mosaic/Levitical laws, which were extraneous to the Decalogue, were relativistic. They were so because they related specifically to Israel at the time in their history when they were ruled directly by God, by virtue of a Theocracy. Those laws were case laws, which is akin to what we call common law today. It is fashioned and melded by the judiciary to suit a specific society, based on previous cases. The same methodology is not used in Statute law, which is immutable, but of course sometimes subject to interpretation, mainly, dependent on how clearly it is written. I would say that the Decalogue is analogous to what Statute law is today. I have maintained from the beginning of our discussions that I believe the Decalogue, alone, to be universal and abiding and therefore not relative.

[johnno777]

For Argumentum Adhominum

You say: “Okay, god did not write the bible. So the god-given morality is man-made, you are saying that men wrote the bible.  Even if god was the muse and god sealed it with a kiss it still is man-made.  And here you admit that the brutal, unfair and immoral (by today's standards) laws were approved by god.”

You omit my statement that says that though man physically wrote the books which make up what we call the Bible today, God nevertheless inspired and put His seal on it. Some laws were man-made and some were not.

As to some of the penalties, punishments and actions which appear to our sensibilities today to be barbaric and cruel, I agree with you, I find much of it horrific and some seemingly unfair (viz, the killing by God of the man who stumbled next to the ark of God, because he touched it as he stumbled, while it was on its way back to Israel). Our knowledge of God is limited, but we get clues in the Bible as to His fearsome holiness. Many of the acts committed by humankind had spiritual connotations to God, hence Him calling Israel at times, a whore and a prostitute (going after other gods).

Also, the barbaric behaviour was pandemic at the time, even outside of Israel. Most Semitic people lived in a world of extreme violence. Those of us who are Gentiles are so called because generally non-Semites were known as gentle people, Gentiles.

[johanvz]

Not looking for answers on the other questions, just this one for now.

Yes the old laws are still in the Bible, as are reports of incest, murder and rape etc. As I explained before, just because they are there, does not infer that they should be paradigms as to how Christians (or non-Christians) should be living today.

I think that it is important to know that the Bible should not be read piecemeal. It should be read in its entirety. The Bible should also be read with a spiritual enabling from God. We are unable to discern spiritual truths without God enabling us, by His Spirit, to do so.

Firstly, you say that the bible is the perfect moral code.

I assume that you reject the nasty bits in the bible due to the spiritual enabling god has given you when reading the bible. This would mean the bible in itself is not the perfect moral code, you need some additional ingredients to make it work.

Lets assume I happen to read the bible with a spiritual enabling telling me that getting bears to tear up kids laughing at my bald head is acceptable, or that the killing of Annanias and Sapphira in the New Testament were justified.

How would you prove that you are right and I am wrong? How do you know the spirit spoke to you and not to me?