Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?
Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?
God is said to have condemned the whole world and all in it who followed Adam and Eve.
Christianity calls it our Original Sin; the sin of being born tainted by Adam’s sin. It happens to be an immoral construct that the Jews do not have in the original theology.
We are also told that god creates us all tainted and sustains us all.
If I erred in raising or creating my children, I would step up to the blame.
Why does god punish us, victims of his poor craftsmanship, instead of taking his rightful blame?
I also thought that Yahweh was the Jewish god, yet Christianity does not have Yahweh following his own law. Christians have Yahweh murdering his own son as a sacrifice that goes against most sane laws.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.
God, it seems to me, has screwed up creation and wants to blame the creation for his own
incompetence.
Thoughts?
Regards
DL
God is said to have condemned the whole world and all in it who followed Adam and Eve.
Christianity calls it our Original Sin; the sin of being born tainted by Adam’s sin. It happens to be an immoral construct that the Jews do not have in the original theology.
We are also told that god creates us all tainted and sustains us all.
If I erred in raising or creating my children, I would step up to the blame.
Why does god punish us, victims of his poor craftsmanship, instead of taking his rightful blame?
I also thought that Yahweh was the Jewish god, yet Christianity does not have Yahweh following his own law. Christians have Yahweh murdering his own son as a sacrifice that goes against most sane laws.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.
God, it seems to me, has screwed up creation and wants to blame the creation for his own
incompetence.
Thoughts?
Regards
DL
Comments (45)
There is no god and we follow our instincts quite well. Jut look at how successful humankind is.
Yet we still complain against about how the boogie man created us.
Regards
DL
I had read a lot about Christopher Hitchens, how good an essayist and thinker he was. He was well known as an atheist, but he was considered a public intellectual with a very broad range of interests and expertise. I decided I would read something by him to see if he had anything to offer. I choose one of his atheism essays, I can't remember the title. It was very obviously a vigorous polemic, which I didn't object to. It was the quality of his argument I was interested in.
Among all his expected arguments against God's existence ; lack of evidence, no falsifiable predictions, unwillingness to consider legitimate alternative explanations, dependence on suspect historic sources, inconsistencies in different parts of the bible etc. etc.; he tossed in an argument that surprised me. God has done such terrible things - he claims to be merciful but sends people to hell for eternity for technical violations, he tells people to kill their sons, he makes a bet with the devil to torture one of his followers. How could people believe in such an evil entity.
Well, I stopped reading at that point and I've never been tempted to read anything else by him. He's supposed to be so smart but uses what he must know is an intellectually dishonest argument that has nothing to do with the subject being discussed. Whether or not God is good has no impact on whether or not he exists.
So, what's my point? I judge your argument by the same standards. Whether or not the things you say are true, that has no bearing on whether or not there is a God. Or was your only intention to insult God?
My only intention is to make Christians think of the prick they are idol worshiping and recognize that such a prick is not a worthy god.
Hitchens, is not a literalist but has to use a literalist stance if he is going to criticize them.
He was reporting what believers believe and not what he believes so I see you as the dishonest one who would rather waste time arguing for the existence of that myth instead of looking at the immorality of a satanic Yahweh.
Regards
DL
Yet they do, and are full of excuses such as 'mysterious ways', blah, blah, and even dishonestly teach their suppositions as if they are truth. This could affect all of us if they could impress the government, but this hardly ever happens. Look to cleric-run governments, such as in Iran, to fully grasp it.
Quoting T Clark
Now, although this thread is centered on exposing the supposed Christian God as evil, it shouldn't hurt to extend it toward the likelihood of God's existence or not, if no one minds…
So, your answer is yes, your only intention is to insult God and the people who worship him. As I said, that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he exists.
At the crossroads of His human experiment,
God wondered where the human nature went:
“Damn! I formulated it so perfectly in the lab,
So why did it not turn out exceedingly fab?
“Adam and Eve failed in the blink of an eye,
So I sent Commandments down from the sky,
But ever did humans build the golden calves
Diminishing my needed adoration into halves.
“So I killed all experiments but Noah’s sake,
For they were all a big rainbow of My mistake;
I right the human course yet once again to sail
Into those waters where it can not ever fail.
“What’s this, I see that all again has gone amiss;
I’ll have Jesus preach the other check to kiss.
Human nature failed for sure; they put him to death;
I must check my formulas once again to save the rest.
“I will send more prophets to shake the mixture up;
Oh, no, this life cast they still crash; I must give up!”
It seems to me both morally and then in terms of coming into full maturity you have to notice and integrate these feelings and fears. And then consider what you would do, feel, intend if you realized that at your core you thought your God was evil or making mistakes, etc.
It takes courage.
There can be a great relief in simply doing what you are told and currying favor and ducking your head down when the dictator walks past.
Think of humans. Would you consider true/real Artificial Intelligence "poor craftmanship"?
Thought you and @PoeticUniverse might like this. These are lyrics from one of my favorite Randy Newman songs - "That's Why I Love Mankind." God is singing.
Man means nothing he means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower
Or the humblest Yucca tree
He chases round this desert
Cause he thinks that's where I'll be
That's why I love mankind
I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
From the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why I love mankind
It's a wonderful song.
Quoting T Clark
You are correct that whether or not God is good has no impact on whether or not he exists.
However, as far as I know, God's goodness is a core tenet of most versions of Christianity,
By pointing out that the God depicted in the Old & new Testaments commits horribly cruel acts, Hitchens was simply highlighting one of the most glaring inconsistencies in standard Christian version of God.
That's a good point, and true to a point. What struck me in Hitchens's essay, and in the posts from @PoeticUniverse and @Gnostic Christian Bishop, among many others, is the hatred they have for God and religion and the contempt they feel for those who believe.
It has everything to do with whether or not the Christian god exists though.
Explain please.
I don't find that a convincing argument.
Claim: A red ball exists in this box
Fact (if you’re taking what he’s saying as true): If a ball existed in this box, it would be blue
Conclusion: The claim is false (although a ball can still exist in the box)
[s]Yeah, but there's still a ball in the box.[/s] No, no. Wait. Forget that. I don't want to get into another one of our nitpicky arguments about this. I made my point. I got started in this thread just because of the distaste I feel for the kinds of arguments @Gnostic Christian Bishop was making, if you can even call them arguments.
But not a red one
Quoting T Clark
I’ll just leave it at that then
I don't know as I have yet to see such a thing.
Why would you compared a man's ability to a gods?
Do you see us as equal to god or perhaps better given our better secular law?
Regards
DL
We are already a part of a major global extinction event.
We may have doomed our grandchildren.
Regards
DL
If you love mankind, then you should hate the gods that would enslaver us. like Yahweh and Allah.
Regards
DL
sure.
No. They did the best they could with what they had.
Do you credit your parents to some extent for the good in you?
Why would you compare humans to to a god?
Regards
DL
True, and how Christians get from a genocidal and infanticidal god to look good is something Christians run away from explaining.
Regards
DL
Indeed. They are a disgrace toi the human race.
Why do you not hate a genocidal and infanticidal god?
Regards
DL
True. In a dualistic world, god must have a Yin and Yang. The bible confirms this.
Regards
DL
To tell you the truth I really can't make sense of this world. So understanding an omniscient being is way out of my league.
I feel that if there is an omniscient being we'd all be like monkeys trying to comprehend what E = mc^2 means.
However if a place of pain-free bliss, utopia, can be imagined and planned for by humans (monkeys) I just wonder how an omniscient being could not and an omnipotent being did not.
The conclusion should lead you to recognize that god is not defined properly as no one can access the supernatural realm he is said to exist in.
Men put many lies in the bible.
Regards
DL
There is but compassion for those who are stuck, those who have to misleadingly teach "maybe's" as truth, as well as anyone who is stuck, such as those ever running into life's wall and getting thrown back into prison or just in general always having to cause trouble. It's not their fault that their will became what it is, compounded by an inability to learn; one is never responsible for how one turned out. Some people are reachable and some aren't. Some teach their belief out of rote or out of fear, who knows. Lately, there is more opposition, such as many more books on the subject, which may impress the fence sitters, although perhaps not the severely indoctrinated.
1. Thou shalt have no strange gods or singing idols before Me, for I wilt be jealous of them. All of thous wert created and put on Earth solely to worship Me. I need it; I am insecure. I ever was what I am and so I just don’t get the scheme of it.
2. Thou shalt not ever take the surname of thy Lord God Dammit in vain—damn all you swearers.
3. Remember thou to keep holy the Sabbath Day, and thus not even lift up a finger or do wholly the laundry. Do not even press an elevator button.
4. Humor thy father and thy mother—never tell them where you’ve been!
5. Thou shalt not kill, like I do, except outlaws and in-laws.
6. Thou shalt not admit adultery. Me, I only had sex once. Do not think of people naked, as like the way I made them.
7. Thou shalt not steal, except for office supplies and sundries from restaurants.
8. Thou shalt not bare falsies.
9. Covet Heavenly bodies and make love to thy neighbor.
10. Ever covet thy own ass—tie it to a tree, like Moses did.
11. Do one to others before they can do one to you.
12. I work in mysterious (crazy and insane) ways.
13. Don’t try to walk on water except during a very cold winter.
14. Fun is sin’s evil twin outside of the Sin-a-God.
15. You can have free will, but only if it matches My will.
16. Do not lie in court; let your lawyer do it for you!
17. Thou shalt only one spouse—this is called monotony! More than one spouse is called spice.
18. You are ever at fault for the sins of your ancestors. Luckily, I have no ancestors, nor any earliest memory.
19. Tell Me how darn great I am—or be tortured and burned in Hell forever.
20. I think I goofed—I made you in My own image!
21. Heaven is a wild place—you can do whatever you want!
22. You may commit horrible sins if you repent them.
23. I fully expect children not to touch something when I tell them not to.
24. I shall murder all mankind again anytime that I choose, but, not by flood, for I’ve promised not to, but by Earthquake!
25. Preferential treatment is given to those who beg, grovel, and ask for favors to get ahead of others.
26. I use My higher level intelligence to throw tantrums and have emotional outbursts!
27. We have had the last supper—no more free meals.
28. I crap on the just and the unjust alike.
29. If someone kisses your ass, then turn the other cheek.
30. I am in your heart—in your mind—and in your end.
(the previous was in another, similar thread.)
Were the Homo series of near-men and proto-humans merely a lucky result of the extinction of the dinosaurs and 95% of all species by asteroids or some such? Or did God send the asteroids? If He could send plagues of locusts then… why not! This is intelligent design at work.
For those who feel that evil sprits still tempt us into sin, we could say that the Devil’s method is to unbalance one’s brain chemicals. Not fair? Well, don’t expect ‘fair’ from a Devil. Religion can always adapt to new information, as it did with evolution and the asteroids above.
So, the infant species of Homo Sapiens continues forward, some ahead of their time and some way behind. It is not totally unexpected that many will arrive at evil, and that saying they shouldn’t won’t change this. Some will obsess on winning the Olympics or being great at something, doing little else along the way; some will go into depressions and do bad things; some will get so anxious that they will hit their children and spouses, and many will slip into the sit-com life of being selfish. This is human nature as it really is, fully intended, with no surprise. Casting out Angels, making Adam, sending Moses, restarting with Noah, and sending Jesus all did nothing because…?
Science, of course, continues inventing helpful things, schools continue new programs like Good For the Sake of Good (GSG), and putting drunk driver’s wrecked cars on the school lawn by the entrance, asking for compassion, and so forth, as in “Rachel’s challenge” and exposing bullying.
I suggest even more focus for the young and impressionable. There could be a class in which students daily log how their thinking out of consequences helped lessen their problems, or, when they merely reacted without thinking, how problems arose and bloomed out of control. Such thinking ahead might then become as routine as doing math calculations. Why not focus a lot on the actual living of life?
We have, perhaps, zillions of years to improve, which, at the current rate, may be necessary, for human nature is what it has become. It could very well go the other direction as well.
Overall to date, is the human race progressing? If not, why does the same evil stuff keep befalling it? Is the gene pool degrading? Why are the prisons full? Will drug-users, abusers, gamblers, sports nuts, gang members, workaholics, and all such (the list is too long) reproduce so much more of the same until goodness becomes a rarity?
Still, what an adventure it is to be alive at this time on this pale blue dot in the middle of nowhere between the eternities of forever was and will be…
For your consideration while you are going there, your third paragraph contains a clue: that the Jews have an advantage over the English speakers.
When I came to question what you are questioning, I found that the ones who have believed the view you are objecting to, are forced to misread scriptures in order to sustain their view (consider 2 Peter 3:16c).
Some translations have even gone so far as to take the liberty to completely change what the bible says, because the translators genuinely are unable to see that what they are reading can mean any other thing. Amusingly, by choosing to go so far as to change the words, they reveal a genuine contention that the original words are somewhat misleading, and that if they had written what is written in the bible, they would have chosen different words to say it. So of course, seeing they are at liberty to write their own words in the bible, that is exactly what they do, thinking that they are doing a service to God.
So that is what we are wrestling with. Two thousand years of it (and more, as Jesus also remarked: Mark 7:9).
Here are a few things you will find as you keep pressing into the matter:
If you can get through it, this is a letter I wrote to someone who, owed to my having discussed differences over this very doctrine with his subordinate, and his having taken sides with that subordinate without hearing my own words, excluded my welcome and then declined my requests for his hearing. So I wrote this letter to him, hoping it might be useful. You'd probably gain a few things from it to go with what you are already bringing forth.
I am not so sure that's true. There is something about an all-too-human God with character flaws that makes him far less believable. A being capable of creating this universe, obviously having intelligence and power beyond our comprehension, would surely not be so petty and fucked up!
I don't claim to have a great argument that would show some necessary connection between the goodness of God and the likelihood of his existence. But there is certainly something persuasive in an argument against a particular kind of God based on his character flaws. For one, seeing such flaws makes it apparent that this God is probably something created in the imaginations of flawed human beings who made God in their own image, mostly after their abusive fathers.
If there is a true supreme intelligence behind everything, surely this temperamental and jealous monster depicted in the Bible is not that supreme intelligence!
Maybe one argument would be that the more supremely intelligent, good, and wise you are, the less likely you are to be concerned to punish apes you made for playing with their sexual organs, especially when you are responsible for their desires and their weakness and know precisely why they have these. Or you could simply show that such a being is not good, and if God is defined as being identical with Goodness itself, that this being cannot therefore be God as God is defined. This character clearly violates the definition of God in a number of ways.
I have a pretty strong intuition that if there is a God, He (as if such a being would be gendered!) would necessarily be supremely good and would necessarily not engage in the sort of behavior attributed to the God of scripture. But I am not sure how to justify that rationally. Something seems obvious about it. That doesn't mean God exists! But if God were to exist, God's goodness would surely be commensurate with His infinite intelligence and wisdom. I have a hard time taking seriously the idea of some kind of divine supervillain who created everything just to torture it!
If only believable things are real, then Donald Trump wouldn't be President and fucking light would make up its mind.
Sorry. You deserve a better answer than that.
Quoting petrichor
It's kind of a raw deal for God. People who don't believe in him wouldn't believe in him no matter how good he is. He can't win. Damned if he does.... well, I guess not.
Quoting petrichor
A lot of Gods are pretty hard on the help. Zeus raping. Shiva destroying all things. Loki bringing on Ragnarok. Those Mayan gods and their virgin sacrifices. You know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Who's up for us here estimating the good probability of a quite normal Person-like system of mind as 'God' or the estimating that there is no 'God'? Can't really use any of the Biblical inspirations/contradictions for either stance unless they would still apply as a universal principle.
Probability for no ‘God’
0. Note: It is not a factor herein that the Biblical and thus necessarily fundamentalist ‘God’ has been demolished by evolutionary science and self-contradiction, for it still remains to size up what’s left.
1. All that we see goes from the simplest to the composite to the complex to the more complex, where we exist, which will continue into the future, where we can expect being higher than ourselves to become. The unlikely polar opposite of this is an ultra complex system of mind of a Designer being First as Fundamental, but systems have parts, this totally going against the fundamental arts.
2. (1) gets worse, given that there can be no input for any specific direction going into the Fundamental Eterne—the basis of all, this bedrock having to be causeless, having random effects, like those of quantum mechanics.
3. So, (2) indicates that there is no ultimate meaning, not that a built-in meaning would be great, for it would be restrictive, but at least, as ‘liberating’, there’s anything and everything possible that could become from the basic state of not anything in particular—our present Earthly life path being one that is being lived now after 13.57 billion years, much of which can be accounted for.
4. On top of the preceding unlikelihoods, and given that obviously that no Designer made everything instantly, it is unlikely that all eventualities could have been foreseen by a Deity in starting a universe suitable for life. It more seems like we were fine-tuned to the Earth.
5. It’s more OK if the ‘God’ Deity is like a scientist who throws a bunch of stuff together that is balanced and energetically reactive enough but not too much so that it races along too fast, etc., but, again, really, what is a fully formed person-like being doing sitting around beforehand, this also being all the more of a quandary that enlarges the question rather than answering it. If life has to come from a Larger Life, then a regress ensues, making this not to be a good template. As for a Deity trying to put workable stuff together, this is much like the idea of a multiverse.
6. Even worse, existence has no alternative, given that nonexistence has no being as a source and that there is indeed something, and so existence is mandatory, there not being any choice to it.
7. We see that the One of Totality continually transitions, never being able to remain as anything particular, which matches its nature supposed, due to no information being able to come into it in the first place that never was, for the One Fundamental Eterne has to be ungenerated and deathless.
8. Aside from the trivial definition of free will being that without coercion, that the will is free to operate, and the useless definition of the harmful random will equaling ‘freedom’, the deeper notion of ‘free’ as being original and free of the brain will is of a currency never being able to be stated and cashed in on, leaving ‘determined’ to continue to be the opposite of ‘undetermined’.
While eternalism can’t yet be told apart from presentism, the message from both is of a transient ‘now’, whether pre-determined or determined as it goes along. All hope is crushed, both for us and the Great Wheel having any potency. This is the great humility; hubris is gone.
It is enough, then, that we have the benefit of experiencing and living life well, sometimes, more so given this modern age, although still with sweat, tears, and aversive substrates of emotions that those of the future might consider to be barbaric.
Doesn’t seem like a smart God’s world, and so fundamentalist literalist Biblical ‘reasons’ cannot apply here, for those went away already. The pride of being special and deserving of reward and avoiding punishment is a nice wish, though, for us electro-chemical-bio organisms who appear be be as organic as anything else that grows in nature.
9. God’s operations, curiously restricted to be the same as nature’s has us not being able to tell them apart, but which is more likely, the natural or the supernatural? Earth is where it ought to be, in the Goldilocks zone, not out near Neptune. And why must there be a distinct transcendent, immaterial, intangible, super realm when it would still have to give and take energy in the physical material language?
10. Sit on a fence and go to church half the time or estimate the probability either way; there can be no blame for not knowing what can’t be shown for sure.
No less now that I have said so, I enjoyed your thinking and the craft of your beautiful poetry! :)
.. and I would like add thoughts WRT this:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
.. sure, blame is pointless, whether it is available or not - but you are really promoting a catch-22 when you speak this way. Whoever trusting and believing, offering their prayer of love in faith, will get to see. "Ask for anything in my name, without doubting, and it shall be done for you". The doubt does not come from God, because Romans 8:32 "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?"
The "no blame" conclusion is good for those who must honestly admit that 'God' is a maybe, however unlikely, those who didn't accord to the deal to accept 'God' or not have something, or worse, they most likely thinking that what is All Love wouldn't have any controlling conditions, but would true grant true freedom to the human natures designed as such as they are; however, if there is still a penalty foretold, either it is wrong since there can't be any or they wish to retain their freedom or at least integrity by not submitting to the accepting requirement of the conditional giving.
I have spoken of most of the issues you put but thank you for the thought.
Regards
DL
Oops.
Nice that you are not ready to become a Christian by allowing your morals and intellect to go into a dysfunctional Christian mode.
Regards
DL