Does Yahweh/Jesus live by the Golden Rule?
Does Yahweh/Jesus live by the Golden Rule?
Most Christians seem to think so as they say that Yahweh/Jesus can do no evil.
We could look at all the commandments and laws but that might have us taking off in too many directions so I thought the Golden Rule might be a good starting point as it encompasses many of the commandments.
Most, I hope, start their moral thinking by some variant of the Golden Rule, a reciprocity rule, so I think we can all relate to some degree in judging Yahweh/Jesus.
Christians are told in scriptures to judge all things. Most Christians have judged Yahweh/Jesus and I wondered if others had as well.
Be you a Christian or not, could I have your overall thoughts and judgement of Yahweh/Jesus based on if you see him living by the Golden Rule?
Regards
DL
Most Christians seem to think so as they say that Yahweh/Jesus can do no evil.
We could look at all the commandments and laws but that might have us taking off in too many directions so I thought the Golden Rule might be a good starting point as it encompasses many of the commandments.
Most, I hope, start their moral thinking by some variant of the Golden Rule, a reciprocity rule, so I think we can all relate to some degree in judging Yahweh/Jesus.
Christians are told in scriptures to judge all things. Most Christians have judged Yahweh/Jesus and I wondered if others had as well.
Be you a Christian or not, could I have your overall thoughts and judgement of Yahweh/Jesus based on if you see him living by the Golden Rule?
Regards
DL
Comments (61)
Yahweh and Jesus were different characters, so I don't see why they should be considered the same Defendant in this trial you've proposed. It could be that Jesus did live by the golden rule, but not Yahweh (or vice versa).
Anyhow, I think the general argument among believers is that Yahweh (assuming you are referring to the god of the Old Testament, although there is some textual support that El and Yahweh were different gods that later merged into one) is necessarily all good, so whatever he did that you might think was crazy, it's just due to your limited understanding of what good he was bringing about.
I think we all understood the method by which the OP should be answered, which is to reference the book referenced. The question is why you haven't.
-------------
You guys have scared all the theists away.
Know that I post this type of question here looking for decent apologetics or arguments that I can use in my work of discrediting what I see as a harmful religion. I know my enemy and want to use the bible and how it represents a vile god that theists promote as good.
I hope I get some of those arguments.
If either of you wish to provide your best to the exact question, please do.
I feel ,it my duty to be anti religion and seek ammo. If you are capable, please show me the best tou have.
Bashing is good, but sound arguments are better and this is supposed to be where philosophers hang out and not just bashers.
Thanks.
Regards
DL
I can't speak for most, or indeed any Christians as such, but this much seems unbiblical already. The way I heard it, the devil thought it worth having a three way tempt of Jesus in the desert. And he resisted. He could have done evil, but he didn't.
But if I was going to be a Christian, I wouldn't be engaging with this sort of question at all. There is an idea of Jesus as the ideal of humanity. So I might believe in that, and be immune from the facticity of biblical verbiage. Jesus the magic man is boring. But Jesus the idea, Jesus the direction, Jesus the imaginary friend, is another matter.
As to stroke-Yahweh, frankly who cares? A trumped up mouse god hiding in a secret box.
The root of the Golden Rule is empathy for it enjoins us to treat others based on how we would feel if so treated. To say God doesn't live by the golden rule would mean, given the atrocious amount of pain in our world, that either God lacks empathy or God has, as per George B. Shaw, different "tastes". Since both possibilities are unacceptable to the faithful it implies that god does live by the golden rule. However, if God does live by the Golden Rule and he's in the driver's seat regarding all the goings on in the world then, there shouldn't as much pain and sorrow as there is in our world but...there is. It then follows that God isn't in control of the situation and one way that can happen is if we all have free will. :smile:
True, and that bolsters the Christian belief that he does no evil. You seem to use that to refute the does no evil meme.
Quoting unenlightened
Indeed. That is why the question asks if he lives by the Golden Rule that he preached.
Care to opine on this as it is what the O.P. is all about?
Regards
DL
I saw nothing to argue in your views.
I see this quote as close but not quite getting to the root.
I think we are pushed by our selfish gene which creates our empathy and altruism.
A small point but biologists seen to see the selfish gene creating all our reactions.
Regards
DL
Not really, because as you have made clear that you are concerned with matters of text and matters of fact, I have nothing to say about these aspects. Was there ever a boy who cried wolf, and exactly how many times did he cry it? I don't know or care. Is honesty the foundation of communication and community? That, I care about.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
A small point but the author of The Selfish Gene himself admits in his preface, that the idea is an analogy; that in fact genes have no self and no interests; they are not equipped to care or know whether they survive or not. They are bits of chemical. As a science bible, it is just as liable to misinterpretation by literalists as the other bible.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
And my answer is that the story doesn't work if he is a hypocrite, so the story is that he isn't. It is as if I confessed to a belief in justice, and you showed me that judges are sometimes unjust. "Of course they are, that's why we need to believe in justice. If justice always prevailed, belief would have no function."
Regards
DL
The notion of a selfish gene is unsettling. Is altruism an illusion created by our genes whose only objective is to self-servingly replicate itself at the earliest opportunity?
To answer that question, firstly, understand that it's impossible that some personal benefit will accrue no matter what you do. Since ought implies a can and it's impossible that one gains nothing, it follows that one is not obliged to prevent benefitting oneself. Requiring altruism to be such that one doesn't benefit at all is asking for the impossible. Ergo, if altruism is to be a meaningful notion, it should overlook unavoidable personal gain.
What then is meaningful altruism? It's to benefit others, some unavoidable personal gain notwithstanding. One can't help profiting from one's own actions but what is different in altruism is that others are also benefited.
Selfishness isn't the same; after there's only one person who benefits from it, to wit oneself.
Coming to the notion of selfish genes, if it's a good scientific theory then it shouldn't be able to explain everything, especially if the things being explained differ significantly. Altruism and selfishness as I've described them are essentially poles apart and the selfish gene theory should provide an explanation for only one but not both. As Karl Popper once said, "a theory that explains everything explains nothing". Ergo, since it's more plausible that the selfish gene idea explain selfishness, it must follow that altruism can't be explained by it.
Pfffft.
Life's first priority is to seek thet it's best end for itself.
More life as life's first concern is a selfish situation, without which the fittest could never emerge.
Give me and all of us selfish, --- or give us extinction.
Selfish is what makes us so nice to each other. Too nice perhaps.
Quoting TheMadFool
Selflessness is anti-love. You want those you love to know that they come first on your loved list.
True love first, lip service love later.
Our selfish gene defaults to cooperation. That is our good side.
We are killing the planet with love for ourselves and each other. Quite the paradox.
Regards
DL
I've seen Jesus spelled as Yeshua...but "Yahweh" is the name of Abraham's god.
Well, firstly this is a reply to an old post of mine and so I don't recall where we left the discussion hanging. Secondly, if memory serves, you mentioned the selfish gene, probably to make the point that we're all selfish and that altruism is an illusion. My reply to that is
1. Altruism is meaningful and not an illusion and is contradictory to selfishness
2. The selfish gene theory is believed to explain both selfishness and altruism. This is an inconsistency isn't it?
The apostles creed make the monotheistic Christian religion only having one head.
Christians stupidly try to put 3 in one and that is what I am working with.
Regards
DL
No it is not.
Our selfish gene will do whatever it selfishly want to maintain life.
Our selfish gene defaults to cooperation, as that is the best survival strategy, and it includes altruism and empathy towards others.
Ifr selfish, I will try to make friends, given that we are all tribal by nature, and that means being nice to others which is when our altruism and empathy come out.
Regards
DL
You should read this:selfish gene
No part of our genes survive beyond a certain number of generations.
If reproduction is about selfish genes then, these genes must persist through generations which they do not.
Reproducing is a part of selfishness, sure, but survival comes first and given that there are old around, the DNA lasts long enough.
Regards
DL
I suggest you bite me.
Regards
DL
I think the temptations were cleverer in this case. It is debatable whether turning stones into bread is actually evil. And you would know, from my own stance, that the story actually means Jesus was considering staying there and farming rather than continuing on the mission he had committed to. The actual answer on the stones into bread is interesting too, because it does not say doing so is evil either, but the point was more that he resisted the temptation and followed the word the god, which is kind of cute really ) Thtas what I think for what its worth.
So now you're changing your tune, from selfish genes to DNA. But I'm afraid even that doesn't persist long enough to aid your stance on altruism vs selfishness. The atoms that make up DNA change from parent to offspring.
If anything persists it's the information content of DNA but that too, if Darwin got it right, changes, evolves. Nothing persists for long enough for there to be a self that could be selfish. This remind me of memes - DNA/genes are information and so are memes in physical form [@Pinprick @i like sushi].
You might then speak of life itself - life information[in DNA] persists so long as major extinction level events don't occur - and then come to the conclusion that life is selfish but there's something terribly wrong with such a view for just as it doesn't make sense for just one person marooned on a deserted island to act selfish towards anybody[he/she is alone], it doesn't make sense for life to act selfish towards the nonliving.
I agree.
Who did such a stupid thing?
As to DNA. They are what genes are made of so there was no changing goal posts.
The information encoded in it, to you, does not last long yet science has shown that it goes from generation to generation, and in some instances, skips a generation, to pop up in the next.
You have not kept up my friend.
But that aside, if you do not see the great instincts we have with our selfishness, what do you think our prime directive from our instincts are, if not be selfish?
Regards
DL
Well, what you're describing is the behavior of phenotype - the expression of the genotype. I'm talking about the genotype - the information for life - and the molecules encoding that information don't persist through generations - there simply is nothing that persists to which we may impute selfishness.
Yet we are all born with that instinct.
So you have no other suggestion as to our prime directive, and will ignore the perfect logic that our DNA gives us to survive as a selfish prime directive.
You are a science denier without even a substitute theory. You have hit a blank wall and just keep on doing the same thing.
Regards
DL
Firstly, I accept selfishness exists as part of our nature. No one can deny that. However, altruism is as real too.
Selfishness = self
Altruism = self + others
There's a difference, no? Altruism is real, no?
There is a difference and both are real.
Here is the sequence.
Selfishness is served by our altruism and empathy towards others.
Altruism and empathy are tools that we use to insure that our selfish desire to live is served before all other considerations.
Life wants to live, --- not that life or our instincts can think, --- and then live as well as possible.
That is why we use tools like empathy and altruism. We are successful to where we now threaten our own extinction, because we are too nice to each other.
We have become soft and that is destroying us. We have to start to be harder on each other so as to improve on what we are doing to our eco system.
Regards
DL
Actually it wouldn't help, because I looked into this so-called 'golden rule' thing, and I can't find any evidence it existed at the time of Jehovah and Jesus, lol. There is a long bizarre article claiming it did on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and I heard people say it was from 500BC. But the encyclopedia has no references to actual texts to prove it, and I never even knew one even try to produce a reference anywhere else, but it has appeared in my Facebook feed occasionally from the Gaia ex-hippie no-longer-barefoot-wtih-Birckenstocks-from-divorce stoned-again-and-now-what community.
And even if there is a reference produced now, popped up from somewhere, it's probably fake and should be thoroughly vetted with deep suspicion. It appears it is another effort to discredit Jesus, this time by claiming he took his teachings from some other fictitious person again, without ever actually saying who, and there's a variety of such frauds perpetrated against him, and this one is the claim he stole his teachings from someone else.
I dont know where the 500BC came from, thats even 200 years before Buddha, lol.
There were some other golden things. There was a golden age, quite famous through literature for about 1200 years, described in Hesiod, ca 700BC,
And there was a golden harmony talked about by the Huang Lao in attempt to 'improve' of Confucius' harmony of the spheres, by adding the necessity of an emperor to oversea the perfect order, kind of a good deal for the emperor, didnt appear to help anyone else.
Glad to oblige, thanks for the invitation
You COULD call it 'the golden rule,' but that would NOT be correct. These have been widely known, at least since the King James version in 1511, and possibly longer than I have been told (but running into limits of the English language and requiring analysis of latin for further elucidation), as THE TWO COMMANDMENTS. Which Jesus is by all evidence the first person to state, although you can find some precedent for them in the old testament, what is it, psalms I think? But they are not COMMANDMENTS in the old testament. The point was, when Jesus fulfilled the holy covenant by sacrificing his own blood, the old law of Moses, the TEN COMMANDMENTS, no longer required animal sacrifice for atonement of sins, after which THE TWO COMMANDMENTS were sufficient. One may argue the holy covenant was a tribal misconception, but according to what's written, that's what they are, TWO commandments.
[b]NOT ONE RULE
TWO COMMANDMENTS[/b]
There is something else in the epistiles which is sometimes referred to as the ONE COMMANDMENT, but its not considered fulfillment of the covenant whi
THE GOLDEN RULE refers to some proposed and, by all that I can determine, entirely contrived abstraction that Jesus deviously kidnapped for his own purposes which was, according tp new age hippies, wiidely known from the hareems of the sultans alive at the time of Christ, to yellow savages in the far east slaughtering each other between hugs.
Glad to oblige, thanks for the invitation
also,
Oh. Not that I think it that important, but for your information, 'Yahweh' is an English pronunciation of an affectionate Hebrew abbreviation of 'Jehovah,' the Jewish name for the 'One God,' mostly popularized in the English speaking world due an unusual decision by the Catholic church to use the affectionate version, rather than the formal version, in its beautifully paraphrased rewrite of the bible for easy reading called the 'The New Jerusalem Bible,' which is also noted by its unusual inclusion of the entire apocrypha without making a big deal of it.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/goldrule/
The point of jesus' teaching is that the two commandments are inseparable. One can certainly discuss a rule was drawn from them and labeled golden, but such a rule by itself it has no significance to jahweh or to jesus. The topic most people prefer to debate is how it can actually work successfully without believing in God at all. Jesus made it very clear that loving God first, with all your strength, is necessary and indivisible from a simple moral axiom by itself.
That is one hell of a run-on sentence.
Didn't know it is the English pronunciation of Jehovah, doesn't sound like any English pronunciation I've ever heard...
tast???
For some reason it is often stated as the pronunciation of Jehovah, but Jehovah is typically pronounced with three syllables, but some with a soft J like Y and a silent V. But still three syllables. Yahweh is more of a two syllable truncation of familiarity. Like Johnny for Johnathan.
No problem buddy.
My research shows, ----Reciprocity dates as far back as the time of Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology)#History
Ancient Egypt[edit]
Possibly the earliest affirmation of the maxim of reciprocity, reflecting the ancient Egyptian goddess Ma'at, appears in the story of The Eloquent Peasant, which dates to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040–1650 BC): "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do."[9][10] This proverb embodies the do ut des principle.[11] A Late Period (c. 664–323 BC) papyrus contain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
Quoting tim wood
Correct. That is the book on which I based the question.
I do not see Jesus living by the Golden Rule.
Regards
DL
Where in scriptures is this documented?
Regards
DLQuoting ernestm
Jesus tested the savior prophesy and failed to return and that is why the Jews rejected him as their messiah.
The Jewish law is clear that Jesus could not die for us. That is a Christian lie and quite immoral.
On Jesus dying for you.
It takes quite an inflated ego to think a god would actually die for you, after condemning you unjustly in the first place.
You have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil you make Jesus to keep your feel good get out of hell free card.
It is a lie, first and foremost because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral. To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.
You also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.
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.
Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:
There is no way that you would teach your children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are doing just that.
Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh.
Regards
DL
Just look at your own instincts that default to cooperation instead of competition.
We are born with the Golden Rule as our guide to cooperate because that is the best survival strategy.
That is why we default to it till old enough to compete to be the fittest.
Regards
DL.
Actually, the two command are actually one. The other is redundant or just a repetition, depending on how you define god..
To Jesus, man is the highest form of life therefore and god. Jesus asked, have ye forgotten that ye are gods?
Most have forgotten. I hope you haven't.
Here is the real way to salvation that Jesus taught.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Allan Watts explain those quotes in detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw&feature=player_embedded
Regards
DL
I got that far and stopped reading. Sorry. I would xplaoin why, but there is no point, is there. Gee what anice day. I think I'll mow the lawn. Hope you enjoyed me biting you. agani, thanks for the invitiation )
You're just straight evangelizing now. Nobody wants to read that crap.
Don't be sorry. Many cannot give up supernatural and foolish thinking.
To a Gnostic Christian who recognizes his god within, loving ones self and god are the same thing.
Most settle for a genocidal absentee god instead of a living breathing one.
Regards
DL
I am showing a way to think that all religions who put man above some supernatural god do.
If you don't like that, too bad. Go complain to someone who cares.
Regards
DL
I remain on my position that jesus held there were two inseparable laws, which was the question I was addressing previously. Maybe some people believe there should be one, or more, or none at all, but on the topic of Jesus, he held two, no more than two, and nothing less than two. Jehovah obviously had ten, no more than ten, and nothing less than ten, at least as far as the religion ever got to understanding Jehovah as the face of one God (Christianity has one or three gods, depending on your perspective, lol).
Are you speaking of Yahweh?
If so, how does his killing when can just as easily cure, live up to the Golden Rule?
Further, how do you get that he created the Golden Rule when most religions that are older, like the Egyptians, have a Golden Rule in the book of the dead?
Quoting Julia
How do you understand the Golden Rule in light of Yahweh killing instead of curing?
Regards
DL
Yahweh is shown to kill instead of cure in many parts of scriptures, even to the use of genocide.
If Yahweh used the Golden Rule, he would cure instead of kill. No?
If you did not know that he kills many and cures none, it does not seem like you read your bible?
Let me bring you up to speed just a bit.
https://vimeo.com/7038401
Regards
DL
In Job 2;3 where he admits to being moved by Satan to sin by doing evil without a just cause and when he repented in the Noah myth.
You say god kills as the best result when he could take the moral high ground and cure.
You ignore that he murders millions and cures the few who you did not name.
I think your are making shit up so show where he cured anyone in the O.T.
Regards
DL
I just went to read the passage you mentioned and it doesn't say what you are saying it says. The passage says that God is letting Satan know that Satan's plan is to get God to to evil to Noah. But if you keep reading further it's clear that God declined to do evil to Noah so Satan did it instead.
And where does it say that God repented in the Noah story? Keep in mind though when someone says sorry it may not be because they've done wrong. People often say sorry to someone who told them someone they know died. That sorry isn't because it was their fault in any way. It's a way to express sadness which I'm fairly certain is what you're confusing the Noah story with.
It does indeed say that in my bible and further down, it just has god setting the limits for Satan.
God is the don while Satan is the hit man. You are blaming the hit man while leaving the don who sent her off scot free.
You are not thinking in a moral way or are a moral coward who fears to face the truth.
Here is an ex preacher testing Christians and their double moral standards that are like yours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJCCARjyNM
Quoting Julia
Genesis 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
God missed whatever mark he had set and repented for his sin.
Regards
DL
Umm our bibles will say the same. And God wasn't the don or anything. Satan wanted God in to help him and God refused and Satan did everything without God.
And you're still using the wrong meaning of repentance. God was sorry that humans chose to be stupid. I am sorry for humanity a lot too for being stupid. That doesn't mean I or God am responsible for their actions or it be our fault. I'm "sorry" you think that. Think about how I did the repent there, of actually doing no wrong.
When god says Satan moved him to do evil without a cause, I read it that way.
You blame mankind for being stupid, while ignoring that our stupid natures are given to us by your god.
Your morals are truly compromised as that ex preacher says they are.
Strat thinking like what is shown in this clip. If moved to, watch the whole movie and note how it ends. Like their mind set, I do not want you to stop seeking god. I just want you to reject the genocidal god you adore and seek a moral one.
You are a female. If you, like me, a hard hearted man, do not come near tears watching it, you will know for a fact that you are not thinking the right way. Try to answer his question of, what kind of god would torture and murder a baby.
https://vimeo.com/7038401
Regards
DL