Is God immoral?

[fallingblood]

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

FALLINGBLOOD. so there IS a double standard afterall as argued in post 42. if you disagree, it would be nice if you manned up and disputed it in a respectable manner. not what you have been doing so far.

No, I don't think there is a double standard. I also don't think you will be convinced, and thus is hardly is worth my time to continue arguing something when you aren't going to be convinced. I stand by my examples. I think they are perfectly acceptable analogies, that get my point across. You obviously don't, and I don't feel like just running in a circle. You don't seem to get what I was trying to say (I in no way thought alcohol consumption and murder were on the same level. I simply used an analogy), and that's fine.

[jamesmorrow]

Originally Posted by fallingblood

No, I don't think there is a double standard. I also don't think you will be convinced, and thus is hardly is worth my time to continue arguing something when you aren't going to be convinced. I stand by my examples. I think they are perfectly acceptable analogies, that get my point across. You obviously don't, and I don't feel like just running in a circle. You don't seem to get what I was trying to say (I in no way thought alcohol consumption and murder were on the same level. I simply used an analogy), and that's fine.

if you can justify that no double standard applies to the act of murder, then why do you have to use an analogy at all? you could just use the act of murder itself, which is exactly what we are discussing.

instead you opted for using analogies in hopes of avoiding the act of murder.

well i am sorry boss, but you can not use the consumption of alcohol or drinking out of the toilet to justify the act of murder....

murdering an innocent baby IS IMMORAL and UNACCEPTABLE for anything and anyone.... for you, for your child, for your dog for everything....to say otherwise is to use a double standard...if you say that it is ok for your dog to kill a baby, but it is not ok for you child to kill a baby you are applying a double standard........ ONE STANDARD FOR YOUR DOG, ANOTHER FOR YOU CHILD. ... your analogies fail miserably.

[Koldo]

Originally Posted by fallingblood

Yes, in many of the books, there are both things that are literal and metaphorical. We see this in many works from the ancient world. We are talking about a time before the genre of history really began forming.

It seems odd to me. But i will accept your suggestion and read a book on the subject. Any recommendation intelligible to the average Joe?

[fallingblood]

Originally Posted by Koldo

It seems odd to me. But i will accept your suggestion and read a book on the subject. Any recommendation intelligible to the average Joe?

The Original Story, by John Barton and Julia Bowden is a nice introduction. It is the one that I was assigned for my last Old Testament course, and is a good read. It also contains a section on just method, texts, and interpretation (that is actually the title of the section). Furthermore, it is a nice price.

[fallingblood]

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

if you can justify that no double standard applies to the act of murder, then why do you have to use an analogy at all? you could just use the act of murder itself, which is exactly what we are discussing.

instead you opted for using analogies in hopes of avoiding the act of murder.

well i am sorry boss, but you can not use the consumption of alcohol or drinking out of the toilet to justify the act of murder....

murdering an innocent baby IS IMMORAL and UNACCEPTABLE for anything and anyone.... for you, for your child, for your dog for everything....to say otherwise is to use a double standard...if you say that it is ok for your dog to kill a baby, but it is not ok for you child to kill a baby you are applying a double standard........ ONE STANDARD FOR YOUR DOG, ANOTHER FOR YOU CHILD. ... your analogies fail miserably.

Well it seems as if you already have your answer, so why ask the question in the OP to begin with? Nothing I'm going to say is going to change your mind.

I could argue that in times, murdering someone may be justifiable. Such as assassinating a ruthless drug lord, or war lord. Now, I may tell my child not to kill, but I could exceptions. Now, that isn't a baby that I would be killing, so you can just easily dismiss what I said anyway. And there we really have where my analogy fails for you; you have already made up your mind.

[jamesmorrow]

Originally Posted by fallingblood

Well it seems as if you already have your answer, so why ask the question in the OP to begin with? Nothing I'm going to say is going to change your mind.

I could argue that in times, murdering someone may be justifiable. Such as assassinating a ruthless drug lord, or war lord. Now, I may tell my child not to kill, but I could exceptions. Now, that isn't a baby that I would be killing, so you can just easily dismiss what I said anyway. And there we really have where my analogy fails for you; you have already made up your mind.

you have already made this argument in post 39 and i refuted it in post 42. at which point you ran away like a little school girl and didnt show up again until post 119 where you repeated the same argument you made in post 27 which i refuted in post 35. and now here you are once again, at post 135, repeating the argument in post 39, which....... yes, you've guessed it, I REFUTED IN POST 42.....AT WHICH POINT YOU R.A.N......

you have got to be kidding me. i am done with you. first it was Sleeppy in the other thread and now you. same crap different toilet.

go away, you are dismissed.

Levite is my last hope.

[fallingblood]

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

you have already made this argument in post 39 and i refuted it in post 42. at which point you ran away like a little school girl and didnt show up again until post 119 where you repeated the same argument you made in post 27 which i refuted in post 35. and now here you are once again, at post 135, repeating the argument in post 39, which....... yes, you've guessed it, I REFUTED IN POST 42.....AT WHICH POINT YOU R.A.N......

you have got to be kidding me. i am done with you. first it was Sleeppy in the other thread and now you. same crap different toilet.

go away, you are dismissed.

Levite is my last hope.

I thought I dismissed my last post anyway? Also, dismissing arguments don't refute them. Just for future reference.

But please don't play. You know as well as I do, Levite isn't going to change your mind, and neither is anyone else. You think the Biblical God is immoral. You asked a question you didn't want anyone to really answer, as you already have an answer that you are deeply rooted in.

[filthy tugboat]

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

hmm. i think you have a point here.

Why, thank you.

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

if you adopt someone's opinion without consciously forming an opinion on that person's opinion, you are subconsciously forming an opinion of "agreement" that the opinion that person formed is correct.

I would go one step further and suggest that you are consciously forming an opinion. In order to adopt another's opinion you have to understand the opinion, if you understand the opinion then you have form an opinion of their opinion. You can't adopt an opinion you don't understand, it wouldn't truly be adopting their opinion, even if you tell others' that's what you believe, it's still not meaningfully adopting the opinion.

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

however you are agreeing subconsciously WITHOUT reason.... and isnt that FAITH afterall?

Can you agree subconsciously without reason? You might not agree wit the reasoning but I don't think it's possible to understand and agree with something with absolutely no reason.

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

EDIT: wait, the statement "An adoption of their opinion is an opinion of their opinion in and of itself" is still false because an adoption of their opinion can also be an opinion of their ability to form a correct opinion.

This can be a part of the opinion being formed when adopting another's opinion but it certainly cannot encompass the whole thing, as I described above about "understanding the opinion being adopted."

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

not an opinion of their opinion itself. .... therefore you dont necessarily form an opinion of agreement with their opinion, but rather, you form an opinion of agreement of their ability to form a correct opinion

I don't think an opinion can be adopted based on the opinion of another's mental faculties alone. You have to know the opinions' you are adopting in order to adopt them, you need to understand them to some degree. The act of understanding an opinion and forming either opposition, agreement or simply just criticism on it's fine points is in itself the forming of your own opinion, without the understanding, you cannot form an opinion of that opinion.

[jamesmorrow]

Originally Posted by filthy tugboat

Why, thank you.



I would go one step further and suggest that you are consciously forming an opinion. In order to adopt another's opinion you have to understand the opinion, if you understand the opinion then you have form an opinion of their opinion. You can't adopt an opinion you don't understand, it wouldn't truly be adopting their opinion, even if you tell others' that's what you believe, it's still not meaningfully adopting the opinion.



Can you agree subconsciously without reason? You might not agree wit the reasoning but I don't think it's possible to understand and agree with something with absolutely no reason.



This can be a part of the opinion being formed when adopting another's opinion but it certainly cannot encompass the whole thing, as I described above about "understanding the opinion being adopted."



I don't think an opinion can be adopted based on the opinion of another's mental faculties alone. You have to know the opinions' you are adopting in order to adopt them, you need to understand them to some degree. The act of understanding an opinion and forming either opposition, agreement or simply just criticism on it's fine points is in itself the forming of your own opinion, without the understanding, you cannot form an opinion of that opinion.

you know, i am still cloudy on the issue. i see what you are saying but it does not make sense 100%. i think this might be one of those murky issues where one could make a limited case for both sides but not a 100% objective slam dunk.

now, if it were an important issue for me i would dedicate a whole lot more time to it. but its not. so ill leave it at that. maybe levite can provide some additional insight on the issue, since it is his position. i was just playing devil's advocate.

[Levite]

Originally Posted by jamesmorrow

from what i understand, you resist my argument for two reasons:

1. you believe that god is moral, and would never order someone to do something immoral.

2. you repeat your argument that the scriptural narratives may be based on the narrator's own belief of god's personal involvement, and that therefore god may or may not have actually been personally involved.


in response i will point out that your first reason is a NON-reason as judged by your own criteria, because, by your own admission, you have no discernment over the moral qualities of god, or his orders.

in response to your second point: while you reserve the right to legitimately dismiss scriptural narratives(such as the abraham and isaac story in GEN 22) you can not dismiss our modern story of the woman who murdered her children at god's request, because we have hard evidence that this literally happened.

in conclusion i submit to you that your reasons for resisting my argument are NON-reasons, and i would encourage you to revisit my 2 part argument which i will repeat below.

1. As a theist, you completely ignore your moral compass when God orders you to do something immoral, due to your belief that God is moral.

2. As a theist, you completely lack the moral compass to judge those who follow God's orders, due to your self imposed inability to judge God, or his orders.

First of all, I thought I had been clear: I will not say that I judge God to be either moral or amoral, because at least as I understand the concept, judgement involves weighing objective facts-- preferably indisputible facts, or at least fact very difficult to dispute-- and coming to a conculsion based upon them, and with God, there are few or no facts on the ground, and none indisputible or even close to it.

However, I will choose to believe that God is moral: a claim which I freely admit is subjective and unpersuasive, and not grounded in objective facts. It is a claim of faith, which by definition is subjective; not a claim of reason, which ideally should be objective.

Second of all, while problematic depictions of God's actions in Torah may demand of me that I analyze them and come to some kind of theodical defense of God, if I plan to continue holding the theology concerning God's nature that I do, this is because part of my theology is that Torah has a spark of divine inspiration in it. In some measure, in other words, there is a divine element of contribution to Torah's origin, IMO. Therefore, I am compelled to philosophy of theodicy if I intend to reconcile that divine element within Torah to the theology that I hold.

However, the rest of Tanakh is not claimed to be divine in origin, even in Orthodox Judaism. I am under no obligation to defend the depiction of God's actions in the rest of Tanakh, because I am free to believe that they are simply not God's actions if they do not strike me as such.

And as for the claims of random individuals who try to justify their actions by saying they were told to do something by God, I am under no obligation whatsoever to believe their statements. Nothing in the Jewish tradition or any other theological influence on my thinking exists to argue the idea that if some woman kills her kids and says God told her to do it, I should be compelled to believe that God actually told her to do it.

In fact, even if she were Jewish, and offered Jewish style proofs, I would be obligated to not be swayed by her claims, because we hold that the age of prophecy is long over, and when the covenant of Sinai came into being, and Torah was given from God to human beings, we were now permanently bound by it; and though we have original jurisdiction to interpret Torah law, not only can we not randomly overturn commandments without reason or due process, God cannot do so without calling all the People together and giving a new Torah, either-- which, of course, we do not believe He would ever do. So a person who comes along and says that God told them to do such-and-such a thing expressly forbidden by the commandments is held to either be lying or insane, by definition.

Originally Posted by Koldo

So, you do indeed judge God to be moral.
But you said, in one of your other posts, you are not currently in the position to judge whether God is moral.

As I said above, there is a difference between judging something and believing something, at least as I understand the meaning of the terms.