Where in the Bible is the Christian God Cruel and/or Incompetent...

[ChristineM]

hah hah....probably, since I was an atheist when reading through it long ago, you won't much be able to paint a picture that I read it with an urge for it to be one way or the other, lol. I suggest: try to make your thoughts on it less about me, and more about the text.

I strongly suggest to anyone they try, make a serious real effort, to entirely put aside and even forget (if they are able) old ideas about what is there, and just read it with fresh eyes, as if a poem, where you are trying to listen to hear the deeper side of it.

In other words, don't make it about me, or about you, make it about the story itself.

Don't big yourself up, we are talking bible atrosities here

That's precisely what i did, three times with 3 different bibles. I read them, first one when i was 14/15 years of age with a fresh and open mind, I didnt interpret, i didn't apologise for it, but read as written so please don't try and make this about me when you have no idea of my history.

 

[stvdv]

Some hint is given here:

Mark 10:18
18 - "Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked him. "Nobody is good except for one—God.

If no one besides God is good then God must be the very definition of what good is, right?

Boy, am I glad, that I don't have to defend this point using the Bible
So, here Jesus seems to say that even He is not good, only God

I do agree that it doesn't mean that he can't do evil, in fact I would say that he does a lot of that.

I agree with that. IF you get upset or angry with anything, just give all the anger to God, everything is His (IMO)

So you probably right that it doesn't say anywhere that "God is all good", but when you read the bible, do you get the impression that he is not always right, just and good?

I get the impression that He is both "The bad and the good", so definitely not Omnibenevolent, as in "there is no pain, sadness"

 

[halbhh]

Don't big yourself up, we are talking bible atrosities here

That's precisely what i did, three times with 3 different bibles. I read them, first one when i was 14/15 years of age with a fresh and open mind, I didnt interpret, i didn't apologise for it, but read as written so please don't try and make this about me when you have no idea of my history.

Actually I don't assume anything about you nor judge you, and I'm asking you to do the same for me: to try not to assume anything about me, and try not to be judgemental. It would help if you don't assume anything.

 

[ChristineM]

Actually I don't assume anything about you nor judge you, and I'm asking you to do the same for me: to try not to assume anything about me, and try not to be judgemental. It would help if you don't assume anything.

I wouldn't have thought so from your post, anyway I will leave it here before things get too fractious

 

[halbhh]

I wouldn't have thought so from your post, anyway I will leave it here before things get too fractious

I'll repost that post word for word. It's worth a look -- it's about the interesting real meaning in the Genesis passage:

 

[halbhh]

While I've probably answered every last one of those [list of claimed misbehaviors of God] over the years (having written many hundreds of posts to answer such questions), such as to help correct mistaken concepts typically assumed or painted onto various passages or verses, the first one is pretty interesting:

GE 3:1-7, 22-24 God allows Adam and Eve to be deceived by the Serpent (the craftiest of all of God's wild creatures). They eat of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," thereby incurring death for themselves and all of mankind for ever after. God prevents them from regaining eternal life, by placing a guard around the "Tree of Eternal Life." (Note: God could have done the same for the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in the first place and would thereby have prevented the Fall of man, the necessity for Salvation, the Crucifixion of Jesus, etc.)

The Garden story with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually a story about the birth of consciousness.

The story also involves the eventual natural urge to independence, and then the typical (usually happening at some point in life for each person) mistake to assume the authority to judge others -- i.e. eat of the fruit of the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' -- which is generally at some point very soon above our wisdom ability level when the judgment goes past judging merely an action, and instead tries to judge the person themself.

In other words, Adam and Eve trusted their own judgmentalism -- the worst part of themself some would say -- over trusting God.

A common problem for non-believers in trying to interpret something in the common bible is to bring too many extraneous assumptions (and judgements or bias) to the text, and that's usually how they end up making errors in understanding it as it is meant.

 

[ChristineM]

The Garden story with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually a story about the birth of consciousness.

Interpretation is a wonderful and calming thing

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I see the God of the Bible as Utilitarian. He does what is needed to get the job done. He wants to reach a certain goal and he does what is needed to get there. He is the creator and everything else is his creation therefore he can do what he wants with them. All this morality nonsense is defined by the creator for his creation so as far as I see it it doesn't apply to him.

All this I understand, and this is all fine, taking the perspective of "God owns everything" and viewing the Earth and all its inhabitants from that perspective.

However, from the human perspective, we're not just going to sit idly by while some tyrannical overlord (even though he can "do as He likes") is attempting to destroy everything we hold dear, are we? Is that what you would do? I, for one, would challenge the actions. That's the first, and easiest thing I would do - even if it were completely ineffectual. To just throw one's hands in the air and say "Well... He owns it, so I guess it's fine that I am, and everything I love is, about to be obliterated."

And so it is from the human perspective of what constitutes an acceptable action that humans most often judge activity that involves humans. And rightly so. Is it possible to see things from other perspectives? Sure. Is that always advantageous to the survival and well-being of humans? No. Case in point? God's supposed actions throughout many a Biblical tale. I posit that viewing things "from God's perspective" is just about the only way to get past all the atrocities that the thing called "God" commits in the stories of the Bible and come out still desiring to worship the ridiculous thing.

 

[halbhh]

Interpretation is a wonderful and calming thing

lol...

Also a wonderful thing, in my opinion, ala Joseph Campbell.

To listen and hear and begin to understand -- Campbell was a master at that, and at teaching it.

Campbell shows us what is possible in understanding subtle things about myths and other subtle stories --

To listen in a truly sympathetic way, to hear what is actually there.

Instead of bringing our simplistic ideologies to a story, to instead hear it as it is, with the subtle things about it.

 

[Trailblazer]

An all powerful god, has the ultimate and absolute moral responsibility for everything since he can do anything.

Moral: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=moral+means

God is not a human, therefore God has no moral responsibility. Only humans have moral responsibility.
Logic 101.

In essence, what you are saying is that God is all-powerful so God can do anything, therefore God should do what I think God should do. Sadly this is a typical atheist ploy, but it is illogical, because if an all-powerful God did what humans wanted Him to do, rather than what He would choose to do, that God would no longer be all-powerful.

Omnipotence implies ability but it also implies that God only USES that ability as He chooses to, NOT as you want Him to.
Here is what omnipotence implies, in a nutshell:

“God witnesseth that there is no God but Him, the Gracious, the Best-Beloved. All grace and bounty are His. To whomsoever He will He giveth whatsoever is His wish. He, verily, is the All-Powerful, the Almighty, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 73

“Say: He ordaineth as He pleaseth, by virtue of His sovereignty, and doeth whatsoever He willeth at His own behest.He shall not be asked of the things it pleaseth Him to ordain. He, in truth, is the Unrestrained, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.”
Gleanings, p, 284

“Say: O people! Let not this life and its deceits deceive you, for the world and all that is therein is held firmly in the grasp of His Will. He bestoweth His favor on whom He willeth, and from whom He willeth He taketh it away. He doth whatsoever He chooseth.” Gleanings, p. 209

People who hold a belief in an all powerful and loving deity are, in my opinion, ridiculously wrong and illogical. The others, not so much.

People who hold a belief that an all powerful deity a would/should do what they think He would/should do, rather than who He chooses to do, are, in my opinion, illogical. The others, not so much.

 

[halbhh]

However, from the human perspective, we're not just going to sit idly by while some tyrannical overlord (even though he can "do as He likes") is attempting to destroy everything we hold dear, are we?

I wondered here if you mean a human tyrant, since that was a logical possible meaning.

It didn't fit the sentence to think you meant 'God':

Would a tyrant suffer our attacks and evils against himself without striking back?

To even let us crucify Him on a cross for our benefit -- to thereby break the grip of our own evils over us, the magnetic/addictive power of our own evil over us, and thus help free us from our own evils.

Of course, to suffer and die at our hands for our sake, self-sacrificially, isn't exactly a tyrant action.

e.g. -- was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a tyrant for being willing to face death threats and then continue to work for civil rights even until he was killed, for the sake of civil rights for all?

 

[firedragon]

I read the Bible, Quran, Gita, Book of Mormon, Hadith etc.
...and on the Bible I did so more than a dozen times. I actually summarised it too.
Yet, when ever I speak to non Christians, inclusive of Atheists, they try to turn the Christian philosophy of a loving God, especially Jesus, on its head with an argument that ...

"If Jesus is one of the Trinity, then it was Him who comitted atrocities, genocide, murder etc."
Another argument is that Christians believe in a loving God, but turns this thinking of God around with the question...

Why would a loving God create people, just so that they should die, get cancer, suffer..." and so on.

I have been thinking of these accusations and can not agree that the "Christian God" is accountable for these heardships and pain. The Bible actually gives the answers, and I found that it is only a very superficial reasoning that is claimed by people who never read the Bible on these questions, to find an answer.

Perhaps someone would supply me with a simple example, to enable me to see what they are talking about. If it is true that God is this immoral being, I want to know about such evidence.

How do you interpret the so called parable of ten minas?

 

[ChristineM]

lol...

Also a wonderful thing, in my opinion, ala Joseph Campbell.

To listen and hear and begin to understand -- Campbell was a master at that, and at teaching it.

Campbell shows us what is possible in understanding subtle things about myths and other subtle stories --

To listen in a truly sympathetic way, to hear what is actually there.

Instead of bringing our simplistic ideologies to a story, to instead hear it as it is, with the subtle things about it.

You may have answered those atrosities to your own satisfaction, the fact remains they remain unanswered others. Hence the reason they are still considered bible atrosities as opposed to being accepted as a warm fuzzy god just doing his thing...

 

[icehorse]

I have been thinking of these accusations and can not agree that the "Christian God" is accountable for these heardships and pain. The Bible actually gives the answers, and I found that it is only a very superficial reasoning that is claimed by people who never read the Bible on these questions, to find an answer.

Perhaps someone would supply me with a simple example, to enable me to see what they are talking about. If it is true that God is this immoral being, I want to know about such evidence.

Do you want us to focus on the NT only?

 

[ChristineM]

Do you want us to focus on the NT only?

Awww, thats thats cheating to cut out 85% of the bible

 

[halbhh]

You may have answered those atrosities to your own satisfaction, the fact remains they remain unanswered others. Hence the reason they are still considered bible atrosities as opposed to being accepted as a warm fuzzy god just doing his thing...

Humans have committed very many atrocities, but at least in the bible, God resurrects all of those dead people back to life.

If in contrast to the bible, a person has an idea of 'god' who allows (or speeds up, either way) the real deaths of innocent or repentant humans here on Earth to die real final deaths, then such a 'god' would be merely a murderer.

That version is only a murderous 'god'.

But a 'god' like that would be extremely different than the God shown throughout the common bible.

 

[Trailblazer]

Awww, thats thats cheating to cut out 85% of the bible

Do you mean all the anthropomorphisms in the Old Testament, all the men speaking for what God did?
It is Unbelievable that people actually believe God did even half of that stuff.

 

[ChristineM]

Humans have committed very many atrocities, but at least in the bible, God resurrects all of those dead people back to life.

If in contrast to the bible, a person has an idea of 'god' who allows (or speeds up, either way) the real deaths of innocent or repentant humans here on Earth to die real final deaths, then such a 'god' would be merely a murderer.

That version is only a murderous 'god'.

But a 'god' like that would be extremely different than the God shown throughout the common bible.

You have evidence of this zombification?

So you say you god can commit genocide with impunity but if any other god tried it it would be murder... Ok...

 

[Trailblazer]

Do you want us to focus on the NT only?

Yeah, let's.... God obviously turned over a new leaf and decided to be nicer and more loving when He sent Jesus...
Why talk about the past?

 

[halbhh]

Do you mean all the anthropomorphisms in the Old Testament, all the men speaking for what God did?
It is Unbelievable that people actually believe God did even half of that stuff.

The main thing I've seen over and over here are non believers trying to paint it (incompatible with the text of various scripture like the common bible) that people dying in this mortal body are dying final or irreversible death.

If that were so, it would of course then make any 'god' able to prevent such death out to be merely a murderer.

But that painting or assumption there is no afterlife contradicts the text of the common bible, and many other religious texts.

So, they begin with a contradictory premise, and then assert the obvious implication of the false premise, over and over.

Analogy:
It's like someone saying about a skilled surgeon with a reported, written track record of having saved a lot of patients in many feats of skilled work --
"Why did that evil doctor let so many die?"
-- it's about that level of distortion.