The Moral Argument Against God?

[Craig.Paardekooper]

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[Rose]

I have decided to look at each chapter of the book of Genesis in turn, to see if God acts morally, starting with the call of Abraham

Genesis 12 v 1-3

God calls Abraham : I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curse you.

If this promise is taken literally then even if someone has the moral right to curse Abraham, that person will still be punished by being cursed by God. Conversely, a criminal and murderer might bless Abraham, and therefore would automatically receive the blessing of God.

It is odd that God should show such favoritism. Favoritism leads to moral inconsistency, since God will end up cursing people who don’t deserve to be cursed, and blessing people who don’t deserve to be blessed.

This is the beginning of the idea that Abraham is a Chosen People – God’s elite – who receive special treatment from God.

It definitely does not fit in with our concept of God as Just and Fair.

Imagine if the promise had been : 'I will bless those who support the Labour Party, and I will curse those who support Conservative.'

You can see how unjust this law might turn out to be. It is very tribal. If you are nice to Abraham’s tribe you will be blessed; if you are nasty to Abraham’s tribe you will be cursed.

Genesis 12 v 4-9

Abraham travels throughout Canaan marking out his territory by building altars at key points. The Canaanites were living in the land at the time. Abraham was going into someone else’s back garden and claiming the territory as his own. Would an impartial God grab land from other people in this way? How would you feel if a Hebrew turned up in your back garden, and started marking out their territory? Would you feel that it was right, just or fair. Should not the people who had settled there already be consulted, and maybe offered resettlement elsewhere? Remember, we are not talking about God here – who claims to be the absolute moral good – never doing wrong to anyone.

Genesis 12 v 10-20

Abraham’s wife, Sarai, pretends to be Abraham’s sister. Pharoah takes Sarai as his wife, and provides Abraham with animals and servants in return. However God inflicts serious diseases on Pharoah as a result. This does not seem fair, since Pharoah was deceived, and Abraham received goods and services under false pretences. However, Pharoah may have killed Abraham if Abraham had claimed that Sarai was his wife, so this may have been the lesser of two evils.

However, it is possible that ALMIGHTY GOD could have protected Abraham and Sarai without the need to deceive. And to punish Pharoah was unjust. God could simply have made Pharoah aware of the truth and then given him a chance to do the right thing, rather than punishing him instantly before he even knew what he had done.

And Abraham and Sarai are not rebuked at all for their deception. Neither do they return the goods that they obtained under false pretences. This seems unjust too. And Pharoah seems scared of Abraham and Sarai, since he does not try to get his things back, nor does he try to punish them.

So within the first chapter of the calling of Abraham, we see a very strange god.

Hi Craig,

I applaud your endeavor... Doesn't it feel good to be able to clearly view what is being said and speak freely? I know for myself it's like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. So many accounts recorded in the Bible have always been troublesome, and unsettling to me. It was such a relief when I realized that much of what is recorded in the Bible is no more than pagan rituals that the Hebrew copied from surrounding cultures, and just because the Hebrews say "God" told them these things, does not necessarily mean he did.

We as intelligent, modern thinkers need to use the minds that we were created with to discern and make moral judgments....not to blindly follow writings in an ancient book written by people who had faith in myths and practiced pagan rituals, because they believed those things to be true.

One thing the Bible does give us is great insights into the thoughts and practices of ancient man.

Blessings,
Rose

[Bob May]

I have decided to look at each chapter of the book of Genesis in turn, to see if God acts morally, starting with the call of Abraham

Genesis 12 v 1-3

God calls Abraham : I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curse you.

If this promise is taken literally then even if someone has the moral right to curse Abraham, that person will still be punished by being cursed by God. Conversely, a criminal and murderer might bless Abraham, and therefore would automatically receive the blessing of God.

It is odd that God should show such favoritism. Favoritism leads to moral inconsistency, since God will end up cursing people who don’t deserve to be cursed, and blessing people who don’t deserve to be blessed.

This is the beginning of the idea that Abraham is a Chosen People – God’s elite – who receive special treatment from God.

It definitely does not fit in with our concept of God as Just and Fair.

You begin this post with the words, "if this promise is to be taken literally."
there are four levels of reading the bible.

Literal,
Implied,
Allegorical and
Spiritual.

You are spending much energy to prove the literal meaning does not make sense.
Then you are implying that God is somehow immoral.
Then you go off on a side trail, coming to the conclusion that God did not write the bible. Or only parts of it.

You would do better to spend that much energy to prove that the implied and allegorical meanings do make sense.
Then you could pray that the Spiritual meaning come to you.

Because that Spiritual meaning IS the land that was promised to Abraham and his seed after him.

Just my take,
Bob

[Craig.Paardekooper]

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[Bob May]

Maybe you are right Bob, that there is a deeper allegorical and spiritual meaning.

I just think that it is surprising that an impartial, universal God of compassion and perfect ethics, should appear to say and do things that are ethnocentric and quite controversial, from the very first chapter.

Why God would want to "appear" to be ethnocentric when He is quite the opposite doesn't make alot of sense. Why clothe beautiful allegorical meanings about universal love in ethnocentric stories?

Why would Aesop clothe stories of morals behind talking animals like foxes and crows, etc.?
Do you think the people reading those stories really think or thought back then that he was serious, or do you think maybe ancient peoples had two brain cells to click together and assume that there might be something more to the story?

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Why would Aesop clothe stories of morals behind talking animals like foxes and crows, etc.?

Hummm .... that sounds like the typical atheist criticism of Scripture. They say it's nothing but a bunch of "fairy tales."

[Craig.Paardekooper]

New Message Pending

[Richard Amiel McGough]

You begin this post with the words, "if this promise is to be taken literally."
there are four levels of reading the bible.

Literal,
Implied,
Allegorical and
Spiritual.

You are spending much energy to prove the literal meaning does not make sense.
Then you are implying that God is somehow immoral.
Then you go off on a side trail, coming to the conclusion that God did not write the bible. Or only parts of it.

You would do better to spend that much energy to prove that the implied and allegorical meanings do make sense.
Then you could pray that the Spiritual meaning come to you.

Because that Spiritual meaning IS the land that was promised to Abraham and his seed after him.

Just my take,
Bob

Hey there Bob,

I agree that there are multiple levels of meaning. But your list begins with the "literal" and I don't see how we can just ignore that aspect of the text if it happens to present God as immoral. It's just a form of "picking and choosing" what we like and throwing away the rest. If that's what we must do to save the text from presenting God as "immoral" why believe any of it? And it doesn't answer a very obvious question: If God really is the author of the Bible, why did he choose to present himself as immoral? Merely rejecting the literal sense of the text does not answer this question.

And why not do the same thing with all other religious texts? It's pretty much the same thing that the Sufis (Islamic mystics) do with the Quran with great success. They repeat "There is no God but Allah" over and over to enter into a mystical perception of identity with God. Thus the Sufi mystic is forced to say "I am the Truth" just like Jesus. Indeed, there was a Sufi named Mansur Al-Hallaj who was publicly executed from making that claim. Do you think that God wrote the Quran too? If not, why not?

Of course, your approach of "spritualizing everything" is a good path towards peace amongst all religions since it allows us to deny all the contradictory doctrines! The Bahais seem to take that path, declaring that all religions are one and the differences are caused by interpretations that are too literal (or otherwise erroneous). It's a lovely thought, but something in me doubts it is really true. And even if true, all it would mean is that all religions are false or meaningless, since they can be made to mean whatever we want them to mean.

All the best,

Richard

[Bob May]

Hey there Bob,

I agree that there are multiple levels of meaning. But your list begins with the "literal" and I don't see how we can just ignore that aspect of the text if it happens to present God as immoral. It's just a form of "picking and choosing" what we like and throwing away the rest. If that's what we must do to save the text from presenting God as "immoral" why believe any of it? And it doesn't answer a very obvious question: If God really is the author of the Bible, why did he choose to present himself as immoral? Merely rejecting the literal sense of the text does not answer this question.
Richard

It's not my list. But it is obvious that we, in our fallen state first see the literal meaning of things. Outward appearance is available to everyone. It takes effort to try and see past it.
Some people never do and for those Their life is also very surface oriented.

I see the "picking and choosing" in deciding which parts that God wrote and which parts were added by ancient man.
I am not rejecting any of the bible. There are things I don't understand though. Those I make no decision on. If I am supposed to understand it, it will be given to me in due time.

I honestly do not know why God chose to present himself that way.
And that is and should be the legitimate question here, in my opinion.

But in looking at the Patriarch's response to God's OT law I can see that they were looking more deeply at his word.

Ps 119:18 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

Why would David need his eyes opened to see those wonderous things?
Wouldn't they have been apparent?
We recieve Grace and the OT law loses it's hold over us. We are free.
But the law is perfect.
So now we go back and look for what is in the law that we missed being that now we have the mind of Christ. It is a different book now. Because we are different now.
The law leads us to Christ because we realise we cannot keep the law. It was never meant to be kept. It was meant to bring us to the end of ourselves.
To go back and re-read the law with the intent to disprove it by reading it literally boggles my mind.

And why not do the same thing with all other religious texts? It's pretty much the same thing that the Sufis (Islamic mystics) do with the Quran with great success. They repeat "There is no God but Allah" over and over to enter into a mystical perception of identity with God. Thus the Sufi mystic is forced to say "I am the Truth" just like Jesus. Indeed, there was a Sufi named Mansur Al-Hallaj who was publicly executed from making that claim. Do you think that God wrote the Quran too? If not, why not?

I don't know enough about the Quran to comment exept to say that if it is true that they believe Jesus was just a prophet and not the son of God or a manifestation of God in the flesh, then no, I do not believe it was wriiten or inspired by God.

Of course, your approach of "spritualizing everything" is a good path towards peace amongst all religions since it allows us to deny all the contradictory doctrines! The Bahais seem to take that path, declaring that all religions are one and the differences are caused by interpretations that are too literal (or otherwise erroneous). It's a lovely thought, but something in me doubts it is really true. And even if true, all it would mean is that all religions are false or meaningless, since they can be made to mean whatever we want them to mean.

You call it spiritualizing. I think everything is spiritual and we make it carnal by not seeing it as it is.
Jesus did not come to bring peace. "Peace on earth good will toward men" is our peace with God. Not with men.

Allegory can be used to make anything we want only if we put our own meanings to the types. If we use the symbolism in Scripture it gives us the meanings to those types.
Jesus gave a few of those keys to the disciples. Paul gave more later.
We find some ourselves by comparing spirtual things to spiritual things...

(That is the allegorical level of reading scripture.)

...and the rest are given to us.

That is the forth level of reading scripture.

Isa 54:13 And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.

All the best,

Richard

All the best to you too Richard,
Bob

[Rose]

New message pending

Hey Craig! Why did you delete your post? I'm glad I quoted it in my post so it still remains. I thought you brought up some very good points.

Blessings,
Rose