LP675

And as for your former post I haven’t answered yet:
You know you took my words out of their context, which is fine (the 'right thing' was in reference to what Jephthah should have done i.e. obey God’s command or stupidly murder his child). It is ludicrous to suggest God is responsible for this because he “was present� and “allowed it to happen�. God allows us to exercise our free will, which means human beings could choose to be “loving beings� and just do lovely wonderful things for each other (which is what he wants us to do). People however decide to do wicked things to each other, against God’s wishes. How can God be held responsible for that? If I go right now into the TV room and punch my sister in the face, according to your reasoning God is responsible. If I decide to go rob a bank God is according to your reasoning responsible. If I decide to steal someone’s credit card numbers and buy child pornography according to your reasoning God is responsible. If I decide to fly a plane into a very tall building according to your reasoning God is responsible.

If I decide to visit this site and my brain is damaged by the nonsense you sprout, according to your reasoning God is responsible.

Ahhh, make the girl superhumanly immune to burning. Another sensible suggestion in the face of this whole ridiculous scenario? :thumbs:

Vorkosigan

Of course. The only thing a completely omnipotent entity can do is kill them. It couldn't raise a wall between them, convince them to change their minds, bribe them, etc. The ways of dealing with the situation are limitless

[quote]What about the poor girl? The point is God had nothing to do with it. It was the foolish action of this man against the express commandments of God not to engage in child sacrifice.

Beats killing. The best your omnimax entity can do is butcher its enemies. Even us imperfect types can think of more sensible approaches than that.

Why not? Just think how many problems would caused by a simple act of communication.

Jack the Bodiless

Well, no, there IS a much more plausible reason: God's nonexistence, which puts severe limits on what he can actually DO to limit our free will!

I haven't seen much evidence that God deliberately allows free will.

Of course, Jephtah's daughter would actually have been sacrificed by the priests, who supposedly had a God-given monopoly on performing sacrifices. They were accustomed to carrying out blood sacrifices, including human sacrifices on special occasions.

LP675

Who said this was the only thing and omnipotent God could do? You asserted the “The whole thing is ridiculous�. I pointed out it wasn’t ridiculous for God to help them defend themselves. And helping them in combat to defeat an enemy who wages war on them is a pretty sensible way to do it too.
Yes, your mate Ariel Sharon is going to solve all Israel’s middle east problems with the wall he seems bent on building isn’t he?
I see, God should (using his omnipotence) convince them to change their minds should he? If he actually just changes their minds directly using his limitless power, He takes away their free will. If he just presents them with incentives to pursue a different course of action it has little to do with his omnipotence, because the decision is still theirs to make. Incidentally, one might say God did (via Jephthah) attempt to convince them to change their minds. Diplomatic calls to respect each others right to live in their respective lands (11:24), and threats of divine intervention by God (11:27) had not convinced them to change their minds. I don’t think too much more could be said.
Yes an excellent way to deal with aggressive nations who want to subjugate one’s country is to pay them not to do it. Just like terrorists? We should submit to their demands should we?
Sure. I have a fertile imagination too. He could have given them all serious cases of constipation, and offered them laxatives if they would leave. He could have turned all their swords into roses (all the bleeding heart, hippy types would have liked that one). He could have re-settled them on the moon.

I don’t think your suggestions are more ‘sensible’ than assisting the Israelites in combat. God has chosen to interact with the world in the way he does. He generally does not interfere with peoples free will. He generally does not cause bizarre things that defy natural laws to spontaneously occur (instantaneous erection of walls, teleportation, immunity to fire, widespread spontaneous cases of constipation). He does sometimes do things defying natural laws, but that is not the way he orders the world or usually interacts with it. You might disagree with the way he is running things. You might think if you were an omnipotent God you would run things so much better, and you are entitled to that belief. I personally think most people on these boards who appreciate the laws of nature which makes science possible and who enjoy physics, geography, sociology etc would object to God running the universe in the zany and haphazard method you seem to be advocating (resembling an episode of ‘I dream of Genie’ or something). If every time something ‘bad’ was about to occur (a murder, someone was about to be hurt by fire, a car crash was about to happen, I was about to punch my sister in the head etc) God distorted the laws of nature in bizarre ways to prevent it our world would be a pretty senseless place.

And you seem to be insinuating in this case there is some moral problem with 'killing'. There is nothing inherently wrong with killing, and sometimes it is a legitimate response to a persons actions. If an aggressive nation attacks your nation, I don’t think there is anything wrong with killing invaders. Would there have been anything wrong with assassinating Hitler?

Mankind is responsible for the evil it afflicts on itself, and God is not accountable for a persons stupid actions. God has given them the choice or ‘free will’ to do positive or negative things. God is not morally obliged to supernaturally jump in and stop any person from carrying out choices which have ramifications for other people.

I think you meant ‘could be averted’. The point is God has by a relatively ‘simple act of communication’ in the scriptures made his views accessible to anyone who is interested in what he has to say. Most people just don’t care.

gregor

Obviously, there are several stories of favored human sacrifice in OT and the Jephthah story is simply one of these. The diced concubine is another. I have even read that in one version of the Abe/Isaac story Isaac is actually sacrificed.

These all reflect the amalgamation of texts that became the OT.

Do Friedman's follow ups to "Who Wrote the Bible" or do other authors discussing the documentary hypothesis compile those stories with similar theology on human sacrifice? (I bet Doc. X could answer this).

I'll let LP675 continue with his "just so" stories now. . .

Hobbs

Um, how carefully did you read 1 Sam 15? Yes, it says that to obey is better than sacrifice, but what they are obeying here is a command to commit genocide! A god like that is a god who would want even a stupid vow to him to be carried out, even at the cost of the life of an innocent child. The point with Jephthah, remember, is his vow to God to make a sacrifice, not the sacrifice itself. God didn't command the sacrifice; Jephthah made a stupid vow to God, and he had to carry it out. God did nothing to release him from his stupid vow. How would it have violated Jephthah's free will to have released him from his vow and instructed him not to be so stupid in the future?

I seriously cannot fathom how people can read this stuff and think it is the inerrant word of a perfect God, or how they can take it seriously at all. Why would anyone even want to try to defend this stuff?

Why is it so important to some people that the Bible, which is so obviously flawed, be a flawless document?! How can you possibly defend God-ordered genocide, how can you possibly not fault God for not stepping in and stopping Jephthah's sacrifice? He could have done like he did with Abraham and waited to see if Jephthah was really seriously going to go through with it and then stopped it. How would that have violated free will? Jephthah would have freely chosen what he wanted to do, all God would have done was to see that the consequences of the choice didn't all follow through. Or God could have just released him from his vow. What's free will got to do with it?

Amaleq13

There is nothing ludicrous about holding God to the same standards of morality I would hold a mortal man. I contend that anyone who stood by and watched Jephthah burn his daughter alive was wrong. I also contend that arguing God cannot be held by this standard is special pleading. I only provided a single example where the girl's life is saved but no violation of free will takes place but I expect an omniscient entity could think of others. Clearly, the right thing can be done without violating Jephthah's free will so your argument fails.

Try to stay focused on the specific example before us. Clearly, God is involved in the action because it is taking place solely as the result of Jephthah's belief it is what God wants.

[added later] Keep in mind that Jephthah believes God has accepted his deal because the children of Ammon were, in fact, defeated. In fact, the text clearly states that Jephthah won because of God.

An omnipotent entity wouldn't have to make the girl anything. God could simply prevent the fire from burning her. You are aware of other stories in the your Bible where he does just that, right? Your sole objection was that God's intervention would violate Jephthah's free will but that is clearly not true. Do you have a better argument to defend God's failure to do what is right?

And I agree with you that, taken literally rather than as a parable, this story is entirely ridiculous. :thumbs:

[added later] A more sensitive individual than myself might view your irrelevant sacrastic remarks as ad hominem. In fact, I probably would have edited them had they been directed at someone else. Please adhere to the forum rules and avoid such remarks in the future. After all, they do not logically support your argument and serve only to create the impression that you are getting upset because your argument is failing.

LP675

No. Your reasoning is terrible. You firstly admit God wants obedience to his will. The best way to determine what God’s will is or what he would want is simply to read what God actually says he wants. In Samuel 15 God wanted Saul to wipe out the Amalekites completely. In regards to Jephthah God had again made it clear what he wanted when it came to child sacrifice i.e. he never wanted it done, he hated it.

So to determine what God wants instead of saying “look at Y, surely he would want X�, we should look at where God says explicitly “I never want X, I hate and detest it�
God did not encourage, demand, accept, reject, hold Jephthah to, release Jephthah from, or have anything to do with Jephthah’s vow. It simply had nothing to do with Him. Look at Saul in 1 Samuel 14:44 making a stupid vow to God (regarding eating), which similarly had nothing to do with God, which Saul did not follow through on. Jephthah had the same course available to him, to simply not do it.
Of course inerrancy, and defending against charges of genocide have nothing to do with the issues at hand. If you want I could give my thoughts about such topics, but they have nothing to do with Jephthah sacrificing his daughter.
Ok, I’m not sure if you have bothered to read my other posts so I will try to repeat it simply. God has chosen to interact with the world in certain ways. He generally does not interfere with natural laws whenever anything ‘bad’ is about to happen. This seems sensible to me because if he did it would be a very strange world. How can you distinguish this situation from any other of the millions upon billions of ‘bad’ things that he could bend the laws of nature to prevent e.g. car crashes, scraped knees, bombs being dropped, murder, fires burning people etc. If you can’t distinguish this scenario from those, do you maintain God should run the world so there are no consequences for any actions, in a zany fantasy world type situation?

And even if you do believe that he should, you still haven’t established that he must. It is mankind who is responsible for all these bad things and who perpetrates violence on itself, so how is God culpable?

LP675

LOL! My remarks were not irrelevant. I am sorry if you construed my remark as saying all your posts were just ‘sprouted nonsense’. I meant the post you had just made, which I considered to be nonsense.

My point was that the logical conclusion of your line of reasoning is that God is responsible for every single ‘bad’ thing, great and small, that has occurred throughout all of history because he didn’t distort the laws of nature to prevent it. Therefore “If I go right now into the TV room and punch my sister in the face, according to your reasoning God is responsible. If I decide to go rob a bank God is according to your reasoning responsible. If I decide to steal someone’s credit card numbers and buy child pornography according to your reasoning God is responsible. If I decide to fly a plane into a very tall building according to your reasoning God is responsible.�

And let me amend this sentence slightly:
“If I decide to visit this site and my brain is damaged by the nonsense you just sprouted in your last post, according to your reasoning God is responsible�.

Let’s assume I was just rude and abusive. Is God responsible for my rude and abusive post because he didn’t somehow distort the laws of nature to prevent it? Perhaps he should have made my computer shut down? Or turned my message into a love sonnet instantaneously when I posted it? What should he have done?

Were my allegedly 'irrelevant' conclusions as to the logical outcome of your reasoning applied to these different scenarios wrong? I maintain, as I have elsewhere, that if God intervened by distorting the laws of nature in strange ways to prevent all ‘bad’ things happening the world would be a very senseless and strange place. And for you to maintain God is somehow involved in and responsible for every ‘bad’ thing that one human does to another is ridiculous.

Hmmm… Interesting. So you are asserting that every time any person foolishly ignores clear directions from God (in this case to sacrifice his child, which God had said he detests and hates) and decides to pursue a course of action because they believe God wants them to do it, God’s hand is forced, and he must interfere? God is involved in some sense more than all these other scenarios because of their mistaken theology? He had to interfere during the crusades, during the jihads, before every Islamic suicide bomber does his dirty work? Why does mistaken theology on behalf of a human make God more culpable?

And what about suicide? Should God prevent every suicide?

Yes, and I noticed you didn’t defend your half-baked post where you implied that God should have made him lose the battle so he wouldn’t feel obliged to sacrifice her. Why don't you?

You were the one who suggested it! Remember?: “How is Jephthah's free will violated if, for example, God simply rendered the girl immune to fire?
Yep, he sure could have. Was he morally obligated to? And if so how would you differentiate this case from any other adverse effects of any natural law.

gregor

Um, your god does not "generally . . . interfere" with the world and interfering with "the laws of nature" would make the world a "senseless place."

This is the same god that:
1. knocked down huge city walls by a trumpet sound
2. made the sun stand still for 6 hours
3. flooded the world to a depth of eight miles
4. parted a large body of water
5. caused global darkness for 3 hours
6. inspired Saul to take a census - (there goes your free will)
7. hardened Pharoh's heart (ibid)
etc.
etc.

So, he might cause genocide directly, but he wouldn't interfere to protect a life though. Just checking.