Jabu Khan

As a thesis for a religion class I'm taking I was thinking of comparing moral development in children to the moral development of God in the bible. It seems at first God is very self-centrist and in nedd of constant adulation then he lays down laws that must be followed blindly then he works through prophits who predict the actions of others and finally through Jesus develops the ability to apply a moral framework to specific situations. Do you think this will work or does the connection seem too far fetched?

PTET

Howdy.

Try these pages from my site:

A brief history of Christian Ethics
Why the 'Christian God' is immoral, needy and irrational
The evil of fundamentalist Christian morality

Any questions, let me know ;>

PTET

Jabu Khan

I'm an atheist and I relize God does some very immoral things according to the bible I just think the development of what God requires of his people parallels the stages of moral development in children. Also the way he starts by applying it to a nuclear family (Adam, Eve, and their children)even though there most be others or there would be no other lands for cain to go off to and marry someone. Then he develops patriotism(Isreal) and applies it to a group and eventually extends it to other cultures and tries to be accepting of some differences. Granted he remains pretty ethnocentric as most adults do it sounds like God is going through childhood development as well learning to become an adult. He gives up his trying to minipulate the rules and people around him to achieve his own goals while gaining acceptance and evolves towards someone who is willing to trust in everyones abilities to be good and to give them all the same chance. I'm not saying he is a paradigm of moral behavior in the new testament I'm just saying he develops his morals in a way that parallels what psychologists such as Piaget predict for children.

Thank you PTET for the links that will save me a lot of skimming.

I'm just wondering if some others could respond and tell me if they think the connection works at all or sounds interesting or if it sounds like a lot of word play and mental gymnastics.
I realize this concept may be offensive to some fundies. I'm not saying god is infantile I'm just saying his growth in dealing with the humans he created(according to the bible) seems to be the same as the humans growth in relating to each other. My instructor is very open minded and I believe Agnostic. Hes a minister who left the Baptist church because he could not reconcile some of his own beliefs with the church. This class is an upper division humanities class and not part of a Theological institution. He wanted something original so this is what I came up with

PTET

Jabu Khan: ...it sounds like God is going through childhood development as well learning to become an adult...

That's an fascinating idea. You'll certainly need to map out these "stages of moral development in children", and then look at how God in the Old Testament develops, and see if there's is an overlap. Don't be too downhearted if you don't get a match.

In any case, I tend to think of the OT god as a typical "hostile Type-A Personality" abusive father. Just my $0.02 ;>

PTET