Mike(ATL)

This is an unfair and over generalizing statement and only partially correct. Name an instance where an author is showing God to be unjust. There are passages such as the bears thing where no explanation is given, but the author is certainly not giving the account of an unjust God. I'm sorry but your interpretation alone of whether something is just or not is of no consequence. There can be instances (such as the loss of a loved one) that seem very unjust to us at the time but in the big picture could have positive consequences. We just don't know, that's why we're not God and shouldn't want to be. However, as I said, there are instances where God chooses to show no mercy. He's not ashamed of that nor trying to hide it. So some accounts given are indeed not interested in showing a merciful God.

Note that this "big picture" argument applies to many of the counterexamples given. The immediate suffering is unfortunate and it pains us and God, but God has a larger plan panning out. We can only guess about His plan or lack thereof. Without trusting God we can look at all of these individual circumstances and say maybe he could've accomplished the same thing without any suffering, but we don't know, we only guess, and we don't know how it affected anything else in the world down the timeline. We are not all knowing, it's not our responsibility.

Another point, without suffering, how would we know what it means to be blessed? You can't have one without the other, this is the nature of the world.

Sensei Meela

Ha! Justice requires explanation. What, 'God punishes the wicked'? So it's terribly wicked to call the faithful 'bald'? Mockery, you say, is wicked? Cute. Er, you sure? Seems to me a God who professess to be 'good to all' and whose 'mercy is all over [his] works' would not betray this portrayal, even infrequently.

Then your 'guess' that He's working everything out in our favor, and with 'good' (not 'evil') intentions, is nothing more than wishful thinking. It's just like that poor sod who is a Chicago Cubs fan (read: me) saying, 'No wait, you'll see, this is the year...all those years we loved them when they sucked are gonna finally pay off'.
The God cannot do what is logically impossible...like exist outside the universe, act before time, create a married bachelor or let the Cubs win a World Series...

Asha'man

Do you not even know what the Big Picture of the OT is?

The Jews thought they had a really kick-ass tribal God, the cream of the crop. However, they were trying to farm a desert, had lots of hostile neighbors, and life generally sucked. They had to explain this general contradiction.

Their solution: our ancestors must have made a deal with God, and we failed to keep up our side of the bargain. Therefore, God was perfectly justified in not doing all the things he should have been doing (given his duty as tribal God).

They were living out the Problem of Evil, and needed a mental escape for the obvious conclusion that God was powerless because he didn’t exist.

Now, re-read the whole thing with that in mind, and see how everything changes.

gregor

I must assume that people's brains are wired differently (or sculpted differently) when it comes to reasoning about religion.

Mike states the two standard positions that fundamentalists cite in response to the "problem of evil." Those are: (i) the "they must've deserved it, . . . cause it happened to them" position and (ii) the "we're not smart enough to know God's plan" position.

Obviously, my brain is not wired (or possibly trained) to even understand these positions. I'm not saying my brain is better, just different.

Doctor X

Mike(ALT):

Just one? Au contraire [He knows no French.--Ed.] . . . .

YHWH demanding the sacrifice of children.
YHWH demanding the slaughter of every woman, child, and infant.
YHWH admitting he made "bad laws" so people would follow them and then he could punish them.
Every time Pharaoh decides to let the slaves go, YHWH makes him change his mind.
This guy named Job.
Et cetera, et cetera ad nauseum

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Ipse dixit which is ironic since the passage cited is an ipse facto case of injustice . . . unless you wish to argue that mauling children is a justifiable response for taunting--let me know, Halloween is just around the corner.

It seems to prove more reliable than yours. Of course, I generally do not advocate child sacrifice and mass murder . . . unless they do not finish their vegetables.

Launches in to an apology for suffering which is not relevant to the original question. For a discussion on the justice of suffering, I refer the poster and Noble Readership to the threads devoted to the subject. To date, the poster has not responded to the question in said threads.

Ipse dixit and incorrect. "BIG" or "little" does not matter, for genocide is genocide.

Further apology for Unjust Suffering follows which does not, unfortunately, make any of the cases cited just.

As noted in other threads, the fact that Unjust Suffering exists leads us to a Non-Existent, Evil, Incompetent, Irrelevant, or Some Combination of the later three deity.

Now to return to the point of the thread, the authors did not feel this a major point of contention--a deity committing injustice.

Why else would they have him declare he created evil?

--J.D.

Mike(ATL)

Big picture, big picture, big picture. We do not have the perspective God does. I don't want to get into every little thing here.

The big difference here is that I start knowing that God knows what he's doing, you start knowing He's a tyrant, I'm not going to convince you, I'll let what I've already written speak for itself. Your responses here indicate you just aren't hearing what I am saying about the nature of God.

Doctor X

Argumentum ad ignorantiam and it rather does not excuse Big Daddy . . . genocide is genocide no matter whether you use a closeup or wide-angle shot.

You are attempting to diminish cases of mass slaughter. These are not "little things" at all.

If you consider the biblical texts historical then you just contradicted yourself. You asked for examples of an author portraying Big Daddy as unjust. I have replied with a more than one specific example. If these are historical, than "knows what he's doing" makes him Evil. Indeed, he even "repents" of his "evil" in one passage. He admits committing evil in another. Thus:

cannot be different from your perspective unless you wish to concede that the texts are myths.

Yet, what you have "already written" speaks for my argument.

Ipse dixit bordering on Poisoning the Well, nevertheless, incorrect. I have rather read what you wrote.

Let us review the catechism. . . .

You asked for:

and I replied with more than one.

You then tried to brush this aside with appeals to ignorance and some "big picture" which, in some manner unexplained by you, justifies the mass-slaughter of infants.

I am afraid you will have to do better than that.

Now, you can simply deny the implications, but that remains your error and not one you can expect others on a debate board to share.

Either you accept the stories and just that--stories--which leaves you accepting my original contention that the authors had little problem with an unjust deity--or you accept that Big Daddy is unjust.

--J.D.

-DM-

. . . and your responses here indicate that your reasoning is off--way off.

If "we" (which includes you) do not have the perspective that "God" does, then it is useless for you to attempt to explain "God" to us--as you think you have done, it is useless for you to think that you "start knowing that 'God' knows what he's doing," and it is silly (in my opinion) for you to pick "God" over another god to worship.

-Don-

Doctor X

Come on, -DM- you are merely one post away from "6666" which is like . . . more sixier than the Number of the Beast!

Anyways, Mike(ALT) you will have a bit of a problem arguing theology on a Biblical Criticism and History forum. This may seem counterintuitive, but recognize that what you believe is not what "they" believed "way back when" as different texts were written. To throw some Strawscholars about, most accept that at some point child sacrifice was a part of the YHWH cult. Neat! That is a part of history. At some point it not only was rejected, it was written against--why else would a writter feel the need to have YHWH explain it?

Similarly, if you believe F. M. Cross, "YHWH" is the "causitive imperfect form of the Proto-Cananite-Hebrew verb 'to be'"--of course!--as was originally a part of a larger "god-title" for El--examples: "god that makes the mountain." At some point YHWH becomes a separate deity--either a renaming of Baal--which means "lord"--and/or El or a branching off on his own--gets syncretized with elements of these gods and Bablyonian gods--ala the Flood Myth--and . . . voila! . . . becomes a national deity.

At some point, he may have had a formal consort--Asherah--though depictions of the two together are really non-existent. Somewhere, the consort . . . who may have been more of a "manefestation" of a power . . . gets supressed.

Now, I think I can wager you do not worship one of those earlier--but historically "real" deities! I keep trying to go back to the earlier manefestations, but the Zoning Commission will not let me build a tophet [Stop that!--Ed.]. Fine and dandy; however, what you believe now has nothing to do with the history of "what" "they" believed during the various "thens" in history.

"What" and "when" impacts on the texts. In some cases, frankly, the texts wish to change the "what." None of them probably expected to be collected in the same volume found in hotel rooms across this Great Nation. . . .

Syncretism--the blending of aspect of religions--was not as scary a prospect it seems now. Reinterpreting deities was a more common practice--new king, new religion. Assyrians conquer you . . . your deities are really "their" deities now. Thus, it probably did not disturb a post-exilic Chronicler to alter the responsibility for causing King David to commit evil in a pre-exilic text--if you believe most dating for the Deuteronomistic History.

Thus, frankly, what you personally believe will not have any weight in discussions on these pages unless you draw it from the texts and back that up from the texts. This does not mean you cannot believe what you want . . . you just cannot expect the authors of the texts to agree with you.

--J.D.

K

Mike(ATL):

Your arguments seem to run along the lines of:

God said He was just in the Bible.

God does many things in the Bible that don't seem just to us.

But these are not contradictions because those things were just.

They had to be because God is just.

I know this because He said He was in the Bible.