GenesisNemesis

"God can do whatever He wants because He's the Creator"?

A Creator should see to it that He does not piss off His Creation with pathetic genocide.

chrisrkline

A god that can cast whomever he pleases into the outer darkness can certainly demand that we obey him. He can also say: "I am god, and if I say that "X is good", then X is good." You are free to appease him if you want, but it has no bearing on whether "X is good". But since I hold that "X is good," only if it is set relative to a subjective state of mind, then this is the case for god as well. "God believes genocide is good (or bad) under certain conditions" is certainly true. That "Genocide is bad" has not been established. I am personally pleased that we have gotten, for the most part, past the morals of the OT, since "I strongly hold that genocide is bad" is true.

Boro Nut

I like termites. They're a great example to reluctant girlfriends that billions of other females find nothing sordid or dirty about eating wood.

Boro Nut

Wedge

:rolling:

oatmealia

I'm interested in seeing Closseau actually answer this, rather than just throwing some oblique one-liner at everyone.

chrisrkline

The point is he can't. Either morals are truly objective and we can hold god to those standards or they are just subjective edicts by a big bully.

Besides, when a theist resorts to the "Well you will find out what happens to those who judge god...burn, baby, burn..." argument, then we have left the realm of the rational.

Julian

(I apologize in advance for using you as my 'straight man,' as it were. Any of my comments that may seem negative toward you, aren't.)

Well, you are new here, so I guess I can understand. Let me explain.

When, you see a post like that you are immediate incredulous. When you have been here for a while you simply become outraged. Later, you merely squint and assume a forbidding mien. Eventually you arrive at a place where you realize a few simple facts, the pertinent one being this: Someone who can in any way defend the behavior of god in the old testament will never, ever be able to hear, much less understand, anything you could ever say on that subject. You need to be reasonable to understand reason. Do you honestly think that someone who, even for a second, supports genocide could ever look at your posts and say, "Hey, what was I thinking?!"

Someone who judges who has a higher standard by their, admittedly lower, standard, has some issues. It's a bit like a stupid person telling an intelligent one how his thinking is flawed. Could god reasonably commit genocide? I suppose so, if such an entity existed. A much better question would be: Why would he need to? Why does he need to resort to this step? Didn't he see this coming? And, interestingly, it isn't god doing the killing most of the time, it's people. In a book written by other people. Ostensibly speaking on behalf of god. If one creates life, doesn't one have some responsibility towards it, once created? If our children don't do as we say, would it be okay to, say, burn them alive? I guess, using the OT as a guide...

Why does god need cheap theatrics? Why does he need ten plagues? Why does he need a flood? Why does he continually need something that looks like something thought up by an under-endowned, witless goat-herder? The old testament is, by far, the most repulsive, gross, disgusting, evil, and just plain juvenile and unintelligent piece of ugliness ever written. To think that it might have even the slighest moral upside speaks volumes about the person who might utter such nonsense.

Anyways, enough of my rants... It's late and I'm tired. This is the time of day when I get highly annoyed by people who thinks that killing lots of women and children is a-okay. I'm just crazy that way.

Julian

lpetrich

First, I note Hector Avalos's Creationists for Genocide, decribing certain creationists' defenses of Biblical genocide.

And now to my main business.
Why should I? Genocide is always justifiable to those who commit it. The Nazis believed in the legitimacy of their genocidal mass murders; they claimed that Jews were nothing but troublemakers who deserved to be exterminated.

So one needs to take a broader perspective.

That's the old "God as an absolute right to pull rank on us" argument.

Toto

Would this topic do better in Moral Foundations and Principles?

From the BCH perspective, the genocide never happened. It was a foundational myth - nations established their legitimacy in those days by slaughtering their enemies, so the Israelis needed a story like that to establish their legitimate right to the land that they lived on. But actually, the Hebrews evolved from the Canaanites.

This question seems more aimed at those who think that the Bible is eitherr true or a moral guide.

Besides, I keep thinking that the essay that compares Canaanites to cockroaches must be the product of a disturbed mind.

Steven Carr

DO we have a right to be told the truth by this alleged god?