BadBadBad

Nowhere,

I think we could understand each other better if you could be a little more open with your religious beliefs. You say some christian like things and some atheist like things. What are your beliefs? I am an atheist. I don't believe in any God. I believe the Bible is total and utter nonsense. I believe that christians are foolish, ignorant and irrational for believing it.

You wanted to know why it's a big mistake to reject God in the hypothetical we're discussing. It's a big mistake because if you are confronted by the ACTUAL almighty God, then it's all true. You better do what God wants or he may zap you into a ball of flames and send you off to hell just like the example I posted from Leviticus. If he actually exists, it must be OK to do what ever he wants because He has absolute moral authority. If he asks you to murder your child, maybe it's a test, and if you fail it, off to hell you go. If it's not a test, maybe your child turns out to be one bad dude. The absolute moral thing may be to murder him in the most brutal way possible. In any case, if God actually exists, who the hell does any christian or any human think they are having the absolute audacity to say no to God? As a hypothetical case, it illustrates quite nicely how christians don't believe in their own doctrine. God defines absolute morality. The Bible God in the OT was absolutely moral. If God asked christians the same things he asked Moses, on the other hand, many christians would say no to God on moral grounds. The point is that christianity is rediculous.

I don't have that problem with the God hypothetical because I'm an atheist. I can easily look at the hypothetical and realize that the Bible God is not omni-benevolent and absolutely moral. Just the opposite. The Bible God is immoral and evil. The Bible descriptions of God are incompatible, therefore he doesn't exist. I can reject the hypothetical outright and not contradict my own beliefs. Christians can't.

Nowhere357

It's good that you ask, rather than just assume. Kudos to you.

I am hard atheist against the xian mythological god, and almost as hard against any other personal-type god I'm aware of.
I am agnostic towards spiritual reality in general, but with a soft spot for the possibility of transcendance of some sort.
I like to find the default position in things, but I understand that the default position is not always correct.

Yes I know. And as a stand-alone book, I agree the Bible is worthless. Two points, however:

There is some good stuff in the Bible - love your neigbor - although I know this is good only because I learn it elsewhere.
More importantly, many people are invested in the thing, and dismissing it out of hand merely offends those people, and then they are completely non-receptive to any insights we may offer. Iow, this hurts our cause (long live freethought!).

Many atheists are foolish, ignorant and irrational, also. How is it helpful to say so?

I understand your point, and I resolve it by understanding that in a real way, we are still stone-age man. Our science and technology has far outpaced our spiritual understanding. Iow, we as a species are still child-like in general.

As a parent, I know children are foolish, ignorant and irrational as a matter of course. We should help them learn and grow, as opposed to insulting them and tearing them down. This analogy has limits - children grow within our lifetime, while folks lacking the skepticism gene (I just made that up) are probably stuck that way - they won't change much in our lifetime. We have to see the big picture.

I realize this view contains arrogance - I'm not proud of that, but I think the view is on the right track. We should cherish our skepticism, not ridicule those who lack it.

Saying "no" to God and rejecting God are two separate things, I think. I would say yes, it's a big mistake to reject God, if we know God exists. This assumes God is benevolent, of course. If it turns out god is evil, I'll oppose it and take my lumps, I guess.

But saying "no" is a separate issue.

Again assuming God is benevolent, then it is not possible that God is less moral than us. And it is not possible that God has no interest in our moral awareness. To me, the audacity would be to reject all of our moral understandings simply because we tremble with fear.

I agree the Bible causes far more problems than it solves. One day, maybe thousands of years from now, maybe a lot sooner, it will be found only on library shelves. Historical Religious Tome Department. In the fiction, myths and legends section.

In this thread, I think the question boils down to, how should we react if we hear voices in our heads which command us to do something.

Now, as a skeptic, I would recognize it as illusion, and certainly not obey it. Maybe seek psych help if it continues.

But if I held a belief in God, the situation is very different. I may not recognize it as illusion. So what if the voice commanded me to kill my children, in the name of God?

I would tell it "no".

If god is creator, he would have no need of my help in killing things.
If god is benevolent, it must be a test of my morality. God wants us to say "no".
(If it's a test of faith, as per Job, then clearly god is not benevolent. Job is myth.)
If god is neither of these things, then it must be an evil demon or whatever - the answer is still "no".

People everywhere, if you hear a voice commanding you to kill your children, or blow up a plane, or commit any immoral act, TELL IT "NO" (and get thee to the doctor).

Opera Nut

All you bad spellers take note:

If you're not careful, you could end up selling your soul to
Santa.

orac

You're saying that God truely does instruct modern parents (as in parents living today, at the moment you are reading this) to sacrifice their children to him?

Forget Abraham and Isaac - I'm not talking about bible stories. Are you actually trying to make the claim that God wants children to be killed by their parents today, when he causes them to hear his voice in their head?

Well. That's interesting.

You realise, of course, that if you deny this, then you have to accept that people actually do hear voices that are not from God, but who would possibly give that possibility any attention?


So, which is it? Does God demand parents sacrifice their children, or do some parents believe they have had instructions from God when, in fact, they have not?

On the off chance that you think God is not instructing parents to kill their children, do you think you can answer the original question?


I know you probably try to avoid hearing things like this, but there are people who kill their children, believing that God told them to do it.

Can you accept that they may possibly be wrong? Or do you just want to roll your eyes at me, too?

ComestibleVenom

It runs the gamut my friend. What else can I say? There are a lot of borderline cases that don't really get noticed due to the religious nature of their illusions. But I know a lot of people who have decidedly crossed boundaries of sanity. Seriously dudes, once in a while even a relatively sane person can be quite insane.

Not that I'm any different in principle. Not immune to delusions. If I ate BZ or perhaps some bellodonna alkaloid, I would surely have some exceedingly bizarre and barroque delusions for some time. (perhaps days) It might never occur to me to question the truth of some of what happened, even though I was aware that I was under the influence of powerful drugs.

But it was sanity, not reason, not scientific argument, not guilt that ultimately drove me from God. I began to distingish between internal webs of dicourse and reliable external information.

The Angles that talked to me, (who I named at the admonition of a woman who claimed that it would in fact be a divine revelation of the angels name), who gave advice, protected me with the thought of what was likely to happen because the danger of the situation was at any rate incommensurate with my fear........ became voiceless thoughts, frozen like the illusion in the dark become vivid stone gargoyles when the light illuminates the litchen growing on stone grimaces.

When I realized Santa could not in fact get into my house through the chimney, the grating on the fireplace itself ceased seeming magical. Sanity hits you like a bag of doorknobs to the brainstem, but it does not constitute more than a hint that can itself be misunderstood.