Years ago, my sense of morality clashed against the teachings of the JW.
I had a lot of inner termoil because of how it all went.
I wouldn’t kill someone if God said to, for example.
That’s quite the sin, also.
Killing the first born son of everybody in egypt, according to the JW guys it was necessary and just.
I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to go around killing millions of children and stuff. Adults and animals too.
Yeah, he really isn’t a very good or fair god.
Jesus was a little better, but he still toed the party line most of the time.
He killed those innocent pigs. You’d think a messiah would cast devils out of a man without involving animals that never did any harm, but no; over the cliff they all went. I guess because, for Jews, pigs are unclean to eat, so he didn’t care about the loss to the owner, and he sure didn’t care about the pigs.
Not my brand of saviour.
Often strikes me that religions latch on the Demiurge type characters.
I don’t mean Demiurge in the traditional, neoplatonist sense, but more as some entity that has some power but is not God.
Why should morality operate between species the same way that it operates within a species?
Why should a human not swat a mosquito? Or not eat a chicken?
Why should a lion not eat a human?
Why should a god not kill a human?
The why in each case is being asked by a human and can be answered by a human, according human precepts.
Our concept of right and justice must address our relationships with everyone and everything else, with a particular human at the center of each transaction.
We keep negotiating, adapting and modifying our precepts according to the shifts in our understanding of the world and our place in it.
So… is it just or unjust for a lion to eat a human?
Is it just or unjust for god to kill everyone except Noah and his family? Or is it “getting rid of weeds in the garden”?
Does that mean that every individual decides subjectively what is moral? What if an individual decides that a particular murder is fine for him?
Neither. A lion is not governed by human conventions.
At the time that story was told, the people who told it believed that their god had the right to do that. Many people still believe that; many others do not.
Of course. Every minute of every day - and his focus keep shifting between transactions, so that different precepts take precedence according to the situation and his own feelings.
Happens every minute of every day in every part of the world.
Murder is a legal term that means the deliberate unauthorized killing of one human by another.
The human-on-human killings we approve of are called something else - collateral damage or capital punishment or jihad or serves 'em right for being in a war zone or whatever. The killing of other species, we call slaughter or sport or crop-dusting.
The same can logically be said of god.
An individual kills someone and is judged by others as having committed a moral or immoral action.
The morality of the act is not his subjective opinion.
It is said of gods. Though I wouldn’t use of the word “logic” when referring to gods.
It’s both. Moral tenets are encoded in laws, bot secular and religious, which are supposed to govern the members of a sect or society or nation. By and large, these laws are obeyed. Sometimes they are broken. Whenever a law is in conflict with an individual’s conscience, the individual decides which is the moral imperative in the given instance.
What is justice? Is it not, more than anything else, a world where everyone, not only human but plant and animal as well, can be what they are, and have the freedom to do so?
Is that possible under a regime such as Egypt?
Can we blame creation for churning under that yoke? Or God for damages as that yoke is broken?
It seems to me the natural consequence, maybe even inevitability, of a regime such as Egypt is death, not only of others, but of Egypt itself (its firstborn…). Is that not what this story shows? Does that mean a choice between God and justice? Or is the choice for God not, in fact, the choice for justice?
One cannot assess justice until one defines an ideal. Justice is restoring the ideal.
If one finds conflict between God and justice, it can only be because one has accepted an un-Godly ideal (such as Socialism).
Humans are always going to eat plants and maybe animals. Therefore, a plant is definitely not free to ‘be what they are’. Unless being eaten is included in ‘what they are’.
I’d say it’s unjust.
I am trying to not be so hypocritical.
The problem is that virtues come with a larger brain and good dna.
Lions are not privilaged. They are assholes. But they have to be, as it is right now.
You may define it thus. Each convened group of humans defines it somewhat differently, according to their lights.
In biblical times, Egypt was one of the more enlightened and well-governed nations. That’s why Joseph - who had been accepted and promoted to high office - and his clan were able to take refuge there in a time of famine. Not only had the pharaohs made provision for all their own people, but had the surplus and magnanimity to take in some raggle-taggle herders.
Creation had no objection to Egypt. The Nile kept on flooding; the chickens kept on laying; the crocodiles kept on swimming. The Hebrews were not slaves. Slaves don’t live in affluent neighbourhoods in homes that even an angel can’t distinguish from the citizens’ homes (hence the blood on the doorframe) and where people have gold and silver tableware.
Pharaoh gave them a three-day vacation to go off where they liked, unsupervised, and celebrate their foreign religion. (Three times, Jehovah had to harden his heart before he’d refuse.) Their Egyptian neighbours willingly lent them their very best stuff.
So they absconded with the cutlery and repaid their benefactors by killing the babies. Nice idea of justice.
After going around in circles for a while (The Negev is not that big a desert! ) they infiltrated a city that was just sitting there, minding its own business, knocked down its walls, killed its residents and took their land and livestock. More Justice?
If we want to evaluate stories and actions of God, we need to understand the justice that God is working toward. Feel free to share your view since this entire thread is a non-starter if we go with what you’re saying here.
Won’t deny that Egypt is at times in the good grace of God and the rest of creation. By the time of Moses, though, things have changed, and Egypt is now enslaving people… And eradicating male children of those it fears in order to keep its place on top… Exodus sets the stage pretty clearly I think, even if there was a time in its past when Egypt was working toward justice.
Pretty sure Israel didn’t kill babies… They did take a share of Egypt’s wealth though. That said; I think we have to evaluate Israel’s action separately here. On the one hand, you have the yoke of Egypt being broken (with the suffering and death that comes with such oppression and the breaking free from it). On the other hand, you have a freed people who do not necessarily act justly in their newfound freedom…
As the history that follows in the bible shows, it doesn’t take long for Israel to become not much different from Egypt. To the point God wants to decimate them (golden calf) and works with other kings to dismantle its rule…
My argument was never that Israel was just. Or that Egypt never was just.
Interesting and significant that animals are excluded in Genesis 1 from what we can eat… Does a plant necessarily have to cease to be for us to eat of it? I feel most die prior to harvest (grains) or bear fruits that leave the plan intact. I’m no gardener though. 
And what is the source of the information from which we understand what God was working toward 3500 years ago and still hasn’t accomplished? Just how incompetent is this deity?
I make it a policy not to share my opinion of Jehovah too freely, as it clashes with my habitual good manners.
The rest of creation wasn’t mentioned. I’ve done you the courtesy of sticking to the book (which I largely disbelieve); you can do as much.
Yes, the latest pharaoh wasn’t in Joseph’s thrall. He probably expected the Hebrews to pay their tithes and do their community service, like everyone else.
Who, in those days, wasn’t? Justice didn’t come into it: slavery and rapine were SOP. As soon as the Israelites got their own country (not by the fairest methods) they did the same.
No, the angel of the lord did. How is that better?
After sojourning there for several generations - in preference to the chancy nomadic life. They arrived with nothing, and took off with whatever they could carry. Not a share of Egypt’s wealth but the family heirlooms of the people next door. Not heroic. And what did they do with these gold vessels? Melted it down and made a calf, of all hare-brained things, which their god didn’t like, so it got wasted.
They act on the instructions of their god. They’re just a bunch of confused, resentful DP’s. Jehovah’s the one on trial. (What’s your deal with the yoke? Oxen have had to wear it since about 7000 BC. Be fun to see them break out and take off with their masters’ cufflinks… except the people who have oxen don’t have shirts…)
Ups and downs. Sometimes he helps, sometimes he smites. Fickle little bastard, ain’t he?
Good. So what is your argument concerning Jehovah and justice?
Hello Dan
I think you should be more charitable. What I mean is that, if your purpose is to judge, then judge the highest elements rather than the most base.
The entire Bible comes from the hands of men, first of all. Thus it reflects the customs of the day. But if you look at the OT closely you will find that it does not take itself as absolutely as you take it. It is filled with reversals and corrections and even doubt and moral challenges such as yours.
I am of a different opinion.
For me it is precisely the inclusion of the immoral character that makes God God.
Plato once posed the question of who was a better man; The one who could not lie or the one who could chose to either lie or tell the truth. It is choice that is present and indeed make God superior and we His image.
The bible is the source of course. Not of history, mind you, so all your historical arguments or references, while interesting, are to be considered separately… (All I’m doing is reading a story, and trying to understand that story on its own terms. History can be illuminating in this, but not authoritative.)
Is God incompetent in that story? I think it’s more God’s chosen mode of action… God looks to us, and so I would say it is more a matter of our incompetence than God’s. One way to read Genesis 1 when God rests is: “Hey, I’ve gotten things moving in the right direction, now it’s up to you, humankind, to take over…”
It’s less a failure of God to continue the movement toward justice and more a failure of humankind, created in God’s image, to be like God and finish the job… (Biblically and historically, in this case.)
I’m quite happy to stick to the book. Creation not mentioned though? Hmm. Have you read the disasters that struck Egypt? What are these but a creation in revolt? (Frogs, rivers, animals, locusts?) Or a sign that creation is part of God’s / Moses’ / Israel’s revolution against Egypt’s cruel order?
Just look at the crossing of the Red Sea by Israel for a clear example. Not of creation in revolt, but one of its elements in the service of a people trying to be free… (The point being: creation is everywhere in that text, playing a major role throughout…)
Agree on Israel. (Think I made that point pretty clear in my last response.) Also, to flesh out my view a bit more, there can be a fine line between working in the service of, and being enslaved by. Most people read Genesis 1, for instance, as a world determined and, as such, pretty much enslaved to God, not a world in the service of God… The difference being choice, and voluntarism, and God getting the elements of creation on board with God’s plan versus God acting out of sheer power and self-will, determining what the elements of creation do… What I think we see in Genesis 1 is not God’s determination of creation (enslaving it to his will), but the elements doing God’s bidding because they see what God is working toward, and want to achieve that end (of justice) as much as God…
(The language of “let there be…” is not the language of determination, but of bidding, and asking…" and holds within it the very justice I am after: a world where everything can be what it is, and express itself freely…)
To relate this to Exodus, and to your point before, I think we can see Israel originally working with Egypt along extremely similar lines, i.e., in the service of Egypt. But that line can quickly become blurred, and crossed, and “in the service of” can be become “enslaved by”. So of course we see slavery everywhere in the bible and in history. It’s that very tendency and crossing of lines that we need to resist if we’re to stay on the path to justice, and be and work with others (e.g., the ox) versus over them.
Correction, and this is important: they don’t act on the instructions of God, but of Moses, who is their intermediary… What’s really important here, and we have to remember every time there is a human speaking on God’s behalf (no matter who that person is), is that they could be misrepresenting God, even characters in as high an esteem as Moses… We see this with Moses during the golden calf episode in Exodus. Read what God’s final “instruction” is to Moses (i.e., NOT to decimate Israel), and what Moses SAYS God’s instruction is when he sees Israel’s betrayal for himself… Complete opposite…
And what’s my deal with the yoke? It’s a nice image… To the point before about being in the service of versus being enslaved by, an ox that willingly accepts the yoke to help till the field is great, but an ox forced to bear it… That is an ox that, well, has two choices: either passively do so or revolt, and break the yoke… The latter is what we see with Israel and Egypt, the only course left when dealing with a hardened heart.
Okay, back to the beginning. Again, justice, in the bible, or my view of it (feel free to present your own view), is a world where everyone is free to be / express who / what they are. Justice is the end state that we (should all) work toward. The eschaton so to speak…
The enslavement of a people is contrary to that end (as much as the enslavement of an ox). Hence the breaking of Egypt in order to free Israel is an act to move the world toward justice, and there is no ‘choice’, as per the OP, to be made between God and justice. They are one and the same. The choice for God here is the choice for justice…
My references were only to what I recall of the - rather one-sided - biblical account. Granted, I lack motivation to go read the whole thing again, so I may be inaccurate as to details.
Within the confines of the one story, no. But my response was to your assertion that he was “working toward” a greater justice. I thought you meant greater than the exodus story.
Yes, he always gets off on that technicality. Whatever goes well is down to God. Whatever gets screwed up is your fault.
“… and when you try to make your own decisions, I’ll toss you out on your ear, lest you eat from the other tree and become immortal.”
Huh. I always thought those were unnatural events performed by Jehovah in a pyrotechnics contest with pharaoh’s wizards. A contest he forced on them.
What revolution? They lied, took the gold and ran off. Never raised a fist. Left the angel to kill first-borns and god to drown the army. This is not an event I would consider heroic enough to celebrate annually in perpetuity… It’s only slightly less distasteful than celebrating the political execution of some itinerant preacher.
Okay. As long as for “creation” we read “Jehovah’s tool-kit”. Let’s not expect too much from nature in the service of peoples trying to be free, though. It didn’t serve the Moabites and Edomites.
I recall the first chapter as a straightforward creation myth: males and females, go forth and subdue the earth; nothing about service. The second chapter repeats the process, except that it ends up with something like a zoological garden with a single experimental specimen getting cloned. Very different tenor; certainly different origin.
Lots of creative interpretation there; no substance. Elements don’t have free will - which is good news for the cohesion of matter. Even if by elements you mean weather, they can be as fickle as god.
Sounds nice. Not buying the Exodus-as-divine-justice line. And certainly not the part where the slave-owner didn’t notice crossing over from being an employer. They knew all about raiding the next country, killing the men, raping the women, taking the children, and were okay with it.
In the escape part. I had been referring to their god’s instructions later on, when they became a nation of invaders and enslavers.
Well, then, we have a very serious problem with a god about whom our only information comes through just such persons.
You can tell the difference?
That’s rich, given who hardened the heart.
Nothing in the bible - except maybe a couple of Jesus’s sermons, and they’re iffy - comes close to remotely depicting any such concept of justice. But we probably are approaching the end of our world. It’ll be up to the cockroaches next.
That event changed nothing in the world order. Nor did any number of wars later in the bible. Or in history since.