Would you choose to live next door to this guy?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

There is this fellow I’ve been reading about, and he is not the most enlightened individual I ever heard about. I wonder if you would choose to live next door to this guy?

He is insanely jealous and reportedly is often given to fits of violent rage when he detects disloyalty or betrayal. He has a reported record of killing people who disagree with him. Reportedly, he often intentionally sets up diabolical traps for people by devising situations where people will be tempted to break his rules or to incite his jealousy. And when they do, he then reportedly inflicts these god-awful punishments upon them, including killing them or just subjecting them to hellish pain and suffering. He has been know to turn over one of his loyal followers to his worst enemy to be tortured, in order to see if they would defect under duress. Even his closest chosen associates refer to him as wrathful and vegenceful. Even those who claim to love him, still fear him and for good cause. Stories are told about how he has manipulated people by using his influence to blind their eyes to the truth about something or to harden their attitudes against doing the right thing. Time after time, he has allowed people to suffer pain when he allegedly had the ability to cure their ailments and remove their suffering. Time after time, he has allowed people to starve to death when he alledgedly had the resources to provide food. There are even stories of him using his power to inflict pain and suffering upon whole countries, raining death and destruction upon the citizenry, just because their dictatorial monarch would not comply with his demands. He has reportedly butchered whole cities who refused to follow his rules, and he has reportedly caused floods to kill millions of innocent men, women and children.

With a record of lacking compassion and of committing acts of terrorism and violence like this, you would think that this guy wuold be hated universally. However, incredible as it sounds, just the opposite. He is worshipped. While he has never actually been convicted of these violent mass murders, his followers do not deny he did these things and, in fact, many of them absolutely insist upon the truth of these stories. In fairness some of his followers say that these are just stories and are not intended to be taken literally, but they do not claim that the people who reported these events were guilty of making up lies about him.

And his worshippers have done incredible acts of violence, torture, murder and even fought entire wars, claiming that they were doing these things as his agents. Small wonder I suppose, given his alleged example. They have opposed science and have tried to suppress learning and progress in his name, They have even forced teachers, such as Galileo, to recant truths as lies. Women have been often denied access to education and economic opportunity because of him. There are numerous documented cases of his followers putting people to death because those people did not share their beliefs. Even among his worshippers, there is violence and terrorism. Their history is that they cannot even get along among themselves, let alone live peacefully with people who don’t share their beleifs. His lack of enlightenment has been continued by his followers.

Anyway, I wonder if this guy was living next door to you, if you would let your kids play in his yard? Would you circulate a petition to get action from the police? Would you try to get laws passed making his violence and the violence of his followers illegal?

Recently, in the last few hundred years, just a brief moment in time really, there has been a young movement afoot to insulate government and seperate government from the influence of this fellow and his worshippers. It is a very hot political topic, even today. Many people will still not vote for anyone who rejects this guy. And many politicians still use this guy’s influence to get elected. No wonder we live in such a violent world when guys like this have such a wide following and continue to have such widespread influence on our political and social life.

Who is this guy? You can read about him in the books of the Old Testament. Those are the same books that are embraced by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.

2

God, but you make it sound bad. The people of the world brought it upon themself’s. And the flood did not kill innocent, it was ment to vanqush the evil and the giants.

3

I make it sound bad?

It just sounds bad. That’s the problem with the God described in those books. It just sounds bad.

4

here is my argument to counter yours… The argument expressed does not mean they are my own oppinions.

If God is the definition of good, all knowing, and all powerful… and he created humans, who are you to say that he is not doing everything right? Because by definition, God infallible, and therefore, perfect in every way. We as humans are too limited of the capacity for knowledge to make a rational decision on the right-ness or wrong-ness of God’s actions.

Is there sanctity of life? Maybe. Who made it up? The living. You don’t really hear JFK, Ghandi, Thomas Moore, or Louis XVI talking about the sanctity of life do you? No, because JFK, Ghandi, Thomas Moore, and Louis XVI are all dead. So what makes life so special? It is inevitable that we die anyways… so why care what happens in our life? That is where God’s laws come in… if you follow these laws, there will be eternal paradise… if not… too bad for you. But now I’m rambling, and I have a 12 hour night shift to go to soon

5

OK, this guy rains death and destruction on Egypt because their Pharoh won’t let Israel go. But, and here is the rub. This guy has hardened Pharoh’s heart, so that Pharoh is not free to come to that conclusion. It is not until after this guy has his fun laying waste to the citizens and babies of Egypt that he allows the Pharoh the freedom to choose to let them go.

Then, he leads them out into the desert, and when they make an inanimate object, a golden calf, to worship, he goes beserk and is going to kill them all! Not because the calf is any threat to him, but because he is such an egomaniac that he goes over the edge at the drop of a hat. So poor old Moses is trying to reason with this maniacal ego that it would probably not win friends and influence people to lead people out into the desert and then just slaughter them, that the guy repents and eases up a little. He give Moses a chance to save as many as he can but then he slaughters the rest. Now what sort of god needs Moses to do his thinking for him?

You know, right, that this Old Testament god he once ordered a father to take the father’s son and slaughter him on an altar and offer him as a human sacrifice. And the poor miserable father was completely prepared to do it, and by the father’s consent for all practical purposes, ethically he murdered his son? He was guilty of intent to commit murder with this Old Testament god egging him on. Now that is wrong on so many levels that even your “there is no sanctity to life” arguement has to fall by the wayside. First, there is the issue of human sacrifice, which is condemned by most Jews, Muslims and Christians, and yet their guy made this father consent to sacrifice his own son. Second, is the ultimate act of betrayal by the very father who is entrusted with the son’s well being and protection, to be turned into the son’s executioner and butcher just to satisfy this Old Testament god’s incredible vanity? It doesn’t matter that he was stopped from doing it, he was fully intending and prepared to do it. Thirdly, there is the traumatic mental effect on both the son and the father. Can you imagine? I am sure that just deciding to slaughter your own child would cross over so many mental boundries and lines that you would never be right again. It is a horriific story.

I can go on and on. The books are full of these god-awful stories. The point is, this guy is not a balanced, centered, enlightened individual by any definition. I wouldn’t choose to have him as my neighbor, given his track record of behavior. I wouldn’t trust him around my kids or my wife. Would you?

6

that doesn’t disprove anything I said… perhaps all human emotions are unreasonable to God, and in that case, who is right? A human, made by God, given the limited ability to think, or the all knowing, omnipotent, omnipresent God?

7

Yes and perhaps the men who wrote those books were just projecting their own ideas about God into them. These errors about the very nature of a God, and how a God would behave, are perhaps no different than the other errors they made. That God would be an unbalanced irrational egomanical jealous vengencful and violent being is perhaps no more true than is the fact the the Earth is flat or that the Earth is fixed and immovable or that the Sun rotates around the Earth or any of the other errors they made in their creative writing.

8

Dude, you are really bored. Look if you would actually sit down and read the bible you will understand that you should not take everything in it “literally” but you should take everything in it “in perspective”, heh. You read and you learn nothing more nothing less you were not there literally to determine whether his actions were justifiable or not and quite frankly there is a lot of stuff that God does that one with humans eyes is unable to deter, it’s not for us to. It’s like this, okay, if your life is a timeline (3 dimensional timeline) then your goal, I hope, is to get to the light at the end. IF your course, in the beginning of the time line, is moved just 1 inch to the left or right doesn’t matter, then when you reach the end of it you can totally miss your whole destination.

9

Dude, you are really bored. Look if you would actually sit down and read the bible you will understand that you should not take everything in it “literally” but you should take everything in it “in perspective”, heh. You read and you learn nothing more nothing less you were not there literally to determine whether his actions were justifiable or not and quite frankly there is a lot of stuff that God does that one with humans eyes is unable to deter, it’s not for us to. It’s like this, okay, if your life is a timeline (3 dimensional timeline) then your goal, I hope, is to get to the light at the end. IF your course, in the beginning of the time line, is moved just 1 inch to the left or right doesn’t matter, then when you reach the end of it you can totally miss your whole destination.

10

Ah, but that is a different argument… that gets to whether God exists or not.

we were talking about the rationality and/or irrationality of God, assuming God is real.

11

The Bible is not God.

No it does not get to whether God exists or not. Why in the world would you link God’s existence to the credibility of the Bible? Those are not one in the same at all. The mere fact that some men wrote down their own perspectives about who God might be and how he might act, and the mere fact that they got it almost entirely wrong (in my opinion) says nothing about whether God exists or not. They made God out to be an unbalanced egomaniac. They claimed She told or revealed to them things about our world that we know God would never say, including attributing to God such outlandish astronomical errros as a fixed and immovable Earth. These facts do not talk to the existence of God, but rather talk only to their description of him and what they attributed to him.

Look, I might claim that God appeared to me and told me to recruit an army, start a religious war and wipe out all non-believers, but that would not make my claim true. Nor wold the falacy of my claim mean that there is no God. It would only mean that (being charitable) I am powerfully confused.

I suppose everyone who does believe in a God being would probably agree with me that one of the worst offenses anyone could make would be to enthrone themselves on God’s level, and to claim to be speaking for God. If there is a God being, then I suspect that one of the things that would really be a source of irritation to a God being would be for some men to claim to be representing Her or to be acting on Her authority, and use that claim to promote evil. But that has not ever stopped men from doing exactly that, and I think that whoever wrote those Old Testament books was probably one of them. I suspect that if there is a God being, then that being is probably fairly unhappy with how She was portrayed by those guys and all the errors they attributed to Her.

But that is just how if feels to me upon reading it. I’ve been reading it for about 30 years now, and it always strikes me as just wrong. God would not act like that. I can’t fathom an ultimately enlightened being who would behave the way that they say She behaved in the Old Testament. I can’t fathom an all wise all knowing God who would make so many errors of fact. It just does not ring true.

12

Or here is another possible explanation. It all happened exactly like they say it happened. The being acted exactly like they say he acted. But he was not THE GOD. He was just a god.

Maybe he was psuedo god. Some sort of being who had the power of creation, used it, made a mess of it, and then THE GOD caught wind of it, finally showed up and slapped his hands, and put an end to his playing god, and that is why we have had no further news of him. But if that being really existed and really acted like they say he acted then he was not god. God would not act like that. That behavior is just too imbalanced, too off center, too lacking in enlightened compassion to be the behavior of a true God.

So, maybe in fairness, those guys who wrote those books were just thinking the same sort of thoughts as me but were stuck with the reality of their experience so they reported it, not knowing that they were being used by some manipulative being who was actually doing some renegade unauthorized creating. Maybe he was just some outlaw hacker sort of being, you know?

13

Yeah, that is strange I guess in a sense I agree but then I’m not sure heh

14

I think everyone, with some some form of intellectual thought has really thougth about what you are saying. This is why I choose to be Agnostic. I guess from me playing video games as a child, heh, and knowing how many twists and turns I experienced on those, I know for a fact life is harder than Final Fantasy, lol. You can’t reset or pause life. I often question what if like it is all a trick? I mean I believe there is definitely truth to the bible, don’t get me wrong, and I definitely believe in God. I just wonder sometimes if religion in itself is a trick. Like maybe it started out right but then had gotten corrupt? Like what if a UFO came and came out and said I’m taking you home…come. I mean c’mon now this is a UFO! I dunno man…

15

the bible wasn’t written to be “God”. It is the B-I-B-L-E Basic Intructions Before Leaving Earth ::nods::

16

I keep reading your statement over…sorry. She? I always viewed God as neither male or female. I don’t know I’m only human and I never claimed to be God himself/herself. I just know sometimes I feel like I’ve done a good deed. I mean I’ve read the bible and I didn’t get this cruel perception to how God was perceived. You sure you are not just reading the bible with a jaded view? Only thing I can say, in regards to your statement, is that I agree with you saying that God did not write the bible himself/herself. So of course it isn’t going to be “accurate”. But because the bible is so metaphorical one can not decipher whether the point was to make him out to be a prided egotistical maniac or just a phenominally unbelievable individual, you were not there. I mean I’m no where near God’s power but I’ve been accused many times for being arrogant when in fact I’m just extremely confident. I mean what I’m suppose to downplay myself just because others are scared to poke their heads out their imaginary playtime boxes and view the world for how it really is? It’s a vomitting sight, the condition of this planet…

17

I agree completely that THE GOD, if he/she exists, is truly sickenend by this world and the way we behave in it. I think THE GOD abhors the mess that has been created, and that is one reason why I cannot fathom THE GOD creating it. There is just something about all this that seems incomplete, flawed and a bit off kilter. That’s why I suspect that, if there was a creator, which is highly suspect in itself, then that creator was not THE GOD. THE GOD would not have botched it so horribly. Certainly, the way that being described in the Old Testament behaved is not the description of THE GOD. If it is, then we are in dire straights indeed. If the ultimate authority in the Universe is this unbalanced ego-maniacal vegenceful, wrathful, vindictive, violent being eaten up with jealousy and given to explosive fits of violent rage, a shamelessly manipulative games player who has to be talked out of irrational behavior by the likes of Moses, if that is the case, then we are all in deep trouble. I would like to think that the journey towards enlightenment is a process of becoming more like God not less like him. The more centered, serene and patient I become, the less I am like that god described in the Old Testament. That tells me that something is not quite right about that fellow,

18

So was your argument meant to talk about the writers of the Bible, or the rationality of God? Because the latter seems to be the original statement. You say the God in the Bible is jealous, quick tempered, irrational, etc…

I argue that who are humans to say that God is irrational, since God by the definition of God, is a perfect being, in otherwords, infallible.

You argue once again with an argument on human terms, which did not disprove my argument.

I pose the same argument again, in which you respond with an attack on the writers of the Bible writing with thier emotions. To which I say is a different argument… we were talking about the God of the Old Testement as if he were a real being, and whether his actions are rational, not about the writers of the bible, and whether they made up God in thier own image.

So please tell me, what exactly is the point you are trying to make?

19

Exactly why I do not believe in God. I fail to accept that fact because to me, that is shutting down our minds, and submitting ourselves, believing we know nothing, and in that case, what’s the sense of living.

Go ahead and worship your God that is all so powerful, but I’d rather risk dying a fiery death and suffering for all eternity than to waste my life right now on such beliefs…why you ask?

All signs point to mankind creating every story of god, it is almost blatantly obvious. I know my mind is capable of suspecting and sniffing out the “fishy”, and if this is God’s idea of a trick to “test” me, well I don’t care. My mind is a powerful thing, without it, I feel I am nothing. So why then should I accept that a god would use this tool against me, reducing me to nothing, and then expect me to make a decision.

As I look at all the followers, all their beliefs. Most are just so impossible to work with, having no intellectual creativity or free thought. To me, that is saddening. I wish they would just open their eyes, and their minds.

20

My point is that I don’t know the answer.

Being charitable, I would have to say that the writers of the Bible wrote what they believed to be true, that they were not trying to perpuate or initiate some hoax.

Being rational, I would have to say the Being they describe is irrational, off-centered, unenlightened, violent, jealous, vengenceful, wrathful, given to violent mood swings, manipulative, and so forth.

Being rational, I cannot simply ignore the errors of fact that they attribute to the Being they describe. Such as a fixed and immovable Earth for example.

So the conflict between charity and rational thought is created. How do I reconcile it?

You say that they reported it correctly but that God is not subject to virtue, not subject to being enlightened, not subject to being rational in his behaviors. This I reject out of hand. A God that is in complete conflict with all that mankind aspires to become?? Why would we accept such a God? Such a God would be opposed with all that we can muster. Which is where I began my discussion. Would you live next door to this guy?

I counter that

  1. It never happened. Like many Christians say, it is just a compilation of stories and not the “Word of God” at all. If so, then my shock and concern about the behavior the writers describe is much ado about nothing

  2. The writers just got it wrong. Maybe they just wrote down what they thought, much like a theory of God, and their theory is just flawed? If so, then no such events really ever happened, so there is nothing to be concnened about and I am right, God never acted like that. Or

  3. maybe the writers were somehow decieved? Maybe some other sort of being claimed to be God but his behavior reveals that he was not God. This might explain his absence for the last 2000 years, Or

  4. The God of the Jews, Islam, Christianity, the people of “The Book” that God is just wacko and a complete berserker.