In regards to God & Christianity, troubling morality.

[ProHypster]

I understand this is a delicate matter for many and I hope people will post rational suggestions and arguments. I'm interested in some the answers to some of the more questionable things God/The Bible tells us happened. Any Christian or bible reader or anyone with a rational opinion may post here, for all others please be respectful to both sides.

 

Alright so the most controversial question (and I hope it doesn't offend anyone but without communication there is no understanding) first. If you have your own questions you can also post. For those who are not christians but would like to discuss this issue, pretend that christianity is true in this topic. We are questioning the morality in some parts of the bible.

 

In the Bible God creates the Satan but blames him for everything bad that happens on earth.

 

How can this action be justified or explained?

[Doom Shepherd]

Well for one thing, the whole idea of Satan being "Evil" is a rather late invention. In Judaism, Satan was on fairly good terms with God.

 

He was more of a "trickster angel," tasked with testing humanity's worthiness/ability to follow God's commands. Of course, God was a bit of a prankster, too. See "The Book of Job."

 

You might even say he was God's Prosecutor.

 

It wasn't till much later that "Satan" became the scapegoat for humanity's Epic Fails. (Or God's, if you think about it that way.)

[Blue]

From what book does that come from?

 

My understanding is that the theoretical stance of Satan would be:

 

Before creation, there was God. There was the Trinity, with some angels, and his right-hand Angel Lucifer. And God said "Gather 'round everybody, I'm gonna make some stuff." And all the angels are talking to themselves like "Oh awesome! What's stuff? Well I guess we'll find out pretty quick." *PTHOOM* and God creates the Universe. ON a little planet in this Universe, is his crown creature.

Lucifer says to God "What are they?"

God says to Lucifer "I call them Mankind. They can reason, they can figure out for himself how wonderful the universe is. They is created in my image."

Lucifer says "Are they mine?"

God says "I made the Universe as a love letter from me to them, to show how much I love them, so that they would love me in return."

Lucifer (who suddenly has the pride to think his power could equal God's) says "They can reason; can they really? What is the point of free will if there is really no choice between loving You and loving.... well... not You."

God says "What are you saying?"

Lucifer says "Allow me to give them a real choice, between loving You, and loving Me."

God says "Alright. Give it your best shot."

 

And so sin entered the world, beginning with the form of a serpent, who deceived Eve. Lucifer could not create his own world because he did not have that power; he could only change what had already been made. From this is where corruption of God's good creation comes from, and where we get evil.

Edited November 16, 2011 by Guest (see edit history)

[Vapymid]

God who creates qualities which can be corrupted is not a true God, is he?

 

Why do we have to assume that evil is a corruption of good rather than that both are fundamental properties of the Universe in which we live?

 

For life to exist it must feed on free energy from the environment outside. When that energy is spent to perform useful work, what's left is entropy, which is useless. So, free energy is good for life (for any life) and entropy is bad - when the life gets complicated enough to correlate information with physical entities, what's bad for life is tagged as "evil" and what's good as "good", religion or no religion.

 

Now, to survive and continue as life forms we must be able to understand that the "evil" state is undesirable and to want to move as far from it and as close to the opposite state of "good" as possible. And that is what is driving everything, from our cellular biochemistry to our daily lives to the progress of human civilisation. Without this difference in "desirability" of outcomes we and life itself would not have existed.

 

That actually implies that life would equally not have existed is there was only one state (even if it was "pure goodness") possible because there would be no dynamic process which would allow for parts of "goodness" to be moved from one state to another and extract any work from it. So, life is impossible without death and therefore death is not intrinsically "evil".

 

Notice that this gradient in "desirability" between the states of "good" and "evil" only needs a set of very low-level fundamental laws defined just so at the time of creation of the Universe for the process to unfold itself without any further intervention from outside. So the Universe with laws like that does not need any active God in order to function.

 

The only remaining question is whether the initial setting of rules happened by design (i.e. by God) or by pure chance.

 

Regards

 

P.S. There are two threads - this one and Theism/Atheism, which are becoming closely intertwined. I am posting this here but it can also be considered as an answer to this one.

[Blue]

God who creates qualities which can be corrupted is not a true God, is he?

A car that can steer into a tree is not a true car, is it?

[Razor235]

I think he means that if God's power can be corrupted, then he is not an all-powerful being.

[Blue]

Unless he permits the corruption to exist.

[Kyon]

Unless he permits the corruption to exist.

Touche

[Vapymid]

Unless he permits the corruption to exist.

 

Corruption assumes things going not according to the original plan, which would be quite unGodly.

 

Also, if God originally planned to only have goodness in the world (which prevents any life from coming into existence) and someone else comes in and subverts the original plan by corrupting the good, creating evil and thereby causing life to appear, then the corruptor (Satan?) is actually good? You broke my brainz...

 

Isn't the following a much simpler and likelier scenario?

 

- God creates the world with a state A and a sate B in it. Stuff from B flows into A. The flow allows matter to organise itself and causes life to evolve. Life thrives on B and dies in A, so terms A as "evil" and B as "good".

 

Consequences:

 

- B flows into A until all B is gone and only A remains. Life must find a way to continue itself beyond that point while there is still enough B left to do that. It's a race. Life wins and turns into something bigger or loses and dies forever. End of experiment.

 

Regards

[Blue]

Unless he permits the corruption to exist.

Touche

One may then ask "Why?"

The Christian answers:

• [Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
   
  The Gospel of Matthew 13:24-30, ESV

Where the grain is symbolic of the actions of those that believe in Christ that are good (because the bad actions of those that believe in Christ are 'but chaff', and thrown away), and the weeds are symbolic of the actions and behaviors of those that have heard the Word of Christ and did not believe. The Sower is God, the servants presumably are angels, "The Enemy" is the sin nature, and/or where-ever/whatever Sin came from.

[Doom Shepherd]

From what book does that come from?

 

Job. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan Also, parts of the Talmud that weren't incorporated into the Bible. There's quite a bit of that. Probably because it didn't fit in with the New Church's narrative.

[Doom Shepherd]

Unless he permits the corruption to exist.

Touche

One may then ask "Why?"

The Christian answers:

• [Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
   
  The Gospel of Matthew 13:24-30, ESV

Where the grain is symbolic of the actions of those that believe in Christ that are good (because the bad actions of those that believe in Christ are 'but chaff', and thrown away), and the weeds are symbolic of the actions and behaviors of those that have heard the Word of Christ and did not believe. The Sower is God, the servants presumably are angels, "The Enemy" is the sin nature, and/or where-ever/whatever Sin came from.

 

The problem with this is that God claims to have made everything, and within the set of "everything" are "the wheat," "the weeds" and "the Enemy."

 

God doesn't just allow corruption to exist, he created it.

 

Also... I'm guessing that Jesus wasn't a gardener, because weeds are pulled because they actively harm the crops by their very existence, cutting off nutrients and water and shade. By harvest time, the weeds have gone to seed, and this will just spread more weeds.

 

Infallibility fail! I just broke the universe!

[Blue]

Job. Also, parts of the Talmud that weren't incorporated into the Bible. There's quite a bit of that. Probably because it didn't fit in with the New Church's narrative.

Things that aren't part of the Bible aren't in there because their importance, relevance or accuracy has been questioned. And it's not like The Bible is one iron text, Bibliocanonics is one of the more deep and well-argued Theological things in Christianity and it's been an on-going process ever since the Apostle Peter was alive.

(Personally it greatly irked me that you stated those things about Satan earlier as fact when you quoted documents of debated canon accuracy, as fact. They would be of debated accuracy pertaining to Christianity if they were not in the Bible.)

 

In regards to calling Jesus's parable a fail:

 

• 13:24-30 Weeds (plural of Greek zizanion, only read here in the New Testament) are probably darnel, a weedy rye grass with poisonous black seeds, which resembles wheat in its early growth but is easily distinguished from it at maturity. Any attempt to gather the weeds would only endanger the wheat, because the roots of the weeds would be intertwined with those of the wheat. Let both grow together (v. 30). God allows both believers and unbelievers to live in the world until the day of judgement; see note on v. 38.
   
  2008 Crossways English Standard Version Study Bible, p.1848.

 

God created good with the capacity for evil because it is not true free will if we do not have the ability to choose between right and wrong. (Do tell what kind of free will it would be if we had only the capacity for one and not both)

However the Serpent showed us how we could choose evil (since we had the capacity but had not learned that we could choose, hence the name "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" as described in Genesis). Once we were made conscious of evil, then everything went sideways.

[Michael Archer]

Well for one thing, the whole idea of Satan being "Evil" is a rather late invention.

 

Plus, I think God killed a helluva lot more people than Satan in the Bible if I'm not mistaken.

[Blue]

God could be directed as responsible for the deaths of several thousand people whom were enemies of the Hebrew people/nation of Israel, or otherwise dedicatedly 'irredeemable' as far as observance can say, regarding the testimony of the Old Testament.

 

The same testimony declares that all other deaths are the fault of the Devil indirectly.

 

If one is to criticize the Bible, they have to take the text as a whole, not pick and choose which parts "could be" accurate.

[Doom Shepherd]

God could be directed as responsible for the deaths of several thousand people whom were enemies of the Hebrew people/nation of Israel, or otherwise dedicatedly 'irredeemable' as far as observance can say, regarding the testimony of the Old Testament.

 

The same testimony declares that all other deaths are the fault of the Devil indirectly.

 

If one is to criticize the Bible, they have to take the text as a whole, not pick and choose which parts "could be" accurate.

 

You have to wonder though, because so much Biblical criticism hinges on "interpretation," and for centuries, all the interpretation that was permitted was the work done by the "Extremely Pro-God" camp. Everything else got you killed.

 

Which is kind of like trying to get the "true" history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Hamas partisan.

[Blue]

Interestingly, although interpretation has varied through the years, the thing they're interpreting, has not. You can still compare all copies and translations of the Bible and related texts to their originals in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, exactly as they were written 1950±40 years ago.

Again, taking the text as a whole, it is a contradiction of the terms it enforces, to alter them.

 

• I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll.
   
  Revelation 22:18-19