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Regarding God's 'Morality': A Few More Random Thoughts

*Many True Believers don't think through the implications of their belief system. True Christian Believers believe their God will send non-believers to eternal torment in Hell (which of course God Himself created). So perhaps it is not surprising that non-believers are more than slightly upset with what True Believers believe. Wouldn't you be upset if someone who wouldn't know you from a bar of soap thinks you should - just and only just because you are a non-believer in their religion and in their God - go to Hell and be punished for all eternity. So apparently True Believers have to believe in God's 'morality', that finite 'crimes' deserve infinite punishments (i.e. - Hell). If you do not agree with God's 'morality' as stated in your holy text(s); if God's 'morality' offends you, then in order to avoid being a hypocrite, you should shop around a find a more suitable religion or just give up religion entirely. It's not as if there aren't alternatives.

*I'm a bit confused here. In the Book of Exodus, God wants the Egyptian Pharaoh to let his people go and sends Moses and Aaron along with a bunch of magic tricks to 'diplomatically' arrange for this to happen. However, God also hardens Pharaoh's heart in order to prevent the very thing that God wants from happening. Why? The only reason that makes sense is that this gives God an excuse to multiply His signs and wonders unto the Egyptian nation and thus also give reason for Him to wage atrocities upon Pharaoh and the Egyptian people. It's all just for the sake of patting His omnipotent self on the back, getting some of that fear of God PR (no publicity is bad publicity) into the great unwashed, all while waging atrocities just for the sake of waging atrocities and for no other reason. It just gives God an illegitimate excuse to strut His stuff. Presumably the last thing God actually wanted was for Pharaoh to let his people go - even after Pharaoh let His people go.

*Let's assume that God created Adam and Eve and at that time these two humans had no concept of right and wrong; of good and of evil. God then instructed them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now the question is, could Adam and Eve comprehend this instruction? For Adam and Eve to obey or not to obey would in itself require them to have a knowledge of good (obeying God) and evil (disobeying God) which they obviously lacked. So Adam and Eve had no real understanding of the consequences of God's instruction, a fact that an allegedly all-knowing God would already have known, thereby rendering God's command irrelevant. Nor would God's threat of death through disobedience hold any meaning for Adam and Eve since being the first humans, they never had seen a dead human. Death would have just been an abstract word and concept. In any event, Adam and Eve didn't die immediately after disobeying God, so God lies.

*If you think God is Mr. Morality personified, then please allow me to read certain adult-only Biblical stories to your young children!

For example (one of many):

1 Samuel 15: 2-3 (King James Version)

2 “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.”

3 “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Now how are you going to explain to your young child why God ordered infants and babies to be slaughtered? And what was the point of killing all of the livestock? God’s insane!

*More about God's crimes? God says "do not kill"; God kills. Enough said! For elaboration I recommend you watch on YouTube DarkMatter2525's clip on "God goes on a mass murder spree". He gives 41 Biblical references to back up his claims.

*We do not, or we certainly should not get our morality from God on the grounds that He's very much a 'do as I say, not as I do' sort of dude. Any positive association between God and morality is a major oxymoronic association. I'm ready, willing and able to pass judgment on God and God's alleged 'morality', especially on grounds that God, after all, was created in the image of humans. So I'm ultimately in judgment of fellow humans, albeit humans - humans who wrote the Bible hence defined God's 'morality' - long since turned to dust and ashes.

*If you accept God’s version of morality unreservedly, then you are passing judgment upon God. If you do not accept God’s version of morality unreservedly, either in part or in its entirety, then you are also passing on God. In either case, you are using your own internally derived concepts of morality to either agree or disagree with God’s morality.

*Morality must come from some authority. We (the people) ARE that authority.

johnprytz 7 Oct 28
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This is why fundamentalism is rife with special pleading.

I once met a fundamentalist who also believed in Universal Reconciliation (UR). This is a rare combination. UR says that all will eventually be reconciled to god, one way or the other. It generally regards hell as temporary, if it exists at all. The thinking (which is actually not that bad, for theists) is that redemption is meaningless if it doesn't ultimately redeem everyone. If it fails to redeem even one than it is ineffective as a basic matter of principle.

Another odd thing this guy believed, speaks to the topic at hand. He believed that while it is wrong for you or I to practice "situational ethics" -- to do evil that good may come of it -- because god alone knows the end from the beginning, and understands the ultimate outcome of everything, uniquely, he alone can do evil that good may come of it. He used this to explain how even the bad things that happen to people are under god's control and often are even of god's making. After all, if you believe that all will eventually be saved, then what is a little temporal suffering over against an eternity of bliss?

I found this instructive because fundamentalists do not normally admit so openly that god operates by his own rules apart from those he imposes on us. Rather than anything that applies to us being even MORE applicable to the "backing authority" for the moral code, god imposes morality because he can, not because it has some universal quality of "rightness" to it. Indeed, some theologians argue that if morality is inherently moral rather than just declared moral for some based on nothing more than godly fiat -- then morality is definitionally greater than god because god is dependent upon morality and subject to it himself.

Let that sink in a minute. It is but one of the logical conundrums that fundamentalists wrestle with. How can morality have any existence apart from an omnipotent god? If it proceeds from god then it is ultimately whatever god arbitrarily decides in one particular moment for one particular person or group of persons; if it is universal and immutable then god himself must be subject to it and so cannot be omnipotent.

Most fundamentalists compartmentalize this in various ways and talk about god being immutable and his law being immutable and universal, and yet, when god is pouty, angry, vindictive, and petty then we simply are impudently applying mere human standards to god, who, by implication, can do whatever he wants, including violating the supposedly unbendable, exceptionless rules he imposes on his subjects.

@johnprytz I completely agree. Morality is a function of evolved mirror neurons. Even self-denial and similar forms of discipline are just empathy for your imagined future self.

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Remember, something evangelicals can't, the JOB is the worst translation of the bible and containing many errors that the "self chosen" people think is the word of God. And, believe me, that will argue bible history and established fact. Like "The Trinity always existed." Denying that Niacea and other meetings occurred to set church dogma and doctrine.

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