Is God evil?

[Ateius]

I expect the SAB is using a literal interpretation precisely to combat the fundamentalists who use a literal interpretation. Fire with fire, as the saying goes.

 

[edge]

Gods not evil, man is, what is so hard to understand?
Your alive aren't you?

Radrook has stated and is absolutely correct.

And the only ones who would believe that statement to be true are those who blindly accept anything anti-biblical without checking to see if it's accurate or not. Anyone having a basic knowledge of scripture knows that this world wasn't created as is by God but is the inevitable result of an angelic[Satanic, Demonic] and a human rebellion against God.

True, you can believe otherwise. But not with the Bible too support you in the way you are attempting it. On the other hand, you might want to write your own version. Skeptics are good at doing that.

I never seen so many that are blind Rad, unbelivable!

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Yours is a fundamentalist view, UW. The fact is that a human being wrote those words down and human beings also interpret them. We shouldn't have to go all the way back to the work of the Scholastics to realise that there are major contradictions in the depiction of "God" and "God's Laws"--sometimes in the same book, sometimes in the same chapter, and (don't ask me to find the quotes) sometimes in the same verse.

Alternately you are proposing that Moses (or some other human being represented by Moses) was infallible. Tricky stuff, that.

So why not go one step further, and conclude God was not inside Moses' head?

Saving that, why not conclude everything was misinterpreted? Jesus was a man, men are imperfect, so why is 'Love thy neighbour' held up as literal fact?

All this said, how can a loving message possibly be so misinterpreted that it become one in which you kill a non-virgin on her wedding night? If this is the case, then this is surely proves that God's message was a very, very bad signal.

 

[bobrayner]

Gods not evil, man is, what is so hard to understand?
Your alive aren't you?

So god is good; but people created by god, subject to rules chosen by god, surrounded by god, who have no free will with respect to god... they're evil. And god's going to punish them. But God is good. Right?

Radrook has stated and is absolutely correct.

No. Radrook gave us lines of superstitious waffle that has no grounding in the real world:

And the only ones who would believe that statement to be true are those who blindly accept anything anti-biblical without checking to see if it's accurate or not. Anyone having a basic knowledge of scripture knows that this world wasn't created as is by God but is the inevitable result of an angelic[Satanic, Demonic] and a human rebellion against God.

True, you can believe otherwise. But not with the Bible too support you in the way you are attempting it. On the other hand, you might want to write your own version. Skeptics are good at doing that.

Where's the evidence?

I never seen so many that are blind Rad, unbelivable!

What, blind because we base our opinions on what's in the real world rather than a book of old myths?

Oh, if only god could have provided some evidence so that skeptics might believe in him. Supposedly he created the entire universe and every soul in it, but didn't leave a fingerprint. Supposedly this beneficial god created all kinds of natural disasters and atrocities but it's All Part Of A Bigger Plan. Supposedly this moral god wants us to to respect the barbarism of the bible and follow a set of utterly contradictory rules.

Supposedly, god listens when you ask him nicely; but prayers have gone unanswered over and over again.

Skepticism in the face of all this isn't wilful blindness; it's a wholly rational response.

 

[stilicho]

I expect the SAB is using a literal interpretation precisely to combat the fundamentalists who use a literal interpretation. Fire with fire, as the saying goes.

I agree with your assessment, Ateius.

I thought I would go back to the SAB and find out what it said about some other popular Biblical passages. On Psalm 23, absolutely nothing. But the most interesting one was in Matthew 5--specifically "The Beatitudes".

Two thumbs up and no comment on the other five.

The one that really struck me was his selection of "...blessed are the peacemakers..." I am surprised that one achieved a thumbs up because that verse specifically had been used by churchmen to support the concept of "just war". (I believe it was Augustine, primarily.)

The SAB would be a great device to thwart anyone who claimed that there were no contradictions in the Bible or for someone, like skeptigirl, who doesn't like the attitudes towards women that it represents. It also has clickable icons that line up all the contradictions and other aspects of the book that you might not like.

In a debate about whether "God" is "evil", it's virtually useless as a source.

 

[stilicho]

Saving that, why not conclude everything was misinterpreted? Jesus was a man, men are imperfect, so why is 'Love thy neighbour' held up as literal fact?

It's been a while but I think it's in Aquinas where it is explained that "love thy neighbour" is a derivative or consequent commandment on "loving God". Why we are more familiar with the second part of the saying than the first is probably a reflection of the growing awareness of humanism within the church and society.

Naturally, we might argue that the second part is possible without the first but that's not likely what the saying originally meant.

 

[stilicho]

Wow...

you actually typed all that out?

Non-Sense.

Fresh Tomatoes really are 'GOOD' on omelettes, and of course grated parm cheese, with copius amounts of fresh ground Black pepper. Oh, I praise the egg.

Life is just that simple.

It isn't really that simple. It's just that your "God" is tastier than others'.

 

[iamivy]

Depends.In whom you're seeing God.If you're seeing God in Ian Huntly then God is evil. If you're seeing God in Aung San Suu Kyi then God is an angel.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I decided to return to your original source, SG. What we find there is a literal and fundamentalist interpretation of a version of Hosea. Remember, you picked several quotes from that source to bolster a claim that the Bible is misogynistic (which it may very well be).

I'm really not sure where you are going with this.

If you interpret Hosea as a sermon about the dangers of falling away from the author's version of christianity, it reflects highly misogynistic attitudes.

If you interpret Hosea as an inspired work that should be read today as if every word were literally true, it still reflects highly misogynistic attitudes.

The people who wrote it, as a matter of historical fact, had highly misogynistic attitudes.

Unless you can present some defensible reading of the text which is not misogynistic and which does not present an evil God, I don't see what point you are making that is relevant to this thread.

 

[stilicho]

Unless you can present some defensible reading of the text which is not misogynistic and which does not present an evil God, I don't see what point you are making that is relevant to this thread.

It's an allegory, KL. Not a simple one either.

It refers to the turning away of the Hebrews of the "Northern Kingdom" (really a loose collection of villages under a nominal central authority) from the Hebrew God to the domestic Canaanite deities. As a "prophecy", it is obviously included because of the subsequent besiegement of Samaria by the Assyrians.

References to women in Hosea are entirely allegorical. Hosea represents "God" while his "harlot wife" represents the "Northern Kingdom".

I suppose you might be asking whether "God" would/should protect the inhabitants of the "Northern Kingdom" from the Assyrians when they plainly preferred Ba'al and Ashtoreth. If you take the story literally, as I suppose you and skeptigirl do, then you might have selected the "good" choice and prevented the siege from happening by having "God" simply pluck the Assyrian general from the field and escort him to Marvin Gardens or some place like that. It would have been a small price to pay that "God" (and Hosea's "prophecy") would have vanished and we could instead be discussing how "evil" Ba'al and Astoreth were.

 

[stilicho]

If you interpret Hosea as a sermon about the dangers of falling away from the author's version of christianity...

BTW, Hosea is canonical OT, not NT.

There was no Christianity then.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It's an allegory, KL. Not a simple one either.

It refers to the turning away of the Hebrews of the "Northern Kingdom" (really a loose collection of villages under a nominal central authority) from the Hebrew God to the domestic Canaanite deities. As a "prophecy", it is obviously included because of the subsequent besiegement of Samaria by the Assyrians.

References to women in Hosea are entirely allegorical. Hosea represents "God" while his "harlot wife" represents the "Northern Kingdom".

What has that got to do with the point?

The authors presumably did not choose the metaphor of a woman and "whoredoms" to represent heresy or apostatism, and the metaphor of nasty things happening to that woman and her children to represent God's punishment, entirely at random. Although it's always questionable to claim to pick up implicit attitudes from translations it wouldn't surprise me at all if comparing apostate Jews to a woman was meant to be an insult in and of itself given the general attitudes to women in the Bible.

Further, even if all the business about God attacking women's children or sexual organs in Hosea was an allegory it's still an allegory of revolting behaviour.

I suppose you might be asking whether "God" would/should protect the inhabitants of the "Northern Kingdom" from the Assyrians when they plainly preferred Ba'al and Ashtoreth. If you take the story literally, as I suppose you and skeptigirl do, then you might have selected the "good" choice and prevented the siege from happening by having "God" simply pluck the Assyrian general from the field and escort him to Marvin Gardens or some place like that. It would have been a small price to pay that "God" (and Hosea's "prophecy") would have vanished and we could instead be discussing how "evil" Ba'al and Astoreth were.

Now you've wandered off the point entirely.

Now rather than cherry-picking the chapters you can construe as allegories or whatnot, would you care to defend, say, Deuteronomy or Judges?

 

[stilicho]

Now rather than cherry-picking the chapters you can construe as allegories or whatnot, would you care to defend, say, Deuteronomy or Judges?

Or Leviticus. That's probably where I would start to establish the point being argued (in the affirmative): 'Is "God" evil?'

Leviticus 24 is particularly vicious and cannot ordinarily be used out of its context while Hosea can. Exodus 21 is another good place to begin.

If you stick with the unambiguous passages you'll have a better chance when you try to make the point of the OP.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... a claim that the Bible is misogynistic (which it may very well be).

The entire Judeo-Christian religion is steeped in misogyny. "Which it may very well be". Holy crap! The Bible is overwhelmingly misogynistic. How could you conclude it only "may be"?

...My counterclaim is that plucking quotes in a literal way out of a centuries old book to prove that misogyny existed isn't very helpful. Not only has this been done long ago and simply repeated as an exercise in SAB, but your source's cherry-picking falls into the same traps that fundamentalists do by misunderstanding the meaning of (just for one) the Book of Hosea.

I posted quote after quote from book after book including references to some outrageous trends such as almost always naming or mentioning begotten sons and leaving most references to daughters nameless, stating over and over the worthlessness of women, the powerlessness of women, and the dirtiness of women, not to mention blaming women for the initiation of the universal sins of the entire human race.

Your thesis that I just posted some cherry picked quotes was false.

...I provided you with a context for understanding those quotes. The SAB, to its discredit, does not. There is no mention of the fall of the Northern Kingdom, nor of the siege of Samaria by the Assyrians, nor of the lyrical methods of "prophecies" in ancient writings, nor much of anything you wouldn't find in a fundamentalist Christian pamphlet.

The SAB, like me, take the Biblical text as is. You have accepted someone's version of its meaning, an interpretation, which I pointed out are a dime a dozen.

But let's look at the explanation for Hosea and see just what difference it makes. Context from Wiki:

Context
During Hosea's lifetime, the kings of the Northern Kingdom, their aristocratic supporters, and the priests had led the people away from the Law of God, as given in the Pentateuch. Forsaking the worship of God, they worshipped other gods, especially Baal, the Canaanite fertility god. Other sins followed, including homicide, perjury, theft, and sexual sin. Hosea declares that, unless they repent of these sins, God will allow their nation to be destroyed, and the people will be taken into captivity by Assyria (Ho 9.3; 11.5), the greatest nation of the time.

In fact, Assyria did capture Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, in 722 BCE. All the members of the upper classes and many of the ordinary people were taken captive and carried off to live as prisoners of war.

Themes
The primary theme of the Book of Hosea is that God loves Israel, just as a man loves his wife. This is shown by the extended metaphor of Hosea's own marriage.

In conjunction with that theme, however, are the twin themes of Israel's sin and the coming retribution. Although God loves Israel, Israel has not returned His love. This has been shown by the continued idolatry and acts of violence, oppression, and sexual sin among the people. Because Israel has not returned God's love, He will put them away from Him, just as Hosea did his wife, and send them into exile.

This introduces the fourth theme, which is the restoration of Israel from exile. The country will be conquered; the people will be sent into exile; but some will return and build the land up once more. God will embrace them as His people, and they will be loyal to Him as their God.

So what is your claim here? That the quotes I posted were out of context? Are you saying that makes them not examples of evil or misogyny? How do you figure?

Let's look again at the quotes I posted you are trying so hard to apologize for.

Hosea
# If you misbehave, God will make your daughters "commit whoredom" and your wife "commit adultery." 4:13
# God will induce miscarriages and kill the children of Ephraim. 9:11-12
# "O Lord: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts." 9:14
# "I will slay even the beloved fruit of their womb." 9:16
# God will punish Israel by "dashing" together mothers and their children. 10:14
# Because the Samaritans chose to worship another deity, God will dash their infants to pieces and their "women with child shall be ripped up." 13:16

Are you trying to apologize for the Bible here by saying these acts of cruelty are merely metaphors? Hosea is railing on about what is going to happen to the people he is chastising. It sounds to me like he is trying to get people to follow his beliefs using all sorts of disgusting threats to accomplish that. And the fact he likens the worst of his threats to analogies using misogynistic examples supports my point.

References to women in Hosea are entirely allegorical. Hosea represents "God" while his "harlot wife" represents the "Northern Kingdom"

That doesn't make the examples any less misogynistic. If anything, it makes them more so.

..As much as you, I dislike the deployment of Biblical literature to bolster absurd claims about the status of women. More than you, obviously, I deplore the literal interpretation of any "sacred text" as is done both by religious fundamentalists and the SAB.

You assumed I knew nothing. You assumed I had not evaluated the dime a dozen interpretations. In doing so you posted ignorant condescending claims that you were so well informed and the rest of us mere twits.

I have read many an interpretation. People proposing apologist's interpretations like to refer to metaphors and meaning whenever something sounds too discordant with whatever the belief du jour is.

Point me to an unbiased anthropological interpretation based on knowledge of the culture in which the original text was written and I'll be happy to re-evaluate my position if it is wrong and if there is evidence for interpreting the text in some other way than what it appears to say. Anything short of that amounts to Bible believers who fancy themselves capable of applying meaning to "God's Word".

Those are not Biblical scholars. Those are god believing fantasizers imagining great meaning in descriptions of either mundane mythological tales or simple word of mouth historical records of people from thousands of years ago. Erich Von Däniken thinks he sees extraterrestrial space visitors in the text, Michael Drosnin thinks there are secret messages in the text, and Bible apologists like to purge the facts in front of them with all sorts of explanations molding vile punishments into "God is Love" claims.

I don't see anything in the context of Hosea as described in the Wiki account that makes those passages any less despicable. It shows a man telling people to believe as he does or suffer great sorrow and pain. That's the 'revenge for not believing' theme that permeates the Bible along with the misogyny. Seems pretty clear as I read it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As I said, not everyone has the same interpretation of the Bible and that includes the following opinion I found on Hosea.

Catholic Encyclopedia

Is the marriage of Osee historical or purely allegorical? The hypothesis most in favour at present says that the marriage is historical, and the grounds for it are, (1) the obvious sense of the narrative; (2) the absence of any symbolical sense in the words Gomer and Debelaim; (3) that the second child is a daughter. It appears to us, however, with Davidson (Hastings, "Dict. of the Bible", II, 421 sqq.) and Van Hoonacker, that the first reason is not convincing. A careful reading of cc. i-iii discloses the fact that the action is extremely rapid, that the events are related merely in order to express a doctrine, and, moreover, they appear to take place within the single time requisite to one or two speeches. And yet, if these events are real, a large part of the Prophet's life must have been spent in these unsavoury circumstances. And again, the names of the children appear to have been bestowed just at the time that their meaning was explained to the people. This is especially the case with regard to the last child: "Call his name, Not my people: for you are not my people …" Another reason for doubting this hypothesis is that it is difficult to suppose that God ordered His Prophet to take an unfaithful wife mearely with a view to her being unfaithful and bearing him adulterous children. And how are we to explain the fact that the prophet retained her notwithstanding her adultery till after the birth of the third child, and again received her after she had been in the possession of another? That the second child was a daughter may be explained by dramatic instinct, or by some other sufficiently plausible motive. There remain the names Gomer and Debelaim. Van Hoonacker proposes as possible translations: consummation (imminent ruin), doomed to terrible scourges; or top (of perversity), addicted to the cakes of figs (oblations offered to Baal). Nestle also translates Bath Debelaim by daughter of the cakes of figs, but in the sense of a woman to be obtained at a small price (Zeitsch. für alttest. Wissenschaft, XXIX, 233 seq.). These are but conjectures; the obscurity may be due to our ignorance. Certain it is at least that the allegorical meaning, adopted by St. Jerome, satisfies critical exigencies and is more in conformity with the moral sense. The doctrinal meaning is identical in either case and that is the only consideration of real importance.

That sounds like opinion to me. If there was corroborating evidence at the time the book was written, it might be known whether it was historical or allegorical. Short of corroborating evidence, the context of the author can only be speculated and typically it is done so in the context of current religious beliefs at the time the text was analyzed, rather than in the context of good anthropological analysis.

Most of what we know about the cultures from this time period are derived from religious writings. The problem with that is the anthropologists rarely address the ancient Judeo-Christian history objectively. Every other culture has myths. The Judeo-Christian culture has "God's Word".

Either way, it doesn't change the misogyny or the implication of the threats.

 

[Complexity]

stilicho - Why have you wasted so much of your life accumulating mounds of information about such a silly topic?

I suppose everyone has their enthusiasms, and you're surely entitled to spend your time as you choose, but this? What a shame.

I'm interested in a wide variety of things, including the development of the religous beliefs of the ancient Greeks. They were wrong, of course, but interesting, and they weren't tacky like the xians.

Drop the christian crap - one of the major embarrassments of mankind, and not worthy of a moment of a person's time.

 

[Relic]

Consider the following:
A child must be killed for slagging off his parents and a women can be stoned to death on her fathers doorstep if not a virgin on her wedding night. Even if we impose the "Different times, different laws" excuse, we have to ask what possible benefit these rules -that make the Taliban look like Rupert the Bear- can bring to society other than misery.

Then his son has the cheek to suggest that we love this genocidal maniac.

Why are so many here reufully accusing God without any evidence to support their claims? Lies. I thought this was supposed to be a friendly site?

It was in the name of Christianity that Martin Luther King preached equality between blacks and whites, the Christians who first opposed the Nazis while the atheists cowered in their holes, the same brave Christians who are taught to be willing to die on a cross for the sake of their ideal- the basic principality of which is Truth.

A God who dies for the heresy of heathens rather than suffering you atheists (who insult him even now) to die is not evil, but if anything ridiculously merciful, and the example of his followers shows it.

And by the way...

My view, not who you asked, but....
There is evil in the world (won't cover all of it, and what I will cover is quite sufficient for me) : children are killed/mutilated/foully mistreated all over the world every day; people are harmed/ etc./killed every day. IF there was a god and IF that god allows this, THEN that god is pure evil and it is my duty to track down and do my best to destroy it.

My assumption is no god - based on evidence by lack of behavior, BUT if I ever find I am wrong on that then I will function appropriately.

You say you believe there is no God- then where does the evil in the world come from? The only answer can be mankind. In this case, then, according to your desire to "hunt down and destroy the being responsible", you should go out right now with a shotgun and shoot everyone dead.

 

[JoeEllison]

Why are so many here reufully accusing God without any evidence to support their claims? Lies. I thought this was supposed to be a friendly site?

It was in the name of Christianity that Martin Luther King preached equality between blacks and whites, the Christians who first opposed the Nazis while the atheists cowered in their holes, the same brave Christians who are taught to be willing to die on a cross for the sake of their ideal- the basic principality of which is Truth.

A God who dies for the heresy of heathens rather than suffering you atheists (who insult him even now) to die is not evil, but if anything ridiculously merciful, and the example of his followers shows it.

And by the way...


You say you believe there is no God- then where does the evil in the world come from? The only answer can be mankind. In this case, then, according to your desire to "hunt down and destroy the being responsible", you should go out right now with a shotgun and shoot everyone dead.

Pretty much everything you posted is wrong. Wow. I assume you've never actually read the Bible, or anything about history.

 

[Mashuna]

Why are so many here reufully accusing God without any evidence to support their claims? Lies. I thought this was supposed to be a friendly site?

It was in the name of Christianity that Martin Luther King preached equality between blacks and whites, the Christians who first opposed the Nazis while the atheists cowered in their holes, the same brave Christians who are taught to be willing to die on a cross for the sake of their ideal- the basic principality of which is Truth.

A God who dies for the heresy of heathens rather than suffering you atheists (who insult him even now) to die is not evil, but if anything ridiculously merciful, and the example of his followers shows it.

And by the way...


You say you believe there is no God- then where does the evil in the world come from? The only answer can be mankind. In this case, then, according to your desire to "hunt down and destroy the being responsible", you should go out right now with a shotgun and shoot everyone dead.

Most of this is gibberish, the bolded part is offensive gibberish.

Still, welcome to the forum.

 

[Complexity]

Why are so many here reufully accusing God without any evidence to support their claims?

Nonsense.

There is no god. There is no evidence to support your claim that there is.