• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Is God evil?

geni said:
Murder again generaly requires that they belong to the same species as you.
Click to expand...

No. It applies to any sentient being, even if you created it.

And any case, we were made "in the image of God", and thus are the same "species", so to speak, at least in the important ways that would make murder apply.



Nope. The point of collateral damage is that they are deaths you are prepared to accept in order to atchive your objective. Sometimes they may be unknown but they don't need to be.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. But that speaks to the lack of omnipotence in God. An omnipotent god wouldn't have to "be prepared to accept" anything.



So you want to put a bunch of kids on top of a mountian where I understand there is generaly very little food or shelter?
Click to expand...

Hmmm. I wonder if a kind, loving, omnipotent god would also provide them with shelter and warmth? Or just create a pocket playground for them for the year or so the whole Flood took.




Well there is the small issue that that didn't actualy happen. Given the rate at which it would have had to rain I doubt they would have had time to notice. 5.3m of rain an hour is likely to be lethal on it's own.
Click to expand...

According to Da Actual Bible, water also flooded up from below. In the Bible's cosmology, the Earth was a pocket in the great waters of chaos, hollowed out by God. Hence the whole "it must have rained XXX meters per hour" is a non-issue, my fellow skeptics. 99%+ could have come flooding up from below.


Of course, we now know the Earth is not a hollowed out pocket in a 3-dimensional space filled with odd water. Make of that what you will.


"It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones"-Plutarch

Haveing seen what happens when there is no legal system even Drakon's law were better than nothing.
Click to expand...

Again it speaks to the lack of omnipotence in God. He is guilty by reason of creating such a scenario, regardless of how badly humans mismanaged it once he took his hands off it. And when you throw in the illogic of He Knew It Was All Going To Happen Anyway, he's doubly guilty.

"Yes, your honor. I knew when the kids got on the Matterhorn ride, that it was replete with lose bolts, and that one kid would probably loosen another and they'd all fling out and be killed. But I'm innocent because it was their choice to do so!"

"Guilty! 33 life sentences with no possibility of parole, to be served consecutively." :mad:
 
Beerina said:
According to Da Actual Bible, water also flooded up from below. In the Bible's cosmology, the Earth was a pocket in the great waters of chaos, hollowed out by God. Hence the whole "it must have rained XXX meters per hour" is a non-issue, my fellow skeptics. 99%+ could have come flooding up from below.
Click to expand...

Serious inquery: Where does the above information derive? I'm certain I've heard it before, but I can't place it.
 
Beerina said:
No. It applies to any sentient being,
Click to expand...

Nope. We've only just got it as far as applying to all post birth humans. Increasing it to all sentient beings would be quite a step. As things presently stands it is questionable if killing a Neanderthal would be considered murder.

Murder is in any case unlawful killing. Which law are you suggesting god broke?

even if you created it.

And any case, we were made "in the image of God", and thus are the same "species", so to speak, at least in the important ways that would make murder apply.
Click to expand...


Only if you want to view a statue as the same species as human.


Fair enough. But that speaks to the lack of omnipotence in God. An omnipotent god wouldn't have to "be prepared to accept" anything.
Click to expand...

Killing nearly everyone is a fairly widely practiced way of makeing your point.

Hmmm. I wonder if a kind, loving, omnipotent god would also provide them with shelter and warmth? Or just create a pocket playground for them for the year or so the whole Flood took.
Click to expand...

And then what?

According to Da Actual Bible, water also flooded up from below. In the Bible's cosmology, the Earth was a pocket in the great waters of chaos, hollowed out by God. Hence the whole "it must have rained XXX meters per hour" is a non-issue, my fellow skeptics. 99%+ could have come flooding up from below.
Click to expand...

Again likely to be leathal in a very short time period.

Again it speaks to the lack of omnipotence in God. He is guilty by reason of creating such a scenario, regardless of how badly humans mismanaged it once he took his hands off it. And when you throw in the illogic of He Knew It Was All Going To Happen Anyway, he's doubly guilty.

"Yes, your honor. I knew when the kids got on the Matterhorn ride, that it was replete with lose bolts, and that one kid would probably loosen another and they'd all fling out and be killed. But I'm innocent because it was their choice to do so!"

"Guilty! 33 life sentences with no possibility of parole, to be served consecutively." :mad:
Click to expand...

Adults however are generaly accepted as being responcible for their actions.
 
If God can't be judged by human standards of morality, then God's standard of morality can't relate to us in any meaningful way, therefore it's pointless for anyone to make any value judgments one way or another about God's actions. What this means is that it's just as meaningless, not to mention idiotic, to say that God was justified in killing everyone to get his point across. If God is just going around doing his own thing, on a level that humans can't make a moral determination about, then he's not God at all.


On a side note, I'm pretty sure most web browsers have spell checkers as available plug-ins. It might be worth it to look into one of those.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
There isn't really much room for a faulty interpretation of "God's Law" to be had in that particular section of the Bible. This isn't someone else speaking for Him, this is Him going "And these are the Laws that ye shall"... The only possible conclusion we can come to is that God's voice was scrambled when within Moses' skull. If you want to extend faulty interpretation to that, you may as well extend faulty interpretation to the 10 Commandments.
Click to expand...
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.
 
The Biblical god is evil and disgusting. I am especially appalled at the treatment of women in the text.

Some examples
Genesis
# God punishes Eve, and all women after her, with the pains of childbirth and subjection to men. 3:16
# Adam is also punished, although less severely. 3:17
# Adam begat some daughters. These nameless ones are the first (and nearly the last) girls to be born in the Bible. 5:4
# "The male and his female ..." Notice that in the Bible female animals are the property of male animals, as women are the property of men. 7:2
# Sarai is the first of a long line of barren women who were desperate for children. (In the Bible, it is the women who are barren, never the men.) She sends Abram into her handmaid, Hagar, so that she can "obtain children by her." Abram gladly complies. 16:1-4
# Lot refuses to give up his angels to the perverted mob, offering his two "virgin daughters" instead. He tells the bunch of angel rapers to "do unto them [his daughters] as is good in your eyes." This is the same man that is called "just" and "righteous" in 2 Pet.2:7-8. 19:8
# Lot's nameless wife looks back, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. 19:26
# Lot and his daughters camp out in a cave for a while. The daughters get their "just and righteous" father drunk, and have sexual intercourse with him, and each conceives and bears a son (wouldn't you know it!). 19:30-38
# Give me children or else I die." Rachel considers herself worthless if she cannot produce children for her husband. 30:1

Exodus
# To the author of Genesis, rape is a crime against the honor of men rather than against a woman. 34:31
# In the Bible, women are the property of men; they are his possessions -- like an ox or an ass. 20:17
# God explains how to go about selling your daughter -- and what to do if she fails to please her new master. 21:7
# "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Thousands of innocent women have suffered excruciating deaths because of this verse. 22:18
# Three times a year God wants to see all of the males. The females he never wants to see. 23:17
# "Their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods." God always blames the women; it is they who "go a whoring" and then "make" the men "go a whoring." 34:16

Leviticus
# Only unblemished males are to be killed and offered to God. Females don't even make good burnt offerings. 1:3, 10
# Women are dirty and sinful after childbirth, so God prescribes rituals for their purification. If a boy is born, the mother is unclean for 7 days and must be purified for 33 days; but if a girl is born, the mother is unclean for 14 days and be purified for 66 days. This is because, in the eyes of God, girls are twice as dirty as boys. 12:1-5
# After a woman gives birth, a priest must kill a lamb, pigeon, or dove as a sin offering. This is because having children is sinful and God likes it when things are killed for him. 12:6-8
# God lays down the law on menstruating women. Such women are to God both filthy and sinful, and anyone who comes near them is contaminated by them. 15:19-30, 33
# A man who has sex with a menstruating woman "shall be unclean seven days." 15:24
# If a man has sex with an engaged slave woman, scourge the woman, but don't punish the man. (Even if he raped her?) 19:20-22
# If a man has sex with his father's wife, kill them both. 20:11
# If a man has sex with his daughter in law, kill them both. 20:12

Numbers
# When "Moses numbered them according to the word of the Lord" he was told to count "every male from a month old and upward." Women and girls didn't count as persons. 3:15-16
# Miriam and Aaron (Moses' brother and sister) criticize Moses for marrying an Ethiopian woman and thus breaking the law of God. But God makes it clear that his rules don't apply to his favorites, and he strikes Miriam with leprosy. Notice that only Miriam is punished, though both she and Aaron complained. 12:1, 9-10
# When one of the Israelite men brings home a foreign woman, "Phinehas (Aaron's grandson) sees them and throws a spear "through the man .. and the woman through her belly." This act pleases God so much that "the plague was stayed from the children of Israel." But not before 24,000 had died. 25:6-9
# For impaling the interracial couple, God rewards Phinehas and his sons with the everlasting priesthood. 25:10-13

Deuteronomy
# In the cities that god "delivers into thine hands" you must kill all the males (including old men, boys, and babies) with "the edge of the sword .... But the women ... shalt thou take unto yourself." 20:13-14
# If you see a pretty woman among the captives and would like her for a wife, then just bring her home and "go in unto her." Later, if you decide you don't like her, you can "let her go." 21:11-14
# If a betrothed virgin is raped in the city and doesn't cry out loud enough, then "the men of the city shall stone her to death." 22:23-24
# If a man rapes an unbetrothed virgin, he must pay her father 50 shekels of silver and then marry her. 22:28-29

Judges
# After taking in a traveling Levite, the host offers his virgin daughter and his guest's concubine to a mob of perverts (who want to have sex with his guest). The mob refuses the daughter, but accepts the concubine and they "abuse her all night." The next morning she crawls back to the doorstep and dies. The Levite puts her dead body on an ass and takes her home. Then he chops her body up into twelve pieces and sends them to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. 19:22-30
# To find wives for the Benjamites (they were unwilling to use their own daughters), the other tribes attacked and killed all occupants of a city except for the young virgins. These virgins were then given to the Benjamites for wives. 21:7-23

1 Samuel
# David and Saul have a contest to see who can kill the most people for God, and the women act as cheerleaders saying, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." 18:6-7, 21:11, 29:5
# David kills 200 Philistines and brings their foreskins to Saul to buy his first wife (Saul's daughter Michal). Saul had only asked for 100 foreskins, but David was feeling generous. 18:25-27

2 Samuel
# God is angry at David for having Uriah killed. As a punishment, he will have David's wives raped by his neighbor while everyone else watches. It turns out that the "neighbor" that God sends to do his dirty work is David's own son, Absalom (16:22). 12:11-12
# To punish David for having Uriah killed, God kills Bathsheba's baby boy. 12:14-18

2 Kings
# King Menahem rips up all the pregnant women in Tizzah "because they opened not to him." Does God approve of such acts? It's impossible to tell from this passage; the mass murder is simply reported without editorial comment. 15:16

Ezra
# The Israelites offend God by "taking" foreign wives and thereby corrupting "the holy seed." 9:2
# Ezra tells the men that they must abandon their wives and children if they are to avoid God's wrath. 10:2-3, 10-12

Jeremiah
# "As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband ..." If a woman leaves her husband, she is "treacherous," but a man is blameless when he "puts her away" for no reason. 3:20
# God threatens to punish the men by taking away all of their property, including their wives, and giving them to others. 6:12
# To punish men, God will "give their wives unto others." 8:10
# God compares the destruction of Jerusalem to the rape of a woman who deserves to be raped because she has sinned. 13:22
# God will cause the daughters of Rabbah to be burned with fire. 49:2

Lamentations
# God mercilessly kills everyone, young and old. He even causes women to eat their children. 2:20-22
# God "accomplishes his fury" by making women eat their children. 4:10-11

Ezekiel
# God sends a "man clothed with linen" to mark the foreheads of the men who will be saved. Apparently only men are considered good enough to keep, the others (unmarked men, "maids", little children, and women) are to be slaughtered. God says he'll "fill the courts with the slain" and will have pity on no one. 9:4-10
# Two sisters were guilty of "committing whoredoms" by pressing their breasts and bruising "the teats of their virginity." As a punishment, one sister's nakedness was discovered, her children were taken from her, and she was killed by the sword. And the fate of the surviving sister was even worse: Her nose and ears were cut off, she was made to "pluck off" her own breasts, and then after being raped and mutilated, she is stoned to death. 23:1-49
# God kills Ezekiel's wife and then tells him not to mourn her. 24:15-18
# God says he will destroy Tyrus. He plans to kill everyone, but he is especially looking forward to killing all of the women. "And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD." 26:1-21
# In condemning Israel God says, "their way was before me as the uncleanliness of a removed woman." 36:16-17

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

Zechariah
# God will make "all nations" fight against Jerusalem. The women will be "ravished." 14:1-2

Matthew
# Jesus says that divorce is permissible when the wife is guilty of fornication. But what if the husband is unfaithful? Jesus doesn't seem to care about that. 5:32, 19:9
# Abandon your wife and children for Jesus and he'll give you a big reward. 19:29 (Also repeated in Mark 10: 29-30 and Luke 18:29-30)
# "Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Why? Does God especially hate pregnant and nursing women? 24:19
# Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who went to meet their bridegroom. 25:1

Romans
# Paul explains that "the natural use" of women is to act as sexual objects for the pleasure of men. 1:27

1 Corinthians
# Women are commanded by Paul to be silent in church and to be obedient to men. He further says that "if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in church." 14:34-35

1 Timothy
# You should help a widow only if she 1) is over 60 years old, 2) had only one husband, 3) has raised children, 4) has lodged strangers, 5) has "washed the saints feet," 6) has relieved the afflicted, and 7) has "diligently followed very good work." Otherwise, let them starve. "But the younger widows refuse [to help]: for ... they will marry; having damnation." Besides the young widows are always idle tattlers -- "busybodies, spreading things which they ought not." He adds that "some are already turned aside after Satan." 5:9-15

2 Peter
# Lot, who in Gen.19:8 offers his two virgin daughters to a crowd of angel rapers and later (19:30-38) impregnates them, was a "righteous man." 2:8

Revelation
# Jezebel (whom God had thrown off a wall, trampled by horses, and eaten by dogs [2 Kg.9:33-37]) is further reviled by John, saying "that woman Jezebel" taught and seduced God's "servants to commit fornication." 2:20
# Jesus will "cast her [Jezebel] into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her." 2:22
Click to expand...

If this isn't evil despicable crap, then the word, evil is meaningless.
 
fuelair said:
Give examples please. I am neither omniscient or omnipotent.
Click to expand...
You need not be, as they are absolutes for what we already possess. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence couldn't exist within time, furthermore nothing within the natural world could possess or approach it (such as an artilect, yes quantum physics!). Hypothetically, we can draw examples from history. Consider the madness of the Roman emperors who had every social validation of their godlike status. Consider if that wasn't only social. In any situation where a humanistic force were present to that extent, the disassociation with the natural world and the human condition would be so enormous that it would be transfiguring. You could say God isn't subject to stress, but this does not resemble what Christianity or Judaism relate in allegory or purpose. Now, let's see if it's possible to get away with 'omnipotence', 'omniscience', 'omnipresence', 'quantum physics', 'Judaism' 'Christianity' and 'God' in a diplomatic way in the same relatively short paragraph. :eusa_angel:
 
skeptigirl said:
The Biblical god is evil and disgusting. I am especially appalled at the treatment of women in the text.

If this isn't evil despicable crap, then the word, evil is meaningless.
Click to expand...

Word! A lady friend of mine once asked me to create a new website in my God Hates series just about the extreme sexism and misogyny of Yahweh.

We offer for your NSFW amusement God Hates Vaginas. My friend was pleased.

I realize that I have not even scratched the surface yet of the myriad things this fictional creep with anger management issues hates, but a webserver can only hold so many sites, and I only get 24 hours a day.
 
SirPhilip said:
You need not be, as they are absolutes for what we already possess. Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence couldn't exist within time, furthermore nothing within the natural world could possess or approach it (such as an artilect, yes quantum physics!). Hypothetically, we can draw examples from history. Consider the madness of the Roman emperors who had every social validation of their godlike status. Consider if that wasn't only social. In any situation where a humanistic force were present to that extent, the disassociation with the natural world and the human condition would be so enormous that it would be transfiguring. You could say God isn't subject to stress, but this does not resemble what Christianity or Judaism relate in allegory or purpose. Now, let's see if it's possible to get away with 'omnipotence', 'omniscience', 'omnipresence', 'quantum physics', 'Judaism' 'Christianity' and 'God' in a diplomatic way in the same relatively short paragraph. :eusa_angel:
Click to expand...
However, you still have not given examples. I really have no idea what you meant there (your original response to my explanation). I cannot answer your question without examples since the question (as stated) provides no clue as to what you are asking about.
 
skeptigirl said:
The Biblical god is evil and disgusting. I am especially appalled at the treatment of women in the text. If this isn't evil despicable crap, then the word, evil is meaningless.
Click to expand...
It is. But aren't people alone capable of being evil and disgusting? The Soviet Union was an example. Aversion requires an awareness of consequences.
 
skeptigirl said:
The Biblical god is evil and disgusting. I am especially appalled at the treatment of women in the text.

Some examples

If this isn't evil despicable crap, then the word, evil is meaningless.
Click to expand...

From your quotes: 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

### ### ###

This is classic cherry-picking and something that JREF generally frowns upon. The book of Hosea (just as an example) is a stern admonition by a "prophet" against allowing relative prosperity to corrupt the traditions of the nation. The argument presented is essentially that both the "covenant with God" and the traditional fairness of commercial practices (such as they were) had been ignored.

There is a lyrical and not very easily translated comparison presented where "God" orders Hosea to marry a "harlot" while the Northern Kingdom abandons its covenant to return to the worship of Ba'al and other available fertility/agriculture deities.

Although it is thought that the "prophet" Hosea lived in the eighth century BC in some circles, there is no doubt that the book was included in the Bible because of the eventual destruction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria some time after his "prophecies".

Sometimes critics of the Old Testament ought to try to understand why certain passages were kept instead of assuming that they are attributable to "God".
 
RobRoy said:
Serious inquery: Where does the above information derive? I'm certain I've heard it before, but I can't place it.
Click to expand...
.
"Fountains of the deep"
All that water -underneath- the crust, hithertothen unknown. (And to this also)
And of course, having less volume than the surface it was coming to, wouldn't do much at all to increase sea level... see the link to computing the volumes of spheres.
 
SirPhilip said:
It is. But aren't people alone capable of being evil and disgusting? The Soviet Union was an example. Aversion requires an awareness of consequences.
Click to expand...
.
That's been my feeling for years!
There's no need to invent an "adversary" to blame for the "evils men do".
Humanity is more than capable of outdoing even that guy!
There's a Bill Mauldin cartoon from WWII showing AH with his chest out, hand in the vest, having just told Satan why AH is there.
Satan is -appalled-!
He says.. "You did all THAT?".
History is full of man's inhumanity to man.
Supernatural interference is hardly required!
 
I Ratant said:
.Supernatural interference is hardly required!
Click to expand...

But if you have no tradition of historiography from Gibbon through EH Carr and onwards, how exactly would you explain the brutal 3 year siege and eventual destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians except by publishing Hosea?
 
I'm unfamiliar with Hosea.
Not part of the Catholic bible.
Whatever human inhumanities that may not have been known had it not been published, there's a thousand others...
Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, AH, JS.. all those piss-ant dictators ridding their countries of dissidents... Milosevic, etc. Tutsi vs Huttu..
The list is positively endless.
One massacre more or less, who'd notice, with all the rest!
There's that ship of Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca intercepted by the fleet of Vasco De Gama off the east coast of Africa.
All the people on board robbed of everything they had, forced below decks, then the ships burned.
I never heard about -that- in my history classes praising the explorers Prince Henry the Navigator sent around the Horn to "open the trade to the Far East".
Done "in God's name", but God didn't do nuthin to stop it.
 
SirPhilip said:
It is. But aren't people alone capable of being evil and disgusting? The Soviet Union was an example. Aversion requires an awareness of consequences.
Click to expand...

I don't buy your example. Men and other people can be evil, but not usually whole populations. However, you do bring up a point. There is no such thing as the Biblical God. There are the evil men who wrote the texts for their own selfish gratifications.
 
I Ratant said:
I'm unfamiliar with Hosea.
Not part of the Catholic bible.
Click to expand...

Which version are you using? I was unaware that Hosea was expunged from the canonical Old Testament.

Skeptigirl cherry-picked deliberately from Hosea (among others) to provide "proof" that "God" was "evil". (Wow, that was a lot of quotation marks!)

You're saying that Hosea isn't even canonical Old Testament. I wonder if you guys are all reading the same things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom