Transparency

[2PhiloVoid]

I don't determine what a Christian is - Jesus does!

What makes you think that human life has no value apart from the existence of a divine creator?

For someone who claims to be familiar with philosophy I find it hard to believe that you could be unfamiliar with the concept of man assigning value...

Oh, I'm quite familiar with the concept of any one of us assigning a subjective, arbitrary value to human life. I do so myself, of course, quite a part from handling anything in the bible (...and I can do so since it's not like I was raised a literalized, fundamentalist Christian, mind you, 'cuz I wasn't. )

Regardless of what we input as to the meaning withing the value we may assign to human life on the whole, this doesn't grasp immediately at questions dealing with extrinsic versus intrinsic value, let alone material value versus metaphysical value within our axiological musings.

 

[topher694]

I have my moments...

I do hope, though, that you will address post #168 and we can continue having an actual discussion of substance

This tit for tat, back and forth inanity ain't cuttin' it!

What can I say? I'm fascinated by what you are going to say next.

 

[Treeplanter]

What can I say? I'm fascinated by what you are going to say next.

Sadly, I cannot say the same about you

It's all too predictable, that which comes from a Christian

 

[Treeplanter]

Oh, I quite familiar with the concept of any one of us assigning a subjective, arbitrary value to human life. I do so myself, of course, quite a part from handling anything in the bible (...and I can do so since it's not like I was raised a literalized, fundamentalist Christian, mind you, 'cuz I wasn't. )

Regardless of what we input as to the meaning withing the value we may assign to human life on the whole, this doesn't grasp immediately at questions dealing with extrinsic versus intrinsic value, let alone material value versus metaphysical value within our axiological musings.

I don't see the issue...

Can we not decide, for ourselves and as a whole, that human life possesses an intrinsic value?

Why would this be arbitrary?
Why should we care if it is arbitrary?

What exactly do you mean by "subjective"?

Sounds as if subjective is, in your estimation, somehow inferior to objective
Myself, I've never understood a reticence to embrace the subjective

Again, I don't see a problem!

 

[topher694]

Sadly, I cannot say the same about you

It's all too predictable, that which comes from a Christian

You are so right! We are just so... predictable.

 

[Treeplanter]

You are so right! We are just so... predictable.

You sure are!

The refusal to even try to address points that have exposed your position as untenable is particularly and especially par for the course...

 

[topher694]

You sure are!

The refusal to even try to address points that have exposed your position as untenable is particularly and especially par for the course...

I know right! Any more insights?

 

[Treeplanter]

I know right! Any more insights?

Alright, pastor - you win

I'm done
I am swallowing my pride as we speak
I am now walking away and giving you the last word

Just know this:
I am the better man and, in this case, the closer to Christ

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I don't see the issue...

Can we not decide, for ourselves and as a whole, that human life possesses an intrinsic value?

Of course you can subjectively decide for yourself what you feel is valuable about another human being, but that decision wouldn't indicate an intrinsic value actually exists, especially not on some macro, metaphysical scale that anyone should need to consider and care about in the same way that you do. All you would be doing is assigning an arbitrary, personal taste that is extrinsically applied to other human beings.

Why would this be arbitrary?
Why should we care if it is arbitrary?

You don't get to ask that question. You're the one who is here testing us by the criteria you've stated you think are 'right,' and by which you've "decided" that religion is dangerous and a detriment to humanity. So no, you don't get to play the switch-a-roo-on-you card by which, all of sudden, I'm put on guard with Socratic scrutiny.

What exactly do you mean by "subjective"?

I'd go more with something along the line of Kierkegaard's notion rather than the contemporary, colloquial definition.

Sounds as if subjective is, in your estimation, somehow inferior to objective

I haven't implied anything as of yet about subjectivity or objectivity in ethics. It's you have made the implications already, though.

Myself, I've never understood a reticence to embrace the subjective

As I stated above, you will think whatever it is your brain wants to think; I haven't said anything above about 'prescriptive' values as yet, but you have.

Again, I don't see a problem!

Well, you should see an instant problem if you know the difference in ethical thinking between, say, Nietzsche and Sam Harris (among others).

 

[ViaCrucis]

If you love someone and you truly desire for this someone to fully trust in and love you in return - don't you present yourself with full transparency?

Bingo. That's the Christian religion in a nutshell. God is not found up in the clouds, or on mountain tops, in great bursts of fire and thunder, or floods. God is found in the Carpenter from Nazareth.

The story of the flood serves a helpful purpose in the overall biblical drama that Christians believe is centered upon Jesus; namely the flood demonstrates that one can't fix the world by getting rid of "bad people". The flood isn't God's way of dealing with the brokenness in the world. God's way of dealing with the brokenness of the world is Jesus of Nazareth.

And that brings up the fundamental question, from the Christian POV anyhow, is what we encounter there in Jesus something and someone that is trustworthy? That is, in its most purest essence, what Christianity means when it talks about faith in Christ.

The difficulty in trying to respond to this thread is that it is, from a Christian perspective, impossible to answer without getting into some crunchy theology.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[DamianWarS]

That's not true

Your "God exists" bias exists independently of my "No God" bias

correct, what does this have to do with a response to the OP?

Not true

I do not blame God for the suffering of the world - I blame God for consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm

then by doing so you demote him to something less than God.

Not true

God can exist in any way, shape, and form that He chooses to

Unfortunately for us, God chooses to exist as a being who sometimes consciously and purposefully chooses to inflict needless harm upon His creation

God has immutable characteristics he cannot do something needlessly because everything he does has a purpose. anything short of that means he's not God.

If God is God then He can choose to elevate us

sure, but not higher than himself. it would counter-self for him to elevate his creation higher than himself

Not true

God's offer of salvation is for HIS OWN benefit - not our's

God saves us so that His name be glorified
It is for HIS OWN GLORY

exactly, so why would God create something to needlessly inflict suffering on it? that would be counter his Glory

Correct

And this is what God does

God can achieve any and every end He desires by any means that He desires

When God chooses to achieve an end by means of 1st inflicting harm - the harm, by definition, is needless because God was not required or forced to inflict harm

God could have produced the exact same end result WITHOUT causing harm in the process!

Needless...

God cannot do things needlessly regardless of how you interpret them.

I reject this

Our actions dictate whether we are good or evil

God's actions, sometimes, are evil

God is incapable of being evil. why? because everything he does is for his glory. sin by definition is anything against God and righteousness by definition is anything for God. These are your good and evils, God cannot do evil because in doing so he would be rejecting himself. You seem bent on defining morals through the lenses of humanity so if God is the cause of human pain he must be evil. This is untrue, God does everything for his glory and we may become recipients of his glory if we stand with God rather than against him. does it sound selfish? perhaps if it were anyone else but God. before all things, there was God so whatever action he did was for his own glory and this was good, not evil as there was nothing else. he then created all things... for what purpose? for his glory, and this was good, not evil. and every action since then is motivated by his glory and his actions are good, not evil. it doesn't change because God is unchangeable. You may call God evil but this doesn't actually make him evil, he still remains innately good.

 

[Treeplanter]

Of course you can subjectively decide for yourself what you feel is valuable about another human being, but that decision wouldn't indicate an intrinsic value actually exists, especially not on some macro, metaphysical scale that anyone should need to consider and care about in the same way that you do. All you would be doing is assigning an arbitrary, personal taste that is extrinsically applied to other human beings.

Nothing has value unless we say it does!

There is no such thing as an intrinsic value
Dirt has little to no value because we decided that dirt has little to no value
Gold has great value because we decided that gold has great value

 

[Treeplanter]

Bingo. That's the Christian religion in a nutshell.

Well, that may or may not be the ideal to which the Christian religion aspires, but I don't believe this to be what the Christian religion has achieved...not by a long shot

Where, for example, has the Christian religion even begun to offer an explanation for God having drowned innocent babies alongside the wicked when He could just as easily have taken them into His bosom WITHOUT drowning them?

The story of the flood serves a helpful purpose in the overall biblical drama that Christians believe is centered upon Jesus; namely the flood demonstrates that one can't fix the world by getting rid of "bad people". The flood isn't God's way of dealing with the brokenness in the world. God's way of dealing with the brokenness of the world is Jesus of Nazareth.

Do you believe the Flood to be an allegorical story or an actual, historic event?

And that brings up the fundamental question, from the Christian POV anyhow, is what we encounter there in Jesus something and someone that is trustworthy? That is, in its most purest essence, what Christianity means when it talks about faith in Christ.

If God, as many Christians insist, actually did the many awful things that He is said to have done throughout the OT then I can't see how Jesus, who insists that we love God with all our hearts/minds/souls, can be considered trustworthy

 

[Treeplanter]

then by doing so you demote him to something less than God.

I blame God for consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm

You say that by doing so, I am demoting Him to something less than God

In effect, what you are suggesting is that:

Were God to refrain from consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm then He would be demoting Himself to something less

Are you actually intending to assert that the conscious and purposeful infliction of needless harm upon man is {either entirely or in part} what makes God great???

God has immutable characteristics he cannot do something needlessly because everything he does has a purpose. anything short of that means he's not God.

One of the immutable characteristics of God is His omnipotence

Being all powerful means, among other things, that God is NEVER made to do anything against His will

He is not required to do anything
He cannot be forced or compelled to do anything

Everything that He does is by His free will choice

There was no law stating that innocent babies had to be drowned alongside the wicked
No law - dictating that innocent babies be drowned - that God had to follow

God consciously and purposefully chose, of His own free will, to drown innocent babies

God did not NEED to drown babies in order to save and resurrect them
God CHOSE, in the process of saving and resurrecting, to drown babies
This is the very definition of NEEDLESSNESS!

sure, but not higher than himself. it would counter-self for him to elevate his creation higher than himself

God cares more about Himself and His own glory than He does us
This is selfishness

To love is to value the other above your own self

A loving God would elevate us above Himself and, in doing so, engender far more love in return than does a God who values self over other

The God of the bible, however, is more concerned with Himself and His own glory

exactly, so why would God create something to needlessly inflict suffering on it? that would be counter his Glory

Who ever said God makes sense?

He created us
AND
He, on occasion, inflicts needless harm upon us

I, for one, refuse to give glory to God for this very reason, however, there are millions who do give glory to Him anyway

This, too, makes no sense

God cannot do things needlessly regardless of how you interpret them.

Sure, He can!
He does so all the time

ex:
God didn't NEED to create mankind
God chose, of His own free will, to do so
Our creation was, by definition, NEEDLESS

You seem to be conflating purpose with NEEDFULLNESS/NEEDLESSNESS

Did God have a purpose in drowning innocent babies alongside the wicked?
Yes!
His purpose was to save the babies from a fallen world and resurrect them to a better one

Did God NEED to drown innocent babies in order to save and resurrect them?
No, of course not!
God could have saved and resurrected those babies WITHOUT causing them the harm of drowning

God consciously and purposefully chose to inflict the NEEDLESS harm of drowning upon babies

To consciously and purposefully inflict NEEDLESS harm is evil and immoral

God is incapable of being evil. why? because everything he does is for his glory.

Obviously, this is not true
God consciously and purposefully inflicts needless harm
To consciously and purposefully inflict needless harm is evil

"Everything He does is for His own glory"
I agree 100%

sin by definition is anything against God and righteousness by definition is anything for God.

Agreed
However, I am not talking about sin
What I am talking about is evil and these are two entirely different concepts

You seem bent on defining morals through the lenses of humanity

Naturally
We created and defined the concepts of good and evil
We developed the means by which to differentiate between the two {morality}

so if God is the cause of human pain he must be evil.

When He consciously, purposefully, and needlessly inflicts it - YES!

 

[ViaCrucis]

Well, that may or may not be the ideal to which the Christian religion aspires, but I don't believe this to be what the Christian religion has achieved...not by a long shot

Where, for example, has the Christian religion even begun to offer an explanation for God having drowned innocent babies alongside the wicked when He could just as easily have taken them into His bosom WITHOUT drowning them?


Do you believe the Flood to be an allegorical story or an actual, historic event?


If God, as many Christians insist, actually did the many awful things that He is said to have done throughout the OT then I can't see how Jesus, who insists that we love God with all our hearts/minds/souls, can be considered trustworthy

I had a longer post, but I want to be clearly understood and thus hope I can do so by avoiding being needlessly wordy.

To answer your question of whether I believe the flood to be allegorical or historical, my answer is neither. I think the best word to describe it is mythological. Which I don't believe is a bad word, the word "myth" simply means "story". The story of the flood is just that, a story.

What interests me are the questions about that story--why is the story here in the text? What purpose does it serve in the overall narrative of Genesis? What purpose does it serve in the overall narrative of the Torah, or of the Bible as a whole?

The Old Testament stories are not, strictly speaking, the way Christians understand (or are supposed to understand anyhow) God.

God is to be understood in and through Jesus. The Christian confession that Jesus is God is not a statement about Jesus being ascribed a list of divine qualities. It's a statement about who God is as beheld in the flesh-and-blood person of Jesus of Nazareth.

There's a massive difference between reading a story about Abraham Lincoln and actually meeting and knowing and befriending the man himself.

That is, in the historic Christian view, the difference between the Old Testament and Jesus.

Therefore the question of trustworthiness is about Jesus being Jesus.

As far as loving God is concerned, this is why St. John writes "We love because He first loved us." To "love the Lord your God..." is nonsense apart from God's own love for us. God is love, St. John says, and we love Him because He first loved us.

How does God love us? Where can that love be found? Those are the really interesting questions, and the ones that I believe actually matter.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Treeplanter]

I had a longer post, but I want to be clearly understood and thus hope I can do so by avoiding being needlessly wordy.

To answer your question of whether I believe the flood to be allegorical or historical, my answer is neither. I think the best word to describe it is mythological. Which I don't believe is a bad word, the word "myth" simply means "story". The story of the flood is just that, a story.

What interests me are the questions about that story--why is the story here in the text? What purpose does it serve in the overall narrative of Genesis? What purpose does it serve in the overall narrative of the Torah, or of the Bible as a whole?

The Old Testament stories are not, strictly speaking, the way Christians understand (or are supposed to understand anyhow) God.

God is to be understood in and through Jesus. The Christian confession that Jesus is God is not a statement about Jesus being ascribed a list of divine qualities. It's a statement about who God is as beheld in the flesh-and-blood person of Jesus of Nazareth.

There's a massive difference between reading a story about Abraham Lincoln and actually meeting and knowing and befriending the man himself.

That is, in the historic Christian view, the difference between the Old Testament and Jesus.

Therefore the question of trustworthiness is about Jesus being Jesus.

As far as loving God is concerned, this is why St. John writes "We love because He first loved us." To "love the Lord your God..." is nonsense apart from God's own love for us. God is love, St. John says, and we love Him because He first loved us.

How does God love us? Where can that love be found? Those are the really interesting questions, and the ones that I believe actually matter.

-CryptoLutheran

How do you determine what in the OT is myth and what, in actuality, happened?

Did God really create us and the whole of existence, itself, in 6 days time or is that just a myth?
Did God really craft and then give unto Moses the Ten Commandments or is that just a myth?
Is God really the one and only true God or is this, too, just a myth?
Etc


I get it - you are a Christian and, as such, it is only natural that you want to focus on Jesus Christ

What I don't get, though, is how soo many Christians, in their zeal for Christ, manage to casually and callously brush aside the atrocities attributed to YHVH throughout the OT...?

God, the Son {Jesus} and God, the Father {YHVH} are ONE IN THE SAME!
As does the one - so does the other
No matter how much you might want to - you cannot separate the two!

That said, let's just concentrate upon Jesus and the NT for the moment:

Admittedly, most of my criticisms and charges of improprieties are relegated to God as described throughout the OT

Jesus, however, is no innocent, Himself
Jesus, too, consciously and purposefully inflicts needless harm upon us

Jesus tells us in the NT that no one comes to the Father except through Him

What happens when a person, not having found Jesus in life, dies and finds him/herself standing before Jesus?

This person, realizing for the 1st time that Jesus is exactly who He claims Himself to be and desiring, from the bottom of his/her heart, to spend the rest of eternity in the presence of Jesus - drops to his/her knees and, fully and genuinely repentant, confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

What happens?

According to Christianity, Jesus then sends this person to Hell for the 'crime' of having not recognized Him in life

Does Jesus have to do this?
Is it NEEDED?

No, He does not
It is a NEEDLESS harm that He chooses to inflict

And, once again, to consciously and purposefully inflict needless harm is evil and immoral

 

[ViaCrucis]

How do you determine what in the OT is myth and what, in actuality, happened?

Did God really create us and the whole of existence, itself, in 6 days time or is that just a myth?
Did God really craft and then give unto Moses the Ten Commandments or is that just a myth?
Is God really the one and only true God or is this, too, just a myth?
Etc

When you walk into a library do you assume that every book in that library is the same kind of book? That everything in the library is history, or myth, or fiction, or a how to guide?

The first thing to understand is that the Bible isn't a book, it's a library of books.

Then the hard part--actually engaging with the text.

So let's provide an example: Genesis.

What is Genesis? We have an answer to that question, it's one of the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch. We can talk about things such as authorship, such as the Documentary Hypothesis or various alternative hypotheses; but at this point that's not really that important. What is important is what is the point of the books of the Torah--why were they written, redacted, etc. It's the Torah, God's covenant instruction to ancient Israel; or at least that is how its authors/redactors and original recipients understood it.

So Genesis is first and foremost Torah. It's not a coincidence that the stories of Abraham's hospitality and of Sodom occur right next to each other, that's intentional. Abraham, as Israel's patriarch represents what the covenant people of God are supposed to be like in regard to strangers, hospitable, welcoming. When the stranger comes into your midst you invite them in, prepare them food, a bath, clean clothes, your home is like their home. This is presented in dark and stark contrast to how the people of Sodom treated the strangers who came to them; who upon seeing strangers did the opposite of welcoming them and providing for them (and no, the story has nothing to do with sexual orientation).

How much of the text is myth, legend, and/or history? On some level there are certain questions that we aren't going to have a very sufficient answer for.

As for myself, I think Genesis blends all three together. I believe there was an historical Abraham, but that also doesn't mean I believe the stories of Abraham in Genesis should be read like a modern, western history--an accounting of ordered historical facts. What mattered wasn't so much ordered historical facts as it was connecting past and present together in a meaningful way. The dry details of Abraham's story are in a lot of ways much less important than the broad strokes of Abraham's story. It's the story of a promise, a promise of a people, a people with a special place in the world with a special relationship with God. Now, as I said, I believe--as an article of faith--that the figure of Abraham in Genesis correlates with a very real person, and the promises associated with Abraham involve a real person and a real people.

Hence the story of Abraham isn't "history" in the strictest, wooden sense; but neither is it some kind of spiritual allegory or mystical statement about mere abstract ideas.

I get it - you are a Christian and, as such, it is only natural that you want to focus on Jesus Christ

What I don't get, though, is how soo many Christians, in their zeal for Christ, manage to casually and callously brush aside the atrocities attributed to YHVH throughout the OT...?

You're talking to someone who has been struggling with that sort of thing for most of my life.

I've found an approach that I find personally satisfying, and that has been an approach I discovered while engaging in conversation with Jewish persons. Speaking of Genesis, there is a story about Abraham's grandson Jacob who has a strange encounter with a human (or human-like?) figure, the two wrestle and afterward the figure renames Jacob to Israel because he "wrestled with God". That's what the name Israel means, "struggles with God" or "wrestles with God". The Jewish rabbis have therefore understood that the Jewish people's relationship with God is complicated--it is a relationship of struggling and wrestling with God, of making sense of this profound "I AM".

The value I've gleaned from that was this: That answers don't come easy, and that's okay. The difficult things of the Bible are things to be taken seriously, not ignored, but to be wrestled with. An honest engagement with the Bible means a struggle with it, wrestling with it.

That does mean that there may not be very good, or at least, satisfying answers. That's okay.

There is no way for me as a Christian not to approach the Bible apart from Jesus. I'm not talking about Jesus to say "don't pay attention to that stuff back there", I'm saying "that stuff back there needs to be read in light of Jesus". Jesus, for the Christian, is the lens, the magnifying glass or the microscope through which the entire Bible is to be read. That is the whole reason there is a Bible at all--the Bible didn't fall out of the sky, the Bible was put together by the Christian Church as part of its confession and faith in Jesus.

God, the Son {Jesus} and God, the Father {YHVH} are ONE IN THE SAME!
As does the one - so does the other
No matter how much you might want to - you cannot separate the two!

Of course not. I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, it is impossible to separate the Son from the Father. And, in fact, that's the point really: the Father isn't found apart from the Son. The Father cannot be separated from the Son, and in fact, the Father cannot be known except in His Son.

That said, let's just concentrate upon Jesus and the NT for the moment:

Admittedly, most of my criticisms and charges of improprieties are relegated to God as described throughout the OT

Jesus, however, is no innocent, Himself
Jesus, too, consciously and purposefully inflicts needless harm upon us

Jesus tells us in the NT that no one comes to the Father except through Him

I think you are misunderstanding Jesus here, which I don't fault you for, the problem is that this is a common misunderstanding that is frequently repeated by many well-meaning Christians.

Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father but by Me" in the context of talking about how people can know and see the Father. You can find the whole exchange in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 14. I would encourage you to read it, perhaps with fresh eyes.

What happens when a person, not having found Jesus in life, dies and finds him/herself standing before Jesus?

This person, realizing for the 1st time that Jesus is exactly who He claims Himself to be and desiring, from the bottom of his/her heart, to spend the rest of eternity in the presence of Jesus - drops to his/her knees and, fully and genuinely repentant, confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

What happens?

According to Christianity, Jesus then sends this person to Hell for the 'crime' of having not recognized Him in life

Does Jesus have to do this?
Is it NEEDED?

No, He does not
It is a NEEDLESS harm that He chooses to inflict

And, once again, to consciously and purposefully inflict needless harm is evil and immoral

Oh I agree with you, and if I thought any of that were a true expression of Christianity I'd probably be in agreement with you in a lot of other things as well.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[DamianWarS]

I blame God for consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm

You say that by doing so, I am demoting Him to something less than God

In effect, what you are suggesting is that:

Were God to refrain from consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm then He would be demoting Himself to something less

Are you actually intending to assert that the conscious and purposeful infliction of needless harm upon man is {either entirely or in part} what makes God great???

God is incapable of doing something without purpose. So God is unable to do anything needlessly.

One of the immutable characteristics of God is His omnipotence

Being all powerful means, among other things, that God is NEVER made to do anything against His will

He is not required to do anything
He cannot be forced or compelled to do anything

Everything that He does is by His free will choice

There was no law stating that innocent babies had to be drowned alongside the wicked
No law - dictating that innocent babies be drowned - that God had to follow

God consciously and purposefully chose, of His own free will, to drown innocent babies

God did not NEED to drown babies in order to save and resurrect them
God CHOSE, in the process of saving and resurrecting, to drown babies
This is the very definition of NEEDLESSNESS!

in one line you say "God consciously and purposefully chose, of His own free will, to drown innocent babies" then you conclude "This is the very definition of NEEDLESSNESS!" those two don't reconcile. if it's down with purposefully it's not needless, if it's not needlessly it's not purposefully. God doesn't do things arbitrarily. his purpose is not needless.

God cares more about Himself and His own glory than He does us
This is selfishness

To love is to value the other above your own self

A loving God would elevate us above Himself and, in doing so, engender far more love in return than does a God who values self over other

The God of the bible, however, is more concerned with Himself and His own glory

before anything existed there was God and every act God did was self-motivated (because there was nothing else). Does this make him selfish? God doesn't change so before creation and after creation, God is motivated the same way.

Who ever said God makes sense?

He created us
AND
He, on occasion, inflicts needless harm upon us

I, for one, refuse to give glory to God for this very reason, however, there are millions who do give glory to Him anyway

This, too, makes no sense

Sure, He can!
He does so all the time

ex:
God didn't NEED to create mankind
God chose, of His own free will, to do so
Our creation was, by definition, NEEDLESS

You seem to be conflating purpose with NEEDFULLNESS/NEEDLESSNESS

Did God have a purpose in drowning innocent babies alongside the wicked?
Yes!
His purpose was to save the babies from a fallen world and resurrect them to a better one

Did God NEED to drown innocent babies in order to save and resurrect them?
No, of course not!
God could have saved and resurrected those babies WITHOUT causing them the harm of drowning

God consciously and purposefully chose to inflict the NEEDLESS harm of drowning upon babies

To consciously and purposefully inflict NEEDLESS harm is evil and immoral

Obviously, this is not true
God consciously and purposefully inflicts needless harm
To consciously and purposefully inflict needless harm is evil

"Everything He does is for His own glory"
I agree 100%

Agreed
However, I am not talking about sin
What I am talking about is evil and these are two entirely different concepts

Naturally
We created and defined the concepts of good and evil
We developed the means by which to differentiate between the two {morality}

When He consciously, purposefully, and needlessly inflicts it - YES!

I blame God for consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm

You say that by doing so, I am demoting Him to something less than God

In effect, what you are suggesting is that:

Were God to refrain from consciously and purposefully inflicting needless harm then He would be demoting Himself to something less

Are you actually intending to assert that the conscious and purposeful infliction of needless harm upon man is {either entirely or in part} what makes God great???


One of the immutable characteristics of God is His omnipotence

Being all powerful means, among other things, that God is NEVER made to do anything against His will

He is not required to do anything
He cannot be forced or compelled to do anything

Everything that He does is by His free will choice

There was no law stating that innocent babies had to be drowned alongside the wicked
No law - dictating that innocent babies be drowned - that God had to follow

God consciously and purposefully chose, of His own free will, to drown innocent babies

God did not NEED to drown babies in order to save and resurrect them
God CHOSE, in the process of saving and resurrecting, to drown babies
This is the very definition of NEEDLESSNESS!


God cares more about Himself and His own glory than He does us
This is selfishness

To love is to value the other above your own self

A loving God would elevate us above Himself and, in doing so, engender far more love in return than does a God who values self over other

The God of the bible, however, is more concerned with Himself and His own glory


Who ever said God makes sense?

He created us
AND
He, on occasion, inflicts needless harm upon us

I, for one, refuse to give glory to God for this very reason, however, there are millions who do give glory to Him anyway

This, too, makes no sense


Sure, He can!
He does so all the time

ex:
God didn't NEED to create mankind
God chose, of His own free will, to do so
Our creation was, by definition, NEEDLESS

You seem to be conflating purpose with NEEDFULLNESS/NEEDLESSNESS

Did God have a purpose in drowning innocent babies alongside the wicked?
Yes!
His purpose was to save the babies from a fallen world and resurrect them to a better one

Did God NEED to drown innocent babies in order to save and resurrect them?
No, of course not!
God could have saved and resurrected those babies WITHOUT causing them the harm of drowning

God consciously and purposefully chose to inflict the NEEDLESS harm of drowning upon babies

To consciously and purposefully inflict NEEDLESS harm is evil and immoral



Obviously, this is not true
God consciously and purposefully inflicts needless harm
To consciously and purposefully inflict needless harm is evil

"Everything He does is for His own glory"
I agree 100%


Agreed
However, I am not talking about sin
What I am talking about is evil and these are two entirely different concepts


Naturally
We created and defined the concepts of good and evil
We developed the means by which to differentiate between the two {morality}


When He consciously, purposefully, and needlessly inflicts it - YES!

you seem really caught up in this idea that God needlessly inflicts pain. There's a lot to unpack there, to start identifying God is in fact the cause of these needless inflictions but with that aside what gives you the authority to judge these things as needless? Isn't it possible that God may do something and you don't understand its purpose? Does God owe it to you to explain his every action? If you believe in God but see him as evil then what exactly is your fate armed with this information about God or are you just making it up as you go?

 

[Treeplanter]

God is incapable of doing something without purpose. So God is unable to do anything needlessly.

You are needlessly conflating purpose with need/needlessness

in one line you say "God consciously and purposefully chose, of His own free will, to drown innocent babies" then you conclude "This is the very definition of NEEDLESSNESS!" those two don't reconcile. if it's down with purposefully it's not needless, if it's not needlessly it's not purposefully. God doesn't do things arbitrarily. his purpose is not needless.

Again, you are conflating purpose with needfulness

As I explained above:

God had a purpose in drowning innocent babies alongside the wicked
His purpose was to save the babies from a fallen world and resurrect them to a better one

That said, did God NEED to drown innocent babies in order to fulfill His purpose?
No, of course not!
God could have saved and resurrected those babies WITHOUT causing them the harm of drowning

That God consciously and purposefully chose to inflict harm anyway means, by definition, that the harm was NEEDLESS

And, to consciously and purposefully inflict NEEDLESS harm is evil and immoral

before anything existed there was God and every act God did was self-motivated (because there was nothing else). Does this make him selfish? God doesn't change so before creation and after creation, God is motivated the same way.

Yes, God was selfish long before He created us - selfish in the exact same way that a man or woman who chooses to bring a child into this world for the express purpose of being; him/herself, exalted would be considered selfish

you seem really caught up in this idea that God needlessly inflicts pain.

Are you saying it is unreasonable to expect moral perfection from a God who claims to be morally perfect and demands that He be eternally glorified for said perfection?

There's a lot to unpack there, to start identifying God is in fact the cause of these needless inflictions

Scripture makes perfectly clear that it was God who, of His own free will, consciously and purposefully flooded the earth with the express purpose of killing every human being {minus Noah & co} on the planet {including innocent babies}

but with that aside what gives you the authority to judge these things as needless?

God was capable of saving babies from a fallen world and resurrecting them to a better one without drowning them in the process

This is not a judgement
This is a fact!

That God needlessly drowned innocent babies is not a judgement
It is a scriptural fact

Isn't it possible that God may do something and you don't understand its purpose?

Of course it is!

Did you read my OP?

I said:

"I'm perfectly willing to accept that God might have had a morally valid reason for consciously and purposefully inflicting the harm of drowning upon those innocent babies

In other words, I'm perfectly willing to accept that the drowning of those babies was, after all, not even needless to begin with..."

Does God owe it to you to explain his every action?

Again, from my OP:

"Doesn't He {God} owe it to us to offer His explanation for having inflicted what seemingly appears {to us} to be a NEEDLESS harm?

Isn't this just common sense?

If you love someone and you truly desire for this someone to fully trust in and love you in return - don't you present yourself with full transparency?

Don't you at least make an effort?"

If you believe in God but see him as evil then what exactly is your fate armed with this information about God or are you just making it up as you go?

I don't believe in the God of the bible, but if He is real then I fully expect that my fate shall be eternal damnation {which will conclusively prove that God is, in fact, evil...}

What do you think my fate SHOULD BE?

 

[Treeplanter]

When you walk into a library do you assume that every book in that library is the same kind of book? That everything in the library is history, or myth, or fiction, or a how to guide?

The first thing to understand is that the Bible isn't a book, it's a library of books.

Then the hard part--actually engaging with the text.

So let's provide an example: Genesis.

What is Genesis? We have an answer to that question, it's one of the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch. We can talk about things such as authorship, such as the Documentary Hypothesis or various alternative hypotheses; but at this point that's not really that important. What is important is what is the point of the books of the Torah--why were they written, redacted, etc. It's the Torah, God's covenant instruction to ancient Israel; or at least that is how its authors/redactors and original recipients understood it.

So Genesis is first and foremost Torah. It's not a coincidence that the stories of Abraham's hospitality and of Sodom occur right next to each other, that's intentional. Abraham, as Israel's patriarch represents what the covenant people of God are supposed to be like in regard to strangers, hospitable, welcoming. When the stranger comes into your midst you invite them in, prepare them food, a bath, clean clothes, your home is like their home. This is presented in dark and stark contrast to how the people of Sodom treated the strangers who came to them; who upon seeing strangers did the opposite of welcoming them and providing for them (and no, the story has nothing to do with sexual orientation).

How much of the text is myth, legend, and/or history? On some level there are certain questions that we aren't going to have a very sufficient answer for.

As for myself, I think Genesis blends all three together. I believe there was an historical Abraham, but that also doesn't mean I believe the stories of Abraham in Genesis should be read like a modern, western history--an accounting of ordered historical facts. What mattered wasn't so much ordered historical facts as it was connecting past and present together in a meaningful way. The dry details of Abraham's story are in a lot of ways much less important than the broad strokes of Abraham's story. It's the story of a promise, a promise of a people, a people with a special place in the world with a special relationship with God. Now, as I said, I believe--as an article of faith--that the figure of Abraham in Genesis correlates with a very real person, and the promises associated with Abraham involve a real person and a real people.

Hence the story of Abraham isn't "history" in the strictest, wooden sense; but neither is it some kind of spiritual allegory or mystical statement about mere abstract ideas.

I appreciate your response - and I get it, the bible is a whole library of books
Some fiction
Some non-fiction
Within the text we find both myth/legend and history
Some of it even reads like a straight up 'how to' guide

That said, apart from an acknowledgement that there are certain questions for which there are no sufficient answers forthcoming, you haven't really answered my question...

How do you, personally, go about determining which is which?

Do you feel as though you are led by the Spirit to correctly discern scripture?

Do you rely upon a teaching authority {for ex: the Catholic Church} to correctly interpret scripture for you?

Is it purely an exercise in reason or is it something you feel in your heart?

You're talking to someone who has been struggling with that sort of thing for most of my life.

I've found an approach that I find personally satisfying, and that has been an approach I discovered while engaging in conversation with Jewish persons. Speaking of Genesis, there is a story about Abraham's grandson Jacob who has a strange encounter with a human (or human-like?) figure, the two wrestle and afterward the figure renames Jacob to Israel because he "wrestled with God". That's what the name Israel means, "struggles with God" or "wrestles with God". The Jewish rabbis have therefore understood that the Jewish people's relationship with God is complicated--it is a relationship of struggling and wrestling with God, of making sense of this profound "I AM".

The value I've gleaned from that was this: That answers don't come easy, and that's okay. The difficult things of the Bible are things to be taken seriously, not ignored, but to be wrestled with. An honest engagement with the Bible means a struggle with it, wrestling with it.

That does mean that there may not be very good, or at least, satisfying answers. That's okay.

There is no way for me as a Christian not to approach the Bible apart from Jesus. I'm not talking about Jesus to say "don't pay attention to that stuff back there", I'm saying "that stuff back there needs to be read in light of Jesus". Jesus, for the Christian, is the lens, the magnifying glass or the microscope through which the entire Bible is to be read. That is the whole reason there is a Bible at all--the Bible didn't fall out of the sky, the Bible was put together by the Christian Church as part of its confession and faith in Jesus.

Again, I appreciate your thoughtful response

This is what I am wrestling with:
"there may not be very good, or at least, satisfying answers. That's okay."

I struggle with resigning myself to:
"there may not be very good, or at least, satisfying answers. That's okay."

This is the question that I posed in my OP:

"If you love someone and you truly desire for this someone to fully trust in and love you in return - don't you present yourself with full transparency?

Don't you at least make an effort?"

If God is God then He can achieve, for us, any end He desires by any means that He desires

Why needlessly insist that we struggle?
Why needlessly force us to wrestle with Him?

Oh I agree with you, and if I thought any of that were a true expression of Christianity I'd probably be in agreement with you in a lot of other things as well.

What do you think happens to people who die without faith in Jesus Christ?