challenge: try to describe a society more evil...

[bunny]

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I have a few questions for you. What do you think benevolent and all-loving means? Based on old religion courses I took, all-loving in the context of the original Hebrew translations basically means "wishing another well". Hoping that they have a prosperous life, good things happen to them, they make good decisions in their life, etc. Does all-loving, in this context, imply you cannot punish others who do wrong? Does it imply that you cannot give a decree that an extremely oppressed group of people go to war? Does it mean we have to turn a blind eye to evil actions because we are benevolent and love that group of people anyway?

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I always struggled with what omni-benevolent could mean. If anything, I think it means (or at least includes) a desire to minimise suffering and pain. As such, I dont think it necessarily precludes punishment, perhaps even including violence (although I personally am a pacifist).

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I do not think being all-loving and benevolent implies these things. In fact, just the opposite is true in my opinion. At some point, even if we deeply care about the well being of someone or another group of people, we may have to take actions against them that ideally we wouldn't wish to take. Of course going to war is an extreme example of this, but I think it should be obvious that some wars are necessary even if we don't want to harm the opposing group (and honestly wish them well... i.e. that they would simply cease their actions and live a "good" life).

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I certainly agree that a case can be made for the necessity of war in some circumstances (I am aware that part of the reason I can afford the luxury of pacifism is because there are other people fighting battles for me - in a perfect world, perhaps my stance would shift to some less extreme position). I am not really criticising a primitive tribe for going to war, I am more making reference to God and his actions or views, as portrayed in the bible.

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As to your assertion that "God could have made the whole population die painlessly in their sleep"; sure he could have. He could make everyone die painlessly in their sleep. He could make everyone live forever (if he's all powerful). This would require intervention by God on a constant basis though, which doesn't seem to jive with there being pain in the first place. There is either pain, or there isn't. Even if God caused them to die painlessly in their sleep (in the Bible story), you could easily move on to the next group of people and say, "hey, why didn't God cause these people to painlessly die in their sleep". The cycle would never end, unless there was no pain, period.

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I was not suggesting God is bad because there is some pain. Some others may make that claim, but I can accept that maybe the world is a better place (in an "overall" kind of way) given it includes some pain. What I find hard to believe is that God's action (or inaction) in the story as portrayed here minimised suffering.

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Yes, in this story, God chose to NOT intervene and have the Israelite's enemies painlessly die in their sleep. Instead, he simply told Moses it was time for war, and Moses did the work. This seems reasonable to me, unless we go down the path of God tweaking and optimizing every human action. Essentially, what I am saying is, war is inevitable (and it was in this case, as Israel was in a crappy situation -- due to these enemies around them that they are now at war with), and just because God sanctioned a war does not mean he is a madman and does not love his people.

I think the problem may be in the use of the word all-loving or omnibenevolent. Maybe some theists think one can still be all-loving and allow people to be punished (or allow wars to occur, for whatever reason). Some atheists may think omnibenevolence and punishment are mutually exclusive.

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I dont think they are mutually exclusive. But the only way I could reconcile the above story consistent with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god would be to claim that the murdered tribe had behaved so abysmally that the punishment they received (ie being massacred) was the only just response. While I can accept that this is possibly true (an omniscient God would be much better at deciding that than me [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]) it doesnt gel with my intuition of what "benevolent" means.

A christian who claims that they "got what they deserved" or something similar is being consistent, in my view. But is unlikely to persuade a skeptic that they are correct.

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Also, I do not think it is right to justify political actions based solely on a Biblical passage. However, I see nothing wrong in basing your morality on the study of the Bible, just as I don't see anything wrong in basing your morality on the study of a philosopher that you like. I think there is a big difference between "study" and plucking out random quotes to support a moral (or political) position.

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I agree with you. I didnt mean to say people shouldnt do this. What I meant is that it can be unnerving to an atheist to here someone say "This book tells me how to live well. It is infallible and I find my moral answers from the stories in here." when the book in question includes stories such as the above which, on the surface, present abhorrent actions as virtuous.

EDIT: Apologies for the delay in responding - I am struggling with internet access at the moment (the more I deal with Telstra, our national, quasi-monopolistic phone provider, the more I sympathise with all our AC posters...)

[Lestat]

I don't agree with you on this Chez. It doesn't matter whether you think God is evil or not, if He in fact exists. The whole system of animals killing other animals in order to eat them and survive can seem evil, but who are we to say? It's the way of the world. Either conform or perish. If God exists, it's His ball and He makes the rules. Maybe when all's said and done, what we thought was evil, really wasn't. But even if it is, it's the way of the universe. Conform or perish. I guess you'd rather perish?

[yukoncpa]

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I don't agree with you on this Chez. It doesn't matter whether you think God is evil or not, if He in fact exists. The whole system of animals killing other animals in order to eat them and survive can seem evil, but who are we to say? It's the way of the world. Either conform or perish. If God exists, it's His ball and He makes the rules. Maybe when all's said and done, what we thought was evil, really wasn't. But even if it is, it's the way of the universe. Conform or perish. I guess you'd rather perish?



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Hi Lestat,

I can’t answer for Chez, but I’d rather not perish if I think I can trick this God. As long as I can out smart him, I’ll do what it takes to keep alive. But if I can’t outsmart him, then I won’t worship him and I’ll hope like hell, that there is a better God who will save me for not worshiping a monster, or I’ll just grit my teeth and hope for a Slaughter House Five, type of after life.

[Lestat]

I'm not sure it's even a matter of tricking or out-smarting God. The big thing seems to be "honor" and "obey". Does the bible say anything about "agreeing with"?

[Matt R.]

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I was not suggesting God is bad because there is some pain. Some others may make that claim, but I can accept that maybe the world is a better place (in an "overall" kind of way) given it includes some pain. What I find hard to believe is that God's action (or inaction) in the story as portrayed here minimised suffering.


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Hey bunny,
Here is what I am getting at. Based on your above quote, you seem to be suggesting that for the God of our universe, if he exists, to be omnibenevolent, he must minimize pain? Is this accurate? At least, you are definitely suggesting that (unless these tribes were completely evil and behaving horribly), that for him to be benevolent he should minimize the suffering of the tribes in THIS case.

Let's assume the tribes which were destroyed were not outright evil... although they probably wished to wipe out the Israelites, I don't think there is much else from the passage (that I recall) which suggests they were monsters. So, if God is omnibenevolent, and the war with Israel was necessary, then God MUST minimize the pain of the opposing tribe if they are being killed, right?

I disagree with this, and here's why (this may be rehashing my last post, but I'll try to make it more clear why I think this). We will assume that, for God to be omnibenevolent, he must minimize the suffering of the tribe or tribes described in Deuteronomy (by making them die in their sleep or whatever, or clearing off some landmass for Israel -- whatever gives everyone the minimal amount of suffering). Now, if God does it in this case, it is clear he must do it in another case, otherwise we could equally say "God is not omnibenevolent, because he did not minimize suffering in this other case." So God must minimize the suffering of the victims in another war which Israel was involved in.

Here is an analogy to how I think of it, similar to a mathematical induction argument. This may sound retarded to you since you are a mathematician, so feel free to laugh at me.

Assume: God must minimize the suffering of people in case X to be considered ombnibenevolent.

(1) (from you assertion) It is a true statement that God must minimize the suffering of people in case X to be omnibenevolent.
(2) God must then minimize the suffering of people in case X+1 to be omnibenevolent. This is from my argument above... we can easily simply move on to the next instance of "non-minimal suffering" if God indeed DOES minimize the suffering in case X.
(3) God must therefore minimize ALL suffering to be omnibenevolent.

In other words, making the claim that "God did not minimize the suffering of the tribes in Deuteronomy, thus he isn't omnibenevolent" is equivalent to saying "God does not minimize the suffering of EVERYONE, thus he isn't omnibenevolent."

The latter statement, while potentially true, is absurd from my point of view. It is clear God created a universe based on physical laws, logic, etc. For him to minimize ALL suffering, he would have to, for example, limit our inherent decision making ability (anything at all that would increase pain would be disallowed), we wouldn't die, and on and on and on. This is what I was getting at when I said "There either is pain, or there isn't". If God must minimize pain in ONE instance to be considered omnibenevolent, he must minimize pain in ALL instances (imo, this would involve simply removing pain). Thus, I don't think "minimizing pain in a specific instance" should be a requirement for omnibenevolence, as it reduces to an absurd claim. If God exists and intervenes, then he CAN minimize pain if he so chooses, but it should not be a requirement for a definition of omnibenevolence, in my opinion. Also, note that to always minimize pain God would always have to intervene and "tweak" the universe. In my opinion, it's kind of silly to have a universe based on physics at all in this case because everything would be unpredictible due to constant interventions; we couldn't, for example, predict the trajectory of a ball because it may or may not hit someone in the head.

This boils down to my claim that pain and suffering is an inherent property of the universe (that cannot and should not be removed) which is a required biological mechanism for us to cope with our environment.

[chezlaw]

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I don't agree with you on this Chez. It doesn't matter whether you think God is evil or not, if He in fact exists. The whole system of animals killing other animals in order to eat them and survive can seem evil, but who are we to say? It's the way of the world. Either conform or perish. If God exists, it's His ball and He makes the rules. Maybe when all's said and done, what we thought was evil, really wasn't. But even if it is, it's the way of the universe. Conform or perish. I guess you'd rather perish?

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I think you're making the mistake of missing the upside of refusing to conform - similar mistake to the pascal's wager type. Its a gamble either way and the upside of god being good vs god being loathsome makes it an easy call.

It why even if you and DS are right in principle in practice its a bad bet i.e. if you knew it was conform or perish you might be best of conforming but as you can never know that, you're far better off trusting that god is good (by your own sense of goodness, no need to consider any absolute goodness about which you might be mistaken)

I think you should also consider that this loathsome god must want something for itself. Masters who rule slaves through fear want something and so aren't OOO, there may be some value in not providing what they want. Its a problem for a good god as well but at least we can fall back on the idea that his doing it for our benefit.

chez

[bunny]

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I was not suggesting God is bad because there is some pain. Some others may make that claim, but I can accept that maybe the world is a better place (in an "overall" kind of way) given it includes some pain. What I find hard to believe is that God's action (or inaction) in the story as portrayed here minimised suffering.


[/ QUOTE ]

Hey bunny,
Here is what I am getting at. Based on your above quote, you seem to be suggesting that for the God of our universe, if he exists, to be omnibenevolent, he must minimize pain? Is this accurate? At least, you are definitely suggesting that (unless these tribes were completely evil and behaving horribly), that for him to be benevolent he should minimize the suffering of the tribes in THIS case.

Let's assume the tribes which were destroyed were not outright evil... although they probably wished to wipe out the Israelites, I don't think there is much else from the passage (that I recall) which suggests they were monsters. So, if God is omnibenevolent, and the war with Israel was necessary, then God MUST minimize the pain of the opposing tribe if they are being killed, right?

I disagree with this, and here's why (this may be rehashing my last post, but I'll try to make it more clear why I think this). We will assume that, for God to be omnibenevolent, he must minimize the suffering of the tribe or tribes described in Deuteronomy (by making them die in their sleep or whatever, or clearing off some landmass for Israel -- whatever gives everyone the minimal amount of suffering). Now, if God does it in this case, it is clear he must do it in another case, otherwise we could equally say "God is not omnibenevolent, because he did not minimize suffering in this other case." So God must minimize the suffering of the victims in another war which Israel was involved in.

Here is an analogy to how I think of it, similar to a mathematical induction argument. This may sound retarded to you since you are a mathematician, so feel free to laugh at me.

Assume: God must minimize the suffering of people in case X to be considered ombnibenevolent.

(1) (from you assertion) It is a true statement that God must minimize the suffering of people in case X to be omnibenevolent.
(2) God must then minimize the suffering of people in case X+1 to be omnibenevolent. This is from my argument above... we can easily simply move on to the next instance of "non-minimal suffering" if God indeed DOES minimize the suffering in case X.
(3) God must therefore minimize ALL suffering to be omnibenevolent.

In other words, making the claim that "God did not minimize the suffering of the tribes in Deuteronomy, thus he isn't omnibenevolent" is equivalent to saying "God does not minimize the suffering of EVERYONE, thus he isn't omnibenevolent."

The latter statement, while potentially true, is absurd from my point of view. It is clear God created a universe based on physical laws, logic, etc. For him to minimize ALL suffering, he would have to, for example, limit our inherent decision making ability (anything at all that would increase pain would be disallowed), we wouldn't die, and on and on and on. This is what I was getting at when I said "There either is pain, or there isn't". If God must minimize pain in ONE instance to be considered omnibenevolent, he must minimize pain in ALL instances (imo, this would involve simply removing pain). Thus, I don't think "minimizing pain in a specific instance" should be a requirement for omnibenevolence, as it reduces to an absurd claim. If God exists and intervenes, then he CAN minimize pain if he so chooses, but it should not be a requirement for a definition of omnibenevolence, in my opinion. Also, note that to always minimize pain God would always have to intervene and "tweak" the universe. In my opinion, it's kind of silly to have a universe based on physics at all in this case because everything would be unpredictible due to constant interventions; we couldn't, for example, predict the trajectory of a ball because it may or may not hit someone in the head.

This boils down to my claim that pain and suffering is an inherent property of the universe (that cannot and should not be removed) which is a required biological mechanism for us to cope with our environment.

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I do think omnibenevolent means minimising suffering. However, I dont think that necessarily means eliminating it.

Your argument doesnt seem retarded to me - you have a consistent position in my opinion, although it seems to lead to the claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. (ie that if God could minimise the suffering just a tiny bit more he would have.)

I never found this a very satisfactory answer to the problem of evil, but of course that doesnt mean it isnt right.

[MaxWeiss]

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Hey, this Brick Testament is great. I looked up the link in my King James bible, about the girl who has to marry her rapist ( Deuteronomy 2-29 ) and sure enough, she has to marry her rapist because, “ he hath humbled her”. But Snowball, you should be informed - preachers don’t use Deuteronomy when preaching to their congregation.



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Yeah I know. I've been to church. God though. How [censored] cool would it be to preach a guest sermon about this stuff. I am tooooootally down to do this if anyone can set me up with fake credentials at a church anywhere near LA. We need someone to film it though. It'd be like Borat yo.

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I would attend church for that service.

[SNOWBALL]

God murders jews who complain about wandering in the desert

The story of Er and Onan
I guess killing Onan maybe makes sense, but wtf is up with killing Er? All it says is "Er was offensive." I guess bad manners=death

Noah gets drunk, naked, sobers up, acts like a lunatic

A couple of jews trick an entire city into circumcizing themselves, and then they murder all of the inhabitants I wanna make this one into a movie.

[NotReady]

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Ummm, and the reason NR doesn't respond to this stuff is that he has no response.


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Actually, I just found this thread.

Pick one thing from the Bible you think proves God is evil. Research it, say why you disagree with the explanation, and I'll respond.