(Continued from my
previous post on morality):
For my second line of
reasoning, I will go back to the claim that Christianity provides a foundation
for objective morality to distinguish between right and wrong. Our Lord God has
defined for us that sin is wrong and has outlined which actions are considered
to be sinful. However, this Lord that is referred to in the Holy Bible
(particularly the Old Testament) finds no problem with slavery or murdering
people because of things such as homosexuality, idolatry, or witchcraft (yes,
witchcraft (Deuteronomy 18:10)). God did not make any mention that slavery and
war are wrong, but rather that the Israelites (God’s people) should utilize
violence to eliminate anyone else that did not accept God and succumb to His
wrath. If this Lord were truly a being of caring, compassion, forgiveness,
benevolence, PEACE, and LOVE, it doesn't show. Here is a prime example from the
New International Version of the Holy Bible itself, where Yahweh (the Lord
God)is speaking to the Israelites through Moses:
“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.” – Deuteronomy 20:10-15.
Does this sound like the loving and caring God that the church portrays? Not at all… It is one of the most immoral things I can think of to command to an army that if a city accepts an offering of peace, to then proceed to force them into labor. That is the definition of needless suffering. I, with my secular morality, would think it better advice that if a city accepts your offer of PEACE, then you stay true to your word of an offer of PEACE, and go about your days in your respective cities in PEACE. But no, God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:4-5, Deuteronomy 5:8-10) and an angry God (Isaiah 13:9), so anyone who commits idolatry and worships another God is deserving of physical death. Thankfully, our modern culture has opted to oppose such immoral behavior. This loving God takes on this controversial tone throughout the entire Old Testament. You can observe this for yourself simply by skimming through books of the Torah (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (not so much Genesis)) and the Major Prophet books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel).
One other sign of God’s barbaric nature is His pre-Christ requirement for the Jews to give sacrificial burnt offerings of animals for their repentance of guilt and sin. What I find disturbing is the part of the story of Noah’s Ark where, after Noah/his family/the animals get out of the ark, Noah then proceeds to build an altar for the Lord and sacrifice some of the clean animals and birds (Genesis 8:20) on top of the already global physical genocide that had been done. What I find truly unnerving is the next line, which reads: “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma…” (Genesis 8:21, NIV, or “sweet savour” is the translation in the KJV). Of course, from what I remember about mass as a kid, the typical church chooses to neglect this part of Noah’s Ark or to brush over it.
The only possible way Christians will defend the Old Testament’s cruelty
is to say that Yahweh was appealing to the historical and cultural context of
that time; because the Israelites and its surrounding nations felt that things
such as slavery, the bloodshed of sacrificial offerings, and war were a part of
their way of life, God would not tell them otherwise and would instead tell
them how to treat slaves, how/when to conduct burnt offerings, and how to
conduct war. However, why would God’s morality depend on the culture of sinful
man? You would think, with his omniscience and benevolence, that He would still
view slavery, sacrificial offerings, and war as wrong. I would not expect such
a Lord of ‘enduring love’ to advocate the use of dehumanization, violence,
bloodshed, and war as a solution to anything, but rather advocate alternative
solutions such as respect, kindness, negotiation, tolerance, and PEACE. There
is no indication that Yahweh supports the golden rule of ‘treat others how you
would want to be treated’ (one example being that He did not allow His people
(the Israelites) to be treated as slaves under the Egyptians (Exodus 3:6-10)). There
is no conceivable reason why Yahweh could not give humans any insight on how to
live lives of peace, rather than war. Or am I mistaken?“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.” – Deuteronomy 20:10-15.
Does this sound like the loving and caring God that the church portrays? Not at all… It is one of the most immoral things I can think of to command to an army that if a city accepts an offering of peace, to then proceed to force them into labor. That is the definition of needless suffering. I, with my secular morality, would think it better advice that if a city accepts your offer of PEACE, then you stay true to your word of an offer of PEACE, and go about your days in your respective cities in PEACE. But no, God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:4-5, Deuteronomy 5:8-10) and an angry God (Isaiah 13:9), so anyone who commits idolatry and worships another God is deserving of physical death. Thankfully, our modern culture has opted to oppose such immoral behavior. This loving God takes on this controversial tone throughout the entire Old Testament. You can observe this for yourself simply by skimming through books of the Torah (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (not so much Genesis)) and the Major Prophet books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel).
One other sign of God’s barbaric nature is His pre-Christ requirement for the Jews to give sacrificial burnt offerings of animals for their repentance of guilt and sin. What I find disturbing is the part of the story of Noah’s Ark where, after Noah/his family/the animals get out of the ark, Noah then proceeds to build an altar for the Lord and sacrifice some of the clean animals and birds (Genesis 8:20) on top of the already global physical genocide that had been done. What I find truly unnerving is the next line, which reads: “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma…” (Genesis 8:21, NIV, or “sweet savour” is the translation in the KJV). Of course, from what I remember about mass as a kid, the typical church chooses to neglect this part of Noah’s Ark or to brush over it.
Obviously, the Lord God carries an entirely different tone once He decides to manifest Himself on earth as Jesus Christ. They are nearly polar opposites in their teachings, where God generally treated sinners with hatred/genocide and Jesus generally treated sinners with love/kindness. I cannot see the connection between the two as being a part of the same Holy Trinity. There is a reason why Christian apologists preach the Gospel and do not preach the Torah.
I would rather stand by my own developed subjective/contextual moral code due to my upbringing, environment, education, awareness, and understanding. You may call me a satan (which is not a proper noun in Hebrew) against God because, yes, I am an adversary of God. And I emphasize: do not be afraid of a life without Christianity. There is more to fear in the belief of a barbaric, jealous, angry, persecuting, war-prophesying, totalitarian, and selfish Lord, a tempting evil devil known as Satan, and a fire-burning Hell where you are condemned if you decide not to believe. That is what I take from the Bible at the most fundamental level of interpretation.
Ahh I see you added a response to the contextual view of YHWH in the OT :). The move to "why would God’s morality depend on the culture of sinful [humans]?" is a good move to make. However, I think it is roughly the question of "if God is supposed to be so good...why didn't he make stuff better? Why does he interact with suffering rather than stopping it?" and that sort of thing, which is essentially the problem of evil. I think it would be helpful for you/readers to work on that issue, since I think that's what it will ultimately come down to. So the question at root seems to be: "If there is a good God, how can there be evil in the world?" And the answer most people will give is "because God wanted us to have free will." To which you might respond "but is that *really* worth all the needless suffering I mentioned before?" And they might respond "Well, us having a free will is the greatest possible good, so it would outweigh the greatest possible suffering" or that sort of thing, you can imagine how the discussion might continue from there. Then, once you've resolved this question you can work back up to "Why, in the context of the OT, did God just work within the existing moral systems rather than changing them?" To which someone might respond "Well God did change them! They're different now aren't they?" And so forth!
ReplyDeleteYou're definitely still right about the lack of moral absolutes (I think this is what you mean by 'objective,' because the inconsistency of God's interaction with what we would think are absolutes are what your arguments target. But no one seems to be careful with these terms anymore anyway so no worries. 'Objective' is the view that there is a fact of the matter about whether the actions we perform are right or wrong, which is compatible with contextual/situational morality). Anyone who claims absolute morals (certain things are wrong at all times and all places) on the basis of "Bible" is sorely mistaken. I think your argument certainly shows that if nothing else. People sometimes respond "well there's some things that are absolute!" But I would imagine you wouldn't have too much trouble refuting that objection.