All atheists are aware of the immorality of God’s behavior throughout the Hebrew Testament. There are a number of arguments that revolve around the conquest of Canaan or the death of the Egyptian first born. One thing that does not commonly get mentioned are the times that humans actually argue God into being more just or merciful.
Abraham
The most famous is the bargaining scene between God and Abraham over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah:
Then Abraham drew near, and said, “Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”(Gen. 18:23-25, RSV)
Abraham is actually chastising God, calling on him to be just and not “destroy the righteous with the wicked.” Its almost as if Abraham is having to remind God of his own just and merciful nature – or at least his reputation.
Moses
Less famous, but even more striking, is the scene between Moses and God after the Israelites and Aaron have created the golden calf:
But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.’”(Exodus 32:9-14, RSV)
Notice how Moses diverts his God’s anger? Moses actually appeals to YHWH’s pride: “You dragged the Isrealites out to the desert just to kill them all? But God, what will the neighbors think?” He then all but rebukes God, calling him to “repent of this evil” and reminds him of his earlier promises.
Job
I’m not quite sure how the book of Job fits into this. On one hand, the point of Job (as I see it) is that God is beyond mortal categories of moral and immoral. And yet, there is that curious inversion of roles, where Job is laying out his case against God Almighty, and God actually responds.
Archibald MacLeish expanded on this in his remarkable play J.B. After Job cowers before Mr. Zuss, in the role of God, Zuss has the following epiphany:
The whole creation! And God showed him!
God stood stooping there to show him!
Last Orion! Least sea shell…
And what did Job do?Job…just…sat!
Sat there!
Dumb!
Until it ended! Then! … you heard him!
Them, he calmed me!
Gentled me the way a farmhand
Gentles a bulging, bugling bull!
Forgave me! …
for the world! …
for everything![...]
He’d heard of God and now he saw Him!
Who’s the judge in judgement there?
Who plays the hero, God or him?
Is God to be forgiven?
Are humans called to be better than God? I think that’s an implication that you could draw from the Bible.
Huh. That last question is interesting. Maybe one could interpret some of those stories as beseeching humans to make up for God’s injustices.
Another way to look at it is that the world is not fair, so it is up to us to make it fair.
Of course, most of the Bible won’t fit that theme at all, but it is an interesting take on those stories, anyway.
I see those histories as justifying Abraham and Moses relevance and importance. In them, they are not only dod’s speakers but also the intermediaries between god and his sheeps. Along the bible, human’s paper is usually demeaned, they only have to listen and execute god’s orders, with his help. Then, where is the greatness of those leaders? We are speaking about the founding fathers of jewish people, would you be pride of them for following instructions?
Besides, YHWH is a pretty humanized god in the Hebrew testament and yes, in those passages he gets corrected. But taking the first one, as it is ordered in the bible that you should punish your neighbour’s inmoral behaviour god could argue that every inhabitant of those cities was, in fact, inmoral; instead it begins the bargain between both of them:
“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
Ugh, I thought god was all-knowing, but he has to find 45 (then 40, 30,20 and finally, only 10) righteous people; he doesn’t know if there are righteous people in the city he wants to destroy.
The next we know (Gen 19) is that god sends two angels to destroy the cities, those angels meets Lot who shows his righteousness by offering his virgin daughters to be violated by an angry mob instead of the angels. When Lot and his properties -including wife and daughters, of course- are safe enough God sends burning sulfur. So, what for came the angels to Somorra? It’s typically greek the bit about Lot’s wife staring back and becoming a pillar of salt.
By the way, I would like to point again that Egyptians are not god’s people. Who “created” them? Why is it implied that they are not descendants of Adam and Eve? Why should god matter about what the neighbours would say?
It’s certainly interesting to observe how God completely changes in character over time. Back in the earliest books his relationships are a lot more physical, and he exhibits some very human traits.
He frequently changes his mind, he walks around, he turns his back, he sits down to share a meal with Abraham, he even (bizarrely) has a wrestling match with Jacob, and he tries to kill Moses. In none of these situations does he seem omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent.
The early Judeans clearly had a much more down-to-earth perception of God, probably even to the point where one could argue that they believed in a different god than modern Jews or Christians do (additionally Jahwe was only of the gods early Judeans believed in). This perception has survived in the Bible up to this day, though it is glossed over by modern believers – if they’re even aware of it.
correction:
(additionally Jahwe was only one of the gods early Judeans believed in)
That’s one of the reasons for catholics not defending usually the OT -appart from the homophobic bits and the “ten” commandements- and refer to it as being allegoric. Another reason could be that OT is plainly absurd and inmoral. I think Constantine or some council should have eliminated it from the bible.
Another explanation is that with Jesus humankind had a new covenant with God, wich in fact changes our relationship with him (basically erasing the original sin). But of course that hardly can explain that god changed from a genocidal psycopath to a loving father, much less can it explain that he became almighty and omniscient, and universal.
He was still an apprentice.
If young Jahwe was the padawan, then who was the master?
Very puzzling, this enigma is.
I would guess that the student (ie, man) has become the master. In many cases, the bible god must be taught how to behave in a non (or at least less-) evil manner.
But I bet he has an awesome light-sabre.
Ugh, I thought god was all-knowing, but he has to find 45 (then 40, 30,20 and finally, only 10) righteous people; he doesn’t know if there are righteous people in the city he wants to destroy.
I’ve always seen that interpreted as YHWH attempting to point out to Abraham that there aren’t any righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, so he shouldn’t worry about it.
Like, say you and your buddy are trying to decide where to eat dinner. You suggest a restaurant. He says, “But you didn’t like the burgers,” and you say, “Yeah, but it’s still a good restaurant.” He says, “But you thought their fish was badly cooked,” and you say, “Yeah, but it’s still a good restaurant.” This goes on for a bit until you realize that the restaurant is actually terrible and you’d rather go somewhere else.
If you reverse perspectives on the bargaining thing, then, Abraham isn’t so much talking YHWH down from committing genocide as YHWH is working to justify it. So if YHWH knows everyone there is wicked the conversation makes sense. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it makes sense.
Of course this episode is then followed by YHWH sending messengers in to the city to see what’s up, which kinda takes away from that particular interpretation. But my entire point is to offer a scenario in which the bargaining session makes sense and still allows for YHWH to have an awareness of the relative wickedness of S&G. It makes the following episode contradictory, but seeing as how the answer to that is always, “The Bible doesn’t contradict itself because I read something somewhere that says so!” I’m not too worried about anyone’s cognitive dissonance.
“26 And the LORD said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” ”
it’s different than
“If I find in a city 50 righteous I would spare the whole place”
Now, some christian apologist could say that old hebrew didn’t have such a thing as a conditional form, of that grammar is devil’s work, but it is a curious choice the simple future in there.
I have looked also at an spanish translation, and it also uses the future (if + present , future ). I’m not that sure about english, but definitely in spanish we would have used the conditional tense in your scenario. “Far be that from thee!” sounds pretty bossy in spanish too (the exact translation from what I read is “Never do that!”), when your interlocutor is god.
God doesn’t know how many righteous people are in Sodom although he wants to destroy it, and then changes his mind because of Abraham and he agrees to look for righteous people.
On another hand, in Genesis 19 the angels are sended, allegedly, to destroy the city and not to confirm that there aren’t righteous people. But as it is god who destroys the city it would have made more sense to send the angels to test the people.
Of course, as always, twisting the words christian apologetics may find a way to avoid the contradiction.
BTW, I read what is said after, what about before?
Gen 18:21
” 21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.”
I will go down??
It’s pretty clear that he still doesn’t know how the citizens from Sodom behave. BUT then, maybe you are right about the other bit and he wasn’t going to destroy the city even if Abraham had not spoken, he is just saying that he will try to know and if there is righteous people he won’t burn Sodom.
Which further implies that God isn’t quite so great and onmi-whatever after all. That’s a surprise.
I didn’t saw that the first time, the connection between gen 18 and Gen 19 may be that sentence:
” 4But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:”
proving that every men in Sodom was wicked and so God should destroy the city.
Wait, what about Sodom’s women? They doesn’t count? They are not even “people”.
Of course not, one of the few things the buybull is consistent about is the classification of women as property.
Humans may or may not be better than god but it would be hard to be worse.
So for the sake of ten, God would not have destroyed Sodom, but apparently he’s fine with destroying it despite there being four good people. I wonder what the cut-off was. Five? Eight? I guess we’ll never know.
You should probably take the whole story with a pinch of salt.
Maybe even a pillar of salt.
“On one hand, the point of Job (as I see it) is that God is beyond mortal categories of moral and immoral.”
Basically this is also the base for Lovercraftian’s Old Ones :D
I’ve been spending too much time on facebook — I instantly looked for the “Like” button…
Of course humans are better than God. They have courts that set the length of prison sentences. They have set time-outs for their offspring. They don’t throw their offspring and anyone who has committed a crime and anyone else who doesn’t grovel or think just right into a punishment forever! bwaahhhhhahahahahahaha!
Does anyone know that quote by Paul that said something to the effect of “I wouldn’t even think of a lot of evil things if you didn’t put them into my head by talking about them and telling me not to do them.”?
It would be such a great one to tell christians. When I went to church as a teenager and read it, I thought, “Haha, now they’ll see themselves and stop and think.” Wahhhhhahahahahahahaha!
I’ve tried a search in online concordances and such, but must not know enough about what words were used or which book it was in to begin to find it.
The only crime worthy of eternal punishment, would be to sentence someone to eternal punishment.
A crime is wicked and blameworthy in direct proportion to the worth of the one assaulted. — John Piper
I’m sorry Jus, but your last comment crossed the line of “no evangelising” by far, far too much. The spam filter caught it, and I’m not letting it through. This is not a rigidly policed board, but 500 words of pure evangelism with a dozen links in it is, in my opinion, too much. Daniel or Vorjack might over-rule me on it, but I thought you deserved an explanation since you’re otherwise a generally polite poster.
No worries, Custador. And I’m sorry if I have crossed the line. I have thought about that “no evangelizing” policy, and wondered what it meant. But now you have showed me an example. Thanks for letting me know!
(1) John Piper is an a$$.
(2) So you’re saying that an assault on Paris Hilton (economic worth) or Ghandi (moral worth) or Einstein (intellectual worth) would mean that the person who did the assaulting should be punished harsher than if someone else of “lesser” worth was assaulted? Dude, that is f*cked up.
So much for all being equal under the eyes of god, or however that bulshit quote goes.
Some are more equal than others.
I see your argument here: as God is infinite worthy any little crime against him deserves an infinite punishment. This argument is flawed in -at least- two ways: any eternal punishment is infinite, so the punishment could be not to eat chocolate for all the eternity, instead of being tortured for all the eternity. The other problem is in the premisse, what John stated has sense in a cast system and not in a democracy where everybody should be equal for the law.
On another hand, I could say that I find fairer that the punsihment should be proportional to the damage caused. Then, as we cannot harm God, there should be no punishment at all for such a crime.
LRA, Sunny Day, Len:
Sorry I didn’t make the context clear. Piper is not talking about the difference in worth between human beings, but between different creatures.
“A crime is wicked and blameworthy in direct proportion to the worth of the one assaulted. So there are no penalties for slapping mosquitoes. However if you kill dogs with the same disregard, you can get into trouble. And you’ll be in worse trouble if you do the same thing with horses. And when you assault a person, your guilt increases in the same way that the worth of a person is greater than the worth of an animal.”
Fransec:
Yes you got the argument! What Piper is aiming at is the difference in worth between creature and Creator.
“And so it is when you assault the glory of God. Since God is infinitely greater, infinitely more valuable, than human beings, an assault on his worth is wicked and blameworthy beyond measure. And therefore it is just and right that God should condemn people to eternal condemnation.”
But it’s really not that simple. You’ll see if you read the article.
But the article still presupposes that god is “infinitely more valuable, than human beings” and offers no justification for this position. If you take the more logical position that god is less valuable than a single human, then an assault on god ranks up there with slapping a mosquito.
Nox, you are right that he offers no justification for the presupposition. But I don’t think the opposite presupposition is a more “logical” one to take. Because, what is this God who is less valuable than human being? He’s no God at all. Unless you’re trying to say, “God doesn’t exist”, which is another presupposition.
If God doesn’t exist, then yes an assault on him ranks up there with slapping a mosquito. No, actually if God doesn’t exist, then a mosquito is infinitely more valuable than him!
“God does not exist” is not a pesupposition – it’s a refusal to blithely accept somebody else’s presuppostion.
“What is this God who is less valuable than human being?”
Deus ex machina.
The god we make.
A god who accrues negative value through the measurable detrimental effects of humans believing in him.
A crime against a human is much worse then a crime against god since a human will sustain some damage from a crime committed against them. If god is either fictional (my position) or omni-omni (your position) he can’t be damaged by anything we do.
“I love you baby, why do you make me hit you?” – God
Custador:
Excellent attitude! We should always refuse to blithely accept somebody else’s presupposition, whenever possible. Nevertheless, I think both sides are still just hypotheses/presuppositions. When talking about God, we have to start with one of two positions: either “God exists” or “God exists not”. (A different matter if we are not talking about God)
Nox:
As I guessed, you were aiming at “the god we make”. But this is no God at all. It is just one form of the “God exists not” hypothesis: “God is fictional”, “Deus ex machina”.
And even if we take Nietzsche’s position of “God is dead…. we have killed him”—as implied by Vorjack’s question (probably unintentionally), “Are humans called to be better than God?”—our starting point is still “God exists not”, which is just a hypothesis, and is no more or less “logical” than “God exists”.
Yoav: Shalom.
If we picture God as a Father, then we might see how he can be hurt. He does not wish any of his children to perish, even his rebellious son who wishes to kill him. Like how David hurt when he heard of the death of his son Absalom, who led an almost successful rebellion against him.
And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” — 2 Samuel 18
Sunny Day:
God is not a wife/child-abuser. He is a slave master who went to the market, and handpicked and bought a bunch of blind slaves, in order to sacrifice them to his God. He told them they would undergo a slow and painful death, so that he could show the world how terrifyingly cruel he was. To prove it, he branded them ON THE FACE, implanting an electronic device on their faces, which caused them “persistent pain”.
Problem is, after they got branded, somehow, despite the pain and certain death, these slaves became glad, and started to go through that torturous death process gladly and joyfully, of their own accord. They started singing “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound… I once… was blind, but now I see”. Looks like either they have gone completely wacko and “pulled the wool over their own eyes”, or the master did something terribly kind, not cruel. Like “branding” them with a VISOR, by which they could perceive a reality that is so glorious and joyous that they could not perceive before.
…thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become… slaves of righteousness….
– Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus
(By the way, all the slaves in the market are blind from birth)
@Jus.
Let me repeat, imaginary being can’t be hurt.
According to the buybull we will parish because god is pissed at us over our great, great, great to the umpteen level great grandparents listening to a talking snake, what a whiny asshole if he’s all that powerful why can’t he just get over it and make us not perish?
Um… are you really triumphing slavery, in any form?
Not to mention the clear-cut position that God is fictional, which would mean there should be no penalty whatsoever for disavowing him (which of course there won’t be, at least from God, but society’s response is another matter).
How exactly do you commit a crime against an omniscient omnipotent being?
Any crime such a being did not foresee disproves omniscience. Any action it couldn’t stop disproves omniscience. Any crime against itself it chose not to stop would be self inflicted.
Seems that god is the ultimate self abuser.
I think you mean to say “Onanism” not “self-abuser.” =)
(And yes, I know the controversy behind “the crime of Onan,” but that’s not nearly as entertaining.)
I would interpret these examples with an emphasis on their literary value. Specifically in the first example, Abraham’s encounter with God heightens the tension about the outcome of Sodom. Of course, we’ve all read the story multiple times so it’s not much of a surprise to us, but imagine if you were unfamiliar with it- you’re unsure what will happen but you know it’s going to be a close call judging by the fact that Abraham doesn’t seem too confident in his original estimate of fifty, which causes him to slowly whittle it down all the way to just ten.
I guess you could interpret it as a discussion about man and God’s relation to “morality” if you really wanted to, but theology is boring and psychotic and not as much fun as literary criticism.
Something similar happens to Jesus in Matthew 15:21-28