tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030110973061875792.post5171575428305116312..comments2024-03-16T21:32:23.088-04:00Comments on A Sure Word: Is the Bible Immoral? Part 2: Did God Order a Genocide?RKBentleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00566375018731000081noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030110973061875792.post-24614479378726781302015-11-22T17:27:39.763-05:002015-11-22T17:27:39.763-05:00You've made no argument about why God has no c...<b>You've made no argument about why God has no claim on us even though He created us.</b><br /><br />I thought I had. Of course, you've made no argument about why God <i>does</i> have a claim on us just because He made our ancestors. I offer you one moral intuition against another; I argue that it makes a difference whether your creation has any interests or thoughts of its own. A pot doesn't care what use it is put to, or whether it is altered or destroyed. A human does.<br /><br /><b>Do you not worry that God will also deal with you just as He promised?</b><br /><br />Should you not ask, do I not worry that God will deal with me as you believe He has promised? I note that Paul says <i>nothing</i> about Hell. Moses says nothing about any sort of life after death, much less punishment after death. Even Jesus, who is recorded as speaking about Hell, spoke indifferently about a fire that is never quenched and about body and soul alike being <i>destroyed</i> in Hell. I see neither the consistency nor the clarity in biblical teachings about the afterlife that you do, nor is it as obvious to me that the Bible, in fact, contains promises from God as opposed to promises made by men in His name.<br /><br /><b>Not quite. His promise was to obliterate the memory of Amalek.</b><br /><br />Where will you find the Hattusa (the Hittites of Anatolia, as opposed to the Hatti -- the Hittites of Canaan) today? When was the last time anyone heard of an Elamite, or an Olmec? Lots of ethnic groups and nations have been as thoroughly obliterated as the Amalekites, and Saul didn't have to kill any of them without mercy.<br /><br /><b> God is the Author of life and only He can appoint when we should die.</b><br /><br />Okay, so we're back to arbitrary and absolute power; whatever God does is right because God does it, and we know this is true because people tell us that God said so. You set your fallible human reason against mine. You decide that one set of scriptures, out of many, is the word of God. You decide that one interpretation, out of many, is right. And you declare my opinion worthless because it disagrees with yours, which you identify with God's.Steven J.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15638850493907393069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030110973061875792.post-82686607199873918132015-11-20T14:34:41.325-05:002015-11-20T14:34:41.325-05:00Steven J,
You said, “People are not pots; they ha...Steven J,<br /><br />You said, “People are not pots; they have interests and hopes and minds that pots do not.”<br /><br />Of course people do but I'm not sure how that changes anything. Do the pots belong to the potter or not? You've made no argument about why God has no claim on us even though He created us.<br /><br />You said, “what is the point of asserting that God is "just" or "righteous" towards His chattels? If by definition anything He does to the beings he owns is good, then assuring us that He will deal righteously with us or deal out justice tells us virtually nothing.”<br /><br />I worry for atheists. You and I will both stand before Him in judgment. I believe He will treat me just as He promised. I will receive grace I don't deserve because I have believed in His Son for salvation. Do you not worry that God will also deal with you just as He promised?<br /><br />You said, “Trust me, none of the critics of God's command in 1 Samuel 15 are worried that bringing up God's reasons would weaken their case.”<br /><br />“None”? Surely some do. Why do they so frequently omit the entire quote? Note that I didn't say, “all” but I know that some do.<br /><br />You said, “If there is no difference between commanding the wholesale slaughter of people and allowing them to die naturally, then [a] God had already carried out His promised vengeance centuries before, and was still carrying it out, and had no need to tell Saul to do anything,”<br /><br />Not quite. His promise was to obliterate the memory of Amalek. If the Amalekites continued living, generation after generation until today, then God would not have fulfilled His promise.<br /><br />You said, “[b] it's not entirely clear why the Mosaic law contains commands against murder, since everyone ends up dead anyway.”<br /><br />Yes it is. God is the Author of life and only He can appoint when we should die. I heard this analogy:<br /><br />Suppose I created intelligent robots – let's say they're not as aware as Data or Lar just to keep this simple. In spite of your objections, these robots belong to me. I could destroy one of them if I wanted. However, if one robot malfunctioned and began destroying other robots, my wrath would be against the one malfunctioned. Even though I have the right to destroy any robot, the stray robot doesn't have that same right. I would assert the same argument in response to your analogy of abortion.<br /><br />Steven J, the bottom line is this. You might think God is unfair but your opinion is worth nothing. Such a belief does not mean the Bible isn't true, it doesn't mean there is no God, and it doesn't mean He won't treat your unbelief just as He promised. God is terrible and frightening. He is also loving and merciful. Rejecting Him because of the things you find terrible also means you reject His love and mercy. I'm not sure what you think that accomplishes.<br /><br />I'm praying for you. God bless!!<br /><br />RKBentley RKBentleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00566375018731000081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030110973061875792.post-13953511835501214392015-11-20T00:09:49.930-05:002015-11-20T00:09:49.930-05:00No one can credibly deny that the vessel a potter ...<b>No one can credibly deny that the vessel a potter makes belongs to the potter.</b><br /><br />I suppose we may differ on what one ought to regard as "credible," but quite a few science fiction stories have argued (credibly, in the opinion of many readers) that, e.g. a sentient robot or genetically-engineered intelligent organism ought not be the property of its maker. People are not pots; they have interests and hopes and minds that pots do not.<br /><br />On the other hand, God is often supposed to be ontologically superior to us in a respect that, e.g. Dr. Soong is not superior to Data. But what is the point of asserting that God is "just" or "righteous" towards His chattels? If by definition anything He does to the beings he owns is good, then assuring us that He will deal righteously with us or deal out justice tells us virtually nothing.<br /><br /><b>The Bible gives us a complete picture of Him.</b><br /><br />Or, the Bible gives us multiple conflicting pictures of Him, reflecting an evolving view of God by the successive generations of biblical writers; the Bible is the record of a millenium-long argument about the nature of God, and reflects several disparate viewpoints.<br /><br /><b>God could have rained fire down on Amalek just as He had done with Sodom and Gomorrah, but it was many generations later, after the Jews settled in the Promised Land and Saul had become the king, that God fulfilled His promise.</b><br /><br />That was three hundred years after the event being punished. Every Amalekite in the generation that incurred God's wrath, and every great-great grandchild of every such Amalekite, would be dead already. It would be like Austria bombing Sweden, today, over what Gustavus Adolphus did in the Thirty Years' War. God was, according to this story, literally commanding the Israelites to do what in Deuteronomy He forbade them from doing: punishing distant descendants for the sins of their ancestors.<br /><br />Trust me, none of the critics of God's command in 1 Samuel 15 are worried that bringing up God's reasons would weaken their case.<br /><br /><b> Some have asked, “Why would God command the babies to be killed?” ... To say that God was cruel in His treatment of Amalek is to deny that God judges all of humanity fairly.</b><br /><br />If there is no difference between commanding the wholesale slaughter of people and allowing them to die naturally, then [a] God had already carried out His promised vengeance centuries before, and was still carrying it out, and had no need to tell Saul to do anything, and [b] it's not entirely clear why the Mosaic law contains commands against murder, since everyone ends up dead anyway. You would never concede that abortion is justified inasmuch as many pregnancies end in miscarriage anyway, and in any case the unborn child will die someday, somehow, anyway. Why should you expect me to concede that commanding infanticide is good, on exactly the same grounds?Steven J.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15638850493907393069noreply@blogger.com