Loyalty, honesty, Scripture, yourself

[Rex_Goodheart]

In his essay A Few Reasons for Doubting the Inspiration of the Bible Robert Ingersoll wrote:

We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

That quotation, of course, doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the many atrocities, scientific improbabilities, logical contradictions, philosophical weaknesses, and historical implausibilities depicted in the Bible.

Have you ever supposed that the Bible is a test of your honesty?

Except in the matter of God worship we as humans don't elevate loyalty above integrity and compassion. We don't, for example, accept a Baathist crony as virtuous simply for his loyalty to Saddam.

When we learned that Saddam killed 30,000 of his own people in ghastly manner we had no tolerance for his excuses. But many of us readily buy the excuse of ancient Hebrews that they massacred the Amalekites according to God's wishes. Ironically, hardly any of us would afford the same exemption to the Israelis if they conducted such a purge today under a similar God excuse.

Is it enough to reconcile your misgivings away under the ready aphoristic justification that God is ineffable and inscrutable? "God has killed in ghastly manner because he is perfectly just, and we'd have to be God himself to understand his motives, and these words are his" is internally contradictory and logically circular, but it is precisely the notion to which many of us subscribe. And if there is a divine Creator then you have to suspend his gift of logic in order to maintain that subscription.

Saddam is fallible. Saddam is mortal. Saddam needed unquestioning loyalty to retain power. Does your omnipotent God need such loyalty? And if He doesn't need it, couldn't he tolerate a doubt within you that the atrocities attributed to him are not compatible with his true nature? And, more importantly, will he tolerate your loyalty to human-generated accounts of savagery ascribed to Him?

[gratuitous]

1. Ohmigosh!

Gee, thanks for posting this! I suppose anyone who never got past children's Sunday School has never pondered any of this! I should get out of the church immediately, because there are passages in the Bible that don't aren't all sunshine and lollipops!

Thanks again, Rex_Goodheart. Those goddam orphans and widows can just go hang. And the homeless and the starving? Tough titty! Rex_Goodheart found a story or two, and now I'm convinced the entire Bible's just a sham!

[Az]

2. So how did you reconcile such matters

I for one have trouble reconciling why God would send a couple of bears to slaughter a group of 42 children just for calling some guy baldy. Any chance you can enlighten me as to how you managed it. I ask this out of honest curiousity.

2 Kings 2:23-24
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

[gratuitous]

4. Drop by Peace Church any Sunday morning around 9:30

The coffee's on and hot (fair trade, of course), and we can discuss as a community any topic you care for during the next hour before the service. We'll traipse through the Bible, philosophers old and new, and share our own experiences.

[Az]

5. We have a perfectly valid forum here

We can engage is such discussions civilly and openly. And all without the fear of the holy water bursting into flames due to my presense :evilgrin:

[gratuitous]

7. Uhm, we don't have holy water in the Church of the Brethren

You seem confused; which is why I suspected that my answer to your question would seem unsatisfactory to you.

[JNelson6563]

6. Some of us don't need a god to know

the value of helping the less fortunate. Of course we don't believe we get a ticket to heaven either. Believe it or not, some of us do good and charitable works for the sake of the greater good.

Julie

[Jade Fox]

3. Excellent post-thanks...

All Christians believe that God gave us free will, do they not?

If so, than we need to stop blaming God for our own savage behavior.