Hypocrisy starts at the top?

[PureX]

I'm wondering how theists, particular those within the Abrahamic traditions, deal with the apparent double standard between god and his creations for what qualifies as moral behavior. For example:

1. God says to love your enemies and turn the other cheek if you are struck, but god eternally tortures those who offend him.
2. God says not to kill, but kills people for a multitude of reasons when they displease, inadvertently offend him, or even sometimes when they do obey him. Plus multiple ethnic genocides.
3. God says not to envy or be jealous, but is violently enraged by people worshipping other gods.
4. God forces himself on an unmarried girl, with no personal or legal consequences.
5. Corinthians 13:4 describes the attributes of love, and god is by all appearances the diametric opposite of these attributes.

What does it mean when god's moral commandments for humans, to instruct them how to be good, are laws that he routinely violates? When a law applies to one person but not another, isn't that moral relativism? Isn't a moral system that's dependent on a particular person's opinion (i.e. god's opinion) the definition of subjective morality?

How do you tell the difference between an evil god, and a god that declares itself to be good while it constantly violates all of the laws it establishes to delineate good behavior and also simultaneously violates human intuitions about moral goodness?

I think I am confused about the intention of this post.

Are you assuming that God is as depicted in the bible, and as you are interpreting those depictions?

If you are not assuming that God is as depicted in the bible, then what is it that you want to know about those depictions? Are you asking why people overlook the apparent double standard being promulgated by the depictions?

 

[blü 2]

Apparently you did not read that in none of my messages have I or will I entertain being God. I find it to be meaningless, as I said before.

And yet brainless wanton cruelty is attributed to God every time hell is mentioned.

 

[Lain]

And yet brainless wanton cruelty is attributed to God every time hell is mentioned.

I fail to see how this is the case. Perhaps such is just a defect in my mental abilities.

 

[blü 2]

I fail to see how this is the case. Perhaps such is just a defect in my mental abilities.

You fail to see why curing people of their vices instead of burning them in hell is a logical way for a benevolent God to proceed?

Then I'll leave you to it. As I said, an enormous gulf separates our points of view.

 

[Lain]

You fail to see why curing people of their vices instead of burning them in hell is a logical way for a benevolent God to proceed?

Then I'll leave you to it. As I said, an enormous gulf separates our points of view.

No, I think you simply have a different view of Hell and human persons, so it seems that you've "talked past" the whole time. But God bless, I'm sure there is a gulf. At least it's not the Gulf Coast, we might get high in the waters.

 

[alypius]

1. God says to love your enemies and turn the other cheek if you are struck, but god eternally tortures those who offend him.

Where does it say that God eternally tortures those who offend him?

 

[BilliardsBall]

I'm wondering how theists, particular those within the Abrahamic traditions, deal with the apparent double standard between god and his creations for what qualifies as moral behavior. For example:

1. God says to love your enemies and turn the other cheek if you are struck, but god eternally tortures those who offend him.
2. God says not to kill, but kills people for a multitude of reasons when they displease, inadvertently offend him, or even sometimes when they do obey him. Plus multiple ethnic genocides.
3. God says not to envy or be jealous, but is violently enraged by people worshipping other gods.
4. God forces himself on an unmarried girl, with no personal or legal consequences.
5. Corinthians 13:4 describes the attributes of love, and god is by all appearances the diametric opposite of these attributes.

What does it mean when god's moral commandments for humans, to instruct them how to be good, are laws that he routinely violates? When a law applies to one person but not another, isn't that moral relativism? Isn't a moral system that's dependent on a particular person's opinion (i.e. god's opinion) the definition of subjective morality?

How do you tell the difference between an evil god, and a god that declares itself to be good while it constantly violates all of the laws it establishes to delineate good behavior and also simultaneously violates human intuitions about moral goodness?

I appreciate your last sentence, a question as to how to tell the difference, since you cannot tell the difference.

Thank you.

 

[PureX]

I appreciate your last sentence, a question as to how to tell the difference, since you cannot tell the difference.

Why do we have to 'tell the difference'?

 

[BilliardsBall]

Why do we have to 'tell the difference'?

It would save us both a lot of time on RF, when we could be enjoying videogames.

 

[Messianic Israelite]

I understand that the bible claims that god exists, and that he is perfect and gets to judge everyone, and gets to use physical violence to punish anyone who disobeys him, and any mistake is always our fault, never his. We should be so thankful for the love he gives us, because we're worthless without his love. But look what we make him do, sometimes, and we bring it on ourselves.

He's the model of an abusive husband.

And let's ignore that fact that there's no evidence any of this is real, because it's an internal critique. My point is that an abusive spouse's love is not perfect love, and is in fact what I would call evil. It's bad and wrong, even if the abuser is powerful, or knows more than me, or insists they are perfectly good.

You said: "How do you not know that Miriam was not asking for a righteous Son? This goes back to the fact that we don't know what Miriam was praying for, what she desired, what her innermost thoughts were."
Can you not see how grotesque this sounds? "How do you know the women didn't secretly want someone to rape and/or impregnate her?" is what you are saying. Any crime or horrific immoral act can be post-hoc justified by this flawed reasoning. And my obvious response (and point of this thread) is, "How do you know your god isn't secretly evil?"

Hi AlexanderG. Good afternoon. I fail to see your reasoning that Yahweh is a model of an abusive husband. An abusive husband doesn't heal you when you're sick. Doesn't listen to you and help you when you are afraid, or in need. Doesn't comfort you when you are broken-hearted. The main issue you seem to have at the present time is that of Miriam.

Let's turn to Luke 1 and read what happened:
"And Miriam said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? 35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of Yahweh. 36 And behold, Elisabeth thy kinswoman, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that was called barren. 37 For no word from Yahweh shall be void of power. 38 And Miriam said, Behold, the handmaid of Yahweh; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her."

Notice what she said: "be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her." She wasn't forced upon. She didn't deny the angel. She didn't say, this is something I don't want. She wanted this to come to pass, and after the meeting with the angel she conceived. So you see any reasoning that Yahweh is somehow unjust is not justifiable.

 

[PureX]

It would save us both a lot of time on RF, when we could be enjoying videogames.

I can't think of a bigger waste of time than video games.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

A mere human... lecturing a cosmic super-intelligence who creates universes about how to govern those universes, and about what behavior is acceptable when operating within those universes... as if the nature of man and God even compares.

It’s our business if the rules apply to us.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

It means that we are not God.

In that same Bible the very first story is about mankind's primary and original sin. That sin was to presume ourselves to be God's equals, and to presume ourselves to possess the knowledge of good and evil. But we are not God's equals, and we do not possess the knowledge of good and evil. So we presumed this unto ourselves, falsely, and we have falsely stood in judgment of all creation (and of ourselves and each other) ever since. Causing no end of division, animosity, and strife.
We can't. Because we are not gods. An we do not possess the divine knowledge of good and evil.

God made us in His image and then complained when we acted like Him.

 

[PureX]

God made us in His image and then complained when we acted like Him.

... According to stories men wrote about how they perceived their God. Stories intended to embody the idea that their God is all powerful, all knowing, and inexplicable.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I can't think of a bigger waste of time than video games.

I can, talking to entrenched religionists in an attempt to deprogram them, say at a forum.

 

[PureX]

I can, talking to entrenched religionists in an attempt to deprogram them, say at a forum.

That too, or atheists entrenched in scientism .

 

[blü 2]

Where does it say that God eternally tortures those who offend him?

In the NT ─

Paul arguably favors the idea that the wicked and the unbelieving are destroyed, not punished ─

Romans 2:9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,

and to grant rest with us to you who are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire,

And the most likely pseudipigraphical author of 2 Thessalonians is a 'destruction' man ─

2 Thessalonians 8 inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.9 They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,


Mark is pro-hell, and specific about its everlasting quality ─

Mark 9:43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched.
45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched.
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.

On the other hand, the examples are outright silly, so perhaps the argument is available that he uses hell only as a rhetorical device, and not as a supernatural establishment,

Matthew is fond of hell too . He repeats Mark and adds more of his own. He doesn't specify that hell is eternal, but he never mentions a post-hell condition either.

Matthew:5:22 But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.
5:29 If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
10:28 “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
11:23 And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
18:9 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.
23:15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.
23:33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?

Luke mentions hell but only briefly and perhaps metaphorically:

Luke 10:15 And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to hell.

12:5 But I will warn you whom you should fear: fear him, who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell.

16:23 And being in torments in hell, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

But Luke is also a death is the end man, the 'destruction' school:

Luke 13:3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.


As is John:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.


It's a good idea to bear in mind the fundamentals of salesmanship here. These include the technique which works thus :

Gather round ladies and gentlemen, I have some terrible news, truly appalling.

You are all going to burn in hell forever [or as the threat may be] and there's nothing that anyone can do about it, NOTHING!

Except, very fortunately, I've discovered the one remedy.

And very fortunately again, I'm able to bring it to you at a very reasonable price.

I even have some with me, enough for the first few lucky buyers.

Yes, oil extracted from various serpents ...​

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

First, the creator of the universe had to establish laws in order to maintain function and order, with this including both physical laws of nature and moral laws for created beings. Is it not rational that the system's designer rightly determines the rules? In the same way that an engineer designs a computer program with right and wrong inputs, his rules for functioning within the program are certainly more than subjective; they're decisively objective. If there is an infinite, all powerful god that created the universe and governs our lives, could there be any standard other than his that qualifies as being right?

“But, John, if InGen designs dinosaurs and they eat people, isn’t InGen sued into bankruptcy?”

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

OK... I understand the concept you are relating.. but it still seems to be a personal opinion, please note:

"I am referring to god impregnating Mary with his "holy spirit" without any consent, any discussion, and then sending a messenger to inform her of the deed. In the bible, if a man copulates with, rapes, and/or impregnates an unmarried woman, then certain legal consequences entail like paying her father and marrying the woman."

Do you have a supportive documentation that there was no discussion and that it wasn't done with consent? Or are you just making a statement by what you have heard or imagined?

Gabriel doesn’t ask the barely pubescent girl what she wants. He just declared she is now pregnant.

 

[Kenny]

Gabriel doesn’t ask the barely pubescent girl what she wants. He just declared she is now pregnant.

I don't believe that is how it went. Can you quote the conversation?