Regarding the Bible

[uss_bigd]

Nah, cause of that whole jealous god thing. Amazing to me how a being who is supposedly almighty can be jealous of other gods. What does he have to be jealous of? Here's the deal, I can write a book that says god wants me to bomb abortion clinics, then I can go out there and do it and say that god told me to. Think that explaination would fly in court these days? Neither would what the Bible puts forth

tsk tsk, do you have a son?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

tsk tsk, do you have a son?

Oh dear, I sense a bad analogy coming. Like I've never heard this one before.

 

[uss_bigd]

Oh dear, I sense a bad analogy coming. Like I've never heard this one before.

if you feed your son, give em clothes, give em everything he needs and thanks your neighbor, NOT YOU.

would you feel jealous?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

if you feed your son, give em clothes, give em everything he needs and thanks your neighbor, NOT YOU.

would you feel jealous?

You cannot prove that your god is the one who gives everyone everything. He may be the one who gives you things, so you'd be right to worship him, but my gods give me things, and I worship them. You cannot prove that your god is like my father either. My gods are more like my parents then your god ever was.

 

[uss_bigd]

You cannot prove that your god is the one who gives everyone everything. He may be the one who gives you things, so you'd be right to worship him, but my gods give me things, and I worship them. You cannot prove that your god is like my father either. My gods are more like my parents then your god ever was.

you are ignoring my question...

would you feel jealous?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

you are ignoring my question...

would you feel jealous?

Your question is an attempt to trap somebody. I don't answer rigged questions. Sorry jack. Try asking a more honest question that isn't laced with an agenda, and I might answer you.

 

[uss_bigd]

Your question is an attempt to trap somebody. I don't answer rigged questions. Sorry jack. Try asking a more honest question that isn't laced with an agenda, and I might answer you.

well thats because you know you are contradicting your own standards, throwing stones at GOD for feeling jealous with idols ... when you would feel the same way.

how do you call Christians who do that? contradict their own standards? Hypocrites is it?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

well thats because you know you are contradicting your own standards, throwing stones at GOD for feeling jealous with idols ... when you would feel the same way.

how do you call Christians who do that? contradict their own standards? Hypocrites is it?

Why does God feel jealous though? If God is truly my father as you are trying to claim, and my gods are false, then let your god prove to me himself that it's true. He never has yet. Instead it's my gods that love me and give me guidance and support, far more then your god ever did.

 

[uss_bigd]

Why does God feel jealous though? If God is truly my father as you are trying to claim, and my gods are false, then let your god prove to me himself that it's true. He never has yet. Instead it's my gods that love me and give me guidance and support, far more then your god ever did.

Why would you feel Jealous when your son will thank your neighbor instead of you?

seek and you shall find?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Why would you feel Jealous when your son will thank your neighbor instead of you?

seek and you shall find?

That's my point though, it's not your god doing anything for me. I have nothing to thank your god for. Don't you get it? My gods are who I look to and have a relationship with. Why should I thank your god when my gods are the ones who give me things? Let's use your own analogy. What if a parent isn't a good parent, so a child goes and asks the neighbors for help? Then thanks is rightly due to the neighbor.

 

[uss_bigd]

That's my point though, it's not your god doing anything for me. I have nothing to thank your god for. Don't you get it? My gods are who I look to and have a relationship with. Why should I thank your god when my gods are the ones who give me things? Let's use your own analogy. What if a parent isn't a good parent, so a child goes and asks the neighbors for help? Then thanks is rightly due to the neighbor.

you asked why would GOD feel jealous .... why would you feel jealous if your son thanked your neighbor and not you?....

your answer is my answer to the question.

 

[Levite]

I guess I want to get other people's viewpoints on something that's been bothering me. When I read the Bible, I see some horrible things in there like war and plundering, things I could never call good. My sense of empathy and compassion won't allow me to see it as good, but then I see some people saying it's good and even loving on God's part. This is where it really bothers me. Isn't it bad when people start to totally redefine words in their minds to justify terrible things? Let's face it, what the Bible says Israel did to the Canaanites is not loving, not compassionate, not merciful, and not good. You have to totally redefine the meanings of those concepts to say such. Doesn't this suggest that it's dangerous and de-sensatizing to a society to read this book in this sense, literally?

First of all, I would want to point out that the two reasons that the Bible gives for following the commandments and worshipping God are: 1) God is the Creator of all things; and 2) God took Israel out of Egypt and established a covenant with them Sinai, wherein God agreed to be Israel's supreme authority, and Israel agreed to accept that authority. There is no mainstream argument made in the Hebrew Bible that God ought to be obeyed because He's sweet and gentle and nice, or that He's such a fun guy. And while the Tanakh certainly affirms that God is the source of all Good, it also affirms that He is the source of Evil, as well. Isaiah 45:7 says it explicitly, and, after all, if God is the One Sole Creator, that means everything came from Him-- good and bad.

But I understand your query. What I would say in response is two things, one spoken from the Jewish tradition, and one spoken as a scholar of Biblical criticism and Jewish philosophy.

The Jewish traditional response would be to cite the well-known principle put forth by the Rabbis of the Talmud: dibrah Torah ki'leshon b'nai adam. Meaning, "The Torah speaks according to the ways people use language." Which not only goes to explain the Biblical uses of idiom, metaphor, simile, and parable, but also is intended to teach that prophetic messages are expressed in the language that will be comprehensible to the immediate listener, and commandments are designed to form a system livable to those who immediately received them.

In other words, the Written Torah was given to a bunch of nomadic warrior-cattle herders from 3500 years ago. It introduced ideas that were, to that place and time, radical innovations in society: it placed limitations on slaveholding, on plundering and pillaging during battle, on business behavior; it demanded support for the dispossessed of Israelite society, and sympathy for the stranger living among them-- paradigmatic individuals who were hideously vulnerable and inevitably abused in every other society that surrounded ancient Israel; and so forth. Even problematic commandments like the elimination of Amalek and the conquest of the Land of Canaan were object lessons in learning to abhor needless brutality in battle, or they were defined objectives that prevented Israel from attempting to become empire builders. And what is more, the elmination of idolatrous sects was, unfortunately, a necessity in securing the faithful monotheism of an entirely novel theology into place in society. That Israel so often ignored these commandments and embraced idolatrous practices almost led to the destruction of the Jewish people before monotheism was accepted by all.

Torah pushed and challenged the limits of moral and ethical vision for that time and place. But had God given instructions couched more in terms of modern morals and ethics, the simple truth is that it would have sounded insane to the ancient Israelites, and they would have considered it totally unliveable. The People Israel would have abandoned their covenant with God, rejected Torah, and become lost to the ash-heap of history. For this reason, God gave the written Torah according to the levels of understanding and comprehension of the ancient Israelites; but gave with it the Oral Torah, so that as times changed, and the understanding and comprehension of the people Israel expanded and grew, the way we follow the commandments would also grow and evolve, and the ways in which we understood what God was asking of us would grow and evolve.

Now, my other answer is that Torah may well be a text whose authorship is divinely inspired. But it is patently unreasonable to say that it is literally written by God. If there is a divine element to Torah (and I personally believe there is), it comes from the text having been written, at various times and through many centuries, by prophets. But prophecy is a chancy business: messages come in visions, dreams, and trances, and must be actively interpreted by the prophet afterward, as the experience is being translated into poetry or narrative. But though prophets may hear God, they are still mortal, finite, flawed human beings: they may misinterpret what God wishes, or misunderstand, or simply be incorrect in what they believe God was telling them. Part of the challenge of the modern Jew (and, I suppose, by extension any modern reader of the Bible) is to attempt to sort out what must be taken at face value, or in the strict sense of the tradition, and what ought to be reinterpreted, or even reinterpreted radically, in order to try moving closer to what we imagine God must intend.

But, prophect or no prophecy, Tanakh is a work of human hands. It may or may not be considered holy, but it is undeniably a collection of historical texts-- composed by mortal men and women, who were themselves the products of their culture and environment. For example, if one lives in a world where indentured servitude is universal throughout every known land, one will simply be incapable of believing that a society could be completely free of it. If one lives in a world where pretty much all societies are patriarchal, one will create a patriarchal society. Are there problematic descriptions of God and His will in Tanakh? Of course: Tanakh was written by people living in a vastly different cultural environment, over a millennium or more, between 3000 and 2000 years ago. They had a completely different worldview, a different theology, different morals, and different ethics.

This is why reinterpretation and exegesis is critical to the persistence of the relevancy of Tanakh. Even in the layers of Torah text such reinterpretation is visible: clearly D is revisioning J and E; in Tanakh at large, the prophets radically revision things said by Torah; and then the Rabbis of the Talmud come along and radically revision the entire Tanakh-- a process we have continued to this day.

Whether I speak from tradition or academe, the beauty of Torah is not that it is "perfect" in its written form, but that as a whole-- Written and Oral Torah together-- it is designed to be interpreted and reinterpreted. And the traditionalist in me would add that that is what makes it eternal.

 

[Caricus]

if you feed your son, give em clothes, give em everything he needs and thanks your neighbor, NOT YOU.

would you feel jealous?

I will answer this.
Actually no I would not be jealous at all. It would be enough to know that he had these things not his praise for my gifts.

But that's not the real question is it. The real question is why should a God be jealous over people woshipping other Gods when he knows they do not exist?

It is abit like your analogy but mine is different as there is no neighbour, you know he does not exist! So why would you be jealous in the first place over a being that does not exist if you are God?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Torah (however much inspired) is a wondrous human endeavor laced with human pathos and human aspiration refracted through multiple levels of human agenda. Failure to appreciate this diminishes the work and results in little more tiresome absurdities.

 

[rusra02]

I guess I want to get other people's viewpoints on something that's been bothering me. When I read the Bible, I see some horrible things in there like war and plundering, things I could never call good. My sense of empathy and compassion won't allow me to see it as good, but then I see some people saying it's good and even loving on God's part. This is where it really bothers me. Isn't it bad when people start to totally redefine words in their minds to justify terrible things? Let's face it, what the Bible says Israel did to the Canaanites is not loving, not compassionate, not merciful, and not good. You have to totally redefine the meanings of those concepts to say such. Doesn't this suggest that it's dangerous and de-sensatizing to a society to read this book in this sense, literally?

You have a sense of empathy and compassion because God created you that way. Much more than we, our Creator is compassionate and loving. Would you consider it loving and compassionate to allow helpless children to be sexually abused and murdered by their own parents? God created us with a conscience, and holds us accountable for what we do, even if we do not know God. God's patience and mercy has limits. When it is clear there is no hope for change, He takes action against the wicked.
God decreed the destruction of the Canaanites because of their detestable practices. As Creator and Lifegiver, He certainly has the right to judge whether they (and we) live or die.
The Canaanites practiced incest, bestiality, homosexuality, spiritism, murder, and other evils. The Bible Handbook notes that at Megiddo, archaeologists found the ruins of a temple of Ashtoreth, goddess-wife of Baal. He writes: “Just a few steps from this temple was a cemetery, where many jars were found, containing remains of infants who had been sacrificed in this temple . . . Prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth were official murderers of little children.” “Another horrible practice was [what] they called ‘foundation sacrifices.’ When a house was to be built, a child would be sacrificed, and its body built into the wall.”

“The worship of Baal, Ashtoreth, and other Canaanite gods consisted in the most extravagant orgies; their temples were centers of vice. . . . Canaanites worshiped, by immoral indulgence, . . . and then, by murdering their first-born children, as a sacrifice to these same gods. It seems that, in large measure, the land of Canaan had become a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah on a national scale. . . . Did a civilization of such abominable filth and brutality have any right longer to exist? . . . Archaeologists who dig in the ruins of Canaanite cities wonder that God did not destroy them sooner than He did."​

God's destructive acts against the wicked in the past make it clear he will not tolerate such evil forever. "Just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more; And you will certainly give attention to his place, and he will not be. But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth,And they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace." (Psalms 37:10,11)

 

[uss_bigd]

I will answer this.
Actually no I would not be jealous at all. It would be enough to know that he had these things not his praise for my gifts.

thats nice of you ... what is the basic human tendency?

But that's not the real question is it. The real question is why should a God be jealous over people woshipping other Gods when he knows they do not exist?

It is abit like your analogy but mine is different as there is no neighbour, you know he does not exist! So why would you be jealous in the first place over a being that does not exist if you are God?

what constitutes existence?

 

[Caricus]

what constitutes existence?

This is going to get pointless if you do not answer questions directly put to you but throw out other useless questions.

So to your reply (which are always short and very sparse), then existence is different from the word "exist" like I used. Existence is a way of living as opposed to exist which to have object reality of being.

Nice try though.

 

[uss_bigd]

This is going to get pointless if you do not answer questions directly put to you but throw out other useless questions.

So to your reply (which are always short and very sparse), then existence is different from the word "exist" like I used. Existence is a way of living as opposed to exist which to have object reality of being.

Nice try though.

so if you had a son, whom you feed, give clothes, send to school and he thanks his toy optimus prime. how would that make you feel? being replaced by optimus prime?

 

[Caricus]

so if you had a son, whom you feed, give clothes, send to school and he thanks his toy optimus prime. how would that make you feel? being replaced by optimus prime?

I had to laugh at this one... so if you had a young son who would he thank at Christmas Santa or God for his toys?

Would it bother you if your child thought Santa supplied the gifts not you?

 

[uss_bigd]

I had to laugh at this one... so if you had a young son who would he thank at Christmas Santa or God for his toys?

Would it bother you if your child thought Santa supplied the gifts not you?

you're still the one putting the gifts in the stockings and you do it on purpose that you make your kids beleive there is a santa.

i am asking you would you feel its ridiculous if your son will thank buzz lightyear or woody for his food everyday when you are the one giving it to him?