Is God good?

This post stems from a conversation over at Bunch about biblical contradictions, particularly related to the creation story and man’s fall from grace in Genesis.

For simplicity’s sake, I am mostly going to be speaking here of the Judeo-Christian conception of God, known as Yahweh in the Old Testament and God the Father in the New Testament, but a good portion of this will apply to the God of Islam or any other deity that man has created with certain transcendent, otherworldy characteristics, such as omniscience.

The following is the first definition of “god” from the Merriam Webster:

capitalized: the supreme or ultimate reality: as

the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe.

I would wager that because of our general acceptance of religion in society, “goodness” continues to be part of our working definition of what we mean when we say God. But does this necessarily have to be the case? The ancient Greeks completely understood that although humans might label a being as a god does not mean that this being is actually good just because he commands powers that might appear mystical to us. Indeed, the Greek gods were in some cases capricious, childish and downright vile in some of their dealings with humans and each other. Take the rape of Europa, for instance (see illustration).

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

Yahweh, likewise, is certainly capricious, jealous — by his own admission — and overbearing, and thus, not much different than his Greek counterparts in being wholly a human creation.

In any case, let’s briefly take the Bible’s word for it and assume for argument’s sake that the Judeo-Christian god is basically good. The Bible directly tells us in many places that God is good, not the least of which are Psalm 100:5, “For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” and Psalm 107:1, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His loving kindness is everlasting” and Matthew 19:17, “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? (there is) none good but one, (that is), God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”

But it seems these passages belie God’s actual actions if we look at the Jewish and Christian narratives in totality, which in turn, make the strong case, once again, that the Bible is wrought with inconsistencies. First, let’s take the Jewish tradition from the Old Testament. Since there doesn’t seem to be a coherent consensus in Judaism about the afterlife, and particularly, heaven and hell, we can just look at the behavior of Yahweh toward his “chosen” people. Although the argument that God is good may be up for debate, as I argue here, the notion that he is omniscient and all-powerful are not, otherwise, we must change what we mean when we utter this three-letter construction.

If God is omniscient, he would have known there in the black chaos before speaking anything into existence that man would be seduced by the serpent and ultimately fall from grace. He would also know, in his omniscience, the precise time and place that Satan would tempt Eve to eat the fruit. He knew there in the black chaos that man would be exiled from the Garden as a result of the fall (and his seeming lack of concern that Satan infiltrated Eden) and would be relegated to a life of toil and birth pains. He knew there in the black chaos that man would soon after the fall become wicked in his sight. He knew he would have to flood the entire earth, kill untold numbers and preserve only one pious man and his family. He knew there in the black chaos that his “chosen” people, Israel, would betray him time and time again by falling into idol worship. He knew his beloved Israel would become slaves in Egypt. He knew of the wandering, the despair and the bloodlust on display against rival tribes in his name. He knew there in the black chaos that someone claiming proprietary knowledge would advocate the burning of random women believed to be witches and of stoning gay people. He knew of the impending Inquisitions; he knew there in the black chaos that Hitler, wanting to purge the world of his own “chosen” people, would maim, starve and slaughter 6 million Jews.

Moving beyond the Old Testament into Christianity, God knew that he would one day send his son for the atonement of man. He knew of the intense suffering that Jesus would endure. He knew of the intense suffering and persecution that early Christians would endure. He knew that one day, he would have to watch as millions, exercising their “god-given” reasoning capabilities, would not be able to believe in the historicity of Jesus or accept his gift of salvation and thus be cast down to perdition to burn forever and ever.

Regardless of whether any of this is true in reality and if we take these stories at face value, God saw the misery, the suffering, the despair, the waste of life and loss that would ensue once he spoke creation into being. He saw it all in the beginning. His mind’s eye envisioned this vale of woe in the chaos, and with a poker player’s blank stare, he went about the business of creation anyway. This alone, notwithstanding any arguments we might make about unnecessary suffering and an all-loving deity, renders God evil at best and sadistic at worst.

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Classic Hitchens

For the first 97,000-98,000 (years) of this, heaven watches with indifference. ‘Oh, there they go again. That whole civilization’s just died out. Eh, what are you gonna do? They’re raping each other again. They think that the other tribe has poisoned the wells, so they’re going to kill all their children.’ Just watch all that. Three thousand years ago it’s decided that, ‘No, we’ve got to intervene now.’

You have to believe it. You have to believe it, and revelation must be personal. It has to appear. So, we’ll pick the most backward, the most barbaric, the most illiterate, the most superstitious and the most savage people we can find in the most stony area of the world. We won’t appear to the Chinese, who can already read. … No, we’ll appear to this brutal, enslaved, hopeless, superstitious crowd, and we’ll force them to cut their way through all of their neighbors with slaughter, genocide and racism and settle on the only part of the Middle East where’s there’s no oil. And all subsequent revelations occur in the same district and without this, we wouldn’t know right from wrong.

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Leaving their religion

Pretty much everything these folks said in the video below sounds familiar, especially the person at the 1:00 minute mark who said that she eventually came to the point where she wanted the “scientific” evidence that Jesus and the Bible were real, not just in her head or heart, but, like, you know, real.

And she got her answer. It is amazing how a person’s life can change when they actually begin thinking critically. Religion is contemptible because, as the guy said here, it seeks to, at best, control, or at worst, destroy the one human trait that separates us from all the other species.

And that’s why it needs to be shown the door.

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One true God?

Via Why Evolution Is True.

OK, so while this is not entirely airtight, it’s amusing, especially the Allah column.

I would say, for instance, that Catholics, at least modern Catholics in America, are probably more accepting of gays than Protestants. Admittedly, I’m not in those circles anymore, so I could be entirely off base. I also think that the Protestant category should have been subdivided into traditional and evangelical. Also, the “Mary Is ..” category is not terribly accurate in the Protestant column since, while she was a nobody as far as her earthly life was concerned, she was the host of an immaculate conception and the “mother” of God.

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Biblical deconstruction IX: Sodom and Gomorrah

And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;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. — Gen. 18: 20-21 (KJV)

 ***

Continuing with this series, we now turn to Genesis 18-19, in which Abraham and Sarah in the first part of Chapter 18 learn from God that she, now at an old age, will bear a son. The passage begins with the Lord appearing to Abraham under some trees, as well as three “men,” presumably angels.

Abraham, by now used to interacting with God, runs to Sarah to get some food and drink for his guests. What use God and some angels have with mortal food is a mystery. In any case, they eat the meal, and God then tells Abraham that Sarah will have a son. Sarah, passed child-bearing years, laughs to herself, and God asks why Sarah laughed at the proposed miracle. God then said, to paraphrase, “Is anything impossible with me?” God and Sarah then have a brief feel-good moment in which Sarah denied scoffing at the suggestion that she would have a child. God then says, “No, but you did laugh!” Ahh … divine humor. What a jolly fellow, this Yahweh.

Verse 17 is where things get interesting and not so jolly, as God is about to do some heavy-handed smiting. In Verse 16, God asks himself:

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing? (v. 17)

This is, perhaps, the most intriguing quote in the whole passage. First, the notion of God asking himself a question is really bizarre since, in his omniscience, he already knows what he is going to do, not just about Sodom and Gomorrah but about everything, and this logical problem comes up time and time again in the Bible. Apparently, it didn’t take long to decide. Two verses later, God spills the beans:

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. (v. 21)

Here again, God does not have to “go down” anywhere to find out whether Sodom is full of wicked people. He already knows. If he doesn’t already know, he’s not omniscient, and thus, not God at all. Further, what to make of this “outcry” (This is the term that’s used in the New King James Version) against Sodom. God seems to be getting a sixth sense from a source other than himself. Is that the Holy Spirit? No, that can’t be right since the Holy Spirit is just the “spiritual” manifestation of God. Are angels communicating to God all of Sodom’s misdeeds? Is Satan? In any case, this “outcry” seems independent of God, which is odd to say the least.

Abraham then pleads with God that if he can find some  people in the city who are righteous, the city can be saved. God concedes — grudgingly? — that if at least 10 people are good in Sodom, the town won’t be torched. Perhaps to show how depraved the city really was, whoever wrote Genesis includes the next passage that has two angels (what happened to the other guy?) coming to Sodom. Lot takes them into his home and prepares a meal for them. Now, the men of Sodom, “old and young” come to Lot’s house and demand that Lot turn over the angel-men so that the townfolk can have sex with them.

In order to save the men from sex-starved and sex-obsessed city, Lot then says the men can have his two virgin daughters for their gang-raping pleasure. What a guy! Really seething and horny by now (You can just picture them with breathing heavy with fists clenching and licking their lips in wanderlust), the men outside attempt to break the door down, but just as the angels pulled Lot back into the house, the men struck the townfolk with blindness, and then order Lot to take his family out of the city. I guess the angels blinded them so that they couldn’t see what was about to happen? Who knows.

Lot and his family escape to a location called Zoar as fire and brimstone rain down on the city. His wife, however, wasn’t as fortunate. For some inexplicable reason, they are commanded not to look back on the town as it was being torched. Lot’s wife disobeys this commandment and is subsequently turned into a pillar of salt. Somehow, this doesn’t seem odd to anyone at all, and Lot never mentions a word about this wife. Indeed, Lot seems more interested in whoring out his daughters than protecting his bride.

I’ll conclude with more lively sexcapades in the brief passage that follows. In 19:30-38, we learn about how Lot’s incestual lineage found its genesis in those two daughters, who were apparently, by this time, quite sex-starved themselves. Maybe they wanted to be thrown out to the raging men in Sodom:

Now living in Zoar, in a cave no less, with his two daughters, Lot found himself drunk with wine and easy pickings for his two horny daughters:

Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. (v. 32)

The first thing to notice here is that “come in unto us” is a particularly graphic way to say they want want to have sex so they can have children. Second, the passage indicates that because Lot was drunk, he did not realize his daughters were copulating with him. Yes, that’s right. Lot was drunk; he wasn’t blind. How do you not know when a person begins having sex with you, and when he or she dismounts (v 35)? Further, even plastered, one would be lucid enough to realize a) a girl is on top of me and b) that girl is actually my daughter. The final problem with this is that if Lot was so shit-hammered that he couldn’t stand up (or see, apparently), he probably wouldn’t have had the vitality, as it were, to pull off one sexual firecracker, much less two. This entire passage is a !facepalm.

Moving on. Third, this is one of a handful of instances in which the biblical patriarchs engage in incestual activity. Sarai was, after all, Abraham’s half sister. Here’s more information from Wikipedia:

Incest amongst the patriarchs includes Abraham’s marriage to his half-sister Sarai;[Gen.20:11,12] the marriage of Abraham’s brother, Nahor, to their niece Milcah;[Gen.11:27–29] Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, his first cousin once removed;[Gen.27:42–43;29:10] Jacob’s marriages with two sisters who are his first cousins;[Gen.29:10,Ch.29] and, in the instance of Moses’s parents, a marriage between nephew and aunt (father’s sister).[Exod.6:20]

Passages such as these often get a pass from Christians or other religious types because they claim that for the Old Testament law about incest to be established in the first place, there had to have been some cases in which incest, in fact, had occurred. Otherwise, there would be no basis for the necessity of the law. The biblical characters could be excused from such behavior because that was part of a development in their moral character.

This explanation, forced as it is, misses one point: God didn’t have to wait until all the way in Leviticus to start handing down his law. Indeed, I have no idea why he did. Hell, he put a carrot on a stick in front of Adam and Eve, allowed Satan into Garden and then exiled the couple for doing something he knew they were going to do in the first place. God, very early on in the Bible, seems concerned with man following his rules, yet waits until Leviticus to establish the law? Since the aforementioned episodes of incest took place before the Ten Commandments were passed down, broken by Moses in anger that surely was a sin — and then handed down again, one would have thought that might be a good time to say something about incest or rape or slavery or child abuse or sex trafficking. But nah, those weren’t important social ills that needed to be eradicated any time soon.

Finally, isn’t the justice of God immutable and everlasting? In other words, if incest or eating ham or homosexuality were wrong by the time Leviticus rolls around, wouldn’t they have been wrong in Genesis as well? That’s the definition of immutable. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever, right? This is more evidence that the biblical writers simply made stuff up as they went along and attempted (but failed) to make it as consistent as possible, given that they were semi-literate Bronze-aged scribes steeped in myth and lore.

And this masterwork of stupidity is supposed to be our source code for morality. Remember that divine humor I was talking about?

Provocative speech from Jewish legislator

I’m Jewish. I keep kosher in my home. I have two sets of dishes. One for meat and one for dairy, and another two sets of dishes on top of that for Passover. Judaism believes that therapeutic abortions, namely abortions performed in order to preserve the life of the mother are not only permissable but mandatory. The stage of pregnancy does not matter. Wherever there is a question of the life of the mother or that of the unborn child, Jewish law rules in favor of preserving the life of the mother. The status of the fetus as human life does not equal that of the mother. I have not asked you to adopt and adhere to my religious beliefs. Why are you asking me to adopt yours?

And here is the kicker:

And, finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no’.

I wonder how many male politicians would have the balls to say what she just said?