Semi-Daily Journal

As a kid reading Exodus, I too was extremely puzzled by this (I still am, frankly). I came to the conclusion that this had to be written for people with different concepts of free will and rewards/punishments for behavior from our own modern conception. Really kind of a punt, but I never could come up with anything better.

Richard Niebuhr once suggested that we may have a need to justify ourselves to ourselves, so when we practice acting badly repeated practice may be felt to support the bad behavior. As we act badly, we become increasingly bad.

The OT always surprises!

Perhaps the message is that a negotiated settlement with true evil is not acceptable. Along those lines, imagine the following thought experiemnt:

Say that in 1859, the governors of the various slaveholding states made the following proposal to U.S. Congress: "We will move to end slavery in the South over the course of the next 50 years. We will do this gradually, first limiting the import of new slaves, then freeing the children of slaves on their 18th birthday, then mandating that 1/4, then 1/2 of each slaveholder's slaves must be freed, then finally doing away with slavery entirely." (Make the simplifying assumption that the Civil War was entirely about slavery)

Would you accept this proposal? If you say "yes", then you are saying that some level of human bondage is acceptable, that the continued slavery of many human beings, for up to 5 decades, is a reasonable price to pay to avert war. Ugly stuff.

If you say "no," then you are saying that the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men, the vast majority of which are northerners who don't much care about slavery, or southerners who do not themselves own slaves, must be sacrificed to end an institution that will be ended anyway within the lifetime of many of those same young men. Not so ugly morally, but if you tally up in a ledger the hundreds of thousands of people killed (often brutally), to make the lives of hundreds of thousands of others better, then its not so clear that turning down the proposal is the adult thing to do.

Most of us generally believe that human life is valuable in an absolute sense. We also believe that the quality of human life is valuable in an absolute sense. But life often throws these two values into conflict: we must trade blood for liberty, and justice, and many other social goods. Where do we draw the line? There are no trivial solutions.

An interesting point, sd, though I feel compelled to point out that the import of new slaves into the U.S. was banned well before 1859.

The big difference between sd's thought experiment and any similar situation involving God Almighty is that God is, well, al-mighty. Surely an omnipotent being could come up with a way to hasten the creation of the state of Isreal which doesn't involve the brutal slaughter of 6,000,000+ people?

Anyway, better minds than mine have pondered this question without arriving at a satisfactory answer.

WHAT thought experiment about ending slavery? That sort of graduated freeing is just precisely what was done everywhere else - with earlier and better results, as well as fewer unintended enduring consequences. Tutelage in the British West Indies, freeing in the womb in Brazil, poll taxes on slaves under Rome - what was done in the USA was indeed the wicked and the worse.

"Anyway, better minds than mine have pondered this question without arriving at a satisfactory answer."

Oh yes indeed, there is a trivial and entirely satisfactory answer.

I don't know, this is pretty tame considering the crappy nasty stuffy the Old Testament God was up to... There are bigger moral fish to fry when the question of the goodness of the Old Testament God is on the line...

How about those Midianites, for example?
(Numbers Chapter 31 verse 7)

"They warred against Midian, as YAHWEH commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain ... and they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire ... Moses was enraged ... 'So you spared the women ... kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man but keep the virgins for yourselves ... divide them up evenly.'"

Thats nice.

Well. God isn't human. He's superior in every way. So why would he have a problem hurting children?

I think if all humans treated every other human like they were a God and decided to do away with money forever we might have a chance at providing our children a loving environment that you know they want.

But if you like your money and want to get rich, then I agree. I don't have kids.

And slavery? Slavery made us rich. What's wrong with that?

The solution? Replace the carrot. Our incentive to work comes from money. I say get rid of money then make the incentive to work come from the TV. Spread entertaining educational information over the TV that advertises the jobs people should be doing so they can help eachother provide for everyone else.

The goal is to create the proper environment in which a human can live a healthy life. That human should not need parents or money or anything more than they were given by God. Everything else can be provided for by the civilized society.

Society can provide for EVERYONE by making use of the human's most valuable possession, their brain. Computerized industrial automation is basicly free labor, free production, free money.

So why again do we need money?

Judging us by our actions I would say we have placed a value on human life and it is far less than infinite. An innocent American, for example, is worth at least twice the number of innocent people in Afghanistan or Iraq. And a terrorist? They aren't worth the cost of a bullet unless there's some economic advantage to invade their country.

I think anyone who would physically harm another human is not human at all. They are an animal. And the only way they could ever be human is if they were willing to learn the true meaning of love. It has never been written in a dictionary, so don't bother looking it up.

I don't know, this is pretty tame considering the crappy nasty stuffy the Old Testament God was up to... There are bigger moral fish to fry when the question of the goodness of the that fella is on the line...

How about those Midianites, for example?
(Numbers Chapter 31 verse 7)

"They warred against Midian, as YAHWEH commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain ... and they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire ... Moses was enraged ... 'So you spared the women ... kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man but keep the virgins for yourselves ... divide them up evenly.'"

Thats nice.

Makes me want to re-read Harlan Ellison's short story "Deathbird", actually.

oops, sorry for the double post, folks

PM, I thought it was phased out over 100 years or so,ending with Doctor King?

Delphina:

Accept or reject the existence of the OT God if you'd like. But I think it follows that if the OT God exists, then judging Him on moral/ethical grounds is a bit silly. If the OT God exists, then what He does is by definition right. There is no higher moral standard than that which is pleasing to Him (If ther were, then the OT God would not exist, because the definition of the OT God includes his role as source of all Being, Creator of the universe, Author of history, etc.). Again, you can say that such a God does not exist (whether or not you think there is some other God is somewhat beside the point), but if He does exist, He can hardly fail to live up to his own norms.

If He does not exist, but is merely some sort of literary creation, then questions about His moral and ethical legitimacy are mildly interesting, in the same way that questions about the morality of Aeneas or Gilgamesh are mildy interesting. But presumably these discussions are animated by more fervor than discussions about other characters because at least some folks don't think the OT God is fictional.

SD

P.S. An alternate take is suggested by the age old barroom philosophy question: Does God tell you not to kill because killing is wrong, or is killing wrong because God tells you not to do it. If you think the former, then indeed the OT God is being bad, because He is telling the Israelites to do something aweful. But again, I think there are philosophical inconsistencies in this approach. If you think the latter, then God can tell anyone to kill anyone else if He wants, because the morality of killing was defined by His fiat in the first place.

P.P.S. Discussions of the Holocaust in relation to God's action are again, mildly interesting. But one need not assume that because He has intervened in human history at various points (And the God who intervenes in human history is really the cornerstone of Judaism and Christianity; without an activist God, the whole of both religions falls apart), that He intervenes at all points. Most theologians would say that God has specifically altered the course of human destiny at certain key points, but otherwise leaves us to do what we will with out free will. If one of us becomes a Hitler, then one of us becomes a Hitler.

Oops: last line of 2nd graph should read "OT God is not fictional."

sd wrote: "Does God tell you not to kill because killing is wrong, or is killing wrong because God tells you not to do it. "

That's easy. Just compare the tenets of various religions, Judeo-Christian and non. If there is a rule against killing in religions that aren't based on what God tells you to do, then it's because killing is wrong, not because of what God said.

Any rule that appears in multiple religions must be kind of like a moral axiom. something that just seems right to humans, or else it's a rule because experience showed that violating the rule caused problems.

Rules that appear only in one religion are idiosyncratic, and likely only wrong because 'God' (or more likely, the priest class of the relevant period) says so.

Is killing wrong?

res Exodus and the Conquest. Every culture, sect, denomination sees god in its own image. Scripture is the record of those people who experienced god, and wrote, not as God is, but as they experienced. So the god who is entirely other, beyond time, invisible, is described in terms of our goals, feelings, our ethos and times-- except for the rare non orthodox believer- like Abe Lincoln.

My favorite explanation for this comes from Rabbi Yehuda Schnall, one of my teachers in yeshiva, who also has a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Some philosophers talk about a distinction between "first-order desires" and "second-order desires". For example, if you're a smoker who wants to quit, your first-order desire is to smoke, so you light up, but your second-order desire is to not smoke.

If God had not intervened to harden Pharoah's heart, Pharoah's first-order desire would have been to let the Israelites go. After all, his whole country was being ruined, and the devastation caused by the plagues far outweighed any benefit he could have received by keeping the Israelites as slaves. But his second-order desire was to stand fast, and not to give in to this gang of rabble that was trying to give him orders in the name of some deity he had never heard of.

By hardening Pharoah's heart (note that in ancient Hebrew, the heart is the metaphorical seat of the mind), God allowed Pharoah's second-order desire to remain in charge. But Phaorah still had free will; at any time, he could have decided that keeping the Israelites in bondage was simply wrong, and cut them loose.

Seth, do you mean that God gave Pharaoh the ability to withstand all His pressure and then of course it was Pharaoh's fault that he didn't?

One of the reasons why I've moved away from Christianity in general, but definitely from OT based religions: God is an opportunistic killer but we are supposed to accept that either (1)his purposes are too vast for us to understand them so any evil he visits on us is ok or (2) it's all our fault anyway because we're not following God's dictates even when he's working against us.

A religion for masochists.

Jon H.,

I'm afraid I can't buy your argument. As a method for comparing religious traditions its valid, but it doesn't answer the central question. If the Judeo-Christian God exists (and quite a few people belive just that), then all of the deities associated with other religious traditions are by definition false, because the definition of the Judeo-Christian God implies exclusivity. And given that exclusivity, do His moral commandments have any validity apart from His fiat?

Again, I would argue that the answer is no, that if on Mt. Sinai He had told Moses to write "Please, by all means, covet thy neighbor's wife," then the moral and ethical thing to do would be to covet thy neighbor's wife. You can dis-believe in this existence of such a God if you'd like, but I really think it makes little sense to posit that He exists and then to judge him (negatively) by some kind of moral standard.

Nor does it make much sense, it seems to me, to begin with the question of whether or not you find a particular omnipotent deity morally worthy before deciding on whether or not you'll believe in His existence. One should start with the simple question of whether or not He exists, and if so, deal with the consequences, and if not, don't waste any time worrying about Him anymore.

SD

Jon H.,

I'm afraid I can't buy your argument. As a method for comparing religious traditions its valid, but it doesn't answer the central question. If the Judeo-Christian God exists (and quite a few people belive just that), then all of the deities associated with other religious traditions are by definition false, because the definition of the Judeo-Christian God implies exclusivity. And given that exclusivity, do His moral commandments have any validity apart from His fiat?

Again, I would argue that the answer is no, that if on Mt. Sinai He had told Moses to write "Please, by all means, covet thy neighbor's wife," then the moral and ethical thing to do would be to covet thy neighbor's wife. You can dis-believe in this existence of such a God if you'd like, but I really think it makes little sense to posit that He exists and then to judge him (negatively) by some kind of moral standard.

Nor does it make much sense, it seems to me, to begin with the question of whether or not you find a particular omnipotent deity morally worthy before deciding on whether or not you'll believe in His existence. One should start with the simple question of whether or not He exists, and if so, deal with the consequences, and if not, don't waste any time worrying about Him anymore.

SD

To Ron Rosenbaum:

Allegory, a story that teaches a lesson. The heart hardens the more deeply it immerses itself in the evil. What other explanation for much of the hurt in the world. It's not God, or YHWH, literally doing it, it is humanity, or more specifically, human leadership doing it to itself and everyone else. YHWH, for better or worse, is the gifted poet's metaphor for what dominates in society and, often, many individuals. Why do the leadership class of any society, most at least, continue in morally bankrupt policies when so much suffering is caused? Pure moral idiocy, which is an illness, but appears less so if a large number of people engage in it and an even larger number passively allow it to continue.

To Ron Rosenbaum:

Allegory, a story that teaches a lesson. The heart hardens the more deeply it immerses itself in the evil. What other explanation for much of the hurt in the world. It's not God, or YHWH, literally doing it, it is humanity, or more specifically, human leadership doing it to itself and everyone else. YHWH, for better or worse, is the gifted poet's metaphor for what dominates in society and, often, many individuals. Why does the leadership class of any society, most at least, continue in morally bankrupt policies when so much suffering is caused? Pure moral idiocy, which is an illness, but appears less so if a large number of people engage in it and an even larger number passively allow it to continue.