Prot: "I just wounder[sic] why if you don't believe in a god what dose[sic] it matter to you that anyone dose[sic]?"
Sin: It's not the belief in God that I'm attacking, it's you presenting that belief as if it's absolutely true - and attempting to prove God through logic or science. In the case of the positive religions, it's the ideas that come along with that belief in God. For instance, Old Testament states, "Disobedient children should be stoned to death." I'm going to attack anyone who believes that because their God or a book told them to. It's dangerous and it should be treated as such.
If someone were to say to me, "I believe in a first principal, the God of philosophy, the God of Spinoza, the God of Aristotle, The Prime Mover", I have absolutely no problem with that. However, when someone says, "I believe in the God of the Bible." Well, that God is a dangerous God and, ibid, should be dealt with accordingly.
Prot: It is not a dangerous God, the God of the Bible is a God of love.
Sin: Scripture states, "For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts [the Canaanites] so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the LORD had commanded Moses." That in no way resembles a God of love. It resembles a racist, sexist, violent God.
Prot: Well couldn't that be construed as quote mining and possibly a straw man fallacy?
Sin: It is not a strawman. The Bible, especially Old Testament, is littered with a violent, racist, selfish, sexist God. Period. If you read that book without having any preconceived notions of what particular God it's about, or anyone telling you. "It should be interpreted this way", you will probably come away saying, "That God is an evil God."
If people insist on claiming their God is a God of love, which is an extraordinary claim considering the content of the Bible, then I would like them to show me how -- without attempting to explain away or rationalize every violent, genocidal, racist verse in the Bible with, "Well God in his infinite wisdom had to do this" - teleological suspension of the ethical rubbish.
Prot: Well, if it isn't a strawman it's definitely mining for quotes.
Sin: No it is not mining for quotes. You obviously have limited knowledge of how logic works, its' principles or its laws. The claim was made, "The God of the Bible is a God of love." That is an extraordinary claim. All I'm required to do to debunk such a claim is produce one single shred of solitary evidence from the Bible itself that does not support God being a God of love. Which I did, thus proving that he is not a God of Love.
Friday, April 25, 2008
A Protestants Question
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2 comments:
Your Sinfulness,
Very well put, clear and concise. You are to be praised for the econmomy of your use of terms and the precision of your logic in this matter.
We would say that, at root, the separation of reason and our common sense of what is good and true good from God, with no resort to analogy, leads to the problems you itemize. They create a "God" who is nothing but an irrational, cruel tyrant--and a childish one at that! The same spirit that constructed the Jewish giod of the Old Testament, gave us the Will of the People of Rousseau, the irrational racialist theories of the Nazis, and the obscenities of the Marxist-Leninists (Mao, Stalin, et alia.) They too believed that there is no human nature, rational and fixed, which makes moral demands on particular men and women. They too appealed to a "irrational force", an "elan vital" or higher goal moving through history that superceded customs human decency and compassion. They too believed that our moral sense is simply an historical artifact and relative, and therefore could be swept aside by the "revolution," justifying the murder, torture, rape and genocidal rage which characterized their regimes.
Tenete quod dedicisti!
Nicolas Eymeric
Your Irreverence,
The proposition:" the God of the Bible is a God of Love," is a universal proposition,---that is, something that is always true in every case with no exception. Since Prot fundamentalists have no accepted hermaneutic with which to interpret except a relatively literalist one, they must regard the only data worthy of evidential merit as proceeding from a literal understanding of Scripture. They reject natural theology. Only the evidence of Scripture suffices and has authority in these matters. Therefore, your argument that only one example "mined" from Scripture negating that propositon is sufficient to reject the assertion that the "God of the Bible is a God of Love" is "spot on" and logically coherent.
One would have to submit the Old Testament to a thoroughgoing critique based on a post paleao-dispensational hermaneutic to escape the conclusion you have so admirably drawn. Alternatively, one would be forced to have recourse to the Marcionite expedient.
Roma locuta, causa finita!
Nicolas Eymeric.
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