Part I: Investigating "Is God in the Bible Immoral?"

In my last blog post, I gave a little background to this investigation. This will be part one of a multi-part series, dealing with a detailed argument an acquaintance of mine has given in defense of his god's morality.

This post will deal with the introduction to his argumentation, which, in and of itself, is frought with fallacies. The link to this segment is: http://resplect.com/mainsite/?q=node/20

He begins by giving a little context surrounding morality for us. He separates the commands of his god into three groupings: Descriptive, General Prescriptive and Special Prescriptive. While this segmentation is never addressed or indicated in the bible, this is how he will begin to justify the atrocities that his god has committed and condoned.

Descriptive is used to describe those events in the bible that are not commanded or condoned by god, but merely describe sinful acts that some people in biblical times participated in. He does not give examples of these things, but I suppose items that would fall under this category for him would be the actions of the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, or I guess possibly Lot and his daughters idea of how to repopulate their tribe. This is speculation, of course, but I assume this is what he meant.

This is already problematic, in that if his god is omniscient and omnipotent, and, as is frequenty attributed to him, "has a plan" for us all, these sinful behaviours would necessarily fall under his plan, be known to him, and be allowed by him (since he would be able to not plan it happening, or knowing about it, stop it from occuring with his power). I'm certain that the christian would point out that these actions are permitted by god under the "free will" clause of his contract with humanity, but allow me to elaborate.

"God allows this free will to happen, so that we are not all blind slaves to his will. He has angels for that! He wants people who freely choose him", the christians chorus. Fair enough, except that people do bad things. Things that we, as a society, find repugnent. Things that we find disgusting and wrong for societal and evolutionary reasons. Things like, oh, raping children, for example.

God must inherently know that people are raping children. He must also allow this kind of thing to occur, even though he knows about it. This is good? This is moral?

What if I did that? If I knew my next-door neighbour was abusing his or her child, and I did nothing to stop it? I would be the worst kind of person, to allow an innocent to suffer that kind of abuse, rather than take measures to end his or her suffering. God, apparently, does this daily. Hourly, actually, and doesn't bat an eyelash. Loving father, indeed. I could be imprisoned for such an act of willfully allowing a child to be in harm's way and not interceding. God intercedes to help people win ballgames and find their keys and get a job, but doesn't deign to provide a little assistance for a child being abused by their parents?

So, already, I have issues with "Descriptive" texts, because, inherently, they are bad things which god allows to happen when he could actually stop it, and we've barely gotten through three paragraphs.

Let's move on.

The next segment, "General Prescriptive", which are, to quote, "ways of life that God deems ought to be carried out by people in all circumstances." The example given is the commandment to not have or worship idols from the old testament, which is later reinforced by Paul in the new testament.

Interesting that he should point out one of the ten commandments. This would, to my mind, imply that ALL of the jewish law (the ten commandments are only the first ten, after all, out of over six-hundred) is General Prescriptive. Which means that god wants all people to follow those laws in all circumstances, simply to extrapolate on the example provided. Fantastic! A few of the laws that are now to be followed by all christians everywhere, in all circumstances, are as follows:

• Stone your unruly children! (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
• Murder everyone and destroy an entire town if they have different religious beliefs! (Deuteronomy 13:13-15)
• Murder all women who cannot prove their virginity after the wedding night! (Deuteronomy 22:20)
• Eat bugs! (Leviticus 11:21-22)
• Kill homosexuals! (Leviticus 18:22-20:13)

And so many more. These are all General Prescriptive, and need to be carried out by all people in all circumstances, by order, command, and indictment by god, according to this reasoning.

The third category mentioned is Special Prescriptive. These are commands that god issues for a CERTAIN person or group of people to do at a CERTAIN time. The example given is when Jonah of the bible is commanded to go to Ninevah and preach the good news at people. It is helpfully explained that god doesn't want ALL of us sillybears to go to Ninevah and preach at people. That would be silly.

The example I would have perhaps used would have been the example of Jepthah. Jepthah was a man with a plan. Part of that plan included winning a certain war. Jepthah bargained a bit with god to win the war. The deal was struck with god and went thusly: if Jepthah was victorious, he would slaughter -- I mean, sacrifice -- the first thing to walk through his door after the victory. The god in the story let Jepthah win, and then, in a turn of events worthy of a daytime TV drama, the first thing to walk through his door was his daughter. Jepthah murdered -- I mean, sacrificed -- his daughter to god.

Now, this would probably be something that my friend here would call Prescriptive. His god doesn't necessarily want us all to sacrifice our children, just in this situation, when the two characters had a bargain.

Either way, it's totally sick to do such a thing. God was probably laughing all the way to the blood bank after he orchestrated that little twist of fate. Couldn't he have made a ram stumble into his house first? Wouldn't god be upset by the idea of one of the people he created being sacrificed simply because she walked through a door, unbeknownst to herself that it was signing her death certificate? Didn't the girl have a say?

Wow, all of this nonsense, and we're just past the fifth paragraph.

Now that we know the categories that my friend has just made up and defined, we can go on to identify which of these segments each atrocity of god is filed under. Very handy! I'll have to use that for my filing system in the future. I was worried I was going to have to create a new alphabet to help me better organise the mass of horrors god has inflicted upon the world.

I'm not necessarily sure what good it does to have these categories, but it certainly made him feel important, so let's go on.

Next we deal with the concept of morality, and whether or not we can actually take god to task about his actions.

My buddy here begins with this statement:

"Many have made the claim that various actions and specific prescriptive commands of God in the Old Testament are simply cruel or otherwise immoral."

True, many have made this claim, myself included. I don't personally limit myself to the old testament, actually, I find major parts of the new testament destestable as well, particularly that little part about making an admittedly innocent man suffer and die to circumvent rules that could have easily been changed to forgo blood sacrifice. Or that one part where it's supposedly "justice" for someone to pay the penalty for someone elses crimes. Those parts bother me a bit. But, I digress.

The author makes the claim that since we are not just asking another human person to account for their actions, we have to take a different tack. We are asking GOD, after all, and he deserves a different playing field when we question his morality.

I couldn't possibly disagree more. If something is immoral, it is immoral for everyone, supernatural beings included. If someone does something wrong, it doesn't matter if they are a god or the president or a receptionist or a dole bludger or a fairy, I have every right to take them to task. I am a member of this society, and the actions of other people affect me. If someone is going to rape someone, for example, or order the rape of someone, or condone the rape of someone, it doesn't matter a whit if they are an authority. They're an asshole.

The question is asked, "...[W]hat is the standard that [I] hold God to?"

It is posed almost as if there has to be a different standard to hold this god to than anybody else. Incorrect. Especially given the descriptors of god as "infinitely just", we absolutely do have to judge him to the same standards. If he says something, and yet does not follow his commands, or he says or does something that we all know to be wrong, then we have to ask why.  Why do we know that slavery is wrong, for example, while we also know that god endorses it?

If someone in today's society were to say that slavery was okay, then we would consider them immoral. People in the past, judged from today's standards, who said slavery was great, are considered immoral. If a god says, in the past or today, that slavery is okay, we know that is wrong. We know it's wrong to own people. We know this, and whether or not you want to consider it to be a moral code granted to you by god, or whether you acknowledge that we have our morals thanks to our evolution as social animals, you know that this thing is wrong. It is wrong no matter who says it is right.

Including god.

This is certainly an argument that falls under The Euthyphro Dilemma. This is an argument against divine command theory, which was attributed to Socrates in Plato's dialogue "Euthyphro", in which Socrates asks, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"

Which is essentially asking, "Does god say it is good because it is good, or is it good because god says so?"

If god says something is good because it is good, then we don't need god to tell us so. We can cut out the middleman, so to speak, and go straight to the good stuff. This god isn't the author of morality, because it is moral with or without him, he's just saying it's good because it is. Now, if things are good because god says so, then god can literally describe morality however he wishes. Today, child rape is wrong. Tomorrow, child rape is totally okay and burn everyone who doesn't do it! The next day, child rape is back to being morally wrong. It's completely arbitrary.

The standard by which I judge the morality of god is the same standard by which I judge the morality of every single other person or entity on the planet: my own morality. It was developed by my social ancestors over millions of years of evolution. I know murder is wrong because I do not want to be murdered. If I murder people, other people are likely to murder me, and I don't want that to happen. I know slavery is wrong because I wouldn't want to be a slave. If I enslave people, I'm more likely to be enslaved by others, and I don't want that to happen. It's simple stuff really. If I am kind and generous, then people will trust me and help me out. If I am cruel and ruthless, then people will hate me and leave me to die.

Not complicated. No need to spin suffering off as morality. No need to try the convoluted path of explaining why rape is okay in certain situations at god's say-so. Just very, very simple social evolution. Google it. There are a billion articles on it.

This is the basic reason that I disregard the next premise that our friend comes up with, that we must need some sort of authority figure that we could never overthrow to define morality for us. We do not! It is innate, it is a part of our evolutionary make-up just as much as our DNA and our bone structure.

He builds a straw-man, saying, "For this accusation [that his housemate stealing rent money for beer and candy is immoral] to be coherent, it must be based on a standard which is set out by an entity in authority over my housemate.  Now, it could be argued that this standard could be imposed by a human government (these are, after all, in authority over us)."

Not at all. This is a posit which is completely undefended. It does not have to be set out by an entity in authority over us at all. It is set out INSIDE of us, in our development as social animals. The reason the government asserts authority over those who break our social mores is because we have social mores in place ALREADY and we need a system in place to deal with those aberrant creatures who do not abide by them. It is wrong to murder because we say so, and we say so because that is what we developed over time, living social lives.

No need for an authority to write the laws, we wrote them ourselves, over millions of years of trial and error. If a civilsation did not share, did not protect the young, did not help eachother, that civilisation would die out. We need eachother to live, and if someone is stealing, murdering and raping amongst us, they are hurting the society. We don't abide that, so we stop it. It's not a difficult concept.

So by the time we get to this bold assertion, "I suggest that the only candidate for such an authority figure is some sort of divine personality. Now, the Bible describes God as being that very authority figure." I am no longer a participant in this conversation, because it diverges so much from what is actually known about how the world works.

Not only is it wrong on that level, but it's wrong on several other levels as well. It's a false dichotomy, to begin with -- there could potentially be other candidates for that authority figure, even if he was necessary, which he isn't. For instance, the authority of our nature as social animals, which I have described already.

Secondly, a "divine personality" could, literally, mean anything. Flying Spaghetti Monster. Allah. Shiva. Thor. Zeus. Yahweh. Gazillions of others. Am I to take into account the (dubious) morality expressed by all of these gods simply because they could be this divine personality?

Thirdly, the bible has not been demonstrated to be accurate, or divine, in any way. You cannot just say, "The bible says so, therefore it's true." That is not demonstrating its veracity at all, that is just spouting random claims. "The Koran says so, therefore it's true." is equally true by this logic.

So when you back up the claim that we must jump and do whatever god says, immediately, quick-smart, with a ridiculous comment like this: "The Bible speaks of this Person as the divine Creator and Sustainer of everything that exists apart from Himself.  For this reason, His ultimate power is completely unassailable to humans and His word must function, for them, as law." it is essentially meaningless.

I know that at this stage we are not questioning the existence of a god. We are talking about the specific character of a god. However, I do take issue with the argument that because god is god, we cannot question his character. Sure we can! I'm doing it right now. You can do it, too. My mom and dad made me, but that doesn't make them immune from my questioning them. For instance, if they beat me mercilessly everyday of my childhood*, then I could easily say that they had no right to do so, despite having made me, and having the power over my life to do it. Likewise, even if god made me, and has the power over me to do horrible things to me, that doesn't make it right for him to do so, and it in no way makes him unassailable to my questioning.

He goes on:

"If the person is to accuse God of being immoral for being changeable in His preferences, or otherwise call God to account on the basis of a standard set by an authority figure, they will find that they are thwarted from the outset.  For God by nature is the highest point of authority for both Himself and His accuser. "

All he is saying by making this argument is that might makes right, and whoever is the strongest and most authoritative gets to say what is morally correct. This is not true, in any context. If god is the supreme overlord of all creation, and he's a dickhead, he's still a dickhead, whether or not we're allowed by his laws to say so. So if god does something wrong, or arbitrarily changes his mind, then we can, and do, call him out on it. I do not recognise the authority of this god, nor do I agree that everything that comes out of his holy mouth is morally correct, just because he said so.

The final one-two punch of the introduction is to explain why, even though we are not allowed to question god, and god had written his morality on our hearts, we do question him anyway on the hideous things he does from time to time.

This is answered, as I forboded, in two parts. One being that we do not understand the parameters of the thing we are accusing god of being immoral about, i.e., we have taken the action out of context, and two being that we have a faulty understanding of morality, i.e., god gives lots of chances and only punishes those who don't respond to his mercy.

The first is ludicrous, as we have the entire context of the situation readily available to us in the bible. The fact that god ordered Abraham to slaughter his son as a sacrifice is no less disturbing when the hand holding the knife is stayed by an angel. He still ordered him to do it, and Abraham acknowledged that his god was the kind of god who would ask for a human sacrifice. The fact that god commands Jesus to actually go through with the sacrifice is no less disgusting and wrong when it is revealed that Jesus went through with it willingly, to serve his father, and to suffer for our sins. Actually, it may genuinely make it MORE offensive.

The second is pure baloney. If god murders a slew of people, then it doesn't matter how many warnings he gave them. That would be like if I had my 2 year old neice, Lily, over at my house, and I told her repeatedly not to pull my glasses off my face. Two year olds totally do this all the time. I may say no, sternly. I may put her down. I may push her little hand away when she reaches for them. I may put her in time-out. But I may not murder her.

Lastly, he gets to this:

"And finally, we discover that God taking the life of a human is not murder at all, in the sense of one human taking another human's life, because we are not related to Him as beings of equal value which He ought to respect.  Rather, our relationship to Him is like that of a lump of clay to the potter, in that the potter may do whatever he likes with the clay.   The clay is not something which the potter is obligated to treat with as much value as he has in himself (Romans 9:19-24).  So then, within the frame of reference of God relating to humans, the act of taking a human life is not murder..."

Guess what? Yes, it is. I really, genuinely feel bad for people who have such little self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem. You ARE worth something, Nick. You're not some invisible man's plaything. You are a being in your own right. As I said before, the fact that my mother and father biologically made me, and the fact that, as a child, I was not equal to them, does not give them unlimited license to do whatever they want with me. The fact that I could not stop them, or the fact that I was not their intellectual, physical or social equal does not mean that they had the right.

Nobody has the right to arbitrarily do what they like with you, and call that love and mercy and morality. It is none of them.

So, we now wrap up the first part, the introduction, and wasn't it fun? It took me several days to read through this article that he wrote, simply because it was full of such hatred and willful ignorance that it made it really hard for me to read. That is why I am doing this, not only because it is cathartic, but because it is worthwhile.

See you all next time, when we tackle the much shorter part two, concerning god and genocide.