Is the Bible a magic book?

[Lion IRC]

...I don't pretend to be in any position to say what a "loving god" (whatever that is) "should" do.

I shall have a scroll thru your posting history to see whether you consistently refrain from commenting on what you think God should or shouldn't have done.

 

[Elixir]

...I don't pretend to be in any position to say what a "loving god" (whatever that is) "should" do.

I shall have a scroll thru your posting history to see whether you consistently refrain from commenting on what you think God should or shouldn't have done.

Oh, I don’t doubt you’ll find plenty of flippant references to hypothetical things some or other hypothetical god might, should, or should not do. A “loving god” though? That’s def outa my league.
BTW I do take the fact that I exist as strong implication that overall, the observable universe is slightly more kindly creative than cruelly so. Seems mostly indifferent to me, but not quite entirely so. And there doth dwell My God of My Gaps.

 

[ideologyhunter]

And would you agree that it is kinder to take unmarried virgins into your (patriarchal) care rather than leaving them to fend for themselves amid the many other ravaging warlord tribes in that region?

If you kill off every infant, every toddler, every child, every teen (except for virginal girls), every married woman, every man, every senior in a city, you are no longer a warrior. Those acts would make you a thoroughly debauched mass murderer. (I know there's a dispute among some believers if those events even happened.) Mass murderers do not get to take a moral stance. And what the hell would it amount to? Why were they told to spare the virgins? "Look how virtuous we are. We killed off the rest of their city. We'll take them under our protection, and we'll have sex with them." You think the protection part of the setup makes this a moral act?

 

[Lion IRC]

Yes. War is hell.
The Israelites tried to live peaceably with those who would be their enemies and they were being repeatedly attacked without provocation.
What we see at Numbers 31 is a culmination, and one which I think was the lesser of two evils.

 

[bilby]

If they did deserve punishment would you agree a loving God should intervene to end their wickedness?

And would you agree that it is kinder to take unmarried virgins into your (patriarchal) care rather than leaving them to fend for themselves amid the many other ravaging warlord tribes in that region?

"Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust" - Voltaire

 

[ideologyhunter]

From Numbers 31 (beginning at verse 9, ending at verse 18, and shortened by me):

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...Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoils to Moses...And Moses was angry with the officers of the army...Moses said to them, 'Have you let all the women live? Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.'

I read this differently. I don't see it as a narrative that can be covered by the generalization 'War is hell.' It is about officers who had decided to spare the lives of the children and bring them out of the place alive. Their leader, however, was enraged that the male children and married women aren't dead. He had them murdered. The Bible (I presume here) presents this as moral.
Forget that this comes out of an ancient book and is written in a folk tale style. Can you imagine how these events would be received by the world today?
To believe that the events in Numbers are true and that the book is inspired by a deity is to assert that wars of extermination and infanticide can be moral acts and that a deity may command them, and then you better commit them. I don't believe in either of those scenarios, and don't have that burden. It must take a long, tangled rationalization to believe that (and of course, as many believers do, to believe, in addition, that God is pro-life and condemns abortion.)

 

[Politesse]

I read this differently. I don't see it as a narrative that can be covered by the generalization 'War is hell.' It is about officers who had decided to spare the lives of the children and bring them out of the place alive. Their leader, however, was enraged that the male children and married women aren't dead. He had them murdered. The Bible (I presume here) presents this as moral.

This is a bad way to read the Hebrew Scriptures in my opinion; they were intended as a historical records as well as a political documents, and do not necessarily portray either YHWH or his people as always correct or always good.

Christians often do, though, which can be pretty damn alarming in some cases.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Oh, I disagree. The OT quotes Jehovah as condemning for slaughter entire peoples. See Deut 20, for a good example.

 

[Politesse]

Oh, I disagree. The OT quotes Jehovah as condemning for slaughter entire peoples. See Deut 20, for a good example.

If you re-read my post, youll see that this is not a contradiction with what I said. In the Hebrew Scriptures, G-d is not presented as infallible, nor as universally concerned with human wellbeing. That sort of thinking is Greco-Roman influenced Christian philosophy anachronistically applied to a text that cannot support it, as it was not composed to either support or refute such a view. The peoples of the ancient Near East had a fundamentally different set of starting assumptions about what a god was and what they might be expected to do. When the HS admonishes you to fear the LORD, the authors mean it: G-d is portrayed throughout the Torah and most of the Ketuvim as a terrifying and ultimately uncontrollable being, likewise his couriers the angels, and they were never portrayed otherwise until those books written during and after the Babylonian exile entered the anthology and a more Classical idea of God as a universal principle slowly crept into the narrative.

 

[southernhybrid]

Well I don't agree that it was "genocide" being ordered or rape.
But it's very easy to argue that failure to punish evil would not be a loving thing to do.

If God hadn't intervened to hasten an end to the Midianite war, there would have been even more death and suffering.

This reminds me of the tornado we had here last year that killed a young boy and a government worker who was trying to help save people or property. The Christians were all praising god for saving so many lives, but nobody mentioned that this god they believe in allowed a little boy and a good man to be killed by the tornado that god sent to us. Since god is in control of everything, according to most Christians, then it was god that sent hat tornado and allowed it to kill two innocent people. I guess that's where, it must have been god's will for those two to die, even if we don't understand god's plan.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Oh, I disagree. The OT quotes Jehovah as condemning for slaughter entire peoples. See Deut 20, for a good example.

If you re-read my post, youll see that this is not a contradiction with what I said. In the Hebrew Scriptures, G-d is not presented as infallible, nor as universally concerned with human wellbeing. That sort of thinking is Greco-Roman influenced Christian philosophy anachronistically applied to a text that cannot support it, as it was not composed to either support or refute such a view. The peoples of the ancient Near East had a fundamentally different set of starting assumptions about what a god was and what they might be expected to do. When the HS admonishes you to fear the LORD, the authors mean it: G-d is portrayed throughout the Torah and most of the Ketuvim as a terrifying and ultimately uncontrollable being, likewise his couriers the angels, and they were never portrayed otherwise until those books written during and after the Babylonian exile entered the anthology and a more Classical idea of God as a universal principle slowly crept into the narrative.

OK... I see what you're saying about Jehovah, although I'm not thoroughly behind the analysis. If it's substantially true, it would make the moral structure of the Bible even shabbier. Jehovah in that case might as well be called Donald.
Also -- I detect not a hint of approbation at genocide in the narratives about the hero Joshua, et al.

 

[Politesse]

OK... I see what you're saying about Jehovah, although I'm not thoroughly behind the analysis. If it's substantially true, it would make the moral structure of the Bible even shabbier. J

The Bible cannot possibly have a consistent moral structure. Some of it's authors lived nearly as far apart culturally and temporally from one another as the latter ones do to us now, and many ideas about God and faith are explored throughout its various faiths. Then you've got the problem that those who compiled works like Kings and Chronicles, though they certainly had political motivations to portray certain kings as virtuous or villainous, had no idea that thousands of years on people would be looking through their historical annals seeking to turn them into moral advice or emotional support posters.

This inconsistency and variability can be a good thing, as long as you understand that fact and read it as the complex, textured religious collection that it is, rather than the simplistic moral manual that fundamentalist readings try to turn it into. When you start reading the sacred texts of the various world traditions as texts, as books rather than moral manuals or legal prescriptions, you find that there is still plenty worth discovering in their pages. They are all of them fascinating works, and in all cases, there are reasons why they stuck around over the millenia rather than fading into obscurity.

 

[Jarhyn]

No, to Politesse's usage (which is different from yours), you responded that it requires delusion.

Ah, right. My bad for creating that confusion.
There’s a difference between what magic “is” and what is required to believe that causality has been violated.
Then there remains (for some) the question of whether causality is in fact violable. It’s absolutely your option to remain agnostic about that. In fact, if it enriches your life experience to entertain the possibility, I wholly endorse it, assuming no harm comes to others as a result.

As I said, I don't subscribe to the belief in the violation of causality, and am not agnostic to the idea; even were there to be an 'outside', I do not see a situation where causality itself could be violated.

I'm not agnostic to it insofar as any claim amounting to one of "additional causal framework" requires strong evidence.

The sort of magic many subscribe to doesn't require any new additional causal frameworks beyond the proposed physical ones*. It helps to know as much as possible actual causal framework being leveraged, because that leads to more consistent effects (good engineering relies on sound theory), but as a metaphor you don't need to know the exact chemical action of a pill to get the effect.

Admittedly, those who think there's some causal framework they can leverage to make someone fall in love with them by burning a candle and some sticks and some incense is probably delusional, and if they think they can do it without risking terrible side effects, secondary costs, or other unwanted results (including success), they are absolutely delusional.

Delusions around magic abound, and are so prevalent that they probably dwarf the percentage of anything real you might find. Most of them are, as you observe, belief in external causality without any possible real causality. The best forms are generally accidentally discovered and often poorly understood psychological manipulations of the self, either for the benefit of either the author or the reader of said book of magic.

I surmise the true name of a great many spells cast around the world is nothing more than "Fill occult bookstore owners' pockets with money".

Honestly I think belief in non-causal phenomena is pretty uniformly harmful, since it opens the door to casting that pernicious spell of "putting your money in someone else's pocket for no good reason" instead of anything in the family of "some obscure psychological exercise that will actually help improve the chances that you get what you want."

*They can believe a headache pill will work for instance because it contains little angels that bless the places in their feet that cause them to get headaches, none of which is true other than the headache pill will actually work.

 

[Elixir]

I surmise the true name of a great many spells cast around the world is nothing more than "Fill occult bookstore owners' pockets with money".

Don't know why that strikes me a so funny, when it is in fact so sad.

 

[steve_bank]

So Learner, all that is implied as evil in the bible mist be punished? Thickness certainty must be stoned to death.

The problem for us non religious is that Christians for 2000 years punished what they consider evil in god's name and the bible.

When a Christian says god says something is evil or bad it usually means 'I don't like it and I am using god for emphasis'.

To Evangelicals atheists are doing evil by being atheist.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Isn't it obvious that the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the Midianites deserved to be 'utterly destroyed' by the Israelites for their 'abominable practices'? Why, it's written there in...the Israelites' scriptures.
Lunacy, if it's fiction, and lunacy, if it's believed today.

 

[southernhybrid]

So Learner, all that is implied as evil in the bible mist be punished? Thickness certainty must be stoned to death.

The problem for us non religious is that Christians for 2000 years punished what they consider evil in god's name and the bible.

When a Christian says god says something is evil or bad it usually means 'I don't like it and I am using god for emphasis'.

To Evangelicals atheists are doing evil by being atheist.

No. They don't think we're evil because we're atheists. They just think their god is going to send us to hell to be tortured for all eternity because we're atheists. However, we're not that special. God is going to punish the Muslims, the Baha'is, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Mormons, the JWs, and all the other religious or non religious who don't believe exactly what they do. "For the wages of sin is death.....but the gift of god is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"......Get it. Believe like we do or you're screwed. ( Did I remember that correctly? I had to memorize it during my childhood ). Hell will be more diverse and interesting or as Mark Twain put it, "Heaven for the climate...Hell for the company."

"Judge not, that ye, that ye be not judged." God should listen to his own words. Or... When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a WOman, I put away childish things. Like for example.....religion, especially evangelical religion.

 

[steve_bank]

So Learner, all that is implied as evil in the bible mist be punished? Thickness certainty must be stoned to death.

The problem for us non religious is that Christians for 2000 years punished what they consider evil in god's name and the bible.

When a Christian says god says something is evil or bad it usually means 'I don't like it and I am using god for emphasis'.

To Evangelicals atheists are doing evil by being atheist.

No. They don't think we're evil because we're atheists. They just think their god is going to send us to hell to be tortured for all eternity because we're atheists. However, we're not that special. God is going to punish the Muslims, the Baha'is, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Mormons, the JWs, and all the other religious or non religious who don't believe exactly what they do. "For the wages of sin is death.....but the gift of god is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"......Get it. Believe like we do or you're screwed. ( Did I remember that correctly? I had to memorize it during my childhood ). Hell will be more diverse and interesting or as Mark Twain put it, "Heaven for the climate...Hell for the company."

"Judge not, that ye, that ye be not judged." God should listen to his own words. Or... When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a WOman, I put away childish things. Like for example.....religion, especially evangelical religion.

I disagree strongly. You can hear it in Evangelical TV and radio. I'd heard it on FOX news. They causally say secular instead of atheist. Secular science is out to destroy religion.

When I was in assisted living two preachers came in for meetings in the community room. When on the floor you cod hear loud angry hate speech directed at atheists.

Atheists are a convenient perennial foil for Christians.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Bill Barr railed against us. Bush I declared that an atheist couldn't be a good American.

 

[DBT]

Apparently atheism is un-American, as with left wing politics, the Democrats and anyone who questions Trump.