God - do you believe?

[straits]

Urgh, there is no God, there is no pattern, we have no control!

edit: never mind, answered my own question.

[scotcat]

I just can't bring myself to believe in God. I have many people in my family that do believe - and thats great - but I can't.

Too many people I've met/seen on the news/read about in the paper use God as an excuse for doing some truly Sh*tty things to other people - it's ok because 'God is on my side' or 'its in the bible so it's written in stone' being their reasoning behind it. This has turned me completely away from the whole thing.

I'll never say never, because you never know what in your life would make you believe. Things can happen to make believers out of people. Lets just say I don't see it happening anytime soon and leave it at that.

[Lummel]

If those people didn't use God as their excuse they would use something else as their excuse for their poor behaviour and attitudes like manifest destiny, biological imperatives or market discipline.

[Valyrian_Goddess]

I basically haven't slept in more than a day, so my brain is a little slow right now...but, what? how is "I agree" answering Solo's question?

I thought it was rhetorical

[Sci-2]

they aren't exactly the same. i distinguish a difference, as you can see in my earlier posts, but that does not mean that there aren't atheists that exhibit irrational faith

you don't think some of these things are cutural as opposed to religious. for the most part, a religion meets the needs of a society. what a society wants to hear, its religion will say. (not always of course, but often)

there are non-religious homophobes and misogynists

i do think that your last statement is 100% correct. but i find that the religious impulse you blame is often a religious rationalization

Oh, I don't think there is a 100% causal relationship between, say, Christianity and homophobia. We, on this very board, have dedicated Christians who are also dedicated LGBT advocates if not LGBT persons themselves.

But religions are, almost by their very nature, snapshots of certain time periods. So there have definitely been times when religion has pushed for social change and charity, this exists in the modern day.

Yet I'd also note that when people want to defend a retrograde way of thinking, they can often find an easy ally in ancient scripture.

This is why, though one might disagree with the harshness of the rhetoric, Terra really is debating in good faith because from a moral and logical standpoint many (most?) gods come off as tyrannical and/or manipualtive, misogynistic and/or homophobic when you take a literal reading of many (most?) scriptures.

[sologdin]

yeah, it really is about close reading of scripture. people might adhere to a loving god, but i'm not seeing scriptural authority for that proposition, which comes across as naked, unsupportable conclusory allegation. that's fine, but it means that adherents of the Loving God have invented a new religion that exists only in modern oral tradition and whose material practices overlap with practices arising out of ancient religions based on inhumane texts. the oral theology of the Loving God is simultaneously a progressive step forward in terms of which ethics is dominant as well as retrograde insistence on belief in the absence of evidence and obediance in the absence of law outside of nebulous divine will.

[BringerOfSnow]

A little off topic but that's what I do. Here's something my friends and I always joke about.

I enjoy watching sports. Any sport, really. However, what I truly despise is seeing a player make some great play then go down into a prayer or doube tap their fist against their chest and point upwards towards the heavens.

Post-game interviews are always funny, too. "Aw man, like, our defense played really great, and I'm just thankful God was there and helped me make that great catch to win the game." Yeah, okay dude. Why can't you attribute your skill to all the hard work you've put yourself through throughout the years? Why can't you thank your parents for blessing you with good genes?

So here's our little joke. While God was busy helping that athlete score their touchdown, hit their homerun, or score their goal, a bus full of children went careening off a cliff, five kids just drowned while tubing down a river, your mom was raped by a eunuch and then eaten piece by piece, and your friend's dog was just brutally beaten to a pulp.

Ungrateful fucks.

Sorry for the tangent. Mods, delete it if you feel the urge.

[aimlessgun]

Yeah, okay dude. Why can't you attribute your skill to all the hard work you've put yourself through throughout the years?

I remember a sprinter saying just that after qualifying at the Olympic trials, and the only reason I remember something so mundane and meaningless is that it was so unusual in the context.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

yeah, it really is about close reading of scripture. people might adhere to a loving god, but i'm not seeing scriptural authority for that proposition, which comes across as naked, unsupportable conclusory allegation. that's fine, but it means that adherents of the Loving God have invented a new religion that exists only in modern oral tradition and whose material practices overlap with practices arising out of ancient religions based on inhumane texts. the oral theology of the Loving God is simultaneously a progressive step forward in terms of which ethics is dominant as well as retrograde insistence on belief in the absence of evidence and obediance in the absence of law outside of nebulous divine will.

It's really about close reading of scripture that comes from a proper religious hermeneutical lens from within the tradition. ;) And no, it's not just a "modern oral tradition," but part of a tradition that extends much further into the religious history of Judaism and Christianity themselves. It's only really within the past one to two hundred years that the "Loving God" has been emphasized over the "God of Righteousness and Judgment," who has been forced to coexist in a religiously-pluralistic secular society, but that does not necessarily make it a new religion anymore than moving a fish from a lake to an aquarium makes it a new fish.

[Castel]

Yeah, okay dude. Why can't you attribute your skill to all the hard work you've put yourself through throughout the years?

Is it really that weird? People don't become successful because of their hard work alone. Michael Phelps didn't choose his body type, he just refined it. You don't choose your height, build or your ability to pay for lessons. A lot of people can find the seeds of their success in things totally disconnected from their efforts.

eta:And even during matches sometimes the weirdest things will happen (but then we get into whether or not god affects human actions) the ref looks away for three seconds and some asshole hands the ball into the net and you get knocked out for no reason, someone sprains their ankle all of a sudden. Volcanic ash forces you to take the bus and leaves you tired and sore before the match. A piece of debris on the field blocks the ball and steals your goal.

[sologdin]

MFC--

i hear you, especially about the supremacy of immanent hermeneutics. but is there scripture that negates the arbitrary malice of the flood, or of sodom, or of the egyptian plagues? the fundy will insist that they are mere instances of perfect justice, which insistence is of course denied on my end--but how to deduce Loving God from all that?

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

MFC--

i hear you, especially about the supremacy of immanent hermeneutics. but is there scripture that negates the arbitrary malice of the flood, or of sodom, or of the egyptian plagues? the fundy will insist that they are mere instances of perfect justice, which insistence is of course denied on my end--but how to deduce Loving God from all that?

Emphasis. You'll get a mix of responses from those purporting an all-loving god that range from rejecting the text,* glossing over the text, or emphasizing a different message. More progressive and educated Christians will typically situate the text in its historical context while still upholding God's benevolence. The other problem is that you seem to assume that these would be places, or, perhaps, should be places from which a Judeo-Christian would deduce a loving god. (And when talking of emphasis, I would raise here how Jewish emphasis is not on the plagues, but how Yahweh's salvific rescue led to the what they see as the loving gift of the Torah to their people.) I would, however, argue though that the texts do present Yahweh as a loving god, but with the caveat that modern conceptions of love - typically one of romantic sentimentality - is not one necessarily held by the ancient Near Eastern world, which has a closer semantic overlap with "devotion" and "loyalty." The other issue is that the narrators of the biblical texts were undecided at the times of their composition (and still now in their reception) as to the extent of god's love. Notice, for example, as to whom are the recipients of God's wrath in your examples: Flood - a universal wickedness and corruption (i.e. not the scriptural audience); Sodom - the Sodomites (i.e. not the scriptural audience); and the Plagues - the Egyptians (i.e. not the scriptural audience). For some, that love extends only to the elect people. For other narrators, this love extends as a universal in which god loves all peoples. Through no fault of your own, you are not necessarily making much effort to read these texts as any variety of believer probably would, whether they be fundamentalist or progressive, or postmodernist, modernist, pre-modernist, or ancient. You have already incriminated the entirety of the texts a priori without looking at the dialogue that is happening within, between, and around the texts.

* The worst offender I've heard - and one that I have committed to my memory for the day when I teach bible courses - was a student at seminary who said that God flooding the Egyptians didn't happen because an all-loving God would not do that. The objection here being that their conception of God somehow determines the historicity of the narrative event described in the literary text.

[Castel]

* The worst offender I've heard - and one that I have committed to my memory for the day when I teach bible courses - was a student at seminary who said that God flooding the Egyptians didn't happen because an all-loving God would not do that. The objection here being that their conception of God somehow determines the historicity of the narrative event described in the literary text.

Did God ever claim to be all-loving?

(Legitimate question here, off the top of my head I can't think of him ever saying such a thing).

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Did God ever claim to be all-loving?

(Legitimate question here, off the top of my head I can't think of him ever saying such a thing).

A few authors likely do attribute God as claiming omni-benevolence. Give me a moment to dig up some relevant selections in which God is the subject of "love." The problem in this case was with the hermeneutic this particular seminary student used.

[Sci-2]

1 John 4:8?

[Thlayli]

Thread improves with a soundtrack:

[sologdin]

In that hour the voice of MFC grew so great and so potent that even the herald of the atheists bowed before him as one full-answered, and departed.

[Larry of the Lawn]

It's really about close reading of scripture that comes from a proper religious hermeneutical lens from within the tradition. ;) And no, it's not just a "modern oral tradition," but part of a tradition that extends much further into the religious history of Judaism and Christianity themselves. It's only really within the past one to two hundred years that the "Loving God" has been emphasized over the "God of Righteousness and Judgment," who has been forced to coexist in a religiously-pluralistic secular society, but that does not necessarily make it a new religion anymore than moving a fish from a lake to an aquarium makes it a new fish.

True, but taking the fish out of the lake changes its behavior and even its growth. It'll even change its color. Same fish, but in a different world.

What happens when you take that fish out of the aquarium and put it on a bumpersticker?

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

God as Subject

Deut 4:37 And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them. He brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power...

Deut 7:13 [Yahweh] will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, in the land that he swore to your ancestors to give you.

Deut 10:15 yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

Deut 23:5 (Yet the Lord your God refused to heed Balaam; the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.)

Isaiah 43:4 "Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.

Isaiah 48:14 Assemble, all of you, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? The Lord loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

Isaiah 61:8 For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Jer 31:2-3 Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, ³ the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.

Hos 9:15 Every evil of theirs began at Gilgal; there I came to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their officials are rebels.

Hos 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

Hos 14:4 I will heal their [i.e. Israel] disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

Malachi 1:2-3 I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? says the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob ³but I have hated Esau; I have made his hill country a desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.

Cf. Ps 11:7; Ps 33:5; Ps 37:28; Ps 47:4; Ps 78:68; Ps 87:2; Ps 146:8; Prov 3:12; Prov 15:9; Neh 13:36; 2 Chr 2:11; 2 Chr 9:8

Prophetic Command

Amos 5:15 Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

In the Hebrew Bible, the love is not really all that universal, but usually particular to the Israelites/Judeans/Hebrews or to patriarchal figures (e.g. Abraham).

It certainly does become more universal in the New Testament with its focus on the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles. There is a growing sense in Pauline scholarship that Paul never saw himself as being part of a new religion, but, rather, saw his mission to the Gentiles as being an entirely Jewish one in which the Gentiles were being brought into the nation of Israel for the coming of the endtimes. In response to Castel's question, I would also add that I think that the omni-benelovence was a later development that was probably influenced by the "omni-obsession" in Hellenistic thinking regarding divine perfection (e.g. omniscience, omnipotence, etc.).

True, but taking the fish out of the lake changes its behavior and even its growth. It'll even change its color. Same fish, but in a different world.

Such is the way of religions.

What happens when you take that fish out of the aquarium and put it on a bumpersticker?

Ichthys.

[Thlayli]

In that hour the voice of MFC grew so great and so potent that even the herald of the atheists bowed before him as one full-answered, and departed.

Agreed. Cher kicks ass.