What the Bible Says

But if God was with Judah, he clearly wanted him to win the battle, so why wouldn't he grant that? Either he wasn't really with Judah, and the passage is wrong, or he was and he couldn't beat the iron chariots.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Or, you know, historical bias. People write what sounds good to them, fabricate elements of the story, exaggerate. Even if one considers the ultimate messages of the Bible infallible, that does not make the messengers any less human in the long run.

Alternately—though they might not have wanted to spell it out—God was teaching Judah some kind of lesson. Which is a very Old Testament thing for God to do, to be honest...

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

God being with them does not necessarily mean He wanted them to win the battle. Or that He wanted them to win strongly enough to intervene.

As much as people throughout history, many influential, have wished, God has no inherent reason nor obligation to favor the ego of any set of humans. Maybe He'll do something of that sort to catch their attention. But not as a policy.

Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?

"I would say that the hidden assumption behind the rule of thumb isn't that the text is never self-contradictory, but rather is that the text seeks to display some meaning of some sort, and that the text is reasonably adept at soldiering towards that goal throughout the passages of itself- because to that end self-contradiction is rarely constructive."

Yup.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Replying from the Homosexuality vs Religion thread:

It is both things, and more besides. "Divine inspiration" does not mean that God came down and wrote the whole text Himself; rather, it means that the texts, written by the human authors according to their own mindsets and limitations, are one of the means that God chose to communicate with humankind. Reading the Bible is a process of interpretation, through which one must try to understand the divine message under the human trappings.

edited 2nd May '12 6:41:49 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

So I got a little curious and read the Hebrew source of the talked about phrase(Judges 1:19) :

The translation seems a bit weird (I guess it's translated through Greek or something) , there's no mention of anything translatable as "could". If I were to literally translate it it'd be something like this:(Weird syntax ahead!)

"And god be with Yehuda(Judah) and inherited the mountain because not to inherit (?) the sitters of the valley because they have iron chariots "

Not very understandable, but now it's up to you foreigners!Good luck!

Note: Arial doesn't deal well with the diacritical marks,I'm not sure why don't they fix it. Any other Hebrew font available here? Preferably David?

edited 2nd May '12 9:22:34 AM by ssamredrum

I have a question: is God judgeable by human and/or Biblical morality? If so, what of the plagues, the fireball and the fifty-one, and other such things? Can we still say He's omnibenevolent?

But if God is not judgeable by human and/or Biblical morality, then why call Him good? If one can say "The ways of the Lord are mysterious" to absolve God of responsibility for an apparently destructive act attributed to Him, why can't one say the same to brush aside all the apparently benevolent things He's done? It seems to me to be a deeply double-edged argument to say that God is outside of all morality or unknowable- for if he is unknowable or unjudgeable, how can we claim to know His love or judge His word to be true?

Smile for me!

That's a question that I've often asked, but never received a satisfactory answer. I've heard Christians talk about "objective morality" as though morality was handed down by divine command. But if that were the case, then wouldn't the God that is the supposed source of morality also follow its own rules?

Some will say that killing babies is always wrong. But if you believe the story of Noah's flood, or the Plagues of Egypt, or Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Israelites' conquest of Canaan, then God either directly killed or ordered the killing of lots of babies.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Thanks for moving the train, Carc.

I know you, and indeed most Christians, don't think God wrote the Bible. But you said: Also, people didn't just wake up one morning and say "oh, and by the way, the Lord hates it when you have gay sex". And I'm wondering why Divine Inspiration couldn't cause people to do just that. My guess is that you place those part in the "cultural influence" pile. What causes you to do that though? Can't be the Tradition because, unless I'm misunderstanding how Tradition works, since the Catholic Church still regards homosexuality as sin Tradition sees those parts of the Bible as valid.

ssamredrum

I'm guessing "to sit" can also be translated as "to live" or "to rule" and "to inherit" means also "to conquer", because otherwise that's kindof bizarre.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Well, God, by definition, can do whatever He wants. But that does not seem to me to be His usual style of doing things. If I had to guess, I'd say that this is partly because He does not wish to interfere with human free will, and partly because the Original Sin cut us off, by our own choice, from a direct contact with the Divinity; but that's just a guess.

But to be clear, it's not like I take a precept of the Bible and try to guess if it should be put in the "Divinely Inspired" pile or in the "Cultural Influence" pile; rather, given any precept I try to understand what in which sense it is applicable to me now — for example, in matters of sexual morality, it seems to me that the underlying meaning of much of what the Bible says on the topic is that it is not acceptable to make use of people for one's own pleasure, as if they were objects; and that furthermore, it is also unacceptable to be slaves to sensual pleasures.

And as for why I don't consider the specific precept that we are discussing to be literally applicable: mostly it comes down to the fact that I disagree with the idea that the telos of sexual acts is exclusively reproduction (which is the main rational argument used by the tradition I belong to); that the passages of the Leviticus against it are superseded as a matter of course, as they were never meant to apply to gentiles; and that finally, the passages in Paul are to be understood in the light of the Graeco-Roman cultural environment he was in, and — most importantly — in the light of the passage in which Saint Augustine says

edited 2nd May '12 12:39:37 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I just want to point out that I disagree. God, by definition, can only do what's right.

Now using Trivialis handle.

Hm, I actually agree with you here. I misspoke, sorry.

What I meant is that there is nothing that makes it intrinsically impossible for God to send a message directly to a person, with no possibility of misunderstanding (well, not unless this is unjust for some reason, of course). But that historically, He does not seem to have done that very often — generally, He seems to favor subtler ways of letting Himself be known.

edited 2nd May '12 4:11:38 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I have to say, I don't understand this "by our own choice" thing at all. It seems like you're saying we at least partly deserve the dearth of divine intervention because we made a choice to disobey his whole "don't eat the apple" rule. But here's the thing: Original Sin wasn't my choice. It was, at best, Adam and Eve's choice. I don't understand why a just God would make a decision regarding me or anyone else alive today for something that someone else did. It wasn't "our own choice." It was someone else's.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

God can do whatever they want. A god that is worthy of worship is one that follows their own rules even though they are beyond any requirement to. A god that lives in a manner in opposition of their mandate, while not out of their power, is just unworthy of worship.

Original sin is a cruel sabatoge at worst and callous stupidity at best.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

I should think that an entity that created the utmost cruel sabotage probably isn't worth worshiping, at least not if we presume it's omnipotent.

It goes without saying that I don't take the story of the Garden of Eden and of the Fruit as literal. What I get from it is that the universe is different from what it was planned to be, and that this is the result of free choices of intelligent beings — and note, this is not to be understood from a historical perspective either. In a sense, one could perhaps say that every time in which I, freely and consciously, did not strive for Good to the very best of my abilities, that was part of what is symbolized by Adam and Eve's disobedience.

As a sidenote, I am aware that other Christians here prefer a more literal interpretation of that passage. I mean no disrespect towards them — what I am describing here is my interpretation, and I am aware that it is not shared by all of Christianity.

And there is no talk of "deserving", as I understand it; rather, God refuses to oppose the will of intelligent beings, to make Himself into some sort of benevolent tyrant. If I tell Him to leave me the heck alone — and that is what sin is, in its essence — then He will obey.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Pretty arbitrary definition of Sin. That's the thing-whenever anyone brings up The Problem of Evil, it always seems to be "parried" by "Free Will" but for a definition of Free Will that's ... lacking.

I mean, it's immoral of me to stand by and watch evil be done when I have the ability to, at no cost to myself, stop it.

Though you can argue that god isn't all-loving and stuff like that. Pretty much throws my argument out of the water there.

Anyhoo, been through that argument umpteen billion times before, no sense of rehashing it any further.

Well, sin is a conscious refusal of divine Grace. I don't think that this is a particularly nonstandard definition.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Okay, but then we need to remember "Sin =/= evil or bad"

Well, I am operating under the assumption "God = the source of all that is good". So every time in which I am given the possibility to do some good, that is an offer of divine grace; and every time I consciously refuse to do so, that is a conscious refusal of divine grace.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The problem is that that's begging the question. Or wrong. Because we can then demonstrate that-by other reasonable definitions of "good"-that at times, doing that which is good is sinful.

Either you are using a very legalistic definition of "sinful", or a very strange definition of "good", or I have no clue what is going on here (always a very likely possibility ).

I'm off to dinner now, in any case, read you later.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Well, people argue this or that about what the bible says about slavery or about homosexuals or about yadda yadda yadda. If you're saying "that's wrong, the Bible says it's a sin" because "sin = not doing good" then you're begging the question, because you're saying "that's wrong because it's wrong."

I don't have an "absolute definition" for good, but I generally consider it the mitigation of suffering and the expansion of happiness (for the most vague definition thereof-this does not necessarily mean the world is best off with everyone being given happy pills. I'm not getting into that argument).

OK, "legalistic definition of sin" it is.

I think that the Bible contains a number of useful insights and arguments about the nature of good and so on; but I don't think that you'll find me using "the Bible says that it's a sin" as the primary justification for me disagreeing with some behaviour any time soon.

I could instead say, for example, that something is a sin because it does not treat other people with the respect and the dignity that they deserve, and so on.

edited 4th May '12 10:06:48 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Right, but that's still begging the question, because "Oh, god is all goodness. Why? It is."

It's God being defined as the source of all good because it's defined that way, not because of any real evidence or argument.