Why does God need the Blood ?

Originally posted by telerion
I judge based upon what appears right through reason.

Until you solve Euthyphro's Dilemma, you are prey to your own accusation. You just have an extra bit of fantasy tied on.

A thoughtful response. Thank you.

I looked up Euthyphro's Dilemma (always good to learn something new 🙂 ). The arguments are not new to me - but I like knowing who made them also.

It seems his question is which is prior, God or good. Russel seems to think this puts the Christian between the rock and a hard place. Clearly I would say God defines good. Russel said the problem with this is it makes good arbitrary - based on the whim of God.

Indeed it is true that good is based on the whim of God. In a limited sense it is arbitrary. But arbitrary has negative connotations. But a simple view of arbitrary is something that is based merely on a particular persons wishes. This is not a problem for two reason.
1) Good is based on the one persons wishes - it is God's will.
2) The Christian God is not mutable - so the saying that God could have made something good that he now considers evil is senseless.

God is not going to pull the rug out from under us. He has made defined good according to his will, and that is made clear in his commands - particularly to love God and our neighbors.

If good was defined by the will of a man, it would be arbitrary in the connotative sense. But since God is immutable, there is no dilemma. God is prior to good, God defines good.

Originally posted by Coletti
A thoughtful response. Thank you.

I looked up Euthyphro's Dilemma (always good to learn something new 🙂 ). The arguments are not new to me - but I like knowing who made them also.

It seems his question is which is prior, God or g ...[text shortened]... ble, there is no dilemma. God is prior to good, God defines good.

I'm sure bbar will be making his appearance soon, and I look forward to it.

A couple of quick things first, if you are interested in Euthyphro's Dilemma. I'm guessing from your post that you read Bertrand Russell's version tailored to the xtian god. You probably saw mention of this Russell's work, but Plato is the originally records the dilemma in the short dialogue "Euthyphro." It's a excellent, short read.

The problem that I have with your position (It is one of the two positions first offered by Socrates in the dialogue.) is that it offers no reason to think that good things should be desired over bad things. If you offer any other reason for doing so, then you've gone beyond your position that God defines good arbitrarily because you would be supplying an independent reason for why some things are good and others bad. According to your position as it stands now, the only reason that it is not good to take my neighbors virgin daughter as a slave/concubine is because you think God says not to do this. That it is a bad action is rooted in anything else (e.g. the intense pain that it causes). It just so happens that God doesn't want us to take slaves/concubines (The OT seems to suggest that God makes allowances.).

You give two reasons why the arbitrary nature of good according to your position is not problematic.

1)Good is based on the one persons wishes - it is God's will.

This isn't so much a justification for arbitrariness, as a restatement of your position. It also contains an unjustified assertion that your god actually exists. If some other god (perhaps even a Yahweh that you do not know) exists and your Yahweh does not, then this first statement is false. Either way 1) does not justify the arbitrary nature of good according to your position.

2) The Christian God is not mutable - so the saying that God could have made something good that he now considers evil is senseless.

I don't think it is senseless. God could do many things and declared many things by omnipotence. It would be senseless according to immutability though for God to actually change the rules he has declared though.

First, I see no reason why immutability gives any reason to think that what God says is good is desirable in any way. At best, it is just the opinion of God, nothing more. Again if you give other reasons why something is good or bad, then you've expanded your position from "God has declared some things good and other things bad. It is arbitrary, but that's okay."

Second, God does seem to make allowances for even the strictest moral rules (murder, rape, theft, etc.). So even if his standards are immutable, they may be so sensitive to circumstance that we cannot tell what is good and bad or when which rules apply.

I would also like to point out that the criticism from my last post still holds. Saying God is good is meaningless. It just says that God does what he does and opines what he opines.

Edit: Oh yeah, Socrates/Plato disagrees with your position. He prefers the position (using Greek view) that the gods love things because they are virtuous, not that things are virtuous because the gods love them. I can't remember why right now. I'd have to pull out the dialogue again.

Originally posted by Coletti
A thoughtful response. Thank you.

I looked up Euthyphro's Dilemma (always good to learn something new 🙂 ). The arguments are not new to me - but I like knowing who made them also.

It seems his question is which is prior, God or g ...[text shortened]... ble, there is no dilemma. God is prior to good, God defines good.

To define "good" by what the OT monster God finds acceptable is to drop to the Lowest Common Denominator of human morality. The atrocities ordered and/or sanctioned by this God according to the OT are among the most savage in the ancient world; wholesale slaughter of defeated enemies was decidely NOT the norm in ancient times. In fact the Israelites themselves were twice conquered, by the Babylonians and the Assyrians (one of the most warlike peoples in the ancient Middle East), but they were NOT treated like the Midianites or others were treated by our Biblical heroes: either put to the sword entirely or only virgin girls being saved for later "use".

These semisavages created a God and gave him undesirable human traits like cruelty, jealously and insane anger which reflected their own behavior. To say this twisted construct then can define "good" bereft of ANY standards of human decency is deranged. Human beings are generally emphatic, social animals; whether this is innate or simply evolution driven is another debate. But it doesn't take a philosopher to KNOW that sticking a sword into a baby is not "good", human beings who aren't mentally sick can recognize this without any trouble. But when you want to believe in a Big Daddy who's going to make everything all right for you in the long run, you tend to overlook little moral transgressions like mass child murder. OT God doesn't define good as he almost certainly doesn't exist, but people like Coletti who will excuse anything if their God says it is right come about as close to a pure evil belief system as any philosophy can.

Originally posted by no1marauder
wholesale slaughter of defeated enemies was decidely NOT the norm in ancient times.

Really?

In fact the Israelites themselves were twice conquered, by the Babylonians and the Assyrians (one of the most warlike peoples in the ancient Middle East), but they were NOT treated like the Midianites or others were treated by our Biblical heroes: either put to the sword entirely or only virgin girls being saved for later "use".

Where does the Bible say that the virgin girls were being saved for later "use" (by which I presume you mean sexual purposes, of course)?

Also, one cannot directly compare the Babylonians/Assyrians with the Midianites because they occur at two points of history. The "rules of war" (if there might be such a thing) between two city-states or civilisations would be very different from those between two sets of nomadic peoples.

But it doesn't take a philosopher to KNOW that sticking a sword into a baby is not "good", human beings who aren't mentally sick can recognize this without any trouble.

But it is alright to use surgical instruments to cut a baby to pieces when still in the mother's womb? It is alright to starve or overdose a baby if it suffers from a degeneretive disease? And human beings who think so are "mentally sick"? What was the name of that philosopher again who could find no moral objection to infanticide of infants under six months or so (ivanhoe?)?

Your problem with the Bible is that you read it exactly as the literalists do - with no regard to context, literary style, culture etc. The books of the Bible dealing with the Exodus and the immediate post-Exodus era would've been written much later - when the Israelites had already developed a civilisation with cities etc. The stories written down of this era would've been oral traditions that may or may not be true or amplified even if based on a true event. You have shown no evidence to suggest that the Israelites who first read the written versions (as Scripture) followed this behaviour, or recognised it as anything more than allegorical. After all, did the later Israelites follow similar rules of war? Why or why not?

Further, what was considered just during the Exodus era and in Exodus culture? If an act A was considered just at the time, and the Bible says that God ordered A, then the episode would've conveyed the message that God is just to a person who is aware of this fact. Your problem is in interpreting such messages based on modern standards, not as the actual audience at the time would've.

I don't really care about the exploits of the ancient Israelites, which were probably pretty unremarkable for the time. What I do find worrying is the insistence by some Christian groups that the whole Bible is a guide to life today, not just selected bits. Until these groups make clear which bits they consider to be just the history and rules of a Middle Eastern tribe as of 2000 years ago, and which bits they consider to be of fundamental importance, I can't associate the Old Testament massacres any more or less with the Christian message than the Resurrection.

I'm not having a go at Catholicism here - the numerous pronouncements of the Catholic Church over the last 2000 years have spelt most things out, or at least made the effort. It's more the groups who say 'just figure out the Bible for yourself' and then insist that you must arrive at a particular interpretation, denouncing others as heresy or worse 'popery'.

Mind you, even those groups which do disown some of the less PC aspects of the Old Testament face a problem: apparently, the one true God told the Israelites to do most of that killing, and the same God is up there today, with his morality unchanged. So why isn't genocide acceptable to modern Christians or Jews in the way it was to their predecessors? Is it simply that there haven't been any ethnic groups that need eliminating, because all the important ones were disposed of in the Old Testament days? If it turns out, for example, that the Dutch are the enemy of Christianity, could God tell his followers to wipe out the Dutch people, sparing not one man, woman or child?

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Originally posted by no1marauder
[b/]wholesale slaughter of defeated enemies was decidely NOT the norm in ancient times.

Really?

In fact the Israelites themselves were twice conquered, by the Babylonians and the ...[text shortened]... odern standards, not as the actual audience at the time would've.

There's so much BS here it's hard to know where to start. Just because you are ignorant of ancient history does not mean that my points are not correct regarding ancient warfare. Although Christians apparently think that the Bible is the first and only written history of the ancient world, in fact many cultures have historical texts which pre-date the Bible by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. Try finding a people who exterminated entire populations of their defeated enemies in Egyptian, Sumerian, Indian, Chinese, etc. etc. records. The Illiad is considered a story which dates to the approximate time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan; even the Greeks spared the children and women of Troy. My point stands; the description of Israelite warfare in the OT is virtually unprecedented for savagery in the ancient world; you may perhaps find passages from other ancient texts which are equivalent in isolated cases, but you will find none that exceed their cruelty.

The Bible doesn't mention that the girls were raped; what a surprise! It does mention they were "given" to the Israelite men (you know the nice guys who had just butchered their defenseless families). Here's a pop quiz for ya, LH; what characteristic did virgin girls have that would lead to them being spared that boys and men did not? You can also look up and figure out why the non-virgin women did not make the "cut" as it were. I find it hilarious that soooooooo many Christian apologists have no problem with little boys getting their throats cut, but can't imagine that girls would be raped! And I use rape in its normal meaning: sex by threat of force, I don't care if the girls were "married" to the murderers of their families against their will or not.

Where by the way did you get the idea that the wars of the Bible were between "nomadic peoples"? In the Midianite Massacre, it describes cities being burned and Joshua conquers cities like Jericho (where every single person was put to the sword). Please, oh please, at least read the OT before you make such asinine comments. The point stands; the savage, warlike Assyrians conducted themselves less murderously than your God ordered the Israelites to conduct themselves.

I'm not interested in another "Culture of Death" sideshow; suffice to say that an embyro in a womb's status is a matter of reasoned debate and different points of view among religions - the Midianite little boys are not. I won't waste my time on defenders of infanticide; that's a red herring.

Your last point is ridiculous: are you saying the parts of the Bible regarding the history of the Jewish people was meant to be "allegorical"? Please. Besides you have once AGAIN missed the point of my posts; they are in response to Coletti's claims that whatever God says is good is good and NO human standards of decency are relevant. Further, he states that God is immutable; thus if butchering every last person in Jericho was "good" in 1200 BC, it's still "good" now. YOUR problem seems to be you can't follow the arguments in a thread; if OT God's actions were meant to be judged by a "reasonable man" standard of 500 BC Palestinian Jews and if we have to look at them in light of our moral standards NOW, then Coletti's argument falls to pieces, don't it? So argue with him, LH.

Originally posted by no1marauder
There's so much BS here it's hard to know where to start. Just because you are ignorant of ancient history does not mean that my points are not correct regarding ancient warfare. Although Christians apparently think that the Bible is the first and only written history of the ancient world, in fact many cultures have historical texts which pre-d ...[text shortened]... oral standards NOW, then Coletti's argument falls to pieces, don't it? So argue with him, LH.

in fact many cultures have historical texts which pre-date the Bible by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.

Which cultures lived before Adam and Eve?

Btw: Don't you think that God was trying to show us how we should deal with sin? In the same way as the enemies of God were dealt with in the olden days, we have to deal with sin.

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]in fact many cultures have historical texts which pre-date the Bible by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.

Which cultures lived before Adam and Eve?

Btw: Don't you think that God was trying to show us how we shou ...[text shortened]... f God were dealt with in the olden days, we have to deal with sin.[/b]

Learn to read: I said many cultures had historical TEXTS which dated before the Bible, that is absolutely true. Many other cultures also have creation myths which were in written form before the Garden of Eden fairy tale was. Again, ignorance of ancient history by most of the Christians on this site is absolutely extraordinary.

No, I don't think God was "trying to show us how we should deal with sin" by ordering the slaughter of innocents. I think that the people who wrote the OT created a God who mirrored their own cruelty and base emotions. And I think that anybody who worships that God today and makes rationales for the atrocities committed (supposedly) at his command is morally bankrupt.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Learn to read: I said many cultures had historical TEXTS which dated before the Bible, that is absolutely true. Many other cultures also have creation myths which were in written form before the Garden of Eden fairy tale was. Again, ignorance of ancient history by most of the Christians on this site is absolutely extraordinary.

No, I don ...[text shortened]... d makes rationales for the atrocities committed (supposedly) at his command is morally bankrupt.

So basically you are saying that what you think is true and what everybody else thinks is false?

Where does the Bible say that the virgin girls were being saved for later "use" (by which I presume you mean sexual purposes, of course)?

Numbers 31.

Deut 21 also talks of taking women from the captives for yourself.

Also, one cannot directly compare the Babylonians/Assyrians with the Midianites because they occur at two points of history. The "rules of war" (if there might be such a thing) between two city-states or civilisations would be very different from those between two sets of nomadic peoples.


This exemplifies why I think Coletti's position that the immutability of God alleviates the arbitrary nature of good is a poor one. How do we know that butchering captives is wrong if it all just depends on the time period in which we live? The rules are very sensitive to circumstance and we have no clear way to map the circumstance into the appropriate behavior.

What was the name of that philosopher again who could find no moral objection to infanticide of infants under six months or so (ivanhoe?)?

If you are thinking of Peter Singer, then you are grossly misrepresenting his position.

Further, what was considered just during the Exodus era and in Exodus culture? If an act A was considered just at the time, and the Bible says that God ordered A, then the episode would've conveyed the message that God is just to a person who is aware of this fact. Your problem is in interpreting such messages based on modern standards, not as the actual audience at the time would've.

Are you saying that God just reminds us of human laws? I wonder if Col will agree with you. It really does make "good because God says so" very arbitrary indeed.

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]in fact many cultures have historical texts which pre-date the Bible by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.

Which cultures lived before Adam and Eve?

Btw: Don't you think that God was trying to show us how we should deal with sin? In the same way as the enemies of God were dealt with in the olden days, we have to deal with sin.[/b]

(shaking head disappointedly yet again)

Originally posted by dj2becker
So basically you are saying that what you think is true and what everybody else thinks is false?

LMFAO!! In a normal person I would recognize irony in this statement, but I guess that concept is foreign to you. What I'm saying is I believe what I'm saying is true for the reasons I've given; that's called arguing rationally. I haven't quizzed EVERYBODY else on what they "think" and neither have you, so we're both in the same boat there. If you ever develop an ability to examine your own belief system with some degree of critical thought, you might be able to engage in a discussion without looking like a deluded fool. However, from the evidence you've given on these forums, that day is far away if indeed it ever comes.

Originally posted by buckky
It obviously makes no sense at all. Only in a savage mentality would something like this make any sense. It 's one of those stone age beliefs no longer holds water.

Holds water?

Why whatever could you mean? What does water have to do with 'sense', or with 'mentality'? Or are you just using an idiom; a word picture that carries an idea to your listener? Must you use visual aids and symbolism to communicate? Can't we simply know what you are thinking without your using letters, words, paragraphs and punctuation?

If not, then why can't God simply use blood as a symbol of the seriousness of our need? The very 'savage' image that blood somehow evokes even in our modern minds, I think, is at the very heart of the symbolism (sorry, my computer ran completely out of question marks!!). When our blood is pouring out, all hope is nearly lost. Just as you might imagine that God is saying our righteousness is all drained away by the jugular cutting nature of sin, and we need a transfusion of perfect blood that can clot up the worst of our self-inflicted wounds.

I can't imagine a more telling and drastically imperative symbol for God to have used.

Originally posted by chinking58
Holds water?

Why whatever could you mean? What does water have to do with 'sense', or with 'mentality'? Or are you just using an idiom; a word picture that carries an idea to your listener? Must you use visual aids and symbolism to communicate? Can't we simply [b]know what you are thinking without your using letters, words, paragraphs and ...[text shortened]... unds.

I can't imagine a more telling and drastically imperative symbol for God to have used.[/b]

So you don't think Jesus really needed to bleed and die? You don't think that the blood from a perfect ram used by the Hebrews was important? I thought this was a key part of evangelical xtianity (and many other sects besides). If not, then maybe God should have said, "Whoa. You guys got me all wrong. Blood is just a metaphor, dude. Stop killing stuff!"

Could God have been satisifed if Jesus had come down and grown a huge farm of banana's and offered them to God insteead?

Originally posted by telerion
So you don't think Jesus really needed to bleed and die? You don't think that the blood from a perfect ram used by the Hebrews was important? I thought this was a key part of evangelical xtianity (and many other sects besides). If not, then maybe God should have said, "Whoa. You guys got me all wrong. Blood is just a metaphor, dude. Stop killing st ...[text shortened]... if Jesus had come down and grown a huge farm of banana's and offered them to God insteead?

Not at all bud.

With God, as one might expect, symbolism is raised to a whole new level. Like an allegory is a metaphor expanded, I think that God uses real physical things like lambs and blood, His own Son born as a real man, and trees shaped into a cross, to demonstrate spiritual truisms.