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I think my facile conjectures make more sense than yours. Get rid of the old testament god, and what's left? A shitty version of the enlightenment.
The idea that there is a meaningful difference between the old testemant God and the new is a lie that was sold to you by your aithiest college professor. It aint guys like me who are trying to get rid of the old testamant God, its you.
Just because they’ve had two thousand years to hone a lie, doesn’t mean it isn’t one. He’s a capricious blood god in the mold of allah or odin. You know why people believe the ‘antitheist professors’? Because what they say is convincing. They don’t rely on the gullibility of the recently born and the soon-to-be deceased. And for the record, I did not have to wait for college to notice the discrepancy between the old god and the new. Besides, those most involved in selling the image of a nice new testament god aren’t guys like me but modern christians, who by embuing him entirely with enlightenment values, sanewash christianity. I guess even the common man knows which way the bread is buttered, and it sure as hell wasn’t the old god that buttered his.
Can you give an example from the OT of God being capricious?
Freud was one of the most convincing antitheist professors that has ever lived. Do you believe that this was because his arguments were correct?
No, they rely on the gullibility of people who yearn to be told that they can do what they want without consequence.
It would be interesting if you could demonstrate that discrepancy, then, because I don't think it actually exists.
People who ignore bits of the Bible they find inconvenient aren't actually Christians. There are plenty of us left who do not.
The flood, sodom and gomorrah, the binding of isaac, being a dick to job, the killing of egyptian first-borns (was that some genocidal form of proto-identity politics, I wonder) are the most well-known and really define his personality, but the bible is full of examples:
(ie, burnt his own daughter as a randomized trade/thank you note for crushing the ammonites. The morale of the story presumably being, you never know what’s gonna come through that door)
Again with Freud. Look, it’s not a binary. All else equal, an adult being convinced by arguments is more evidence of them being correct than a child believing something (eg, santa claus).
People throughout the world grow extremely wicked, God destroys them as punishment while protecting a righteous man and his family. Not capricious.
People in two cities grow extremely wicked, God destroys them as punishment while protecting a righteous man and his family. Not capricious.
God demonstrates that his chosen patriarch is willing to sacrifice his son, and also that such sacrifices are not desired by God; that is to say, the absence of child sacrifice is not due to a lack of fervor or obedience on the part of God's people, but rather because God himself considers child-sacrifice abhorrent. Not capricious.
The point of Job is that God is under no obligation to justify his actions to his creation. It is not claimed that God acts arbitrarily, only that we are not owed an explanation for specific things that happen. This is as close to capricious as your list gets, but throughout God insists that he has reasons for what he does. Not capricious, any more than any other need-to-know system is.
The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, and attempted genocide against them by ordering the execution of all their male children. Their own first-borns are killed by God as punishment, after they are given repeated opportunities to relent from their actions. Not capricious.
Moses, while acting as God's prophet, has violated the covenant by not circumcising his sons in direct violation of God's command. Not capricious.
The youths treat God's representative with scorn, dishonoring God, and an example is made of them. Not capricious.
The capricious actions are all Jepthah's, not God's. Jepthah is a cautionary story about swearing foolish oaths, and Jephthah himself is no more an example of a righteous man than Samson is.
None of these citations involve a single capricious action on God's part.
Stop claiming that expert-based consensus settles arguments, and I'll stop citing the gold-standard of evidence that expert-based consensus absolutely does not settle arguments.
And if Christians were only made by convincing children, this would be relevant. But they are not, and those convinced as children grow up and have ample opportunity to change their minds. Likewise, adults being convinced of something is not good evidence that the thing they're convinced of is true. There is no such thing as proof by social consensus, so stop citing social consensus as evidence.
I find it unlikely that everyone was uniformly wicked, there were probably at least 10% of the population who - by your standards - shouldn't be slaughtered just because they're adjacent to wickedness. Like, how would you feel if China decided one of their provinces was really degenerate and gassed everyone in the province? It's clearly capricious, and you're clearly using a form of reasoning that provides infinite deference to religious claims.
Pity about the wife though. Looking, that’s a death sentence by transmutive salination according to the comprehensive christian moral system. I can only imagine Lot’s reaction. “Honey...Honey? What the hell….? Why God, Whyyyyy? Oh, now I get it, it’s not supposed to make sense. I needed more salt anyway. “ He ended up fucking his daughters, so it all worked out. I'd say he was more of a pragmatic man than a righteous one.
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To you he’s god, so of course he can walk on water, but if you take him as a literary character, he is consistently behaving in a childish, bloodthirsty and petulant manner. The crimes and behaviour of his enemies, supposedly inviting his ‘just’ punishment, are not in any way worse than his own. How many innocents have to die for his ego? Who is lower than the child murderer? What kind of leader repays the loyalty of his followers with the death of their children?
Are we clear on what he should be compared to (a capricious man) , or do you simply deny that his actions can be interpreted at all, as in your defense of job’s treatment?
He shouldn’t have hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then (exodus 7:3).
A psycho does not need to claim he acts arbitrarily to act arbitrarily. His actions in the examples are not the result of a consistently applied universal rule (which would be barbaric, but not capricious), but depend on his whim of the moment.
@HlynkaCG is the one who first invoked the specter of expert-based consensus to compensate for his lack of arguments. If anyone who disagrees with him must believe the ‘lies’ of experts, then what of his beliefs, whose usual and most fertile ground is found in the overly trustful minds of children? I did not come with a sword, telling him to bow to the experts, but to bring arguments, and he once again found nothing better than to retreat into bulverism and his conspiratorial, anti-intellectual shtick. I merely helped myself to the can of worms he opened.
You seem to be equating "does not adhere to your particular brand of Rousseau-infused consequentialism" with "capriciousness". That's not what that word means. God's behavior may seem arbitrary from a strictly materialist perspective, but as @FCfromSSC ably pointed out above, he is both consistant and predictable.
That's actually kind of the point of the story of Job. Job is a bronze-age human man with a puny human brain. He doesn't have access to the big picture, nor is he privy to the discussion in Heaven at the opening of the book. Job might not know why these things are happening to him, but we as the audience do and God's canonical reply to Job is basically "There's much bigger things going on here than just you bro".
A recurring theme through both Testaments is that of choice and consequence. Those who choose wickedness beget wickedness. Those who choose virtue beget virtue. Life and death. Blessings and Curses. Internet Atheists like to point to Exodus 4:21 and 7:3 as "proof" that such choice is illusion and free-will is a sham. But that requires us to ignore the wider context both in the specific narrative of Exodus (God doesn't take action until After Pharaoh has chosen the path of destruction) and the Bible as a whole. Jesus has multiple opportunities to escape/save himself but instead goes to the cross willingly. God is constantly warning against the wages of sin, and offering the people he's about to Smite a chance to change course. That the warnings go unheeded, and the opportunities to escape untaken, doesn't mean that they aren't real.
Perhaps you should try to familiarize yourself with the work you're criticizing before accusing someone else's analysis of being "Facile".
Again, it is obviously untrue that the whole world was uniformly wicked and deserved to die, or that an entire city was uniformly wicked and deserved to die. Everywhere has some upstanding people.
Again, compare it to: Imagine if China gassed everyone who played video games, or smoked, or had premarital sex. That'd be pretty capricious, right? How is that different than what God did?
also: this has nothing to do with consequentialism at all. boxing shadows.
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God’s behaviour appears arbitrary when compared and applied to a man, real or fictional. Of course if you put him outside the norms of human behaviour, he isn’t going to be capricious or not-capricious, he isn’t going to be just, or anything. We’ll need new qualifiers for this peculiar kind of entity, like “gobelficious”.
Why would you defend his behaviour as consistent or predictable? Can you, as a christian in good standing, predict you will receive Job’s treatment? Of course not, "There's much bigger things going on here than just you bro". You’re not supposed to understand what he did, or to predict what he will do. That’s not arbitrary, that’s gobelficious.
I suppose I should consult the Experts in black so they can tell me what to think on what I can plainly read. I am familiar with the work I’m criticizing, far more than it deserves. My family, my entire society, has viewed it as a sort of “holy book” for centuries, you see.
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The thing is that if you actually read the Old Testament from start to finish it becomes clear that He isn't being capricious at all. He's doing exactly what he said he'd do. A lie being convincing doesn't make it less of a lie.
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Christians have not gotten rid of the Old Testament God, and Christianity built the stability, peace and plenty that made a grift like the Enlightenment possible.
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