Does the God of Abraham acts in accordance with moral principles

Or are moral principles something arbitrary subject to change by God's will ?

Is pedophilia,rape,murder evil because it is God's will for it to be evil or is it evil regardles, and God being benevolent is forced to be against it.

The God of Abraham is good (benevolent) and has unlimited power by definition (omnipotent).

Is good, good because God wants it to be good or is good always good and God must act upon it? Making him not omnipotent.

is morality subjective or intrinsic ?

Originally posted by DCLXVI
Or are moral principles something arbitrary subject to change by God's will ?

Is pedophilia,rape,murder evil because it is God's will for it to be evil or is it evil regardles, and God being benevolent is forced to be against it.

The God of Abraham is good (benevolent) and has unlimited power by definition (omnipotent).

Is good, good because God wants it to be good or is good always good and God must act upon it? Making him not omnipotent.

is morality subjective or intrinsic ?

The God of Abraham was/is a nasty, overtly egotistical, blood thirsty, maniacal God. One of many.. The Elohim... The Gods.

Moral principles are uniquely human in origin, unless of course you subscribe to the belief of them being handed down to humans from 'On High'.

Good and Evil are like Start and Finish, Black and White, Day and Night. They exist only as Extremes at each end of a Spectrum and everything in the middle is only Experience available in This World. They are two words we humans have attached much emotional content to, and doing so has strengthened our addiction to Our Belief in Duality.

Oh... God does not give a hoot what you do. How can it care about the tiniest particle within it's body ? Do we care what one atom in a skin cell on our arm is doing ? No.. neither does 'God'.

Fantastic question. I've heard it posed before.

Honestly though, I think it's a question of semantics - again demonstrating the limitations of language to convey certain truths.

That being said, I'm going to meditate on this ... it does seem puzzling on the surface but peer deeper and I have no doubt that a simple, seamless answer awaits to be unearthed.

At least, that's been my experience with the holy mysteries.

Does the God of Abraham acts in accordance with moral principles?

Why not ask HIM?

Seriously!

reply to post by DCLXVI


I highly recommend taking 20 minutes to watch this TED talk by Sam Harris. It's really good and it addresses the OP.

reply to post by DCLXVI


Dear DCLXVI,

Or are moral principles something arbitrary subject to change by God's will ?

If you do not believe God exists, then what does it matter, it becomes a silly question. If one truly believes in evolution then one believes that people can improve and learn more lessons. Is that not true for humanity, are the simple answers we were given as children (don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal) the same when we are in our 30s and can begin to see more than the simplistic. If my family and I are dying of hunger and I kill a dear in the "King's forest", is it right that I be ripped apart? Would you teach a child the greys or the black and white and they greys as they mature. Did the truth change or merely your ability to understand it? I cannot tell you how many people have asked the same question in 2,000 years and the answer is the same. Peace.

reply to post by DCLXVI


Does a parent usually know better then its teenager? Despite what the teenager my think or believe?

wow o.p that's a big question, in fact probably one of the biggest...

I personally think that God exists as the individual interprets it's existance, but then you have to ask yourself, how does my free will impact on right and wrong? If an act is justafiable in ones head and god is the interpritation of ones self then is it wrong? If society deems you to be at fault, then you are punished by society's standards. However The creator (in theory) loves all his creatures and if he exists under ones own interpritation then that leads me to believe that it's the individuals free will that creates his/her own karma so to speak and in turn you will punish yourself. I think i'm just going around in circles..

well done O.P, Star for you!

Love, Light and all that crap....

We have no grounds to judge the God of Abraham, because we don't know the correct moral standard.

What is wrong to some might be right to someone else. A war is a good example where you have two or more groups disagreeing on morals and moral values. They fight for their right to have it their way.

God of Abraham is different things depending on who is telling you about the God of Abraham.

If the God of Abraham, as described in the Old Testament, was a person, he would be in prison or a secure mental institution. He demonstrates massively disproportionate responses to practically everything, often ending in the killing of people. If I killed my own children because they pissed me off or they were a massive disappointment, I wouldn't have the internet access to be writing this as I wouldn't even be trusted with shoelaces or anything that could be used as a weapon.

New Testament God, "please, call me 'Jesus'", seems a pretty OK bloke but still has a tendency to catastrophise a situation.

A lot of our* morals aren't in synch with what the God of Abraham tells us is OK or right. The vast majority of people understand that slavery is wrong, that owning people like goods is wrong (it's not as if there's not enough threads here raging about how the Powers that Be are quite literally owning us like chattel). This God says it's OK though, so obviously there's a massive gap between what he says and what we instinctively think.

God's 'My House; My Rules' hectoring is ignored, dismissed or rationalised away on a routine basis. How many 'Christians' take dietary advice from the bible? Take fashion advice regarding mixed fibres and tattoos?

Yeah, the stuff about killing people, being nice to people &c are pretty good: they 'feel' right and are useful to society but perhaps that's a case of 'broken clock syndrome': even a broken clock is right twice a day.


*when I say 'our', I mean most people wired-up correctly

reply to post by Merriman Weir

This God says it's OK though, so obviously there's a massive gap between what he says and what we instinctively think.

Apparently this cognitive dissonance is rationalized by believing God meant certain passages for certain people, or for certain times in history.

What that rationalization doesn't address is the fact that the God of Abraham told someone to stone to death his wife if it was discovered she wasn't a virgin. Maybe God doesn't want us to do that now (New Covenant Jesus magic)...but he once did. How does one exactly reconcile the attribute of omnibenevolence with such a moral atrocity? How does a thinking person manage that?

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

This God says it's OK though, so obviously there's a massive gap between what he says and what we instinctively think.

Apparently this cognitive dissonance is rationalized by believing God meant certain passages for certain people, or for certain times in history.

What that rationalization doesn't address is the fact that the God of Abraham told someone to stone to death his wife if it was discovered she wasn't a virgin. Maybe God doesn't want us to do that now (New Covenant Jesus magic)...but he once did. How does one exactly reconcile the attribute of omnibenevolence with such a moral atrocity? How does a thinking person manage that?

edit on 18-8-2012 by Lucid Lunacy because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's explained by despite it being the Word of God (straight after this commercial break), it was physically written by Man's hand (a hand also used to masturbate with &c). Man makes mistakes, mishears, has a grudge &c

Forks in the road of Christianity and splinter groups go some way to address this. Some groups decide that certain elements are the 'right way' and practically jettison everything else. There's no need to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideas if you're already thrown them out. Historically, the split between Jews and Christians is one of those forks in the road. One body of Jewish literature is kept, but the rest is trashed just like that cheating bitch's photos and love letters and never mentioned again. Old school Jewish writings are more consistent than the marriage* of Jewry and Christianity but that doesn't really explain why the God of Abraham is such an angry, vengeful, 'all or nothing' kind of guy and the kind of guy that wouldn't pass any kind of job interview let alone, Creator of Universe.


* to use an antique-dealers term for a weird piece of furniture cobbled together from bits of different pieces of furniture of different dates

After all these years, I've arrived at the conclusion the only answer is to be critical about everything and develop your own ethics. Work out what you would and wouldn't do, draw your own line in the sand. Put your ethics before all laws. Choose whatever path tht helps you reach your potential.
The alternative ends up with moral relativism, which gives people excuses for everything.

The other reason is there are cults and branches of religions that become so obsessed with following laws, they became just an empty shell of what should have been spiritual.

reply to post by DCLXVI


You are asking a stupid question when the answer is in the 10 Commandments of Torah

You know the principals of God, but do YOU keep them all? Probably not! I've never known a grown man who has not sinned!

reply to post by bluemirage5


That reminded me of this quote I read earlier today

"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." --- Ronald Reagan

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by DCLXVI

 

You are asking a stupid question when the answer is in the 10 Commandments of Torah

You know the principals of God, but do YOU keep them all? Probably not! I've never known a grown man who has not sinned!

Did you read the question?

reply to post by DCLXVI


So, I won't be able to explain this perfectly, but something that was better understood at the time the Bible was written. People back then didn't have just the dual moral view of good and evil like we do.

We have only two options opposed to each other. Good != Bad. However in the OT it's more complicated than that. To them there were three levels. Holy -> Clean -> Unclean.

Holy -> Okay -> Bad is the closest we have in today's language.

God is Holy. It's like saying a fish is wet. Is being wet good or bad? It depends. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. It's just a state of being. Fish are wet, and God is holy. He likes to be around things that are holy and fish like to be wet.

But what is holy? Well it's like trying to explain to a fish what wet means. We don't really understand it fully. It usually means good, but not always. Sometimes it just means something God must do. Like when God pours out his holy wrath. It's not a good thing, even God is saddened by it. But it must be done and is holy.

Like when you have to put a sick animal down that can't be cured. There's nothing really good about it. Not in the happy way that we think of as good. But it must be done even though it saddens us to do it simply because there is no other way. It's not exactly the good thing to do, but the right or holy thing to do.

Anyway. God gave us a list of things that were holy, things that were clean, and a list of things that were unclean. Just because something is "okay" does not mean it is good or holy. It's just okay. No one is "holy" but the father.

Also things that are unclean like murder usually line up with what we consider bad. But the comparison doesn't always work there either and we get confused.

Sometimes we see something in the OT that's bad like eating pork and we don't understand why. What's bad about pork? Nothing, it's not bad. It's unclean. A totally different concept.

Unclean != bad. To understand the concept of unclean you have to remember the temple. These were very religious people. If you're unclean you can't enter the temple or worship with respect. It's like when you put on your dress clothes to go to church. There's nothing bad about your ripped tshirt and jeans, they may just be unclean for church.

Now the Bible has moral good and bad rules also. But some of the rules that don't make sense, like being unclean after touching a dead body, have nothing to do with being bad. They have more to do with the idea that they were so religious that they just lived their lives in their church clothes basically.

They not only wanted to be clean on the Sabbath, but they wanted to be clean for worship everyday.

Now when it comes to our basic idea of good and evil. The Bible explains the concept like this. Things that are evil are just objectively evil. Like pedophilia. Even many pedophiles or serial killers will tell you they're evil. But it has to do with the flesh, or the desires of the human body.

The Bible says the desires of the flesh are evil. You're like a spirit of light trapped in a flesh body that's cursed and wills you to do things you don't really wanna do.

Like most pedophiles, they don't wanna be pedophiles, but their body does. So this isn't just the Bible. The concept of evil in many religions comes from the concept of trying to fight or control these fleshly desires.

We have never heard the voice of god speak ...Period,,,Not in Abrehams time not before not after,Not present day .We have heard mens interpitations of what god allegedlly says or does thinks ect,..This is hear say...Or when you starlt lieing about a deitys mindset...Herresay....Neither one is beleivable....M O O.............