A sickening example of religious vampirism

by expatbrit 80 Replies latest jw friends

dickelentz

It is my opinion that the verses you listed cannot be answered without an understanding of who God is and what He's trying to accomplish. It is also my premise that if we don't undertand what the overall message of the Bible is and what God is trying to communicate through it that the Bible as a whole will make little sense.
Many religions lift passages out of the Bible and use them to come up with their own distorted view of who God is. There's been an immeasurable amount of anguish and harm caused by those who have twisted God's word in this way, creating manmade religions that have little to do with God's true nature. Using a warped view of the Bible as a basis for discussion will never lead to an understanding of who God is and will cause many to reject God.
However, I do believe that if we can find what the central message of the Bible is that nearly all of it will make sense. I compare this belief to the workings of the wheels on a covered wagon. Everything revolves around the hub. If the hub is weak, then the whole wheel will eventually fall apart and the wagon won't function. But if the hub is sound, then the rest can fall in place.
I don't believe your questions are the "hub of the wheel". Furthermore, I don't think they can be answered rationally without knowing what the "hub of the wheel" is.
I believe the "hub" of the Bible is found in Genesis 1-3. These chapters describe a perfect world, one that God created and then called "good". God created a perfect man, a perfect women, a perfect human relationship, and a perfect place to live in.
What's more, chapter 3 indicates that God walked in the garden with the ones whom he created. I interpret this to be a literal physical reality. God not only intended for us to have perfect lives and a perfect world, he also wanted a perfect, personal, and intimate
relationship with us.
The lives of those first two people were complete. They were emotionally, physically, and spiritually fulfilled. God intended for them to live eternally in this perfect state.
The interesting thing is that the first 3 chapters of Genesis closely parallel the last 3 chapters of Revelation. These passages are near mirror images of each other. For example, Revelation 21 describes the perfect world once again, one where there is no death, no sorrow, and no tears. It also describes a world where God once again literally dwells among men.
And so, though your questions are important, I think the more crucial questions are these:
1. What happened to the perfect world described in Genesis 2 and 3?
2. Is today's world what God intended it to be, or is the world in the first 3 chapters and the last 3 chapters of the Bible more representative of God's intent?
3. If today's world is not what God intended it to be, what if anything has God done about it?
I would be curious to see your answers to these questions. But I may not be able to respond to your posts for a few days due to other commitments.
Note that this discussion could be continued in another thread if that seems more appropriate to do so and if someone wants to get it rolling. But I don't mind continuing it here, and I do think it ties into some of the original discussion.
Xander

Note that this discussion could be continued in another thread if that seems more appropriate to do so and if someone wants to get it rolling.
Well, your answer is a little more far-reaching that I was looking for. I asked a specific question because I'm only interested in your answer to that question.
I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and have since done enough research to realize the bible is not the 'inspired word of god' it is heralded as.
I was simply questioning your statement:
But all murders are the result of rejecting God as well as God's will for our lives.
Which does not agree with the above scriptures I cited. Within them are a number of god-ordered murders (as in the murderer was not only NOT rejecting god, but acting under his direct orders).
A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
--George Santayana
dedalus

And so, though your questions are important, I think the more crucial questions are these:
Again, Mr. Lentz tap dances around the issues put to him.
1. What happened to the perfect world described in Genesis 2 and 3?
Well, today seems a far cry from any sort of "perfect world." It's worth mentioning that, in those celebrated first 3 chapters of Genesis, there are some blatant contradictions about how God made that world. Also, that "perfect" world had some pretty arbitrary, senseless rules, like "Do not eat from this tree blah blah blah." Looks to me like God, with all his infinite foresight, was setting mankind up from the get-go.
2. Is today's world what God intended it to be, or is the world in the first 3 chapters and the last 3 chapters of the Bible more representative of God's intent?
You miss the fundamental irony of this question: How could God's will ever fall short of his intention? How could a perfect God, an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, fail to follow through on his intention? The very question you ask presupposes that your perfect God has failed at someting. There are two possibilities explanations for this: 1) It was never God's intention to create a "perfect" world; or 2) God is not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent.
3. If today's world is not what God intended it to be, what if anything has God done about it?
Let me rephrase the question according to my answer to #2: "Since God has messed up and failed in his purpose, what has he been doing to correct his mistakes?"
The answer seems pretty clear: nothing. I know you're going to invoke the holy name of Jesus now, and talk about his great sacrifice, but even if all that is true, which I doubt it is, it's been over 2000 years since then, and is the world yet the "perfect world" that God "intended"?
Have you read the Grand Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov?
Dedalus
dickelentz

I don't think I'm tap-dancing. What I think is that the issue is much deeper than trying to understand why God ordained certain killings.
God did prohibit men from murdering each other, but did not say that all killing was prohibited.
Many of the laws given to Israel in the book of Exodus were designed to give them an orderly society. God knew that without some guidelines, man with all their imperfections would struggle with doing what was right and best for themselves. God gave guidelines because he loved them. But he also prescribed the consequences of straying from those guidelines. Sometimes the consequences were minor. But sometimes the consequences were quite severe.
Why would God do this? Does this mean he is a mean, angry God that is out to destroy people? I argue that the contrary is true. What kind of a God would allow murder, theft, adultery, rape, or any of the other "major" sins without prescribing some kind of penalty. In fact, if we did not have laws in our society to punish crime, would not the natural result be more crime and not less? For example, if there was no penalty for theft, how many of us would be tempted to shoplift or perhaps even commit grand larceny? Or if there were not severe penalties for murder, would not more people give into their anger or frustration and be tempted to kill others?.
The same goes for God's judgements against nations. Nations themselves can be so corrupt that they are not only a danger to themselves, they become leeches on the world and can end up bringing the whole world down. God dealt harshly with the Canaanites and many other nations not because of their rejection of God, but because as a consequence of their rejection of God they intended to tear apart and destroy everything good thing God was trying to accomplish. Their main target was Israel. Psalm 83 is a good example of their mindset. But their deeper desire was not just to destroy Israel but to eliminate God's presence and influence in the world.
Why would they want to do this? I think it ties directly to Genesis 3.
Adam and Eve had everything they needed. The world was made perfect for them, and God gave them permission to enjoy everything he'd created. He asked only one thing of them: (my paraphrase) "Don't take on the responsibility of determining right from wrong. Don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That is my perrogative. I will determine right from wrong. What you need to do is trust Me in that area of life."
Satan wanted to tear apart the relationship between Adam and Eve. He used some very crafty arguements to do so: (again my paraphrase). "Did God REALLY say that? You know, he's really trying to hold back something good from you. You really will be much better off if you ignore what He said. Besides, you will be just like him if you just ignore the instruction."
At the base, all of us want to be in charge of our own lives. Few of us enjoy having someone else say "This is best for you. Just trust me." Most of us want to make this decision for ourselves. Satan used that desire to draw Adam and Eve into sin.
God gave Adam and Eve freewill. He could have created them robots, but instead gave them a choice. They chose not to trust God in the only area he put restrictions on. The consequence was that they lost that personal and intimate relationship God wanted to have with them.
The part of the passage that is relevant for this discussion is what happened next. God said there would be consequences for their rejection of Him and his instruction. Their world would no longer be perfect, and they would struggle physically in ways God never intended. And, instead of living eternally as God intended, death would now be their destiny. But God also talked about a struggle that would continue for a very long time - a struggle between he who "bruises on the heal" and He who will "bruise him on the head". I believe this passage is referring to the struggle that would exist from that point on between good and evil. Evil would have it's time in the sun. But ultimately God would give victory over evil in a way that dealt with it completely and permanently.
Something else happened here that is important to understanding what happens in the rest of the Bible. Adam and Eve thought the solution to their problem was to create fig leaf skirts to hide their nakedness. God said their personal efforts to correct the situation were inadequate. He then proceeded to kill an animal and create a covering for their bodies. He could now look at them and not consider their sin an issue because of something he did for them - something they were unable to do for themselves.
This single act of God (and the first recorded death in the Bible) established how God would restore the relationship broken through Adam and Eve's sin. As Paul later pointed out in Hebrews, "the forgiveness of sin comes only through the sacrifice of blood." God offered the first sacrifice, then gave instructions later (in Exodus and Leviticus) on sacrifices that were to be offered daily to atone for sin. But God ultimately sacrificed himself (through Jesus) as an atonement for our sin. This was prophecied in Isaiah 53, and then connected to Jesus when John said, "Behold, here is the lamb of god who comes to take away the sin of the world." (John 1:29).
That's God's solution. The problem is that most of the world has historically stood against this solution. Many nations (and individuals for that matter) are more predisposed to come up with their own way to God or to turn away from God rather than accepting the provision God has given.
God for the most part allows that. But at times, the evil of some individuals and some nations is so intense that God deals with it decisively in order to prevent that evil from bringing down the rest of the world.
dedalus

*Sigh.*
Believe what you want. A God who commands his people to murder and rape is protecting his people from murder and rape. Great. Whatever. Have fun worshipping your big God in the sky, and give Jesus a big kiss on the lips for me when you see him, okay?
Dedalus
dickelentz

I'm wondering if we're dealing with a disagreement about what God allows and what God approves of.
Because God gives us freewill, we are allowed to do nearly anything. But that doesn't mean that God approves of everything. Paul made this distinction in 1 Corinthians 5,6, and 7. We have the liberty to do practically anyhing. But not all things are beneficial for us. Furthermore, many choices we make are harmful.
Israel frequently stepped outside of God's will and took matters into their own hands. This always resulted in difficulties they never anticipated.
God did call on Israel at times to destroy the evil that surrounded them. But those that might argue that this is an example of God's corruptness should ask what the US or Canada should have done about the Nazi's in World War II. Is it an act of love to let evil thrive and then sit back and do nothing about it? Should the Nazi's have been allowed to continue the massacre of the innocent until no Jew was left alive in Europe? Should Germany have been allowed to continue their drive to control the world until all of us were under their control? What was compassionate in this case, to fight evil, or to let evil thrive?
I would surely hope that a compassionate God would at times approve of the destruction of evil and not allow it to thrive. Some may on a personal basis wish to avoid war and may feel compelled not to be part of process of destroying evil. But God does give men the right to defend themselves. And, more specifically, God frequently called on people to destroy the evil that surrounded them lest that evil take over and draw everyone down into the hell of a corrupt world.
Did God ever call on anyone to rape? I think not. If you have a specific verse, I'd like to see it. Did his people ever commit rape? Yes. But when they did, they weren't doing what God intended.
But again, I think a lot of these are side issues. When I read around this forum, I find many complaints against God. But I believe these complaints ought to be aimed against what some religions say about God and not at God himself.
I sense that many of those who write here have been exposed to a man-made religion that has little to do with who God really is or what he's trying to accomplish. The clue to this is the "rules" I keep hearing about. For example, many say things like this: "I was told to do this, and told to do that. I ended up feeling frustrated and oppressed and just wanted to escape." From what I've read, I don't blame people from feeling this way.
My premise is that ANY religion based on a list of do's and don't's will lead people away from God and not to Him. These religions will also frustrate people to the point that they are driven to jump ship and swim away from God and not towards him. But worse, any religion based on a "You must do this" theology is in direct conflict with the Bible's core message that "we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law." (Romans 3).
How do we work around this false conceptions about God and get to an understanding of the core truths of the Bible? And, what measures can we use to determine if someone is on track with their interpretation of the Bible?
rem

God did call on Israel at times to destroy the evil that surrounded them. But those that might argue that this is an example of God's corruptness should ask what the US or Canada should have done about the Nazi's in World War II. Is it an act of love to let evil thrive and then sit back and do nothing about it? Should the Nazi's have been allowed to continue the massacre of the innocent until no Jew was left alive in Europe? Should Germany have been allowed to continue their drive to control the world until all of us were under their control? What was compassionate in this case, to fight evil, or to let evil thrive?

I don't remember the US or Canada killing all of the enemy males and nonvirgin females. It seems that humans are much more civilized than god - at least the god of the OT. Also, the Nazi's were actively committing genocide, the Caananites were not. In fact it was god's chosen nation, Israel, that was committing mass genocide in his name. This was not of their own choice, but by the command of god. I don't blame you for trying to ignore the uglier parts of god's personality in the OT. It does make you an irrational person, though.

I would surely hope that a compassionate God would at times approve of the destruction of evil and not allow it to thrive.

Yeah, and Christians have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this for over 2,000 years now. It's the classic "problem of evil". Since evil exists, god cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. But getting back to the point, the god of the Bible goes way overboard in his treatment of "evil" people - punishing later generations who were never even involved with the original wrongdoing. If a human leader acted the way the god of the Bible is depicted, we would revile him as a genocidal maniac.

Some may on a personal basis wish to avoid war and may feel compelled not to be part of process of destroying evil. But God does give men the right to defend themselves.

There is a difference between self defense and genocide. Learn it.

Did God ever call on anyone to rape? I think not. If you have a specific verse, I'd like to see it. Did his people ever commit rape? Yes. But when they did, they weren't doing what God intended.

He may as well have since he commanded his people to destroy all of their neighbors except for the virgin girls. Since god is omniscient he should have known that such a command would inevitably lead to rape of the virgins. Why not leave the non-virgin women? Would not a parent be responsible if he left his child alone with matches and the child proceeded to burn the house down? The parent is responsible because the parent has knowledge. The god of the Bible is a bad parent. He allows people to suffer and even commanded his people to do things in which made uneccessary suffering, such as rape, a certainty.

But again, I think a lot of these are side issues. When I read around this forum, I find many complaints against God. But I believe these complaints ought to be aimed against what some religions say about God and not at God himself.

No, you are the one trying to side-step the issue. The god of the Bible is a brutal bully; a genocidal maniac, even. Yet you continue to defend god's commands in the bible as being "good". You try to shift the blame on people, when god is the one who is ultimately responsible for the actions of his creation. These "complaints" are not aimed against what religions say about god - they are directly from the Bible - supposedly god's word. God depicts himself as a brutal, jealous tyrant in his own book. You are reading the bible with your particular religion's rose colored glasses which keeps you from seeing god in anything less than a perfect light. Your apologetic bias is showing loud and clear.

The clue to this is the "rules" I keep hearing about. For example, many say things like this: "I was told to do this, and told to do that. I ended up feeling frustrated and oppressed and just wanted to escape." From what I've read, I don't blame people from feeling this way.

Well, that doesn't describe me at all. I left the JW's because they were intellectually dishonest. I gave up on the god of the Bible after reading his word - even when I was still very much a Christian at heart - and seeing how cruel and barbaric his actions toward his own children were. I also realized from reading the Bible in several translations that the accounts within it were really just ancient mythologies and oral traditions written down by ancient, superstitious goatherders. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out by just reading the bible objectively, just like you would read the Hindu Vedas or the Book of Mormon. Take away the special pleading and you have no way to differentiate the bible over any other ancient religious text. In fact, many parts of the bible are plagerized passages and concepts from neighboring societies and religions.

My premise is that ANY religion based on a list of do's and don't's will lead people away from God and not to Him. These religions will also frustrate people to the point that they are driven to jump ship and swim away from God and not towards him. But worse, any religion based on a "You must do this" theology is in direct conflict with the Bible's core message that "we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law." (Romans 3).

Well your premise is incorrect because many people leave JW's and other rule-based religions and keep their faith in god. When I was in the process of leaving the JW's I had no intention of leaving my belief in god. In fact, for a time I felt my relationship with god was much, much stronger than ever before. Taking an objective look at all of the evidence is what turned me away from believing in a mythical deity.

How do we work around this false conceptions about God and get to an understanding of the core truths of the Bible? And, what measures can we use to determine if someone is on track with their interpretation of the Bible?

Is someone on track with the correct interpretation only when they ignore all of the terrible things that god did and commanded men to do in the bible? It almost reminds me of a child defending their abusive parents - he loves his parents so much that he only wants to see the good in them. It's not an objective view. People like that are full of cognitive dissonance and their compartmentalization leads them to take irrational leaps to defend the god of the Bible.
rem
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain
dedalus

Thanks REM -- all great points.
Looking over this thread, I find it irritating how Mr. Lentz cannot stay on the subject. For example, he asked three questions that he thought were "more important" than the ones that had been put to him. I bothered to answer those questions and demonstrated, I think, that the 2nd one was especially absurd -- i.e., how could a perfect God fail to follow through with his intention?
Mr. Lentz also seems really ignorant to the most basic philosophical objections to his Christian platitudes. For example: he asserts that God gave us free will. Yet, he also believes that God is omniscient. This means that God knows everything we will do before we do it. Before we are even born, he knows every detail of every thought we will ever have, every detail of every action we execute. Which means that, no matter what we do in our lives, we could not have possibly done otherwise. Basically, asserting that we have free will and that God is omniscient is contradictory. Furthermore, it would be especially cruel of God to punish us for doing something he didn't approve of, since we were never able to do otherwise!
It also means that, when God made Adam and Eve (whether he made Adam first and then Eve, or both of them simultaneously, is something Genesis isn't sure about), he knew that they would disobey his arbitrary stupid rule about the Tree of Knowledge. Which is why I suggested God was setting them (and humanity) up from the get-go. If you actually believe these myths, of course.
But my point is that all this is obvious to anyone who's read the simplest textbook on religion and philosophy. Mr. Lentz consistently fails to anticipate these objections, or, when they are made, he ignores them utterly.
Dedalus
crownboy

Dickelentz said:
God gave Adam and Eve freewill. He could have created them robots, but instead gave them a choice. They chose not to trust God in the only area he put restrictions on. The consequence was that they lost that personal and intimate relationship God wanted to have with them.
This is one of the more brain dead arguments that theist trot out, because without it God would be evil for allowing badness. However, "passing the buck" to humans simply isn't fair. God only wants us to behave a certain way, but yet he designed us with the proclivity to act another way. If I wanted my kids to eat healthy foods, I would try to ensure that I provided an environment that is conducive to them eating healthy. I would only buy and serve healthy foods to my kids as I know this would be best for them. Would my not providing them with junk food alternatives infringe on their "free will" or make them into "robots"? In the context of healthy eating, maybe yes, but if the alternative of eating junkfood would kill them (like disobeying God does), then does that not make me justified? If God knows that giving us "free will" would result in our destruction, then he's just as evil as the parent who allows the kid to eat junk food and die.
The free will is only "free" if there are no adverse consequences for picking one or another chioce. It's "free will" to pick an apple or orange to assuage hunger. It's not "free will" to pick between an apple and a stone for the same purposes, and you're not being a "robot" for picking the only viable option.
In the "worship God" vs. "don't worship God" scenario, there's only one viable option according to the bible, since the "don't worship God" option results in eternal destruction. The presence of a non viable option doesn't denote the presence of "free-will". If your father told you "you either choose to become a plummer as a profession (worship God) or I will kill you." You're free to choose either to become a plummer or not, but is it really "free will" to not become a plummer(let's presume the father can follow through on his threat)? Of course not.
So God giving us free will only gave us the "ability to mess up" because his true purpose is to make us "robots" anyway, because he only wants us to do as he says. If God respected our free will to worship him or not, that would be one thing, and that would truly be "free will" as there are equal consequences for an action (worshipping God). But since God only wants us to do one thing anyway, the invention of "free will" is only something that can mess us up, something only an evil parent would do.
If you try to say free will is the only way God would know if we love him or not, then he should save himself the time and only create creatures with minds that want to love him, since that's what he wants anyway. Eternally punishing people because they don't believe in a historically inaccurate and sometimes cruel book, and hence don't want to love that deity, is pure evil on God's part. He already knew before I was born that I would/would not worship him, so he obviously likes to see people suffer.
Go therefore and baptize the people in the name of the father and of the son... what the hell, we just need to bring up the yearbook numbers!
dickelentz

I suppose I should clarify what I mean by some questions being more important than others.
I tend to take a much broader view of the God and the Bible than is evident in some of the postings I've seen here. I don't see any single verse is being totally representative of God or his nature and try to take a larger look at the Bible as a whole. I try to look at how God's entire plan for the world has unfolded in the past and how it continues to progress forward. This has led me to a different understanding of God's nature and intent for the world than I've seen shared here.
I've given answers to some of your questions although not to the extent to which you desire. For instance, I acknowledge that God has judged evil in the past by destroying people he considered evil. I've also acknowledged that Israel and even Christians have done despicable things "in God's name", things that do not represent God's nature or intent. But I don't think these questions or the answers to them give a complete or clear picture of who God is.
I also readily admit that some questions are unaswerable. For example, I can't answer how an all-knowing God would give Adam and Eve a choice knowing they would make the wrong choice. All I can say is he did give them the choice, they made the wrong one, and we are now living with the consequences. If your criteria for continuing this dialogue is that I must be able to answer every question, then I am unable to meet your requirements.
What I can do is to try to give my sense of what the Bible is about as a whole and how I see all the parts fitting together.
I'm sure we'd all agree that we do not live in a perfect world. One of the big arguments, however, is whether we are inherently good and simply do bad things, or if we are inherently flawed and therefore prone to do bad things.
The Bible is clear on this. It says in Romans 3 that "we all sin and fall short of the glory of God". And Isaiah (53?) says that none of us is righteous ("We like sheep have all gone astray").
In Jesus' day, the Pharisees accepted their flawed nature. Their solution, however, was to come up with a long list of rules that when followed would make them acceptable to God. Jesus' response (in Matthew 5 and 6) was to raise the bar. Jesus said that hatred was equivalent in God's eyes to murder, and lust was equivalent to adultery. Jesus did this to show how far away the Pharaisees were from God's standard of righteousness, so far that it was impossible for any of them to do anything on our own to meet God's standards.
It's like swimming. Most of us can swim. And if God was on an island on a lake a short distance offshore, most people could swim there. But the separation between us and God is so vast that it could be compared to the separation between California and Hawaii. Most of us can swim part of the way there. Be all of us would eventually drown.
This may sound like a message of condemnation. But I don't see it that way. It's just a statement of fact. God's holiness and righteousness is so far out of reach and in some ways so incomprehensible that none of has a hope of understanding it nor being able to achieve it on our own.
If this is where the story ended, then I would fully support anyone's choice to reject the Bible as well as God. I would also be in full agreement that the Bible as well as Christianity was an irrational and perhaps even dangerous belief.
But the Bible doesn't stop with just describing the problem. It gives the solution.
On the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16) , two goats were offered during the temple sacrifice. The first was sacrificed as an "atonement" for sin. In essence, God was saying, "You have sinned, and you deserve punishment. However, I don't want you to take that punishment upon yourselves. Instead, I will let this sacrifice be your substitute. It will take upon itself the penalty for your sin."
But God did more than this. After the first goat was sacrificed, the priest placed his hands upon the second goat. He symbolically placed the sins of the people on this second goat, then led the goat out to the wilderness to wander far away from camp.
This second goat was called the "scapegoat". God this time was saying, "Not only will I not punish you for your sin. I will take the issue of sin away from you and count your sins against you no more."
One of the Psalms says, "As far as east is from west, that is how far God removes our sins from us." John said (John 1:29), "Behold, here is the lamb of God who comes to take away of the sin of the world." And Jesus said, "I come not to condemn the world, but to save it." (John 3:17).
The core message of the Bible is not about condemnation of sin, but about rescue from the consequences of sin. It is also not a message of what we must do to please God but instead of what God did to remedy the consequences of man's rebellion against Him.
I believe that the rest of the Bible will make little sense outside the context of this message.

A sickening example of religious vampirism

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