And Now for Something Completely Different...

First of all you should really stop repeating your mantra that "He cannot exist." That is not true and it is blinding you from truly entering into the conversation.

Nevertheless, God is not a vague idea. If He was I would agree with you. If I thought God was a vapor or mysterious mist that had the power to create all things but remains ever distant from us hovering around but never tangible, I would ask how you could love it. However, I believe God is a real person, Jesus of Nazareth. He is incarnate and as real as you or I. Now I don't know what your belief system or lack thereof allows you, but maybe there was a very special person in your extended family who was loved very much and has passed on. The love your family had for that person is not diminished and they still think of that very real person often. In my faith tradition not only is that person alive in our memories and thoughts, but is also very much alive with God and connected to us still today. So when I think of my great-grandpa I love him very much and call upon his prayers for me and others like I would have if he was alive when I was around. He was real, I can prove it, and my love for him is real as well, for that you are going to have to trust me. Jesus is real, I can prove it, and my love for Him is real as well, for that you also are going to have to trust me.

Quote: Face

Are you so sure?

The idea that you are not is a little disconcerting.

Your post is a good example of how moral theology is done and wrestled with. It is more evidence that it takes extraordinary circumstances to get us humans to the point where we will be willing to make a surprise attack, establish reeducation camps, or drop destructive bombs on each other. You show through your post we don't do these things lightly and a lot of hand wringing and discussion go into it. We only do it when we feel we have no other option. It's interesting that no one ever just says, "Hey, dropping the bomb is a good thing - what are you all worried about?!?" That person would be thrown out of the room. You can't make these things good. You can however, paint yourself into a corner and feel like we have to do it, but you aren't happy about it and you'd rather not.

I guess I'm trying to pierce your argument and parse it out for us to see that the actions you allude to are really never in doubt as to their morality. What we throw back and forth are questions like: is it permissible with regret, is it necessary to stop a greater evil, is it just to rebel, what is our duty to our friends, allies, etc. In moral theology and in history all these things are thrown into a stew and mixed around and what comes out is: Americans saying it was good to drop the bomb. We hopefully don't mean the vaporizing and killing of thousands and thousands of people is good. We mean that in our myopic vision we justified it because of this or that. By the way, for the record I would disagree with any argument trying to justify those bombs.

I maintain that "good" is reinforced by the teaching of Christ and your mom, but it goes beyond these teachings. If God forbid we had bad teachers in our lives or if the majority of people rejected the teachings of Jesus and your mom, then what is good would not fundamentally change. The hard work usually using fear and violence and oppression would begin to force humans to ignore what their innate moral compass is telling them to do and to follow guys like Hitler, but it would be a short reign and eventually the truth of good would win out and all balance would come back into the force as it has throughout history. You could force people to view the holocaust as an accomplishment for a time, but eventually its true disgraceful nature would shine through the veneer.

Quote: FrGamble

First of all you should really stop repeating your mantra that "He cannot exist..." However, I believe God is a real person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Well, god cannot exist, what can I say.
It's not an argument for me and a lot
of others far smarter than I am. For
you he can exist, and that's fine. We
take that with a grain of salt and
understand you can't help it, it's what
you were taught and what you chose
to accept.

There is a much better argument for no
god then there is for one. Even some
of the most honored people in your won
church had problems with the concept.
In modern times, over 25,000 Roman
Catholic priests have quit the priesthood
in the US in the last 60 years, 150,000
worldwide. Many of them lost their faith
in god, some were disgruntled with the
Church.

If god is not even believable to an ordained
priest, what does that say to an atheist.

Quote: FrGamble

The idea that you are not is a little disconcerting.

Don't fret. They're just thought experiments. I suppose you could say it's how I "find my way", what with not having the light of Christ to guide me and all ;)

And I admit that these types of arguments I make are incomplete and often contradictory. I like throwing stuff at walls. I'm not always prepared to tackle what decides to stick.

It is hard for me to argue that there is an underlying current defining what's wrong and what's right. I can make a bunch of arguments as to why that is, but none feels exactly right. None is that perfect square peg into the perfect square hole. So I ask, and I answer, and we talk.

So at the risk of going waaaay off topic, let me hop onto the other side for a moment. Let's say it's all God. Let's say that morality is some unseen force that God created and that we must follow, much the same as physics is an unseen force created by God that we must follow.

Forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong, but there was a time when the Old Testament was all there was written about God. And here we have FrG circa 100BCE preaching to the masses. My ignorant interpretation is that the Old Testament God was a bit of an asshole. The bears murdering children, turning Lot's wife to salt, torturing Abraham by making him kill his own son (just kidding! That ram will do), and good Christ, poor Job.

And today we read Leviticus 21, and FrG learns he may not cut his hair or trim his beard, and his clothes must not be unkempt or torn, and he may not enter where a dead body lay. Brother died? No funeral for you. To do so is "wrong", so sayeth the Lord our God. And prostitution is a thing, remember, so just know you have to burn them all. To do so is "good", hell, it's the Lord's work. And we're not yet about saving the infirmed, so those who are retarded, blind, crippled, and even those with a bad case of acne need to get to steppin'. Dwarves? Please. You need to wait outside.

Is that "good"? It was, at one point, the word of God. And we could go on and on for days listing examples where God was a few steps below the stereotypical drunk, abusive father. But in 100BCE, it was "right". You, as a man of God, would declare it "right". All those within your culture would view it as "right".

And that's where the thought of an "unseen force of good prescribed by God" breaks down for me. The same thing I describe, "good" being a product of societal acceptance, seems to have happened even in the land of God. Because the Old Testament God was an asshole. He was a complete psychopath. But somewhere around 100CE, things changed. Maybe by actually having to deal with His creation by way of becoming Jesus and having to experienced His results, God Himself was like "oh s%^&, I messed up". Or maybe the people saw what a mess it was, and changed it themselves. But either way, what was 'good" and what was "bad" certainly changed. It appears, to an outsider, that the very word of God changed.

Pre-100BCE God smote anyone who looked at him funny (and many who did nothing at all), and this was good. Post 100CE, God forgave for even the most despicable of actions, and this was good. Which is it? What changed? More importantly, why did it change?

I dunno. But I'll keep asking =)

Quote: Face

Forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong, but there was a time when the Old Testament was all there was written about God.

Nooooo.... The Rigveda of the Hindus is almost a
thousand years older than the oldest part of the
Hebrew Bible. It is also said to be inspired by god.

Two different kinds of gods. Yahweh is childish and
petulant, Vishnu is patient and mysterious. Many
similar stories are in both religions, though. There
is a reason for this.

"You may find it surprising that much of Christianity originated from India. Indeed, over the centuries, numerous historians and sages have pointed out that not only has Hinduism had a predominant influence on Christianity, but that many of the Christian rites could be directly borrowed from Hindu (Vedic) India." http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/christianity.htm

I won't bore you with details, but Hinduism had
a profound effect on the early Christianity, and
is a far older religion.

Quote: Evenbob

Nooooo....

Sorry, I was too vague.

I'm aware of all of those, and all of the arguments that Christianity's concepts are nothing more than a hodge-podge of preexisting beliefs. Everything from the virgin birth to resurrection has been done before. I know.

Rather, when I said "God", I was speaking specifically of the Christian version. "....but there was a time when the Old Testament was all there was written about the Christian God." I'm trying to show that even in his belief of a rigid moral compass, things can, and have, changed.

Quote: FrGamble

Nothing, no amount of propaganda, no matter how long someone has influence over history and how we learn it, no matter what you do you would never be able to make the holocaust a good thing.

You'd be surprised how little it actually takes. There are areas of the world where this is precisely the case, mostly in Muslim majority countries.

Quote:

It would be like trying to imagine a society where rape and the torture of children was made legal or even encouraged it would be doomed to be rejected.

Again, some Muslim majority countries. I'm sure the Saudis who "marry" ten-year old girls for a day to have sex with them don't think of it as rape or torture, but that's just what it is.

First of all Face that is a pretty good hack job on the Hebrew Scriptures. The Old Testament gets such a bad rap. Here is a quick little experiment to perform to show that the common misconception about the Old Testament is way off base. Grab your Bible and randomly open up to different parts of the OT and randomly point to a verse and see what it says. I just did it myself and one time out of ten I ran into a verse about an angry God who was planning to punish the sinner. It was actually a pretty bad verse that actually mentioned bowel diseases would be sent upon these people. Anyway, the other verses I pointed to from all around the first part of the Bible were either innocuous or beautiful. One in particular I pointed to, and I am not making this up, was Ecclesiaticus 22:13, "Do not talk much with the stupid, or visit the unintelligent. Beware of them lest you have trouble and be spattered when they shake themselves off. Avoid them and you will find rest and not be wearied by their lack of sense." I wonder if that was a message from God ;)

Seriously, there are some troubling things in the Old Testament, but I wonder if you did the same experiment with an honest American History textbook or a history of the world would you have better luck. Also if you read the entire Old Testament overall you would be hard pressed to declare it anything less than a story of God establishing covenant after covenant with His people, who continually broke these covenants only to be punished, forgiven and the relationship re-established. The last quote I fell upon was from the Song of Songs, which is a PG-13 love letter that finds itself in the Bible to signify the type of love God has for us.

You also must realize that there is a divine pedagogy at work here where God is slowly moving a violent and chaotic ancient world towards the eventual acceptance of the New and Everlasting Covenant through Jesus Christ. Seen in this way and according to my tradition you really can't read the Old without the New. Jesus Christ is not a break from the "mean" God, but rather the culmination of God's manifestation of His love for us. No longer are we punished, but He takes the punishment for our sins on Himself so that we are free from them. This is something prefigured many times in the OT, most notably the suffering servant in Isaiah.

Anyway, your main point was not to criticize the OT but rather show how good and bad were changed or redefined from 100 BC to 100 AD.

Quote: Face

Pre-100BCE God smote anyone who looked at him funny (and many who did nothing at all), and this was good. Post 100CE, God forgave for even the most despicable of actions, and this was good. Which is it? What changed? More importantly, why did it change?

I don't know how much things really changed in the sense that it was and is always bad according to the Bible to look at God funny or curse Him. The OT showed us all pretty clearly that we could not live up to this moral law, heck we can't even master the not killing the innocent commandment. Therefore, God doesn't just say, "okay, I give up you guys suck so go ahead and have at each other and curse me all you want." Instead He says, I will take the guilt and burden of your sins from you and free you from the burden of the law. The new covenant God establishes is no longer dependent on us doing the impossible, namely living up to the Law of God, but rather on our faithfulness and God's mercy. This is not a get out of jail free card nor is it a change in the moral norms that were around a long time before the Hebrew Bible was written, as Evenbob pointed out. It is the culmination of God's love and is meant to inspire us to follow suit and be loving and merciful to ourselves and each other. We are never going to be perfect, but we finally have found something that we can actually do like God and do very well - namely forgive each other.

Quote: FrGamble

First of all Face that is a pretty good hack job on the....- namely forgive each other.

I left the first and last parts of your post. You
realize we've all heard this mumbo jumbo
all our lives and know it by heart, right?
Are their really people, upon hearing it,
that smack themselves on the forehead
and say "What was I thinking!" And from
that day on, they're god worshipers. Gosh
I hope not, that would really be embarrassing.

Whenever I read the word sin in a sentence, I
stop reading. Starting with a faulty premise
(that we all 'sin') does not make for a productive
argument. If you can get the heathen to accept
that sin exists, you have him, as they say. The
rest of it is knocking over the dominoes. But
sin is a tough sale to an atheist, and without
that, the holy man has nothing to sell. Except
to the choir, of course.

Quote: Evenbob

Whenever I read the word sin in a sentence, I
stop reading. Starting with a faulty premise
(that we all 'sin') does not make for a productive
argument. If you can get the heathen to accept
that sin exists, you have him, as they say. The
rest of it is knocking over the dominoes. But
sin is a tough sale to an atheist, and without
that, the holy man has nothing to sell. Except
to the choir, of course.

My brother in law is a Baptist minister and lives
in Canada. I remember the first time I met him
and he asked me if I was a Christian. When I
said it was impossible because sin doesn't exist,
I thought he was going to have a heart attack.

He said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.
But after we talked for awhile, and I made some
good points, he just got furious and stomped
away and he refused to talk to me for 15 years.
We still don't get along, we just don't talk about
religion.

I believe I was the first person he ever encountered
who didn't believe in sin. It's the ministers foot in
the door, if there is sin you need a savior to forgive
you for sinning. If you refuse to take the bait, he
doesn't have a chance of ever seeing your money in
the plate every week.