Things you didn't know about God

[mistermack]

I found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. 

I looked up Onanism, (after a reference to masturbation) and it's a pretty good read. 

Judah had two sons, Er and Onan.

God slew Er because he was wicked. Case closed. The death penalty is moral. Although of course, being God, he would KNOW without any doubt that Er was indeed guilty of being wicked. We mere mortals convict on REASONABLE certainty, so there is always that bit of uncertainty I guess. But in cases where there is no doubt at all, then the death penalty is moral, because God didn't just say so, he actually performed the execution himself. 

God then spoke to Er's younger brother, Onan, and told him to have sex with Er's widow. Onan did as he was told, but he pulled his willie out, before he came, and ejaculated on the ground. So God slew him as well. It seems he was a real fan of capital punishment. 

So Onan not only got killed, but he suffered the indignity of giving his name to masturbation, even though his crime was actually just pulling out.

The story then follows Tamar, the widow of Er that Onan was supposed to get pregnant. She asked Judah if she could marry another of his sons, but he said no.

So she dressed up as a prostitute, covered her face with a veil, and met up with Judah on his travels. Not knowing it was his daughter-in-law, Judah negotiated a price for sex  with this "prostitute" , I think it was one goat, and Tamar got pregnant by him. 

Later, when it became obvious that Tamar was pregnant, Judah said that he would kill the man who got her pregnant, and Tamar produced the goat. So Judah realised that he had actually vowed to kill himself. 

It's all there in the good book. Lots of stuff that I didn't know about God. Particularly, how right wing he actually is when it comes to the death penalty. Truly, the Lord is a Republican !!

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

I found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. 

Yes, he did an awful lot of fatal smiting individually, as well as on a genocidal scale. What he did to the Egyptian babies was small potatoes compared to that flood. Not to mention foisting original sin on all of us, because a girl who didn't yet have a concept of good an evil or of deception took the advice of a fellow resident of the garden.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Lots of stuff that I didn't know about God.

It hasn't exactly been a secret these past 1600 years.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Truly, the Lord is a Republican !!

And he shares human billboard space with guns and Trump. That's what makes me a godless socialist.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Peterkin
more

[Intoscience]

I guess if you believe, in the afterlife, heaven etc.. then death is not the end but the beginning. Which can be why many extremists see death and sacrifice as no big deal.

Since God is the creator (if you believe in such) of all things then he/she/it is also the destroyer of all things, maybe the only entity who can justify such acts. 

Personally I don't believe in God or an afterlife, so for me this life is a gift to be cherished, since it will come and go in a blink of an eye.   

[exchemist]

5 hours ago, mistermack said:

I found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. 

I looked up Onanism, (after a reference to masturbation) and it's a pretty good read. 

Judah had two sons, Er and Onan.

God slew Er because he was wicked. Case closed. The death penalty is moral. Although of course, being God, he would KNOW without any doubt that Er was indeed guilty of being wicked. We mere mortals convict on REASONABLE certainty, so there is always that bit of uncertainty I guess. But in cases where there is no doubt at all, then the death penalty is moral, because God didn't just say so, he actually performed the execution himself. 

God then spoke to Er's younger brother, Onan, and told him to have sex with Er's widow. Onan did as he was told, but he pulled his willie out, before he came, and ejaculated on the ground. So God slew him as well. It seems he was a real fan of capital punishment. 

So Onan not only got killed, but he suffered the indignity of giving his name to masturbation, even though his crime was actually just pulling out.

The story then follows Tamar, the widow of Er that Onan was supposed to get pregnant. She asked Judah if she could marry another of his sons, but he said no.

So she dressed up as a prostitute, covered her face with a veil, and met up with Judah on his travels. Not knowing it was his daughter-in-law, Judah negotiated a price for sex  with this "prostitute" , I think it was one goat, and Tamar got pregnant by him. 

Later, when it became obvious that Tamar was pregnant, Judah said that he would kill the man who got her pregnant, and Tamar produced the goat. So Judah realised that he had actually vowed to kill himself. 

It's all there in the good book. Lots of stuff that I didn't know about God. Particularly, how right wing he actually is when it comes to the death penalty. Truly, the Lord is a Republican !!

This is all very American. 

[mistermack]

2 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Since God is the creator (if you believe in such) of all things then he/she/it is also the destroyer of all things, maybe the only entity who can justify such acts. 

A bit like a painter smashing up his canvas, when he doesn't like what he painted. We are truly made in his image. 

[Genady]

Gives a pretty good idea on human social life and attitudes in the Bronze Age.

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

Gives a pretty good idea on human social life and attitudes in the Bronze Age.

With half the world's present population (3.8 billion people) professing adherence to one of that same god's religions.

Which would suggest that the bronze Age didn't end - it just kept growing.

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I guess if you believe, in the afterlife, heaven etc.. then death is not the end but the beginning.

That's a late adjunct to the Abrahamic cults. There is no resurrection in the OT - death is very much the end, and not at all to be desired. The New testament was written during the Roman Empire and is based on a quite different, more sophisticated form of emotional manipulation. While the Jehovah of Moses used direct intimidation to enforce his law, the three-cornered god of Christianity employs a carrot/stick/shaming strategy.    

[swansont]

9 hours ago, mistermack said:

God slew Er because he was wicked. Case closed. The death penalty is moral.

I don't see how this follows. Surely there are punishments reserved for an omnipotent being that fallible mortals should not be dabbling in.

IOW, just because God does it does not mean it is moral when it comes to humans doing it. 

[mistermack]

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

IOW, just because God does it does not mean it is moral when it comes to humans doing it. 

In other words, do as I say, not as I do ?    Sounds familiar. We have a Prime Minister who operates on that basis. 

And a heck of a lot of the clergy live by the same motto.

[swansont]

2 minutes ago, mistermack said:

In other words, do as I say, not as I do ? 

You either believe in them and follow their rules, or you don't.

[mistermack]

1 minute ago, swansont said:

You either believe in them and follow their rules, or you don't.

Not true for the majority. Most people believe a bit, and follow the rules when it suits them.

[Bufofrog]

You should have named this thread "Things I didn't know about God".

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I guess if you believe, in the afterlife, heaven etc.. then death is not the end but the beginning. Which can be why many extremists see death and sacrifice as no big deal.

These stories are in the part of the bible that was before the invention of Heaven so death was a bigger deal in those days.

[Peterkin]

35 minutes ago, swansont said:

I don't see how this follows. Surely there are punishments reserved for an omnipotent being that fallible mortals should not be dabbling in.

IOW, just because God does it does not mean it is moral when it comes to humans doing it. 

Actually, the same god, in the same book, also commands his people to kill one another for various infractions, as well as to kill other nations for simply getting in their way. And the Catholics of medieval Europe seemed just as confident of receiving God's blessing for their wars of aggression as were the Muslims of Allah's approval for theirs.  

The Book of Leviticus put a lot of responsibility and power on the priestly caste, and that has certainly continued to the present day.  If they say a killing is legal and just, it is.

[swansont]

38 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Actually, the same god, in the same book, also commands his people to kill one another for various infractions, as well as to kill other nations for simply getting in their way. And the Catholics of medieval Europe seemed just as confident of receiving God's blessing for their wars of aggression as were the Muslims of Allah's approval for theirs.  

The Book of Leviticus put a lot of responsibility and power on the priestly caste, and that has certainly continued to the present day.  If they say a killing is legal and just, it is.

That's not the same as saying "If God did it, then it's OK for me to do it"

[Peterkin]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

That's not the same as saying "If God did it, then it's OK for me to do it"

No. It's the same as saying "If God tells me to do it, I have to do it." This makes the death penalty, and holy wars, and stoning for blasphemy not merely permissible but mandatory.

[swansont]

21 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

No. It's the same as saying "If God tells me to do it, I have to do it." 

Which was not presented as the example in the OP. You are substituting other arguments, to which I did not object. 

[zapatos]

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

This is all very American. 

In what way?

The type of discussion? Our belief in such things? Using god's killings as a model for ourselves?

Inquiring minds want to know! 😃

[Peterkin]

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

Which was not presented as the example in the OP. You are substituting other arguments, to which I did not object. 

True: not all examples of God's use and approval of the death penalty were presented in the OP. One would have to be far more conversant with the bible than mistermack appears to be, and spend a great deal more time than we generally have for forum posts, to present all the examples that support the burden of his opening sentence:

Quote

found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. 

 I volunteered a few of those examples.  

Edited January 4, 2022 by Peterkin

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

In what way?

The type of discussion? Our belief in such things? Using god's killings as a model for ourselves?

Inquiring minds want to know! 😃

The caricature of Christian belief and the association of it with US right wing politics.

Don't get me wrong: both the caricature and the association seem to have a fair amount of validity in a US context, sad to say. Elsewhere however it would not be seen as a very thoughtful critique of Christian belief, that's all.     

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by exchemist

[Phi for All]

6 minutes ago, exchemist said:

The caricature of Christian belief and the association of it with US right wing politics.

Don't get me wrong: both the caricature and the association seem to have a fair amount of validity in a US context, sad to say. Elsewhere however it would not be seen as a very thoughtful critique of Christian belief, that's all.     

But how can this argument rise above the No True Scotsman fallacy? With over 9000 recognized sects, which contexts in Christian belief are thoughtful and which aren't?

[Peterkin]

24 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Elsewhere however it would not be seen as a very thoughtful critique of Christian belief,

I don't think it was intended as a thoughtful critique of Christianity in all the world, so much as a personal observation from a new [to himself] perspective on US politics.  

[MigL]

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

The caricature of Christian belief and the association of it with US right wing politics.

If it is true that a lot of American Republicans take the Bible literally, I would guess that it is also true of some members of this forum.

Why would anyone take any of these stories literally, and not as a 'mirror' of the morality of our civilization at the time they were written ?
To believe these stories you also have to believe in an omnipotent/omniscient white bearded man who created the universe, and killed His Son, just to resurrect him three days later.
Sounds like a bit of a 'stretch' to me.

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

But how can this argument rise above the No True Scotsman fallacy? With over 9000 recognized sects, which contexts in Christian belief are thoughtful and which aren't?

You can judge that for yourself I think, by what they say about such things. If you talk to a Methodist, or an Anglican, or Episcopalian, or a Scottish Presbyterian (I don't know about Presbyterians elsewhere),  or a Lutheran or a Catholic, i.e. major recognised denominations with a body of theology and some form of authority structure, you won't find them taking literally all these bloodthirsty stories in the Old Testament.     

[TheVat]

As David Graber and other anthropologists have noted, the desert cults tended to be conservative because they were developed among rural pastoralists (herders and farmers and support trades) many who had fled the urban centers of the ancient world and rejected the worse aspects of them, like multi-generational debt obligations, debt peonage, usury, rigid heirarchies, and the tendency to go to war for filling royal coffers and acquire slaves.  It's no accident that desert cults like Christianity had prophets who preached communist values and egalitarianism, and pushed back against materialism and wealth acquisition.  It's interesting to see how such a religion gets later coopted by economic/political entities and gradually starts to shy away from collectivism and embrace mercantilism and then capitalism.   

[Peterkin]

9 minutes ago, TheVat said:

It's interesting to see how such a religion gets later coopted by economic/political entities and gradually starts to shy away from collectivism and embrace mercantilism and then capitalism.   

That happened very early on. Christianity was still a very young and largely unrecognized cult when Constantine took control of it, and the first administrative bodies of the Holy Roman church were given great temporal power and opportunities to accumulate wealth. The inclusion in the christian canonical text of the very materialistic, patriarchal, landowner and caste oriented, as well as severely punitive, OT was no accident in the materialistic and hierarchical  Roman Empire. In fact, except for a few heretical sects that later cropped up and were eradicated or at least persecuted by the state-established churches, both catholic and later Protestant, the old testament has continued to exert far greater influence on the laws and mores of christian Europe and its offshoots than any sermons from Jesus. They accept the sacrifice and redemption - not the lesson.