A question about the morality of God

[Evointrinsic]

This question has been plaguing my mind ever since I learned more about the bible when I was younger. No one seems to be able to answer it, quite soundly at least, and thus the reason why I am creating this topic.

In the bible God is said to be all knowing. During the creation of the universe, planet earth, Man and animals comes a troubling event. That is the additional - and seemingly unnecessary - creation of the forbidden fruit.

Surely, if God is all knowing then he would have known that the forbidden fruit were to be eaten. At the very least the fruit could have been something a bit less tantalizing. Perhaps "do not drink from the stinking bog of acid that burns flesh at the very touch of it's liquid."

It seems a bit irresponsible to place something that would essentially destroy that which man had at the time of creation and in the garden that god also knew they would consume, ultimately bringing their doom upon them. The same goes for the great flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If he knew that these people would be so evil in their hearts and so wrong, why allow their creation in the first place?

The worst of it all is that the people who commit these acts - of which could have been prevented - burn in hell for their sins. For eternity! Constant torture day after day for ever. Infinity is quite the scale of time. So long that our minds have a massive difficulty trying to comprehend it's vastness.

What could possibly be so needed as to let these events and lives come to this level without intervention or preventative measures?

[cnorman18]

There are more ways to read and understand the Bible than as a literal account of actual history. The Hebrew Bible is the collected literary heritage of the Jewish people, not a history book, not a scientific treatise, and not objective reporting. Literature. Neither history nor fiction nor nonfiction. Oral tradition, thousands of years old, collected and written down long after the fact. Literature.

Here's a clue; in the Hebrew language, Adam is not only a proper name; it is also a collective noun which means "Mankind." The first chapters of Genesis are poetry and metaphor, not ordinary narrative.

Here's another clue: In Jewish belief, the incident to which you refer is not considered the "Fall of Man," and in Jewish teaching there is no such thing as "Original Sin." One strand of Jewish thought is that the eating of the fruit was a necessary and good thing, a step which humans ("Mankind") had to take in order to grow up and become fully human. It's not a huge intellectual leap: isn't "The Knowledge of Good and Evil" something that humans OUGHT to have, something we NEED to have?

The Bible doesn't comment on itself, and a skeptic mindlessly buying into Christian interpretations as the only ones possible of what is, after all, a JEWISH book is no better than the fundamentalists mindlessly buying into those same dogmatic doctrines themselves.

This stuff isn't really that hard, once you put aside all the stuff that Biblical literalists have been peddling for a couple of hundred years (modern fundamentalism is NOT an ancient tradition). Just let it go and approach the text on its own terms with a little help from a scholarly commentary or two. I've been posting this link a lot lately: The Bible as it IS. Take a look and see what actual Bible study really looks like. It's not about taiking snakes and donkeys.

[Evointrinsic]

Thank you for your post. I agree that with a non-literal view on scripture that what you have stated is absolutely correct. But, that is not the concept of my question. I understand full well of what the bible is in all actuality as well as how to truly conceive it's texts through the meaning of it's words in the time of which it was written.

The question in it's essence is pointed towards the concept of literal biblical readings. With a literal interpretation of scripture everything seems to fall apart in accordance to what 'literal-interpretationists' say they believe in. It is contradictory to many levels.

This concept of God being moral seems to be one of those contradictions when we take a literal view of biblical scripture. I value your response as it is indeed the most logical way to respond to such a question. But, the question itself - once again - was applied to the literal view of biblical scripture. The question is how one can say that God is moral when - read literally - these events and actions occurred.

I apologize for not making it clearer.

[cnorman18]

Thank you for your post. I agree that with a non-literal view on scripture that what you have stated is absolutely correct. But, that is not the concept of my question. I understand full well of what the bible is in all actuality as well as how to truly conceive it's texts through the meaning of it's words in the time of which it was written.

The question in it's essence is pointed towards the concept of literal biblical readings. With a literal interpretation of scripture everything seems to fall apart in accordance to what 'literal-interpretationists' say they believe in. It is contradictory to many levels.

This concept of God being moral seems to be one of those contradictions when we take a literal view of biblical scripture. I value your response as it is indeed the most logical way to respond to such a question. But, the question itself - once again - was applied to the literal view of biblical scripture. The question is how one can say that God is moral when - read literally - these events and actions occurred.

I apologize for not making it clearer.

No apology is necessary.

A couple of remarks for the record: My own rabbi has remarked, and more than once, that "if you want to demean and trivialize the Bible, read it literally." I think that's profoundly true, and true of most great literature. If one were to read Moby Dick or Shakespeare's plays as literal and allegedly accurate reports of actual events in history, one would be left with a LOT of bizarre questions and contradictions -- and, of course, entirely miss the deep moral, psychological and intellectual insights in those works, not to mention their literary beauty and the real pleasure of reading them.

Second: In Jewish teaching, the nature of God is undefined. Whether or not God is "moral" by human standards is very much an open question; witness the bargaining, or argument if you like, between God and Abraham over the city of Sodom. "Shall not the Judge of all the world act justly?" Apparently, in the literary heritage of the Jewish people, God was capable of injustice and evil. It's not appreciated by many outside the Jewish community that in Judaism, God is very often adversary as much as Creator and King; we must struggle with God in order to be free of Him, to become mature, independent and fully human, to stand on our own feet and be responsible for our own decisions and actions. Indeed, "Israel" MEANS "struggles with God." '

Those who seek easy, pat answers and a way to stop thinking for themselves ought not turn to the Bible. All the convoluted mental gymnastics and Alice-in-Wonderland logical rationalizations and careful cherrypicking required to make that work might be better spent at actually THINKING -- even actually thinking about the Bible as it is, and not as some WISH it were.

[Evointrinsic]

Very true. I could only hope that more people would follow in the direction that your words present. Once again, however, the concept of my argument is directed towards the individuals who hold the mindset of biblical literalism. Not an argument against the words in the bible from a literal standpoint, as I do not take the bible literally but more so metaphorically or loosely based (in some cases) on actual historical events.

[connermt]

This question has been plaguing my mind ever since I learned more about the bible when I was younger. No one seems to be able to answer it, quite soundly at least, and thus the reason why I am creating this topic.

In the bible God is said to be all knowing. During the creation of the universe, planet earth, Man and animals comes a troubling event. That is the additional - and seemingly unnecessary - creation of the forbidden fruit.

Surely, if God is all knowing then he would have known that the forbidden fruit were to be eaten. At the very least the fruit could have been something a bit less tantalizing. Perhaps "do not drink from the stinking bog of acid that burns flesh at the very touch of it's liquid."

It seems a bit irresponsible to place something that would essentially destroy that which man had at the time of creation and in the garden that god also knew they would consume, ultimately bringing their doom upon them. The same goes for the great flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If he knew that these people would be so evil in their hearts and so wrong, why allow their creation in the first place?

The worst of it all is that the people who commit these acts - of which could have been prevented - burn in hell for their sins. For eternity! Constant torture day after day for ever. Infinity is quite the scale of time. So long that our minds have a massive difficulty trying to comprehend it's vastness.

What could possibly be so needed as to let these events and lives come to this level without intervention or preventative measures?

To me, the current understanding of the christian god (as you described it here) is...flawed...to say the least. It doesn't make sense.
Because it doesn't make sense, you will see people coming up with all types of excuses: we can't understand god's plan, god knows everything but chooses not to know, you're not a real christian so you just don't understand, free will, [etc]. These are all excuses.
The most sense one could make of it is to see it as symbolic as possible (even then the ability for it to make sense is merky). The problem we run into by this approach is that everyone (can have) a different interpertation of the same event.
Surely, if it was this important, a deity that created the universe could write it and make it make perfect sense to everyone, right? Or, if it's so grand and perfect, loving and kind, powerful and knowing, it wouldn't allow mis-interpertations, mis-translations, mis-representation [etc] from its own book, no?
The best option, IMO, is to see it (the bible) as nothing more than what we know it really is: a book of stories written by long dead men, edited and combined into a 'work' by other long dead men.
In regards to morality, people like to think there is a 'universal moral code' (or the like). If there is, I have yet to find it. Therefore, morality is up to the individual during the time in the society they live in.

[Quath]

I like the Garden of Eden story. There are many ways it can be read or taken. I will list a few of the ways the story could be read.

• Rip off of other mythological stories: Interesting from an academic view.
• Ultimate Set Up: God puts two innocent people who have no knowledge of good nor evil and asks them to make a decision based on good or evil. God also allows a talking snake to tempt them into doing something they do not know is evil. God curses Adam and Eve (but Eve gets a little more punishment than Adam). And God punishes all their progeny to pay for the sins of the father and mother.
• God drools; Lucifer Rules: I heard this from a Satanist (or probably more correctly a Luciferian). God plays the role of Zeus and Lucifer inhabits the snake to play the role of Prometheus. The snake gives knowledge to humanity. Humanity is worried that they will die when they eat the fruit. The snake says that God lies and says they will not die. They do not die but gain knowledge. God punishes everyone involved and treats Eve as Pandora was treated.
• God as Zookeeper: This one is a bit Twilight Zone-ish. God acts like an alien and rounds up all sorts of animals for his big zoo (Eden). He captures a man and finds out he can speak. The man names all the animals he knows. God finds a woman for Adam. Another alien objects to capturing intelligent lifeforms and tells Adam and Eve to log onto his apple computer. They do and find out that they are like caged animals. God gives them a choice: stay forever locked in a zoo without any worries or cares or back to Earth and live a hard life free. They choose freedom.
• Rise of Mankind: After Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they have knowledge of everything. (In Hebrew, the fruit is better named "fruit of knowledge of all from goodness to evilness" or "knowledge of everything.") They know they are naked, not because they are bad, but because gods are naked. Animals always wear clothes. They know they are not gods. God realizes that if he lets them eat from the tree of life, they will be gods and he doesn't want that. He worries that humans may rival the gods. So he casts them out. He further worries when he seems them organize and do great things, so he does the whole Tower of Babble thing to really push the people down.

There are others, but those are the ones I like.

[Thatguy]

There are more ways to read and understand the Bible than as a literal account of actual history.

While I don't find that the Eden story works well for me on any level, I personally find it most interesting as a combination of portraying adolescence and as a way of telling of the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural one.

As adolescents, we have to leave the benign, protected innocence of childhood and set off on our own, out of our parents' houses. There's conflict and recriminations during this phase, but the adult knowledge is inevitable and necessary. Unfortunately, adolescents are often made to feel guilty for growing into this knowledge.

As for the tale of agriculture, it's similar. (kinda like an ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny story combined in one metaphor.) Being a hunter/gatherer takes less work, more reliance on the world providing a living for you. Once we gained the knowledge of agriculture (from a tree) we were destined to hard work by the sweat of our brows, but although the knowledge brought more toil and responsibility for creating our own habitat, it brought great opportunity for broadening our lives as well.

The problems I have with the story are mainly related to trying to say that Mankind was to blame for acting horribly, or trying to say that this is how things should be rather than as descriptions of how things are or have been.

[Evointrinsic]

The most sense one could make of it is to see it as symbolic as possible (even then the ability for it to make sense is merky). The problem we run into by this approach is that everyone (can have) a different interpertation of the same event.
Surely, if it was this important, a deity that created the universe could write it and make it make perfect sense to everyone, right? Or, if it's so grand and perfect, loving and kind, powerful and knowing, it wouldn't allow mis-interpertations, mis-translations, mis-representation [etc] from its own book, no?
The best option, IMO, is to see it (the bible) as nothing more than what we know it really is: a book of stories written by long dead men, edited and combined into a 'work' by other long dead men.
In regards to morality, people like to think there is a 'universal moral code' (or the like). If there is, I have yet to find it. Therefore, morality is up to the individual during the time in the society they live in.

I agree, fully! What I don't understand when it comes down to his, is when an individual who is a christian and holds this view point is a christian at all in the first place. I'm not quite sure the reason behind the need to stick with Christianity, per se, when it appears as if they are taking the metaphorical stories as moral teachings or what have you. Is Christianity, in their sense, merely a gateway for moral teachings? If so, then there is no reason to follow the religion in it's whole, but simply the teachings of which most religions tend to say relatively the same ones.

[connermt]

The most sense one could make of it is to see it as symbolic as possible (even then the ability for it to make sense is merky). The problem we run into by this approach is that everyone (can have) a different interpertation of the same event.
Surely, if it was this important, a deity that created the universe could write it and make it make perfect sense to everyone, right? Or, if it's so grand and perfect, loving and kind, powerful and knowing, it wouldn't allow mis-interpertations, mis-translations, mis-representation [etc] from its own book, no?
The best option, IMO, is to see it (the bible) as nothing more than what we know it really is: a book of stories written by long dead men, edited and combined into a 'work' by other long dead men.
In regards to morality, people like to think there is a 'universal moral code' (or the like). If there is, I have yet to find it. Therefore, morality is up to the individual during the time in the society they live in.

I agree, fully! What I don't understand when it comes down to his, is when an individual who is a christian and holds this view point is a christian at all in the first place. I'm not quite sure the reason behind the need to stick with Christianity, per se, when it appears as if they are taking the metaphorical stories as moral teachings or what have you. Is Christianity, in their sense, merely a gateway for moral teachings? If so, then there is no reason to follow the religion in it's whole, but simply the teachings of which most religions tend to say relatively the same ones.

I don't understand a lot of what christians say and believe these days anymore....
It seems like everyone is making it 'their own' and saying they - and only they -are 'right'.
But to be fair, that happens with a lot of things, not just christianity