Why do some modern intelligent minds accept Yahweh?

[marco]

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares, creating and destroying, commanding and punishing, crazy with jealousy and obsessive about being "loved."

It seems obvious that Yahweh is born of primitive imagining. Yet many intelligent people do accept he is a real being. Why? Some like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have changed sides and embraced Christianity with both hands, presumably admiring the unlovable OT God. What makes people do this?

Love seems out of the question, so is it fear?

[OnceConvinced]

Well it seems to me that if you embrace the New Testament and the loving forgiving Jesus, then you have no choice but to embrace the monster of the OT. You can't have Jesus without Yahweh as he's the father. It was Yahweh who sent his son. Likewise, you can't have a loving Jesus without a loving Yahweh, so you embrace Yahweh and you find whatever justifications you can for his horrendous acts.

[marco]

Well it seems to me that if you embrace the New Testament and the loving forgiving Jesus, then you have no choice but to embrace the monster of the OT. You can't have Jesus without Yahweh as he's the father. It was Yahweh who sent his son. Likewise, you can't have a loving Jesus without a loving Yahweh, so you embrace Yahweh and you find whatever justifications you can for his horrendous acts.

Yes, Christ's biographical details - scant as they are - get confused. He should have complained that he had an abusive father. But he speaks of love and at the same time endorses the wicked advice of Yahweh: kill witches, kill homosexuals, murder wayward girls. God so "loved" his boy that he had him slaughtered. If Christianity calls this love, then Christianity is fraudulent.

[bluethread]

Yes, Christ's biographical details - scant as they are - get confused. He should have complained that he had an abusive father. But he speaks of love and at the same time endorses the wicked advice of Yahweh: kill witches, kill homosexuals, murder wayward girls. God so "loved" his boy that he had him slaughtered. If Christianity calls this love, then Christianity is fraudulent.

The problem with this analysis is that it oversimplifies the law and romanticizes chesed, translated as agape', due to the lack of an appropriate common Greek noun. Admittedly, Lewis appeared to hold to the romanticized evangelical view of Yeshua and devoted relationship, and that puzzles me also. However, I do not think that Yeshua's view of Adonai differed from the view of Adonai one finds in the Tanakh. As I stated, the seeming dichotomy is more a matter of the combination of the romanticizing Yeshua and judging HaTorah based on modern egalitarian humanism.

[Mithrae]

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares, creating and destroying, commanding and punishing, crazy with jealousy and obsessive about being "loved."

Those look like reasons to suppose that the deity was not an enlightened 21st century Australian. Are they reasons to suppose that he's not real?

[liamconnor]

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares, creating and destroying, commanding and punishing, crazy with jealousy and obsessive about being "loved."

It seems obvious that Yahweh is born of primitive imagining. Yet many intelligent people do accept he is a real being. Why? Some like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have changed sides and embraced Christianity with both hands, presumably admiring the unlovable OT God. What makes people do this?

Love seems out of the question, so is it fear?

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares,

a rather selective scope.

creating and destroying,

I do not find anything like the Hindu god Shiva in the O.T.

commanding and punishing,

My parents gave commandments and punishments when I broke them. I never have nightmares about them. I suppose some might think an amoral deity more sophisticated.

crazy with jealousy

Would it have been more rational if Yahweh said, "You shall love all the gods equally, sacrificing to any idol you care for"

and obsessive about being "loved."

Obsessed? As I recall the command to love God appears only a few time. It should also be noted that the ancient term carried a connotation of obedience, less of sentiment.

Love seems out of the question, so is it fear?

That would be an odd motivation to believe in something; to move from disbelief through fear to belief? Emotions had very little to do with either Lewis' or Chesterton's conversion.

Why? Some like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have changed sides and embraced Christianity with both hands, presumably admiring the unlovable OT God.

If anyone is specifically curious about those two, they have written on it. I recommend Lewis' Surprised by Joy and Chesterton's Orthodoxy. As for a general answer, I do not find the O.T. God unloveable. Stern, yes. But as I survey the commandments the real thought that pops into my head is, "These commandments are really not that hard." How difficult is it to avoid adultery? How difficult is it to abstain from gathering sticks once a week?

It seems obvious that Yahweh is born of primitive imagining.

To you perhaps. To others it does not. Israelite religion eludes modern explanations for the rise and character of religions. It is very peculiar that a monotheistic (or at least monolatrous) religion should arise in the ancient near east: there was only one other attempt recorded and it was hardly monotheistic, and failed within a generation. To find something like the Yahwehism in that time period is like finding a mountain flower springing up in the desert: the environment does not explain the origins, let alone the endurance.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

Logically Yahweh cannot be unlovable since so many people (past and present) love him. I suppose you can claim they don't love him, they just think they do (just as a believer might claim there are no true atheists, only those that think they are ones) but if we are to take them at their word, then Yahweh (Jehovah) is not demonstratively not "unlovable".

I am of the opinion that people love who they love and, as with homosexuality, even if one finds the idea repulsive, perverse and incomprehensible, that is nobody's elses business but those concerned. Although my relationship with God is personal, I'm not ashamed to come out in public say I do love JEHOVAH (Yahweh) for what I perceive to be his many beautiful qualities as displayed in the bible*, and how He has manifest those qualities to me through personal experience.


JW


* Needless to say I don't accept the OP interpretation of His actions as presented in the preamble; it was not clear if only those that accept the premise in the first sentence could participate in the discussion and apologize for my contribution if that is the case.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares, creating and destroying, commanding and punishing, crazy with jealousy and obsessive about being "loved."

It seems obvious that Yahweh is born of primitive imagining. Yet many intelligent people do accept he is a real being. Why? Some like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have changed sides and embraced Christianity with both hands, presumably admiring the unlovable OT God. What makes people do this?

Love seems out of the question, so is it fear?

It seems obvious that people overwhelmingly tend to subscribe to the religion that they were originally indoctrinated into as a child. Which is why we still have portions of the world that are predominantly Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Hindu. Clearly, it is very difficult to overcome this early childhood programming for many people. C.S. Lewis for example had a strong Christian upbringing as a child, but was appalled by the carnage of the first world war and declared himself an atheist as a result. But is is not that easy to overturn one's entire upbringing and one's entire view of reality. So when Lewis drifted back into religion, he inevitably drifted back into the religion he knew best, Christianity.

Why? Because some people desire comfort and reassurance in their lives. Also there is a strong need to be accepted and not ostracized by one's family. These are things that all religions are designed to provide. All it takes is the ability to overlook the nonsense factor which dwells at the heart of every religion. How many times has a Christian said to me, "I believe it because it must be so!" To which I can only reply, "No, you believe it because you prefer that it should be so."

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 8 by Tired of the Nonsense]

C.S. Lewis for example had a strong Christian upbringing as a child, but was appalled by the carnage of the first world war and declared himself an atheist as a result.

Please give evidence from C.S. Lewis himself about the time of, and reason for, his abandonment of the faith.

I have all his books on my shelf, including three volumes of letters. I have never come across any indication that it was the war which compelled him to abandon belief.

Here is an excerpt from Wiki

Return to Christianity
Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "angry with God for not existing".[34] His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics.[35] Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:[36]

Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa

Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.[a]

Why? Because some people desire comfort and reassurance in their lives.

Perhaps, but I advise you not to make claims about Lewis unless you have read him. I have. 'Comfort' had nothing to do with his conversion. It was on intellectual grounds. 'Comfort' was something that evaded him almost his entire life. He believed God was good, but was often terrified about what that goodness entailed.

[Divine Insight]

Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "angry with God for not existing".

There you go. Lewis own confession that he was never truly an atheist. You can't be angry with a God that doesn't exist. He could be angry that a God does not exist. But not angry "with" a nonexistent God for not existing.

So Lewis gives himself away as having never been an actual atheist. He always believed that a God existed and apparently he was angry with God for not creating a world that Lewis would be happy about. Not angry with God for not existing.

So Lewis was never anything other than a disgruntled theist, by his own confession.