Bible - cruelty and violence

[Compassionist]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true? If it is true then why is God so cruel and violent? Doesn't God's cruelty make God evil and unworthy of praise and worship?

[Compassionist]

He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.

- Luke 22:36, The Bible (NIV).

Read this: http://answering-islam.org/Authors/Arla ... _22_36.htm

The site was down when I tried to visit the link. Will try again later. Thank you.

I have managed to view the webpage. It was interesting to re-interprete the verse in its wider context. The Bible doesn't record how the disciples died. Why is that? The webpage claimed that all except John was martyred. How do we know that this is true? Do we have detailed account of what happened? I would like to know more - please let me know if possible. Thanks again.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true?

The Tanakh is human narrative, a tapestry of mythic etiology, lore, poetry, folk history, politics and theology. To ask if it's 'true' is literally nonsensical.

[Compassionist]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true?

The Tanakh is human narrative, a tapestry of mythic etiology, lore, poetry, folk history, politics and theology. To ask if it's 'true' is literally nonsensical.

I understand what you are saying. The thing is, Christians consider the Bible to be God's Word and therefore, true. The Bible makes certain claims e.g. the Creation story, the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the story of various prophets, the story of Jesus and his virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. I am not aware of any evidence to prove these claims. Of course, if it is just man-made literature, then the question of the veracity of the Bible is irrelevant.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true?

The Tanakh is human narrative, a tapestry of mythic etiology, lore, poetry, folk history, politics and theology. To ask if it's 'true' is literally nonsensical.

I understand what you are saying. The thing is, Christians consider the Bible to be God's Word and therefore, true. The Bible makes certain claims e.g. the Creation story, the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the story of various prophets, the story of Jesus and his virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. I am not aware of any evidence to prove these claims. Of course, if it is just man-made literature, then the question of the veracity of the Bible is irrelevant.

I am a Jew and, as a Jew, not particularly interested in speaking for Christians. But when you say "Christians consider the Bible to be God's Word and therefore, true" you are painting with an overly broad brush. I would also suggest that characterizing the Tanakh as "just man-made literature" does it an injustice.

But there is another point to be made. Much of the Torah has almost certainly gone through many, many stages of refinement as it moved through oral and, later, scribal cultures. Yet we are left with a narrative that has the Midianites thoroughly destroyed only to later return. Unless we believe that those who transmitted and embraced these narratives were fools, we are forced to recognize that they were not viewed as 'true' history they way we view history.

[Compassionist]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true?

The Tanakh is human narrative, a tapestry of mythic etiology, lore, poetry, folk history, politics and theology. To ask if it's 'true' is literally nonsensical.

I understand what you are saying. The thing is, Christians consider the Bible to be God's Word and therefore, true. The Bible makes certain claims e.g. the Creation story, the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the story of various prophets, the story of Jesus and his virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. I am not aware of any evidence to prove these claims. Of course, if it is just man-made literature, then the question of the veracity of the Bible is irrelevant.

I am a Jew and, as a Jew, not particularly interested in speaking for Christians. But when you say "Christians consider the Bible to be God's Word and therefore, true" you are painting with an overly broad brush. I would also suggest that characterizing the Tanakh as "just man-made literature" does it an injustice.

If it is not just man-made literature, then is it God's Word? Here is a list of beliefs held by Christians. One of these beliefs is: "The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct."

But there is another point to be made. Much of the Torah has almost certainly gone through many, many stages of refinement as it moved through oral and, later, scribal cultures. Yet we are left with a narrative that has the Midianites thoroughly destroyed only to later return. Unless we believe that those who transmitted and embraced these narratives were fools, we are forced to recognize that they were not viewed as 'true' history they way we view history.

I agree with this part. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[cnorman18]

Here is a list of beliefs held by Christians.

Some Christians. That is from an "evangelical" site. Those beliefs may apply to all "evangelicals," but certainly not to all Christians.

Nobody has the right to stuff beliefs into the heads of others, any more than they have the right to stuff words into others' mouths. People get to define their own beliefs, and not have those beliefs defined for them. Period, full stop.

[cnorman18]

Evil? I suspect that if we looked at a few carefully cherry picked episodes from your own life, we'd decide that YOU are evil. That's certainly true of me. Even as a literary character, God is a good deal more complicated than your average Warner Brothers cartoon -- and even Wile E. Coyote was neither purely good nor purely evil.

It's alway struck me as strange how some atheists, very much like many fundamentalists, insist on (1) reading the Bible literally, and (2) oversimplifying things to make them nice and neat and easy. Real life isn't like that -- and neither is non-fundamentalist, non-literalist religion.

Neither you, nor I have committed genocides of billions and caused suffering to billions e.g. making childbirth painful.

And neither of those acts were understood in that way by the people who produced those documents. It's similar to attributing "evil" to the Road Runner for making Wile E. Coyote fall off cliffs and get squashed by falling anvils. Those were literary effects and plot points, not claims about the nature of God.

See, that's what I mean. Assuming that the ancients read the Bible 2,000 and more years ago with the same perspectives and judgments that YOU hold today is no more legitimate than reading it as objective history reporting.

I am puzzled by something. Without Genesis 3, there is no need for Jesus getting crucified and resurrected. The Fall of Adam and Eve and salvation through Jesus is the foundation of Christianity. How can Genesis 3 be read metaphorically given that it is an alleged account of the incidents which led to all the suffering and death on Earth? I am not oversimplifying the Bible. I am quoting what it says.

Not quite. The Bible very rarely explains the meaning of the events that take place in it. Very many Jews read Genesis 3 without either the word or the concept of "Fall," which word does not appear in the text. Calling it "the Fall" is properly commentary, and commentary can change. There are many threads of such commentary in Jewish tradition, and one of them -- a very ancient one -- is that eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a good and necessary act for Adam, symbolizing the need and desire of human beings to stand on their own feet and take responsibility for making their own moral decisions, as opposed to being mindless automatons directed by God. One wonders exactly what else "knowledge of good and evil" might mean.

If one does not understand that the Jewish attitude towards God has always contained a powerful strain of regarding God as adversary, from Whose domination man must FREE himself even against the resistance of God Himself, as much as that of regarding God as Master and King, one does not understand Judaism. Indeed, that is the very meaning of Jacob's new name, Israel, is it not? "He who struggles with God." Of COURSE the Bible speaks of God "punishing" humans for disobedience. That's not the end of the matter. For many Jews, that was an injustice. Is God always just? Does he always protect his Chosen People? Drop in on a discussion of the Holocaust in a synagogue Torah study some day and see what you hear. As Rosemary has observed, we both worship God and shake our fists at Him. It's always been like that, from Abraham onward.

The meaning of Scripture is very rarely found lying on the surface. That's a mistake often made by both fundamentalists and atheists. Its meaning is also the responsibility of the reader to determine at least as much as it is God's; that's another.

I didn't say that the Bible is true. I am convinced that much of the Bible is fiction and the Biblical God is imaginery and evil. Just as Voldemort in 'Harry Potter' is imaginery and evil.

And I have said, many times, that dismissing the Bible as mere "fiction" is also missing the point. The categories of "fiction," "nonfiction," "history," "myth," "objective," "subjective," and so on simply didn't exist two or three or four millennia ago. These were all just stories, oral traditions, passed down for generations before anyone wrote them down. What do they mean? I personally believe that they were intended to make people think and decide for themselves what they mean -- to encourage humans to use their own brains and not seek easy answers in a magical book.

You see, I would agree that in certain narratives, God IS presented as evil, and disobedient humans as good; you'll notice that Moses gets in trouble more than once for NOT carrying out a massacre as ordered. He also argues with God, and protests against what is an obvious injustice -- his not being allowed to enter the Promised Land because of a trivial failure to follow directions. Not about genocide, mind, but about HITTING a rock as opposed to just SPEAKING to it. Abraham quietly accepts God's command to murder his son, but argues with God over the fate of a city of strangers. What other meaning for these bizarre inconsistencies, and for the weird moodiness and capriciousness of God Himself, can there be? One possibility is, "You can't trust God; think for yourself." The people who redacted the Torah into its present form may have been many things, but it's hard to argue that they were stupid; and in the opinion of Jews for centuries, they left these difficulties in Scripture precisely in order that later generations would argue about them and work it out anew in every generation.

As I've posted many, many times: The Jewish attitude toward "religious indoctrination" has never been "Yes, thank you, I'll swallow it all" but "Now wait just a damned minute..."

Oversimplifying. Not just reading the text literally, but assuming that even its symbolic meaning is simple and obvious. If it were, we Jews wouldn't have been arguing about it for 2,000+ years.

[Wootah]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true? If it is true then why is God so cruel and violent? Doesn't God's cruelty make God evil and unworthy of praise and worship?

I don't recall an instance in the Bible of God acting against good people to warrant the claim God is evil.

A good person can be quite violent and quite good if there are a lot of bad people around. John McClane in Die Hard is a good example of this. My point being that we need to analyse each action in that list to determine if God is evil or not in taking those actions.

so for you, killing babies, toddlers and children is moral?

What do wicked people think will become of their children? I think in general the commands to kill children stem more from the reality that it would have been difficult to raise them and keep Israel holy.

The difference autodidact is God did or ordered that and yet Christians are anti-abortion. What is your stance on abortion?

[Wootah]

'Harry Potter' books don't claim to be God's Word, the Bible does. We all know that 'Harry Potter' is fantasy. The Bible claims to be God's Word and Christians take it as such. The Bible doesn't count as evidence. It is inaccurate and self-contradictory. Here is a link to some examples. How can you use the Bible as evidence when it is just words. It provides no evidence to support its many claims e.g. the story of the Creation, the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, the story of the virgin birth, the many miracles, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. Would you count the Book of Mormon, the Bhagabat Gita and the Quran as evidence, too?

I use those books directly when discussing those religions. It would be bizarre to do otherwise.

How can killing people wanting bread and water be anything other than evil?

Example?

Babies were bad? Animals were bad? Saving virgins and killing others (including babies and animals) is good? Kindly consider Genesis 3. God could have prevented all suffering, unfairness and death by giving Adam and Eve wisdom instead of making them gullible. Punishing all humans and other living things for the error of Adam and Eve is unjust and cruel. Making childbirth painful is a deliberate evil. Do you know how many women and children have died during childbirth? Millions! Nazi slaughter of the European Jews and Romas and others is rather like the killings of other ethnic groups by the Israelites. The Nazis and the Israelites were both on the evil side. The Allied forces opposed the Nazis but God didn't oppose the Israelite genocides, he commanded the genocides - rather like Hitler. Incidentally, why didn't God prevent all suffering, unfairness and death? Surely, that would have been a far better approach than the alleged crucifixion and resurrectiobn of an alleged god-man hybrid Jesus?

They were not made gullible or unwise. What evidence for that do you have?
That is why God didn't punish us all by ending creation.
Your list of suffering suggests why we should flee to God.
Because there would have been no reconciliation for anyone with God without Jesus.

My point is the of the lack of peaceful intentions. Creating divisions between family members is cruel. Buddha was far better in his intentions, words and actions.

So honesty is now cruelty?

Also, "Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves." - Matthew 21:12, The Bible (NIV). Jesus was attacking and vandalising at the temple, not showing understanding and love in words and actions.

God is for all people - those who block others from God can clear off.

Yes. Why would an allegedly loving and compassionate God want to bring fire on the earth and wish it were already kindled?

Because the place sucks compared to what it should have been and will be.

You have missed my point. Jesus was unjust in punishing a tree not bearing fruit out of season. The tree couldn't help it. The action of Jesus is not only irrational and absurd, it is also evil because he punished an innocent living thing.

It is irrational to consider justice in relation to trees.

People are innocent till proven guilty. The onus is on those claiming that entire ethnic groups were so evil that they (including their babies and animals but not their virgins) had to be exterminated. Please note that John McClane wasn't killing babies and animals and he wasn't selectively saving virgins for himself either. The violence used by the Allied forces to oppose the Nazis is very different from the violence used by the Israelites to oppose the Amalekites, the Canaanites and the Medianites. These ethnic groups were not killing millions of people. There is no historical evidence of any such atrocities performed by these ethnic groups.

Which is why your points fail. The book you are getting your evidence against God from says the opposite to your points.

[Autodidact]

Please read this list of cruelty in the Bible. Is the Bible true? If it is true then why is God so cruel and violent? Doesn't God's cruelty make God evil and unworthy of praise and worship?

I don't recall an instance in the Bible of God acting against good people to warrant the claim God is evil.

A good person can be quite violent and quite good if there are a lot of bad people around. John McClane in Die Hard is a good example of this. My point being that we need to analyse each action in that list to determine if God is evil or not in taking those actions.

so for you, killing babies, toddlers and children is moral?

What do wicked people think will become of their children? I think in general the commands to kill children stem more from the reality that it would have been difficult to raise them and keep Israel holy.

Got it. You are in favor of killing babies. And you wonder why we hate your religion? Maybe it's because it leads you to favor killing babies.

The difference autodidact is God

Yes, I see. Without God, killing babies is bad. With God, it is good. The difference is God. Thank you for making that clear, and reminding me to remain atheist.

did or ordered that and yet Christians are anti-abortion. What is your stance on abortion?

Start a thread; don't derail this one.