For the Christians who answered yes to Numbers 15

[rikuoamero]

So Jagella recently published his topic regarding the man gathering sticks in Numbers 15. Mine here is an extension of that thread.
In the original thread, people were asked would they stone the man.
In this thread, that's a given. Several people indicated yes they would, so I'm going with that as a given. Thus, I do not want discussion from others saying they would not do it.

In my replies on Jagella's thread, I indicated my reaction to the positive answers that were given, albeit sarcastically. I noted that those who answered yes were not apparently thinking much at all in the situation.

My first question for debate is: How is your answer a moral answer, versus immoral or amoral?. I ask this question since quite a few people just said that (paraphrasing and condensing), it was a rule set by God and he gave the sentence...and that's it.
How is it moral to just go along with orders given, and not think (hard) about it?

My second question for debate is: How is the situation from Numbers 15 a sign of an actual God, an actual superior mind and wisdom? Someone who wants the best for humans, to teach us about morals and ethics? The answers I got boiled down to this is God's law, God's rule, the man violated it, therefore he's a criminal and must be put to death.
I don't see evidence there of any kind of introspection or struggle from those people. Maybe because what is touted as being from God encourages such answers and such thinking.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 1 by rikuoamero]

Assuming there was a god that gave this order and it was clear beyond any doubt that such god actually existed and the order actually came from it, there is still a very clear problem of not thinking the situation through.

If said God really wanted people punished, then I say let said god (who is supposed to be all powerful, all knowing, etc) carry out the punishment.

Clearly faulty humans can make mistakes in determining who may be guilty of breaking the law in question. A god would not have this problem.

The real question that should be asked here, IMHO, is why would a god outsource such an important and permanent task to humans? Does the god not realize the trauma involved in killing a fellow human? Why download this violent act onto us? This god could blink an eye and the lawbreaker would vanish in a painless instant and not put blood on our hands.

So, the fact that humans are expected to carry out punishments for a god is really a concept that should be dead on arrival if anyone really put any thought into it. Let god do god's dirty work and let humans concentrate on doing the best we can without making up invisible entities to force people into line.

"Punishments from god" is really just humans making an excuse to punish whoever they disagree with and lay the blame at the god's feet. i.e. "God said this is the punishment, not me. Not my fault."

In other words, creating laws of gods is really a work of cowards IMHO. People who don't want to stand behind laws themselves prop up an invisible god and then use that as a shield to stand behind. Despicable really.

[ttruscott]

How is it moral to just go along with orders given, and not think (hard) about it?

Youassume to much... Where id d Iever hinttha tthiswasa sna decisionformaand I ne er spen any time trying to understand whqt I beleivd was right.

I'm not sure if there is a name to tute insult int hs

[ttruscott]

How is it moral to just go along with orders given, and not think (hard) about it?

You assume to much... Where did I (or anyone) ever hint that this was a snap decision for me and I never spent any time trying to understand what I believed was right???

I'm not sure if there is a name the insult in this question (paternalism? faulty generalization?) but it is there.

It is of course immoral to go along with orders that you have not decided are morally righteous. Your insinuation that we do not believe our choices were based on thinking they were morally righteous is ... <searching, searching...>

By the way, it took me some 35 - 40 years...

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 3 by ttruscott]

Where did I (or anyone) ever hint that this was a snap decision for me and I never spent any time trying to understand what I believed was right???

First, regarding everyone else who said they would stone the man: Pinseeker doesn't give a reason beyond it was to teach the Israelites an important lesson. Jgh7 gives a very short, one sentence answer that says yes he would.
1213 is the ONLY person among those who responded they would do it who actually gave the topic some level of thought, which is surprising considering what I privately think about him (which I will not outline here), but even he tried to equate the picking up of the sticks with genocide and treason, which pretty much everyone else (whether Christian or atheist) would agree ought to carry stiff penalties up to and including death.
We then have JehovahsWitness saying (condensed) that it was the 'law of the land' and that if one breaks it, then one is a criminal and that's enough apparently for him. He also uses it to malign the character of the man by stating that it is "fair to say it was therefore a deliberate act of rebellion. You don't just accidently start collecting sticks"


Second, your initial response on Jagella's thread is post#5: have a look at it. It's two sentences, one line. Extremely short. Just you saying you would. Given that we as readers do not have access to your inner thoughts, this is all I had to go on. A very short line from you simply saying yes, you would, why not. If there was hours of thought and introspection behind that one line, then this is something you failed to divulge to us.It was only afterwards, after you were responded to, that more detail was forthcoming from you.

Everyone of you, who posted in the positive (apart from 1213) gave any indication that your answers were a result of much thought.

It is of course immoral to go along with orders that you have not decided are morally righteous.

That is not an answer to the question that I asked. I did not ask you whether you thought the orders were morally righteous. When I asked the question, all I had to go on from you and the others in terms of your thought pattern was
1) God gave an order
2) Violating said order carries the penalty of death
3) A man violated the order...therefore he must die.
I asked how is it moral to go along with orders given, if this is what your thought process is like? Where is the morality in this kind of thinking (or lack thereof)? One might as well be a turret gun, preprogrammed to fire at anyone that moves in front of its camera.

By the way, it took me some 35 - 40 years...

If there honestly WAS much thought behind your answer, you'll have to forgive me for making this mistake of you. All I had to go on was your initial response, post#5 on Jagella's thread, which doesn't exactly make a great impression on me the reader. How was I supposed to know that you have thought long and hard, to the tune of decades, if your answer was so basic and simplistic, then either this is you lying by omission, or...if that answer is the kind of answer you get after 40 years of thinking...

[jgh7]

[Replying to post 1 by rikuoamero]

Hello Rikuoamero. I'll explain my position in regards to your question:

My first question for debate is: How is your answer a moral answer, versus immoral or amoral?. I ask this question since quite a few people just said that (paraphrasing and condensing), it was a rule set by God and he gave the sentence...and that's it.
How is it moral to just go along with orders given, and not think (hard) about it?

So for the other topic, I put myself in a situation where it is granted that the God of the bible is true, and that I'm actually one of the Israelites being freed from Egypt. So, from my perspective I've witnessed God perform extraordinary miracles and utterly beat the seemingly most powerful kingdom in the world. He's sent forth plagues that have never been done before, He parted a sea, and now He's currently guiding my freed people by means of a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.

So yeah, I'm completely satisfied that this is the Almighty All-Powerful God who just saved us. Now, God tells us that a certain day of the week is very holy to Him, and that just as He rested on that day, we also should rest and that those who disobey and work on that day shall be put to death.

Does this make sense to me? As a human, not really. The most sense I have of significant days from a human sense are birthdays. Does this seem harsh to me? Yes, it does. Do I believe that I'm right and God's wrong? NO. I believe that God is right and I'm wrong. Why do I believe this? Because this God more than demonstrated His Power and proved to me that He is the God of the universe. So who am I to say that this God needs to conform to my sense of morality? I need to conform to His. And this is one of the core issues I believe between skeptics and theists. I think skeptics expect God to conform to their sense of morality while theists look to conform to God's.

My second question for debate is: How is the situation from Numbers 15 a sign of an actual God, an actual superior mind and wisdom? Someone who wants the best for humans, to teach us about morals and ethics? The answers I got boiled down to this is God's law, God's rule, the man violated it, therefore he's a criminal and must be put to death.
I don't see evidence there of any kind of introspection or struggle from those people. Maybe because what is touted as being from God encourages such answers and such thinking.

You don't see evidence of introspection or struggle? It's within a verse of the topic passage.

Numbers 15:33 And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. 34 They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him.

----

So the entire congregation was thinking about this situation. And then they received a clear answer from God and obeyed God. If you're in the same situation as them, you can either trust that God is good and follow Him, or you can believe that He's evil and set yourself as an enemy of the Being who created the universe and just saved your people from centuries of slavery.

How can you truly be sure your sense of morality is what is right? Have you ever strongly believed something to be right or wrong, and then done a complete 180 later on in life?

[Jagella]

I asked how is it moral to go along with orders given, if this is what your thought process is like?

We are not witnessing for the first time that the rationale given for killing was that they were just following orders.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 5 by jgh7]

Do I believe that I'm right and God's wrong? NO. I believe that God is right and I'm wrong. Why do I believe this? Because this God more than demonstrated His Power and proved to me that He is the God of the universe. So who am I to say that this God needs to conform to my sense of morality? I need to conform to His. And this is one of the core issues I believe between skeptics and theists. I think skeptics expect God to conform to their sense of morality while theists look to conform to God's.

This isn't what I would call moral thinking. This is Divine Command Theory, Might Makes Right. You said it. God has the Power (tm), and you don't. Therefore, you change what you believe is right to suit him.
Practically/pragmatically speaking, your action is correct, but this isn't a question of pragmatism. This is a question of morality, and your action is self-serving, and seemingly the only factor that governs what you think is right is whether the other party has power.
So I invite you to think hard about this one. How is it NOT an immoral action or amoral (there is a difference) to just go with who has the power, rather than out of some innate sense of goodness? Oh and in case your response is to tell me that God IS goodness or good or whatever...no he isn't. Otherwise why would he be commanding death for the most mundane things?

You don't see evidence of introspection or struggle? It's within a verse of the topic passage.

I don't mean I don't see any evidence of introspection/struggle from the people of the story. I meant from the people who answered yes in Jagella's thread. i.e. you, Ted, JW and anyone else I might be forgetting.
Your answers (all of you) were short and to the point. This is a command from God, and since someone violated it...death.
Even here, you don't seem to be putting much thought into the matter. Apparently, your only concern is who has the power in the situation.

How can you truly be sure your sense of morality is what is right? Have you ever strongly believed something to be right or wrong, and then done a complete 180 later on in life?

Would you struggle with your morality while you were busy lifting up heavy stones, about to throw them at someone and kill them?

[jgh7]

[Replying to post 7 by rikuoamero]

I put plenty of thought into the matter and I don't need you continually accusing me that I don't. I understand where you and other skeptics come from because I used to think like that, that God needs to conform to my morality, not mine to His. But the answer you don't want to hear is the answer that I will give you. I believe God is goodness. For the sake of the topic at hand, I reasoned that if I was with Moses and the Israelites in their exodus, and if something like working on the Sabbath seemed mundane to me, but to God it was sacred to where disobeying the rule warranted death, then I would believe that my perspective is wrong and His is right, not solely from my witnessing His power, but from my faith in His goodness too.

[Zzyzx]

.

I reasoned that if I was with Moses and the Israelites in their exodus, and if something like working on the Sabbath seemed mundane to me, but to God it was sacred to where disobeying the rule warranted death, then I would believe that my perspective is wrong and His is right, not solely from my witnessing His power, but from my faith in His goodness too.

How is that different from saying, "If someone convinced me that God wanted a person put to death, I would kill them?"