Can anybody refute this from Richard Dawkins?

[Trident_H]

So to punish a people, or simply to remove them from the scene, of all the options available to an omnipotent being, it is being argued that the best one i(God wouldn’t got for the second best) included hacking to death women and children.

We can talk of cars passing and means to an end and Hiroshima and cultural blinkers and 9/11 and all of the rest of it, but that statement above, in a lot of people’s opinion, including yours, is correct.

So be it. I’ve said my piece.

Well Bradski. I’ve been following this back and forth for a while. And I’ve got to admit you’ve got some points in what your saying. A couple reasonable things that a guy can sort of pause while chewing to think about.

But there are a couple other arguments that haven’t been tossed your way yet. A couple that might be fun for your to try on. And they go something like this:

1. What if the race that God said to chop up was made up of a different branch of humanity. Like one that was incompatible. I mean like a bad batch or something. So that if they weren’t erased like the chalk drawing they are to God they’d mess up something. Just by walking around?
2. What if they were all carriers of some small pox like disease. That would let them later wipe out ten times their number.
3. What if they were all sort of a race of psychopaths? I mean a really heartless bunch? Like a whole tribe of mean?
4. Or what if the whole point of wiping them out was to prevent a religion even worse than radical Islam from annoying things when the world wasn’t yet ready to be annoyed like that?
5. Or maybe. The whole point of the story was to be so stunning that it makes guys like you talk to guys like us. So that in at least talking through stuff like this we can all get to know each other better. So that guys like us can learn that our atheist friends have big hearts. And are always ready to be sad about one big batch of killings thousands of years ago. So that we can feel badly for them about that. So we can feel badly about their bad feelings. And maybe sort of lead us all into some kind of group hug. Or something.

I think I should have stopped at number 4.

Peace Bradski.

-Trident

 

[benhur]

So to punish a people, or simply to remove them from the scene, of all the options available to an omnipotent being,

Again, they were ‘relocated’, the same thing we do when a neighborhood, job etc. gets "bad’. Same thing happens in nature. The weak get "relocated’ , from food in another’s stomach, to fertilizer, even oil, for others to benefit .Nothing is lost, or in vain, or bad in that regard.

Blessings

 

[benhur]

So to punish a people, or simply to remove them from the scene, of all the options available to an omnipotent being, it is being argued that the best one i(God wouldn’t got for the second best) included hacking to death women and children.

 

[josh987654321]

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

This is a very popular quote from Dawkins among the Neo-Marcionites in the New Atheist movement. Can anybody refute these charges, individually, concerning the personality and actions of Almighty God as He is revealed in the Old Testament? Thank you.

I don’t know enough about the Old Testament to properly refute it, but right from the get go I know there is malice and deceit involved in his comments here and having read a bit of his book, he takes many quotes out of context and uses many fallacies, like the God of the Gaps which doesn’t even apply to Christianity.

youtube.com/watch?v=BXlBCZ_5OYw (Finding God by C.S. Lewis)
youtube.com/watch?v=AJu0oYvi-cY (Religion and Science C.S. Lewis)

When I came to the part In his book regarding ‘abortion’ and how he views it, well, I would easily ascribe much of that to Dawkins views on the sacredness of human life.

He and others like him think it’s frightening that people believe and justify what God has said and done in the Old Testament, I say it’s far, far more frightening that people believe and justify Dawkins views on the sacredness of human life, especially considering how he justifies abortion.

People are worried about someone doing evil in the name of God (or a god or gods) and calling it good, I am too, I am also worried about someone denying good and evil altogether and doing the same (heinously evil deeds while calling them good).

And I guess my favorite is where he tries to downplay atrocities committed in the name of Atheism and disbelief and tries to exaggerate atrocities committed in the name of Christianity, anybody who takes a proper look at history knows that nothing could be further from the truth.

Richard Dawkins is mistaken in many areas, I would say fair enough if he got Christianity right and the arguments for and against it, then if people took his side, than I would say at least he fairly represented Christianity. But he didn’t fairly represent Christianity, not even close.

I am surprised by people who buy into his arguments on religion. I wouldn’t consider a biologist qualified to fix my car, I take it to the mechanic.

Anyway, these are my views at the moment, I hope this has helped.

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[josh987654321]

Furthermore, as St Augustine said “Never judge a philosophy by it’s abuse.”

Let’s take a little look at them -

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

• Richard Dawkins

I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.

• Adolf Hitler

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

• Matthew 22:36-40

27 For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.

• Matthew 16:27

I hope this has helped

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[Randy_Carson]

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

This is a very popular quote from Dawkins among the Neo-Marcionites in the New Atheist movement. Can anybody refute these charges, individually, concerning the personality and actions of Almighty God as He is revealed in the Old Testament? Thank you.

This is a common line of argumentation from atheists, and it is really an appeal to emotions. They misunderstand what is going on in the OT, and they cherry-pick some events, take them out of context, and use them to paint God as a moral monster.

Okay, so what? All they have done is given the reasons why they are not Jews or Christians.

But they haven’t actually disproved the existence of God, have they?

The following article addresses the charge of genocide:

Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims
By: Clay Jones
equip.org/articles/killing-the-canaanites/

 

[Thorolfr]

This is a common line of argumentation from atheists, and it is really an appeal to emotions. They misunderstand what is going on in the OT, and they cherry-pick some events, take them out of context, and use them to paint God as a moral monster.

Okay, so what? All they have done is given the reasons why they are not Jews or Christians.

But they haven’t actually disproved the existence of God, have they?

The following article addresses the charge of genocide:

Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims
By: Clay Jones
equip.org/articles/killing-the-canaanites/

The article by Clay Jones is not very convincing in my opinion. He doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why the God of the Old Testament also commanded the killing of infants and animals:

"Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”(1 Samuel 15).

Jones writes:

Moreover, given the evidence of Canaanite sin, it is no stretch to realize that even many young children would have already learned Canaanite ways. Thus, if God wanted to rid the world of their wickedness, then He couldn’t have them grow up wanting to imitate their birth parents with whom they bonded. Imagine the teenage rebellion in those households! Wouldn’t even infants, as they grew, begin to ask, “What practices did my parents do which resulted in your killing them?” As sad as this is, it also points to the horror of sin. Parents can corrupt their children.

How could a small infant have learned the “Canaanite ways” that Jones speaks of such as idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality? And what about the oxen, sheep, camels and donkeys? What did they do to also merit destruction? Did they also learn “Canaanite ways”?

 

[Aloysium]

The main lesson I take away from the story is that even the smallest sin is dangerous and imperils our eternal happiness. It could not be made clearer that, while we may be forgiven, it is we who must eradicate sin within us. It seems a very effective way to communicate that message to the warriors for whom it was first intended.

The meaning of various passages is elucidated by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Just as the story of Abraham and Isaac is not meant to guide us to how to behave as parents, “The Caananites” is not meant to teach us how to behave towards others; the parable of the Good Samaritan better illustrates neighbourly love.

I find it bizarre when unabashedly proclaiming their spiritual unpreparedness, atheists choose to comment on scripture.

 

[PRmerger]

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
– Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

This is a very popular quote from Dawkins among the Neo-Marcionites in the New Atheist movement. Can anybody refute these charges, individually, concerning the personality and actions of Almighty God as He is revealed in the Old Testament? Thank you.

I have often thought that atheists and fundamentalists are, ironically, both made of the same cloth. Both share an extremely literalist view of reading Scripture.

As Napoleon was said to have proclaimed: Scratch an Russian, find a Tartar.

I say: Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The article by Clay Jones is not very convincing in my opinion. He doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why the God of the Old Testament also commanded the killing of infants and animals:

"Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”(1 Samuel 15).

Except that if it truly was the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God who issued the command then it isn’t up to Clay Jones to explain why God would issue the command in the first place. It would be up to God in his omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence to do the explaining.

Are you claiming it is logically impossible for God to justify his command given that he would know the repercussions of issuing or not issuing it down through all history? I don’t suppose we have the wherewithal to claim that God should not have issued it given our limitations nor that our limited moral judgements could possibly have priority over that of the 3Omni-God.

 

[Thorolfr]

Except that if it truly was the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God who issued the command then it isn’t up to Clay Jones to explain why God would issue the command in the first place. It would be up to God in his omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence to do the explaining.

Are you claiming it is logically impossible for God to justify his command given that he would know the repercussions of issuing or not issuing it down through all history? I don’t suppose we have the wherewithal to claim that God should not have issued it given our limitations nor that our limited moral judgements could possibly have priority over that of the 3Omni-God.

My belief is that if God is just, then He wouldn’t have ordered the killing of these infants and animals of Amalek. So, since I do believe that God is just, I’m left to conclude that this story in Scripture in which God supposedly ordered this killing and destruction is just a story and reflects the beliefs or imaginings of its human author and not the will of God.

 

[Aloysium]

I can’t say I’ve spent much time and effort contemplating these passages.
At this point in my understanding, a just God most definitely does not preclude the killing of those people.
Justice after all demands that I die and that our Saviour die for us on the cross that we might live in His presence eternally.
The issue I seem to have has to do with the psychological consequences that come when we take the life of another person.
We have to do what we have to do and a just war would compel me to assist in the development of arms that would kill children.
Knowing that this would be a consequence of my actions, hardly makes it unintentional.
So, I don’t know. In doing the “right thing” sometimes there are very bad results.
I am not God to decide what is right and wrong, and nowhere close to omniscient; I can only hope that what I do reflects His will.

 

[Aloysium]

Btw: I do understand that for persons not believing in an afterlife nor in God, the thought of people going around saying God told them to kill is very scary. Unfortunately, from the beginning we have been butchering one another for all sorts of reasons, and we continue to do so today. We are all implicated in the human tragedies happening everywhere on this globe in one way or another.

:twocents:

 

[Thorolfr]

Btw: I do understand that for persons not believing in an afterlife nor in God, the thought of people going around saying God told them to kill is very scary.

It’s also disturbing to some of those who believe in God and an afterlife.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It’s also disturbing to some of those who believe in God and an afterlife.

Why?

If every life is in God’s hands, then every life is in God’s hands.

I suppose death is disturbing because of the unknown quality of what is entailed, but if God actually commanded those lives be taken and he is fully in control of what that entails then he is FULLY IN CONTROL.

Perhaps that is what is “also disturbing?”

 

[Thorolfr]

Why?

If every life is in God’s hands, then every life is in God’s hands.

I suppose death is disturbing because of the unknown quality of what is entailed, but if God actually commanded those lives be taken and he is fully in control of what that entails then he is FULLY IN CONTROL.

Perhaps that is what is “also disturbing?”

Or maybe the people who wrote these cruel bits of Scripture just made it up. Just because someone says that these instructions came from God doesn’t make it true. I’m not a Biblical literalist, don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy and usually take what Scripture says with a grain of salt.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I’m not a Biblical literalist, don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy and usually take what Scripture says with a grain of salt.

A man with a mind of his own, to be sure. I am left wondering how you might discern what is errant.

If I might suggest that it is wise to pray and to contemplate the church’s teachings in hope of growing in understanding.
This has to be in the context of being charitable and participating in the mass and sacraments, especially the Eucharist.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Or maybe the people who wrote these cruel bits of Scripture just made it up. Just because someone says that these instructions came from God doesn’t make it true. I’m not a Biblical literalist, don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy and usually take what Scripture says with a grain of salt.

So, do you believe in the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God of classical theism?

If not, then I don’t think there are many options left but permitting a kind of diffuse deism, pantheism or polytheism where god is just an ill-defined “higher power” or “powers" of some kind or other, not really worthy of worship in the true sense of the word.

If so, then there is nothing logically prohibiting any kind of intervention since Big Bang cosmology pretty much demonstrates God’s power to bring into existence from nothing – including your moral sense of what is right and wrong.

So the question remains whether the purported “commands" of God in the Old Testament are logically reconcilable with omnibenevolence, omniscience and omnipotence. I think they are.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Or maybe the people who wrote these cruel bits of Scripture just made it up.

Besides my other comment, this just seems to avoid the question.

The question you need to answer is whether a 3Omni-God could consistently command those “cruel bits” of Scripture.

Those “cruel bits” don’t merely exist in Scripture, but are all around us. So the question which MUST be dealt with is why they do occur and why would God permit them, including the death of every human person on earth. None of us are immortal – that has to be faced.

We each will die. Some more ingloriously than others. What is the significance of that in any moral calculus that seeks to make sense of reality in any deep and profound sense.

God himself was killed in one of the most heinous ways possible according to Christian teaching. That, too, must be made sense of when we try to unwrap who we are and why we exist.

 

[PRmerger]

What a humble and gentle admission is the above!

We are so happy to have you on Team Believer, JC! :heaven: