Ep. 104: Hand warmers and dragons

[Equinox]

Hmmm....

Joey, reading over your whole post, it seems that a lot of times we are taking nuances and making disagreements out of them. Yet, in other cases we really do have disagreements. I hope to do a decent job of telling the two cases apart in this post. We'll see how that goes.

Joey wrote:

Yes, I get what you are saying, but, I doubt you would consider any of these things your top priority, would you? If you would say you have bigger priorities, I think we are on the same page. If not, I'd want to challenge that idea.

Again it comes back to the fact that all actions serve more than one priority. And so, in all these cases, the action serves BOTH the priorities, so it becomes almost just a mental exercise to try to say one priority is above the other. In my mind, I see the better world for future generations as the top priority, thus, your asking if some of the other priorities are "bigger" is kina like asking if the pot boils because I turned on the stove, or if it instead boils because the stove got hot. I see these as a chain, not as competing goals. Did that analogy help?

Like I said in the beginning, I don't throw up my hands and say it's not worth trying to do. I do consider future generations and a better world a person goal. It's just that I value other things more than that (and I would hope you would too.)

I see those other goals as a causal chain, not as competing goals to "value more" or "value less". Another way to see that might to ask "do I place a higher priority on my child's right heart ventricle or my child's left heart ventricle?". In other words, trying to separate them in my mind is pointless.

I only mean one thing by God. That's the creator and sustainer of the universe.

That's where I, as an atheist, agree.

What's more, later in my previous post I described the key element associated with God that provides a sufficient reason for me to consider hope for the future a realistic goal, (a solution to evil by way of the death, burial and resurrection of the only begotten son of God)

That's where I, as a non-christian, disagree.

You mentioned recycling earlier. Why do you do that? Is it not because what man has (quite recently) done to our planet endangering not only all life as we know it, but all life period.

No, we are not that powerful. We couldn't endanger all life on Earth even if we wanted to. Even all our nuclear weapons, combined, are only one millionth the power of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, and life survived that just fine, for instance. In fact, our ancestors survived it, without the benefit of any technology, even though it happened without any warning, and no preparation on their part.

What about chemical and nuclear weapons, overpopulation, obesity, and global terrorism? Has human kind faced as menacing obstacles in the past?

Yes, time and again. Epidemics have routinely wiped of a good percentage of the human population at a time, and genetic data shows that disasters like the Toba explosion nearly brought humans to extinction a number of times. The Tambora eruption is similar but on a smaller scale. I think that all of those in your list, except perhaps nuclear weapons, could kill only a small fraction of the population of 7 billion people.

You are right. We definitely disagree there.

OK.

But I don't have to show that my answer fits what's best for the future of human kind.. only what's best for humans right now. You have painted yourself into that corner. All I need to say is that it not acceptable to do what is best for the future at all costs (aka your top priority.)

But what sense is there in screwing over our grandchildren to benefit people today? I mean, if it were possible to use, say nuclear power to give everyone free electricity and consign all future generations to an Earth turned into a radioactive cesspool, wouldn't you oppose that, simply on the grounds that it hurts our future world?

LOL! Trust me.. I've got that one. I'm well prepared to make that case. And yes, I think it would be much easier for me to make it because of what I know about Christians and Christianity, but that's just my speculation.

I suspect it wouldn't be that easy, being that most Bibles repeat over and over that other religious are not to be tolerated. That's clearly a major theme of the OT, and is repeated in the NT (in fact, it is extended to also condemn Christians, if they are not the "right kind".)

I agree, but my point is, you would have to present evidence that was true, and that seems like an unnecessary burden, doesn't it? I mean why is it so hard to just appeal to the value of people today and say that there's no reason why we should value future generations so much more than we value them? Why take on the extra burden of having to show how it affects future generations?

Because it isn't any harder, and because it also clarifies many other questions, like the radioactive cesspool example. Basically, it is a simple answer that works across the board.

I do see at least one fundamental difference. Constitutions can be decided to be wrong, and amended. … Another big difference is the reliance upon evidence.

No, those are not differences between the two. The Bible can, has been, and is subject to, the exact same type of changes, based on the exact same types of conditions. The only things that are different are the circumstances (dates, intents, subjects of authority, etc.)

In your version of Christinity, that appears to be true. However, for many theists (including many Muslims, Jews and Christians), Constitutions are simply the words of humans, subject to change and new evidence, while their holy texts are the immutable and authoritative word of God himself.

I think we’d both agree that the way the 911 terrorists prioritized “God” above all else is clearly harmful,

Nonsense! They didn't prioritize God at all, nor themselves, nor their families, nor their neighbors. They prioritized their enemies (as in indulging in their hatred of) above all those other things. Just because they use God as an excuse, doesn't mean they are being honest about it… any more than Christians were during the Inquisition. If these people had really placed God as top priority, they would have begun to see themselves as enemies of God's will, the way I see myself, and the constant need to surrender their evil wants and desires, rather than give into them

I think it is very likely that many of the perpetrators of evil acts truly and honestly think that God is instructing them to do so. You are claiming that you not only can know their minds, but in addition claiming that in ALL millions of cases, they were not doing so with God as their top priority. It seems clear to me and to many other observers that they probably did take their religion seriously, and did commit these acts to carry out the will of God, as they perceived it. That list can extend to people like Andrea Yates and John List, where perhaps this is more clear, since it seems unlikely that they hated their own children.

Hopefully I'm far away from both.

OK.

First, like I said before, I'm talking about recognizing that I'm human and that humans do terrible things. They think they are better people than they actually are. They think they deserve better than they actually do. They think they can make their situation better on their own, and as such, they make themselves enemies to God. Since I'm human, I have to recognize that all these things apply to me, yet they do not apply to God, so making God top priority means trusting his will, as one unburdened by sin, over mine, as one that is.

But could not "trusting his will" lead to the 911 type stuff we talked about above? Especially if one takes the examples in the Qu'ran or one of the Bibles as examples of "His will"?

If he had prioritized himself better, then he could have lived longer, and that would have been better for him.

Could he not also have come to the same longer life by prioritizing future generations, including you and your son?

So yes, that is a bit selfish way of looking at it… but it's a good kind of selfishness, that I would hope all people try to have.

I agree that's a better way to look at it than rank hedonism. However, couldn't one get the same good outcomes by prioritizing future generations? For instance, I can be a better Dad to my kids if I'm kind, and can't be very kind if I'm always depressed, so it is out of prioritizing future generations that I make sure I do fun things, like going to play pool, from time to time, because it enables me to be a joy to those in my life.

I guess I see it the other way around. I think our answers are similar indeed, but to me it doesn't even address the "just, peaceful and sustainable world scenario."

Perhaps taking a wider view shows that these do help make the world a better place?

I sure hope that wasn't your valentine's card this year! ->

LOL!

People tend to prioritize kids, then spouse, then self. I think families tend to be much stronger and healthier when those priorities are reversed with self, then spouse, then kids, but society tries to color that order in a bad light, not seeing how critical it is to healthy relationships.

So perhaps if everyone valued the whole working unit of a healthy family, for the benefit of current and future generations, we'd be better off?

If you can't provide even for yourself, how can you provide for anyone else?

I agree. If we are to help anyone, we need to first be functional ourselves, just like your example of your dad's smoking.

If that's what you meant, then I'll say that Jesus never taught that. He just taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love our enemies. There is definitely a hierarchy implied in the text.

Regardless of how I see that, I bet there would be many yeses and no's to that from other Christians too.......

I hope I’ve shown that in doing those above, you are not necessarily leaving “what’s best for the rest of the world and future generations” to last. Your actions may indeed be serving all those goals. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more and more how deeply interconnected we all are, and that all decisions have many effects on many different goals or areas. That has fed my building conviction to widen my circle of care and concern to include all humans, and all future humans as well – including your great grandchildren, and even the great grandkids of my enemies.

Sorry but I'm still not on the same page with you there. Sometimes, yes, they fit together nicely, but sometimes they don't, and I think the outcome of having that be the highest priority has the potential to be quite devastating and at the least, lead to some very regrettable decisions.

As before, I think that in all situations, taking the wider view leads to a good choice. I know you disagree, so we may just have to agree to disagree there.

I think my priorities line up better both with scripture .... and what is truly more valuable

I think scripture often supports things that are harmful to people both today and tomorrow. I think we'll disagree there too..... ; )

as well as our shared intuition of what humanity is really like

Actually, we may agree there. We both see humans as having a lot of harmful desires at times. I think these are the clear footprints of evolution, and need to be consciously controlled. On a practical level, we may see those similarly.

Have a good day-

Equinox

[yjoeyh]

it seems that a lot of times we are taking nuances and making disagreements out of them.

I agree. It does seem like we are both shooting in the same direction, but we each say we are shooting at different targets. Our disagreements do not seem to lie in where we are aiming, but what we are aiming at, each of us trying to show the potential problems with the other person’s target because it can lead us astray. Is that a fair assessment?

Yet, in other cases we really do have disagreements. I hope to do a decent job of telling the two cases apart in this post. We'll see how that goes.

fair enough.

Again it comes back to the fact that all actions serve more than one priority.
… the action serves BOTH the priorities, so it becomes almost just a mental exercise to try to say one priority is above the other
… I see these as a chain, not as competing goals.

Well that is the problem I see. I understand that sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone, but I’m specifically talking about when priorities come into conflict. That’s why they are prioritized to begin with. I put the hypothetical about helping a friend with their taxes earlier, trying to keep the idea somewhat ordinary, but let me try another one, maybe more on the darker side to underscore the point: You said you volunteer to help kids learn math at a local school. What if you received an anonymous phone call from some religious zealot who didn’t like the idea of a non-Christian teaching kids anything, and demanded that you stop doing it, or suffer certain consequences? We don’t need to go down the road of describing how you might respond, but it is sufficient to say that you would have to weigh your reasons for participating with the potential consequences to yourself, right? I wouldn’t necessarily expect you to base your decision in the circumstance on what is best for the future of mankind, but I think it would be perfectly acceptable to consider what is best for you in that moment. It’s those kinds of thoughts that go through my mind when I say I don’t consider your stated goal to be my top priority, and why I am skeptical of the idea that many people would.

What's more, later in my previous post I described the key element associated with God that provides a sufficient reason for me to consider hope for the future a realistic goal, (a solution to evil by way of the death, burial and resurrection of the only begotten son of God)

That's where I, as a non-christian, disagree.

Do you disagree that my goal is real, or that such a framework is sufficient to provide that kind of hope if it is real?

No, we are not that powerful. We couldn't endanger all life on Earth even if we wanted to.

Perhaps I’m being overly cynical, but I’m not so sure we can’t, or especially that we are not quickly approaching such capability. There IS empirical data to support that.

Even all our nuclear weapons, combined, are only one millionth the power of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, and life survived that just fine, for instance.

With the exponential growth in weapons technology and scientific advancement, that number doesn’t sound all that un-menacing. Ever heard the riddle about if you could be paid $.01 a day, doubled each day for a month, or a flat one million dollars?

In fact, our ancestors survived it, without the benefit of any technology, even though it happened without any warning, and no preparation on their part.

And no humans, I might add. That’s the problem… a big one as I can see.

Yes, time and again. Epidemics have routinely wiped of a good percentage of the human population at a time, and genetic data shows that disasters like the Toba explosion nearly brought humans to extinction a number of times. The Tambora eruption is similar but on a smaller scale. I think that all of those in your list, except perhaps nuclear weapons, could kill only a small fraction of the population of 7 billion people.

You seem to be missing the distinction I’m making, which is my fault for making it sound so ambiguous… I’m talking about threats to humanity… caused by humans. That’s the key, and what makes these problems so much bigger than mere natural disasters. Humans are our own worst enemy.

if it were possible to use, say nuclear power to give everyone free electricity and consign all future generations to an Earth turned into a radioactive cesspool, wouldn't you oppose that, simply on the grounds that it hurts our future world?

No I would oppose it on the grounds that it makes us irresponsible jerks... today… and I don’t want me and the people I care about to live in the kind of society that lets things like that go. It may seem like I’m splitting hairs here, but I’m just trying to be honest about what it really going on in my mind in that situation. I’m not thinking about the future world then. I’m thinking about now. I find it hard to believe that the same kind of thinking is going on in other people’s minds too. But maybe I’m wrong.

I suspect it wouldn't be that easy, being that most Bibles repeat over and over that other religious are not to be tolerated. That's clearly a major theme of the OT, and is repeated in the NT (in fact, it is extended to also condemn Christians, if they are not the "right kind".)

It would be very easy, I think, using the Bible to show that violence, murder and hatred are unacceptable behavior. You are talking about some of the objections that would be brought up on Biblical hermeneutic grounds. If that was the case, they would have to withstand hermeneutical scrutiny, and yes, that’s one kind of assertion I am pretty confident in being able to squash if someone wanted to go there. Once someone acknowledges the authority of scripture and tries to use it to justify that kind of action, it’s actually quite easy to prove them wrong. It also quickly exposes their true motives.
Now I won’t discuss those particulars with someone who doesn’t believe in the reliability and authority of the Bible, so please don’t ask me to elaborate. Sorry, but I’ve had too many discussion where the other person agrees to suppose the Bible is true, but when challenged to interpret it consistently, falls back on challenges to the Bible’s overall authenticity and authority rather than deal with the internal implications.

In your version of Christinity, that appears to be true. However, for many theists (including many Muslims, Jews and Christians), Constitutions are simply the words of humans, subject to change and new evidence, while their holy texts are the immutable and authoritative word of God himself.

And that would be an example of one of the things I would argue as being an “incorrect” view of scripture.” Like I said before, the Bible, like constitutions, are subject to interpretation, but that does not mean there are not objective intents. The closer to those intents the more “correct” particular views are.

I think it is very likely that many of the perpetrators of evil acts truly and honestly think that God is instructing them to do so. You are claiming that you not only can know their minds, but in addition claiming that in ALL millions of cases, they were not doing so with God as their top priority.

I’m no more making any claim to know what they are thinking any more than you are. It’s an intuition based on our own experiences, that’s all either of us has to go on. But speaking as someone who has a religious mindset (and formerly quite a zealous one) I think I do have some pretty good insight into what goes on in the minds of people like that. I won’t grant for one seconds that any one of them was honestly placing God as the highest priority in their lives. Heck, I don’t know anybody I would say actually does that… just those of us who try to do it, and for those of us who take that attitude, I don’t see any way it leads to that kind of behavior (like I said… younger Joey… quite possibly a different story…. But even then, my priority was not God, but the indulgence of my own evil nature. God was just my excuse.)

But could not "trusting his will" lead to the 911 type stuff we talked about above? Especially if one takes the examples in the Qu'ran or one of the Bibles as examples of "His will"?

That could be the excuse given for sure.

Could he not also have come to the same longer life by prioritizing future generations, including you and your son?

Of course. But he could have also anticipated the maturity that would have occurred in our lives as a result of going through that process, and thus not thought is a justifiable reason to extend his life. But that doesn’t really matter to my point, which was that prioritizing yourself can, and often is, a very good thing. That’s all my point was addressing.

However, couldn't one get the same good outcomes by prioritizing future generations? For instance, I can be a better Dad to my kids if I'm kind, and can't be very kind if I'm always depressed, so it is out of prioritizing future generations that I make sure I do fun things, like going to play pool, from time to time, because it enables me to be a joy to those in my life.

Yes, we are shooting in the same direction again. Remember I didn’t start out challenging your stated goal (although I did end up doing that a bit I guess) but you seemed to have a problem saying I didn’t share the same goal. Well if our goals look the same, then maybe we’re back on the same page again, right?

So perhaps if everyone valued the whole working unit of a healthy family, for the benefit of current and future generations, we'd be better off?

We’d be so much better off. We’d also be better off if everyone didn’t have to work and could just pull anything we needed to sustain our lives out of a magic box in our garage. I don’t see either idea as being very realistic though.

Actually, we may agree there. We both see humans as having a lot of harmful desires at times. I think these are the clear footprints of evolution, and need to be consciously controlled. On a practical level, we may see those similarly.

I realize this is off topic and a discussion for another day, but are you familiar with Plantiga’s argument against naturalism based on evolution? Your comment reminded me of it because I have to wonder how “consciously controlling” our evolved desires could possibly be considered helpful to the future of humanity within a naturalistic or materialistic framework?

I think scripture often supports things that are harmful to people both today and tomorrow. I think we'll disagree there too..... ; )

Actually I agree with you on that point. I think we might also agree that it contains things that are helpful to people both today and tomorrow.
So where does that leave us?
I can certainly see that the harmful outweighs the helpful to you, because the helpfulness is not much more than anecdotal and things we could pretty much figure out without it. So there’s not much on the table to justify the harmful things.
From my side the helpful things have much more weight, and also the harmful things I see as being on the table whether the Bible is or not.
So hopefully, those are things we can agree to disagree on.

Thanks for the stimulating discussion!

[Equinox]

Joey wrote:

I agree. It does seem like we are both shooting in the same direction, but we each say we are shooting at different targets. Our disagreements do not seem to lie in where we are aiming, but what we are aiming at, each of us trying to show the potential problems with the other person’s target because it can lead us astray. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, I think it is, in the vast majority of cases in our discussion.

I wouldn’t necessarily expect you to base your decision in the circumstance on what is best for the future of mankind,

Except that in practice, I generally do. That's OK, we've discussed that one a lot.

Do you disagree that my goal is real, or that such a framework is sufficient to provide that kind of hope if it is real?

Well, first, yes of course I don't see the goal as real. Secondly, I think such a framework could be sufficient, but given the behavior of the God described in the Bibles (who I see as both immoral and untrustworthy based on the bibles), that framework won't work with an untrustworthy God. But that sounds like a whole new topic.

I’m talking about threats to humanity… caused by humans. That’s the key, and what makes these problems so much bigger than mere natural disasters. Humans are our own worst enemy.

OK, maybe I can see your point more clearly now. I agree that we do pose grievious threats to ourselves, and that humanity may not make it even another millenium, due to any of a number of things, such as unsustainable practices in energy and food, or nuclear war, or so on. Humans are much more fragile than life in general. I also agree that the threats we face are unique in that we caused them, unlike previous ones. So perhaps we agree on many of those points, even if we don't agree on whether we are likely to extinguish all the life we know of in the universe.

I find it hard to believe that the same kind of thinking is going on in other people’s minds too. But maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe. I can't know what other's think. I'd guess that they see the cesspool idea as bad because they care about future generations, but maybe not. After all, if they didn't care about future generations, then why would harming future generations lead them to think of anyone as being a "jerk"?

Now I won’t discuss those particulars with someone who doesn’t believe in the reliability and authority of the Bible, so please don’t ask me to elaborate.

OK.

I think it is very likely that many of the perpetrators of evil acts truly and honestly think that God is instructing them to do so. You are claiming that you not only can know their minds, but in addition claiming that in ALL millions of cases, they were not doing so with God as their top priority.

I’m no more making any claim to know what they are thinking any more than you are.

Sure you are. You are saying that you know that all of them, not just 88%, or 94%, or 99%, or 99.999%, but every last one of them, did not place God as their top priority. I'm saying that some likely did. So you are claiming to know the minds of every single one of them, yet I need to only claim to be able to make a probablisitic argument to know the mind of one of them. 0.00001% is less than 99.9999%.

But even then, my priority was not God, but the indulgence of my own evil nature. God was just my excuse.)

I used to be religious too. However, I did place God as my highest priority. I thought "what would God want me to do in this situation?", you know, WWJD.

But could not "trusting his will" lead to the 911 type stuff we talked about above? Especially if one takes the examples in the Qu'ran or one of the Bibles as examples of "His will"?

That could be the excuse given for sure.

But what if I honestly thought about it, and said "WWMD?" (Mohammad, who obeyed God), and based on that decided to fly the plane, or shoot the abortion doctor? Wouldn't it be more of an excuse to say "well, I don't want to be violent, so I'll jus stay in bed today?"

But that doesn’t really matter to my point, which was that prioritizing yourself can, and often is, a very good thing. That’s all my point was addressing.

Yeah, and I agree.

Well if our goals look the same, then maybe we’re back on the same page again, right?

Yes.

So perhaps if everyone valued the whole working unit of a healthy family, for the benefit of current and future generations, we'd be better off?

We’d be so much better off. We’d also be better off if everyone didn’t have to work and could just pull anything we needed to sustain our lives out of a magic box in our garage. I don’t see either idea as being very realistic though.

Not even marginally? Like, if we at least say we are working towards that goal to our friends and those around us, and honestly try to do so, that our behavior wouldn't be, say, 2% better? That's not the same as your magic box idea, where if we state the magic box goal, we won't get anything, not even 2%, out of it.

I realize this is off topic and a discussion for another day, but are you familiar with Plantiga’s argument against naturalism based on evolution?

A little, but it seems to (perhaps intentionally) equivocate by confusing metaphysical and methodological naturalism, as well as ignoring practical approaches to these ideas. Yep, off topic.

Your comment reminded me of it because I have to wonder how “consciously controlling” our evolved desires could possibly be considered helpful to the future of humanity within a naturalistic or materialistic framework?

I think they can be consciously controlled, and that is what I think allows civilization to exist at all. Otherwise I think our morals would be diminished- rape, murder, theft, and such would be more common.

I think scripture often supports things that are harmful to people both today and tomorrow. I think we'll disagree there too..... ; )

Actually I agree with you on that point. I think we might also agree that it contains things that are helpful to people both today and tomorrow.

Yes! I can agree that there are both help and indeed beautiful things in the Bibles.

So where does that leave us?
I can certainly see that the harmful outweighs the helpful to you, because the helpfulness is not much more than anecdotal and things we could pretty much figure out without it. So there’s not much on the table to justify the harmful things.
From my side the helpful things have much more weight, and also the harmful things I see as being on the table whether the Bible is or not.
So hopefully, those are things we can agree to disagree on.

Yes. That is a good summary.

Thanks for the stimulating discussion!

Thanks to you too!

Equinox

[yjoeyh]

I think such a framework could be sufficient, but given the behavior of the God described in the Bibles (who I see as both immoral and untrustworthy based on the bibles), that framework won't work with an untrustworthy God. But that sounds like a whole new topic.

It is and it's one I'm interested in discussing if you'd like, especially the untrustworthy part. The interesting thing for me is that while the "immorality" of God is an issue with some of the more conservative Christian viewpoints around, the "untrustworthyness" is actually much more of an issue with the theological models of people more like me (whether you call us liberal Christians, or what have you.)
So I would be interested in talking about it, for two reasons. First, I don't think you can make a case for God not being trustworthy from scripture. I'm even much more confident in defending that concept Biblically than I am God's morality. Second, it would give me a chance to point out some problems with the models of some of my fellow like-minded Christians, who also reject conservative, fundamentalist type Christianity, yet operate within a framework that very much does make God untrustworthy.

OK, maybe I can see your point more clearly now. I agree that we do pose grievious threats to ourselves, and that humanity may not make it even another millenium, due to any of a number of things, such as unsustainable practices in energy and food, or nuclear war, or so on. Humans are much more fragile than life in general. I also agree that the threats we face are unique in that we caused them, unlike previous ones. So perhaps we agree on many of those points, even if we don't agree on whether we are likely to extinguish all the life we know of in the universe.

I'm satisfied with that.

Sure you are. You are saying that you know that all of them, not just 88%, or 94%, or 99%, or 99.999%, but every last one of them, did not place God as their top priority. I'm saying that some likely did. So you are claiming to know the minds of every single one of them, yet I need to only claim to be able to make a probablisitic argument to know the mind of one of them. 0.00001% is less than 99.9999%.

I don't argue with your point, but I think we missed each other along the way. I was responding specifically to your comment, "I think we’d both agree that the way the 911 terrorists prioritized “God” above all else is clearly harmful," Beyond that is simply my assumption that there aren't any people who genuinely prioritize God all the time. And for those of us who try to make God #1, at the points we come closest to that, we are about as far away from that kind of behavior as you can get. Maybe I am wrong about that, but based on my observation and experience, that seems like quite a reasonable assumption.

I used to be religious too. However, I did place God as my highest priority. I thought "what would God want me to do in this situation?", you know, WWJD.

Thinking that doesn't mean doing that. That's the key as I see it.
Now you say you used to be 'religious.' Could you briefly describe what you mean by that?

But what if I honestly thought about it, and said "WWMD?" (Mohammad, who obeyed God), and based on that decided to fly the plane, or shoot the abortion doctor? Wouldn't it be more of an excuse to say "well, I don't want to be violent, so I'll jus stay in bed today?"

I guess that depends on the person.

Not even marginally?

No, because when you say "we" I can only infer all of humankind by that, unless you specifically meant some subset of human beings. So that means that we can't just look at the affects of humanity based on the actions of a few, but on the actions of all along with them.
Let's say you and I got together to make some cookies. Maybe you figured out a way to make the cookies healthier by using less sugar. That sounds good until we figure out that we are putting chocolate chips made with high levels of cyanide in the cookies. So your less sugar idea, while the best of intensions, didn't make the cookies one bit healthier to the people who ate them… not even marginally.


Later!

[Equinox]

Joey wrote:

I don't argue with your point, but I think we missed each other along the way. I was responding specifically to your comment, "I think we’d both agree that the way the 911 terrorists prioritized “God” above all else is clearly harmful," Beyond that is simply my assumption that there aren't any people who genuinely prioritize God all the time. And for those of us who try to make God #1, at the points we come closest to that, we are about as far away from that kind of behavior as you can get. Maybe I am wrong about that, but based on my observation and experience, that seems like quite a reasonable assumption.

OK, then I won’t argue your assumption, aside from saying that it’s one that I don’t share, and one that I don’t find reasonable.

I used to be religious too. However, I did place God as my highest priority. I thought "what would God want me to do in this situation?", you know, WWJD.

Thinking that doesn't mean doing that. That's the key as I see it.

Except that I didn’t say I “thought” I placed God as my top priority, I said that I did do so.

Now you say you used to be 'religious.' Could you briefly describe what you mean by that?

OK, how about this (from my first post on this forum)?

I was raised Catholic. My childhood was pretty much very good, with the rare and generally unavoidable rough spots here and there. Like many raised Catholic, our family was religious, but not extremely so (we didn't usually go to church during the week, read our Catholic Bible at home very often, etc.). Our whole family was into learning science, as a way of knowing God's creation better (the wonder of our God). At around 13, I had a significant experience praying to Jesus that's too long to describe here. At 16, I thought the world would be a better place if everyone were Catholic. At 20 or so, I was coming up with logical problems like "if people born in Iran are almost certain to be Muslim, then is it just to send them to Hell due to where they were born?" and so on. I couldn't get sufficient (or really any!) answers from priests (yes, I did ask priests), and I slowly drifted away from the church.

I was a bare atheist through grad school (I've got a scientific Ph.D) until I was around 27, when I started adding some naturalistic celebrations to my otherwise excessively dry "spirituality" - the first being celebrating the Winter Solstice. I added the Summer Solstice, and the Fall Equinox, and already had Halloween, Groundhog's Day, and May Day, and after meeting my wife, we slowly realized that we were celebrating a set of 8 holidays that a group of people were already celebrating, often in the same ways. While we weren't Wiccan and didn't hold the belief in the supernatural that they do, we had some commonality in practice. Since then we have built a family culture that includes these 8 holidays in a non-supernatural framework, and I call myself a Naturalistic Pagan. I feel that I've got a strong meaning and purpose to life as well as a clear view of morality. I have a yahoo group on Naturalistic Paganism too, and do other stuff related to it (like beingin a CUUPS chapter) at my UU church.

So I don't know if you'd call me a Pagan, an Atheist, or both. I guess that's up to you.

But what if I honestly thought about it, and said "WWMD?" (Mohammad, who obeyed God), and based on that decided to fly the plane, or shoot the abortion doctor? Wouldn't it be more of an excuse to say "well, I don't want to be violent, so I'll just stay in bed today?"

I guess that depends on the person.

OK, then since it depends on the person, it will be one way for some, the other way for others. The result is that in a world of 3 billion theists, that’s a large number of people who conclude the way I’ve described.

Not even marginally.

OK, well I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree that the valuing of the whole working unit of a healthy family, for the benefit of current and future generations can realistically lead to us being better off, where I think it can, and you think it is unrealistic to value that.

Equinox wrote:

I think such a framework (you wrote: in my previous post I described the key element associated with God that provides a sufficient reason for me to consider hope for the future a realistic goal, (a solution to evil by way of the death, burial and resurrection of the only begotten son of God)
) could be sufficient, but given the behaviour of the God described in the Bibles (who I see as both immoral and untrustworthy based on the bibles), that framework won't work with an untrustworthy God. But that sounds like a whole new topic.

It is and it's one I'm interested in discussing if you'd like, especially the untrustworthy part. The interesting thing for me is that while the "immorality" of God is an issue with some of the more conservative Christian viewpoints around, the "untrustworthyness" is actually much more of an issue with the theological models of people more like me (whether you call us liberal Christians, or what have you.)
So I would be interested in talking about it, for two reasons. First, I don't think you can make a case for God not being trustworthy from scripture. I'm even much more confident in defending that concept Biblically than I am God's morality. Second, it would give me a chance to point out some problems with the models of some of my fellow like-minded Christians, who also reject conservative, fundamentalist type Christianity, yet operate within a framework that very much does make God untrustworthy.

OK, we can give it a whirl, at least for a few posts.

One set of thoughts that come to my mind as to why I don’t think the God described in most Bibles will work to provide hope in your framework (because that god is not trustworthy) is this. Further note that for the sake of this discussion, I am working under the assumptions that this god exists and that the bibles are accurate in describing it. I personally consider both of those to be false, as a likely unneeded side note.

I see around four points.

First – God doesn’t act as though he respects us as agents with the rights to enter into a contract. For a contract to be valid, both sides must see both parties as bound by the same rules. This is why slaves were barred from entering into contracts in the early United States – they were not full humans with full rights, so there would be an imbalance in rights, and if the white person at any time decided to change the contract, the white person wouldn’t need the consent of the slave, and so the “contract” could only be enforceable in one direction, and so the "contract" was irrelevant (and not an actual contract), since in that direction, the white person could already do whatever he wanted, contract or not. Another example of this is in the Empire strikes back, when Darth Vader says “I am altering our contract – pray that I don’t alter it farther.”.

So, what scripture are relevant here? Quite a bit, actually. Examples throughout most bibles make it clear that god doesn’t consider us to have rights that constrain any of the actions of God, even to the point of not following through with previous promises by God. For instance, the whole point of the book of Job, especially the later chapters, are that man has no standing to question the actions of God. In both the old and new testaments, God is described as the groom, and his people the bride, while the same old and new testaments make it clear that women are secondary citizens at best – again reinforcing the power imbalance. That’s enough right there, but there are plenty of other examples, such as Romans 9, the all too common use of humans as tools by God (such as god “hardening pharaoh’s heart” in exodus) and so on. This ties back to Kant’s point that we are to view other people as ends in themselves, and never as just a means to an end. God routinely uses people simple as a means to an end, again showing that we aren’t seen as agents with rights. God makes it clear over and over that he operates by “might makes right”, and he is almighty (Ex 33:19).

Next (2) – You cannot make a contract with an entity that routinely and arbitrarily murders people. If God cannot respect the basic right of humans to live, he cannot be expected to honor the lesser rights that are needed for contracts. The instances of God arbitrarily killing innocent people for little reason if any are legion in most Bibles, including the millions killed in the flood, ordering the mass slaughter of infants/civilians in the conquest, David’s child (who was made to suffer and die because of what someone else did), the two who tried to stop the ark from falling, and many other examples. Because expectations of future behaviour are rationally based on examples of past behaviour, this all shows that it would be rational to expect God to simply ignore any supposed “contract” and kill us (or torture us eternally in hell, even if we had done everything he asked in the “contract”).

Third. The examples of substitutional atonement, both in the old testament in, say, the scapegoat of Lev. 16, or David’s child, or in Jesus are the complete abrogation of justice, and banish any idea that this is a just god. Substitutional atonement is the opposite of justice, because it is just to punish the one who commits the crime, in proportion to the severity of the crime. Substitutional atonement is punishing an innocent (sometimes disproportionally) for the crimes of someone else. This injustice reaches even greater heights in the new testament, where imaginary offenses with imagined infinite severity are brought up against humans unjustly, so as to make people think that they needed some kind of infinite payment.

Fourth – A contract is based on trust, and requires that trust to include the basic fact that neither party will lie to the other in relation to the contract. Yet we see from both the old and the new testaments that God regularly and shamelessly lies to humans, (examples include the statement that the fruit in Eden will kill you on that day, and even small cases like Exodus 34:1). Just to make to that point clear, most bibles go on to outright state that God can lie to us, such as in 1Kngs 22:22 and 2Thes. 2:11.

For these reasons, I even if I did see God as real, and took the words of scripture seriously, I would not see your explanation as a reason to have any hope, but rather a reason to despair. Based on the past behavior of that god, why would one suppose that the death of Jesus actually means anything, or even if it does, will still be binding when I die, or even why would one suppose that Jesus actually was that god's son, and that god didn't send some minor angel to die, or a hundred other scenarios where this god says whatever he wants to as "scripture", and then does something completely different based on his personal mood later on?

Take care-

Equinox

[yjoeyh]

Now you say you used to be 'religious.' Could you briefly describe what you mean by that?

OK, how about this (from my first post on this forum)?

Thanks for reposting. That’s helpful to kind of understand where you are coming from a little better.
Now why do I, the mere musician, always get stuck debating the PhD’s, Lawers and Physicists around here?
Oh well, I suppose everyone is destined to wipe the floor with me at some point. My inevitable humble pie awaits, and maybe I’ll be better for it in the end..

Further note that for the sake of this discussion, I am working under the assumptions that this god exists and that the bibles are accurate in describing it. I personally consider both of those to be false, as a likely unneeded side note.

Thank you for putting that on the record though. I understand, and I think it’s needed to remind us both that we are examining this question within that framework. We are asking if these points must , or at least probably indicate that if God exists and the Bible is accurately describing him, then he is not trustworthy. Is that fair?

First – God doesn’t act as though he respects us as agents with the rights to enter into a contract...

I don’t see the relevance of contractual agreements between people and God to questions of how trustworthy God is. I don’t disagree with your points. They sound pretty much on track with the Bible. I don’t know of any stated or implied balance of rights in scripture. God is not under any contractual obligations, other than those he puts on himself. So the only question at hand is does he respect his own rights and authority, and does he do what he says he will do.
This is the same kind of standard we use to determine if we think our government is trustworthy. Is it consistent within its own standards, and does it do what it resolves itself to do? If it does, that makes it trustworthy. A citizen may or may not have rights that constrain the actions of government, but that says nothing as to how trustworthy that government is. Our government is under no obligation to us as citizens, except those obligations it puts on itself.

Next (2) – You cannot make a contract with an entity that routinely and arbitrarily murders people.

First, the key word in your point is "arbitrarily." If you could show that God's ending human life cannot be (or at least most likely is not) justifiable, then this point would count for something. I didn't see anything in your examples that came anywhere close to that level of proof, but I'll elaborate on that in a second. Again, we put a certain level (quite a bit actually) of our trust into our government who will also kill people when it believes it is necessary to do so to accomplish what it considers a higher priority (protecting life and liberty of others for example.)
You also seem to imply that God does not have the right to take human life to begin with. This just doesn’t follow. If God is the creator and sustainer of all human life, and human life is universally temporary, then God is never under any obligation to sustain it longer than he wants. In that case, God can no more be faulted with the murder of one individual any more that he can the natural death of another. Both are at his discretion and both are within his authority. There is actually no other plausible alternative for God. If the beginning and end of human life is not under God’s authority first and foremost, he cannot be considered to be God. God assures us of our mortality, and he has been trustworthy to that end. No one has ever, or will ever fail to die.
Even then, the assumption that God ends life “arbitrarily” within the Bible is unsustainable. The flood story is a myth, and probably not much historically accurate data contained therein, but even if it actually happened just the way the story goes, it would be no different and no more or less under God’s control than any devastating flood or other natural disaster in history. As for the mass slaughter of infants/civilians (and animals etc,) the case is very thin that such orders actually came from God (yes still within the framework of the stated assumptions above.) The referenced OT texts like Samuel and Joshua and hagiographies, dominated by hyperbole, and are admittedly embellished for poetic emphasis. That doesn’t mean they are not accurate, but they must be understood for what they are. (i.e. Romney slaughtered Gengrich in the AZ primary) It’s not untrue, but overstated for emphasis. He didn’t literally slaughter him. I’m not saying that literal slaughters did not take place, or even that they were not God’s will, but that doesn’t mean that God is behaving like a tyrant and places no value on the lives of these individuals, and it would be a mistake to read that into the text, just because of some overly-embellished language written in a hero-driven cultural mindset. Also Samuel doesn’t fit the same mold as the exilic-age major/minor prophets or the NT apostolic-age prophets. He lived in a different time and clearly had more politically driven motives, which are reflected in the text. Note also that this is no way undermines Biblical infallibility (or even inerrancy, which I don't necessarily maintain it should.)

...Substitutional atonement is the opposite of justice, because it is just to punish the one who commits the crime, in proportion to the severity of the crime.

There’s no argument from me that atonement conflicts with justice. God values mercy over justice. That does not mean that God is unjust, it just means that his justice is not absolute, which is a good thing. If God were absolutely just, then there would be no atonement at all, and there would be no possible way to reconcile the perpetuity of evil. In that scenario, God would only be unjust if he created life and hell anyway without any kind of atonement. The only ethical choice for God, if a justifiable, substitutional atonement were not possible, would be to not create any life, or at least not any life with freewill, programming (forcing) everything and everyone in it to do exactly in-line with his will, and thus guaranteeing that no evil and no hell would ever exist. To say that substitutional atonement means that God cannot be just, the burden would be on you to show that he had a better, more just, alternative. I don’t believe that to be possible.

Fourth – A contract is based on trust, and requires that trust to include the basic fact that neither party will lie to the other in relation to the contract.

This is the first one of your points that I think actually speaks to the question of God being trustworthy. If God lies without sufficient justification, then he is most certainly not trustworthy. However, before even addressing the text, it is again unreasonable to consider exhaustive and factually accurate revelation as an absolute standard for determining who is and is not trustworthy. No one could ever be considered trustworthy in that scenario. Should God be held to a higher standard? Most certainly he should, but not an absolute one. That’s unreasonable. In order to make this case, you will need to either show that there are an unreasonably high number of instances of God being dishonest and/or show how those few instances cannot possibly be justified.
Now for the text, first, in Genesis we are dealing with a very primitive language, of very questionable origin. It can hardly be considered binding, but the language basically says, “beyovm akaleka movt tamut, ” or “day eat surely die.” That can just as easily mean that on the day you eat, you make death inevitable for yourself, or that within so long after eating you will die, or your passion for, or blissful enjoyment of life will die on the day you eat it. That's plenty of plausible, and even more likely, interpretations that do not involve any misrepresented truths whatsoever.
In 1 Kings, Micaiah is considered even less of a legitimate prophet than Samuel was. None-the-less, in this text, even if literally true, only puts God as the one who delegates that which is already dishonest, which is the case with all dishonest people. They serve God’s purpose to that end.Another example would be Judas betraying Jesus with a (dishonest) kiss. God didn't make Judas lie, but he used that lie to accomplish his plan. That doesn’t make God untrustworthy. In 2 Thessalonians, you will notice that the delusion did not precede the people’s determination to reject the truth already revealed to them. Its purpose is clearly stated, just like in the case of Pharaoh, to expedite the inevitable.
This is the point where I will typically make reference to the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan in WWII. Even in that situation, regardless of whether or not that was the best, most moral or ethical decision, it is still not grounds for us not to trust our government, because the data pointed to the inevitable casualties to our military as well as to the civilian population. A very strong argument could have been (and obviously was) made to justify it. If we took that as a reason to say our government is not trustworthy, we wouldn’t be here. We would go somewhere else.

I could get into the positive case for God's being trustworthy, but this is already too long of a post to digest, so maybe we'll look at that part later. For now, though, I don't think it is even necessary because I don't think you've presented a reasonable assertion that he's not.

Have a great weekend!

[Equinox]

Joey Wrote:

Thanks for reposting. That’s helpful to kind of understand where you are coming from a little better.
Now why do I, the mere musician, always get stuck debating the PhD’s, Lawers and Physicists around here?

: D

We are asking if these points must , or at least probably indicate that if God exists and the Bible is accurately describing him, then he is not trustworthy. Is that fair?

Quite fair. Good.

First – God doesn’t act as though he respects us as agents with the rights to enter into a contract...

I don’t see the relevance of contractual agreements between people and God to questions of how trustworthy God is. ...... A citizen may or may not have rights that constrain the actions of government, but that says nothing as to how trustworthy that government is. Our government is under no obligation to us as citizens, except those obligations it puts on itself.

Um, no. Our government, like practically all western democracies, is explicitly built on the foundation of a contract between free and responsible agents. This contract is clearly laid out in the works of those like Hobbes, Locke, etc. The government has no rights or powers other than those we explicitly give it in the contract we agree to. This is basic US history stuff.

I have to admit I’m quite disturbed to find that an intelligent citizen, who I think is above average in thoughtfulness, doesn’t know this. The government form you describe was abandoned after the 17 to 1800’s in the west, and now is confined to dictators and despots.

. I don’t disagree with your points. They sound pretty much on track with the Bible. I don’t know of any stated or implied balance of rights in scripture. God is not under any contractual obligations, other than those he puts on himself.

Right. Our Bibles are clear that we have no rights as far as God is concerned, and that God is under no obligations beyond his whim.

So the only question at hand is does he respect his own rights and authority, and does he do what he says he will do.

No, that’s not what determines trustworthiness. Pol Pot did all that, and he was not trustworthy.

Next (2) – You cannot make a contract with an entity that routinely and arbitrarily murders people.

First, the key word in your point is "arbitrarily." If you could show that God's ending human life cannot be (or at least most likely is not) justifiable, then this point would count for something. I didn't see anything in your examples that came anywhere close to that level of proof, but I'll elaborate on that in a second.

No, the burden of proof for justification is on the killer to show justification, not the other way around. If you want to explain the justification for all of the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Bible by God, be my guest.

Again, we put a certain level (quite a bit actually) of our trust into our government who will also kill people when it believes it is necessary to do so to accomplish what it considers a higher priority (protecting life and liberty of others for example.)

Absolutely not. Any killing by the government is in accordance with the contract we laid out with the government prior to the killing. What you describe is again complete against the foundation of modern democracies, and is how despots and dictators operate. Again, it’s scary to see the above coming from a citizen of the United States.

You also seem to imply that God does not have the right to take human life to begin with. This just doesn’t follow. If God is the creator and sustainer of all human life, and human life is universally temporary, then God is never under any obligation to sustain it longer than he wants. In that case, God can no more be faulted with the murder of one individual any more that he can the natural death of another. Both are at his discretion and both are within his authority.

I disagree. Being the creator of a life in no way justifies one in trampling the rights of that life. A parent accused of child abuse or murder cannot claim to be immune from justice because after all, they created that life. The same goes for being the effortless sustainer of life – for instance, if I were in charge of a building with oxygen supplies, it would not be within my rights to cut off the oxygen and kill those inside.

There is actually no other plausible alternative for God. If the beginning and end of human life is not under God’s authority first and foremost, he cannot be considered to be God. God assures us of our mortality, and he has been trustworthy to that end. No one has ever, or will ever fail to die.

Sure he can. Just because a god could have the power to intervene in the world and kill someone doesn’t mean that he must do so. Being the author of the natural laws allows God to be God without intervening to kill.

Even then, the assumption that God ends life “arbitrarily” within the Bible is unsustainable. The flood story is a myth, and probably not much historically accurate data contained therein, but even if it actually happened just the way the story goes, it would be no different and no more or less under God’s control than any devastating flood or other natural disaster in history.

But the flood story, again and again, affirms the point that God is the one deciding to kill humans because he’s in charge. It’s not just a story of a flood without an overriding theme. The same with the exodus, where God kills thousands of people, including children, explicitly to “show that he’s powerful”. Doesn’t that fit the very definition of a terrorist?

As for the mass slaughter of infants/civilians (and animals etc,) the case is very thin that such orders actually came from God (yes still within the framework of the stated assumptions above.) The referenced OT texts like Samuel and Joshua and hagiographies, dominated by hyperbole, and are admittedly embellished for poetic emphasis. That doesn’t mean they are not accurate, but they must be understood for what they are.

Waffling. Under our framework it seems best to take them for what they say, that God commanded the killing of innocents again and again. If you would rather take the approach that the Bible is a human invention, then we can do that – but that’s a separate discussion. And as you know, there are cases where the very word of God himself includes killing, such as in 2kings were God had a family slaughtered, and the heads of the children presented in a basket, which pleased God.

(i.e. Romney slaughtered Gengrich in the AZ primary) It’s not untrue, but overstated for emphasis. He didn’t literally slaughter him. I’m not saying that literal slaughters did not take place, or even that they were not God’s will, but that doesn’t mean that God is behaving like a tyrant and places no value on the lives of these individuals, and it would be a mistake to read that into the text, just because of some overly-embellished language written in a hero-driven cultural mindset.

Again - Waffling. Under our framework it seems best to take them for what they say, that God commanded the killing of innocents again and again. If you would rather take the approach that the Bible is a human invention, then we can do that – but that’s a separate discussion.

Also Samuel doesn’t fit the same mold as the exilic-age major/minor prophets or the NT apostolic-age prophets. He lived in a different time and clearly had more politically driven motives, which are reflected in the text. Note also that this is no way undermines Biblical infallibility (or even inerrancy, which I don't necessarily maintain it should.)

Sure it does. If you are going to make excuses for the text, and try to argue that it means soming other than what it says, then that’s not considering it infallible, and doesn’t fit in our framework.

...Substitutional atonement is the opposite of justice, because it is just to punish the one who commits the crime, in proportion to the severity of the crime.
There’s no argument from me that atonement conflicts with justice.

But you are missing part of the description. Substitutional atonement says that we are guilty because of something someone else did in the first place, then are freed because God punished a third person, who was innocent. Plus, the understandable and minor misstep (if even that) of eating the magical fruit in no way justifies infinite torture of even eve, much less of generations of innocent people. If that’s an example of “God’s Justice”, then that by itself shows that God isn’t just, and can’t be trusted.

God values mercy over justice. That does not mean that God is unjust, it just means that his justice is not absolute, which is a good thing.

Except that God isn’t merciful. He says he’s merciful, but then turns around and still tortures billions of people for something they didn’t even do (and which doesn’t deserve that punishment anyway). That’s not merciful, that's posturing.

If God were absolutely just, then there would be no atonement at all, and there would be no possible way to reconcile the perpetuity of evil. In that scenario, God would only be unjust if he created life and hell anyway without any kind of atonement. The only ethical choice for God, if a justifiable, substitutional atonement were not possible, would be to not create any life, or at least not any life with freewill, programming (forcing) everything and everyone in it to do exactly in-line with his will, and thus guaranteeing that no evil and no hell would ever exist. To say that substitutional atonement means that God cannot be just, the burden would be on you to show that he had a better, more just, alternative. I don’t believe that to be possible.

Sure there’s a just way. Simply require people to make up for what they did, to the people they actually harmed, in proportion to the severity of their crime. It’s really quite simple. If God were just, that’s all that would be needed - in infinite hell, no original sin, etc.

Fourth – A contract is based on trust, and requires that trust to include the basic fact that neither party will lie to the other in relation to the contract.

This is the first one of your points that I think actually speaks to the question of God being trustworthy. If God lies without sufficient justification, then he is most certainly not trustworthy.

But it’s clear over and over in the Bibles that God is “above the law”, and is immune from any need to supply any justification. In other words, he’s an unrepentant liar. Sure, people lie. And when they do, they can admit it was wrong, and say they’ll be truthful, and in that case one might give them a second chance. However, if someone lies, repeatedly, and then refuses to even admit that what they did was wrong, then of course it’s irrational to expect them to be trustworthy in the future. That’s what the Bible says God does.

In order to make this case, you will need to either show that there are an unreasonably high number of instances of God being dishonest and/or show how those few instances cannot possibly be justified.

No, after lying, the burden of proof for justifying the lie (or admitting it) is on the accused liar. God had repeatedly shown he is unrepentant, and so he is not trustworthy until he shows that he respects us as agents ourselves, and hence deserving of the truth.

Now for the text, first, in Genesis we are dealing with a very primitive language, of very questionable origin. It can hardly be considered binding, but the language basically says, “beyovm akaleka movt tamut, ” or “day eat surely die.” That can just as easily mean that on the day you eat, you make death inevitable for yourself, or that within so long after eating you will die, or your passion for, or blissful enjoyment of life will die on the day you eat it. That's plenty of plausible, and even more likely, interpretations that do not involve any misrepresented truths whatsoever.

As soon as you call the translation into question, you have removed our ability to know that what we are reading in the Bibles is reliable. If you are going to call the Bible into question, that’s fine, but that removes any certainty of even the existence of God, and of our framework.

In 1 Kings, Micaiah is considered even less of a legitimate prophet than Samuel was. None-the-less, in this text, even if literally true, only puts God as the one who delegates that which is already dishonest, which is the case with all dishonest people. They serve God’s purpose to that end. Another example would be Judas betraying Jesus with a (dishonest) kiss. God didn't make Judas lie, but he used that lie to accomplish his plan. That doesn’t make God untrustworthy.

Sure it does. That’s exactly what it does. If I hire someone to carry out my dishonest plan in a dishonest way, then I’ve thrown away any claim to being trustworthy or having integrity.

In 2 Thessalonians, you will notice that the delusion did not precede the people’s determination to reject the truth already revealed to them. Its purpose is clearly stated, just like in the case of Pharaoh, to expedite the inevitable.

In other words, you are saying that he ends justify the means. Any entity that would use dishonest means, supposedly “justified” by the ends, is untrustworthy.

This is the point where I will typically make reference to the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan in WWII. Even in that situation, regardless of whether or not that was the best, most moral or ethical decision, it is still not grounds for us not to trust our government, because the data pointed to the inevitable casualties to our military as well as to the civilian population. A very strong argument could have been (and obviously was) made to justify it. If we took that as a reason to say our government is not trustworthy, we wouldn’t be here. We would go somewhere else.

It may not have been ethical (I’m not claiming it was). It was done by a government which didn’t have a contract with those people anyway. I’m not sure how that helps your argument either way, and it seems far enough removed to be a waste of time to discuss.

I could get into the positive case for God's being trustworthy, but this is already too long of a post to digest, so maybe we'll look at that part later. For now, though, I don't think it is even necessary because I don't think you've presented a reasonable assertion that he's not.

I’m starting to think that it might be hard for us to find common ground.

Have a great weekend!

You too!

[yjoeyh]

Equinox,

Is it okay if we back up for a minute? I began responding to each point of you last post and I quickly realized that, despite our efforts to define the parameters, we’re still ending up going in two different directions. If it's alright with you, I'd like a chance to better layout the components of my case and what exactly it is I'm trying to show.

First, between the two of us, I’m the only one with who has an actual model of a real God, the Bible as his actual revelation, and the assertion that God is genuinely trustworthy. So this is really an exercise to test that model given those three assumptions. What I probably should have done is laid out in a little more detail what those three things mean to my worldview. It’s my definitions and my model that we are trying to test, right? I hope we can agree to that, because I’m less interested in defending someone else’s meaning of these things and trying to reconcile them according to their worldview. I want to know if I am being inconsistent anywhere. I already realize many other Christians are being inconsistent. It's rare in these forums that I will agree to take on the burden of proof for anything, so when I do, I want to be crystal clear as to what burden it is I'm assuming.

1. God – In my model, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe and all life, including human life in it. I believe that God created humans as freewill agents, because God is free, and desires a love relationship with others on a freewill basis, not out of pure force or determinism. I also think that presents a dilemma for God, because beings that are truly free have no real reason to truly love him or seek out a love relationship with him. Instead, since such beings are necessarily more limited in both knowledge and power than God, they will necessarily choose to do things based on their own ignorance and impotence, which are contrary to God’s will which is not limited in the same way. These choices based on limited knowledge and power have no real hope of avoiding real, unforeseen, and ultimately devastating consequences.

2. The Bible – God’s special revelation to man. It is not a book written by God. It is not inerrant. It is not above being abused or misinterpreted. It was written by humans who themselves, not being perfect, were given special direction by God’s Holy Spirit (because they each gave God permission to modify their hearts to be more in line with his) to steer their words and motivations towards God’s message of truth, love, hope, and faith. It’s not supernatural, and must be interpreted using the same methods used to interpret any other text.
Interpretation is critical, just like we need a judicial system to go along with the legislative, we need a method of interpretation to go along with the text. Several times in your last post you said we should take the text for "what it says," which I infer means, we should take it at face value. I'm definitely not okay with that approach. That's how bad religions and crooked lawyers operate, looking for loopholes in the wording of the law instead of trying to best interpret the original intent of the law. I take a systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach to interpreting scripture as objectively as possible. I'll insist that's the only method of interpretation we use.

3. Trustworthy – I’m making a distinction here between a person being trustworthy and people universally having the desire to put their trust in them. All I mean by the term, is that when a person A tells person B that something is true or when person A makes a commitment to person B, that person B can have complete confidence that person A knows what they are talking about, and that they will most definitely honor that commitment. This can very quickly turn into a lengthy, complicated theodicy if we start looking at why a person would want to trust in God vs just having good reason to trust God will honor his commitments. I really don't have the time or energy to get into all that, so I hope you're okay with just sticking to the question of God being trustworthy by this definition.
You mentioned PolPot in your last post. Yes, I would think he would very much also fit this definition of trustworthy.


The biggest part of my argument is comparing our trust in God to our trust in government. I'm showing how we have just as much reason to trust God, given these assumptions, that we have to trust our government. The other side of that coin is that we have at least as much reason to distrust out government as we have to distrust God. And given that we necessarily do trust our government (like you alluded to with your use of the term, contracts) then we have just as much reason to trust God.

Some of the examples you have brought up so far have included:
Killing - Yes God kills people. Our government also kills people. We not only justify it, but sometimes encourage it.
Dishonesty - Yes God has intentionally hidden the truth at times. So has our government. Again, we not only justify it, but often encourage it.


As for the idea of contracts, I know what you're talking about, but I think democracy is just the illusion of a contract. That's more of just my political opinion, but it really doesn't matter. Whether you want to think of our relationship with the government as a contract or not, our relationship with God is still the same kind of thing. The only difference is the scale, but in both, we have a burden of choosing to place our trust in them or not.
Now on the political issue, in reading between the lines of your last post, I get the sense that you view western democracy as some kind of advanced model of government and civilization. I don't want to get off topic on politics, but suffice it to say, as it pertains to this conversation, I do not share that view.


Now I've already started working on responses to each point in your last post, and I'd like to pick back up there, but I thought a lot of this kind of thing needed to be clarified first. If you are still interested in continuing along that path, I'll post my responses to those points next time.

What do you say?

[Equinox]

Equinox,

Is it okay if we back up for a minute? .... If it's alright with you, I'd like a chance to better layout the components of my case and what exactly it is I'm trying to show.

Sure.

First, between the two of us, I’m the only one with who has an actual model of a real God, the Bible as his actual revelation, and the assertion that God is genuinely trustworthy. So this is really an exercise to test that model given those three assumptions.

It doesn't matter what we actually believe, because we are working with the assumption statement in quotes below. Further, you make it clear below that your statment of a Bible being His actual revelation really only means that a chosen Bible of yours is his actual revelation after you've processed it as you wish.

Your statment above wasn’t my understanding. My understanding was that we were discussing “ if God exists and the Bible is accurately describing him, then he is not trustworthy. “
That means we are going by what a Bible says (that’s what “describing” means). If we are going to instead discuss a model you’ve made up based on your own idea of God, then that’s a different thing, which I’ll get to below.

What I probably should have done is laid out in a little more detail what those three things mean to my worldview. It’s my definitions and my model that we are trying to test, right? ...and later...... I take a systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach to interpreting scripture as objectively as possible. I'll insist that's the only method of interpretation we use.

My experience, after 25 years of discussing this will a wide range of different Christians (and different Bibles), is that there are many very different interpretations possible when using a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach”, and that these very different conclusions will vary widely based on personal biases, the different way they paint history to support their interpretation, the different choices of how to slightly change meanings by choosing different meanings of “original Hebrew”, and many other factors. That's not to say that there isn't a "right" way, a way most like what the authors likely intended - there is, but that is a bronze age view, and is almost never the view that most Christians don't take (such as the idea that the Bible describes a geocentric earth and an unfair God).

Basically, the conclusion that come after someone claims to be using a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” can be just about anything, from portraying communism, anarchism, Randian capitalism, a fluffy guru hippy god, apple-pie Americanism, and just about anything else, all based on the scripture in a Bible. The main problem with following your views of your own personal “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” is that the scripture itself ends up meaning very little, and we are left, at every point, with the only recourse asking Joey what the scriptures mean in your model. As such, it seems rather pointless to refer to scripture at all, and instead to just ask you to describe this religion model you’ve made. We’ve seen that already in your responses, and it can probably be further seen in the responses you have written out. So the question to me is whether I want to discuss if the God as you describe in your model is trustworthy, according to the Book of Joey. Let me come back to that question by the end of this post.

1. God – In my model, .... they will necessarily choose to do things based on their own ignorance and impotence, which are contrary to God’s will which is not limited in the same way. These choices based on limited knowledge and power have no real hope of avoiding real, unforeseen, and ultimately devastating consequences.

And is a god who can’t make a better system than that, who’s morality sees that situation (which is like giving a two year old a loaded gun to play with) acceptable, worthy of any kind of trust? I don’t think so.

just having good reason to trust God will honor his commitments. I really don't have the time or energy to get into all that, so I hope you're okay with just sticking to the question of God being trustworthy by this definition.
You mentioned PolPot in your last post. Yes, I would think he would very much also fit this definition of trustworthy.

The point is by trusting any entity, you are making the assumption that the entity in question sees some value in honouring his or her word. To do that, they have to see you as having rights not to be deceived or treated worthlessly. If they don't, then it is irrational to think they will honor their word, regardless of whether they have in the past. The Bibles make it clear that God doesn’t see us that way. That could of course be very different in the book of Joey, which you would rather operate under.

The biggest part of my argument is comparing our trust in God to our trust in government. I'm showing how we have just as much reason to trust God, given these assumptions, that we have to trust our government. The other side of that coin is that we have at least as much reason to distrust out government as we have to distrust God. And given that we necessarily do trust our government (like you alluded to with your use of the term, contracts) then we have just as much reason to trust God.

Some of the examples you have brought up so far have included:
Killing - Yes God kills people. Our government also kills people. We not only justify it, but sometimes encourage it.
Dishonesty - Yes God has intentionally hidden the truth at times. So has our government. Again, we not only justify it, but often encourage it.

As for the idea of contracts, I know what you're talking about, but I think democracy is just the illusion of a contract.
Now on the political issue, in reading between the lines of your last post, I get the sense that you view western democracy as some kind of advanced model of government and civilization.

Well, advanced compared to bronze-age thuggery, yes. Perfect, no. Your previous posts make it sound like your main view of both governments and gods is that might makes right, with no moral compass at all (and that you were unaware of the basis of Western democracies anyway). That says something about how you see your god. You may not actually hold that the only basis of gods and government is that of thuggery, but that’s what it has seemed like – though I agree with you that it’s probably not something we want to get into.

I want to know if I am being inconsistent anywhere.
What do you say?

*Sigh*. I personally see much of your previous post as mental gymnastics to justify what we know in our hearts to be morally abhorrent. I think that many of the inconsistencies of your model have been pointed out ad naseum by the by the much more patient and long-suffering Emery, and I’m unsure of what my purpose my pointing them out yet again will serve (in addition to the fact that I’ve heard the same points over and over, and seen the inconsistencies pointed out over and over, in other places all over the web. Plus, since the only basis for anything in the model will be the book of Joey (the support you make using your decisions in your systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic processing of scripture), I think I can reasonably expect more gyrations like those I’ve seen so far.

I don’t mean that (or anything else in this post) as an attack, but rather to be open about how I see this so far. With that being how I see this so far, I am willing to say whether I find later posts inconsistent or not, but I’m not interested in spending a lot of time trying to fully discuss a bunch of convoluted arguments. In other words, I don’t think my responses will be very in depth for the reasons above, and I’m not interested in debating your model. If you still want to lay it out for a short response, then OK.

Take care-

Equinox

[yjoeyh]

It doesn't matter what we actually believe, because we are working with the assumption statement in quotes. …. My understanding was that we were discussing “ if God exists and the Bible is accurately describing him, then he is not trustworthy. “
That means we are going by what a Bible says (that’s what “describing” means). If we are going to instead discuss a model you’ve made up based on your own idea of God, then that’s a different thing, which I’ll get to below.

That is the rub indeed. We’re not going to be able to talk about “what the Bible says” until we can at least come to agreement on what it is that it says. That’s why having a consistent method of interpretation is essential. We can agree to use the same guidelines whether it help or hurts our respective cases.

My experience, after 30 years of discussing this will a wide range of different Christians (and different Bibles), is that there are many very different interpretations possible when using a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach”, and that these very different conclusions will vary widely based on personal biases, the different way they paint history to support their interpretation, the different choices of how to slightly change meanings by choosing different meanings of “original Hebrew”, and many other factors.

There is quite a bit of that in my experience as well, but I still think you are perhaps overstating it. You seem to be saying that unless we take it on face value, then we have no other way to interpret it. Well that’s the crux of the argument right there. Not only do I say that we have a much better way of interpreting it, but that kind of interpretation is by far one of the most flawed methods we could possibly use. It leaves the question of interpretation wide open to manipulation, bias and other forms of abuse.

Basically, the conclusion that come after someone claims to be using a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” can be just about anything, from portraying communism, anarchism, Randian capitalism, a fluffy guru hippy god, apple-pie Americanism, and just about anything else, all based on the scripture in a Bible.

Now that is definitely overstating things. It’s an appeal to ambiguity, which can only come from a prejudicial view of the text that rejects any kind of objective interpretation as impossible on a strictly a priori basis. If you care to test whether your assertion is correct, just try to use that kind of a hermeneutic to defend any one of those things. I guarantee you will have to switch to reader-response hermeneutics to make any kind of case at all. I’m saying up front that any argument you or I try to make in this discussion that requires reader-response is automatically void. That’s actually quite a significant concession for someone in my position to make.

The main problem with following your views of your own personal “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” is that the scripture itself ends up meaning very little, and we are left, at every point, with the only recourse asking Joey what the scriptures mean in your model.

But I’m not even talking about following my views, but following the text and seeing if my views line up with it or not, consistently. Consistency is the key.

The point is by trusting any entity, you are making the assumption that the entity in question sees some value in honouring his or her word.

I agree with that part.

To do that, they have to see you as having rights not to be deceived or treated worthlessly. If they don't, then it is irrational to think they will honor their word, regardless of whether they have in the past.

No, I can’t agree with that reasoning. They don’t have to care about our rights at all. In fact, a person’s rights need not have any worth to the person in question. All they need is the benefit of that person’s cooperation even for the most selfish of motives in order to have confidence in someone honoring their word.

Well, advanced compared to bronze-age thuggery, yes. Perfect, no. Your previous posts make it sound like your main view of both governments and gods is that might makes right, with no moral compass at all (and that you were unaware of the basis of Western democracies anyway). That says something about how you see your god. You may not actually hold that the only basis of gods and government is that of thuggery, but that’s what it has seemed like – though I agree with you that it’s probably not something we want to get into.

I’m intentionally leaving “right” out of it. I’m leaving that question off the table. So of course, if you expect me to defend God’s moral compass, you are probably going to get the impression that I deny he has one. That’s not the case at all. I’m just trying to be objective to that question while dealing with the other.

I personally see much of your previous post as mental gymnastics to justify what we know in our hearts to be morally abhorrent.

That’s because your bringing morals into it, when I tried to say up front, let’s just leave them out of it. If we did go down that road, you are right that the mental gymnastics get a lot more involved and a lot more complicated. That’s part of life though. Things just aren’t simple when you really dive into them. But it’s a big assumption on your part at that point to say that we “know in our hearts” these things are “morally abhorrent.” Of course I take great exception to that. Not only do we know in our hearts that these things are not morally abhorrent, but we demonstrate as much by our actions every day.

I think that many of the inconsistencies of your model have been pointed out ad naseum by the by the much more patient and long-suffering Emery, and I’m unsure of what my purpose my pointing them out yet again will serve (in addition to the fact that I’ve heard the same points over and over, and seen the inconsistencies pointed out over and over, in other places all over the web.

But that’s the problem. I’d love to find a resource that talks about the issues that I bring up and offers any kind of counter arguments. I’m not talking about a counter-argument that I necessarily have to buy into, or even one that requires a series of rather absurd assumptions. I’m just looking for one that doesn’t appeal to straw men. That’s where we keep finding ourselves, when we try to go through the exercise of looking at the issues brought up in detail and when we make consistent theodicies, rather than address them specifically, and logically, there always seems to be this appeal to simpler, more digestable issues. Ordinarily I wouldn’t object to that in and of itself, but I think it s huge foul ball to throw into the discussion, arguments about the character, morality, reliability of God’s character as described in the Bible, and then refuse to actually look at what exactly the Bible does say in details to even find out if it’s reasonable or not. I run into that kind “hit-and-run” tactic a lot.
If God is being accused of something, then should he not have the right to confront his accuser? (metaphorically speaking of course.)

I don’t think my responses will be very in depth for the reasons above, and I’m not interested in debating your model. If you still want to lay it out for a short response, then OK. If you still want to lay it out for a short response, then OK.

Sure, that sounds fine. I’ll see what I can come up with.
Thanks !

[Equinox]

OK, maybe I can keep track of things with a list (below).

Joey wrote:

That is the rub indeed. We’re not going to be able to talk about “what the Bible says” until we
can at least come to agreement on what it is that it says.

Right.

That’s why having a consistent method of interpretation is essential. We can agree to use the same guidelines whether it help or hurts our respective cases.

As I’ve pointed out (and you partially agreed with), there is enough variability in a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” that many different and mutually exclusive conclusions can be (and repeatedly are) drawn. For that reason, we don’t have a single conclusion to rest on with any high level of certainty. If you are going to base your model on, or test your model against, something as wiggly as that, then there are too many options to come to any meaningful judgement of your model.

Since I think you disagree, how about if I put that on the list of things we agree to disagree on?

Things Joey and I agree to disagree upon:

1. That a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” to interpreting one or another of the Bibles can reliably give a single clear meaning to the text chosen.

Joey wrote:

Equinox wrote:

The main problem with following your views of your own personal “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” is that the scripture itself ends up meaning very little, and we are left, at every point, with the only recourse asking Joey what the scriptures mean in your model.

But I’m not even talking about following my views, but following the text and seeing if my views line up with it or not, consistently. Consistency is the key.

But you stated before that we are interpreting the text according to your interpretation. So we are left with seeing if your interpretation fits your views. I can save us some time – yes, it does.

The point is by trusting any entity, you are making the assumption that the entity in question sees some value in honouring his or her word.

I agree with that part.

OK.

To do that, they have to see you as having rights not to be deceived or treated worthlessly. If they don't, then it is irrational to think they will honor their word, regardless of whether they have in the past.

No, I can’t agree with that reasoning. They don’t have to care about our rights at all. In fact, a person’s rights need not have any worth to the person in question. All they need is the benefit of that person’s cooperation even for the most selfish of motives in order to have confidence in someone honoring their word.

I disagree. Caring about the rights of the other party (seeing them as an agent) is required for any trustworthiness to exist. If I don’t value the rights of a potted houseplant, and I mention offhand that I’m going to put it by the living room window, but then later I change my mind, I could very well simply toss it in the trash without explanation. I would do so without any concern over what I earlier said. Wouldn’t you?

If I had earlier mentioned that I'd put a different houseplant by the living room window, and had done so, then with this one mentioned that I'd put it by the living room window, I may very well end up simply tossing it in the trash. The fact that I did honor my word previously is irrelevant.

I’m intentionally leaving “right” out of it. I’m leaving that question off the table. So of course, if you expect me to defend God’s moral compass, you are probably going to get the impression that I deny he has one. That’s not the case at all. I’m just trying to be objective to that question while dealing with the other.

I don’t think you can leave that question off the table, because it is irrational to expect any kind of behaviour – trustworthy or otherwise- from something that doesn’t consider you an agent with rights (see my potted plant example).

Maybe that's #2 on our list? That we agree to disagree that one can evaluate whether something that has no regard for the rights/personhood of oneself can be considered “trustworthy”.

But it’s a big assumption on your part at that point to say that we “know in our hearts” these things are “morally abhorrent.” Of course I take great exception to that. Not only do we know in our hearts that these things are not morally abhorrent, but we demonstrate as much by our actions every day.

Really? Do you not know in your heart that killing innocent people is morally abhorrent? That killing children to accomplish a political goal is morally abhorrent? That making a child suffer so as to punish someone else is morally abhorrent? I know in my heart that those are morally abhorrent. What actions of mine do you see that demonstrate that I don’t find those to be morally abhorrent?

#3? That we agree to disagree that we know in our hearts that these things are morally abhorrent?

I’d love to find a resource that talks about the issues that I bring up and offers any kind of counter arguments. I’m not talking about a counter-argument that I necessarily have to buy into, or even one that requires a series of rather absurd assumptions. I’m just looking for one that doesn’t appeal to straw men.

Were none of them covered in your recent podcast with Emery?

I think it s huge foul ball to throw into the discussion, arguments about the character, morality, reliability of God’s character as described in the Bible, and then refuse to actually look at what exactly the Bible does say in details to even find out if it’s reasonable or not. I run into that kind “hit-and-run” tactic a lot.
If God is being accused of something, then should he not have the right to confront his accuser? (metaphorically speaking of course.)

Metaphorically speaking, he has. I’ve heard all kinds of convoluted mental gymnastics to justify the atrocities committed by God in the Bibles. Yes, a defence can be offered, but over and over the defence can be seen to be just a filibuster, to keep throwing up mental gymnastics until everyone is sick of it.

Sure, that sounds fine. I’ll see what I can come up with.
Thanks !

OK, go ahead.

Equinox

[mitchellmckain]

I disagree. Caring about the rights of the other party (seeing them as an agent) is required for any trustworthiness to exist. If I don’t value the rights of a potted houseplant, and I mention offhand that I’m going to put it by the living room window, but then later I change my mind, I could very well simply toss it in the trash without explanation. I would do so without any concern over what I earlier said. Wouldn’t you?

That is incorrect. The concept of rights is not the only basis for trust and moral behavior. That may be a key part of your particular reasoning for trust and moral behavior but there are MANY ways that people can and do work out reasons for trust and why some things are right and some things are wrong. In my own case, I always found this idea of rights in the context of the evolutionary development of life to be rather ad-hoc and difficult to justify. So in my own rational construction of reasons for morality (for I was not raised Christian) was mostly based upon principles of psychological health.

I don’t think you can leave that question off the table, because it is irrational to expect any kind of behaviour – trustworthy or otherwise- from something that doesn’t consider you an agent with rights (see my potted plant example).

Wrong. Can and do. It is not irrational. I can trust gravity and the behavior of massive objects and the idea of rights has nothing to do with it. You can trust that someone will act consistent with what they desire and have dedicated all their efforts to achieve. Christians believe in a God that loves us as children and thus we can trust in His desire for our greater good. I believe in a God that created the whole universe for the purpose of promoting the self-organizing process of life and always acting to promote greater free will and self-determination and I trust in that although I see no reason why this concept of rights should have any validity to it at all. If we have any right at all it is to face consequences of our choices, values and desires alone without any interference from God, but that right is a consequence of God desire for a relationship of love with us, because love cannot exist without choice.

Really? Do you not know in your heart that killing innocent people is morally abhorrent? That killing children to accomplish a political goal is morally abhorrent? That making a child suffer so as to punish someone else is morally abhorrent? I know in my heart that those are morally abhorrent.

I believe that is true of yjoeyh and myself also. But is it not also obvious that this doesn't seem to be universally true of everyone? Nevertheless, it looks to me that yjoeyh is going out on a weak limb here and I cannot see where he is going with this.

I think it s huge foul ball to throw into the discussion, arguments about the character, morality, reliability of God’s character as described in the Bible, and then refuse to actually look at what exactly the Bible does say in details to even find out if it’s reasonable or not. I run into that kind “hit-and-run” tactic a lot.
If God is being accused of something, then should he not have the right to confront his accuser? (metaphorically speaking of course.)

Metaphorically speaking, he has. I’ve heard all kinds of convoluted mental gymnastics to justify the atrocities committed by God in the Bibles. Yes, a defence can be offered, but over and over the defence can be seen to be just a filibuster, to keep throwing up mental gymnastics until everyone is sick of it.

I think yjoeyh is making an excellent point here and that this atheist tactic is inconsistent, dishonest and conveniently self serving. It is amounts to nothing more looking for excuses to mock and ridicule the beliefs of others. Sure we can agree to disagree on whether God exist or not, and we should just stop there.

[yjoeyh]

Things Joey and I agree to disagree upon:

1. That a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” to interpreting one or another of the Bibles can reliably give a single clear meaning to the text chosen.

No that’s not what I’m suggesting. The point is that there is nothing better to base an interpretion on. It’s the best approach for consistency objectivity available to us when it comes to interpreting something. All I’m really talking about is taking a reasonable approach to interpreting the text and not presupposing it is in some other class of writing, than anything else we might try to interpret.
I think we’re actually on the same page here, but describing it differently. Isn’t the idea to as much as possible limit the subjective, open-ended nature of the way he text can be interpreted, and use as much consistency as possible? Why is that so unreasonable? I’m really not getting what it is you are suggesting we do in the alternative.

The main problem with following your views of your own personal “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” is that the scripture itself ends up meaning very little, and we are left, at every point, with the only recourse asking Joey what the scriptures mean in your model.

That’s the opposite of what I mean. My model doesn’t even enter the picture until after the text has been interpreted. I’m not in any way trying to see if it is possible to twist the scripture around to make it fit. I’m simply asking if it naturally falls into place once we interpret it, not can we force it to fit.

So we are left with seeing if your interpretation fits your views. I can save us some time – yes, it does.

I’m not convinced even I agree that it does. My view still has textual problems. There are times either the text or I must be wrong. The question is how important and how frequent are those problems.

Caring about the rights of the other party (seeing them as an agent) is required for any trustworthiness to exist. If I don’t value the rights of a potted houseplant, and I mention offhand that I’m going to put it by the living room window, but then later I change my mind, I could very well simply toss it in the trash without explanation. I would do so without any concern over what I earlier said. Wouldn’t you?

If I had earlier mentioned that I'd put a different houseplant by the living room window, and had done so, then with this one mentioned that I'd put it by the living room window, I may very well end up simply tossing it in the trash. The fact that I did honor my word previously is irrelevant.

I understand your point here, but I still think you are equivocating. The rights of the houseplant wasn’t the key, it was the value of the houseplant, indicated by the bold statement in your quote. If you changed your mind, you changed the amount of value you assigned to it from the time you made the initial declaration.
I still don’t see how the perception of rights are a critical component to determining a level of trustworthyness.

I don’t think you can leave that question off the table,

Well yes, I agree, that can never be entirely off the table. But it is a much more complicated question to get into, and like I said earlier, if you want to get into indictments of God’s morality, you have to be willing to answer challenges to that indictment, which gets MUCH more into hermeneutics and ethics.

Maybe that's #2 on our list? That we agree to disagree that one can evaluate whether something that has no regard for the rights/personhood of oneself can be considered “trustworthy”.

Yes, that’s fine, but I think that pretty much nullifies the question. But that’s okay.

Really? Do you not know in your heart that killing innocent people is morally abhorrent? That killing children to accomplish a political goal is morally abhorrent? That making a child suffer so as to punish someone else is morally abhorrent? I know in my heart that those are morally abhorrent. What actions of mine do you see that demonstrate that I don’t find those to be morally abhorrent?

In light of the show #106, you probably already know my answer. That’s almost exactly what we were talking about on that show. I certainly do NOT know that killing innocent people is morally abhorrent. That’s why I’m not pro-life. It is necessary and justifiable in a variety of circumstances. You might want to say that it can still be morally abhorrent, but I don’t think that can be a consistent characterization. I wouldn’t say that an abortion doctor was necessarily doing something “morally abhorrent” when they do this. And yes, if a “political goal” is to protect the safety and liberty of its citizens, then I would say that things like allowing abortions, or bombing a strategic location even where civilian casualties were likely would be morally justifiable. It might be ugly, horrible and sickening. But it’s not necessarily the act of diminished morality.

#3? That we agree to disagree that we know in our hearts that these things are morally abhorrent?

Well, I will challenge you on that idea. Are you 100% pro-life, no matter the circumstance for the mother? Are you personally 100% opposed to any military action that puts civilians at risk, no matter how critical it is to the protection of other people? If not, then aren’t you being “morally abhorrent” by your own definition?

Were none of them covered in your recent podcast with Emery?

No, we’ve been staying off those subjects thus far when Glen and I participate on the show, for a couple of reasons. #1. There were other specific issues on the table. #2 Glen and I have pretty different views on many of these matters, so with us both on together it might be difficult to lay it all out, like other Christians have done when they have been on.

Sorry… my responses are getting more infrequent again. I’ll try to pick back up with the rest of it later.

Thanks!

[Equinox]

Mitch – Thanks for sharing. I’ll leave it at that, at least for now. Have a good day-

Equinox
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Things Joey and I might agree to disagree upon:

1. That a “systematic historical-grammatical hermeneutic approach” to interpreting one or another of the Bibles can reliably give a single clear meaning to the text chosen.

Joey wrote:

No that’s not what I’m suggesting. The point is that there is nothing better to base an interpretion on.

Well, sure – all other approaches are even worse.

I think we’re actually on the same page here, but describing it differently. Isn’t the idea to as much as possible limit the subjective, open-ended nature of the way he text can be interpreted, and use as much consistency as possible? Why is that so unreasonable?

OK, I think I may see what we are actually disagreeing over. I think we are disagreeing on how much consistency is possible (I think "not enough for a model", you think "enough for a model"). Scholarship has shown that the different books of the various Bibles (and the various Bibles themselves) if each allowed to speak for itself, give different religions. For instance, just compare the soteriology of, say, the 7 authentic Paulines with the soteriology of the Gospel of Mt, or the Christology of 1-3 John with that of the Gospel of Mark – those are irreconcilable differences. The same thing happens repeatedly in the Torah vs the Nevi’im, or between 2nd maccabbees and Romans, and so on. You can’t make a coherent model based on different and contradictory religions. I’ve seen many people try, and they do so by ignoring (or more often creatively interpreting) sections to make them all fit first, and it’s not worth my time to see that whole meatgrinder grind yet again for the 40th time - that started very early, the Nicene Creed is one of the early scripturegrinders, for instance. When Christians start with the assumption that there is one religion that can be obtained from the text, any attempt at finding what the original authors actually meant is sacrificed to that goal. Hence, our point of disagreement #1. Perhaps it needs to be reworded to reflect this.

Joey wrote:

The rights of the houseplant wasn’t the key, it was the value of the houseplant, indicated by the bold statement in your quote. If you changed your mind, you changed the amount of value you assigned to it from the time you made the initial declaration.

OK, then how about this:
2. That we agree to disagree that one can evaluate whether something that has no regard for the rights/personhood/value of oneself can be considered “trustworthy”.

And yes, if a “political goal” is to protect the safety and liberty of its citizens, then I would say that things like allowing abortions, or bombing a strategic location even where civilian casualties were likely would be morally justifiable. It might be ugly, horrible and sickening. But it’s not necessarily the act of diminished morality.

No, that’s the choice between killing 4 people by bombing vs killing 12 by letting the war go on longer because you didn’t act. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about unnecessary cases. So how about this alteration:


3. That we agree to disagree that we know in our hearts that these things, when unnecessary, are morally abhorrent?

No, we’ve been staying off those subjects thus far when Glen and I participate on the show, for a couple of reasons. #1. There were other specific issues on the table. #2 Glen and I have pretty different views on many of these matters, so with us both on together it might be difficult to lay it all out, like other Christians have done when they have been on.

Fair enough.

Sorry… my responses are getting more infrequent again. I’ll try to pick back up with the rest of it later.

Thanks!

Did I miss someting? Didn’t you reply to my last post in less than an hour from when I posted it? If that’s infrequent, you are pretty fast.

Anyway, have a fun day-

-Equinox

[yjoeyh]

I think we are disagreeing on how much consistency is possible (I think "not enough for a model", you think "enough for a model").

Well that is the question itself, we would be looking at, so if we are “agreeing to disagree” on anything at this point, it would be that we are disagreeing that the Bible has enough consistency to support a model of a single God who is also trustworthy. We would therefore be agreeing that we don’t want to take the time to examine that question in the exhaustive detail required to answer it one way or the other.

OK, then how about this:
2. That we agree to disagree that one can evaluate whether something that has no regard for the rights/personhood/value of oneself can be considered “trustworthy”.

I’m not so sure about that one. Put that way, it almost sounds like we are agreeing instead of disagreeing, but I still think we are disagreeing. I guess I would have to know exactly how you are defining value in light of how I was defining it. I’m talking about the value that the one who is being tested for being trustworthy assigns something or someone. I’m saying that if you value something or someone, you are trustworthy if you consistently respect that value.
I think the way you had it before was better, because I think we are really agreeing to disagree that the “rights” are the critical part.

3. That we agree to disagree that we know in our hearts that these things, when unnecessary, are morally abhorrent?

I think we are back to agreeing on #3 then. We don’t need to agree to disagree here. Whether or not it is necessary is the critical component on whether it is morally acceptable or not. But without any common ground on #1, we can’t evaluate the question of whether or not it is necessary.

Did I miss something? Didn’t you reply to my last post in less than an hour from when I posted it? If that’s infrequent, you are pretty fast.

Touche!
Yeah, I guess I should have clarified… “after this response.”

Thanks!