It’s Like Admitting to Apathy About Suffering

[cleanhippie]

I did a post the other day talking about what a real savior would look like. Well, Davis S. didn’t think it was very good. He thought I was making a straw man. When pushed to defend that he said…

"I guess it depends on what perspective you’re evaluating the morality of it all from. This is a pretty good post from a humanist perspective, but from the Christian theological perspective, whatever God does is the very definition of good. It’s not necessarily good from our perspective, but it’s at least internally consistent."

And a little bit of vomit crept into the back of my throat. God killing people isn’t immoral because nothing god does can be immoral! Brilliant if you’re fucking two. Forget for a moment that there’s not even a smattering of crumbs in the pile of evidence for god. Think for a moment and try to come up with any moral proposition so horrid, so unbearable to even hear of, that it cannot be deemed moral by that defense. It cannot be done. The concept of evil becomes meaningless in this case.

Recall Abraham, the man willing to gut his son at god’s command. This story is held up to children in Sunday school as an example of perfect faith, due to his willingness to obey god no matter what.

Now consider the atheist. We are the ones saying Abraham failed the test. We’re the ones saying that if a being, no matter how wise or powerful, instructed us to murder our children, we would say “Go to hell. I would rather die myself than kill my son.” To people like Davis S. though, we would be immoral to do so.

By saying that whatever standards we use to determine the evil men and women among us actually contribute to god’s goodness, you display utter contempt for the well-being of others. How do you expect others around you to trust you when at a word from god you’d feel morally justified slitting their throats? Do you not think the 9/11 maniacs felt the same way about morality? This mindset is the engine driving the sum of religious fiendishness throughout the ages. Slavery? God commands it, and his commands are always morally good. Jews into ovens? It’s the will of the good LORD (who, I’ll remind you, is good). Slaughtering the infidels and their children? Why would god desire it if it weren’t good? For those possessed by this mindset, they are necessarily separated from their humanity.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/wwjtd/2011/12/07/its-like-admitting-to-apathy-about-suffering/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

[MarkCharles]

1. A bit of research and a few moments of reflection are needed for any reasonalbe response

to this post.

I'm not the most well-versed Old Testament scholar here.

I'm kind of at a loss for words to weigh in on this dilemma, as I was for weighing in on Clinton's lying about his Monica affair. Seems like if you wanna kill your kids to get into heaven, you just have to be someone like Bush or Rumsfeld, imagining how many Holy Wars someone like Gingrich or Perry or even Romney would be happy to start, as long as all the young Mormon boys were "exempt" as they traversed the villages of southeastern France, looking for one single Mormon convert out of 1000 poor villager Catholics, Protestants, and Jews who had lived together happily for the last 60 years.

[HereSince1628]

3. I don't know about current rules...but I earned my Vietnam ribbons along with Mormon boys.

In fact, I WAS a "Mormon boy" at the time, one born on the same day of the month as Bill Clinton, who didn't choose to serve in that conflict that I DID serve in.

I am sure that you can pick at various approaches to getting deferments, but you can't within the limits of logic take those specifics and make a generalization to ALL Mormons and say that they do not, and have not, served in the military in times of hostilities.

THAT is patently false and my life, and the VA's agreement to treat me as a victim of Agent Orange exposure, denies the universal nature of that claim.

[MarkCharles]

4. Thank you for your service.

I hope you gave your service, not for your religion, but for your freedom to believe in your faith, while serving us all.

Thanks for that. And thanks for those Mormon boys like you who didn't choose to go the missionary route in some part of southern France to get their deferment, as Mitt did.

[HereSince1628]

7. I did not give my service in support of serving freedoms of ANY kind

I wasn't so delusional that I thought serving during Vietnam had anything to do with preserving freedom in the US, Vietnam or elsewhere.

I served because I had a low draft number and I felt that dodging the call would push my responsibility and its risks to a consecutive nominee. I couldn't accept that as a cornerstone on which to build the rest of my adult life.

[Jim__]

6. Thanks for your service.

Sorry for whatever happened to you as a result of our use of Agent Orange.

[HereSince1628]

8. There's no need to thank me any more than the kids who took it to the street

to create the political climate that brought that awful debacle to an end.

All of us who were eligible and 'selected' made choices of one kind or another.

It was a time to learn big lessons about the meaning and consequences of choice.

[roguevalley]

9. god doesn't kill, people do because we have free agency

Do not kill
Do not judge
you are your brother's keeper
Love each other as you would yourself

Man can say anything he wants but we make the world we have alone
God can no more choose horrors for his beloveds than you can for your own kids
People do their own hate, murder, etc. God witnesses and mourns

[cleanhippie]

11. I would agree with you.

Not about what god doesn't do because there is no evidence such a thing even exists, but if you are right, that also means that god does not do any of the things we consider good, like miracles. At best, we are on our own.

[MarkCharles]

2. Abraham, the SAME man responsible for both the Christian and the Jewish, and the

Islamic traditions?

Is there ever anyone more challenging to all three branches of faith, someone of their own literature to challenge their own children with the paradoxes of ethical beliefs over rational thought?

THAT is the message of Abraham's dilemma to me. I know, few clerics will see it that way. I wonder how most religious folks from any of those three branches of religious thought come anywhere close to my interpretations: it's a challenge to children everywhere.

NO?

Now back to the original teachings here in Christianity, the modernist teachings, the "cherry picker" thinkings.

I welcome further thoughts on this fable. Yes, it's a fable.

[Jim__]

5. "Do you not think the 9/11 maniacs felt the same way about morality?"

Do you think the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were moral? Did they kill more innocent people than the attacks on 9/11? Do you think the US nuclear arsenal is immoral? Does the US justify its policies on religious grounds? The reality is that people fight wars. Is that reality moral? Is that reality dependent on religion? Does your morality demand that we all become pacifists? If the US became a pacifist country, do you think we would survive for another 25 years as a (relatively) free country?

Do I think that whatever "god" does or demands is good? No. Do I think that makes a fucking bit of difference to whether or not people will go on slaughtering each other? No. Do you? Really?

[GliderGuider]

10. Suffering and Salvation

"Suffering" is a human psychological response to situations that aren't the way we need/want/wish them to be. The way to end suffering is to cultivate what Buddhists call non-attachment - a response that looks something like apathy to outside observers (especially to those who are still attached).

From this perspective, "salvation" means the same thing as "ending suffering". Since I am the only one who can end my suffering, I am my only possible savior.

"The Problem of Evil" strongly implies that the classical conception of the Abrahamic God is a flawed human intellectual construct. On the other hand, once we go deeper than the level of self-inflicted psychological suffering all people are - by virtue of their very existence - perfect. And we all know that perfection is a required quality of a savior.

Being God should be enough for any of us.