Heel!
Furthermore the LORD spoke unto me, saying: 'I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people;When I reed* these lines, what strikes me the harshest is that God has absolutely no qualms about starting over. I guess human beings look at the lives of the two million people He is about to destroy and say - there is value in keeping these people alive - even if they are sinners, perhaps there is still a spark of good in them and their good will overcome their bad. Perhaps their children or their children's children will produce the next Moses or Galileo.
let Me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.'(Deut 9:14)
But like a child who destroys the sand castle he spend the whole day working on to rebuild a better one, or like a writer to burns his manuscript, or like an artist who wipes the oil from the canvas, God decides that He can just start over and do as good a job, if not better. The notion of time invested in the current work is absent. The notion of effort is meaningless to God.
In a way, this aspect of God is almost a personification of the Universe. The Universe is indifferent to the lives of human beings. If we were to all perish in a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, the Universe would not weep. Instead, the cockroaches will survive, and perhaps, ten thousand years from now, some mutant shrew will evolve into the next sentient being and build a civilization which will start the next downward spiral toward its own destruction.
*Like George Bernard Shaw and Led Zeppelin, I've decided to drift from 'standard' orthography to make sure people understand my meaning correctly. In this case I want to make sure that people see I am using the present tense and not the past.
posted by e-kvetcher at 8:49 AM
15 Comments:
I always thought that the point of that whole exchange was that G-d wanted Moshe to fight for the people. I actually made up a shiur on this topic once; the idea being, what's the point of tefilla if G-d knows what the right thing is anyway? And the answer, basically was that sometimes G-d wants us to yell at Him. He's all like "ooh, look what I'm gonna do!" and He wants us to be like "G-d! Come on now, cut that out." It's a way of getting us involved. I mean, in the end, he did allow Moshe to convince Him out of it right? And how do you really *convince* an omnipotent, omniscient G-d of something? I think there's room to say He never really intended our destruction all along....
>God is an anthropomorphism of the Universe. The Universe is indifferent to the lives of human beings. If we were to all perish in a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, the Universe would not weep.
OK... so I edited it a bit. ;o)
This is one of the horrific beauties of pantheism. When you look at the Universe as God, then Epicurus's bomb kashe just melts away.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
Miri,
>I think there's room to say He never really intended our destruction all along....
I think that given the instances of God destroying multitudes of people (e.g. flood, Sodom & Gomorrah, Egyptians) I don't see the fact that God could decide to wipe everyone and start again that much of a stretch...
FU,
I am not really a pantheist per se, just wanted to approach this particular issue from a pantheistic pt of view...
This story reflects very badly on God. Luckily, it isn't true.
Interesting.
And then, we seem to have the exact 180 degree reverse where you have God concerned about the widow and orphan.
I think that the widow and orphan thing more prove that G-d is concerned about our being moral than about them per se.
FU-
"Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent."
This is where pantheists get into trouble. What's wrong with recognizing that G-d is in fact malevolent? If one wants to posit that He is Perfect, does that not mean Complete - all inclusive? Why then should He not be everything which is evil and ugly as well as everything which is beautiful and good?
Also, you neglect the point that perhaps G-d is the entire universe but also beyond it, and therefor something outside it as well.Which is to say, if we were all to perish, who's to say who/what would weep or not?
E-kvetcher-
"I don't see the fact that God could decide to wipe everyone and start again that much of a stretch..."
I don't think it's beyond Him either. But perhaps He tried to do the same thing with Sodom and Gomorrah, and no one argued? (I know supposedly Avraham argued; however it is possible to say that perhaps G-d wanted one of their own to argue - if they didn't value their own lives enough, maybe they weren't worth saving? Or, conversely, maybe they just had to go for whatever reason, but the situation with the Jews was a negotiable situation. I can't say for sure of course, I mean this is all just theory. But it could be argued, is all I'm saying.)
>But it could be argued, is all I'm saying
Of course it could be argued. Anything could be argued. I could put up a good argument why Hitler should have killed all the Jews...
Yes, but my point is that while we lack any sort of empirical evidence for one theory over another, my argument is basically as valid as yours. So I'm putting it up there. That's all.
>I think that the widow and orphan thing more prove that G-d is concerned about our being moral than about them per se.
This is a very odd way to spin things. The text says that God will hear their cries. That justice will be paid if they are not treated correctly. Geez, so much of the anger in Nach that the prophet talks about is Israel's lack of carrying for the more unfortunate. Amos mentions even how God saved the Philishtim and now you manage to somehow say its not really for their sake???????????
>Yes, but my point is that while we lack any sort of empirical evidence for one theory over another, my argument is basically as valid as yours. So I'm putting it up there. That's all.
You are beginning to sound very post-modern. Or midrashic. Or both.
How far do we take this in religion? There is never empirical evidence. I can come up with the most outlandish story that will still fit the events of the Bible and you can't prove that it is not right. But of course, Judaism takes a stand and says certain interpretations are wrong...
We don't consider Isaiah's suffering servant to be a description of Christ dying on the cross....
Miri,
>What's wrong with recognizing that G-d is in fact malevolent? If one wants to posit that He is Perfect, does that not mean Complete - all inclusive? Why then should He not be everything which is evil and ugly as well as everything which is beautiful and good?
I'm not sure how this shows anything wrong with Pantheism. Epicurus was asking a kashe on your typical theism. If the Universe is all the God there is, then it is certainly malevolent and cruel. However, most theists are particularly offended when you tell them that God is in fact cruel and malevolent. With all the cruelty in the world, how can there be a loving, all powerful being?
>Also, you neglect the point that perhaps G-d is the entire universe but also beyond it, and therefor something outside it as well.Which is to say, if we were all to perish, who's to say who/what would weep or not?
There certainly could be something beyond the Universe. Unfortunately I can't even imagine such a thing. Also a "Could be", especially something beyond my wildest imaginations, isn't very compelling. It does nothing for me.
E-kvetcher-
you need to distinguish between history and theology. Once you start mixing them up, you're already sunk.
"How far do we take this in religion? There is never empirical evidence. I can come up with the most outlandish story that will still fit the events of the Bible and you can't prove that it is not right."
Here's the thing though - the rabbinic Jewish tradition is actually built on disagreement. The point of the Talmud isn't really the psak - that's why people kept writing stuff. The point is the process, and the process is based on debate, ambiguity, and multiple valid possibilities. It's true that you can make stuff up to fit the Bible and no one can say you're wrong - and in fact that's what rabbis have done for thousands of years and are still doing today. (Every read the Tanach according to Artscroll?) I don't think there's anything wrong with that - I kind of think that's what G-d originally intended when He "put the Torah into our hands."
FU-
"most theists are particularly offended when you tell them that God is in fact cruel and malevolent. With all the cruelty in the world, how can there be a loving, all powerful being?"
I think the one of the important aspects of pantheism - as far as I understand it, which is admittedly limited - is that in fact, G-d is simultaneously evil and good. Bc He's EVERYTHING. That's kind of the point. I realize that a lot of people have a hard time with this concept, especially theists who need to focus on the good and get their hackles up when people try to say that G-d is bad. But the fact of the matter is that while there is so much suffering in the world, there is also so much beauty and so much joy. And the fact that the one exists should not negate the fact that the other exists. You need to take everything in together.
"Also a "Could be", especially something beyond my wildest imaginations, isn't very compelling. It does nothing for me."
The reason it's an interesting concept is because it lends support to the whole "He was before creation and will be after" bit of the theology. Whether or not it's practically relevant to us is of course another story.
Miri, my point is that it sounds like you're saying that any interpretation is a valid interpretation because we have no evidence to the contrary, which puts you into a whole new area of discussion. You could create an interpretation that Hamlet's goal was not to avenge his dead father at all. Instead he was a sleeper cell suicide agent of the prince of Norway and his mission was to destroy the ruling house of Denmark to make them vulnerable to the Norwegian invasion... But is that a reasonable interpretation?
"I don't think there's anything wrong with that - I kind of think that's what G-d originally intended when He "put the Torah into our hands."
But you have to realize that there was also a set of interpretations which considered wrong. For example, the original Christians were just Jews that happened to have interpreted the sacred texts of Judaism to fit into their theology. But we do not accept their interpretations as valid, right?
E-kvethcer-
anything that more or less falls within the bounds off what we're provided with textually, yeah, basically. The problem with your Hamlet analysis is that Hamlet spends alot of the text expositing about exactly why he's doing what he's doing - so within the text of the play, there really isn't room for that interpretation. Or at least, it would be an incredible stretch.
"the original Christians were just Jews that happened to have interpreted the sacred texts of Judaism to fit into their theology. But we do not accept their interpretations as valid, right?"
I don't really think the original Christians were interpreting the text in any particularly new way - they just happened to think that Jesus was the Messiah, the way Rabbi Akiva thought Bar Kochba was the Messiah. They both turned out to be wrong. But textually, Christianity didn't get fuzzy until Paul came around and caused the New Testament.
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