#theological

[sophieinwonderland]

"I've never heard an atheist criticize Satan, only God. Why is that?"

This came across my Twitter feed prompting the following thread nobody is ever going to see because Twitter sucks. That felt like a waste, so I decided to share it here.

Other people in the thread already went more into the fact that atheists don't believe in God or Satan, and are criticizing the believers more than the character. But I thought it was also important to point out that, within a literalist reading of the text, God is just... so much worse by contemporary standards of morality.

All of this, by the way, is what God directly did in the text. It's not even dealing with things relating to the problem of evil, and that God could be argued to be responsible for all suffering on Earth.

On this blog, I generally try to maintain a respectful tone to people's beliefs, but I do wonder sometimes if that's the wrong approach. Because TBH, the biblical literalist disturbs me to my core.

If you've read the Bible and are seeing God command Moses to brutally stone somebody to death because they gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and you are thinking "this is a just and fair being of infinite goodness who I want to follow and pledge my eternal soul to," that speaks to a seriously bent moral compass.

This is why I just can't truly respect the biblical literalist Christians as people.

You want to believe in a creator god? Cool! Fairies? Goblins? Aliens making crop circles? Extra-dimensional beings visiting us? Awesome! You do you!

I mean, in the plural community, I've encountered plenty of beliefs of spiritual entities that seem weird to me. But I still respect them. I respect that those people have those beliefs and I respect people's right to believe them.

But I really can't respect someone who believes the Bible word for word, and worships an invisible interdimensional authoritarian mass murderer who wants to punish everyone who doesn't bend the knee with eternal suffering/death. Because this isn't simply a matter of belief for me. It's a matter of morality. If I believed in the god of the Bible as a being that existed, I still wouldn't worship it! Because the god of the Bible, as presented in literalist interpretations... is evil.

But Satan (or the various characters interpreted as Satan) as presented in the Bible... Like, the Job thing was messed up. But basically everything else was just tempting people to disobey the violent genocidal authoritarian creator.

So again, while the main reason atheists criticize God instead of Satan is that neither exist and the criticism is aimed more at the believers, God is also just the more evil character between the two.

[arrayed-in-purple]

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲𝐫𝐬 (𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟖)

𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫: 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐫

[generallemarc]

Christian/Jewish theological buffs, am I missing something in regards to 1 Samuel 15 and the destruction of Amalek?

My translation is the New American Bible revised version, and its footnotes can sometimes be a bit imprecise. At this point and several others it points out that the sacred authors often phrased things as "the Lord said etc etc" when it was actually just a prophet saying it and not a literal proclamation from God, because prophets were seen as being constantly speaking for God and thus there was no difference, as they saw it, between "the Lord said to Israel" and "Samuel said to Israel", for example. This is highlighted in 1 Samuel 15:3 regarding what appears to be a command by God to kill literally everyone in Amalek, man woman and child; the footnote brings back up the substitution of "the Lord" for the prophet in question, pointing out that the supposed command from God was just how semi-nomadic tribes in the region operated at that time(which seems like they wanted to say it was a retroactive justification but weren't allowed to) and that God would never command the slaughter of the innocent.

All well and good, but there then seems to be a contradiction a few verses later, where Samuel rebukes Saul for not destroying livestock and other valuables, as "God" had supposedly told him to destroy absolutely everything. This seems like a textbook case of a prophet abusing their authority, pre-David no less, as Samuel is now saying that God is upset that Saul didn't obey a command that wasn't actually from Him. But the footnotes seem to now operate under the idea that the Lord really had chosen to strip Saul of the crown because of this incident, which makes them contradict themselves on the same page, or at least it seems like it. Am I missing something here? Any theological perspective with knowledge of the text is appreciated, Christian or otherwise. I believe that Samuel is a single book in the Tanakh as opposed to two, if there's any confusion on my numbering.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Theological Seminary in Tambov, Russia

Russian vintage postcard

[thepatristictradition]

Suffering is not What You Think

(The Penitent Magdalene)

So often you hear, when people leave their churches, their gripes surround suffering. Why would God allow suffering? Why would God allow babies to be murdered and die of cancer? Why would He allow war and cannibalism and pedophilia? Why did God allow me to see my mother die? Why did he allow this or that?

What I cannot help but notice is that the people saying this are never talking about their own suffering.

"Why does God allow war?" said a cowardly young man who has never seen bloodshed. "Why does God allow cancer?" said a woman who is perfectly healthy. "Why does God allow abuse?" said a man who had the privilege of watching the sex abuse crisis of the RCC play out on the TV screen and not in the sacristy. "Why did God allow my mother do die?" said a daughter who is still alive.

We may mourn, and we ought to mourn, the sorrows and the fallenness of this world, but witnessing suffering is not the same as suffering.

(Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone)

This was never more clear to me than when I spent a summer arguing with my anti-natalist, atheist sister. She would spend hours berating my poor mother and father for the heinous crime of having children. During one of these spats, my sister turned to me and said, "How can you support natalism?" which she said like a slur, "your grandmother abused you from the moment you were born."

Now, this is true. Truer than she knew, or, if I have it my way, will ever know. My grandmother (who was my and my sister's primary caregiver) always despised me because I was born with a deformity. Her hatred only intensified when my sister was born. My sister was, in her eyes, perfect. As a child, my sister would ask for me to be abused in front of her, for her amusement, by my grandmother.

My sister witnessed plenty of my suffering, but she experienced not an iota of it. And yet, she used my suffering as a way to say that all of human life is suffering. She used it to discredit the worth of all human life.

(Ophelia)

I find this is always the case. When I was an atheist, I was confused by people who brought up the "problem of suffering". I never viewed my suffering as something that made my life worse. Even as an atheist and a child, I saw clearly how the suffering I experienced and was experiencing was driving me toward a larger purpose. This pattern of thought followed me into the sexual abuse I experienced in middle school and into my conversion.

My atheist associates, whose suffering I know well, likewise never cite their suffering as a reason for their disbelief. When you really get down to it, "God is a big meanie" is not a reason to reject His existence, say these associates of mine.

It is only being a witness to suffering-- usually an impotent witness-- that causes this specific kind of apostasy. Even if my sister had stopped encouraging it, I still would have been abused. Her behavior would have made little difference. It is the same for the sufferings I listed earlier. Regardless of what we tell ourselves, no boycotting, no Instagram post, and not even tax evasion or immolation will stop the Genocide Israel is purporting against the Palestinians. We, far removed, poor, and powerless foreigners, are impotent. We can do nothing to help someone with a terminal illness not die-- it's terminal. We can do nothing to help the kidnapped children we see on the news, taken from their homes halfway across the country. We cannot bilocate, live forever, or have infinite money.

When these people say, "Why does God allow suffering?" they are actually asking, "Why does God allow my impotence?" The implication is that, of course, they would solve these sufferings if only they were not impotent. Is this the case? I don't know; who am I to judge the heart of another man?

Whatever the case, it is clear to me that witnessing suffering is of some different metaphysical nature than the actual experience of suffering. I've written a little about this privately, so I will get around to expanding upon it in further posts.

[mrsandman42069]

bro what if god was an alien from alien and the baby jesus was that fucking thang that rips you in twain from inside and that's how Mary got virgin pregnant

[evilhorse]

Pretty sure that question’s your department, father.

(Daredevil Volume 8 #6)

[buddie-i-slitheredherefromeden]

Fight with my dad over theology has me contemplating going back to church