NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/atheism/24564

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From: [e-mail] (Andrew Hilmer)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Date: 30 Dec 1992 10:25:12 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department, Oregon State University
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Scott S Parish ) writes:
>jwest@wisc (Jeff West) writes:
>
>>    1.)  Why did your god "deliever into the hands of Satan" such a
>>         righteous man as Job?  Why did your god need to torture a
>>         true believer?  Wasn't his obedience and faithfulness enough?
>>         Or is it just your gods form of entertainment?
>
>Satan was the one coming before God accusing Job of only serving God
>for the cash, land, camels, sheep, etc.  So, to prove Satan wrong He
>allowed Satan to rake Job over the coals.  It wasn't so much to punish
>or torture (as you put it) Job, as to put Satan in his place.
><minor deletia>

Why couldn't God have simply done the Jedi mind trick on Satan and made
him understand how Job was faithful? Why couldn't God have known this
on his own and told Satan to fuck off? Why couldn't God suddenly hit
himself on his forehead, say "DOH! I'm omnipotent! If I don't like
Satan, I can just make him nonexistant. If I want humans to be good,
well, I'll just define "good" and make all people it. End of parable.
End of Bible. End of point.

Elsewise, what IS the point? God is big and nasty and he can cause all
kinds of angst and whatnot in us poor humans by giving us these nasty
nihilistic parables to make us despair in his glory so we can be bored
to tears in the afterlife of our choice. Blah. So Job had a nifty old
age. I imagine that God could have just made him grateful with the
flick of an omnipotent ganglion. Maybe after all the nastiness he just
went completely psycho: "Yeessss, massa, wa'evah massa. Got me a new
woman to have? Got me some noo chidren? Waaal, I really don't ca'ah
'bout the ol' model. Ah knows you is real good."

Job was the ultimate slave. I spit on this victimization of humanity.
Can the tradition of the Book be this all-enlightening work that
promises happiness as a reward to a slavery to an ideal and a being
that is capricious, cruel and wonderful at the same time? Doesn't the
contradiction get into the brain and cause a little bit of deep pain?

Perhaps the authoritarian God(s) of the middle eastern Book use
this pain as the demonstration of the central sadomasochistic appeal of
His Holy Obscenity. "Despair before ME, slime. Let me twist the knife a
little more. Mmmmmm, you like it, don't you, BITCH! Ha HA!" Where is the
difference between God and Satan? ... between Go(o)d and (D)evil? The
fact that God would ally himself with Satan in the Forked One's little
perverted experiment does not bode well for fundy-style absolute
morality.

Am I getting carried away? Maybe. The point that has been obliquely
hammered at is that given that the Job parable is accurate, God
actively condoned cruel action visited upon one of his most valued
slav... er, servants. The only justification given so far was that
God wanted to prove a point to The Bringer of LIGHT (and the rest of
us) that blind devotion will be rewarded, in opposition to those that
worship out of fear or avarice. I think that in response, I can only
offer the assertion that Job's Trial only lends credence to the
argument of fear. If you are a good little lab rat, you will endure
anything in expectation that it will stop one day.

Absolute ethical behavior is laughed at by the OT
Gawd. A slave doesn't trust his master unless the cruelty that has
been visited upon the slave strips him of any humanity outside the
context of Gawd the Massa.

To eternal hellfire with that ridiculous noise.

I find a much better explanation for the whole "shit happens"
bemoaning in the fact that the human search for a purpose comes
smack up against indifferent reality. God is Omnipotent and
Omniscient, and conceivably identical with the Universe. God
is very cruel at times, nice at others, kind of like fate or
chance, maybe. He has a higher purpose, sure, but doesn't
seem to make the internal machinations for it make sense. He
works in "mysterious ways". This comparison of God with reality
should make some sense out of why athiests reject God. It ain't
profitable. God was what makes things work, but we can examine
how things work without bringing God into it. When we think of
shit happening, we think of shit happening and leave God out. It
has become ludicrous to create elaborate explanations about why
the Universe (God) can be cruel.

andy

--
Andrew Hilmer -- The Truth is the Truth even if you choose to ignore it.
or... The Truth exists even if you can't really tell what the hell it is.
or... Well, reality is this big thing, ya know, and I'm just this little
thing, and, gee, I just like capitalizing things cuz I FEELS like it, see.