From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re:      Re: God Is Unfair
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 08:06:28 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.024754.27590@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>In article <9211112007.AA27824@inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com>, I3150101@DBSTU1.RZ.TU-BS.DE (Benedikt Rosenau) writes:

>>Further, can you give stringent evidence that your interpretation of the
>>passage is the right one? That it was what your god meant when it destructed
>>sodom/invented the fabula of destructing sodom? It rather looks as if another
>>chain of theologic pseudo reasoning that aims at making the brute base of its
>>beliefs more palatable for our 'enlightened' times.
>
>You can't have it both ways.  If you criticize traditional religion for
>being ancient and single-minded and inflexible, you can't turn around
>and complain that my interpretation is flawed because it's too modern
>and ambiguous and flexible.

I think the problem is that the Bible quite obviously preaches a distasteful
message.  I suppose it's admirable that you do all you can to obfuscate the
true message of the Bible, but there really ought to come a time when you 
throw the damn thing away and give up on trying to get it to say something
that it doesn't say.  I'm not at all convinced that even with all the 
obfuscation, the psychological impact still isn't very harmful.  In any 
event, it certainly seems to me as if you're playing with fire.  I honestly
don't think that there is much place for God mandated slaughter and genocide
in a book that is supposed to be used for teaching morality.

>What do you mean by "stringent evidence that my interpretation is the
>'right one'"?

I think what he means is that it is obvious that you're desperately
trying to extract a sane message out of an insane book.  But there
is only so far that you can go with approach, and it's dangerous
because it can easily backfire.  I'm sure that I could, with the
appropriate mental gymnastics, extract the message from _Mein Kampf_
that Jews are fine people, but I doubt if that would be the best way
of conveying such a message.

>>To rephrase it, what you do is to stretch and to bend an old superstition
>>until it fits your world view. Others have done so, too, and have come to
>>different conclusions, including the direct opposite. I wonder how you
>>integrate Job into your lesson.
>
>You're right.  There isn't a single algorithm we can apply to the text to
>find the *authentic* interpretation of the passage.  But why do you find
>that objectionable??  You sound like a fundamentalist in reverse --- you're
>arguing that if I corrected the errors of my ways and learned to understand
>the One True Way to interpret the Bible I would see the brutal and irrational
>message which God intended me to see.

But don't you see that this whole business of "interpretation" is
just a way of trying to get the book to say something that it really
doesn't say?  You and I can read most books without the aid of an
"interpreter" and usually get pretty close to the same message from
it.  Why is it that with religious texts, there are such wildly
varying "interpretations", many of which seem to have very little
to do with what was actually written?  Could it be that you have
preconceptions about what you want the book to say, and do all
kinds of tapdancing to get the book to match your preconceptions?
Can you honestly say that if I read the OT and see a vicious God,
that it is *I* who am guilty of not interpreting the text properly?

>|> The fact remains: the god - as depicted in the bible - is a brutal one.
>
>Only if you read the Bible like Protestant inerrantist fundamentalists.
>That isn't the way we (Jews) read it.

Bullshit.  God commands slaughters.  God commands genocides.  You've
really got to be squinting at it in a funny way to say that this
doesn't depict a brutal God.

>|> Why should I believe a lesson that I consider to be a fable? The only thing
>|> the story would be good for (if at all) was to be a paradigm. Further, what
>|> can I learn from a lesson that serves the purpose of spreading the 'god'
>|> mental phage?
>|> 
>The lessons have positive moral value.  The lesson that
>doing right is more important than honoring authority
>has vast social consequences whether you believe in
>God or not.  The lesson that one should avoid making
>the innocent suffer for the wrongs of the guilty
>also has vast consequences whether you believe in
>God or not.

Yes, these are excellent lessons.  But for the life of me, I can't
think of a worse way to teach them than trying to squeeze them
out of a book which quite clearly teaches the opposite.

>The lesson of mercy (the Noah-Abraham-Moses
>progression) is very important --- very relevant
>for our recent times when both major US presidential
>candidates supported the death penalty :-( .

Why is it necessary to show a progression when teaching morality?
I would think that showing what a bunch of barbarians we used
to be, should fall into the realm of history, not morality.

>If you think these are good lessons, then they should be
>taught to your children.  Otherwise they will assimilate
>the values around them and grow up more cruel
>and intolerant and authoritarian than you might wish.

The lessons are excellent, and if I were to choose to have children,
I would definitely teach them.  However, I choose not to have children
because there are too many cruel, intolerant, and authoritarian idiots
about, and because of this, I have little hope for the future.  And I
think that one of the biggest reasons that there are so many cruel,
intolerant, and authoritarian idiots about, is that our culture teaches
morality from a book which depicts a cruel, intolerant, and authoritarian
idiot of a God.  I do not accuse you Rob of being any of these things.
In fact, you seem relatively sane.  But I think you are that way
in spite of the Bible, not because of it.
--
Should the human race not be extinguished by a nuclear war, it will degenerate
into a flock of stupid, dumb creatures under the tyranny of dictators who rule
them with the help of machines and electronic computers.  This is no prophecy,
just a nightmare.  -- Max Born.   **** dgraham@bnr.ca    My own opinions. ****