God and Egypt question.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical story of Moses going to Pharoah asking to let his people go, the plagues, you know the story. Anyways I've been wondering why God kept "hardening" Pharoah's heart even after Pharoah says he would let them go. It doesn't make any sense to me, it just looks like God is actively trying to keep them there so he could show off his powers. Also why does he seem to have to fuck over the people who had no choice in the matter, destroying their livestock, their children, etc. It just seems completely unnecessary. Anybody able to explain it?

[Zostrianos]

The explanation that's generally given (by Christian exegetes and apologists) is that this was God's way of demonstrating his power to the Israelites - if he hadn't, the Pharaoh would have probably given in and let them go, so God had to step in and manipulate him just so he could demonstrate his power by drowning the Pharaoh's army (I know it's nonsensical, but apologists bend over backwards to justify everything in the Bible, including the terrible atrocities committed by God, which are seen as part of a "greater plan")

[Ocean Seal]

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical story of Moses going to Pharoah asking to let his people go, the plagues, you know the story. Anyways I've been wondering why God kept "hardening" Pharoah's heart even after Pharoah says he would let them go. It doesn't make any sense to me, it just looks like God is actively trying to keep them there so he could show off his powers. Also why does he seem to have to fuck over the people who had no choice in the matter, destroying their livestock, their children, etc. It just seems completely unnecessary. Anybody able to explain it?
You have to consider the mode of production under which the Old Testament was written. It was written during the second mode of production, a time long before internationalism or even a national identity were formed. Moreover, the most important identity was the tribal identity which was often coupled with religion. In turn, the deity must represent the tribe and only the tribe, it was similar with other tribal gods, the lives of others didn't matter as much as the lives of the tribesmen.

[bcbm]

God is a dick...

If god was real and merciful why would I have to put up with teapartyers at every goddamn march I go to? Thats just spiteful and not in her/his job description.


i know things are pretty laid back here but please try not to make spam posts thanks

[artanis17]

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical story of Moses going to Pharoah asking to let his people go, the plagues, you know the story. Anyways I've been wondering why God kept "hardening" Pharoah's heart even after Pharoah says he would let them go. It doesn't make any sense to me, it just looks like God is actively trying to keep them there so he could show off his powers. Also why does he seem to have to fuck over the people who had no choice in the matter, destroying their livestock, their children, etc. It just seems completely unnecessary. Anybody able to explain it?

Ask this to god

[Elysian]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

[Ele'ill]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

But god isn't telling me this, you are.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Anyone who self-identifies as an Anarcho-Calvinist is not only a troll but an obvious one who is probably just seeing how long he can needle the board without getting hammered.

[Zukunftsmusik]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

:rolleyes:

@ A Revolutionary Tool: What RedBrother said. The Jewish God was a tribal God, the Jews/the nation of Israel was the chosen people. Also, God in the first testament is generally a punishing God, I think, while he in the second is forgiving (again, generally). Meaning that God doesn't crush cities or send plagues or locusts on cities in the new testament. He has a different role.

[RGacky3]

There are many different explinations, one being that its a figure of speach, i.e. its not god making him do anything, another explination is that he allowed something to happen, another explination was that he forced it so as to show his Godship, there is buy no means a consensus on it though.


God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

Don't expect ANYONE to take your faith seriously if your gonna be as dismissive as that, and they would have good reason to not take your faith seriously.

[Elysian]

My point is, our sense of morality and goodness comes from the ultimate good which is God. So one cannot judge God based on his actions; rather, we must assume that because his nature is good, his actions will lead to a greater good, which we may or may not perceive immediately.

As a spiritual man, I believe that God alone is good and the relative 'good' we see in this world is merely a reflection of God's supreme goodness. Hence, questioning God isn't relevant for me - because on what basis will I question him?

[GoddessCleoLover]

Calvinists among other types of Christians believe as does Elysian, but to my mind such notions tend to demoralize efforts to improve things in the here and now in favor "pie in the sky, by and by, when you die".

[eyeheartlenin]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

I don't mean to sound like a know it all or to be unkind, but Elysian's statement above is slightly un-informed. One of the most challenging undertakings in theology is the question of theodicy, i.e., whether God is just, given the presence of innocent suffering in the creation over which God reigns.

I have always thought that theodicy is the Achilles' heel of theism: most people live long enough to see their parents become feeble, ill, and worse, and to watch them suffering at the close of their lives. Obviously, there are lots of children in the world who, although perfectly innocent, suffer terribly. One could say that the lives of many, if not most, people outside of the metropolis, the industrialized countries, are tragic, through no fault of their own.

In the twentieth century, entire countries and nationalities were made to suffer; in the face of all that suffering, God could be perceived as either uncaring or unable to intervene, and theodicy, human experience challenging theism, is one front on which faith supplies us with no satisfying answer, as of yet.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

The explanation that's generally given (by Christian exegetes and apologists) is that this was God's way of demonstrating his power to the Israelites
That's what I was thinking but I just wouldn't expect people to actually use that as an explanation for some reason. Seems kind of like a total dick move imo.

Ask this to god
He never answers...


God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.
:blink:

Yeah that doesn't really help coming from an atheist perspective. A better question would be how do Christians justify that. Answering "God is good" is not really helpful, it just makes me shake my head.

[roy]

My point is, our sense of morality and goodness comes from the ultimate good which is God. So one cannot judge God based on his actions; rather, we must assume that because his nature is good, his actions will lead to a greater good, which we may or may not perceive immediately.

As a spiritual man, I believe that God alone is good and the relative 'good' we see in this world is merely a reflection of God's supreme goodness. Hence, questioning God isn't relevant for me - because on what basis will I question him?

If our sense of morality comes from an unquestionable source, then why do we all have different morals? Why not question God on the basis that the world he created is supremely stuffed up?

[Astarte]

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical story of Moses going to Pharoah asking to let his people go, the plagues, you know the story. Anyways I've been wondering why God kept "hardening" Pharoah's heart even after Pharoah says he would let them go. It doesn't make any sense to me, it just looks like God is actively trying to keep them there so he could show off his powers. Also why does he seem to have to fuck over the people who had no choice in the matter, destroying their livestock, their children, etc. It just seems completely unnecessary. Anybody able to explain it?

Back to the original poster's question, I was thinking about the whole hardening of the Pharaoh's heart a few months ago, though was not asking the same question as you.

I would have to mostly agree with Poimandres and Redbrother as to theologically "why" God hardened the Pharaoh's heart.

The question I was thinking about a few months ago, if we are going to be talking about this in the dimension of Abrahamic religion, was, was the Pharaoh, then, actually even an enemy of the Hebrews and YHWH at all? According to the Bible, God was the one who caused the Pharaoh's heart to be hardened to begin with, which also means God also allowed for the Egyptian pagan religion to reign before and even after the Exodus - thus, again, if we are sticking to Abrahamic theology, and God is the one behind all this to begin with, how could it be that the Pharaoh and the ancient Egyptian religion were anything but loyal to YHWH in carrying out God's will?

This is where the concept of God, I believe, in Judaism is much more like the concept of the Tao, or the concept of Dharma (not to be confused with Karma) in Hinduism, than the personal savior God, and, ironically, democratizer of ancient Egyptian ascension theology, Jesus.

[Astarte]

My point is, our sense of morality and goodness comes from the ultimate good which is God. So one cannot judge God based on his actions; rather, we must assume that because his nature is good, his actions will lead to a greater good, which we may or may not perceive immediately.

As a spiritual man, I believe that God alone is good and the relative 'good' we see in this world is merely a reflection of God's supreme goodness. Hence, questioning God isn't relevant for me - because on what basis will I question him?

There is actually something to be said about this. The Platonic "Ultimate Good" ... this same idea has come up on other threads, where I mentioned that Hermes Trismegistus relates the "ultimate good" to the "ultimate truth", so that what is "good" is what is "true".

Thus, what is "true", are those things that remain the most unchanged over long periods of time. After all, how can something be "true", that is not always true to itself, as in identical to itself if it is always changing, decaying, or whithering away, i.e. being negated.

Besides natural and dialectical laws which are forces which act on the material world, what material objects are the most true things in the material world? The stars and celestial objects.

Besides the celestial bodies, ancient people also conceptualized reality and all its natural and dialectical laws into a monotheistic god, or godhead, which governed the celestial bodies and through them all things on earth, therefore, the abstract spheres of Heaven (over the 7th sphere), not visible like the ancient "seven planets" in the sky, were attributed to being everlasting hidden realms (the stars as windows to heaven) - where the godhead resided - a place of sheer "Goodness" and "Truth" and Permanence which ordered the courses of the stars and all things.

Again, this thought is reminiscent of Dharma - that all is a cycle with a greater plan - in non-hermetic and non-gnostic Abrahamism the conception of "Good" can tend to become extremely "streamlined", so that we are not even told exactly what, theologically, is "Good", and why it is "Good", but rather are just told "God is Good".

[Revolution starts with U]

But the stars wither nd die too. What is true is what corresponds to reality, what is good is all that exists... even the bad things:thumbup1:

[The Jay]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

Prove that god is good please.

[Revolution starts with U]

Prove that God is...

But in his case hes going to be perfectly fine with making that assumption, nd knows it from a personal connection he couldn't explain to you if he tried. You have to know it yourself

[Zostrianos]

I was discussing the question of God's brutality in the Old Testament with a Jewish mystic on another forum, and he had an interesting perspective on it: his idea of God was that he is an impersonal force that acts in accordance with the macrocosm and has little regard for individuals. He used the analogy of a farmer who wants to plant crops: to do so he'll have to dig the earth, and in doing so he will likely kill many ants and bugs that live in the ground, and destroy ant colonies, but he still does it because his intent is to plant crops, and the presence of ant colonies is irrelevant (it probably doesn't even occur to most farmers). Humans then would be the ants, and God is the farmer.

[El Chuncho]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

I am sorry but the genocides in the Old Testament - that of Amalek, Amorites, Caanites, the cities under King Og and King Sihon - are not good no matter how much you try to peddle your religious views. The claim that we only consider these actions as evil due because we do not understand them is illogical nonsense. Genocides can never be good, cutting babies out of pregnant womens' wombs can never be good, raping women and children can never be good. In short, if your god did the things he is meant to have done in the Old Testament, he is not good but evil. Either believe that the Bible is true, including the genocides, and admit that he is not good, or ignore them and claim they are the writings of man, and thus you can technically still believe in your god. I do not like your faith, but I'd at least have more respect for you if you didn't accept most of the OT as fact.

Sorry. :rolleyes:

1 Samuel 15:2-3
''Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.''

Doesn't sound particularly ''good'' to me. Guess I am at fault for not seeing how that is a loving and kind command by your god.



Anyone who self-identifies as an Anarcho-Calvinist is not only a troll but an obvious one who is probably just seeing how long he can needle the board without getting hammered.

Might gather all these quotes up and turn it into a petition to hand to the moderators. Elysian is not only an obvious troll, he is an unfunny one at that.

[Astarte]

Personally, I would like a thorough explanation of what exactly "anarcho-Calvinism" is.

My primary impression of Calvinism is that the "elect" are born elect, and nothing they can do can change it, and likewise, the non-elect are born non-elect, and can do nothing to change that...

I read one comment in which he basically said that "Good deeds" (charitable deeds) are the way to ascension. This is an interesting idea, and though it is not a bad one at all, I am not sure if it is the primary determinant of attaining ascension - my view on that is closer to the schools that profess it is mainly about the attainment of "Knowledge", but really I am going off on a tangent...

My question is, does "anarcho-Calvinism" differ from orthodox Calvinism in that the "elect" rather "earn" their way into heaven by way of, more or less, attaining good karma through works of good deeds? Or is it still Calvinistic in terms of the elect being pre-determined?

I think this is the primary question, theologically, as to whether "anarcho-Calvinism" is progressive or reactionary. But, then there is also the aspect of Calvinism which has to do with the idea of accumulation of wealth and capital as being indicators of "who is" elect and "whose not"...

I think Elysian should consider dropping Calvinism, the more I think about it from a historical perspective "Anarcho-Calvinism" wreaks of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism...

[Zealot]

God is good, so whatever he does is good. We may not be able to understand this now, but it's the truth.

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." - Isaiah, 45:7, from the King James Version, the real Bible.

As to the question, the only way to understand the Bible is to put yourself in the time period. Judaism was a tribal cult that considered themselves special above all other people. Thus, I'm not surprised to see something like this that seems nonsensical to us in the 21st century. Destroying children and animals becomes a cliche event in the Old Testament so, in the context of the Bible taken as a whole, it's not surprising.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I was discussing the question of God's brutality in the Old Testament with a Jewish mystic on another forum, and he had an interesting perspective on it: his idea of God was that he is an impersonal force that acts in accordance with the macrocosm and has little regard for individuals. He used the analogy of a farmer who wants to plant crops: to do so he'll have to dig the earth, and in doing so he will likely kill many ants and bugs that live in the ground, and destroy ant colonies, but he still does it because his intent is to plant crops, and the presence of ant colonies is irrelevant (it probably doesn't even occur to most farmers). Humans then would be the ants, and God is the farmer.
I don't see how one can have this view when it seems God seems pretty damn interested in the smallest of things people did in the Old Testament. He created the planet, created us in His image, etc. He constantly made whole people suffer over some petty thing one person would do, he constantly got pissed off about stuff people did that were against His teachings, even killed everybody on the planet one time because we were all so immoral according to him. He even picked out what they could and couldn't eat, how they could plant their crops, how to make their clothes, etc. It seemed like He really really cares about us, although not in a very healthy way for us.

[eyeheartlenin]

I am sorry but the genocides in the Old Testament - that of Amalek, Amorites, Caanites, the cities under King Og and King Sihon - are not good no matter how much you try to peddle your religious views. The claim that we only consider these actions as evil due because we do not understand them is illogical nonsense. Genocides can never be good...

El Chuncho ("the unsociable one" or "the jinx") is on to something here: The problem of the genocides in the Old Testament has distressed some conservative Christians. There are people in evangelicalism, of very reactionary views, who repudiate the standard evangelical belief that the Bible is inerrant, that is, without any mistakes, precisely because they are deeply disturbed by the genocides connected with the Israelites' conquest of Canaan (but that apparently doesn't shake their theism).

And Astarte has impressively described the contradiction at the heart of so-called "anarcho-Calvinism."