Yahweh and Allah. Are they moral and ethical Gods?

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I disagree with your last as we are living in times that have never been this good.

Here is one example but if you check any of the stats for evil issues, you will see that per capita, we have never had it so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Do not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Regards
DL

In that case I have to say I refused to answer it because the question is phrased in an terribly dumbed down and political manner - so badly dumbed down that if I answered 'yes' or 'no' I'd be lying both ways. It has the same problems as "When did you stop beating your wife?" where any date or time given would be an admission to both being married and beating a spouse (have done neither) and saying "I haven't beat my wife" doesn't answer the 'when' part, it would also erroneously suggest that I have a wife. I just happen to give a $%^& about accurate communication.

The very first thing I said on entering this thread explains why the question is BS. How do you evaluate the morality of deities that no one agrees on the definition of? You can condemn the occasional adventurism of Christian and Muslim zealots, you can condemn 'bobble' literalism, that also happens to be a sectarian criticism rather than condemning a God, a Goddess, or anything of the like. Also, especially as something of a practicing Hermetic qabalist, I cannot condemn the metaphysical principles that underpin the old and new testament of the bible. I've run into too many people who can excavate some truly advanced concepts from those books, not just a few but entire systems. So many great authors I've read have come up with profound exegesis on the bible and if not in whole they've strongly exonerated the ideas that are behind various fragments of mystic knowledge that were rather cynically mismatched and sowed together by Ezra and Cyrus the Great at the end of the Jewish captivity, and it was a lot of the mystery contexts that were excavated back out by the so-called Jesus and evangelists. So much of the understanding one can gain in the involution of consciousness, the process of evolution, and the various tools of understanding how to use those tools to get back is right there both in the Hebrew alphabet and in the various neoplatonist sayings of people like John and Paul in the new testament. You can additionally talk, hand in hand, about Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy, the Keys of Solomon, and the four gospel writers.

It all intertwines. I don't see any of this factored into your question anywhere.

What you're demanding is so badly dumbed down and straight-jacketed that I can't give it any more value than click-bate and simply a garden variety internet flame warrior lampooning as a Gnostic. You seem to show, on a regular basis, that you have no idea what you're talking about on any of these topics (on an anthropology level as much as a religious one) and this kind of behavior just helps to perpetuate the idea that esotericists are dumb as bricks, off their meds, or are people who simply haven't discovered science and have yet to make the caterpillar to butterfly transition into good prim-and-proper reductive materialist Marxists.


We is you and the mouse in your pocket.

*suppository boots on*

I'm sorry bud, but you may really want to reconsider your conveyed authority as any sort of 'Gnostic Bishop'. You don't seem to know what Gnosticism is, you don't seem to know what the concept of the supernatural is about, either in the real or in the cognitive and subjective sense. I might be taking a wild guess here - you probably haven't read the Tripartite Tractate or the Pistis Sophia. It's like claiming your an alchemist, saying you don't believe in physical or spiritual alchemy however but you watched Full Metal and thought it was kinda cool, and somewhere between taking it on the cartoon on as part of your social identity and going out and chasing people with it you get the cartoon and the tradition mixed up and thus start calling yourself an alchemist.

I don't know if it's just me, but to carry one self with authority on a body of subject matter it's SOOO much easier to actually do the reading and research and earn that by your own merits than try doing the Jersey Shore route of just lampooning and posing without the merit. If all that's too much work - just go to comicons, play with Magic cards, be the comic book hero 'Gnostic Bishop', and keep the games as games - you might even get to wear a cape and have people enjoy the mysterious pseudo-mystical vagueries as long as you're willing to take it off and be you when the game is over. This whole thing might fly if no one here knew the first thing about these topics, or cared, but even then - what the heck do you gain from it? If you're looking to get people's attention and have them like you, had you considered just doing the legwork and just getting to know what it is you're talking about to start with?

While I'm typically pretty lenient on most matters, and I get that there's loads of junk out there about mysticism, gnosticism, the occult, etc.. it's one thing to run into someone who's just sincerely clueless vs. running into someone whose not only allergic to reading but who keeps throwing out the same rubbish that doesn't seem to have any rational thought behind it or any respect for history.

*suppository boots off*

I was raised in a orthodox Jewish home.
I was a Hebrew school drop out before my bar mitzvah.
I am not a Bible scholar.
I use I a lot
The Bible is read by me daily and I have read it cover to cover (66 Books) a few times.
Today and for over 30 years my Religion and Spirituality of choice is Christian.
My experience is to have explored but not gone deeply into the ways of Zen, "The Red Path" and others I choose not to post on this forum. Gnosticism not included other than to speed skim sites I found not linked from this thread.
God is
God was and will be Good
Good goes way beyond my brains capacity for the word.
Holy is also a word that also goes beyond...
My brain now went to the Graphic novel series The Beyonder so it's time to stop typ

Are you talking about this God?

https://vimeo.com/7038401

Is that God really good to you?

Regards
DL

When Jesus spoke Abba Why have you forsaken me, it was in reference to Psalm 22. Jesus quoted the Old Testament a lot.
The Psalm ends with
Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.

Your video restates points you have made in many ways. They have been posed to this righter in many forms.

I have been in prisons of different forms. I have had losses and brought my anger to my God. I will continue to do so and bring my discussions to folks face to face as well as my joy.
I hope everyone hear can find hope and action of doing the next right thing without kvetching.

Just finished yoga. The teacher led us to a last pose of savasanna with a sub text of gratitude. Her last words Be awesome.

In the 2009 Trek movie, old Spock was talking to young Spock. He said the traditional Live Long and Prosper seemed out of place - so he simply said Good Luck.
I like Charlie Brown's Good Grief, for in-resolved grief has led this Aspie, off balance.

Eh. Thanks.

Don't turn your back on your God. He cannot be trusted.

Regards
DL

Shalom.
Your welcome.
5 Trust in Adonai with all your heart;
do not rely on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him;
then he will level your paths.


As far as my house we will trust The Lord.

Shalom
Zvi

A man who wants to be a slave.

http://imgur.com/IBroXK9

Regards
DL

Since, according to the holy books, god is the absolute moral authority, he is a moral god pretty much by definition.

Compared by human standards, the yahweh of the old testament wasn't ethical though, attacking leaders by killing the firstborn of their subjects, to give one example.

Also, since the quran acknowledges jesus as "another prophet of allah", it is clear that yahweh and allah are one and the same being (assuming it/they exist in the first place), so naming both is redundant

Not to Christians and Muslims.

I agree with your moral view of a vile demiurge Yahweh, as well as Allah, if they are the same.

Regards
DL

Still curious what you say about drlaugh's remark above. New Testament often refers to Old Testament. Jesus repeatedly pointed to the Torah and prophets as valid. He never distanced himself from it in any respect. The God from the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same. What's not the same is the Convenant
First Covenant is a difficult one, but take this: by the law comes the knowledge of sin and death
Will it be possible for people not to know their unrighteousness, but receive, really accept grace? Or is that a hinderance to those who would receive Christ by grace through faith?

The bible says that once God says a thing, it is forever, so if you accept a new testament, you are going against your own bible. You are insinuation, indirectly, that there was something wrong with what God had drawn up as a covenant.

As to what the scribes put in Jesus' mouth, you will note how he goes against the holy books by allowing a man to work on the Sabbath with impunity by saying that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

This also infers that religions and God are made for man and not man for Gods.

Now. To your immoral use of Jesus as your scapegoat. Care to discuss the morality of what you are doing and asking your God to accept. First a link for you then an argument if you care about your immoral stance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKNup9g ... gest-vrecs

Human sacrifice is evil and God demanding one and accepting one is evil.

Those trying to profit from that evil are evil. Do just a bit of thinking and you will agree.

Imagine you have two children. One of your children does something wrong – say it curses, or throws a temper tantrum, or something like that. In fact, say it does this on a regular basis, and you continually forgive your child, but it never seems to change.

Now suppose one day you’ve had enough, you need to do something different. You still wish to forgive your child, but nothing has worked. Do you go to your second child, your good child, and punish it to atone for the sins of the first?

In fact, if you ever saw a parent on the street punish one of their children for the actions of their other child, how would you react? Would you support their decision, or would you be offended? Because God punished Jesus -- his good child -- for the sins of his other children.

Interestingly, some historical royal families would beat their slaves when their own children did wrong – you should not, after all, ever beat a prince. The question is: what kind of lesson does that teach the child who actually did the harm? Does it teach them to be a better person, to stop doing harm, or does it teach them both that they won't themselves be punished, and also that punishing other people is normal? I know that's not a lesson I would want to teach my children, and I suspect it's not a lesson most Christians would want to teach theirs. So why does God?

For me, that’s at least one significant reason I find Jesus’ atonement of our sin to be morally repugnant – of course, that’s assuming Jesus ever existed; that original sin actually exists; that God actually exists; etc.

Having another innocent person suffer for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.

Do you agree?
If not, please show how it is morally and legally good to punish the innocent instead of the guilty, bearing in mind that all legal systems think that punishing the guilty is what is justice.

Regards
DL

Thanks for your detailed reaction!
Still I guess there's something missing: God was not just punishing another child, Jesus is the incarnation of God on earth, God is himself taken the burden of our guilt and not just anybody else.

Gnostics perhaps deny the divinity of Jesus, but in "traditional" Christianity there's no problem with the dogma that Jesus is carrying the punishment, cause it's God himself carrying it on his own shoulders.

1Peter 1:20 0 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

You go ahead and think that God chose himself, to sacrifice himself, to himself, to appease his own wrath, if you like, ---- but that notions is not exactly intelligent.

All good justice seeks to punish the guilty instead of the innocent so how do you see punishing the innocent as good justice?

Regards
DL

This is a difficult one, don't think too easy about it

In Christianity there are two things that are both important, there's a dynamic between them:
- On the one side there's the belief that we humans are so filled with injustice, that you will lose all hope of being redeemed, but rather expect severe punishment from God.
- On the other side there's the belief that God's grace is so strong, that it is open to everyone.
- One moment you can belief that you're so full of injustice, accepting grace would feel like "stealing" it, because you don't deserve it
- Another moment you can belief it's also there for you, even if you don't deserve it, because of grace
- On the one side this leads to a deeper knowledge of sin
- On the other side you can get a deeper sense of God's grace
- One thing we learn in the Old Convenant
- The other in the New

I guess the dynamic between these two things is imporant. You see, these two things are two extremes. And an individual has only a limited ability to tolerate extremes. When a person is put too much or too long between two extremes, this leads to a state wherein the individual will cannot act, cannot choose, and where another will then can assume control. God's will can assume control.

In Gnosticism this balance seems lost in some way, when you skip the Old Convenant

So difficult that you ignored the issue.

Not surprising that you would try to deflect from it like all good hypocritical Christians seem to do.

Regards
DL