There is no condoning of raping wives in the bible. There are stories about it though, but the transgressors usually pay a heavy price for it. And the passages about killing babies and whatnot is from the poetic books of the OT. Jews (and some educated christians) view poetry prayer as a way to convey your feelings to god, so that the person might be unburdened. Again it does not condone it. I think you view the bible as something that was written by this god. It was written by people, believed to be inspired. The idea of "herem" or instructions from god to go pillage is a common ancient idea shared by many of the Semitic peoples of the time. I think you should go take a religion class so you can start to make more educated criticisms of the judeo-christians' torah/bible. It might ease your spirit as well. Hopefully you do not find this rude.

it's funny how vague some scripture reads, how much the verses can be interpreted in many ways, yet theists accuse psychics of doing the same thing....and we're wrong...

The Christian view seems the most obvious. This is a king - a man, who will RIGHTLY be called "might GOD, EVERLASTING Father." The Jewish interpretation of just a different kind of king seems to fall drastically short. Why do I say "rightly"? Because God is APPROVING of this person being called God and Everlasting - titles he has elsewhere reserved only for himself. But here he says that there will come a king who is rightly called those things. What will he do?

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Hard to imagine that meaning anything other than what it says.



As for the second part of your post. The problem is that you confuse an indicative with an infinitive. God is not saying "I will do this..." or "you should do this..." but is talking about what will happen when Israel is taken into captivity and ruled over. The fact that you try and attribute that to God being malevolent just shows that you are either ignoring context and grammar, or purposefully misapplying passages.

For the first part, I believe both Christians and Jews interpret that passage as a reference to the Messiah. The difference is that Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah and the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah to arrive. A great deal of the Bible is interpreted in many different ways and has surely been the source of countless killings.

For the second part, Isaiah 13 _clearly_ states that God will be inflicting his wrathful anger upon Babylon. You claim godlessblogger is making this assertion because he's ignorant of context, so let's provide some context.

Isaiah 13:5-6:

5 They come from faraway lands,
from the ends of the heavens—
the LORD and the weapons of his wrath—
to destroy the whole country.

6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near;
it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

...... or ......

Isaiah 13:9

9 See, the day of the LORD is coming
—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—
to make the land desolate
and destroy the sinners within it.

....... or ..........

Isaiah 13:19

19 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms,
the glory of the Babylonians' pride,
will be overthrown by God
like Sodom and Gomorrah.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2013&version=NIV

Tyler, if you don't think the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is malevolent then you either haven't read the Hebrew Scriptures or you don't know what the word malevolent means. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures routinely calls for vicious and brutal acts to be performed. Hell, at the request of Elijah, God even sent two bears to kill and devour FORTY TWO children just because they teased Elijah for being bald. The God described in the Hebrew Scriptures is a vicious, vindictive, malevolent asshole.

Yeah, again you leave out the context. Who is God judging? The wicked. The evil. The boastful. The ruthless. God is judging the Babylonians with the army of the Medes - but the Medes are still morally culpable for their own sins! and the Medes will later be judged - this is the point of many of the prophecies in Daniel.

There is also a great difference between justice and malevolence. God would be malevolent of he was just inflicting harsh judgment on innocent people. But God is holy and righteous. Now you may not believe this, but that is the God of the Bible. See, your complaint is not new. But it is a strawman. It does not allow ALL of the passages of the Bible to speak - it silences the ones it doesnt like.

The God of the Bible is shown to exercise his wrath - ofcourse. But the God of the Bible is also shown to be holy, righteous, and just. He is omniscient and knows the hearts of all men. So when people like you complain of his malevolence it is only looking at God's actions without looking at God's person.

Think of it like this. Lets say I told you that there was a man who took another man and injected him with poison til he died. He even announced it to everyone and let other people watch. You would rightly say that such a man is malevolent.

But, what if we took the people involved into view. The man was a judge and he was actually executing capital punishment on a man who had raped and brutally killed 30 girls under the age of 10. He had announced it in his verdict and the people who watched were the D.A. and the court officers. Far from being malevolent, this judge was acting in accordance with his person - his character, and his authority - as well as in the interest of seeking to uphold the law and seek out justice for the oppressed.

(continued from below because the formatting was getting too narrow)

Arrogant? You believe that the Ultimate Supreme Being in the Universe with Limitless Power who has Always Existed and Always Will Exist in INTERESTED IN THE SHIT YOU DO ON A DAILY BASIS. And you think I'M arrogant?

By your logic, the infants who were dashed to pieces on the rocks were actually being done a favor by the Medes. Woo! They get to go straight to heaven, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Wait, but the women were being punished with rape and the kids were being rewarded with murder? That's some powerful logic you have there. Oh, but the women deserved to be raped because they killed their children in sacrifice to God. But what about context? That was perfectly normal and natural in their time in history... and wait, wasn't Abraham going to kill his son as a sacrifice to God? So should Abraham be raped to death? Or is child sacrifice ok for Abraham because he was following YOUR God instead of someone else's?

Ok, thank you for admitting that you do not consider rape and murder to be wrong unless declared so by an invisible father figure and that you cannot determine any viable argument against them. Now we can discuss how to be good without God. In an absolutely free environment you have chaos and anarchy. No rules, no laws, nothing. Do you whatever you want, hurt whoever you want, take whatever you want, anything. This isn't conducive to survival or happiness. As a person who enjoys surviving and being happy that system doesn't work for me. Amazingly, I'm not alone in this feeling. Other people got together and decided that anarchy sucked and so we should put together some rules to protect ourselves. Ethical systems are created which value things that we decide to value. I personally value Honesty and Fairness. Whenever I am presented with an ethical or moral question, I rely on those values to guide my actions.

The tortured path of your logic desperately wants me to believe in an objective and supreme moral authority, but I don't buy it. Your mistake is that I argue about God's actions from the perspective of an absolute moral authority because the God and beliefs in the Bible describe an absolute moral authority. The point is that if this absolute moral authority actually exists it is either a) horrible, brutal, and violent or b) ignored on a regular basis throughout the Bible. Perhaps you believe in the Nixon-esque idea of "if [God] does it then it's not [immoral]." Is that your feeling? That God says, "Don't rape" so therefore it is wrong, but if God goes and rapes someone then that's totally fine?

The truth of the matter is that your Bible and history actually support the idea of subjective ethical systems and not absolute objective ones. The horrible, violent acts described in the Bible were totally normal for that time period. Slavery, rape, etc. However, as we've progressed over the centuries we have changed our minds about what constitues acceptable behavior in civilized society. Yourself included. You don't treat women like they do in the Bible because times have changed and as a society we've realized it wasn't the right thing to do. Yet, for some reason you still want to hold on to other specific things as objectively morally wrong.... but you're doing so subjectively. YOU, not God, are picking what you think is right and wrong but CLAIMING to merely be following the absolute and unchanging supreme moral authority.

super busy. Dont worry, I get email notifications. i kept it as new so when I have time to write a reply I will.

Are the children I referenced with Elijah deserving to be ripped apart by bears? Did an entire group of FORTY TWO children really deserved to be mauled and killed by bears just because they said, "Go up, bald-head! Go up!" and mocked Elijah for going to pray? Where is the context for that? Are you going to tell me that those FORTY TWO children all had raped and murdered other children and so they deserved to be eviscerated by bears?

You want to defend the orders handed down by God against Babylon because Babylon was full of wicked and evil people... and yet the orders to Israel's armies were to plunder all of the riches, murder every man, BASH all of the BABIES TO DEATH and to RAPE ALL OF THE WOMEN. Really? Which people are the evil and wicked people here? The Babylonians? Or the Israelites who are RAPING women and MURDERING BABIES in the name of God? Don't talk to me of context when you are clearly ignoring the context.

Is it ok to rape women and bash babies to death on the ground as long as God says it is ok?

"Are the children I referenced with Elijah deserving to be ripped apart by bears? Did an entire group of FORTY TWO children really deserved to be mauled and killed by bears just because they said, "Go up, bald-head! Go up!"

Where is that? I can't find it.

So what did the infants do to God that was so terrible that he would dash them to pieces? I don't know about you, but smashing babies to pieces sure sounds malevolent to me.

"Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes"

This is exactly what I am talking about. in context, God is not demanding the death of the infants by Israel's army. In fact, he is pronouncing condemnation on Babylon for their violence and is declaring that because of their heinous treatment of the peoples they have conquered, when they are conquered their conquerors will be violent with them.

Conext context context. Remember, these books where written in a historical time in a historical context. Study before you knee jerk react

I see, so then in context... it's totally ok to be violently and murderously brutal to _infants_ who haven't done anything wrong because God said their parents are too violent. How does the context make this any better?

Wow, do I really have to walk you step by step through reading comprehension 101? The original post, which inferred from the passage that God was commanding Israel to kill babies, was flat out wrong because in context, it was Babylon, no Israel doing the killing, and it is an indicative passage not an imperative one. It is stating what is going to happen, not saying what SHOULD happen. it would be like if I was describing what happened during the holocaust and what the people there suffered. I would be telling what happened (indicative) but not actually saying that I approve of such actions or telling my readers that they ought to do that action or ones like them.

Tyler, it's stating EXPLICITLY that this is what GOD'S ARMY will do. Babylon will be overthrown by God's Army. The infants will be dashed to pieces. No compassion will be shown to the children. If you want to try to pull the bullshit "reading comprehension" card then re-read the comment I posted 10 hours ago. You said that the reason the overthrowing army will be horribly brutal and violent to the children of Babylon is because the Babylonians were violent...but the chapter clearly states that it will be GOD'S ARMY that will be overthrowing Babylon. Is anyone in the scripture condemning these statements? Is anyone saying, "Oh no, God would never have his army do that to children..."

Again, clearly not able to read. the NEXT verse tells us who will do the killing - and I quote: "17 See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold." So according to Isaiah 13:17 who ransacks Babylon? The Medes. Funny... I thought God's people were the Israelites? You reveal again that you just find what you want to find. it says that God will bring judgment upon the Babylonians by allowing the Medes to conquer them. This again has nothing to do with God's approval of how the Mede's act nor is it anything like an imperative for believers to follow.

"17 See, I will stir up...."

God is sending them to brutally murder their children without compassion. God is sending them to rape all of the women.

"19 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians' pride, will be overthrown by God..."

God is taking this action. GOD is sending his ARMY to rape the women and murder the children.

Again, youre missing the point of the passage, the context, and the theology of the passage. The Babylonians were guilty of killing innocent children, raping women, sacrificing their children by putting them in giant clay cars and starving them to death or killing them by cobras, of slaughtering helpless towns, etc. God is declaring that they will receive the just due punishment. How will it happen? God will use another powerful kingdom, the Medes, to do so. BUT we also see later that the Medes are judged for their conduct! Again, God is not commanding rape or killing of infants since that is the VERY thing he is judging the Babylonians for and will judge the Medes for in the future! But this doesnt keep God from using one nation to over throw another. And Isaiah is still speaking in indicatives not imperatives.

Besides that, in order for you to be morally indignant about this, you must provide an adequate basis for real objective morality APART from God. If morality is not objective but socio-biological, then you have no basis for any moral evaluation. So good luck with that.

No, I'm really not missing the point, you just really want to rationalize it so that your God isn't a malevolent being. Yes, the passage is written as a prophecy. A prophecy that God will send his Army to dash the infants to pieces and rape all of the women. God is choosing his instrument of destruction for the Babylonians. But you're saying that he's going then murder all of the Medes too because they were violent assholes.... do you realize the cognitive dissonance there? That's the modern day equivalent of sentencing a rapist to be raped to death and then killing the guy who raped him to death even though the original guy's sentence handed down was to be raped to death. Or maybe the executioner would also be raped to death because the crime he committed was death by rape.

As you get slowly backed into the logic corner it is inevitable that you'll just try to change the subject and make it about needing God for the existence of morals. If you really want to talk about that I will, but on one condition: You must admit that if you found out tomorrow that God does not exist, that you would no longer find anything wrong with murder, rape, theft, etc.

No, I'm saying God, as the sovereign over all creation, is able to judge one nation through the actions of another nation, but that the second nation is liable for their own actions and HOW they overthrow the first nation. The prophet is merely telling that Babylon will be judged by God for their sin and they they will be over thrown and that the Medes will do to them as they had done to others. There is no cognitive dissonance nor is there anything morally unacceptable about it. We can think of something similar (though on a smaller less severe scale) with impeachment here in the US. One president is held accountable for their actions and is judged by the jury. But that does not mean the jury itself is unimpeachable or even fair themselves. Even school children can see this principle. One bully is beaten out by a bigger bully - but that doesnt mean the second bully is any better. But no one would say that the first bully didnt get what was coming to them. You are trust trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Its not in the passage. Notice that I am talking about the entire passage, in context, with history and literary devices, and you zero in on one or two words. The problem is that you keep trying to eisegete the text to make it say what you want it to, in order to make it easier for you to keep your poor argument for a malevolent God going.

But again, and this isnt a change of topic but cuts right to the heart of your statements. If there is no God, then there is no basis for objective morality. And if morality is not objective, then it is socio-biological and thus you would actually be acting in the greatest of intolerance in judging the moral actions of a different person, at a different time, and a different place. But, you clearly believe that there is an objective moral standard because you believe (erroneously) that God is in violation of that standard. BUT then you are stuck in a paradox. You need a perfectly benevolent God to be the basis of objective morality, but you are also saying that God is not a benevolent being. You give with one hand what you take away with the other. Basically, you hold two conflicting and contradictory presuppositions and for your argument to be valid, you must solve the tension by denying one, or both of them. You must either reject that morals are objective and lose you ability to say God is malevolent, OR you must reject that God does not exist and lose your atheism. I dont see how you can get out from those horns.

Except God KNOWS that the Medes in this case are going to dash the infants to death and rape all of the women and he chooses to send the Medes against the Bablyonians. It's even prophesied that it will happen that way. So isn't God condemning those utterly innocent babies to be dashed to pieces and all of those women to be raped? If God were actually a compassionate being, would he not find a way to punish the evil sinners without subjecting innocent children to brutal murder and without subjecting the women to the worst of physical violations? He's not merely allowing the Medes to conquer the Babylonians, God is explictly INCITING the Medes to attack the Babylonians according to the Scripture.

Your analogy of impeachment is amazingly far off of the mark. I'm sure it makes it far easier to swallow that your God incited rapists and murderers to do his dirty work and then killed the rapists and murderers for daring to rape and murder the very people that he incited them to rape and murder.

Again, if you would like to discuss the idea that there is no basis for morality without God, then I merely ask you admit that if you found out tomorrow that God does not exist, that you would no longer find anything wrong with murder, rape, theft, etc. Would you? If you discovered that God did not exist, would you be ok with rape?

Your first paragraph is shockingly arrogant. It basically says “If God were benevolent then he necessarily would do X.” But it seems to me that you are not God and you are not benevolent, and you are not omniscient – the three things that God is. If God is omniscient don’t you think he knows a little bit more than you do on what is best? Maybe all infants go straight to heaven and so even though the child is killed by the brutal thrust of a sword here on earth, the child is immediately translated, because it is innocent, into an eternal state of bliss. You see, because you don’t believe in heaven, you are stuck with the notion that whatever occurs on earth is all that there is. And not to say that the women sould have been raped, but these are the same women who would put there 1st born children in jars to starve to death as offerings to their gods, or would give them over to the priests of their religion to be burned and consumed. Plus God may have sovereignly incited the Medes to rise up against the Babylonians, but the Medes are still morally responsible agents who are held to account for their own actions. 1st order causes are not the same as 2nd order causes.

If I found out tomorrow that God did not exist, then I may hold that I am personally against something that I decide is immoral, but I would have no basis for expecting anyone else to hold anything but their own subjective views. I would have no recourse or basis in objecting to the actions of a rapist. But such a problem would never happen. Since I think we perceive some things to be objectively good and evil (respectively a mother’s love for a newborn child and the holocaust) as clearly as we perceive physical objects (what is called a properly basic belief) in order for someone to prove that God does not exist, they must be able to not only that God does not exist (although PROVING a universal negation is impossible) and that objective morals don’t exist. So basicially you asking me, “if someone could prove to you that morals are not objective, would you then believe that morals are not objective?”

So now you still have not answered my question. If you believe in objective morality, then you presuppose God’s existence since you cannot base objective moral values on anything else. So tell me, what is your basis for objective moral values?

Didn't get a response. You may just be busy or tired of the convo, but I didn't want it to drop because I tried moving the thread. Here's my response:

Arrogant? You believe that the Ultimate Supreme Being in the Universe with Limitless Power who has Always Existed and Always Will Exist in INTERESTED IN THE SHIT YOU DO ON A DAILY BASIS. And you think I'M arrogant?

By your logic, the infants who were dashed to pieces on the rocks were actually being done a favor by the Medes. Woo! They get to go straight to heaven, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Wait, but the women were being punished with rape and the kids were being rewarded with murder? That's some powerful logic you have there. Oh, but the women deserved to be raped because they killed their children in sacrifice to God. But what about context? That was perfectly normal and natural in their time in history... and wait, wasn't Abraham going to kill his son as a sacrifice to God? So should Abraham be raped to death? Or is child sacrifice ok for Abraham because he was following YOUR God instead of someone else's?

Ok, thank you for admitting that you do not consider rape and murder to be wrong unless declared so by an invisible father figure and that you cannot determine any viable argument against them. Now we can discuss how to be good without God. In an absolutely free environment you have chaos and anarchy. No rules, no laws, nothing. Do you whatever you want, hurt whoever you want, take whatever you want, anything. This isn't conducive to survival or happiness. As a person who enjoys surviving and being happy that system doesn't work for me. Amazingly, I'm not alone in this feeling. Other people got together and decided that anarchy sucked and so we should put together some rules to protect ourselves. Ethical systems are created which value things that we decide to value. I personally value Honesty and Fairness. Whenever I am presented with an ethical or moral question, I rely on those values to guide my actions.

The tortured path of your logic desperately wants me to believe in an objective and supreme moral authority, but I don't buy it. Your mistake is that I argue about God's actions from the perspective of an absolute moral authority because the God and beliefs in the Bible describe an absolute moral authority. The point is that if this absolute moral authority actually exists it is either a) horrible, brutal, and violent or b) ignored on a regular basis throughout the Bible. Perhaps you believe in the Nixon-esque idea of "if [God] does it then it's not [immoral]." Is that your feeling? That God says, "Don't rape" so therefore it is wrong, but if God goes and rapes someone then that's totally fine?

The truth of the matter is that your Bible and history actually support the idea of subjective ethical systems and not absolute objective ones. The horrible, violent acts described in the Bible were totally normal for that time period. Slavery, rape, etc. However, as we've progressed over the centuries we have changed our minds about what constitues acceptable behavior in civilized society. Yourself included. You don't treat women like they do in the Bible because times have changed and as a society we've realized it wasn't the right thing to do. Yet, for some reason you still want to hold on to other specific things as objectively morally wrong.... but you're doing so subjectively. YOU, not God, are picking what you think is right and wrong but CLAIMING to merely be following the absolute and unchanging supreme moral authority.

I'm going to reply to this comment higher up in the thread because formatting is getting thinner and thinner and making it harder to read.