Things are not good merely because God wills them: God has to will them in a way that is good because He is goodness itself—His nature is perfectly good. — Bob Ross

God is reality. The dynamic essence of reality, according to the Hebrew conception. I believe God is good, but he is reality first. If he is good, his idea of goodness is simply beyond our common-sense understanding. This is the same God who sent snakes and plagues to the Israelites in the desert and swallowed up Korah's family whole. The same God who slew the Egyptians' firstborn from the highest to the lowest, and even included animals in that count.

In some ways, I find the NT God more terrifying. In the OT, he'll kill you, but he never threatens you with eternal damnation. If you want to define God as the Form of the Good, you can worship that, but you're better off reading Plato. I'm not even sure what the point would be of worshipping the Form of the Good; wouldn't it just be a one-way relationship?

The Talmud is considered as authoritive as the Torah, and it is interpreted by the rabbis. That is, there is an entire legal system devised around these writings, largely given meaning by the rabbis. — Hanover

Talmud helps us apply Torah, but Torah is the holier, more primary text. If you're looking for a complete code of halakha just go to Shulchan Aruch or Mishneh Torah and skip the Talmud, but the authors of those respective books would never say that their texts hold equal weight to the Torah such a claim would be horrible blasphemy. Those works are Judaism's best attempts at halakha (religious law) formulation, but a major thinker like Maimonedes would argue that understanding is to be prioritized over the simple rule following of religious law.

I'll try a different approach, as I don't intend to restate what I've already said.

Considering other common forms of death in antiquity, death by flood isn't exactly a bad way to go. Would you also think, e.g., death by tuberculosis or dysentery to be God "murdering?" Or dying at 60 of heart disease? People rarely lived past that back then. I don't get where we draw the line between God "murdering" and there being an ok death that isn't "God murdering" if we adopt this absurd view that God "murders."

Secondly, if a set of pre-existent rules binds God, then he is not God. Creation (which includes rules) proceeds from God.

Hundreds of thousands? I hear that's only kids -- so that would make millions of dead Palestinians. Now that'll stick it to the Zionists. Who cares about sources when what matters is liberation?

More seriously: You honestly believe ~25% of Gaza has been murdered by Israel? Seriously?

By your definition, a person would kills an innocent child in society that has not made killing humans, in any way or means, illegal has not committed murder and, most crucially, apparently, has done nothing wrong. — Bob Ross

The man would be guilty by divine law, which exists independently of man-made legal systems.

God is all-just (because it is in His nature to be all-just and not merely because you are defining arbitrarily God's commands as what defines justice) and murder is unjust, then God cannot commit murder — Bob Ross

:up:

God does commit murder in the OT — Bob Ross

The religious view is that God has the right to take and give life as He sees fit.

Death is an inevitability, whether it's now or in 100 years. Whether through pain or with ease.

If you think that those Jewish population changes in the Arab countries were all voluntary emigration, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Um, yeah, Jewish life has grown in Germany since the Holocaust ended.

Something to keep in mind.

Terrifying footage earlier today of Syrian troops going into Druze villages and forcibly shaving the beards off Druze men. Same thing Nazis did to Jews in the early stages. Murders are reported as well; this is fresh news.

Israel has reportedly passed a message to Al-Julani via Egypt: "Your regime will fall within hours unless you cease the massacre against the Druze and withdraw."

OMG a Jew said that! Unbelievable! Stunning and brave.

Thereby, He directly intentionally killed innocent persons and murder is the direct intentional killing of innocent persons; therefore, God committed murder. — Bob Ross

Murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Animals cannot murder, nature cannot murder, and God cannot murder.

Beyond this, God is the source of the Law; for God to be a law-breaker, there would need to be some higher law that God is subject to, which would make him not God by definition—at least not the Judeo-Christian one. Maybe Greek or Roman Gods were bound by pre-existent laws, but not the God of the Bible (who is the source of all creation).

The Noahide laws are in Genesis. See, for instance, Gen 9:4 and 9:5. The injunction against murder goes back further to at least Cain and Abel. God is first the universal God, then he is followed by Israel.

Rules that bind humanity have been present from the very beginning, in Eden.

Yes, Genesis includes the patriarchal tales, but before that are stories about God's interaction with humanity more generally. Noah is saved on account of his righteousness and given seven rules that all of humanity must follow. It is only after these universal prescriptions that we see the shift to Abraham and his tribe.

he OT God is very specifically the god of the Jewish People — EricH

Books like Genesis and Jonah present a more universalistic picture, while Exodus is more particular/nationalistic. A group (Israel) accepted him as their God, but his dominion extends far beyond that, and others are free to accept him.

In Jonah, he cares deeply about Israel's historic nemesis -- the Assyrians.

The OT gets angry and changes his mind - not the expected behavior of a perfect entity. — EricH

God can be negotiated with and questioned; otherwise, you have a God who is beyond question. Some religions do perceive God like this.

The OP doesn't treat God as a 'magical alien': it treats God as God in the classical theistic sense---the neo-platonic sense. — Bob Ross

I wouldn't necessarily equate these things. I would need to read up on Plato, though, but perhaps Plato would perceive God/the divine as unchangeable? The God of the Old Testament is so multi-faceted and presented in so many different ways that I would see some tension here. As @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, God can be bargained with.

If you are secular, I would drop the "Christ" and just call him Jesus. Christ is a title meaning Messiah, not a last name. He's a first-century rabbi whom you take a liking to.

There was a time, particularly in the 19th century, when the "academic" approach to Christianity was very ahistorical. During that time there was a common trend wherein it was forgotten that Jesus was himself a Jew, — Leontiskos

Reminds me of one of Hitler's early portraits. Aryan Jesus.

Genuinely, they could hardly be further apart. — Tzeentch

Kinda strange, considering Jesus prayed to the God of the Bible and seemed to hold the Law in high regard. The gospels record him attending synagogue and reading Torah to the congregation. Or was it all an elaborate ruse?

Didn't realize you were a Marcionite, but it makes sense now.

However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. — Bob Ross

We don't know the soul's journey. Perhaps death is simply a soul being called back to its source. Perhaps suffering can be purposeful. When you shift the focus to the soul, instead of the material body, God becomes more sensible.

IMO, the Flood is the first real moral juncture point in the Bible. It's the first time God truly wreaks mass destruction on humanity. The explanation is that mankind is evil, but this seems questionable. After all, as you mention, there are children and animals.

So it's easy to question God. We can even imagine ourselves as God answering, "How would I have solved world evil?" Remember, we can't infringe on free will. What should we do as God? Offer classes on moral virtue to those who are wicked? But who should teach it? Maybe the angels? But what if the evil don't want to attend? My point is that once we start trying to play God to rectify the issue, things quickly become absurd.

We must accept that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. To question this - to assume that we know better - is to take on the role of God ourselves. The question of ultimate justice for the individual is beyond the horizons of our cognition. The author of Ecclesiastes notes that whether one dies at 1 or 100, everything goes to the same place.

As for Samuel, it is worth noting that God in this book is entirely conveyed through the prophet Samuel. It is not God directly communicating to Saul.

Nature isn't equitable. The problem with these DEI initiatives is that they focus on limited intersectionalities in a world with countless intersectionalities. It creates resentment and prompts the excluded to ask, "Why aren't my intersectional identities being addressed?" And then there's the matter of weighing them up and comparing them - an impossible task.

Come to think of it, even if we were all the same race and all from the same class, I don't believe we'd have made any progress towards genuine equity.

The Middle East has always been "fucked up." To pin it on the Europeans might be politically correct, but it's not accurate. Those living in the area possess agency and are perfectly capable of "fucking it up" themselves.

Europeans do get into trouble when they project their notions onto the Middle East and insist that the region submit to their impositions.

Consider the phrase, "I am politically nonbinary.". Do you discern the speaker's intent differently if they are liberal or conservative? — David Hubbs

Honestly, this cracked me up. I would have to stop myself from chuckling if I were to hear this one.

If it's a conservative, I would suspect that it's a joke or sarcastic. If said by someone on the left, I probably shake my head in confusion or chuckle.

.

To continue with the rest of your so-called argument... — Benkei

My post wasn't an argument. I was setting forth a condition for discussion, namely, the understanding that the Iranian regime was wicked.

To which you finally get around to addressing:

Let’s be clear: the world is full of evil. — Benkei

I get it: We are all sinners. The world is full of sin. Whether we throw in with the 7th century savages who behead homosexuals and rape women before their executions or those fighting them is no significant matter. We're all sinners anyway. We can all agree that those fighting the 7th-century savages are no angels. And the problems of the West will, of course, be condemned to their fullest extent, while we can rationalize away the faults of the 7th-century savages if not blame them on the West itself. It's all so tiring.

I suspect it ties back to the Marxist oppressor-oppressed dynamic, where the oppressor deserves zero leniency.

But the presence of evil doesn’t mean we drop bombs until it feels better.

If their wickedness starts seeping over borders, that's when military action may be required. And military action has been the solution to many, many forms of evil throughout history. Sometimes you can't compromise with evil. Nor can you rationalize with it. History tells us that sometimes, evil must be destroyed with force.

I gotta say, you bring up interesting points that point to our differences.

Step 4: “I don’t care about facts. We need a paradigm shift.”
And there it is: the moment when the mask fully drops. You admit facts don’t matter to you. You just want to feel right. — Benkei

Please tell me more about these theory-independent prescriptive facts. We all have our lens; I acknowledge mine. You, OTOH, apparently have direct access to prescriptive objective reality independent of theory/conceptual framework.

Were the bombings of, say, Berlin or Hamburg murder or killing? What do we say about those deaths? I know civilians died, but I'd like to learn how to make sense of it, prescriptively/in the realm of judgment, without the theory. Is this just one of those cases where "the facts speak for themselves," or maybe, just maybe, we require a lens through which to process these events.

The more I read this the more I enjoy parts of it. You note real points of difference, but from the other side.

Sub 3. It reveals an inability to hold multiple truths at once.
Yes, the Iranian regime is brutal.

But your mind can’t accommodate that tension. You flatten everything into one big moral binary where once you label something “evil,” no further thinking is required. It’s cognitive offloading and it’s dumb because it rejects complexity in a domain that requires it most. — Benkei

As opposed to you, where it's all just a billion shades of grey? Trump brutal. Hitler brutal. Roosevelt brutal. Khomeini brutal. Side with whoever, because the world doesn't have absolutes; we're all just different, slightly darker or lighter shades of grey. Who cares about Khomeini torturing women and beating them to death when the US has bombed Iraq. :roll:

The lemon farming anecdote amused me, but I don't think this is historical, as the Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank, not to the West Bank, in 1967. They largely went to Jordan.

Frank, I don't remember this conversation where you claimed I laughed. Could you give me a link?

No, I don't. I think you're misreading me. If you read anger into my posts, that's the reader's error.

I will keep my responses brief because you've clarified that you probably aren't responding. If you want to continue, I can go into more detail, but I'm not writing pages if you aren't continuing.

Of course there isn’t. Because your position is a closed loop. You demand agreement with your metaphysical assumptions before we can even begin to discuss facts or outcomes. You’re not interested in a debate. You’re interested in moral submission. — Benkei

It's hard to reason with those who don't share common values. I can reason with Christians and Muslims because I'm familiar with the contours of their belief systems. You, OTOH, seemingly take a "view from nowhere." Like you're a disembodied mind. Perhaps we can find some common ground, but it's harder because you don't situate yourself.

If we're talking diplomacy or negotiating within a society, that reasoning—that negotiation—takes place among situated individuals, not disembodied minds. Common values & frameworks must be found for constructive dialogue to occur. In the absence of that, there is force.

Any reasoning must proceed from a shared basis. You value the universal, I get it. There is a place for universalism within my tradition, but I certainly don't envision a mass homogenization where my tradition dissolves into others because we are all "enlightened by reason." My tradition values the universal and the particular, whereas you seemingly value only the universal. This is among our main differences and likely the root of our discord.

You call me tribal because I cling to my particular tradition. I suppose you consider yourself beyond such things. Well, good for you.

The Pre-WW1 jingoism and imperialism died especially after the Second World War. — ssu

It's interesting to me how different countries treat it. WWII is shifting from memory to history. In Russia, it's become a source of great patriotic pride; in Germany, it's a source of shame. In the US, in the past few decades, it was often treated as a fairly milquetoast yet media-worthy and exciting good versus evil conflict. Many great series have been made about it, and it's a safe conflict to portray.

But political landscapes shift, memories fade, and modern issues, like mass immigration, challenge old taboos and force us to rethink our past.

Unsurprisingly, you bring no knowledge to the table. We are once again back at the "they bad, us good" myopic view of the world that brings us nothing but idiocy.

You actually went out of your way to defend attacking Iran because "you hate the regime" not the Persians living there. Well, maybe we should introduce that kind of foreign policy more broadly. Trump, for instance, is hated throughout the world. He has access to nukes and has shown himself to be irrational. Let's attack US nuclear facilities! Because, well we don't hate Americans (or Mexicans or Canadians) but hey "fuck them" that's "double effect" when invariably at some point there's going to be a nuclear fallout because it's totally legit and fine to attack countries just because you don't like them. Idiot. — Benkei

The Iranian regime is wicked. This should be acknowledged, whether one chooses to strike or not. If one can't accept this fact, then it is not worth conversing with this person. Our worldviews would just not be remotely conciliable.

As for Trump, if the US were taken over by an Islamic theocracy that engages in mass repression and murder and threatens other groups with annihilation, then targeting our nuclear capabilities would be more reasonable. It's not simply hating them that justifies the strike.

As for why I'm not really interested in sharing knowledge/facts with you... what is needed is a paradigm shift, not more facts. If you don't believe in good and bad or righteousness/wickedness then we're just talking past each other.

Ah, but when the Jews do it...well, we can't have that. — RogueAI

This is the matter. No one cares about Muslim on Muslim violence. It's only if the Jews dare raise their hand against one of the regional players that all hell breaks loose. 500k killed in Syria by Assad and no one could care less. Iran arrests and beats women to death in their prisons, and you'll see no protests.

Once again: prove they are suicidal or irrational and you have a case. — Benkei

You're talking about a regime that rapes female prisoners before execution so that when they die they don't go to heaven.

Also, not surprising that one of TPF's most obsessive Israel haters views the Iranian regime as seemingly reasonable and moderate.

The Iranian regime is profoundly cruel and deserving of death and destruction. That is certain. The question is whether the West should actively bring about such a result. I can only hope that one day Iran is liberated and the bodies of the mullahs litter the streets. Persia will rise again.

We don't hate the Iranians, we hate the Iranian regime which unfortunately has suppressed that beautiful Persian civilization. There are streets in Israel named after great Persian rulers.

I can't blame everything on Likud. One event that sticks in my mind was the Olympic massacre of 1972. That wasn't under Likud. The violence has been there regardless of whether Israel has been liberal or conservative.

When ~1300 are murdered in a day, yes, the Holocaust will be mentioned. By and large, I don't think the Holocaust fuels violence. Any civilization would be devastated if that many of its own were murdered in a day. I think what fuels Israeli violence and paranoia is memories of Arab violence.

Regarding the Holocaust, yes, it bolstered Zionism, but Zionism doesn't delineate how large Israel ought to be. What the Holocaust did teach us is that no matter how advanced or civilized a nation is, anti-Semitism is here to stay. It shattered the Jews' belief that technological progress or social "advancement" is going to vanquish anti-Semitism somehow. Or that assimilation was the solution.

The reason there hasn't been peace in the region is very simple. It's Zionism. — frank

That's right, Frank. How dare the Jews want to have their own land in their ancestral homeland. I agree -- that's much of what it comes down to. Why can't they just happily subject themselves to Arab rule? The Arabs play nicely. They are merciful rulers with a record of fair treatment towards their minority populations.

How dare those Jews assert themselves? If only they knew they are less, there would be no problems. Their place is under the Muslims. Under the Arabs. And how dare those Nazi Zionists challenge this fact.

I agree with you. This is Likud party's main line: there doesn't have to be any peace with the Palestinians, there can be a perpetual war as far it is low intensity and doesn't cost too much. And that has worked for decades now, whereas trying to do a peace with the Palestinians has been represented as utterly impossible, because it failed. — ssu

Likud rose to power because of the intifadas and the failure of peace agreements. The nice, left-wing Israelis failed, thus you get Likud. Sort of like how on 10/7, the most left-leaning progressive Israelis were killed. Hypothetically, I believe if the Arabs living in Gaza or the West Bank truly wanted peace, we would see it, but this would not work the other way around. The Nakba always looms in the collective memory. I think the "Nakba" is how the "Palestinian" people came to be—both lies.