[Laitoste]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Thank you for kindly offering yourself as an exemplar of my contention that belief is a choice one makes. I am figuring that the pejorative appellation "jerk" is meant to be something that always is linked to "misogynistic", in which case we can dispense with it and concentrate on the main point. Note, first, though, that this is a psychological illness to which you are giving a moral valuation. In other words, what is being said here is that God is morally inferior to the one who refuses to believe because of the misogynist mouthpiece and the killing command. Now: (1) how is Paul a misogynist? (2) what are the facts of the case regarding the 31 kings? (3) How can a creature be morally superior to its creator?

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for my use of the term "jerk". It was inappropriate, and I had let my emotions run away with me. It is my gut reaction to Paul, for more reasons than just misogyny. So again, I apologize.

However, the fact still remains that Paul was unsympathetic towards women, with no good reason. In 1 Corinthians 14:34, he says:

As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

My marginal notes for this passage consist of: WHAT?!! Now, when we discussed Corinthians in my Romans and Early Christians class, many of my classmates wanted to simply forgive Paul for this clearly antifeminist text on the basis of history. Well, that doesn't work. People, in general, don't look at the Bible in a historical context. It has been abused, and is still being abused, to push political agendas (slavery, homophobia, etc). Furthermore, there is no Biblical precedent for this behavior. In fact, in the letter to the Romans, chapter 16, Phoebe, “our sister”, is listed as a deacon, and a Junia is mentioned as an apostle. According to the footnotes, in many translations, “Junia” is actually mentioned as “Junias”, a male Latin name that was not used among the Romans at that time. The earliest manuscript the editors used actually reads, “Julia.” If a woman was preaching the Gospel, how can Paul even imagine saying that “women should be silent in churches”? (Another good place to look for Paul’s attitudes about women is 1 Timothy; however, many scholars doubt the authenticity of this text.) To me, this obviously denotes a misogynist, and not a very observant one, either.

About Joshua: these kings happened to be in the way of the Israelites. They inhabited the land that the Israelites wanted, and were therefore eliminated. For example:

So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, threw it down at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day. Joshua 8:28-29

There is even one passage where one of the Israelites takes a few ornaments from the treasure gathered from Jericho, causing “the anger of the Lord [to burn] against them” (Joshua 7:1). This causes the Israelites to lose their next battle, and eventually, “all Israel stoned him to death; they burned him with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day” (Joshua 7:25). Now, in my class on Jihad and the Crusades, we were required to read this at the beginning of the term so as to understand where the medieval holy violence was coming from. They used texts like these to completely massacre various populations of “unbelievers” in Europe and the Levant. It is simply repulsive.

To answer your third question, littlemanpoet, a creature cannot be morally superior to its “creator”, if such a being exists. However, once a creature starts acting in morally repugnant ways in the NAME of that creator, another creature is perfectly free to make moral judgments on those actions. It is wrong to kill another human being. It doesn’t matter if you do it in the name of God or not, it’s wrong either way. It is wrong to try to repress the ideas of others. If God exists, it would, theoretically, not be possible for humankind to be morally superior to it. On the other hand, we don’t have proof God exists, and have even less proof that this God has commanded people to do anything at all, so it is very easy to use God’s name to commit morally wrong acts. I think it is clear that anything that is a basic human rights violation is wrong. I would like a clarification, however, of what you mean by “psychological illness.” To what are you referring?

Finally, to restate my personal beliefs: I do not yet know if there is a God, but if there is, God will not be found in “holy texts” such as the Bible. The Bible was written by men, even if it was “divinely inspired.“ Men (and women, to be gender-inclusive) are apt to get things wrong. If God is to be found anywhere, God is in collective worship, such as in a church, or in nature. There is some value, I think, in people gathering to worship together. The only issues surface when these groups become hateful and intolerant towards other groups. But respectful, collective meditation, prayer, and song can be good for one’s mental state. It just doesn’t work for me, as much as I love the liturgy of the Lutheran Church (which is pretty much the same as in any other liturgical church, like the Catholic or Episcopalian Churches). As I said in my previous post, I cannot believe in the God of the Hebrew-Christian Bible. That God has been twisted and changed from its original form, whatever that was. That God has been manipulated by humankind, and is, in my opinion, no longer a god.

EDIT: I used the New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV with Apocrypha 3rd Edition. The footnotes and introductions are amazing.