On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:41:40 -0400, Daniel Baumgarten <
db...@sdf.org>
wrote in alt.atheism:
>linuxgal <
linu...@cleanposts.com> writes:
>
>> Daniel Baumgarten wrote:
>>> Free Lunch <
lu...@nofreelunch.us> writes:
>>>
>>>> Did you miss who was responsible for this alleged mass murder? Remember
>>>> that the ones that supposedly died did so because the god in that story
>>>> forced Pharaoh not to change his mind. That god intentionally murdered
>>>> every firstborn child who didn't have the blood. What an evil god.
>>>
>>> Where do you read that God "forced" Pharaoh not to change his mind? My
>>> Bible has God "hardening" Pharaoh's heart, but I don't see the
>>> implication anywhere that this was against Pharaoh's will.
>>
>> Pharaoh desperately wanted to tell his ministers it was against his
>> will but the spell was so strong he couldn't do it.
>
>So you agree that what Free Lunch is claiming about the Exodus narrative
>is absurd. How about the notion that the Bible depicts a God who
>"murdered" the first born children of Egypt? It's perhaps even sillier
>than the idea that God compelled Pharaoh against his will to persecute
>the Israelites. The Egyptians were, of course, fully complicit in the
>slaughter of the children of the Israelites. They were even ordered to
>turn their Israelite neighbors over to Pharaoh's men and to inform them
>of any children who were being hidden. The story gives this as the
>reason why Moses was put in a basket and sent down the river, eventually
>to be discovered by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as an Egyptian. It
>would be disngenuous to object, as you might, that the children of the
>Egyptians were being punished undeservedly for the crimes of their
>parents. Not only is this because no one bothers to criticize Pharaoh
>for his act of mass infanticide, but only blames God; but as the maker
>of all children, God has a right to un-make them that Pharaoh (or any
>human) does not have. Furthermore, in asserting this right, God doesn't
>distinguish between Egyptians and Israelites per se; if an Israelite
>family were to disobey the commandment to observe the first Passover,
>they would lose their first born like any Egyptian -- indeed, they would
>*become* Egyptians by the very fact of their indifference to God.
Aside from the fact that this never happened, the whole story is just a
"my dad can beat up your dad" bit of puffery.
>To further object that this God does not exist is to completely miss the
>point, since this whole exercise is being couched by Free Lunch as a
>referendum on moral sophistication of the Israelite culture that, in his
>opinion, fabricated these stories. The whole point of the story, neatly
>summarized in the Canticle of Miriam so that even dense folk like you
>and Free Lunch can grasp it, is that God is rightly honored above any
>human being such as Pharaoh; that what is appropriate to God's authority
>is not appropriate to that of any earthly king. The scripture *agrees*
>that such things are evil when done by humans.
What a morally obtuse idea that a god can be completely immoral and
unforgiving, but people should be better than the gods they worship --
or is it okay for them to be every bit as vindictive as that murderous
Angel of the Lord?
>IN SHORT, the story
>condemns infanticide as such and threatens a proportionate penalty to
>those who commit it.
Not at all proportionate -- and it blames every member of a group for
the evils that some did. The children of Egyptian peons would not have
been complicit in these alleged murders.
> To say that the God of Israel is an evil character
>in this story because he is guilty of infanticide himself, and therefore
>that Abrahamic believers were and are infanticidal moral hypocrites, is
>to deliberately misrepresent the text, not to mention a form of modern
>blood libel. So we know who the real bigot in this discussion is, and
>it isn't Duke.
Nonsense. The story tells us that the god is striking back and refusing
to allow the leader of the country to change. The story tells us that
the god of the story is vindictive beyond the alleged harm done. Given
that the whole thing is fiction, it defames Egyptians and celebrates
those who never were engaged in an Exodus.