I thought I might dust off the cobwebs on gathering on this blog, since I haven't gotten around to posting for a while. I spent a couple of months out of the country doing some travel and R&R after completing my doctorate.
'The God of the Old testament is a psychopath'
I note this sentiment expressed towards the God of the old testament by atheists, often followed by a proclamation of possessing superior morals. This is interesting for a number of reason, which I want to explore.
The rejection of the old testament God seems to me to stem primarily from a humanist world view, that believes humans are basically good, and generally regards the judgement of death as offensive. Certainly God cannot judge most people to have fallen short, with the sweeping proclamations we see in the old testament, that would be unfair. Some might contend that God couldn't possibly justify these actions.
But it is not this simple. Could there not be circumstances warranting drastic intervention by God? What if it wasn't true that humans were basically good? I note the tendency of a humanistic world view to grapple quite differently with events such as the Boston bombing. Such an event is quite confronting to the view that people are inherently good, but I recall that people wondered how the system had failed the two perpetrators, or if society had done enough to be inclusive of the migrant family, rather than raise the question about the existence of evil. We are reluctant to regard people as evil, but those guilty of the most monstrous of acts, but even then we prefer to see them as simply being broken in some way, to have experienced some great injustice or captive to some unfortunate ideology.
If we see these events as the outworking of evil in the human heart then we can begin to understand God's actions. Fallen humanity prior to the coming of Christ was under the judgement of death. The reason for the flood in part was to stop the flourishing of evil. However, God extended grace to a remnant that began with Noah and would lead to the
covenant with Abraham. God would bring salvation through the nation of Israel and his son, which would be born a Jew, but bring salvation to both Jew and Gentile alike.
The context of the conquest of Canaan in the old testament is God's judgement on the iniquity of the Canaanites and Israel (God's chosen) being given a home in the promised land. Why was Canaan judged? They were a Godless and evil culture. Child sacrifice is just one example. To allow the people of Canaan to flourish would be for evil to flourish and for Israel to be corrupted also.
One commentator noted that were a human to do the same it would be universally condemned. But it does not make sense to limit God (who is the creator and over all things) arbitrarily in this manner. God would not in any sense be limited by human sensibilities, nor is it logical to reduce God to a common murderer, since he has authority over life that we do not. Humanity has also shown that taking of life is sometimes necessary, not desirable but necessary. Do we condemn as immoral the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima in WWII, or would that be overly simplistic?
This discussion hasn't even touched on the basis for the moral argument that atheists have made, when they make the statements this post has discussed. This is one big problem that the atheists world view faces. Sam Harris has suggested maximising human flourishing as a basis for morality, but that itself wouldn't necessarily prohibit a lot of things that atheists find objectionable in the bible. I have already noted some examples of the complexities of life and human existence above. In light of these I think the Christian worldview is actually quite strong and also provides hope and resolution.
