Re: [asa] The Old Testament God is ..

Wayne, I'd agree that there is good reason to question why bad things
happen, and that it is even appropriate to question God as David did often
in the Psalms. But I don't think there's any really sympathetic way to
understand the language Dawkins uses here.

Has it ever been suggested that Dawkins' views about the "Old Testament" God
are anti-semitic? Manicheanism was one of the roots of anti-semitism in
Church history. This seems no different. If the Jewish God is all these
things, then so are all the Jews that recognize him as their God, as well as
the non-religious Jews who are heirs to the Jewish culture.

On 10/3/06, Dawsonzhu@aol.com <Dawsonzhu@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud
> of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive,
> bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist,
> infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
> sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully"
>
> Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion".
>
>
>
> This may come as a surprise, but, to some extend, there is
> reason to share sympathy with him. It is difficult to understand
> suffering.
>
> Moreover, though I have not read the book, this is a typical
> work up over all the parasites that have evolved, natural
> disasters that have claimed the lives of the innocent, the cruel
> dictators who have gone to their graves praised and honored,
> some passages of the old testament where for example God curses
> Ham, etc. As he works to a climax, and thus follows the rant.
>
> These things are matters that are appropriate to make our
> private complaints to God about. We don't understand why
> evil things happen in this world, and it is hard to reconcile
> it with a righteous God (and certainly a Dawkins' divine
> Santa Claus type god).
>
> I don't have an answer to his complaints but one of the differences
> we have as ones who believe in God, is that we have faith
> that we can bring our complaints to God. Dawkins can rant,
> rave, wail, and moan, but it is to no one; certainly no one
> who can save any of us. Everything reduces to chance, and
> for this lot, we live afflicted, strutting a fretting our
> life upon the stage, and soon are seen no more.
>
> Calvin writes of Psalm 102:
> To pour out our complaints before him [God] after the manner of
> little children would certainly be to treat his majesty with very little
> reverence, were it not that he has been pleased to allow us such
> freedom.
>
> On Psalm 39:
> We have here a very profitable and instructive lesson. Nothing is better
> able
> to restrain violent paroxysms of grief than the realization that we deal
> with God
> and not with mortal man. God will always maintain his own righteousness,
> even
> in the face of everything men may say against him in their complaints and
> accusations...
>
> Some, then, ascribe their miseries to fate or fortune, others to other
> people, and
> others account for their troubles from a variety of causes suggested by
> their own
> imaginations. Scarcely one in a hundred recognizes in his troubles the
> hand of God.
> So men allow themselves to indulge in bitter complaints without ever
> thinking that
> they offend God in doing so. David, on the contrary, seeking to subdue
> every unholy
> desire and sinful excess, returns to God and resolves to keep silence,
> because the
> affliction which he is now suffering proceeded from God. As David, who
> was afflicted
> with the severest trials, resolved nevertheless to keep silence, let us
> learn from this that
> it is one of the chief exercises of our faith to humble ourselves under
> the mighty hand
> of God and to submit to his judgments without murmuring or complaining.
>
> I know this doesn't answer Dawkins' rant completely; nor
> I expect many of our personal complaints to God. But the key
> is that we trust that we can bring our complaints to God and
> ask for wisdom on what to do on them. Moreover, we trust that
> that God will somehow __hear__ them! Though truly perplexed and
> confounded by the misery and horrors of this world, we still
> have courage to say "here am I". We are assured that what we
> endure is not in vain, however similar our lives may appear to
> conform to the vicissitudes of this world.
>
> So, as both Calvin and Augustine have written long ago,
> it is not easy to understand what we see in the world as it
> happens on others, and as it happens on ourselves. If they
> wrote similarly so long ago, so we should reflect that it
> will surely not be any easier now. Yet we are urged to carry
> on all the same. We have hope that there is meaning in all
> of this madness that we see, but I perceive not even the hope
> of a dawning sunrise in Dawkins' world: only a slow and torturous
> gasping as time and nature slowly sink into the eternally dark
> oblivion of nothingness.
>
> by Grace we proceed,
> Wayne

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Received on Wed Oct 4 10:22:21 2006