neo-x wrote:Jac, my original point is perhaps lost, as all have chimed in and there are multiple threads of the discussion going about.
My issue is simpler than what is now a plethora of issues. God killing someone is something I can at least understand, the Bible is filled with it and I have had no problems with that, but people saying God told them to kill someone is something I question. This isn't an attack of God's nature or sovereignty but on the margin of error we humans have time and time again, demonstrated.
Further I don't hold God to any rules, but I do expect a certain familiar pattern of acts that may help in establishing whether its the same God I worship or not. If something falls out of line of those expectations than I have to question that. Otherwise no one can hold anyone responsible for any murder they do in the name of their God. Hey! if our God can command such, why not their God does the same? Then we either accept there is nothing wrong with this principle or we know this isn't right. To borrow Rick's words, "somethings are just wrong".
I think you are drawing a distinction without a difference. So God isn't under any rules. He can kill as He wills. But you take exception to Him commanding someone to do it for Him. So why is He under
that rule?
Oh, so it's not a rule, per se. It's an epistemological problem. The problem is that we just don't know whether or not God
actually commanded we kill! To which I just shrug my shoulders and say that isn't a problem for me. I hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. I understand you don't, but may I respectfully suggest to you, then, that this is a problem of your own invention, not mine. The moment you accept that God is under no rules, that He can do (and thus command) as He wills, then so long as I have a way to know that God actually commanded this or that, then I have no basis to judge it. Sure, if Scripture isn't inerrant I can judge the killing it talks about. But if Scripture is inspired and inerrant, as it has traditionally been held and which is, in my estimation, strong reason to think it is, then I have the way to know that God commanded it and therefore cannot judge it. In other words, to reject the inerrancy of Scripture on the basis of the killings is circular reasoning.
Beyond that, as far as other people's gods, I just reject the whole premise. There are no such things. No other gods exist. That's like comparing "my logic" and "your logic." There is just logic. If I do it poorly and you do it well, there aren't two logics. There's just me getting it wrong. Just so, there's only one God. So if a Muslim claims Allah told him to kill, there are only three possibilities:
1. Allah is not God, and so does not exist, and so did not issue the command whatever the Muslim claims.
2. Allah is God, but the Muslim has misunderstood the nature of God, such that he thinks God issued the command when He did not.
3. Allah is God, and the Muslim has understood God correctly, such that God really old the Muslim to kill.
I don't see any other options. Now, for reasons totally unrelated to the killing, I can strongly argue either 1 or 2 is correct (depending on how you define terms on a technical level). But regardless, the problem here isn't that Allah is "wrong." The problem is that either Allah does not exist or else God/Allah has been misunderstood by Muslims. Their error, of course, comes from their reading of the Koran.
The same can be made with any so-called "god." To answer in brief, then, their "god"
can command whatever (s)he wants
if (s)he exists. Those gods don't, though, so I don't judge the actions of the "god." I judge the actions of the people as morally depraved, for they are acting without justification (i.e., the divine command). You can do the same.