Is the God of the Torah good?

[Souron]

Is the God described in the Torah, which is part of the bible and Quaran, good?

I'm asking you to judge God by the same standards as you would a person, though of course he is not a person.

Note that the existence of God is not relevant to this question, as you can judge the morality of a functional character as easily as real person.

 

[Defiant47]

Objectively evil, by any reasonable standard of morality.

 

[bhsup]

Well your title totally goes against your second sentence when you ask us to judge him as a person. This isn't a hypothetical, so we're not bound to accept him as a person per Fifty's hypothetical rules. God is God. He created us 'persons' that you want us to think of him as, so boom right there you just created an impossible conflict.

Now I guess I'll just have to answer based on the title alone instead of the OP content, so yes God is good.

 

[Berzerker]

evil

and I reject the notion that this same god created the universe, the creator doesn't come down and write books and tell people to slaughter and enslave each other.

 

[Souron]

Well your title totally goes against your second sentence when you ask us to judge him as a person. This isn't a hypothetical, so we're not bound to accept him as a person per Fifty's hypothetical rules. God is God. He created us 'persons' that you want us to think of him as, so boom right there you just created an impossible conflict.

Now I guess I'll just have to answer based on the title alone instead of the OP content, so yes God is good.

What conflict?

I am asking about God, and not a person in his place (though that may not matter), but if your definition of good is not the same as when you judge people, then you're answering the wrong question.

 

[_random_]

I can't judge Him as a person. I can only judge Him as three persons (to the extent that I can really "judge" Him at all.) Thus, my religion prevents me from answering the question as you have worded it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Torah is not part of the Koran. Mohammad told many of the same stories, but in addition to presenting them in poetry instead of prose he "corrected the errors in the corrupted texts." The Torah shows the patriarchs and prophets as flawed human beings who were used by God despite some pretty serious sins, but the Koran tend to omits their flaws to show them as unambiguously virtuous.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Judged in total, no. This is a being which has not only commanded genocide, but performed it himself -- a being that sanctions theft, kidnapping, and even rape so long as its "chosen people" are the ones performing the action. It is an utterly self-deserving deity created by a remarkably barbaric people whose vaunted ancestors certainly do not deserve the reputations the west accords them. I would not call that being, taken in total, good by any means. Since no one else has quoted Dawkins, I shall --

The God of the Old Testament is 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.

I loved reading that back in 2006 because I was raised to revere that god, and it took me a while to escape the fear of it.

 

[useless]

If he existed, which he does not, he would be an awful figure. God does not exist.

 

[emzie]

He's good if you're an Israelite / Judean. And even then it's a stretch.

 

[Souron]

I can't judge Him as a person. I can only judge Him as three persons (to the extent that I can really "judge" Him at all.) Thus, my religion prevents me from answering the question as you have worded it.

That's a bit of a dodge. If he's more like three people, then are those three people all good or is there some bad mixed in, or some of the fifth answer?

The more pertinent question is can you judge him well enough to describe the morality of His actions?

 

[bombshoo]

He sure seems like a big jerk, but then again if he really is God, who are we puny ants to question him?

 

[MantaRevan]

Decidedly evil. Creating us isn't an excuse, just like child abuse is a crime.

 

[_random_]

That's a bit of a dodge. If he's more like three people, then are those three people all good or is there some bad mixed in, or some of the fifth answer?

The more pertinent question is can you judge him well enough to describe the morality of His actions?

It was more tongue-in-cheek than anything. Applying a little genre criticism, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that God is good.

 

[Gogf]

This is nonsense. Belief in God entails the beliefs that a.) God cannot be judged by man and b.) God is good. Either God is good, or there is no God. And it makes no sense at all to call something evil which, should it exist, must definitionally be good.

This thread is like asking "is three five? I'm asking you to judge the value of three as you would judge the value of a loaf of bread."

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Morality comes from people. Therefore it is within our rights to judge the character of god. Disagree? Prove that morality comes from your invisible sky wizard rather than innate human empathy.

 

[Bad Player]

Explaining answers would be more interesting - the Dawkins quote gives some idea of why he would say that but requires us to second guess the exact references.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

evil

and I reject the notion that this same god created the universe, the creator doesn't come down and write books and tell people to slaughter and enslave each other.

Well, that is nothing but a gnostic way of thinking. In fact judging how big the universe actually is and how small the biblical myth of creation is (limited to earth and little more) you could think there are two tiers of divinity. A huge God which created the whole universe and small one dedicated to earth, humans and such little things and details. In fact according to the gnostics there is a supreme God that created the whole universe who dont care about us and then multiple little gods dedicated to different worlds in our case our little god would be no other but Satan aka "the prince of the world". For them this lesser god is the wicked Yahveh of the Torah while the supreme one would be the more generic Elohim.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Now I guess I'll just have to answer based on the title alone instead of the OP content, so yes God is good.

And what if you had to judge God as you would a person?

Imagine a hypothetical. Imagine that the title had said: If you had to judge the God of the Torah in the same way you would judge a person Is the God of the Torah good?

 

[El_Machinae]

The God of the Torah is evil, and telling people to love this being is more wrong than telling people to love Hitler. Hitler has the excuse of being obviously human and therefore fundamentally flawed and capable of error. It is good to love people, despite their flaws.

I'm not saying you should love Hitler, he's long dead, it doesn't matter if you do. But he should generate an inkling of sympathy, because if he'd been wiser or luckier he'd have lived a better life.

The god of the Torah doesn't get such an excuse. It's never suggested that we forgive him for his faults, and to accept that he's trying his best. I love my parents, but I have to forgive them and I know they tried.

He doesn't even get the excuse of changing, of becoming a new and better being. I can love Germany, despite WWII, because the nation is peopled with a new people. The evil has been excised and completely replaced. Only the name is the same.

The god of the Torah is still the same god who demanded infant sacrifices of his priest, and punished those who did not fully engage in the blood-letting. The only people I've ever found who defend the slaughter of babies are those who've been taught to 'love' this being.

And this love is perverted, further evidence that the god is evil. My mother loves me, and she would love me if I was accused of being a serial rapist. What she would NOT do is create excuses justifying my evil, but what she WOULD do is seize upon evidence of my innocence. If DNA evil exonerated me, she wouldn't discard it while claiming that it was my 'right' to be a rapist. She'd trumpet it.

The very best modern evidence is that the Israelites were NOT freed slaves from the Egyptians. This means that their god did NOT slaughter the first born of a nation for pathetic reasons. Do His worshipers trumpet this? No, they deny it and then spin webs of evil to justify it.

If you're doing moral contortions to justify a slaughter that didn't happen, then it seems that the love you've been taught to 'feel' is perverted. If this (false) god teaches perverted love, it is not good.

So, it's not good. And if it's not a flawed being, then it's evil. And to teach love of this monster is, itself, wrong.