I don't see the authority over God as being evil, any more than bureaucrats who run research institutions in our world are evil.
? if a bureaucrat required that a scientist have her child tortured to death, you wouldn't see that as evil? Even if her child agreed to it?
Having had a little more time to think about it, I realize I left out a middle step in the lamb to Jesus progression:
1) Jews "pay a fine" for their sins in the form of giving up valuable livestock by killing a lamb.
2) People see the death of the lamb, not as a way of giving up the livestock, but as a specific punishment of the lamb for the sins of human beings. (This is reasonable--presumably the lamb doesn't want to die--but this is where I start having ethical problems with the whole thing.)
3) People equate Jesus with the lamb. If you can right the scales of justice by punishing a lamb for someone else's sin, why not a human?
It is not the case that a person has to be stupid to fail to think about something. In fact one of the best ways to make a smart person do something stupid is to get her emotions involved and encourage her to view a situation in a (single) metaphorical way.
I do understand that your beliefs about God and Christ are pretty different from the mainstream, and I have no problem with that, and, yes, I have to this point been making observations about mainstream beliefs, just as I was in the original post.
If you want to come right out and postulate a God not significantly more powerful and knowledgeable than Albert Einstein, who has to satisfy a superior who demanded God abandon his child in the presence of torturers while God knew perfectly well what would happen, I'm okay with that, but I can think about the moral implications of that a little better if you state the parameters in a more straightforward way.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 04:27 pm (UTC)? if a bureaucrat required that a scientist have her child tortured to death, you wouldn't see that as evil? Even if her child agreed to it?
Having had a little more time to think about it, I realize I left out a middle step in the lamb to Jesus progression:
1) Jews "pay a fine" for their sins in the form of giving up valuable livestock by killing a lamb.
2) People see the death of the lamb, not as a way of giving up the livestock, but as a specific punishment of the lamb for the sins of human beings. (This is reasonable--presumably the lamb doesn't want to die--but this is where I start having ethical problems with the whole thing.)
3) People equate Jesus with the lamb. If you can right the scales of justice by punishing a lamb for someone else's sin, why not a human?
It is not the case that a person has to be stupid to fail to think about something. In fact one of the best ways to make a smart person do something stupid is to get her emotions involved and encourage her to view a situation in a (single) metaphorical way.
I do understand that your beliefs about God and Christ are pretty different from the mainstream, and I have no problem with that, and, yes, I have to this point been making observations about mainstream beliefs, just as I was in the original post.
If you want to come right out and postulate a God not significantly more powerful and knowledgeable than Albert Einstein, who has to satisfy a superior who demanded God abandon his child in the presence of torturers while God knew perfectly well what would happen, I'm okay with that, but I can think about the moral implications of that a little better if you state the parameters in a more straightforward way.