There isn’t just one christian god. Who the christan god is depends on which accounts you consider.
It’s easy to read the old testament, read the post-gospel books, listen to the 2000 years of doctrine, and come away with the opinion that the christian god is evil. If you just read the gospels though, and accept that part of the message is: “I’m throwing out the old deal, the new one is Love One Another,” it’s harder to maintain that argument.
I was raised Lutheran, and am currently a philosophical agnostic. I know people who have an internally consistent belief in a good and loving christian god based on how they interpret the entire body of work (they’re well studied). I also believe their definitions of “good” and “loving” would align with yours.
New thought just now:
If the christian god is a singular entity and is evil, then it must exist
If it doesn’t exist as a singular entity, the only thing to criticize is people’s conception of it
Sorry for the long reply. You got me to extend my thinking and that came out in the comment.
I’ve never understood how one can just throw out half their holy book because their God (supposedly) decided to change the rules. This does not change the fact that he (supposedly) did these evil acts. If you just ignore the parts of the bible you don’t like, God’s a pretty great dude! An argument against Yahweh’s character does not change depending on which parts of the bible are still valid, unless your claim is that the old testament was never valid. In which case, why believe any of it?
Regardless, even the new testament depicts a despicable being. Would it not have been easy, as an all-powerful and all-loving god, to tell people not to own slaves? But no, instead in the new testament slaves are told on multiple occasions to obey their masters. One can preach about love all they want, but when their holy book endorses slavery, I cannot take them seriously.
Regarding your last point, that’s just false. I can criticize the Joker as being evil for killing hundreds, thousands of people. That doesn’t mean the Joker or Batman are real. That’s because I’m criticizing a being described in a story, not something I believe is real.
Edit: I, too, will extend my thinking here. If you believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing god, you need not even look any further through scripture for evidence that he is an evil being. He had the power to create any world with full knowledge of what would be to come, and the world he chose to make was this one. One rife with childhood cancer, slavery, starvation, torture, and natural disasters. This is not a world created by an all-loving being.
There isn’t just one christian god. Who the christan god is depends on which accounts you consider.
It’s easy to read the old testament, read the post-gospel books, listen to the 2000 years of doctrine, and come away with the opinion that the christian god is evil. If you just read the gospels though, and accept that part of the message is: “I’m throwing out the old deal, the new one is Love One Another,” it’s harder to maintain that argument.
I was raised Lutheran, and am currently a philosophical agnostic. I know people who have an internally consistent belief in a good and loving christian god based on how they interpret the entire body of work (they’re well studied). I also believe their definitions of “good” and “loving” would align with yours.
New thought just now:
Sorry for the long reply. You got me to extend my thinking and that came out in the comment.
I’ve never understood how one can just throw out half their holy book because their God (supposedly) decided to change the rules. This does not change the fact that he (supposedly) did these evil acts. If you just ignore the parts of the bible you don’t like, God’s a pretty great dude! An argument against Yahweh’s character does not change depending on which parts of the bible are still valid, unless your claim is that the old testament was never valid. In which case, why believe any of it?
Regardless, even the new testament depicts a despicable being. Would it not have been easy, as an all-powerful and all-loving god, to tell people not to own slaves? But no, instead in the new testament slaves are told on multiple occasions to obey their masters. One can preach about love all they want, but when their holy book endorses slavery, I cannot take them seriously.
Regarding your last point, that’s just false. I can criticize the Joker as being evil for killing hundreds, thousands of people. That doesn’t mean the Joker or Batman are real. That’s because I’m criticizing a being described in a story, not something I believe is real.
Edit: I, too, will extend my thinking here. If you believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing god, you need not even look any further through scripture for evidence that he is an evil being. He had the power to create any world with full knowledge of what would be to come, and the world he chose to make was this one. One rife with childhood cancer, slavery, starvation, torture, and natural disasters. This is not a world created by an all-loving being.