[deknos]

well, as i understand it, it is the star of betlehem which showed humanity that its saviour is born, the saviour which saves mankind and with that god destroyed another sentient species which is very similar to us.

how would you feel about that, if your believesystem said a genocide of another race of sentient, potentially benevolent people by god had to happen, so that you get the message your saviour came around?

[DocTomoe]

The theological ramifications cut even deeper, given that said saviour is predestined to "die for your sins" - yet billions are to die just for his general announcement to happen.

The story's narrator is not a sudden unbeliever - he was obviously very religious, he does not apostate, he "falters in his belief", he realizes his blasphemy even - yet he feels unable to connect such a horrific, monstrous act to the message of an ultimately all-loving deity (and if you put it a bit further - the fact that deity choose to let them find evidence for this). In many ways, that story follows the classic catholic trope of the "Temptation of $holyperson".

[boxed]

The same god who also required a human sacrifice (which was also sort of himself) to back away from his own cruelty?

Seems totally congruent.

[Sharlin]

This is something I've never understood.Are there any reasonable theological arguments for why he had to resort to what amounts to an elaborate ploy, in order to work around his own arbitrary rules of who gets saved?

[jbeninger]

A character asks that question in Hyperion, by another sci-fi author (Dan Simmons).

The answer he arrived at was that God was not testing Abraham. He was allowing Abraham to test God. When God stayed his hand at the last moment, he knew that he'd met a god worth following.

(I'm not religious myself, but I did find this to be an interesting-enough interpretation to parrot it back to you on a web forum)

[Sharlin]

No, I was talking about Jesus (I believe the GP was as well).

The Jesus situation is an interesting inversion of the Abraham dilemma though. This time God is prepared to sacrifice his own son – but we sort of failed the test by design, executing the sacrifice as planned even though we could have just let Jesus live. Not sure what it says about us or God.

[BulgarianIdiot]

Let's play Devil's... I mean God's advocate here.

We seem to judge God, which is probably unwise in light of us knowing so little about the universe. Imagine that God saw the timelines of those two sentient species, and saw both devolve and lose their way, ultimately to their doom. So then God had the choice of saving one by sacrificing the other, because even God has to take when he gives, because there's a balance in the Universe, every positive thing has its negative created and annihilated at the same time.

In this case it was a choice of God letting two species die by their own hand, or kill one to save the other. It's the Trolley Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Of course, I'm not saying Christianity saved us per se. That's the thesis Christianity would give of course. But we also know that the Christian churches imposed a thousand years of intellectual darkness on the world, by fighting science every step of the way. Is this God's mistake or do we again speak in ignorance?

Because imagine we discovered nuclear bombs a thousand years ago. Would we even exist today? Knowledge is good, and I don't think any fair deity would oppose knowing unconditionally. But there's such a thing as "knowing just enough to be dangerous". If our morality lacks severely behind our knowledge, then we'd die by our own hand.

Again, it's hard for us to judge such actions when we can't see the consequences of our actions. We predict, but don't see. A being like God which exists outside our subjective timeline would know precisely what's the effect of their interference.

If I can borrow a popular meme, "would you kill baby Hitler if you go back in time". Well, would you? Of course, there are alternatives to killing a baby, so this is a false dichotomy. You could take care of the baby so it doesn't grow up to be a militant dictator. But in some cases fate gives us the Trolley Problem and no alternatives. And then the wise decision is to make a choice, not let the choices be made for you.

[krapp]

>Knowledge is good, and I don't think any fair deity would oppose knowing unconditionally.

Humanity's original sin, according to the Bible, was literally eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

[BulgarianIdiot]

I'm quite aware of this. The question is did God condemn humans for knowing, or condemned them for knowing before they were ready to know, and disobeying his direct orders.

Think about it like a father, who has a 3 year old toddler. You tell him "don't touch the car keys". The kid turns on the car, crashes in the garage.

It becomes pathological only if you still ban your child from driving when he's 40.

Religions are full of stories where humans tried to reach to the Gods too quickly and were punished for this. What about the Tower of Babel for example? Is this God (or Gods) trying to maintain their power by not sharing knowledge, or is it them being highly cognizant of how dangerous it is to know before you're ready? Maybe a bit of both.

There's another story from Hinduism where a person who died saw Shiva, but using a human form. The person prayed "I know this is not your true form, please show me your true form, I'm ready". Shiva tried to persuade the person that's a bad idea, but he persisted. So Shiva showed him his true form, horrifying and multidimensional and all-encompassing, filling every sense, he was a lion, and a tiger, and a tornado, and all beings at once, and the human could see Shiva in all moments from the beginning of time to eternity. And the human was horrified and begged Shiva to turn back to a human form.

We think we're ready, but we're not. The universe is a horrifyingly complex place. Of course, we should still strive to understand and learn.