What does the God of the Bible have against animals? (myths, punishment)
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People don't get that the Bible is a collection of stories that were told. There was a time before television and social media when storytellers were the entertainment. Stories told verbally tend to be embellished and made more interesting.
While I know God exists and is an important part of my life, the stories are just that, stories. If you take and look at many different religions, you'll see that they "filled in the blanks" about what they didn't understand.
People don't get that the Bible is a collection of stories that were told. There was a time before television and social media when storytellers were the entertainment. Stories told verbally tend to be embellished and made more interesting.
While I know God exists and is an important part of my life, the stories are just that, stories. If you take and look at many different religions, you'll see that they "filled in the blanks" about what they didn't understand.
I'm guessing god being an embellished story never crossed your mind, huh?
People don't get that the Bible is a collection of stories that were told. There was a time before television and social media when storytellers were the entertainment. Stories told verbally tend to be embellished and made more interesting.
While I know God exists and is an important part of my life, the stories are just that, stories. If you take and look at many different religions, you'll see that they "filled in the blanks" about what they didn't understand.
How do you 'know' god exists as there is no verifiable evidence to support its existence?
Drowns millions in a temper tantrum over something humans did and loves the killing of goats to appease himself. The biggest animal abuser in the history of the world. Punishment should be an infinite life sentence banned to an alternate universe where the abuser cannot engage in this activity or any other sociopathic activity for that matter.
Don't take this as tacit approval of the story (the Bible containing a very young version of a very old tale) or the moral implications, but the text of Genesis gives several rationales for why animals were included in the flood - one of which implicates their culpability as well!
If you're curious as why there are 2 rationales from 2 versions of the Flood myth in Genesis, look up the Documentary Hypothesis - a standard model of Biblical scholarship. The 1st rationale is from J (the Yahwist), is probably the oldest strand of the Flood myth in Genesis and implicates humans:
Now YHWH saw
that great was humankind's evildoing on earth
and every form of their heart's planning was only evil all the day.
Then YHWH was sorry
that he had made humankind on earth,
and it pained his heart.
YHWH said:
I will blot out humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the soil,
from man to beast, to crawling thing and to the fowl of the heavens,
for I am sorry that I made them.
(Genesis 6:5-7 SB, Fox)
Above the culpablity is solely due to the "evildoing" of humanity. This is rather unjust for the poor animals, indeed.
The 2nd rationale is from P (the Priestly source), and this time animals are part of the problem!
Now the earth had gone to ruin before God, the earth was filled with wrongdoing.
God saw the earth, and here: it had gone to ruin,
for all flesh had ruined its way upon the earth.
God said to Noah:
An end of all flesh has come before me,
for the earth is filled with wrongdoing through them,
here, I am about to bring ruin upon them, along with the earth.
(Genesis 6:11-13 Ibid.)
In the above story it is "all flesh" that has corrupted the earth, and yes the Hebrew does indeed signify all living things under the phrase "all flesh". What the crimes were can be conjectured by following the story to its conclusions and the Noahide Covenant that is eventually set up. It is possible that the animals began corrupting the earth by eating one another, which would have involved the consumption of blood from a living being - a big No-No to the Priestly author who penned this version of the Flood myth.
Pick your poison! I like the version in which the animals get in trouble as well... it's much funnier. The other version is just too tragic.
Drowns millions in a temper tantrum over something humans did and loves the killing of goats to appease himself. The biggest animal abuser in the history of the world. Punishment should be an infinite life sentence banned to an alternate universe where the abuser cannot engage in this activity or any other sociopathic activity for that matter.
It could be something altogether different than what you ascribe to be God's reason for having to wipe out life on earth.
The 2nd rationale is from P (the Priestly source), and this time animals are part of the problem!
Now the earth had gone to ruin before God, the earth was filled with wrongdoing.
God saw the earth, and here: it had gone to ruin,
for all flesh had ruined its way upon the earth.
God said to Noah:
An end of all flesh has come before me,
for the earth is filled with wrongdoing through them,
here, I am about to bring ruin upon them, along with the earth.
(Genesis 6:11-13 Ibid.)
In the above story it is "all flesh" that has corrupted the earth, and yes the Hebrew does indeed signify all living things under the phrase "all flesh". What the crimes were can be conjectured by following the story to its conclusions and the Noahide Covenant that is eventually set up. It is possible that the animals began corrupting the earth by eating one another, which would have involved the consumption of blood from a living being - a big No-No to the Priestly author who penned this version of the Flood myth.
Pick your poison! I like the version in which the animals get in trouble as well... it's much funnier. The other version is just too tragic.
And as always, the story was bound to have a big hole in it in no time flat...and I'm sure a few people noted that even then, but it would have been a no-no to say so.
I mean if animals HAD to eat one another to survive, and if God created that condition (since He created everything, full stop...even evil, according to the Bible...and certainly, per the stories, He must have set up punishment conditions Himself), yet the animals "corrupted" the earth by what they were forced by God's own system to do, well...
...and round and round we go.
It all really reads like a kindergarten picture-book. It's like watching a cartoon and saying "such-and-such would physically be impossible" and someone wiser saying, "but that's because it's all just make-pretend."
Yes, it always comes down to a mystery when its nonsensical.
Yes.
In the good old days of morals and decency, when people's fingernails would be torn out with pliers or their shoulders and hips jerked permanently from the sockets for expressing doubt or disbelief, the above explanation did just fine and was basically a warning: "Don't ask any more than you already have...or else."
Unfortunately, in today's corrupt, evil society where we don't allow people to be tortured and torn apart immediately before being burned or choked slowly to death for saying "Um what?", it just doesn't work as well, and lo and behold, people are questioning aloud now, instead of just shaking their heads in private while glancing furtively around to be sure they hadn't been seen.
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