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Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes. It is: anything you do is meaningless compared to God, and you should fear him and therefore do what

Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes. It is: anything you do is meaningless compared to God, and you should fear him and therefore do what He has commanded of you. Excuse my French, but this God is a real asshole, and I think it's best that people ignored these threats.

lins1909 4y ago
Why do you have this level of vitriol? Surely if there is a "one true God", this instruction will not seem out of place coming from them? Like it would make sense that this God will say this? And given that we don't know for sure whether or not there is a one true God, why exactly are you so angry about Ecclesiastes?
jdsnape 4y ago
God is an asshole if you read a random bit of the Bible in isolation of the theology/tradition that sits around and explains it. The way I’ve heard it explained by people who have lived this for a long time is a slightly different angle; which is that the way humans were created means that the way to be truely happy is to be aligned with God’s will. At the start you don’t really know what that is, which is why we have ‘commandments’/instruction, but as you deepen that relationship it becomes more and more fulfilling.
- someotherperson 4y ago
  What you’re describing here is Stockholm Syndrome
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    That's funny but I get what the person you were responding to means.
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Whatever happened to the golden rule? Do people really need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass? If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be happy.
  - edgelard 4y ago
  - jhrmnn 4y ago
    He doesn’t need anything. The statement is that there’s a way to live a good (satisfying) life, the God being the creator knows that way, and he reveals it to people, who should follow it (to live satisfying lives)
    - beebmam 4y ago
      It is not "to live satisfying lives". It is because God commands it, and you should fear him.[1] It's very explicit. 1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%2012&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...
      - jhrmnn 4y ago
        Well, yes, if you take the whole Bible literally, it’s not very nice and not even self-consistent. But I don’t think many reasonable people do that
        tacon 4y ago
        Alas, the majority of Christians are not very "reasonable" in that way today. Fosdick was asking 100 years ago (1922) if the fundamentalists will win[0], and it is pretty clear today that they have[1]. [0] http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/shall-the-fundamentalists-win.pdf http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/s... [1] https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamentalists-win https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamental...
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        God commands it for our own benefit, not because he needs it. The Bible wasn't written in English. > The Hebrew word translated into ‘awe’ in the Bible is yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah). It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it can also mean respect, reverence, and worship. https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-connects-fear-and-awe/ https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-co... >John Mallon writes that the "fear" in "fear of the Lord" is often misinterpreted as "servile fear" (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as "filial fear" (the fear of offending someone whom one loves). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_God
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  The last time it is recorded as coming here in the type-0 state known as “God” was to make an unsolicited gamble with Lucifer for fun to ruin Job’s life just for being God’s biggest fan, a process so egregious even literal Satan was like “maybe dial it back a bit” That species gains its power from attention, and that one got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide, and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded history until that point. No other supernatural being aside from God or its current angels did anything with their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book. They were just vilified for not being God or an angel. Nothing else killed babies if lamb’s blood wasn't smeared on the door. It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an national security effort to guard against it.
  - nickthesick 4y ago
    I’m curious in what you are talking about here. Where did you get these ideas?
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      ultimately what it comes down to is "who did what"
- cs137 4y ago
  This is Hacker News. It is not a place for intricate theological debate. God is bad, money is good, the systemic failures of capitalism can be ignored as long as we get to the Singularity, and we're all going to freeze our heads and be immortal.
  - kmmlng 4y ago
    Do you know any good places that would be suited to this topic?
  - throwaw32344 4y ago
    [flagged]
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  A lot of debates around christianity seem to resolve around the back and forth between "the Bible is really dumb and filled with insanities" and "people with two brain cells don't take it at face value, and only take away the parts that don't make them assholes". I always wonder, if these people are smart enough to sift through all the insanities and come up with a safe path that makes sense, couldn't they just stare at the world for a few years and come up with their own sane path that only contains stuff that make sense for them...
  - just-ok 4y ago
    Im(vh)o, all you need to do is stare long enough to realize how easy it is to get lost in a world in which you are constantly, intentionally exposed to calculated manipulation of human psychology to see how valuable it is to have a unwavering, structured approach to life and morality.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Hmmm...you're still choosing among a set of systems that were also designed to manipulate human psychology, but survived a few centuries, potentially getting refined. One argument is that a system that survives that long can't be full blown toxic (would destroy itself in the process), but it's still not guaranteed to be better than any other system that also aren't full blown toxic (include one you make up by yourself), until you dig really deep into it. To take an example from another field, full-blown royal/aristocracies government went on for centuries in France, and the country was quite successful from several metrics. But looking back we wouldn't argue it was a pretty nice system that could still be chosen today, just because it wasn't outright toxic.
      - brutusborn 4y ago
        I think the utility of religious systems can be determined by looking at the reason for their continuity: Abrahamic faiths tended to continue via wars and forced conversions. Dharmic religions such as Buddhism tended to continue because adherents saw such immense value in the teachings that they spread them even despite resistance from authorities. They have both existed for millenia but I see eastern faiths as more useful because they were rarely forced on their adherents. As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy. Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.
- gurumeditations 4y ago
  Gods will is for gay people to be murdered and to burn in hell, so Gods will is a very bad example to follow.
xhevahir 4y ago
I don't believe Ecclesiastes presents one central and unambiguous argument. Like a lot of books in the Bible, it may well have more than one author, too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SnowHill9902 4y ago
Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes.
wwilim 4y ago
I think you might be taking it a little too literally
- beebmam 4y ago
  Approximately two-thirds of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe that Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form.[1] It is terrifying how many people in the US believe the bible is literally true in every way. 1. https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-complex-conflicting-religious-beliefs-according-to-latest-state-of-theology-study/ https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-compl...
  - ducktales 4y ago
    It feels disingenuous to come to the conclusion that Christians take all / most of the bible "too literally" on the evidence that they believe Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form. If you were unaware, belief that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected is taught as the prerequisite to salvation and entering Heaven upon death. Given this fact, I would expect 100% of Christians to believe this. As an additional note, modern Christianity (except maybe Catholicism) brush a lot of the old testament under the rug, of which includes Ecclesiastes I believe? Some churches teach Matthew 5:17 as support for doing so. Catholicism seems to have a more nuanced take: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-reject-the-old-law https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-r...
    - beebmam 4y ago
      Please look at the source I linked. 48% of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe "the Bible is 100% accurate in all it teaches".
      - throwaway0b1 4y ago
        100% accurate and 100% literal are far from the same thing.
czbond 4y ago
>but this God is a real asshole From His/Its/Her perspective, if I had Billions of life forms I was responsible for on each of millions(?) of inhabitable planets throughout just this Universe - I'd be crabby as $hit too. All of them needing constant resources, continually consuming energy to be used on everything from pissing it away, to working for money, or in the rare lot - improving the future of ones species. All while they're bitter and unhappy. And since I was infinite - I had to do that forever for some odd reason... I'd be bitter.
- WJW 4y ago
  I'm not religious but this strikes me as an odd sentiment. First of all, if God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient then why would anything that humans can dream up surprise or annoy God? Surely it is the height of hubris to think that humans could surprise an omniscient deity. Secondly, if you are indeed infinite then even taking care of billions of lifeforms on millions of planets would be an infinitely small part of your attention and thus not worth being annoyed about. Thirdly even if would be so annoying to God to take care of all the species (not that God seems all that proactive these days) then He can just destroy the universe and be done with it? All in all, I don't think there is a lot of reason for God to be bitter or upset about anything that humanity does. After all, it was Him that put these urges into humans in the first place, so it seems kinda petty to then be upset about anything they choose to do.
  - escape_goat 4y ago
    This. Once one posits the abstract properties of God as infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and a priori to all things, a lot of religious presumptions look like failures of the imagination. It is trivially obvious that God is unknowable, that any God one claims to know is 'another' God placed before the true God. It is literal hubris to experience certitude about the nature of God, and there is therefore no exemption from culpability through the name of God for injuries done to another.
    - Clubber 4y ago
      I remember the question of if God is omnipotent, why does he allow such suffering. I believe this was explained away by God giving man free will. I'm not a big student, but I find theology interesting.
ziroshima 4y ago
I think there have been a series of misinterpretations that unfortunately result in a lot of confusion and (in my opinion) completely miss the point of these stories. I don't think 'God' is an 'entity' per se, I interpret 'God' as the reality one lives in. "God is an asshole", and "Life is a bitch" then become equivalent statements. Whether or not 'ignoring the threats' posed by 'God' according to this interpretation is wise is left as an exercise for the reader.
sireat 4y ago
You probably know that the ending to Ecclesiastes is a bit controversial in that it might not have been in the original treatise. It is possible that it was added by an later editor to make Ecclesiastes suitable for inclusion in the canon. https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y
barrkel 4y ago
IMO it's a useful lens to think of religion as an operating system for a society, and the Bible as the source code for an OS specifically for an agrarian society. Agriculture only works if a lot of people do a lot of work which has mostly future payoffs, if they stick around in one place, form stable relationships, and so on. Individual selfish desires must be suppressed to some degree for the greater good of the society.
dang 4y ago
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want flamewar here generally and the religious sort is particularly pernicious and also particularly avoidable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lins1909 4y ago

Why do you have this level of vitriol? Surely if there is a "one true God", this instruction will not seem out of place coming from them? Like it would make sense that this God will say this? And given that we don't know for sure whether or not there is a one true God, why exactly are you so angry about Ecclesiastes?

jdsnape 4y ago

God is an asshole if you read a random bit of the Bible in isolation of the theology/tradition that sits around and explains it. The way I’ve heard it explained by people who have lived this for a long time is a slightly different angle; which is that the way humans were created means that the way to be truely happy is to be aligned with God’s will. At the start you don’t really know what that is, which is why we have ‘commandments’/instruction, but as you deepen that relationship it becomes more and more fulfilling.

someotherperson 4y ago
What you’re describing here is Stockholm Syndrome
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  That's funny but I get what the person you were responding to means.
throwaway743 4y ago
Whatever happened to the golden rule? Do people really need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass? If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be happy.
- edgelard 4y ago
- jhrmnn 4y ago
  He doesn’t need anything. The statement is that there’s a way to live a good (satisfying) life, the God being the creator knows that way, and he reveals it to people, who should follow it (to live satisfying lives)
  - beebmam 4y ago
    It is not "to live satisfying lives". It is because God commands it, and you should fear him.[1] It's very explicit. 1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%2012&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...
    - jhrmnn 4y ago
      Well, yes, if you take the whole Bible literally, it’s not very nice and not even self-consistent. But I don’t think many reasonable people do that
      - tacon 4y ago
        Alas, the majority of Christians are not very "reasonable" in that way today. Fosdick was asking 100 years ago (1922) if the fundamentalists will win[0], and it is pretty clear today that they have[1]. [0] http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/shall-the-fundamentalists-win.pdf http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/s... [1] https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamentalists-win https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamental...
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      God commands it for our own benefit, not because he needs it. The Bible wasn't written in English. > The Hebrew word translated into ‘awe’ in the Bible is yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah). It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it can also mean respect, reverence, and worship. https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-connects-fear-and-awe/ https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-co... >John Mallon writes that the "fear" in "fear of the Lord" is often misinterpreted as "servile fear" (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as "filial fear" (the fear of offending someone whom one loves). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_God
yieldcrv 4y ago
The last time it is recorded as coming here in the type-0 state known as “God” was to make an unsolicited gamble with Lucifer for fun to ruin Job’s life just for being God’s biggest fan, a process so egregious even literal Satan was like “maybe dial it back a bit” That species gains its power from attention, and that one got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide, and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded history until that point. No other supernatural being aside from God or its current angels did anything with their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book. They were just vilified for not being God or an angel. Nothing else killed babies if lamb’s blood wasn't smeared on the door. It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an national security effort to guard against it.
- nickthesick 4y ago
  I’m curious in what you are talking about here. Where did you get these ideas?
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    ultimately what it comes down to is "who did what"
cs137 4y ago
This is Hacker News. It is not a place for intricate theological debate. God is bad, money is good, the systemic failures of capitalism can be ignored as long as we get to the Singularity, and we're all going to freeze our heads and be immortal.
- kmmlng 4y ago
  Do you know any good places that would be suited to this topic?
- throwaw32344 4y ago
  [flagged]
makeitdouble 4y ago
A lot of debates around christianity seem to resolve around the back and forth between "the Bible is really dumb and filled with insanities" and "people with two brain cells don't take it at face value, and only take away the parts that don't make them assholes". I always wonder, if these people are smart enough to sift through all the insanities and come up with a safe path that makes sense, couldn't they just stare at the world for a few years and come up with their own sane path that only contains stuff that make sense for them...
- just-ok 4y ago
  Im(vh)o, all you need to do is stare long enough to realize how easy it is to get lost in a world in which you are constantly, intentionally exposed to calculated manipulation of human psychology to see how valuable it is to have a unwavering, structured approach to life and morality.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Hmmm...you're still choosing among a set of systems that were also designed to manipulate human psychology, but survived a few centuries, potentially getting refined. One argument is that a system that survives that long can't be full blown toxic (would destroy itself in the process), but it's still not guaranteed to be better than any other system that also aren't full blown toxic (include one you make up by yourself), until you dig really deep into it. To take an example from another field, full-blown royal/aristocracies government went on for centuries in France, and the country was quite successful from several metrics. But looking back we wouldn't argue it was a pretty nice system that could still be chosen today, just because it wasn't outright toxic.
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      I think the utility of religious systems can be determined by looking at the reason for their continuity: Abrahamic faiths tended to continue via wars and forced conversions. Dharmic religions such as Buddhism tended to continue because adherents saw such immense value in the teachings that they spread them even despite resistance from authorities. They have both existed for millenia but I see eastern faiths as more useful because they were rarely forced on their adherents. As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy. Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.
gurumeditations 4y ago
Gods will is for gay people to be murdered and to burn in hell, so Gods will is a very bad example to follow.

xhevahir 4y ago

I don't believe Ecclesiastes presents one central and unambiguous argument. Like a lot of books in the Bible, it may well have more than one author, too.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

SnowHill9902 4y ago

Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes.

wwilim 4y ago

I think you might be taking it a little too literally

beebmam 4y ago
Approximately two-thirds of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe that Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form.[1] It is terrifying how many people in the US believe the bible is literally true in every way. 1. https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-complex-conflicting-religious-beliefs-according-to-latest-state-of-theology-study/ https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-compl...
- ducktales 4y ago
  It feels disingenuous to come to the conclusion that Christians take all / most of the bible "too literally" on the evidence that they believe Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form. If you were unaware, belief that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected is taught as the prerequisite to salvation and entering Heaven upon death. Given this fact, I would expect 100% of Christians to believe this. As an additional note, modern Christianity (except maybe Catholicism) brush a lot of the old testament under the rug, of which includes Ecclesiastes I believe? Some churches teach Matthew 5:17 as support for doing so. Catholicism seems to have a more nuanced take: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-reject-the-old-law https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-r...
  - beebmam 4y ago
    Please look at the source I linked. 48% of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe "the Bible is 100% accurate in all it teaches".
    - throwaway0b1 4y ago
      100% accurate and 100% literal are far from the same thing.

czbond 4y ago

>but this God is a real asshole From His/Its/Her perspective, if I had Billions of life forms I was responsible for on each of millions(?) of inhabitable planets throughout just this Universe - I'd be crabby as $hit too. All of them needing constant resources, continually consuming energy to be used on everything from pissing it away, to working for money, or in the rare lot - improving the future of ones species. All while they're bitter and unhappy. And since I was infinite - I had to do that forever for some odd reason... I'd be bitter.

WJW 4y ago
I'm not religious but this strikes me as an odd sentiment. First of all, if God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient then why would anything that humans can dream up surprise or annoy God? Surely it is the height of hubris to think that humans could surprise an omniscient deity. Secondly, if you are indeed infinite then even taking care of billions of lifeforms on millions of planets would be an infinitely small part of your attention and thus not worth being annoyed about. Thirdly even if would be so annoying to God to take care of all the species (not that God seems all that proactive these days) then He can just destroy the universe and be done with it? All in all, I don't think there is a lot of reason for God to be bitter or upset about anything that humanity does. After all, it was Him that put these urges into humans in the first place, so it seems kinda petty to then be upset about anything they choose to do.
- escape_goat 4y ago
  This. Once one posits the abstract properties of God as infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and a priori to all things, a lot of religious presumptions look like failures of the imagination. It is trivially obvious that God is unknowable, that any God one claims to know is 'another' God placed before the true God. It is literal hubris to experience certitude about the nature of God, and there is therefore no exemption from culpability through the name of God for injuries done to another.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    I remember the question of if God is omnipotent, why does he allow such suffering. I believe this was explained away by God giving man free will. I'm not a big student, but I find theology interesting.

ziroshima 4y ago

I think there have been a series of misinterpretations that unfortunately result in a lot of confusion and (in my opinion) completely miss the point of these stories. I don't think 'God' is an 'entity' per se, I interpret 'God' as the reality one lives in. "God is an asshole", and "Life is a bitch" then become equivalent statements. Whether or not 'ignoring the threats' posed by 'God' according to this interpretation is wise is left as an exercise for the reader.

sireat 4y ago

You probably know that the ending to Ecclesiastes is a bit controversial in that it might not have been in the original treatise. It is possible that it was added by an later editor to make Ecclesiastes suitable for inclusion in the canon. https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y

barrkel 4y ago

IMO it's a useful lens to think of religion as an operating system for a society, and the Bible as the source code for an OS specifically for an agrarian society. Agriculture only works if a lot of people do a lot of work which has mostly future payoffs, if they stick around in one place, form stable relationships, and so on. Individual selfish desires must be suppressed to some degree for the greater good of the society.

dang 4y ago

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want flamewar here generally and the religious sort is particularly pernicious and also particularly avoidable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]