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> Abraham being super willing to murder his son to make God happy. Sacrificing your own children is a human behaviour so common through history and with differ

> Abraham being super willing to murder his son to make God happy. Sacrificing your own children is a human behaviour so common through history and with different cultures, that it's basically a biological instinct. Even today parents send their sons to die in industrialized war to prove their faith for the government, as well as sacrifice their children in ways that are less explicit than that - always to prove their faith and loyalty to the entity they worship religiously, whether that's a man worshipped as a god, or a disembodied concept that they worship, such as "the state". The story of Abraham is a way to break that spell. The primitive human instinct is to worship by giving gifts, and then naturally giving the greatest gift you can give to prove your faith, which is your child. I interpret the story of Abraham as a clever way to break one of the most evil and persistent traditions of humanity, which is child sacrifice. And the story is much more efficient than simply saying "You shouldn't sacrifice your own children". Put yourself in his shoes (there have probably been thousands of Abrahams through time). If he says "I'm not going to sacrifice my child", the tribespeople will say that his God is weak because Abraham dares to give less of a sacrifice than the best, or that Abraham puts his own desires in front of what's good for the tribe (pleasing God or any god). If God told him to sacrifice his son and God later changed his mind, that's another thing. The story puts an effective limit on the level of worship. Sacrifice animals sure, but don't sacrifice your own children. Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalistic wars of genocide is the natural condition of humans as a species. That is the simple answer to why humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years without making any progress before something strange happened and we became enlightened. Seeing as the Bible is a collection of stories that where told for thousands of years before being written down, I would think that there are entire generations and cultures who have live by those stories and commands for longer than the Bible has existed in any form. Pre-civilization tribes that we know nothing about. The Bible is our deepest probe into deep time, and absolutely fascinating.

Capricorn2481 2y ago
> The story of Abraham is a way to break that spell That's an extremely generous interpretation. You say the story is about breaking the cycle of pernicious child sacrifice. But there's nothing in the story that supports that view, you just said it because it's the most palatable interpretation of a straightforward story: Obey God, and he may give you mercy (not having to kill your kid). And you conveniently ignore Moses killing all the first-borns. > Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalistic wars of genocide is the natural condition of humans as a species There is no "ritual" wars without religion. Religion is what is natural to humanity, as it develops in every culture without fail. Whether you worship Jesus or the Sun, the belief in an afterlife if you follow the rules the last generation handled to you is what leads to terrible deeds, because you can justify anything. > The story puts an effective limit on the level of worship No, it doesn't. Many innocent people are sacrificed or ordered to be killed throughout the verses. Jephthah sacrifices his daughter. Saul is asked to kill women and children. > Seeing as the Bible is a collection of stories that where told for thousands of years before being written down If by told for a thousand years before being written down, you mean edited, distorted, and mistranslated to the convenience of whoever was in power at the time, yes.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  We are on such a different level of understanding, that there isn't any point in us two talking to each other – about anything. Feel free to take that as a compliment.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    It's been a long time since I read The Myth of the Framework, but I think the concept of "talking past each other" is wrong. On the other hand I often feel this kind of fatigue and don't want to get involved in debates. It probably isn't really about incompatible "level of understanding" (or "frameworks" as in the title), but something else.
  - Capricorn2481 2y ago
    > We are on such a different level of understanding, that there isn't any point in us two talking to each other That would be a very convenient conclusion, but ultimately not true. Willfully misinterpreting a story so that it sounds morally palatable for a modern world is not a different level of understanding, it's propaganda, and it's extremely common. And when I'm not doing my day job, I am reading, discussing, and interpreting stories. Drawing subtext involves evidence from the text itself. You are making up subtext. There's a difference, and it's transparent. I only engaged because you give lots of grace to Christianity and disrespect to everything else, which is annoying to read, but also not even based in real digestion of the work.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      I nominate you as the winner of this discussion, and any future discussions. Meaning you don't have to reply to any of my comments, since you already automatically won by walk-over.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > That would be a very convenient conclusion, but ultimately not true. > Willfully misinterpreting I don't think it works this way. If we've established that we're trying to interpret something, you cannot just claim that your interpretation is the right one, and someone else's is wrong.
tombert 2y ago
He's considered a moral and good character purely because he was fully willing to sacrifice his child. Even if God did stop it at the last second, we're supposed to think that the morally correct thing to do was to listen to God and murder his child. I don't know that I agree with your take, I don't think it's meant to be interpreted as a limit to sacrifice. If that's what you got out of it, that's good, I don't think you should sacrifice humans, but that wasn't the vibe I got from the story at all; the vibe I got was that "you should always listen to God if you want to be moral, and God will make sure that the right thing happens."
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Okay, let's say it's just a stupid story about a stupid idiot who didn't even know how to SSH into Arch Linux, and just walked around hallucinating all the time. What made his story so special that it was told and remembered for thousands of years by real people with real lives to worry about? > I don't think you should sacrifice humans And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you.
  - tombert 2y ago
    > What made his story so special that it was told and remembered for thousands of years by real people with real lives to worry about? I don't know. Maybe a lot of people agree with the message of "always listen to God and things will work out". That doesn't mean it's good morality, or a good way to live your life. While there's certainly selection bias in good stories surviving the test of time, I don't think it's 100% given that an old story is inherently good. If you found meaning in the story, that's great. I just don't know that meaning was the authors' intent. That might not matter to you, that's fine, but I simply did not get the message of "Abraham + Isaac is actually a limitation on sacrifice". > And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you. I can't know what it's like to have lived thousands of years ago, so I can only answer from someone in the late 20th and early 21st century. The reason I think you shouldn't sacrifice humans now is because I value human life, and that I think it would be wrong to deprive that person of life to appease a God that I do not think exists. There are times where ending a life might be justified, like physician assisted suicide, or self defense, and probably a few other cases, but none of those reasons are to appease a god. I don't pretend that I have any kind of objective morality on this, I'm not even sure if I believe in objective morality as a concept,

Capricorn2481 2y ago

> The story of Abraham is a way to break that spell That's an extremely generous interpretation. You say the story is about breaking the cycle of pernicious child sacrifice. But there's nothing in the story that supports that view, you just said it because it's the most palatable interpretation of a straightforward story: Obey God, and he may give you mercy (not having to kill your kid). And you conveniently ignore Moses killing all the first-borns. > Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalistic wars of genocide is the natural condition of humans as a species There is no "ritual" wars without religion. Religion is what is natural to humanity, as it develops in every culture without fail. Whether you worship Jesus or the Sun, the belief in an afterlife if you follow the rules the last generation handled to you is what leads to terrible deeds, because you can justify anything. > The story puts an effective limit on the level of worship No, it doesn't. Many innocent people are sacrificed or ordered to be killed throughout the verses. Jephthah sacrifices his daughter. Saul is asked to kill women and children. > Seeing as the Bible is a collection of stories that where told for thousands of years before being written down If by told for a thousand years before being written down, you mean edited, distorted, and mistranslated to the convenience of whoever was in power at the time, yes.

carlosjobim 2y ago
We are on such a different level of understanding, that there isn't any point in us two talking to each other – about anything. Feel free to take that as a compliment.
- card_zero 2y ago
  It's been a long time since I read The Myth of the Framework, but I think the concept of "talking past each other" is wrong. On the other hand I often feel this kind of fatigue and don't want to get involved in debates. It probably isn't really about incompatible "level of understanding" (or "frameworks" as in the title), but something else.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  > We are on such a different level of understanding, that there isn't any point in us two talking to each other That would be a very convenient conclusion, but ultimately not true. Willfully misinterpreting a story so that it sounds morally palatable for a modern world is not a different level of understanding, it's propaganda, and it's extremely common. And when I'm not doing my day job, I am reading, discussing, and interpreting stories. Drawing subtext involves evidence from the text itself. You are making up subtext. There's a difference, and it's transparent. I only engaged because you give lots of grace to Christianity and disrespect to everything else, which is annoying to read, but also not even based in real digestion of the work.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    I nominate you as the winner of this discussion, and any future discussions. Meaning you don't have to reply to any of my comments, since you already automatically won by walk-over.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > That would be a very convenient conclusion, but ultimately not true. > Willfully misinterpreting I don't think it works this way. If we've established that we're trying to interpret something, you cannot just claim that your interpretation is the right one, and someone else's is wrong.

tombert 2y ago

He's considered a moral and good character purely because he was fully willing to sacrifice his child. Even if God did stop it at the last second, we're supposed to think that the morally correct thing to do was to listen to God and murder his child. I don't know that I agree with your take, I don't think it's meant to be interpreted as a limit to sacrifice. If that's what you got out of it, that's good, I don't think you should sacrifice humans, but that wasn't the vibe I got from the story at all; the vibe I got was that "you should always listen to God if you want to be moral, and God will make sure that the right thing happens."

carlosjobim 2y ago
Okay, let's say it's just a stupid story about a stupid idiot who didn't even know how to SSH into Arch Linux, and just walked around hallucinating all the time. What made his story so special that it was told and remembered for thousands of years by real people with real lives to worry about? > I don't think you should sacrifice humans And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you.
- tombert 2y ago
  > What made his story so special that it was told and remembered for thousands of years by real people with real lives to worry about? I don't know. Maybe a lot of people agree with the message of "always listen to God and things will work out". That doesn't mean it's good morality, or a good way to live your life. While there's certainly selection bias in good stories surviving the test of time, I don't think it's 100% given that an old story is inherently good. If you found meaning in the story, that's great. I just don't know that meaning was the authors' intent. That might not matter to you, that's fine, but I simply did not get the message of "Abraham + Isaac is actually a limitation on sacrifice". > And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you. I can't know what it's like to have lived thousands of years ago, so I can only answer from someone in the late 20th and early 21st century. The reason I think you shouldn't sacrifice humans now is because I value human life, and that I think it would be wrong to deprive that person of life to appease a God that I do not think exists. There are times where ending a life might be justified, like physician assisted suicide, or self defense, and probably a few other cases, but none of those reasons are to appease a god. I don't pretend that I have any kind of objective morality on this, I'm not even sure if I believe in objective morality as a concept,