A while back I described my disgust with Dennis Prager's defense of mass murder. In that I said that the flood story might be more instructive if the focus was on Noah; thinking more about it later, I wondered what you might actually learn from it. So I re-read the story.
What I found was that there isn't really a lot of moral instruction there. Genesis 6:5 says "And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:11-13 says "And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah: 'The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth."
Of Noah, we hear in Genesis 6:9 that "Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted; Noah walked with God." In Genesis 7:1 we hear that "And the LORD said unto Noah: 'Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation."
Apart from generic complaints that the wrong thing is being done, the most specific thing is "violence", repeated twice. So we are taught not to be violent.
After the flood, there is the incident with Ham, Canaan and Noah. Exactly what this is supposed to teach is the subject of far more debate than I had ever realised; the only clear lesson I can see is that you should respect other people.
These are good things to learn, but it seems to me that an omniscient God could think of better ways to teach them than the actual destruction of almost all life on the planet.
But I also learned that Prager was right about something that I missed. I said that God had waited 800 years after the flood before providing laws; this is not correct. Genesis 9:6 says "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man." I expect that this is what Prager is referring to when he says "After the evil that led to the flood, God decided to reveal basic moral rules — such as that murder is wrong. So wrong that one of the moral rules revealed after the flood is that murderers must be put to death..."
Presumably when Prager says "one of the moral rules", the others are whatever one is supposed to learn from the story of Canaan and Ham. Otherwise, we're back to waiting hundreds of years for the rest. So part of my criticism of his logic was faulty; and my point about Moses doesn't hold.
But the rest of it is strongly reinforced; in Prager's world, God didn't tell humans that killing was wrong, and there was a lot of killing going on. To right the situation, he kills almost everybody - guilty and innocent alike - and then tells the few survivors that killing is wrong. Because he hates evil, such as killing.
If that makes sense to you, then your moral compass is broken.
What I found was that there isn't really a lot of moral instruction there. Genesis 6:5 says "And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:11-13 says "And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah: 'The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth."
Of Noah, we hear in Genesis 6:9 that "Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted; Noah walked with God." In Genesis 7:1 we hear that "And the LORD said unto Noah: 'Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation."
Apart from generic complaints that the wrong thing is being done, the most specific thing is "violence", repeated twice. So we are taught not to be violent.
After the flood, there is the incident with Ham, Canaan and Noah. Exactly what this is supposed to teach is the subject of far more debate than I had ever realised; the only clear lesson I can see is that you should respect other people.
These are good things to learn, but it seems to me that an omniscient God could think of better ways to teach them than the actual destruction of almost all life on the planet.
But I also learned that Prager was right about something that I missed. I said that God had waited 800 years after the flood before providing laws; this is not correct. Genesis 9:6 says "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man." I expect that this is what Prager is referring to when he says "After the evil that led to the flood, God decided to reveal basic moral rules — such as that murder is wrong. So wrong that one of the moral rules revealed after the flood is that murderers must be put to death..."
Presumably when Prager says "one of the moral rules", the others are whatever one is supposed to learn from the story of Canaan and Ham. Otherwise, we're back to waiting hundreds of years for the rest. So part of my criticism of his logic was faulty; and my point about Moses doesn't hold.
But the rest of it is strongly reinforced; in Prager's world, God didn't tell humans that killing was wrong, and there was a lot of killing going on. To right the situation, he kills almost everybody - guilty and innocent alike - and then tells the few survivors that killing is wrong. Because he hates evil, such as killing.
If that makes sense to you, then your moral compass is broken.
