Interesting. I'll bite for this one, even though I'm agnostic and don't prescribe to dogmatic religion, I'll play Devil's advocate:
Why can god act with impunity and not be held to the same standards as your neighbors?
After all, morality is made clear in regards to violence "Thou shalt not kill" - unless its god who does it, to provide a lesson or perhaps just for kicks.
You're making some interesting assumptions here. Let me see if I can accurately break down all the suppositions at play:
- God dictates morality: We shall refer to this as "God's law" for the sake of simplicity.
- God's Law applies to humanity.
- God's Law applies to God.
- Human beings are capable of holding God responsible for his/her/its actions/inactions.
I think the difficulty here is points #3 and #4. In my readings of the Bible, Koran, and the Torah - I do not think I have really seen any book address the applicability of God's morality upon God him/her/itself other than in the Koran when dealing with
abrogation - basically Allah (through Gabriel) telling Muhammad that when two revelations seem to be in conflict, the more recent revelation chronologically is the "better" and correct revelation. The part that is relevant to your question is that in the final part of the verse is the phrase, "
know you not that Allah can do all things?"
This could then suggest that the assumption that God's law applies to God would be incorrect, and that as human beings (not the creator of all things), posing this question is a non-sequitur because the laws being set forth are not for God to follow, and even if they were, as human beings we would have no possible method of redress to "punish" God for his/her/its transgressions of the law.
Why do believers defend or explain away his acts of violence?
fatcat has already laid out the examples- stoning women, killing gays, etc. How is this made reasonable in the conscience of a believer?
Excellent question - and it's a problem I have with most dogmatic "western" religions, which I am assuming based upon your examples is whom this question is primarily posed against. A lot of this deals with a few (now) commonly held assumptions/accepted beliefs about God in our modern, contemporary contexts and interpretations. For example:
- God loves everyone: This one in particular causes lots and lots of problems when counted amongst the other assumptions or statements either held as fact, or laid out in various holy books.
However, this is very largely a result of the New Testament. Prior to this, the God of Abraham (the god shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims), have some very definite preferences as to whom he gave the lions share of his love to, which is why God made his convenant to the Jews, and not say... the Egyptians. It was only in the New Testament that through Jesus' martyrdom that "his convenant was extended to all mankind."
This is an issue for another reason: Assuming God has equal love for all people increases the paradox and even "last stop" I outline below - as one could argue that this renders Assumption #1 and #3 logically inconsistent.
- God doesn't change his mind: So far, amongst the "big 3," only muslims openly will admit that God changes His mind frequently and often - again as evidenced by the passage of abrogation. For westerners, indeed since the time of Plato's writing of The Republic, we like to hold onto the thought that because of God's omniscience, it is extremely unlikely that He/She/It would ever have a "change of heart." Indeed, in the old testament, the only time we see God openly admit to a "mistake" was the flood, and His resulting convenant as an assurance the God would not do that again.
- The Paradox of Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence: In the bible, God introduces himself to Moses as, I am that which is I am. I am the Alpha and the Omega.... Here and in other passages he declares and/or reveals Himself to be:
- Omnipresent: That he is everywhere, and see's all of creation. Personally, the concept of God as omnipresent is not anything I would consider overly controversial.
- Omniscient: When Abrahams wife, Sarah scoffs at an Angel's proclamation that she would give birth (despite her advanced age), God speaks to her directly asking her why she laughed at the idea - showing that not only was every where, but he was aware of everyone's thoughts as well
- Omnipotent: "God has a plan." How often do you hear this? This many could claim this gets it's roots from the comment, "I am the Alpha and the Omega," and that because God is all powerful, He has already had his masterplan laid out, and nothing could ever possibly "surprise" Him.
Personally, this is the one "property" of God that I find the least plausible and compelling, as an absolutist interpretation of Omnipotence invalidates suppositions of choice, free will, and several mechanical processes in Nature including quantum mechanics.
- The Paradox: So who cares, right? All of this is important because although the devoutly religious are all too happy to lay the credit for all that is good, wholesome and just (see your conversation of ethics) in the Universe,. . . they are a little skittish of following the Logic train to it's final stop:
Assuming Omnipotence, God is 100% responsible and culpable for all that is Evil in the world.
Part of what makes the discussion of Religion and religious texts problematic in today's culture is that
we're in today's culture, and everyone who is religious is no a student of
hermeneutics: basically studying the language and the context for how it was used at a certain period in history. The good example of this would be the word, "gay" and its use prior to the late 1950's and after.
The other problem is that as is often admitted - these issues boil down to faith, and thus ensuring that the assumptions held by the faithful are not required to be consistent.
Why is it not acceptable for followers of a religion to perform violent deeds as suggested in holy texts?
If god punished kids by having a bear maul them to death, why is it not acceptable for a believer to do the same?
Probably the easiest to address with a very simple answer were I to put on the "Boots of being Religious:"
Because Man is not God, and for Man to consider his judgment, morality and actions as that equal to God is foolish and improper.However, with fundamentalist Islam, there is no such compunction - in fact many of the acts of the more militant muslims reflects many of the actions that the Prophet Muhammed committed in his life, including the decapitation of prisoners. In this particular case, your attempted
Reductio Ad Absurdum is a non-valid reductio, because there are those (the fundamentalist muslim) who do not believe the conclusion is absurd.
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edit: fixed a couple typos