Dumb Theistic Argument of the Week

In response to my contention that the law Yahweh provided was ludicrously inadequate and was in fact highly immoral, Anonymous responded thus:

"God provides laws regulating everything when no laws existed, do you get the point? No laws were there which could say that one action was better than another. Making laws established parity for the behavior of the people he was going to send many more prophets to. This is an example of God teaching men proper behavior piece by piece, not suggesting slavery is not objectively immoral, but that humanity had to be brought to a point where they could accept and live with the knowledge that it was so."

This statement is mind bogglingly ignorant and counterfactual on almost every single level.

1.  "God provides laws regulating everything when no laws existed, do you get the point?"  Apparently I don't get the point...  As a threshold matter, let's dispense with the ludicrous contention that no laws existed.  The Mosaic Law was developed somewhere between 700 and 800 BCE.  In contrast, the Code of Ur-Nammu was codified somewhere around 2050 BCE, the Laws of Eshunna somewhere around 1930 BCE, Codex of Lipit Ishtar somewhere around 1870 BCE, the Code of Hammurabi somewhere around 1750 BCE.  This does not even include other codes of laws extant in the Far East.  In other words, far from the Mosaic Law simply coming into being 'when no laws existed,' the Mosaic Law was actually merely a restatement of codified legal codes that had been in existence throughout the Middle East for over a thousand years.  Indeed, much of Mosaic Law was copied directly from the Code of Hammurabi.

2.  "No laws were there which could say that one action was better than another."  Aside from being factually incorrect (see above), this statement makes the specious assumption that morality and the knowledge of right and wrong can be established only through some manner of authority engaging in the labelling process.  This directly contradicts the Bible in the sense that in the story of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve KNEW the difference between good and evil as soon as they ate from the tree of knowledge.  This is also a rather strange sentiment given the fact that Yahweh was so pissed off at the alleged wickedness of humanity that he decided to wipe all of them out with the flood.  How could Yahweh justify this course of action if, as this theist posits, there were no laws 'which could say that one action was better than another.'  This is either a tacit admission that there WERE laws by which one could determine that one action was better than another, or that Yahweh is a psychotic monster who wantonly slaughtered the entire population of Earth because he forgot or didn't bother to tell people that one action was better than another.  Of course, setting the Bible aside, it is obvious that morality can and does exist in the absence of or even contrary to written law.

3.  "Making laws established parity for the behavior of the people he was going to send many more prophets to."  This proposition is nonsense.  It wrongly assumes that the people Yahweh was sending prophets to did not have extant laws.  Of course, they DID, have codes of laws, many of which were hundreds if not thousands of years older than the Mosaic Law.  More importantly, this notion of 'parity for the behavior of the people' is curious since the Mosaic Law was largely copied from the extant legal codes of neighboring countries - if anything the Mosaic Law merely brings the Hebrew legal code into line with preexisting legal codes.

4.  "This is an example of God teaching men proper behavior piece by piece, not suggesting slavery is not objectively immoral, but that humanity had to be brought to a point where they could accept and live with the knowledge that it was so."  This is simply false.  This is a complete and utter cop out - an unsuccessful attempt to dodge the stark reality that Yahweh absolutely DID expressly permit and codify slavery.  Nothing in either the OT or the NT even HINTS at the notion that slavery is objectively immoral.  The idea that Yahweh or Jesus at any point indicated to humanity that slavery was objectively immoral is utterly unsupported by the text of the Bible which takes great pains to codify and establish the institution of slavery and provide safe harbor laws for beating slaves.  The Bible expressly states that you can beat your slave so severely that he dies, but as long as he dies the next day, it's okay.  The notion that slavery is objectively immoral does NOT come from any kind of divine revelation, but is a wholly secular development.

More importantly, HE'S YAHWEH!  If he KNOWS that slavery is objectively immoral, wouldn't it behoove Him to let us know that he doesn't support the practice?  Given this theist's contention that the law was necessary to know which actions are good and which are evil, Yahweh's failure to address this rather glaring example of objective immorality seems highly irresponsible, especially given the Hebrew's allegedly recent experience with slavery.  Honestly, could there have been a BETTER time to mention that God is opposed to slavery than right after he invested so much spiritual capital in delivering his people from its supposed evils?

The simple fact is that Yahweh did NOT teach men proper behavior.  The Mosaic Law spends a ridiculous amount of time on completely irrelevant ephemera (Leviticus) and utterly ignores or expressly advocates any number of behaviors we now deem objectively evil.  Slavery, Genocide, Rape, Stoning, Mutilation, etcetera.  Men merely codified what they presently believed to be a proper code of social conduct based on extant laws and social norms then slapped on a patina of divinity to provide an aura of authority.

<Facepalm>