God as the Evil Creator

[skotos]

That's like saying that a Corvette isn't a GM product, it's a Chevrolet. Islam and Christianity have the same roots.

Yeah, that was a bit of nitpicking, which it wasn't intended to be. I only realized that it was a nitpick after I posted it.

That brings up an interesting point though, are there any non-Abrahamic religions that view God (or certain gods) as being inherently moral? The one example I can think of are the pagan Chinese religions, the ones that claimed that the emperor had a "heavenly mandate", and therefore must be obeyed. My only knowledge of pagan Chinese beliefs is what I learned in high school, and therefore it's certainly over simplified and might be wholly inaccurate.

[Coop D'etat]

If Zeus wasn't ok with Prometheus being free his ass would be back on the wall in about a half-hour.

Do you care to provide some proof for that statement? Zeus was neither omniscient nor omnipotent after all.

I may have spoken a bit to hastely on that one, but I think the statement can be supported. The Olympeans seem to be able to keep track of most things they care to keep tabs on (this of course varies somewhat from story to story as they're from different people from different places without a need to be absolutely consistant) which would apply to keeping an important malcontent under lock in key. Zeus would be the better informed than most, having the sky as his province along with Hermes running his errands and having Helios (who can see pretty much anything in daylight) on call. He's also not ommipotent but he still gets his way unless there is another powerful deity that cares strongly about the issue, which isn't the case here.

Finally, in most iterations of the story Heracles has to either ask permission or get approval after the fact, which would support Zeus having final say on the matter.

[Magus]

Finally, in most iterations of the story Heracles has to either ask permission or get approval after the fact, which would support Zeus having final say on the matter.

I've always learned that Zeus learned about the freeing soon after, but since he'd had a little cooling off time he just said "Eh, fuck it," and let him stay free.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I think that, to be honest, the whole idea of God's "perfect morality" was retconned into the Judeo-Christian mythos later.

God's literal omnipotence was retconned, originally it simply meaned that he had power in every aspect of reality, not only, for example, thunder or harvests. It explains a lot about iron chariots, swearing to avoid flooding Earth another time, etc...

Kabbalah and even Torah-based stuff like the 13 aspects of god always seemed a little too complicated for a tribe of unsophisticated desert bandits to have come up with in the first place.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

God's literal omnipotence was retconned, originally it simply meant that he had power in every aspect of reality, not only, for example, thunder or harvests. It explains a lot about iron chariots, swearing to avoid flooding Earth another time, etc...

This is true in more ways than one. The God of Israel, Yahweh, was more of an evolution of a figure. The early Jews from 1200 and after, until the sacking of their kingdoms by the Assyrians and later the Chaldeans, were somewhat henotheistic; that is, they believed in many Gods, but worshipped one relatively exclusively. Yahweh was the desert storm God during the Mosaic period.

Once the Jews entered the Land of Canaan, though, they worshiped the Baals. Such was a product of the Mosaic period. Yahweh was one of dozens of deities recognized by Jews. He grew from a rather localized deity to an "all-powerful", transcendent, and "moral" one as time progressed, especially after the aforementioned sackings.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Edit: In response to Mr. Wong's post, there was certainly a shift in the view of the concept of Ethics.

In the early Mosaic period, the relationship between the Jews and their storm GOd was a fair bit different than the latter one. The notion that he was some beacon of justice did come later. The early agreement was merely a practical one wherein if X did Y, X would be left alone. The covenant period for the Jews was essentially this "agreement."

Most of the rules and orders by Yahweh weren't intended to be some paragon of virtue. Later, you are right, that it changed. This is particuarly evolutionary too, and the notion that God required "justice" and "morality" was also partly a product of the sackings and failures of the Jewish kingdoms.

When faced with contradictions and problems in the covenant, they simply reinvented it. The early ten commandments during the Mosaic period were part of the more practical/contractual agreement phase instead of their "moral justice" phase. That's probably why so many of the rules are "worship me, do what I say."