It doesn't make sense to be moral in a world where only the strongest survive.
Perhaps not to you. Rational ethics is unlike ancient, received, crystallized ethical systems, which are prescriptive, and as you have seen, obedience to which for reward or to escape punishment is not considered moral behavior at all.
The typical secular humanist has a utilitarian moral intuition, that is, whatever facilitates the pursuit of happiness for the greatest number is the greatest good. I say intuition, because one cannot derive such ideas from reason or experience, although reason can and should be applied to that intuition to generate rules for generating such a society and for living such lives.
By this method, and under this intuition, we make a world that doesn't resemble the one you propose for unbelievers, one in which only the strongest survive. Humanist ethics promotes supporting survival of even the weakest, and not just surviving. Thriving. Flourishing. Think about liberal values such as objecting to homophobia, racism, anti-LGBTQ legislation, voter suppression, and the like. Or anti-gun stances, or infrastructure support such as for day care, parental leave, and ready Internet access for all. Or environmental protection including greenhouse gas reduction and clean drinking water. It's all about enabling people through education, access to quality health care, living wages, removing systemic barriers to success, etc..
I've seen nothing that shows what God did was immoral, just the opposite. He could have just not given us live, knowing we would reject him more often than not, but he gave us every chance anyway.
Your system of morals is very different from the secular humanists'. Yours is divine command theory, which states that morality is defined by the words and deeds of a deity. By that reckoning, you will never see anything that God did as immoral.
The secular humanist doesn't believe this deity exists, but is still able to make moral judgment about the character described, and does, which offends many theists, but those are their values, not the secular humanist's, who doesn't acknowledge the possibility of blasphemy.
That's like saying don't argue using the tenets of your religion on a religious forum.
That was your answer to, "
You do not know that the Biblical god is omniscient. You just know that the Bible describes him that way." I don't think he's expecting you not to bring your beliefs into the discussion. He's just pointing out that the fact is that the deity of the Christian Bible is called omniscient. We don't ever see this deity or examples of its omniscience, so the critical thinker accepts that that is your belief, but has never been demonstrated to be factual.
God said he wanted his people to obey him and did everything necessary for that to happen.
Apparently not. Give me omnipotence and a preference for how my creation behaves, and I'll give you people that are all upright people, people that never have a desire to harm others, people that care about one another, people obeying the Golden Rule I hardwired into their human nature.
Often, the apologist will disparage such an arrangement, invoking the word robot as if such an existence would be empty or inauthentic, and suggesting that free will is a gift of God, as if such a thing made the world a better place. Under the authority of a tri-omni deity, we would have a paradise in which people were of the same mind according to the Golden Rule and the Affirmations of Humanism. Free will is a curse if the alternative is being built with the knowledge of good and evil and always choosing the good. Look at this vaccine mess we're dealing with. Free will at its worst. Just as we teach our children to avoid the kinds of drug abuse leading to so many deaths and addictions, and if we could, we would reach into them and wire them so that they made that choice, crippling this gift of free will to save their lives, if I could, I'd reach into every one of the willingly unvaccinated and remove that desire from them, replacing it with a more noble sense of community and a better understanding of the science and how to use it. Their free will is harming them and the rest of us. It is not a gift.
Regarding the robot claim, if that's being a robot, sign me up. Imagine only wanting to do what's good and right, fair and kind, and doing it. That's a good life, and it would feel good. It's a life free from guilt, shame, self-loathing, and litany of people that think poorly of you. It's all the free will that gets in the way and allows other lives to be lived, lives in which kids drop out of school, rob liquor stores, and end up making mistakes that degrade life.
Be being told...my dogs can even understand that kind of wrong and right.
But that's not moral behavior. It's self-serving behavior. Can one ever be free to be good for goodness sake if he believes that there are rules he must follow, that he is being watched and judged at all times, and will be rewarded or punished accordingly? Isn't that where we were as children, when we had no moral compass - just rules - and obeyed them for fear of being found out and punished if we didn't?
Earlier, you disparaged secular humanist ethics, thinking they should be dog eat dog if there were no God belief. I'm saying that that same God belief often stunts moral maturation, without which moral maturity - goodness for goodness sake - can emerge. If one stays in that juvenile state of feeling watched and judged, that maturation is impeded or stunted altogether.
You might want to rethink that immoral, godless atheist trope. It hurts you twice. First, the secular humanist gets to describe what it's like living under the authority of a mature moral compass and reveal that the theist seems to be unaware of that people can be moral without a God belief. He gets to show that it is he and not the theist who actually promotes and believes in the Golden Rule, whereas the ones preaching it go ahead anyway with their misogyny, homophobia, and atheophobia, as if they and most other people aren't aware that they would never want to be treated like that. You probably don't want to give the secular humanists a reason to point out who actually promotes loving one's neighbor, healing the sick, welcoming strangers, feeding the poor.
Then, it allows one to demonstrate how that God belief can impede moral and leave one in obedience for reward mode for life. It allows one to comment on the immorality of divine command theory, where people can be made to commit atrocities and feel good about it if they can be convinced that they are God's will. How many times have you seen answers like mine already? How many more times to you want to give people like me a reason to repeat them in a forum like this?
