so in that respect God is not a moral agent.
God is the one who judges everyone else.
That's what a moral agent is - one who makes moral judgments.
God can give one person a wonderful life with health for 100 years and God can make others suffer in a short life.
So can nature without gods. In fact, that's what we expect absent tri-omni oversight.
you judge God from ignorance of reasons that God has. if I read a novel I can judge a character not just on what they do but on reasons for that etc etc.
Yes, you consider the reasons given. The Abrahamic god doesn't give reasons or explanations, just commandments. One must glean from the mythology that that it hates to be disobeyed, but I still don't know its alleged reasons for punishing what it calls sin, and so I judge the choice without them according to my humanist values. I call that intolerant, and absent any justifiable reason for punishing people for being human, irrational.
Certainly in God's eyes humans are guilty
And vice versa in my case, but I'm just judging a character depicted in a book. I don't blame this deity any more than I do Santa for putting coals in stockings for not making one's bed in the morning as "commanded" by Mom and Dad.
We learn what is right and what is wrong from our parents and ultimately from our maker. We are not the source of morality.
I am the source of my moral values, or more correctly, my conscience is, and I discovered them there. They don't come from a book or a pulpit. They don't come from my parents, either.
The Law of Moses has plenty of both reward and punishment
Disagree. It's essentially a list of commands of what to do and whatnot to do with admonitions against not obeying them. The reward from god for compliance would be to not be smitten. What rewards from that law do you envision that equal the punishments (cast from paradise to toil, suffer, then die over an apple, a murderous, global flood, etc.)
Christianity is full of encouragement. You look at what is being told to those outside the faith.
Christianity encourages belief by faith, as well as obedience and submission to an alleged god. Oh, and love God and one another, although what passes for love in that religion is cringe-worthy. God so loved man that created a torture pit to put the ones in who didn't accept his love offer of a blood sacrifice in. Another fine example is the treatment called "hate the sin, love the sinner," which is indistinguishable from bigotry if the sin is the "abomination" of homosexuality or the "abomination" of atheism.
Jesus is anathema for Jews for a number of reasons. The idea that Jesus fulfilled prophecy and died for our guilt and rose again and will come back is rational but not in the Jewish context of a Messiah and the context of Jesus being anathema.
Jesus didn't meet the criteria for a messiah much less fulfilled it. Jesus was just another religious zealot doing what activist, religious fundamentalists do. Jesus changed nothing, much less did the things a messiah must to be considered that - change the world. We're surrounded by such people today with a similar biography and accomplishments. They're ordinary people, not messiahs.
My former pastor is still doing missionary work decades after I left Christianity. He has disciples. He travels to preach. How's he different from Jesus regarding messiahship?
"Terry King often says, “I love to train and resource leaders!” Terry’s teaching and equipping calling has taken him across the United States and to forty one countries. Terry has served as a trainer, leadership coach, mentor, pastor, conference and seminar speaker, college instructor and academic dean. Married to Linda in 1972, the Kings have been based in Hagerstown, Maryland since 1993, having previously lived in Zimbabwe for five years and the Philippines for four years."
source
Which part of post 142 are you referring to?
You wrote, "What anyone believes about the origins of life is believed by faith and isn't knowledge." I answered, "Like many others, I have knowledge there, and no faith is involved. I provided it already in this thread at
post 142"
This part:
There are only a few logical possibilities [for the origin of life on earth]. The first two are much more likely than the third, which is more likely than the fourth:
Life formed by naturalistic abiogenesis on earth.
Life formed naturalistically on another heavenly body and was delivered to earth by an impact.
Life was intelligently designed on earth by advanced extraterrestrials who themselves arose naturalistically long before earth existed.
Life was intelligently designed by a god - a conscious agent preceding, creating, and transcending nature.
I think this list is exhaustive and its elements mutually exclusive, meaning that the correct answer must appear on it as one of the choices. But I don't think one can say more at this time, and maybe never even if a path (or several) for the chemical evolution of life is elucidated.
If you can find a flaw there, please point it out. If you can't, you can neither call it wrong nor unfalsifiable. That leaves "correct," makingit knowledge.