Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[McBell]

This is futility squared.

:biglaugh:

I made that determination concerning "debate" with you a long long time ago.

 

[1robin]

:biglaugh:

I made that determination concerning "debate" with you a long long time ago.

Then it is mutually assured futility then!!!!! Whatever turns this thing off is fine with me.

 

[Ingledsva]

You are skirting the issue. Millions of innocent children and babies would have been "MURDERED" - tortured to death actually - by these events.

And how exactly does Adam, a created first "human," work into the part of YHVH "only son" conceived without sin idea?

And the Bible says Adam is Adam and Eve, so I guess YHVH is God and Goddess. Who reincarnated as the female half of Adam = Goddess?

The wages of sin is death. We all sin and we all die. I'm sure the flood showed great mercy. Man had become exceedingly wicked. What kinda life would those children have been thrust into? God spared them the misery (imo). Still, they had a debt to pay for sins in a past life. I think that Adam completed his journey on earth, and had become mature in Spirit (love). Adam could have been David's son who died before he was able to commit sins that lead to death. I dunno. I wouldn't know on your last point either.

Babies did not sin! There is no way ALL the people of the earth were evil!

This "past life" idea is not part of the accepted dogma of the religions of Abraham.

I find that idea that killing children saves them from something - hideous.

Think of that in todays terms - should we murder by drowning, or other means, the children of drunks, addicts, or wicked people, etc?

*

 

[Ingledsva]

Why do you argue for the right to do the exact same thing for finite humans without justification who can't know the future, can't learn from the past apparently, have no actual moral truth without God and deny the rights of another based on some rights we can not prove exist for ourselves, kill others for our mistakes, then of all things deny that right to the one that created the life, has sovereignty over it, knows the future, is himself moral truth and places those children in heaven without their parents having a chance to send them to Hell as they have chosen to do for themselves.

Killing innocent beings which may have cured cancer by now by the ones who deny that right to an almighty God is moral insanity.

There exists no argument possible. So I say again it is not logic nor rationality that is driving these complaints in question form.

You keep repeating this mantra long after I and others have shown it is not a good argument, not a bad one, but in fact not an argument at all. Why?

If I give birth to a child - and then kill it - that is murder - period!

The idea that a god can create us - and then has the right to kill us - is exactly the same thing - murder.

And shown absolutely to be so - when you take free will into account.

*

 

[ZenMonkey]

Babies did not sin! There is no way ALL the people of the earth were evil!

This "past life" idea is not part of the accepted dogma of the religions of Abraham.

I find that idea that killing children saves them from something - hideous.

Think of that in todays terms - should we murder by drowning, or other means, the children of drunks, addicts, or wicked people, etc?

*

We're not God. You're free to believe what you want. I could care less what accepted dogma is. :yes:

 

[Ingledsva]

Babies did not sin! There is no way ALL the people of the earth were evil!

This "past life" idea is not part of the accepted dogma of the religions of Abraham.

I find that idea that killing children saves them from something - hideous.

Think of that in todays terms - should we murder by drowning, or other means, the children of drunks, addicts, or wicked people, etc?

We're not God. You're free to believe what you want. I could care less what accepted dogma is. :yes:

So as long as you are the creator of something you have the right to destroy/murder it at any time?

So - I can create/pump out a few kids, decide they are not doing what I want them to do, even though I gave them free will, and then just murder them, AND their innocent babies, AND all the innocent people around them???

This is logical - HOW?

*

 

[CG Didymus]

So as long as you are the creator of something you have the right to destroy/murder it at any time?

So - I can create/pump out a few kids, decide they are not doing what I want them to do, even though I gave them free will, and then just murder them, AND their innocent babies, AND all the innocent people around them???

This is logical - HOW?

*

Decide they are not doing what you want them to? No, you knew ahead of time they wouldn't do what you wanted them to and still created/pumped them out, and then killed some of them but forgave a few of them? And then gave them rules to follow, let's say about 600 of them, knowing full well they'd mess up again? Yeah sure logical, moral, and showing ultimate love for them.

 

[Ingledsva]

Decide they are not doing what you want them to? No, you knew ahead of time they wouldn't do what you wanted them to and still created/pumped them out, and then killed some of them but forgave a few of them? And then gave them rules to follow, let's say about 600 of them, knowing full well they'd mess up again? Yeah sure logical, moral, and showing ultimate love for them.

Indeed, they are illogical, LOL.

*

 

[SkepticThinker]

How many times do I have to state I rarely use good in connection with God. I use right. However I grant him goodness as a matter of faith, not judgment or as only consistent with my moral opinion of what good is. You can claim God is inconsistent with your moral codes (whatever they might be) but if you wish to claim he is actually bad or evil then you MUST have a standard capable of making that judgment. I side-stepped nothing but went back to find the absolutely necessary standards you must have but do not. Stop side stepping and provide them or the argument is invalid.

Boy, oh boy. For somebody who accuses others of playing word games, you sure like to engage in it yourself.

Good … right … whatever. You grant your god goodness and in doing so, you are exercising your own moral judgment/standard.

God commands that murder is wrong, and then commands that his chosen people commit murder. How does that make sense, and what’s moral about it?

So your assuming the premise and then simply asserting a conclusion. Of what persuasive value is that?

No. Human beings write books. We know of no other creatures that write languages down on paper. Human beings wrote the Bible. The Bible does not contain any knowledge or information that desert dwellers living centuries ago, could not have known from examining the world they lived in. The Bible reflects the society that people lived in at the time, given its contents that are a reflection of local laws and customs of the time. I see no reason to think that the Bible was written for anyone other than the people who existed during the time it was written. Its contents are a reflection of the human beings who wrote it.

BTW how did those ignorant men make 2500 accurate prophecies and 25,000 extremely accurate descriptions and then suddenly go insane every time a supernatural claim is made and then die for the lie they knew was untrue by the thousands.

Those ignorant men didn’t make 2500 accurate prophecies. I don’t know what you mean by “25,000 extremely accurate descriptions.” And they are ignorant, compared to today’s standards, let’s make no bones about that. They didn’t know a fraction of what we know today about the world.

I’m sure they probably believed what they were writing and reading about, and therefore would not have died for a lie they knew was untrue. Obviously.

Dyeing in the process of killing others for a faith is very common. Willingly laying down lives passively by thousands including those that knew it was a lie if it was, is very rare. The Bible has every mark of sincerity and honesty that a methods exists to test it with.

Is it moral to kill others for a faith?

If you added up everyone God killed (including the flood), ordered killed, Jews killed with or without permission, all the Christians wars (30 years, 100 years, crusades) plus the inquisitions and even the military deaths the conquistadors caused without permission from God they would still not total a meaningful fraction of either the abortions performed or what atheist Stalin killed alone. However let's just pretend they each killed one billion people per side.

This doesn’t address what I said.

The race that kills its own by the billions seems to be almost perfectly in line with god’s desires, given that he supposedly commanded acts of genocide on many occasions, in your holy book. Your god supposedly killed everyone on earth with a massive flood, ordered genocide on many occasions and causes the spontaneous abortion of thousands of people. So, what is someone reading the Bible to conclude from all this other than that god obviously condones murder and violence? How could you say the Holocaust was wrong?

The side that did not create the life, has no sovereignty over any of the lives, does not have a fraction of the needed information to make the decision justly, and can't take care of the soul after death demands the right to kill at will, but denies it to the side that has all those things. This is not simply wrong this is moral insanity. Since even the slowest witted among us can't justify this but even the most intelligent attempt to it must be spiritual and moral blindness that affirms yet another biblical claim.

We can create life though, and we do, every day. And we have brains that we employ to determine the potential consequences of our actions in order to determine what is a good or bad moral action.

Continued ...

 

[SkepticThinker]

And until you actually come up with the capacity, standard, or reason why your judgment should even be considered accurate enough to even be relevant I will continue to do so. BTW where do you get genocide anyway. God did not kill the Canaanites because they were Canaanites nor did he wipe them out in the first place.

I should say the same to you. Might makes right doesn’t equal morality from where I’m standing. And if you’re standing on the side that says genocide and slavery are moral, I’m going to be standing on the opposite side of that argument.

My judgment is that human beings created morality; that it is a product of thinking brains. We can think about the results of taking one action over another and how it will affect others and ourselves. We can observe the consequences of our actions and decide whether or not the result was beneficial or harmful. This is quite obvious to me when we look at the history of morality and how it has changed over time, and why different cultures have slightly different views on morality.

1Samuel 15:3
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

Numbers 31:7-19
7They did battle against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male. 8They killed the kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, in addition to others who were slain by them; and they also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9The Israelites took the women of Midian and their little ones captive; and they took all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods as booty. 10All their towns where they had settled, and all their encampments, they burned, 11but they took all the spoil and all the booty, both people and animals. 12Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the Israelites, at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho. 13Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation went to meet them outside the camp. 14Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. 15Moses said to them, “Have you allowed all the women to live? 16These women here, on Balaam’s advice, made the Israelites act treacherously against the Lord in the affair of Peor, so that the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. 17Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. 18But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves. 19Camp outside the camp seven days; whoever of you has killed any person or touched a corpse, purify yourselves and your captives on the third and on the seventh day.


What do you suppose they kept the virgins for? Does your god also condone kidnapping and rape?

Just as in cutting off an appendages. It depends on circumstances, capacity, and authority. You must prove several things before you can even begin to actually make the argument you are simply assuming.

What?

1. God did not have morally justifiable reasons to take a life.
2. That your moral compass is true and objectively accurate.

I will make it easy and only give you those two. You MUST prove both to even begin the argument. You can resist or hate God all you wish but you have no case until those two questions are answered. Until you do you are only able to say you do not like what God did which is irrelevant.

As I see it, the burden of proof is still on you to show that your god exists and that everything “he” commands must be right and good simply because “he” said it.

You do not follow a system of morality. You follow an authority who dictates to you what is right and wrong and you trust that “he” is good and do what you’re told after first using your own moral compass to determine that “he” is good in the first place.

I do not like the philosophy of divine authority. I avoided it for years but unlike other I eventually give in to what is correct even if I do not like it. The argument necessitates you deal with standards and capacities. You keep wishing to assume the entire premise of your claim which is a terrible defect of your sides argumentation and I will keep going back to the necessities of the argument until you meet the. It's logic and so I am not surprised you resent it.

I say it’s not correct or moral and I see no reason to think that it is. And I don’t see how explaining how it is moral. You wanna keep bringing up the Nazis all the time, well, they blindly followed commandments without exercising their own moral judgement and look how that turned out.

Yeah, I resent logic. Good one.

Never heard of him. I have explained this enough. Believe what you wish as you would anyway.

Continued:

You should look him up. He’s pretty hilarious.

 

[SkepticThinker]

NO THEY DO NOT. Did you not read the whole site. It must have said "if they" "then that" "if the other is true" " based on these assumptions" dozens of times etc.... Then it said even if those "bruises" actually turned out to be evidence it is the first evidence known. Unless that article was printed 30 years ago then we still have virtually nothing. You will grant anything except God desperate credit it does no merit and deny real evidence if it even points in the direction of God . It is as obvious as can be. Why? Even if Polio shots hurt and children may think them evil they are still the only solution available.

Sure it is. It is one piece of preliminary evidence in favour of the hypothesis. Nobody is saying it’s all the evidence needed to elevate the hypothesis to theory standards or anything like that. The scientists involved laid out what they should expect to find if their hypothesis were to have any merit, and they found something that fit with what they were looking for. That is evidence. Obviously more is needed, but you cannot say there is absolutely no evidence at all. Had they not found anything, or something unlike what they had hypothesized, THEN you could say those anomalies do not constitute evidence.

Why should I grant god did it? And why should I grant that YOUR god did it. Your god has no explanatory power and there is no empirical evidence we can use to verify “his” existence at all. In fact, a lot of Christians tell me that there is no way of obtaining empirical evidence for god. Even if there is some merit to claims of NDE’s and whatnot, that alone isn’t good enough to lead us to the conclusion that the god you personally believe in is behind it all.

Same with any of the science fiction arguments used against him. Once again why buck the odds to demolish the only solution available?

This science fiction you speak is better evidence than personal experiences people claim to have with various gods. Why are all these personal experiences so different? How do we test them? How can one person claim to have a personal experience with Allah, while another claims to have had one with Yahweh? Which one is the “real” one?

Still waiting on that empirical evidence for the specific god you believe exists.

I read the whole thing and quoted from it. You apparently did not read all of it nor even the quotes I used from it or you would not have said what you did above. However I may not read anymore of these multiverse or abiogenesis links anymore. It has been one paper tiger after another saying nothing in the most possible words.

Actually I read it all and your responses. Which is exactly why I said what I did above.

If you’re not interested in new discoveries and leads, so be it. But you can’t go on as if you’re some authority on the matter, if that’s the path you choose to take.

My faith is independent of the Big Bang or anything else. Scientific information to me is only confirmation not foundational. No I do not think anyone has much of an ideas at happened billions of years ago. I only think very general ideas can be guessed at. I can see the universe expanding and other actual things so I can go with the Big Bang as the best theory, however you seem to go whatever the opposite or inconsistent direction that God is in even in spite of the evidence, against the latest models, or without a scientific merit of any kind.

You have faith that your god exists, the Big Bang reinforces it, and so you accept it and dismiss all other lines of research. I’m going to wait and see where the research leads us. I see no reason to rush into a decision, either way. Now that we can analyze the cosmic background radiation (and in a way, we are looking back billions of years in doing that), I think we’re in for some extremely interesting discoveries. I was just reading about some new hypothesis where our universe could have emerged from a black hole within a larger universe and the scientist involved suggested that the big bang is just a mirage that has distracted us from what’s really going on. This also came about from studying the cosmic background radiation. I think it’s pretty clear that we’re not done yet.

I call it almost meaningless. If they still have not the slightest idea what gravity is or where 98% of the mass in the universe we actually have is I doubt their capacity concerning universes outside ours. Why have you spent thousands of words attempting to defend the almost infinitely less substantiated model of the universe? How do you know their assumptions were even close? How do you know the algorithms based on those assumptions were correct? How do you the measurements were accurate? How do you know there are not a billion other explanations for the measurements? Etc.. Is there any part of that theory that is not mostly based of faith and assumptions. Where are the independent corroborations, the independent lines of reasoning, and confirming tests? Why is any leap of faith justified unless it goes in the God direction? These double standards never cease to amaze me.

I’m using thousands of words, as you put it, to point out to you that we haven’t got it figured out yet. You accept big bang because it fits with your preconceived notions about your god. Good for you. I’m saying, big bang is most likely not all there is to the story.
Independent corroboration and confirmation is yet to come, which is why I haven’t settled on any one thing in particular yet. I never once said that all the evidence was in on any of this. There is no leap of faith being taken on my part. There is a let’s wait and see, instead.

I have no fixed theories on anything billions of years ago. All the reliable science is consistent with the Bible but I do not think anything is known. You remember that I have the faith position not you? Why are your claims intruding on the condemned faith realm even more than mine?

How many times have you asserted the Borde Guth Vilenkin theorem as fact? Big Bang?

I’m not aware of any reliable science that is consistent with the Bible. Would you care to enlighten me?

What specific faith claims do you think I am making?

Continued ...

 

[SkepticThinker]

I never said that. I said there is no proof for God thought a few things are as close as possible to get.
We have a universe or even a bunch of them. Natural law can't create natural law, nor a universe, nor even explain this one alone. God or something like him is almost a certainty but I will not use the word proof because I have no need of it.

The universe is proof that the universe exists.

The rest of this paragraph is just empty assertions.

NO THEY ARE NOT.

Sure they are. The scientific process is a very rigid one, designed to factor out bias and pseudoscience.

1. Multi-universe have virtually no evidence are 99.99999% faith and they are valid concepts for you.
2. A single finite universe is overwhelmingly evidenced yet not convincing or apparently convenient for you.
3. God has more evidence that both squared and it flat denied by you even as a concept.

1. It has at least one piece of preliminary evidence that fits with what scientists expected to find, should it have any merit at all, and requires further testing.
2. Not exactly.
3. Not at all. That is, not the specific god you believe in. Even if we grant that some sort of deity or supernatural being had to have created all we see (and I will admit that it is at least a possibility), there’s no reason to jump to the conclusion that it’s the god of the Bible.

There is nothing consistent about this, nor even rational and a hundred examples like this or worse exist in atheist argumentation.

Maybe because there is no good evidence and no explanatory power for the god you believe in.

25,000 historical corroborations, 2500 detailed and accurate prophecies, the moral realm, the explanatory scope, philosophical truths, logical laws, etc...... I will make this short, there is not one reliable scientific, historical, or philosophical fact inconsistent with the Bible's claims.

I have no idea where you’re pulling these numbers from but I ain’t buying it. Most of what we actually know about the world is inconsistent with the Bible including logic, science, and history, which is why a full reading of the Bible is one of the reasons atheists become atheists in the first place. Not to mention that “god did it” has absolutely no explanatory power whatsoever.

 

[1robin]

If I give birth to a child - and then kill it - that is murder - period!

On what basis was it not murder before that? On what basis is God's claim to sovereignty over life equal with ours. He created it - not us, he is the highest moral authority in the universe - not us, he knows it's future - not us, he can place that life in eternal contentment - not us. The arrogance required for the ones without any justification to condemn the only being with it, is appalling.

The idea that a god can create us - and then has the right to kill us - is exactly the same thing - murder.

No it is not. However you argue for the right for us to murder yet deny that right to a God that our moral laws do not bind. Whether God exists or not that is hyperbolic hypocrisy.

And shown absolutely to be so - when you take free will into account.

*

I do not know what this means.

You did not show we have the right to kill a human life at any stage nor did you show there is any reason to suggest God does not. I realize that argument can be defended but it was not I who chose it.

 

[1robin]

So as long as you are the creator of something you have the right to destroy/murder it at any time?

The right of ownership to what is brought into existence is the basis for much our own pathetic attempts at law. I see that as usual reliable concepts are only chunked if they make God more likely.

So - I can create/pump out a few kids, decide they are not doing what I want them to do, even though I gave them free will, and then just murder them, AND their innocent babies, AND all the innocent people around them???

Since you demand the right to do so even before they rebel or have freewill then at least you would be consistent. Find me the first innocent people God killed or the first guilty child in the womb before that argument is even coherent. You nor any other human on Earth ever created an actual life. Even if we could actually create life the concept that makes the difference is the presence of a possible soul. My side allows that it may exist and errs on the side of life. You side arrogantly rules out what you have no access to, invents standards it has no access to, and demand's the right to something you deny the child's rights to based on preference and wagers on death.

This is logical - HOW?

We give sovereignty to that which has the justified claim, we give an omnipotent being what it's nature justifies and deny a very fallible and finite being the rights it has no claim to. That is logical and it's opposite, moral insanity.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

On what basis was it not murder before that?

On the basis of logical consistency. If I hold that, for myself, life is better than death and lack of suffering is better than suffering, and if I demand that society behave towards me in a way that's in line with these principles, then it would be irrational for me to deny these things to someone who demands these things as well, as long as they have much claim to them as I do.

 

[1robin]

Boy, oh boy. For somebody who accuses others of playing word games, you sure like to engage in it yourself.

How many posts have the phrase "word games" in them?

Good … right … whatever. You grant your god goodness and in doing so, you are exercising your own moral judgment/standard.

I have every right to grant God what I wish or find justified. I admit that no proof can be obtained to confirm what I believe in this aspect but it is your side who is making the irrational claim that we know too little to call God good but plenty to call him evil. I am consistent.

God commands that murder is wrong, and then commands that his chosen people commit murder. How does that make sense, and what’s moral about it?

Murder indicates a lack of justification. You have not shown that nor could you. Assigning the word Murder to all killing is dishonest and as usually inconsistent with what we do every day.

No. Human beings write books. We know of no other creatures that write languages down on paper. Human beings wrote the Bible. The Bible does not contain any knowledge or information that desert dwellers living centuries ago, could not have known from examining the world they lived in. The Bible reflects the society that people lived in at the time, given its contents that are a reflection of local laws and customs of the time. I see no reason to think that the Bible was written for anyone other than the people who existed during the time it was written. Its contents are a reflection of the human beings who wrote it.

How did they know there were worldwide currents in the sea, how did they know what a creator of the universe would be required to be 5000 years later (they had no cause and effect, modal being, or cosmological sciences), how did they know about germ theory (we were still killing others in ignorance 3000 years later), how did they fake a belief system so comprehensive and so sophisticated that the greatest men in every field of study would think it worth wagering their souls on over the entire course of recorded history (including today)? How did they make 25000 prophecies including 350 about one man?

Those ignorant men didn’t make 2500 accurate prophecies. I don’t know what you mean by “25,000 extremely accurate descriptions.” And they are ignorant, compared to today’s standards, let’s make no bones about that. They didn’t know a fraction of what we know today about the world.

They did make 2500 prophecies and there exists 25,000 historical corroborations and every day adds to it. What they claimed is considered valid by even todays most intellectual men and histories as well. Thousands of other God's that start with the letter "A" alone are defunct yet Christ still marches on. Those men produced the most influential documents in history.

I’m sure they probably believed what they were writing and reading about, and therefore would not have died for a lie they knew was untrue. Obviously.

They had perfect access to Christ's death and his resurrection. If they were sincere and had access to unmistakable evidence, on what grounds do you deny it? Islam, Hinduism, and a thousand other faiths have sincere followers but no record in history is fractionally comparable to Christianity's and Judaism's willingness to passively die for their faith.

Is it moral to kill others for a faith?

It certainly can be. It depends on circumstances as it does in every case.

This doesn’t address what I said.

The race that kills its own by the billions seems to be almost perfectly in line with god’s desires, given that he supposedly commanded acts of genocide on many occasions, in your holy book. Your god supposedly killed everyone on earth with a massive flood, ordered genocide on many occasions and causes the spontaneous abortion of thousands of people. So, what is someone reading the Bible to conclude from all this other than that god obviously condones murder and violence? How could you say the Holocaust was wrong?

We kill billions for things that have no connection to faith whatever. Almost every one of the worst killings in history has an atheist or atheists at it's root. Those that do not believe in the Bible have killed more in the last century than Christianity has in it's entire history. In what way are atheists following the example of God again? Only an atheist could say that murder is consistent with a being that prohibits it.

We can create life though, and we do, every day. And we have brains that we employ to determine the potential consequences of our actions in order to determine what is a good or bad moral action.

No we do not and never have. We preform a infinitely small roll in a system that we did not create a single aspect of but found it existing before us. We nor natural law has ever brought anything into existence from non-existence. We have ended lives and defend our maniacal "rights" to do so but have not created life or a single example of it. There are millions of aspects required to proceed in specific orders and arrangements to get life. We are involved in only a few. I can place two apples in a basket. I did not create math.

 

[1robin]

I should say the same to you. Might makes right doesn’t equal morality from where I’m standing. And if you’re standing on the side that says genocide and slavery are moral, I’m going to be standing on the opposite side of that argument.

Unless it is concerned with the only one of those categories composed of 100% innocent human lives'. Then you demand the right to terminate them at will. You have not show God ordered any genocides nor claimed anything was right because he was strong. Killing others can be justified. The only case where is has no justification even remotely possible is in abortion. On what basis do you grant humans the ability to kill the unborn but deny God the right to take back what he created? Not one argument you made works unless God does not exist, then there is not God to condemn.

My judgment is that human beings created morality;

I do not agree with you judgment in an ontological sense (it is not possible) but the failure or our moral systems does argue for it epistemologically speaking. Without God there is no foundation for a single moral truth. The rest is commentary.

1Samuel 15:3
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
Numbers 31:7-19
7They did battle against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male. 8They killed the kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, in addition to others who were slain by them; and they also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9The Israelites took the women of Midian and their little ones captive; and they took all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods as booty.

I am well aware of OT wars. Do you have anything that says God condemned or ordered the destruction of anyone because they were of a cultural group. It does say that he had tried to get them to repent, that they were guilty of sacrificing live children, burning them alive for other God's, raided Israel at harvest time year after year, and that their cup of iniquity was full. Now on what basis are those people not worthy of death from a just God, in what way were those examples of racism or unjustified genocide, in what way is abortion ok if that is wrong? Sinful actions did exist as part of a cultures practice and that not the culture its self justified God's judgment.

What do you suppose they kept the virgins for? Does your god also condone kidnapping and rape?

Actually there is a very valid reason for that. Do you wish to get into OT warfare specifically? Only if you apply that English word to taking captives in battle instead of either killing tem all or turning them loose starving on homeless to ravage an entire nation of defeated helpless people like every other nation in the ANE did. I can see that page after page after page of scholarly explanation of virtually every aspect of these concepts is not even remembered nor apparently was it ever paid attention to because you keep making mistakes corrected many times before. Of what use is it?

Until you can do anything with this first and simple fact I can't justify going further. God allowed many things of a sinful human race he did not actively desire. Divorce, servitude (which you always interpret by a word that has vastly different application since the 18th century), laws about what to do with captives, and many more were the most benevolent in the ANE and necessitated by the fact we will screw up everything we touch and God only intended to mitigate the damage. If God is for slavery, kidnapping, rape, or whatever word you think will be the most damaging for concepts you apparently have no desire to understand why do all of them disappear at the time God establishes a Kingdom ruled directly by his desire and we are made capable of obedience. If there was a scrap of logic to what you claim why does it all go away when we no longer are capable of rebellion? Until this foundational issue is sufficiently overcome you have no point possible.

What?

Cutting off an arm is immoral in a thousand circumstances and moral in a thousand additional ones. It is silly to say God cut off an arm and so is evil or anything similar without pages of context.

As I see it, the burden of proof is still on you to show that your god exists and that everything “he” commands must be right and good simply because “he” said it.

Faith has no burden by definition of proof. I must show it is only a reasonable explanation of the evidence.

You do not follow a system of morality. You follow an authority who dictates to you what is right and wrong and you trust that “he” is good and do what you’re told after first using your own moral compass to determine that “he” is good in the first place.

This is wrong but even if true, no matter what deficiency you assign to God derived morality, they are infinitely worse for non-God derived morality. Human opinion is about the worst possible moral foundation I can think of and our history is evidence. The most common moral aspect assigned to the Biblical God are:

1. Unconditional love.
2. Justice.
3. Mercy.
4. Forgiveness.

Let's put a stop to that mess quick.

I say it’s not correct or moral and I see no reason to think that it is. And I don’t see how explaining how it is moral. You wanna keep bringing up the Nazis all the time, well, they blindly followed commandments without exercising their own moral judgement and look how that turned out.

This is exactly why a God based morality is far better than a man based morality. Which is the only option you have. They followed someone's opinion about what is moral and as like every other human in history he had no capacity to make moral foundations or claims true. When the Western nations were appealed to stop Hitler it was objective God based morals that were appealed to. When Britain was in it's darkest hour Churchill appealed to C.S. Lewis not Fredrick Nietzsche to prop up his nation and talks became "mere Christianity". Only with God can you claim to have a higher standard than Hitler or any other man's opinion and that claim be true. Atheists to act on justifications their world view does not contain to stop Hitler. Christians do so with a perfect consistency.

You should look him up. He’s pretty hilarious.

I am far to busy making up for the fact that even application science is faulty. I have had 12 instruments built as drop in replacements for others. They are not even cutting edge stuff. They are the state of the art but the art is not new. I have had 100% failure, yet those same people are looking for other universes and telling me what happened a billion years ago. God help us.

 

[1robin]

On the basis of logical consistency. If I hold that, for myself, life is better than death and lack of suffering is better than suffering, and if I demand that society behave towards me in a way that's in line with these principles, then it would be irrational for me to deny these things to someone who demands these things as well, as long as they have much claim to them as I do.

The demands of others are not a rational basis for morality. If so I would have to let Manson out of jail, Hitler kill all the Jews, Stalin kill everyone, and Islam rule the world. No thanks. However you are not even being consistent with that.

1. You demand rights to your body yet you deny those same rights to an unborn child.
2. You demand the right to flourish even if that means that other life forms (that without God are no less valuable) will not flourish.


Inconsistency is not a foundation for anything. Truth is a good foundation, but without God no moral objective truth exists. Give me a single moral fact that is true if God does not exist.

 

[1robin]

Sure it is. It is one piece of preliminary evidence in favour of the hypothesis. Nobody is saying it’s all the evidence needed to elevate the hypothesis to theory standards or anything like that. The scientists involved laid out what they should expect to find if their hypothesis were to have any merit, and they found something that fit with what they were looking for. That is evidence. Obviously more is needed, but you cannot say there is absolutely no evidence at all. Had they not found anything, or something unlike what they had hypothesized, THEN you could say those anomalies do not constitute evidence.

It is not reliable evidence. However let's pretend it was. That site stated it is the first evidence and is about the most speculative evidence it is possible to observe. Both the finite universe and God have mountains of evidence yet you have spent all your time contending those and defending he thing with at best one piece of extremely speculative indirect evidence. Why?

Why should I grant god did it? And why should I grant that YOUR god did it. Your god has no explanatory power and there is no empirical evidence we can use to verify “his” existence at all. In fact, a lot of Christians tell me that there is no way of obtaining empirical evidence for god. Even if there is some merit to claims of NDE’s and whatnot, that alone isn’t good enough to lead us to the conclusion that the god you personally believe in is behind it all.

What you grant is your business. What is the best fit given what we know is an objective quality. He has infinite explanatory power and is the only concept that has a fraction of what is necessary to account for reality as we know it. God even theoretically has 100% explanatory poser. Why did you claim he doesn't? Christ's resurrection is as empirical as empirical gets and those with the most access to it all agree that he died and rose again. Not to mention there is no explanation of their taking on an empirical burden they had no need of unless true.

This science fiction you speak is better evidence than personal experiences people claim to have with various gods.

No they are not. The evidence for those fantastic theories is of the worst possible type. Personal experience is of the best possible type.

Why are all these personal experiences so different? How do we test them? How can one person claim to have a personal experience with Allah, while another claims to have had one with Yahweh? Which one is the “real” one?

I have never heard of an experience with God that is strictly unique as far as salvation goes. Even if they were the least likely conclusion from reports of similar but varying things is the absence of any foundation for them. Yet again you are choosing the least reliable conclusion. If 100 reports recorded 100 different aspect to a football game the worst conclusion possible is that no game occurred.
Still waiting on that empirical evidence for the specific god you believe exists.

Actually I read it all and your responses. Which is exactly why I said what I did above.

If you’re not interested in new discoveries and leads, so be it. But you can’t go on as if you’re some authority on the matter, if that’s the path you choose to take.

I am interested in anything that is based on reliable evidence. Of every conceivable possible fact theorized by scientists the evidence for other universes is the most unreliable possible.

You have faith that your god exists, the Big Bang reinforces it, and so you accept it and dismiss all other lines of research. I’m going to wait and see where the research leads us. I see no reason to rush into a decision, either way. Now that we can analyze the cosmic background radiation (and in a way, we are looking back billions of years in doing that), I think we’re in for some extremely interesting discoveries. I was just reading about some new hypothesis where our universe could have emerged from a black hole within a larger universe and the scientist involved suggested that the big bang is just a mirage that has distracted us from what’s really going on. This also came about from studying the cosmic background radiation. I think it’s pretty clear that we’re not done yet.

No I did not. I went with the most reliable research. You would insist I, you, and everyone do that exact thing unless it points toward a God. If so then anything will do apparently. Once again theological preference is affecting scientific views. I have lost every speck of memorization that comes out of the speculative end of science. I can't even get consistency out of application science. You can do whatever you wish but if I am going with the most reliable by far models in science then I am consistent and rational not the one who does not.

I’m using thousands of words, as you put it, to point out to you that we haven’t got it figured out yet. You accept big bang because it fits with your preconceived notions about your god. Good for you. I’m saying, big bang is most likely not all there is to the story.

As long as I am going with the most reliable science then you have no complaint or contention possible. I think you are trying your hardest to make going against the most reliable science when it is consistent with God look like some kind of higher ground. It isn't.

Independent corroboration and confirmation is yet to come, which is why I haven’t settled on any one thing in particular yet. I never once said that all the evidence was in on any of this. There is no leap of faith being taken on my part. There is a let’s wait and see, instead.

You certainly have devoted 98% of your argumentation to the least likely scenarios and have only done that if it makes God more likely. However 9since you mistakenly think) that macroevolution makes God less likely you have doggedly defended that. I on the other hand have claimed it probably did occur yet even that was not good enough for you. The positions selected and the amount of time you spend in defending them is pretty much exactly consistent on how they impact God's existence. Mine are consistent.

How many times have you asserted the Borde Guth Vilenkin theorem as fact? Big Bang?

I have always (or attempted to) state it is the most reliable model. I need nor claim it is anything else.

I’m not aware of any reliable science that is consistent with the Bible. Would you care to enlighten me?

It is a far shorter list if you post what isn't.

 

[1robin]

The universe is proof that the universe exists.

And that it could not create its self. The natural can not even sufficiently account for the natural.

The rest of this paragraph is just empty assertions.

Assertions that are consistent with the most reliable evidence available. Why is that only invalid if God is at the end of them?

Sure they are. The scientific process is a very rigid one, designed to factor out bias and pseudoscience.

The history of science is anything but always spot on. It is composed of far more mistakes than successes. My work is all to real a proof of that. The fact that a group that has billions thrown at it eventually gets it right is nothing special. It is just one way in which truth is accessed. It is nothing beyond that. It is also unfortunately where the wildest speculation is clothed with the credibility that application science actually earned.

1. It has at least one piece of preliminary evidence that fits with what scientists expected to find, should it have any merit at all, and requires further testing.

I has something that was close enough to what is probably the most speculative form of theory that exists in science to allow grant hungry scientists to claim it might be evidence. No matter how you stack it there is next to no reason to be confident in anything outside this universe. In fact there is little reason to be confident of any claim concerning anything beyond a skeleton of facts concerning anything beyond the solar system and recorded history. We know next to nothing concerning most of what is observable yet there is 6 times more stuff that is not detectable in any way just in this universe. However you defending speculations about things not even in this poorly understood universe.

2. Not exactly.

I saw nothing inexact about my claim.

3. Not at all. That is, not the specific god you believe in. Even if we grant that some sort of deity or supernatural being had to have created all we see (and I will admit that it is at least a possibility), there’s no reason to jump to the conclusion that it’s the god of the Bible.

The evidence I am speaking of either applies only to the God of the BIble or another God impersonating him as a body.

Maybe because there is no good evidence and no explanatory power for the god you believe in.

In what way does an Omni-being creator God not have infinite explanatory power? That is one bizarre claim.

I have no idea where you’re pulling these numbers from but I ain’t buying it. Most of what we actually know about the world is inconsistent with the Bible including logic, science, and history, which is why a full reading of the Bible is one of the reasons atheists become atheists in the first place. Not to mention that “god did it” has absolutely no explanatory power whatsoever.

I am not selling it. I am just stating reliable information. I have little reason to debate your buying habits as they are well established.