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

[1robin]

The post seems to exist. It just contains no evidence about children being walled up alive in foundations.

When we can find no evidence to support our claims, the honest thing is to retract our claims.

Do you retract your claim now?

So the only important thing is where the few sources I managed to dig up in 45 seconds found the bides of sacrificed children at, construction wise. Ritually killing them and putting them in jars and burying them in sacred temples is just fine and not justification for my claim or God's verdict.

1. My source is in a book on OT warfare I have at home.
2. I only provided what I could easily find in less than a minute.
3. Everything I provided lends credence to what I claimed.
4. The foundation deposits in question are called lamp and bowl deposits.
5. The remains found in the temple site are of this exact kind and show they were sacrificed. The other conclusions I provided are based on evidence and agree 100% with what I said.
6. The issue was whether God was justified in ordering the destruction on Canaanite culture. Which never occurred anyway.
7. It is a miracle any evidence exists at all. Providing what evidence I did given the taking of only 60 seconds to search for evidence of what occurred thousands of years ago is far more than should be expected. If it was worth spending half hour I could supply exactly what I stated but the issue was justification not the arbitrary details of the justification. God was justified, the bible was correct in stating they were morally completely corrupt, it does not justify any additional effort on my part.

 

[1robin]

Eustace Mullins and Mike Warnke are your "sources"?! Who are you going to use next, Henry Makow and David Icke?! Mullins was a Jew-hating Holocaust denier and Warnke is a proven fraudster who helped to perpetrate the "satanic panic" hoax of the '80s and '90s.

Eustace Mullins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mike Warnke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, that paragraph is copy+pasted from a racist, antisemitic, conspiracy site: Edomites, Phoenicians,Canaanites, Jews

You have zero credibility at this point. Are you also a racist, antisemitic, conspiracy theorist? You apparently don't mind using them as sources!

If you look through my past posts you will find I almost never reject claims based on sources. I always reject claims based on reasons to reject them. Being a holocaust denier does not produce foundation deposits. Racism does not imply hostility towards a race that was never met. A Jew hater would be the best source possible given the principle of embarrassment. Foundation deposits are conducive to Jewish claims and not what a Jew hater would wish to fake.

However lets forget all of them for the heck of it.

Try instead the quarterly report - Palestine exploration found. The chapter called A foundation deposit.

or


Another horrible practice was that they called ‘foundation sacrifices.’ When a house was built, a child would be sacrificed, and its body built into the wall, to bring good luck to the rest of the family. Many of these were found in Gezer. They have been found also at Megiddo, Jericho and other places.”

SOURCE: Halley’s Bible Handbook, by Henry H. Halley; Joshua, Chapters 23,24, pg. 166; 1965 Edition

or

Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan
Google books

or

In Milton's Paradise Lost, Uriel and Raphael vanquish Adrammelech in Book 6, line 3. "Touch of Evil"



Touch of evil
On the faithful bestowed
Burn for Moloch
Sacrificial inferno
Submitting the offspring
Swallowed in flames
Baptismal immolation
Another soul claimed
Hell on earth
The pagan returns
To please the deity
Children shall burn
"Your children are mine
Placate me with them
You worshipped before
You will kneel again."
As the young are scorched
We welcome the end
The lord of the altar of incense unleashed
Apocalypse begins

The Jews even adopted the practice at times which further proves that God had justification in wiping out the Canaanites (which did not take place anyway).

Joshua practiced what is called "foundation sacrifice." In order to protect a structure from evil powers, a person was killed and buried at the foundation of a city or building. Sometimes the victim was walled in alive. In this case, Joshua's victim would be someone's first born.

26Joshua laid an oath upon them at that time, saying, "Cursed before the LORD be the man that rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his first-born shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates."
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel: The Unspoken Bible

or

Carthage was notorious to its neighbors for child sacrifice. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius and Diodorus Siculus. However, Livy and Polybius do not. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet ("roasting place") by the Canaanites, ancestors of the Carthaginians, and by some Israelites.

Some of these sources suggest that babies were roasted to death on a heated bronze statue. According to Diodorus Siculus, "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire."(Bib. Hist. 20.14.6)

Sites within Carthage and other Phoenician centers revealed the remains of infants and children in large numbers; some historians interpret this as evidence for frequent and prominent child sacrifice to the god Ba'al Hammon.
Child sacrifice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


I am bored but there exists more than enough evidence to condemn Canaanite practices that can be found in ten minutes searching.

 

[1robin]

And a remarkably poor choice for a morally perfect being. How do you distinguish your view that god might have used Cortes from that of loonies who claim god sent Hitler to punish the Jews?

God has no good choices if he desires to use a human. Paul said he was the chief of sinners. Poor pickings all around. God does not use humans like automatons. He usually uses humans already inclined to be disposed to what he desires in general. There were only a handful of humans out to invade Mexico and none of them moral models. However compared to the Aztecs they were Mother Theresa's. If God intended to exact vengeance on the Aztec's however, Cortez was a perfect choice. I do not make a claim to knowledge here. My theory that God possibly used Cortez comes mainly from the miraculous events that occurred. His success is not easily prescribed to any natural source. He just happened to arrive at the exact moment a white skinned God was prophesied to return and claim his land in Mexico. This more than anything assisted Cortez, and his military victories have no easy natural explanation. It is by far the most extraordinary victory given odds I am aware of. Too many improbable things like his instant acquisition of a loyal interpreter (actually two) easily give his efforts a supernatural possibility.

Hitler's do not. There was no clear moral distinction in his favor. No extremely improbable events. Things went exactly as though they were 100% dictated by common natural events repeated many times in history. Hitler did court the churches influence but never received and so he turned on God with vengeance. His own rationalizations for his actions were a combination of Tibetan myth, evolutionary theories put forth by (I think Huxley), and the philosophy of Nietzsche. He did no tearing down of temples and erecting of churches in their place. There was not even a subtle moral superiority paradigm to his actions. They were 100% greed and lunacy. They were not even logical. Hitler was Germany's greatest military liability.

The sacred ball game is more associated with the Maya, I think. You can still visit the ball court at Chichen Itza; and it's the losing team who apparently on some occasions were killed.

That may well be true. I may be getting events from a single trip to a single region mixed together. However I do not think I need that example to prove the Aztecs' savagery and immorality.

OK, I'll still quibble over the word hate, which I'd reserve for things I can feel connected to. I'd opt for "deplore".

What you reserve for a word is not binding on me. I do not know any Aztec's and so hate no specific Aztec at all. I do however hate what that society stood for and produced. It was as bad as any in a long list of morally insane human cultures. I hate according to my rules. You may do as you wish.

I'd be interested to read how archaeology confirms these factoids.
Sounds like clever strategy if you're a neutral observer; not, of course, if you can see the Israelites only as innocent good guys.

There are no innocent cultures and I do not get this from the bible or Jewish literature. I get most of it from a secular book (a huge and boring tomb) on OT warfare I read last year and a thousand things I have seen over the years. There is not a huge amount of Canaanite evidence left behind, there has been a modern uptick in finding what little is left however. I gave a few examples concerning child sacrifice in other posts recently. I do not claim Israel was innocent. I said God's command to destroy the Canaanites was justified and later history (because they did not do so) showed him to be correct. The Israelites far to often adopted another cultures moral insanity instead of destroying it and when they did they were severely punished as the Bible records.

... but that was beyond god's capabilities?

No but it was beyond his purpose and methodology. He could have instantly made them into robots. That would have defeated the point. He wants love, that necessitates freewill, freewill necessitates wrong choices, that necessitates suffering. Once you have the purpose everything else is automatic.

A term many would apply to ordering the slaughter of your enemies' babies.

Which term? Who's babies? What order? BTW we authorize the slaughter of human lives in the womb without hating anyone. We do so as a sacred right given other rights that do not exist without God by depriving other lives of those very rights. Like I said moral insanity not hate is what kills. I can hate and not have any desire what so ever to kill. I normally hate actions and not people anyway.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So the only important thing is where the few sources I managed to dig up in 45 seconds found the bides of sacrificed children at, construction wise.

I'm sorry. I just find most of your writing incoherent. Can't tell if it's your writing or whether it's some kind of confusion which you're suffering about my position.

Anyway.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

If you look through my past posts you will find I almost never reject claims based on sources. I always reject claims based on reasons to reject them. Being a holocaust denier does not produce foundation deposits. Racism does not imply hostility towards a race that was never met. A Jew hater would be the best source possible given the principle of embarrassment. Foundation deposits are conducive to Jewish claims and not what a Jew hater would wish to fake.

However lets forget all of them for the heck of it.

Try instead the quarterly report - Palestine exploration found. The chapter called A foundation deposit.

or


Another horrible practice was that they called ‘foundation sacrifices.’ When a house was built, a child would be sacrificed, and its body built into the wall, to bring good luck to the rest of the family. Many of these were found in Gezer. They have been found also at Megiddo, Jericho and other places.”

SOURCE: Halley’s Bible Handbook, by Henry H. Halley; Joshua, Chapters 23,24, pg. 166; 1965 Edition

or

Burial Patterns and Cultural Diversity in Late Bronze Age Canaan
Google books

or

In Milton's Paradise Lost, Uriel and Raphael vanquish Adrammelech in Book 6, line 3. "Touch of Evil"



Touch of evil
On the faithful bestowed
Burn for Moloch
Sacrificial inferno
Submitting the offspring
Swallowed in flames
Baptismal immolation
Another soul claimed
Hell on earth
The pagan returns
To please the deity
Children shall burn
"Your children are mine
Placate me with them
You worshipped before
You will kneel again."
As the young are scorched
We welcome the end
The lord of the altar of incense unleashed
Apocalypse begins

The Jews even adopted the practice at times which further proves that God had justification in wiping out the Canaanites (which did not take place anyway).

Joshua practiced what is called "foundation sacrifice." In order to protect a structure from evil powers, a person was killed and buried at the foundation of a city or building. Sometimes the victim was walled in alive. In this case, Joshua's victim would be someone's first born.

26Joshua laid an oath upon them at that time, saying, "Cursed before the LORD be the man that rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his first-born shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates."
Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel: The Unspoken Bible

or

Carthage was notorious to its neighbors for child sacrifice. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius and Diodorus Siculus. However, Livy and Polybius do not. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet ("roasting place") by the Canaanites, ancestors of the Carthaginians, and by some Israelites.

Some of these sources suggest that babies were roasted to death on a heated bronze statue. According to Diodorus Siculus, "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire."(Bib. Hist. 20.14.6)

Sites within Carthage and other Phoenician centers revealed the remains of infants and children in large numbers; some historians interpret this as evidence for frequent and prominent child sacrifice to the god Ba'al Hammon.
Child sacrifice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


I am bored but there exists more than enough evidence to condemn Canaanite practices that can be found in ten minutes searching.

You should quote the rest of the article

 

[1robin]

To make things a little easier to follow we’ll track back apiece. I said this:
“God is the sole creator, perfectly good and all powerful. Yet he punishes the vulnerable, fallible and error-prone beings of his own making. And yet he is not logically compelled to cause suffering in his creation and therefore there can be no special conditions that insulate God from the actions or effects of his works.”
To which you replied:

“It was not a statement that includes a conclusion. It was a premise that does not lend it's self to a conclusion beyond what I would expect given God and the purpose of creation. Again you must show ends do not justify the means. I do not think you or anyone even has the theoretical capacity to make any kind of determination about that.”

I replied thus (read it in conjunction with the paragraph you responded to):
“If God lies under no necessity to create worlds, then he certainly lies under no necessity to create humans. That he did so provokes the question: why when God is self-sufficient in all things does he seek a relationship with and glorification from his creation? And remember that creatures that didn’t formerly exist cannot benefit in any way by being brought into existence to experience God’s love. So the act of creation itself is incoherent.”

You then say this: “I may not have existed at one time, I would still be infinitely glad and fortunate to spend eternity in complete contentment with God. I would not choose to instead have never been created, instead.”

The point here, which should be obvious, is that you are in no position to say what you would rather do, antecedently, because you didn’t in fact exist! You can only be pleased after an event, which may or may not have occurred. Therefore you couldn’t profit or gain from being created, and God, the Supreme Being, could not gain or profit it any way from your creation. This is just very basic, logical stuff.

There are at least 4 main points here but I think you intended them as one.

1. God is not required to have to do something in order to do it. God may remain good and still choose to create something with a purpose that includes that allowance for suffering. In fact God could make suffering good and it would be. He could make pain an objective good and it would be. What we think of as good or bad is irrelevant to what it actually is. You cannot judge God by a human contrived set of ethics. The ethics would only correspond to moral truth capable of evaluating God if God first existed. My point is not that suffering is good. My point is that a purpose that must allow for suffering but results in an ultimate good from GOD"S perspective would be good. I am sure you have heard if God be for us who can stand against us. Let me modify it. If God says creating a creature who may incur suffering but possibly live eternally with him in perfect contentment is good who could possibly say it was not and be right. God does not exist under a set of moral truths that you have access to. What we think would have nothing to do with moral truth unless he first existed to begin with. There are only two possibilities here.

a. God exists and whatever he says is moral is the fact of the matter and nothing you or I think has anything to do with it.
b. God does not exist and our moral dictates are arbitrary ethics made for survival, selfishness, or communal optimization and are incapable of determining the existence of God to begin with.

Good is not what you say it is. It is what God says it is. Many times (and it is only explainable by his existence) our views and God's are identical but in any inconsistency his views would be true and ours not. telling God what he must do requires a criteria greater than him that we can access. It does not exist.

2. Now that I hope we can see that any pronouncement about what a good God can have as a purpose is meaningless because his nature determines what is good. You can hopefully see that everything else flows from that as a necessity. I do not think God could satisfy his purpose in any other way no more than he could have made square circles. So all discussions should center on his purpose not what it mandates.

3. God's nature does not gain by anything or lose by anything. His properties as God are maximal, his essence is infinite and can't be added to. That I do not think has anything to do with the logical outworking of that nature. An artist is exactly the same artist without a painting as with one. It is in the nature of an artist to paint. It is in the nature of a creator to create. He is not less God before he creates or more of one afterwards. Worship is not needed by God it is what is proper and fitting given our nature and his. I do think he is crying over any loss of worship. He is saying to not do so is to not acknowledge truth. It is in the nature of natural beauty that it produces awe in humanity. To not have that sense of awe is to violate natural truth. I do realize God is at times given all too human characteristics. I think this is so because we require them to relate. God is not jealous as we think of it. He is stating hat harm comes by following false God's and it is his desire to have us do what is proper and in our best interest. This from our perspective is closest to jealousy. The time frame is also important. I think God gave instructions about Germ theory in language concerning ritual purity so as to be understood for example. The mundane cannot reach up to the magnificent so the magnificent must relate to the mundane on it's common ground.

4. I am unsure how to evaluate your gains in non-existent beings. Would not gain be subjective to begin with. If I would choose existence over non-existence would that not be a gain? We in fact do exist and constantly refer to gains and loss. We lose loved ones and competitions. We do not say we never gained them or wished to. I think it is a point that only has meaning in a semantic exercise and not in the real world and I also think it only serves to challenge Craig's views, not mine. I think God created us as a natural outworking of his nature. I do not know why Craig said it was for our benefit but if our existence is a matter of fact think it reasonable conclusion. If no one in heaven would prefer nonexistence then it would be a real gain.


BTW I noticed you did not even mention my attempt to change topics to non semantic exercises. If Biblical history is true you are twisting in the wind with this stuff.

 

[1robin]

You should quote the rest of the article

There are several articles there and even some books I could not quote. I also do not think I read anything in the article that disproved anything else in the article. Was there a this is all BS footnote somewhere I missed?

 

[1robin]

I'm sorry. I just find most of your writing incoherent. Can't tell if it's your writing or whether it's some kind of confusion which you're suffering about my position.

Anyway.

This one is not completely without foundation. I manage to misspell words I intended in ways that are correct spellings of words I did not intend. However it was pretty obvious I meant graves. There was more than enough grammatically correct words to know exactly what I was stating. Claiming you are incapable of doing so is crap. I also note that at the first misspelling you throw up your hands and complain. You do not ask for clarification or seem to attempt the slightest effort to use other statements to gain clarity. This however will probably not change. I do not consider my posts to you as important enough to review thoroughly because you take little seriously anyway.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

There was more than enough grammatically correct words to know exactly what I was stating.

No. You're mistaken. Even if I substitute my guesses as to what you meant, it still seems incoherent. By that, I mean that your replies seem to be, well... irrational. Off the mark. Irrelevant to my positions.

I also note that at the first misspelling you throw up your hands and complain.

Really, robin, you can't be serious. I pass over probably 98% of your misspellings. And about 85% of your ungrammaticality.

You do not ask for clarification or seem to attempt the slightest effort to use other statements to gain clarity.

You're right about that. It's because I know you and how you will respond, and I prefer not to waste my time with it.

 

[1robin]

No. You're mistaken. Even if I substitute my guesses as to what you meant, it still seems incoherent. By that, I mean that your replies seem to be, well... irrational. Off the mark. Irrelevant to my positions.



Really, robin, you can't be serious. I pass over probably 98% of your misspellings. And about 85% of your ungrammaticality.



You're right about that. It's because I know you and how you will respond, and I prefer not to waste my time with it.

If any of this was true then you would not constantly address me. Given this I would think we are done here. Maybe I am making the same mistake as Icarus here, though?

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

There are several articles there and even some books I could not quote. I also do not think I read anything in the article that disproved anything else in the article. Was there a this is all BS footnote somewhere I missed?

The accuracy of such stories is disputed by some modern historians and archaeologists.[12] At Carthage, a large cemetery exists that combines the bodies of both very young children and small animals, and those who argue in favor of child sacrifice have argued that if the animals were sacrificed then so too were the children.[13] However, recent archaeological work has produced a detailed breakdown of the age of the buried children and based on this, and especially on the presence of pre natal individuals - that is still births, it is also argued that this site is consistent with the burial of children who had died from natural causes in a society that had a high infant mortality rate - as Carthage is assumed to have been. I.e. this data supports the view that Tophets were cemeteries for those who died shortly before or after birth, regardless of the cause.[13]

Well I think this part is important in relation to Carthage anyway.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

If any of this was true then you would not constantly address me.

I often address you while passing over your errors of form. It is necessary.

Given this I would think we are done here. Maybe I am making the same mistake as Icarus here, though?

Perhaps. If one's wings are held together with wax, it might be best not to draw too near the bright light.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Ehrman had an intellectual agreement to the biblical propositions, not born again faith. According to the Bible he was never a Christian. However this is irrelevant. Ehrman is competent, honest, and biased. I never dismiss him, but I do qualify his claims.

I wasn't saying that you dismiss him, I was just wondering why you think he's biased.

Ehrman describes his born-again experience in the Introduction of Misquoting Jesus. It happened while he was a sophomore in high school.

Just as a bonus the most honest, respectful, rational, and very competent debaters on the Bible there is from the other side is a Muslim named Shabir Alli. He is Islam's #1 and there is no #2. Have you ever heard him?

His name sounds familiar. I may have seen him in a debate or two.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That is the whole point and why I made very sure to illustrate the competing contexts and/or meanings of these claims.

The whole point is that your god commands people to murder other people?

Apparently "he" does, yes. Including women, children and infants, as specified.

There is an infinite difference between liking to kill and being willing to kill if necessary. We all recognize this and allow for it even with each other. We would electrocute a man who simply loved to kill, and we will give medals to and build museums for a man who killed because his enemy made it necessary.

We are just lowly sinners, according to you. We are not your god.

Now when you say God wanted to kill people which one of those contexts do you mean?

I'm talking about the verses I cited. In the Bible, commanded Saul to go out and kill a whole population of people, including their sheep and other animals, women, children and infants (" so listen now to the message from the Lord ... "). When Saul did all of that but left the sheep alive, god became angry because Saul didn't follow his orders. Samuel then gives Saul a message from god. What is that message?

22 But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.”
1 Samuel 15 - The LORD Rejects Saul as King - Samuel - Bible Gateway

The message apparently is that we're supposed to do exactly as god tells us without question, even if that means we have to kill infants and children. And sheep, apparently he had a problem killing the sheep and the cattle, or in the words in the Bible, "everything that was good." Not the babies though. They had to go.

1. Since it is not much of a indictment to claim God is willing to kill if he has morally justifiable reasons to do so forced on him by the actions of others, I figured that could not be what you were saying. I have also spent page after page explaining why this context is not the other context. Why wiping out an entire culture can be necessary, etc... We have beat this one to death and whether you will accept the easily discerned necessity given purpose and method has nothing to do with whether it was supplied. This one is over with.

God didn't do it himself though. He commanded the people he created to do so. Oddly enough, he does that even though he supposedly put right in the Commandments that we're not supposed to kill.

Why couldn't your god just wipe out the entire culture himself with an earthquake or some other natural disaster? Couldn't he just strike them all dead with a single thought, or a lightning bolt or something? I mean, we're talking about a god who can supposedly do anything. Or does that kind of thing weigh on his conscience, so he has to get us lowly sinners to do his dirty work?

2. That only leaves you claiming God likes to cause death and that is what I spent my argument countering. I showed neither history nor his revelation is consistent with this view and more importantly your verses do not even fall in this context at all. I do not see how this one is not over with, even though it had little beginning to start with.

This leaves me claiming what I originally claimed: That your god condones the killing of children and infants in the Bible. It says so right in the Bible.

Is there some third option you have invented not covered by those two? God does not desire death for it's own sake. He abhors it and regrets even it's being necessary at all. If you have a just God and a race of humans that routinely go terribly wrong (like the Canaanites, Nazi's, and the rulers in the USSR demonstrate) conflict is expected, necessary, and justified. Your not liking the methods by which evil is eradicated at times is not an argument.

You have no way of knowing what your god desires. Obviously we can't go by the words in the Bible, because you contest them in place of your own personal interpretation. Where does it say anywhere in that story that god regretted sending Saul to kill a whole population of people including children, babies, women and livestock? It actually doesn't. The only thing your god apparently regrets in that particular story is that he made Saul king over Israel. It says nothing about "him" regretting ordering the murder of babies.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You guys are easily impressed. What in the world was funny about it? I have no compulsion against admitting something was humorous regardless of source and have done so many times and am known for a good sense of humor as much as anything. I do not even see the potentiality for humor in it. It is just a rational absurdity with no punch line and no witty reference point. Of course humor is subjective but I do not even think that would explain it.

Maybe you're overanalyzing it.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

If you look through my past posts you will find I almost never reject claims based on sources.

So we can safely dismiss everything you say. You're only looking for "sources" that say what you agree with and copy+pasting them to make it look "official", no matter what lunatic corner of the Internet you have dredge it from. What a joke. What a lack of integrity. You might as well just start citing Christian Identity and neo-Nazi sites. Those people are very close to it, anyway.

 

[johnhanks]

If God intended to exact vengeance on the Aztec's however, Cortez was a perfect choice.

Vengeance seems a remarkably petty (and very human) motive to ascribe to an all-powerful deity.

I hate according to my rules. You may do as you wish.

You are too generous.

Which term? Who's babies? What order?

The term moral insanity; any number of opposing tribes' babies; and orders like these: 1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey; Numbers 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. (I had by the way to interpolate "donkey" into the first quote from 1 Samuel, as RF would not allow its three-letter synonym.)

 

[cottage]

There are at least 4 main points here but I think you intended them as one.

There are three: 1.Purpose. 2. Creation (related to 1.) 3. Suffering

1. God is not required to have to do something in order to do it. God may remain good and still choose to create something with a purpose that includes that allowance for suffering.

<snipped>

A lengthy piece of writing, and forgive me, but overall it isn’t particularly coherent. It comprises a confection of confused or unsupported assertions, special pleading, and fallacious arguments from ignorance, but nowhere have you addressed the contradictions that I’ve identified. I’ll deal with the parts of your post that are relevant and require a response, beginning with that statement of yours at the beginning of #1: “In fact God could make suffering good and it would be. He could make pain an objective good and it would be. That is clearly nonsense. If suffering were a good thing then there would be no Problem of Evil, and would you be prepared to inform the mother of a dying child that, actually, the child’s suffering is a good thing? Utterly preposterous! Then you go on to say: “What we think of as good or bad is irrelevant to what it actually is.” So rape and murder is good, and mercy, generosity and love are bad? That is more abject nonsense. But then we’re into more confusion and self-contradiction when you say: “My point is not that suffering is good. My point is that a purpose that must allow for suffering but results in an ultimate good from GOD"S perspective would be good.” So now suffering is not bad but is good if God thinks it is!

You also appear to believe that any amount of suffering is acceptable if there is eventually a state of no suffering. That’s like saying it is acceptable if a murderer one day ceases killing people. More to the point, whatever is done cannot be undone. Not even God can change the past. So he will always have blood on his hands.


This particular paragraph of yours is heavy with irony:

2. Now that I hope we can see that any pronouncement about what a good God can have as a purpose is meaningless because his nature determines what is good. You can hopefully see that everything else flows from that as a necessity. I do not think God could satisfy his purpose in any other way no more than he could have made square circles. So all discussions should center on his purpose not what it mandates.

“Purpose” is where it all falls down! If God’s supposed purpose is to have a relationship with his creation then that is absurd as a square circle, if god is the Supreme Being. And God can, if he wishes, be the cause pain and suffering and call it “good”, just as a serial killer thinks his depravity good. And if that is your position then you are out of step with the rest of humanity. To sum up briefly, then, we have a Supreme Being that desires that his creation come to know him in a loving relationship and he does this, by way of introduction, by making his created creatures suffer. There’s your square circle again!

4. I am unsure how to evaluate your gains in non-existent beings. Would not gain be subjective to begin with. If I would choose existence over non-existence would that not be a gain? We in fact do exist and constantly refer to gains and loss. We lose loved ones and competitions. We do not say we never gained them or wished to. I think it is a point that only has meaning in a semantic exercise and not in the real world and I also think it only serves to challenge Craig's views, not mine. I think God created us as a natural outworking of his nature. I do not know why Craig said it was for our benefit but if our existence is a matter of fact think it reasonable conclusion. If no one in heaven would prefer nonexistence then it would be a real gain.

I’m slightly perplexed by your not being able to see the absurdity here, in particular where you speak of being able to choose existence over non-existence! If there was once a point where we didn’t exist how then do you suppose you can choose to gainfully come into existence? And if God created us as an “outworking of his nature” it would still require a purpose, and that could only be for God’s gain or ours – both of which for the reasons I’ve already given are absurd and contradictory.

BTW I noticed you did not even mention my attempt to change topics to non semantic exercises. If Biblical history is true you are twisting in the wind with this stuff.

You have it the wrong way about! If the logical arguments cannot be met then the Bible’s claims cannot possibly be true. You haven't met the logical arguments and therefore the biblical God is incoherent or impossible.

 

[1robin]

The accuracy of such stories is disputed by some modern historians and archaeologists.[12] At Carthage, a large cemetery exists that combines the bodies of both very young children and small animals, and those who argue in favor of child sacrifice have argued that if the animals were sacrificed then so too were the children.[13] However, recent archaeological work has produced a detailed breakdown of the age of the buried children and based on this, and especially on the presence of pre natal individuals - that is still births, it is also argued that this site is consistent with the burial of children who had died from natural causes in a society that had a high infant mortality rate - as Carthage is assumed to have been. I.e. this data supports the view that Tophets were cemeteries for those who died shortly before or after birth, regardless of the cause.[13]

Well I think this part is important in relation to Carthage anyway.

I was not speaking of Carthage. The children found in Canaanite sites were found in the exact same vessels known to be employed in lamp and bowl sacrificial ceremonies. Over the years what was placed in these deposits varied but their nature did not. There are so few remains of Canaanite life I will willingly concede no certainty exists but faith does not require certainty. In fact it only requires no defeaters to exist. I raise my bar to best explanation or best fit. IMO the totality of the evidence suggests child sacrifice was a common Canaanite practice. In fact after reviewing what that is based on I thing the evidence is more than enough to justify that conclusion concerning at least Canaanite's but I do not know about Carthaginians. Did you bring up Carthage to hint at the Phoenician connection?

 

[1robin]

I often address you while passing over your errors of form. It is necessary.

Well thank you for tolerating me your worshipfulness. Perhaps your patience will run out soon.

Perhaps. If one's wings are held together with wax, it might be best not to draw too near the bright light.

Or not get to close to a ball of hot gas.