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

[Sha'irullah]

Morality based upon the morals set forth in Christianity is a world without morals at all as Christianity is void of morals. It is a religion founded upon the concept that a god who is a liar and professes kindness will reject the unbelievers which he destined them to be and cast them into hell. A god who professes noble traits such as omnipotence yet puts it to no use or uses it in a sadistic fashion.

Christianity can be gentle or it can be harsh but in this case it is harsh as Biblical literalism coupled with traditionalism creates something unfathomably monstrous. The god of the Bible is the god who is an outright murderer, even if these events never took place. A deity who kills in any fashion is a murderer especially when this deity makes murder immoral yet does it for the simplest accusations of normal human behavior. Religion and morality do not go together as moral absolutes are a figment of delusions enhanced by religious superiority.

Moral absolutes do not exist because just like utilitarianism no absolutes can be formed. Is it moral to have a society of slaves if the majority say it is right? Christianity was a primary proponent of slavery and advocated on the grounds of racial and religious rights. Many religions are immoral and Christianity is not exempt from this as it cannot stay morally consistent.

 

[johnhanks]

Can you even imagine how much God must hate what we do if he exists.

Much harder, I'm afraid, to imagine that he exists.

Punishing evil is one of the most honored virtues and social necessities humans value.

It's certainly a "virtue" that evangelical Christians tend to be very keen on. Trouble is, once a group of people have convinced each other that specified Others are evil, they can justify any atrocity against those Others as an "honored virtue and social necessity".

None of this will fly if you actually include all the context. If you will see post #2705 for just the minimum context. You can search for my posts where I gave a considerable amount of the relevant context a while back. I explain every single thing you mention using the exact same book you quoted selectively from.

None of your "context" explains how ordering the killing of babies is a righteous act. And yes, quoting a single verse from a book is selective: what additional verses should I have quoted that would have made the order to kill the babies look good? (Bear in mind here that as an atheist I interpret the order in question as coming from the human leader of one tribe of barbarians who is out to inflict atrocious punishment on an enemy tribe, no doubt equally barbaric; religion's role here is as a sanitising mechanism to render the atrocity righteous.)

 

[cottage]

If God is God and something in his nature resulted in suffering being good there exists no possibility it would not be true. You can't over turn it, you cannot even meaningfully question it.

God can only do what is logically possible!

I nor the bible suggests that is his primary purpose. His purpose is to freely allow us to choose a relationship with us. He could have but did not desire creating automatons that will inevitably choose to follow him. Love mandates freewill. Love also introduces consequences of that choice but does not mandate the choice its self. Your mixing up many of the things I said together and misunderstanding the purpose.

So, back to the contradiction and absurdity then!! God wanted creatures that didn’t exist to freely choose to have a relationship with him? The creatures that didn’t exist were in no position to enjoy the relationship, and God, already supreme and self-sufficient in all things, has no requirements, needs, or unfulfilled wishes; and there is nothing his creation could offer him that he doesn’t already have.

My point was not that God could choose evil and fool us. My point was that what he chose or is determines what is evil or good. You said a psychopath would think unjustifiable killing was good and you of course would not. My point what determines who if anyone is right is God. I of course believe he would have sided with you but the point is you are binding God by standards that are wholly incapable of doing so. Your are basically saying that good means that a being that was good could not have any purpose that included suffering. How in the world could you possibly know that even if it was true? On what theoretical basis could that be true? God's nature determines both what is good and what he will do. If he exists these can't possibly ever conflict. He literally could not get it wrong in general. However it might be objectively wrong (actually false) for him to state that a creation that included suffering is wrong and then did so anyway. But that is not what we have. It is very helpful to think of morals as wrong or right (true or false) instead of wrong or right. Wrong and right come with illegitimate baggage. They assume we know what is wrong or right and it is some kind of brute fixed fact that everything must conform to including God. This cannot be so if God exists and can't be so especially if he did not.

Prof Craig’s states that if there are objective moral truths, such as murder and rape being wrong (and we all accept that they are morally wrong), then those moral edicts must come from God. Aside from the fact that we’re being given a very shaky first premise (which I do not accept and have a separate counter argument), murder and rape can only occur with the will of God. The defence offered is that an omnipotent and benevolent God did not will the occurrences of murder and rape, but that it was a result of his granting of free will to his creation. But that doesn’t alter the indictment one iota, for it is being implied that for God the importance or value of free will is greater than the alleviation of suffering. And from which it follows necessarily that there can be no all merciful God. The further point to be made is that if there are circumstances where the painful death of an innocent child is acceptable then there can be no objective moral affirmation that the painful death of an innocent child is wrong. If God can make and break the rules then morality is relative to his whims, and in which case there can be no objective moral argument for God.

I do not concede the logical arguments conclusions. I do not see the contradictions you pose, and in a couple of areas I am not capable of satisfying myself that I am competent to evaluate your claims. This is why I suggested submitting them to Craig. BTW to include Craig's arguments but exclude his resolving contentions concerning them is irrational. It is certainly up to you but it makes little sense.

I'm surprised that you cannot see the contradictions I've identified, especially as you yourself have mentioned the impossibility of squaring a circle and if X or not-X etc. My arguments are all very simple, and take the form: If God is whatever he is said to be then he cannot be otherwise. Throughout our discussion you have been asserting that God can be both X and not-X.

This is why I keep wanting to switch gears to areas where more certainty can be gained. If Christ is who he claimed to be every philosophical claim against him is rendered void and wrong. It is remarkable to me the level of resistance to doing this I have gotten from you. You literally do not even entertain the suggestion at all but launch into another cycle of semantic objections. I remember being told (whether true or not it proves the point) that physics indicated a bumble bee could not fly and all the evidence suggests the moon should not exist where it is and how it does. I know at least one of these is true of physics, but it does not matter if neither were. The point is that technical objections to things are never ever the final arbiter of truth. Evidence is. Bumble bees fly, the moon exists, and God is the arbiter of all moral truth if he exists.

You speak of “wanting more certainty”, but what could be more certain than self-evident necessary truths such as P or not-P and A=A? I give very simple logical arguments and it is you who resorts to semantics by attempting to reinterpret your way around them. And yes, the bumble bee flies, and it is both logically possible and empirically true that it flies. Now keep in mind my objections and compare both of those aspects with the statement “An all merciful God exists”?

BTW sorry for the grammar. As you can see at this time I am the only one representing orthodox Christianity. I am the target for everyone on your side. So I am replying in a rush and still can't get to everyone.

That's okay, I'm sure I would fail the entrance exam for the Grammar Police.
I'm sure it would help you if you didn't try to respond to every post and at such length. What about keeping your replies succinct and more to the point, fewer words but with greater punch?

 

[Virus]

to save them from hell

 

[CG Didymus]

His purpose is to freely allow us to choose a relationship with us. He could have but did not desire creating automatons that will inevitably choose to follow him. Love mandates freewill.

Did Jesus have freewill? If so, how was he able to perfectly follow God's will? If not, was he an automaton? If he was God, then no problem. He did the will of his Father, who was really one and the same with himself, right? Regardless, we are flawed and he made us this way. We don't believe, we suffer to punish us and make us turn to . We believe, we suffer so we can get stronger... or give up and quit believing he is real. In which case, we suffer his wrath and punishment for not trusting in his loving kindness. Great plan.

 

[CG Didymus]

God can only do what is logically possible!

Now you've got it. God made creation perfect, or at least very good. He had to give Adam freewill, because he, God, didn't want to have "robots." He apparently gave freewill to some of his heavenly messengers too, because they fell away. Their leader whose name is "The Adversary", a very appropriate name by the way, caused a serpent to tempt Eve and get her to sin. But, that was part of God's perfect plan all along. He wanted to see how much his creation really listened. Obviously, they didn't, because then Adam listened to his wife and also sinned. You are seeing the logic in all of this, aren't you?

This all set up the need for death and pain and suffering. Why? Because we deserve it for not following God's orders. God also need to banish The Adversary and his evil messengers from heaven. So he sent them to Earth to continue to tempt and cause more humans to fall away, which was pretty much everybody. But all is not lost, because to show us he loves us, he sent his only son to save us. So, you might ask, who is saved? Who are the ones that God wants to be with him for eternity in heaven? The ones that believe all this without question, like robots. Now that makes perfect logical sense doesn't it?

 

[SkepticThinker]

No you can't. You have no capacity to determine whether he is immoral or not. You can say he does not line up with your guesses about morality and I do so of other God's. This is literally impossible.

Sure I do. I have a brain.

But if this is true, then you don't have the capacity to determine whether god is moral or not either. And yet here you are, telling us that he just has to be good and loving.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I guarantee that if your family are members of any major traditional Christian denomination we agree on almost all core doctrine. Regardless minor differences exist because no document written over the course of 1800 years and applying to all cultures in all and concerning the most controversial and potent doctrines ever recorded can't possibly have universal agreement of every topic.

Well, they don't. So maybe they're right and you're wrong. After all, they outnumber you. (I know you like to argue along those lines.)


And why couldn't your god have preserved those documents in such a way that there would be no interpretative conflicts among his followers? That would seem a rather easy thing for "him" to have done. That's if "he" was truly concerned about all of us being able to find him.

 

[CG Didymus]

And why couldn't your god have preserved those documents in such a way that there would be no interpretative conflicts among his followers? That would seem a rather easy thing for "him" to have done. That's if "he" was truly concerned about all of us being able to find him.

He did. At least that's what it seems like Catholic Christians believe. I was raised one and told that there is a direct line going back from Pope to Pope right back to Jesus and the Apostles. All interpretive conflicts were "infallibly" resolved by which ever Pope was in power at the time. Sure a few Popes abused their power and did some things that weren't too godly, but who hasn't? Even some, or most, or all Protestant leaders I'm sure have done something wrong also.

But look at the truth here, the oldest and largest Christian Church, the Catholics, has only a few minor doctrinal differences with Protestant forms of Christianity. And amongst Protestants, they are almost all in agreement. Calvinists, JW's, Pentecostals, Mormons, Anglicans, etc. they are virtually one and the same. And, I always like to mention my favorite and most literal believing Christian group, the snake handlers. They probably have the largest percentage of believers that have given their lives for what they believe.

 

[1robin]

Morality based upon the morals set forth in Christianity is a world without morals at all as Christianity is void of morals. It is a religion founded upon the concept that a god who is a liar and professes kindness will reject the unbelievers which he destined them to be and cast them into hell. A god who professes noble traits such as omnipotence yet puts it to no use or uses it in a sadistic fashion.

Christianity can be gentle or it can be harsh but in this case it is harsh as Biblical literalism coupled with traditionalism creates something unfathomably monstrous. The god of the Bible is the god who is an outright murderer, even if these events never took place. A deity who kills in any fashion is a murderer especially when this deity makes murder immoral yet does it for the simplest accusations of normal human behavior. Religion and morality do not go together as moral absolutes are a figment of delusions enhanced by religious superiority.

Moral absolutes do not exist because just like utilitarianism no absolutes can be formed. Is it moral to have a society of slaves if the majority say it is right? Christianity was a primary proponent of slavery and advocated on the grounds of racial and religious rights. Many religions are immoral and Christianity is not exempt from this as it cannot stay morally consistent.

The concept you define as lacking any morals is the exact same concept more associated with moral truth than any other in human history. When you open with that you can expect little additional attention. Only with God are moral edicts true.

 

[1robin]

Much harder, I'm afraid, to imagine that he exists.

Is that why the majority of humans in history have believed in God? On that question you are in a very small box.

It's certainly a "virtue" that evangelical Christians tend to be very keen on. Trouble is, once a group of people have convinced each other that specified Others are evil, they can justify any atrocity against those Others as an "honored virtue and social necessity".

Is that why the great bloodlettings in recent history have mostly been the atheistic Stalin's, Pol Pot's and Mao's or the evolutionary based racial supremacy of Germans. Atheists alone in just the 20th century killed more than all Christians and Jews have in the last 4000 years, and that is assuming all the "god wills it" claims were true (which they aren't). In my experience Christian's are the most forgivable demographic there is. The Church will usually take in anyone denied by every other institution. They certainly have done much that was wrong but the numbers are not even in the same realm. Stain's 20 - 50 million dwarfs the inquisitions 4000 and the Crusades few hundred thousand. And neither of these have one verse that could justify them.

None of your "context" explains how ordering the killing of babies is a righteous act. And yes, quoting a single verse from a book is selective: what additional verses should I have quoted that would have made the order to kill the babies look good? (Bear in mind here that as an atheist I interpret the order in question as coming from the human leader of one tribe of barbarians who is out to inflict atrocious punishment on an enemy tribe, no doubt equally barbaric; religion's role here is as a sanitising mechanism to render the atrocity righteous.)

So God should have left them to be completely corrupted by their parents and wind up in hell instead of taking them directly into heaven. And along the way ruining the moral integrity of his people which those that were left alive in-spite of orders did periodically. However if you a priori remove the possibility of revelation then you of course can have whatever world you desire, at least until you are forced to deal with the one that is, but it makes for silly debates. If God is out before a debate begins then no debate is possible. Take heart though much of modern scholarship does the exact same thing but still can't keep faith in the coffin, even after pronouncing a thousand eulogies for it. BTW your naturalistic explanation for the OT events are about the worst conclusion possible if you are familiar with it. Most of the time the Jews did not want to do anything asked of them and didn't. How could it have been their idea?

 

[SkepticThinker]

So God should have left them to be completely corrupted by their parents and wind up in hell instead of taking them directly into heaven. And along the way ruining the moral integrity of his people which those that were left alive in-spite of orders did periodically. However if you a priori remove the possibility of revelation then you of course can have whatever world you desire, at least until you are forced to deal with the one that is, but it makes for silly debates. If God is out before a debate begins then no debate is possible. Take heart though much of modern scholarship does the exact same thing but still can't keep faith in the coffin, even after pronouncing a thousand eulogies for it. BTW your naturalistic explanation for the OT events are about the worst conclusion possible if you are familiar with it. Most of the time the Jews did not want to do anything asked of them and didn't. How could it have been their idea?

Why not just kill all the children everywhere then. They're all going to grow up to be sinners anyway, so why not just bypass that part and get them straight into heaven from the get-go?

 

[1robin]

God can only do what is logically possible!

Nothing I said was a logical impossibility. A square has objective aspects that a circle cannot perform even if God did not exist. A moral act is not the same. In fact we constantly struggle in many cases to determine if X was right or wrong. Morals unlike squares have no objective reference points outside of God. If we have objective points because God exists then it would be his nature that determined what was evil or good. Unless you can show only a God with a nature that made murder wrong do you have a point. Murder is related to our value to God and an inherent worth that only exists if his nature dictates it.

So, back to the contradiction and absurdity then!! God wanted creatures that didn’t exist to freely choose to have a relationship with him? The creatures that didn’t exist were in no position to enjoy the relationship, and God, already supreme and self-sufficient in all things, has no requirements, needs, or unfulfilled wishes; and there is nothing his creation could offer him that he doesn’t already have.

I do not know if that is accurate. We can give to God, but we can't add to God's sufficiency to be God. Having a mate does not make me any more of a human being. Being sufficient does not mean having all things. It means having all necessary things. God does not have a material form yet he is no less God without it. He is not evil, yet no less God without being so. If I believe life with God is greater than not existing then in what way can you say I am wrong? If I feel fortunate in what way am I not. I also wanted to ad something here that pertains but not something I understand. The bible seems to suggest our souls existed even before the foundation of the universe. I have no idea what that means but it would affect your claims.

Prof Craig’s states that if there are objective moral truths, such as murder and rape being wrong (and we all accept that they are morally wrong), then those moral edicts must come from God.

Not the edicts. The truth the edicts are based on. We can cobble up ethics without God. However if they are based on moral truth we require God. I have never heard Craig say anything different. He usually says that if we believe a moral action is actually wrong regardless of opinion then that require a God to be true, and he is perfectly right. If you believe for example torturing a baby for fun would still be wrong even if everyone believed it was right you require God for that belief to be true.

Aside from the fact that we’re being given a very shaky first premise (which I do not accept and have a separate counter argument), murder and rape can only occur with the will of God. The defence offered is that an omnipotent and benevolent God did not will the occurrences of murder and rape, but that it was a result of his granting of free will to his creation. But that doesn’t alter the indictment one iota, for it is being implied that for God the importance or value of free will is greater than the alleviation of suffering. And from which it follows necessarily that there can be no all merciful God. The further point to be made is that if there are circumstances where the painful death of an innocent child is acceptable then there can be no objective moral affirmation that the painful death of an innocent child is wrong. If God can make and break the rules then morality is relative to his whims, and in which case there can be no objective moral argument for God.

I think you got his argument all wrong to begin with. Edicts are epistemology. Foundations are ontological and Craig always makes ontological arguments. It is not that God sat down and determined freewill is preferable to no pain or suffering in exclusion. His goal is freely chosen love and faith, once implemented freewill is a necessity and suffering a necessity of freewill. So you must show the original purpose was wrong, the rest is inevitable.

The death of a child would require justification. I might add we routinely allow the painful death of children in the womb even though we can prevent it so we are not a very god judge. However an action can be right or wrong based on justification and use. In fact almost all wrongs are good things abused. alcohol and opium have very god functions but are wrong when abused. I know of no historical legal system that ever did not distinguish right and wrong based on many factors including justification. Remove an arm in a hospital and your a hero surgeon, do it on a homeless guy in an alley and your in prison. God would in that case be the ultimate and perfect surgeon who had sovereignty over all arms and all life. Now this will get us into moral epistemology which is a much more ambiguous issue but can be debated. However Craig's and my point is that all moral truths require a God or something very similar. If you think anything is actually morally true regardless of opinion you need God. Without him morality and law are social conventions meant to gain an arbitrary (with respect to truth) goal and are illusory, as to truth.

I'm surprised that you cannot see the contradictions I've identified, especially as you yourself have mentioned the impossibility of squaring a circle and if X or not-X etc. My arguments are all very simple, and take the form: If God is whatever he is said to be then he cannot be otherwise. Throughout our discussion you have been asserting that God can be both X and not-X.

I know what you said God is. I know what you say is contradictory. I just do not think they are. I see no contradiction with a good God who allows suffering for a greater good. This is at it's core a false optimization fallacy. Since freewill mandates wrong choices you are basically saying a good God could never grant freewill and if so then the semantics are leading us into imbecility.

You speak of “wanting more certainty”, but what could be more certain than self-evident necessary truths such as P or not-P and A=A? I give very simple logical arguments and it is you who resorts to semantics by attempting to reinterpret your way around them. And yes, the bumble bee flies, and it is both logically possible and empirically true that it flies. Now keep in mind my objections and compare both of those aspects with the statement “An all merciful God exists”?

I want more certainty does not imply I have any right to more certainty. However that is not your point. I do not see your contradictions and since certain historical claims if true render your philosophical claims moot before hand then I would rather discuss them. There are quite a few philosophic necessities but the problem is they almost all contain opinion to set them up and many do not even provide an advantage to derive truth as the logical validity criteria. Craig would have technical reasons to dismiss your claim, and on a gut level I have intuitively agreed with him. I have met your claims on both of the necessary grounds. I do not claim a victory I claim a stalemate. I would like to use another realm to attempt a resolution but am finding that impossible. This leads me to believe you only feel like you have a case in the ambiguous realm of semantics which necessitates opinion. Craig, Plantinga, and Aquinas etc..... are on the opposite side of most issues from you based on technical philosophic reasons, I for intuitive reasons. How can either of us prevail if this is the only topic allowed?

That's okay, I'm sure I would fail the entrance exam for the Grammar Police.
I'm sure it would help you if you didn't try to respond to every post and at such length. What about keeping your replies succinct and more to the point, fewer words but with greater punch?

I wish I could manage that. It just seems to require a whole lot to illustrate every point. I also have to cut off at the pass every off ramp I can see a non-theist might take. If you review my posts I am constantly either predicting these things up front or attempting to stop them before hand and no force on earth can accomplish it. Not so much you but those on your side of issues relies on technicalities and I must spend a lot of time pairing them down. That always reminds me of a lawyer attempting to set his guilty client free by a procedural technicality.

 

[1robin]

Did Jesus have freewill? If so, how was he able to perfectly follow God's will? If not, was he an automaton? If he was God, then no problem. He did the will of his Father, who was really one and the same with himself, right? Regardless, we are flawed and he made us this way. We don't believe, we suffer to punish us and make us turn to . We believe, we suffer so we can get stronger... or give up and quit believing he is real. In which case, we suffer his wrath and punishment for not trusting in his loving kindness. Great plan.

Jesus would be something we could never comprehend. He would be a divine will obedient in every way (by choice not necessity IMO), but would have been confronted on every decision by his weak material body and will while on earth. No God did not make us flawed. He made us perfect but with the freewill to become flawed. Those that failed are archetypes of what we all would have chose. Yet this is not the end, he did not abandon us to destruction. He paid the entire cost to remedy this eternally and yet we are so corrupt we will not even accept the provision. You seem to have rammed two independent issues together like a train wreck.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So God should have left them to be completely corrupted by their parents and wind up in hell instead of taking them directly into heaven. And along the way ruining the moral integrity of his people which those that were left alive in-spite of orders did periodically.

The perfect, irrefutible argument for abortion.

Kill them in the womb and they all go to heaven.

 

[1robin]

Sure I do. I have a brain.

But if this is true, then you don't have the capacity to determine whether god is moral or not either. And yet here you are, telling us that he just has to be good and loving.

Which brain section or which particle of grey matter is the moral truth part? Your brain is designed to survive if God does not exist and is deciding moral truths based on tribal loyalties and apparently a regard for genes you did not even know existed until the last few years, according to that selfish gene absurdity. IOW you have no capacity for finding moral facts and have no reason to believe they even exist without God. The only thing your brain can do is decide if another beings actions line up with your arbitrary values. Which is what I have already granted about a hundred times. Do you think a thing becomes true based on how many times it is stated?

If God exists my moral conscience which is what your speaking of would be tuned based on God's nature. So if actually followed (and most of use mangle ours into unrecognizable forms) it would inevitably agree with God no matter what he is. IOW whatever God is, if God, would produce moral truth. That is what divine command theory posits. I do not like it but found it so undeniable I have adopted it. If God exists there is no way that whatever he said was not morally true. However that is a whole different subject from foundations and perceptions.

 

[1robin]

Well, they don't. So maybe they're right and you're wrong. After all, they outnumber you. (I know you like to argue along those lines.)

I think you are wrong unless they belong to a group outside of Catholic and protestant circles. So unless you prove what you claim there is no debate. Regardless Both the protestant creed and the Catholic creed claim the same core truths. That accounts for most of Christianity. Maybe your family are Christian scientists or Mormons.

And why couldn't your god have preserved those documents in such a way that there would be no interpretative conflicts among his followers? That would seem a rather easy thing for "him" to have done. That's if "he" was truly concerned about all of us being able to find him.

Because that would require the removal of freewill. It also is not necessary. God's truths would intuitively be mysterious and cryptic much of the time. If he sounded like a see spot run book I would doubt the intelligence of it's source. It is exactly what I would expect of a God like being. Now I mean containing cryptic verses, and mysterious teachings. I of course would prefer something else in some places but I would have no reason to expect it. There are a few verse I would like never to have been written but they are not something I have a no reason to deny God over. I call truth as truth based on evidence. I adopt truth personally practicing it depending on whether it meets expectations, given that I have a God given conscience and access to the Holy Spirit. I find God and the bible to be true whether I like all it's aspects or not. You remind me of a person who does not like something a priori and then set out looking for reasons it could not be true, at one time I did the same.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I think you are wrong unless they belong to a group outside of Catholic and protestant circles. So unless you prove what you claim there is no debate. Regardless Both the protestant creed and the Catholic creed claim the same core truths. That accounts for most of Christianity. Maybe your family are Christian scientists or Mormons.

My proof is that these people exist, and they disagree with most of what you say on this forum. I can't present them to you, unless they feel like signing up to the forum. They don't defend slavery as you do, for example.

Hell, there are many other Christians on this very forum who disagree with what you say on this forum!

That's good enough for me to determine that there are people in existence who call themselves Christians who disagree with your version of Christianity.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Which brain section or which particle of grey matter is the moral truth part? Your brain is designed to survive if God does not exist and is deciding moral truths based on tribal loyalties and apparently a regard for genes you did not even know existed until the last few years, according to that selfish gene absurdity. IOW you have no capacity for finding moral facts and have no reason to believe they even exist without God. The only thing your brain can do is decide if another beings actions line up with your arbitrary values. Which is what I have already granted about a hundred times. Do you think a thing becomes true based on how many times it is stated?

If God exists my moral conscience which is what your speaking of would be tuned based on God's nature. So if actually followed (and most of use mangle ours into unrecognizable forms) it would inevitably agree with God no matter what he is. IOW whatever God is, if God, would produce moral truth. That is what divine command theory posits. I do not like it but found it so undeniable I have adopted it. If God exists there is no way that whatever he said was not morally true. However that is a whole different subject from foundations and perceptions.

How did you determine that the god you believe in is good and loving?
If that god exists and our moral consciences are tuned based on this god's nature, then how come many of us disagree with you that "he" is loving and good?

 

[johnhanks]

Is that why the majority of humans in history have believed in God? On that question you are in a very small box.

I think it was Skeptic Thinker who pointed out your fondness for argumentum ad numerum. He wasn't wrong, was he?

In my experience Christian's are the most forgivable demographic there is.

There's a surprise. (Or did you mean "forgiving"? Equally unsurprising, I suppose.)

So God should have left them to be completely corrupted by their parents and wind up in hell instead of taking them directly into heaven.

Let's imagine, purely for argument's sake, that the parents really were irredeemably evil and had to be killed. How would the babies, adopted by righteous Israelites, then have grown up corrupted? And as others have pointed out, the logic of your argument proclaims that the best favour anyone could ever do for a baby is to kill it at birth - straight to heaven, no possibility of corruption.

BTW your naturalistic explanation for the OT events are about the worst conclusion possible if you are familiar with it. Most of the time the Jews did not want to do anything asked of them and didn't. How could it have been their idea?

Since their god does not exist, how could anything they did not be their idea?