mightyjoemoon

How about genocide?

Not only did they have God's approval, it was a direct command.

So what is the context that makes genocide and infanticide not evil? Yes, stating that Jehovah (YHWH) is evil for commanding genocide is exactly like inmates griping about bad food.

Since apparently there are contexts in which it is righteous for GOD to command slaughtering innocents, how do you decide which claimants to these messages to believe? Why were Samuel and Saul carrying out the commands of a righteous GOD while Osama Bin Laden is considered a mass murderer bound for Hell by Christians?

Have you actually read The Bible?

Amaleq13

No, that would be a learned response to specific stimuli.

What I described is simply a rational approach to reaching a reliable conclusion.

Sven

After thinking about this a bit more, a thought crossed my mind on which I opened a thread yesterday in GRD - which unfortunately is in serious lack of replies.

Maybe praxeus himself will stand up to his claims and answer my question there.

Diogenes the Cynic

Pavlovian response is a conditioned response to stimuli which is built by associating that stimuli with an unconditioned response to another stimulus.

In English, that means that you can trick the body into responding to one kind of information as if it were another kind of information. When dogs see food, they salivate (an unconditioned responses- i.e. unlearned, biological). If you ring a bell every time you give them food, then they learn that the bell means food is coming so they will salivate when they hear the bell (a conditioned response).

In short, Pavlovian response is about physiological reactions to stimuli, not about intellectual ones.It has nothing to do with any discussion of belief.

Imagine that you have seen a weather report claiming that it will be sunny and clear tomorrow with no rain. Imagine that you believe the report. Then imagine that the next day, it rains. At what point do you "decide" to change your previous belief that it will not rain? Do you have any control over that change of belief? Does it not change automatically, completely involuntarily, as soon as you become aware that it is raining? Could you possibly still choose to believe it is not raining despite what you see?

aChristian

Yes I have.
This would probably fall under the category of us not having all the info combined with God's righteous judgement. Of course the Bible does not tell me all the reasons, so I am just postulating why it was done. It could be the whole group was so corrupt that they would have infected (it could have even been a literal infectious disease, possibly caused by their sinful practices) and destroyed everyone that came into contact with them. As for the kids, they quite possibly went to heaven instead of growing up in a corrupt society and being sent to hell a mere 70 years later (a pretty good deal if you ask me). The Bible does make it clear that they would tend to lead the Israelites after false gods and those who were not killed as they should have been did just that. The result is both the pagans and God's people who followed them end up in hell. One reason that it probably seems bad to you is that you are thinking of them as poor helpless people who never hurt anyone. Not the case. Also, as we swim about in our cesspool of sin, we tend to not recognize how awful sin is and how necessary and good it is for God to judge it. Last of all, if any of them were truly honestly seeking God, they would have gone straight to heaven, again, not a bad deal.

Oh, you can tell the difference between Osama and Moses by the God they worship. Moses worships the true God, Osama a false god.

Bertsura

Moses committed God-sanctioned genocide, by the way. You would know this if you read the Bible as you claim.

Think about what you're saying. You're saying that kids dying probably worked out for the best. You're saying that entire civilizations, all those people, deserved death. You're saying that all this is "not a big deal". Think.

Tigers!

The weather analogy appears quite simplistic. It is only a single variable i.e. wet or dry.
We are discussing something rather more complicated - a world view, a philosophy, system of belief etc: This is dependent on far more than a single variable - how you were raised, where you were raised, when you were raised, education, living environment, circle of friends, job, your feeling of the world, your place in it etc: All of these (and more) interact in so many ways that defies simple categorisation as a binary decision.
If you or I were to come to the stage of deciding to change our belief system (viz atheistic to theist or vice-versa) we would reach a stage of deciding to change, it wouldn't just happen. It would be an act of will.

And yes my choice of Pavlovian was not the best.

mightyjoemoon

Good grief... why do I even venture onto this board? Same old fundie bullshit I've had to deprogram myself from spit back up in all the predictable ways. A world where hacking babies to death = good, and "my god is true because I say so, Osama's is false because I say so."

Doug Shaver

That what they all say.

Every adherent of every religion says it: We worship the true god, everyone else worships a false god.

Either (A) all but one you is worshiping a false god, or else (B) every one of you is worshiping a false god. If you try really really hard, maybe you can guess why some of us think (B) is true.

Diogenes the Cynic

aChristian, Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the same Abrahamic God. Allah is not a different God from the God of Moses. Allah just means "God" n Arabic. Do you know what Arab Christians call God? They call him "Allah."