Shadownought

Exactly. But that does not make him a just ruler. What is "just" and what is "law" are not automatically the same thing. Unjust laws CAN exist!

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Power dictates right and wrong.

Power dictates laws, which may or may not be right.

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There is no philisophical "right" and "wrong."

Right- everyone has a different code of ethics. So why do you think God's morals are the best?

Arrogancy

You brought up the "free will" aspect in your original counterargument, not me. Biblical free will isn't really vague - quite simply, it's the ability to choose. The "tree of the knowledge of good and bad" was created because without it, there would be no "choice," and thus no Biblical free will. Adam and Eve chose to self rule, and they had to live with that choice.

Throughout history, some have chosen to live under the God of the Bible, some haven't, some have chosen to pretend to live under him but warp the teachings to do what they wanted to do anyway.

Why does the parent/child anaolgy fail? It doesn't when talking about the Biblical God, only the philisophical omni-everything God. The Biblical God created Adam just like a parent creates a child - he put some cells together, created a being and trained him. The same would apparently apply to Jesus and the angels, including Satan.

You're, in effect, saying that the ability to choose is a flaw. Considering the big picture, I don't see how it is as those that choose against cease to exist, nulling out any pain/suffering that they experience anyway. The "flaw" corrects itself. If you're referring to eternal damnation, then yes, I can see your logic - but that's an errant concept anyway, at least when referring to Christianity that claims to be based upon the Bible.

Arrogancy

I'll answer your questions above, incluiding that one, with a question.

Who decides what is "just?"

Arrogancy

Just for the sake of clarification, so that you know what you're debating against, I'm an "agno-theist," or, in other words, I don't have 100% belief in a God because there is no total proof, but I personally feel that the evidence, subjective and concrete, lies with the Biblical God and thus decide to live my life as if he exists unless the evidence backs up something else to a greater degree.

And excuse typos, please, for now. I have to buy a new KB.

Arrogancy

One more thing, since I refer strictly to the Biblical God, philisophical ideals of omniscience, ominpresence, and omnipotence are irrelevant to me. If you follow the link I posted in the "Story of Bob" thread, you will see where I explained how exactly the Biblical definition of God and the philisophical respresentation differed to David M. Payne when showing that him making "Bob" as such flawed his satire, because he only satirized people that have adopted this viewpoint.

Shadownought

It cannot be objectively proven that anything is just or unjust, because it is not a concrete, objective idea. I think that generally, the people who must decide if a law is just or not are the ones who have to live under it. If you think that God's actions have always been just, then you have the same moral compass that God does, and would probably do the same things he has done if you were in his place (destroying almost all life on Earth with a huge catastrophe, for example).

The question is "Is God just?" Saying "Well, he made the rules" does not answer the question.

Shadownought

Okay. Would you give us some of the concrete evidence?

philechat

Here, the ability to choose would be influenced by one's God-created character. Is there a "natural inclination" derived from their character that Adam and Eve must choose so, as opposed to choosing not to eat the fruit? Could people act against their natural inclination, if God is the maker of all aspects of the inclination? And did God have foreknowledge of the character of his created? Or is God an "unconscious creator" like one's parents?

Here I deliberately avoided the idea of omniscience. My question is about how conscious God is about the nature of his creation? Is he creating as consciously as say the computer programmer (or even more conscious than a certain faltering experimental project of a programmer), or as unconsciously as say parents? How much "degree of confidence" did God have about his creation? And could He be making mistakes (parents training children by abusing them, etc.)? How much responsibility must he take if his "creation" fails?

By the way, I am a fatalist in the sense that I do not believe in free will independent of our own nature. That is, even our "willing" must be a result of our character and past/present experiences, and there is no metaphysical free will in the matter.

Arrogancy

So, basically, you're saying that God being "just" is subjective, dependant on the viewer. Which, being all subjective, means that there's no debate on whether he is "just" or not in the first place in response to the original question. In other words, "there's no answer."

In my opinion, I believe that the God of the Bible is "just." I'm not a very sentimental person and I don't believe in altruism, so "what about the children" has no effect on my logic, especially given the product of the environment/ability to use wisdom to see ahead factors.

For instance, The Flood was issued because there was a situation in which no more repentant humans would come into existance - the environment was overly negative and would only produce negative humans - the "babies" would turn out like their parents due to humans being largely a product of their environment. In this circumstance, the issue as stated earlier could not resolve, so God just wiped the slate clean and started over with a small group of humans so that life could continue as it has up until this day.

A person's experiences are entirely introspective, so whatever "suffering" that those that died went through in death is irrelevant since their experiences cease to exist with them. Similarly, a person resurrected to eternal life, would not care much about 70 - 80 years where some "bad stuff" happened - if anything, it would be a valued learning experience.

Arrogancy

I would rather not get too much into it in this thread, as it is a very big sidetrack, and it would split my attention. Basically, it concerns fossil evidence matching the record of creation as stated in Genesis, something that people of that time not knowing of their own - archaeological evidence supporting certain prophecies, the only argument against being, "it must have been written after the fact BECAUSE it is a prophecy" - huh?, and historical evidence supporting certain things. I'll get into those things here later when they can be addressed in more detail - it would split my attention too much to do it all at once at the moment.