Jinto

If you can't refute my argument, there's no shame in admitting that you're wrong. Try actually reading it this time... and then tell me exactly why your God has the right to tell us what game we should play. Use a logical argument please, I have no use for appeals to emotion.

Roland98

Just thought that was an interesting comment in light of the "was she/wasn't she an atheist" secondary debate.

Carry on!

Dr Rick

A mortal, non-omnipotent man who acts takes a risk; an omnipotent god does not. Your analogy would work if men who acted had no chance of sustaining harm, no chance of failure, and always knew and could change the outcome.

It is immoral for the leader of the affluent country to make such a demand.

The concept of "the only workable plan" places limits on the god, negating his putative omnipotence.

This is the exact same reasoning many tyrants use to justify genocide, only the individuals had "their physical lives cut short" are "for the greater good" of the state and/or race.

In contrast, god does allow the molester to subjugate the victims free-will.

Hired Gun

You may try to use humanism as a basis of moral authority, but whose interpretation of it? Yours? Am I to believe that all humanists are in complete agreement over every moral issue? The more people who claim humanism as their philosophy, the more diverse the views within humanism will become.

I am not arguing that morality will not always be subjective. But humanism doesn't even provide an authority that can be subject to interpretation. The only difference between morals chosen by humanists and morals chosen by Christians, both being equally 'bad' or 'good' according to my opinion, is that the humanist doesn't seem to be bothered by legislating his opinion, and forcing others, whose opinions may disagree, to live by his opinion. Christians, and other theists, seem to realize that their human opinion is insufficient to rule over the opinions of others, hence, the need to turn to a higher authority, and hash out the opinions and limits of interpretation involving that authority. It is the difference of men having opinions concerning other men's opinions and men having opinions concerning God's authority. In the example that you cite above, I think that it would be very hard to justify stoning a prostitute knowing that one's God said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Or does Soc really believe that he is a perfect and sinless lamb?




There are so many paragraphs that would have to be reinterpreted dishonestly to support CR that there would always be a large group of people who would stand against it. Read some of the quotes from Richard Dawkins and his herd who compare Christianity to a mental disease. Should I be frightened?



A few posts ago, 'Nowhere357' made this comment:

I can and do only speak for myself. My God said that He came for the sinner, not the righteous. If a person can easily live by the moral standards put forth in the Bible, they have no need of the god who wrote it. Surprisingly, despite knowing my own mind and the callousness and selfishness to be found there, before I encountered Jesus Christ, I thought that I was a perfect moral agent. It was only through dark self-examination in the light of words spoken by Jesus, that I realized that the only thing that allowed me to outwardly resemble a respectable human being was my comfortable circumstance.

Nowhere is correct. Hope that I never lose my faith.

A.S.A. Jones

Hired Gun

I certainly can't argue against your opinion.



But humanism should?




What happens when your interpretation of moral humanism falls out of synch with what current society has determined is moral? If that should happen, I would prefer that you live next door to me so that I could inform the police of your activities!

Why would you pick only a negative example? There have been times when Christian interpretation of the Bible has been in direct contradiction to what society has determined to be moral. For example, it was against the law to set another man's slaves free in the 1800's. Society determined that this was theft of another's property and, therefore, an immoral act. It was the conscience of Christians, who interpreted the Bible to mean that slavery was wrong, that brought about social reform.

You think it would be morally better to kill mom and dad and let the baby starve to death? Maybe 3,000 years ago, someone could have borrowed the wealth from our nation and established mass orphanages to care for war orphans.

It's very easy to condemn the sentiments being expressed in this verse, but do you realize that it was the Babylonians who did this in their warfare against the Israelites? In other words, the Babylonians would grab the Israelite babies by the feet and swing them, head first, into the rocks. Sometimes, the best way to put an end to a horrific practice is to suggest that practice be done to those who do it. Please keep in mind that there was no Geneva convention 3, 000 years ago. Warfare was brutal, not the kind of cleaned up type of war that we have now. Do you think that a father who witnessed his son being killed in this manner is immoral for crying out to God to do the same to his enemy? I don't see it as immoral. I see it as human.

In your original post, you wrote:

It can't be within the bible, because you would then select everthing as true, even the the verses advising infanticide and genecide.

This verse isn't 'advising' infanticide. It is expressing the torment and anguish of a man who recognizes the barbarity of his son's death at the hands of his enemy.

A.S.A. Jones

Hired Gun

Very well. If you insist. Let's start with the above.

1) You have no argument.
2) An opinion cannot be refuted.
3) Just because an opinion cannot be refuted does not necessarily make it true, nor does it make a contrary opinion false.

For example, the statement, "God doesn't have the right to tell us what game we should play," is an unsupported opinion, not an argument. There is no use of logic accompanying this assertion, and therefore logic cannot be used to refute the reasoning which would result in having the assertion as a conclusion.

The statement, "God has the right to tell us what game we should play," is also an unsupported opinion, not an argument. If you read my post, you will see that I lay out an argument that attempts to logically explain why I believe that God has every right to tell us the game we should play.

That said, let's examine your response in detail.




These are the main points of your 'argument':

1.God doesn't have the right to tell us what game to play.
because it is a game of submission.
2.I would never play and refuse to play a game of submission
3.God thinks that to submitting to him is more important than human life.
4.Who is God to tell me what to do?
5.Imagine if the inventor of poker tried to make it illegal to play blackjack, we would laugh him right out of the courtroom.

#5 is a false analogy. You are comparing the invention of two different games, which use the same equipment, but that are equal in their scope; The inventor of Poker is the objective authority concerning poker, because he is the only person who is in the position to objectively know his own intention concerning the rules of the game. The inventor of Blackjack is the objective authority concerning blackjack, because he is the only person who is in the position to objectively know his own intention concerning the rules of the game. Neither man would have any objective authority over the rights of the other's invention, because they are limited in their authority to their own game.

God, on the other hand, is, by definition, the inventor of life. He has invented 'the Game of Life', encompassing, by design and intention, his plan and purpose for our morality. The inventor of the Game of Life is the objective authority concerning the Game of Life, because he is the only person who is in the position to objectively know his own intention concerning the rules of the game. No man has any objective authority over the rights of God's invention. Your analogy fails. If you will note, I have just given you a logical argument, open to your analysis, that answers your point #4, "Who is God to Tell me what to do?.

Moving on to your other points:

1.God doesn't have the right to tell us what game to play.
because it is a game of submission.
2.I would never play and refuse to play a game of submission
3.God thinks that to submitting to him is more important than human life.

Let's rearrange the points in a more common form:

1. I would never play, and refuse to play, a game of submission.
2(a). God's game is a plan of submission 2(b)(because God thinks that submitting to him is more important than human life)
3.God doesn't have the right to tell me what game to play.

2b, though redundant, because you have already stated that, in your opinion, a game of submission isn't the 'right' game to be played, indicates that you think that submission to God is somehow contrary to 'human life'. I would argue that God desires us to be submissive to Him because he feels that human life is important. A god who seeks a relationship with us obviously attaches some importance to our existence. You may disagree over the quality of that relationship, but to say that it isn't important doesn't follow.

Any way, your whole argument amounts to a Big Non-Sequitur:
1. I would never play a game of submission.
2. God's game is a plan of submission.
3. Therefore, God doesn't have the right to tell me to play this game.

Your conclusion doesn't follow.



Once again, you state a conclusion that you arrived at illogically. But you do ask a good question; "What's so important about winning the Game of Life?"

Well, Ed, tell us what our contestant in the 'Game of Life' has won!
He's won a more abundant life here on earth! The ability to see his own faults! The ability to forgive others their faults! He's also won peace of mind, a moral foundation that won't crack under pressure, and the selflessness that permits him to do great and small things for other people at his own expense. All of this AND his soul will be reconditioned to allow him to spend eternity free of the torment that its present state would cause him, if he should go now! Congratulations!

God doesn't cause us to do bad things. He gives us the free will to do what we want, tells us that there will be consequences to doing things contrary to his will, and we do them anyway. A more appropriate analogy to your 'victimization' scenario is this:

God hands us a pack of matches so that we can light our gas heater to stay warm. He tells us, "Don't play with the matches. Use them to light the heater." We look at each other and say, "Who the hell is God to tell us not play with matches? Playing with matches is fun! Screw Him." We then proceed to burn down the house. God runs in to rescue us. He hears our screams. He shouts, "Follow me! I'm the only way out!" We choke back the smoke and with our dying breath we sneer, "You're pretty damn arrogant to think that you are the only way out."

A.S.A. Jones

Hired Gun

I will soon have to end my infidels.org adventure. I will answer Roland, and Nowhere tomorrow, but I won't be posting again after tomorrow. I go on binges, but if I don't tell of my intention to stop posting as of Monday, I'm sure that you will all *logically* conclude that I had to drop out of the forum because I found all of your rebuttals devastating to my faith and was unable to answer them to my own satisfaction.

I'd like to thank the lot of you for taking the time to ask the hard questions and to converse intelligently with me. It was fun.

A.S.A. Jones

Goober

So you are going to chose to ignore everything I posted? Fine, I strongly suspect you cannot refute anything in my post, which is why you are going to ignore it. But I'm sure ignoring that which you do not like comes naturally to you, after all you are guilty of ignoring the parts of your own 'moral' code, note the inverted commas, that you do not like. I will repost them, in case you actually want to have a try at explaining them:

Exodus 31:15-17 "Six days shall work be done; but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the lord; whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day shall surely be put to death",
Also, Exodus 35:1-3 confirms this with lines like: "These are the words which the lord hath commanded, that ye should do them" "whosoever doeth any work therein shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations"

Exodus 21:17 "And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." Leviticus 20:9 "For everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." Deutronomy 21:18-21 This is too long to quote in full, but it explicitly says that if a child is disobediant "all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die"

Leviticus quotes a huge list of things that make people "unclean", such as menstruating. Leviticus 15:28-29 says that to become clean again, a woman must wait 7 days and then present 2 pigeons to a priest to be used as offerings.

Leviticus 19:19 "I am the Lord. Ye shall keep keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed: neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together"

Deuteronomy 13:2-10 Says people trying to convert you should be put to death, saying "And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to draw thee away from the lord thy god."

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 Says "When men strive together, one with another, and the wife of one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall have no pity"

Deuteronomy 22:20-21 "But if this thing be true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die"

I bet any explanations you do have are based on a subjective, non-literal interpretation rather than a more objective, literal one. Why would you reject these commandments? Let me guess, you feel they are wrong (although you might not admit it here), which makes it clear that morals do not need the bible. Ignore me if you like, but don't you think it's a bit of a gaping flaw in your position in desperate need of explanation, rather than something to be ignored while you busy yourself with attacking other peoples' moral systems? Sounds like a case of pot, kettle, black, expect the kettle isn't as black as you might think.

Odemus

Um Goober, the fact that you ask such a question indicates you have very little to no understanding of what Christians believe, especially regarding Old Testament Law Vs. the new covenent. Speaking as someone who is presently sitting on the fence between both sides of the God argument, I would strongly advise you to at least attempt a general understanding of Christianity before you start critisizing it on such fundamentally flawed premises.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Hired Gun
You think it would be morally better to kill mom and dad and let the baby starve to death?

This does not answer the question of why it is morally good to slaughter Babylonian children.

It's very easy to condemn the sentiments being expressed in this verse, but do you realize that it was the Babylonians who did this in their warfare against the Israelites?

Who did what first to whom has no bearing on the morality of an action.

Do you think that a father who witnessed his son being killed in this manner is immoral for crying out to God to do the same to his enemy? I don't see it as immoral. I see it as human.

I see it as brutal and vicious. It goes far beyond immorality to punish children in such a way for what their parents did; if this is "human", then it's equally "human" to ask God to rape the children of child molesters. Shouldn't people do that? Sometimes, the best way to put an end to a horrific practice is to suggest that practice be done to those who do it. Or, in this case, to their children.

This verse isn't 'advising' infanticide. It is expressing the torment and anguish of a man who recognizes the barbarity of his son's death at the hands of his enemy.

And who thought the appropriate response was to inflict the same barbarity on another child. I'd like to see how the barbarity of one child's death differs from the barbarity of another child's death. Does the Babylonian child suffer less than the Israelite child, for example?