IRON MAN

It was simply an facetious shot about thinking outside the box - not meant to positively refute your square circle argument, and not meant to create offense.

I think that some ideas have been ignored in the past, just because the listener has trouble entertaining the premise.

Can you imagine the response Einstein would have gotten when starting a sentence with ...

Assume for a moment that time is not constant, but the speed of light is ...

Time not constant!? WTF!? What sort of scientific heresy is this!?

God changing his mind about his nature and/or having lied about it in the first place!? WTF!?

Same reaction.

By the same token Abraham would have got a bit of shock when God told him to stick a knife in Isaac. He had never revealed this nature before, but now we look back on it and say He always must've had it, because we believe His nature to be a constant, (not complicating the issue with the eventual reprieve).

I take it on faith that the sun will be shining tomorrow but that still doesn't stop me entertaining the possibility of what would happen if it didn't.

Did you know if the sun just went out then it would take 8 minutes for the earth to go dark?

At the same time I don't believe for a second that is possible, but I allow part of my brain to entertain the idea in order to hypothesize on the results/and or my reaction.

This is what the OP asks you to do.

And yours. I don't mean any offense and it is sometimes difficult for posts not to come across that way, especially if you've had some other atheist jump down your throat in the past.

Possibly, but not the only possibility.

Unless you decide of your own free will to accept both premises as divine orders from God, in which case you have programmed your own mind.

The OP already states there is no doubt that this is God. Many of the arguments on this thread get back to the premises in the OP being in doubt, or not accepted in the first place. This is confusing the debate.

The premises are:

1. Yes it's definately God.

2. He orders you to kill someone.

3. You have a choice.

To condense the question: What would you do if you found out that your God was a sadist arsehole?

1. Obey Him.

2. Refuse to obey Him.

You cannot retreat to saying, "He is not my God", or "God would not do that" because the question simply does not allow for it.

It is not a nonsense question.

Q: How long would it take for the earth to go dark if the sun went out?

A: That's impossible the sun can't just go out.*

*That however is a nonsense answer. To continue on with logical evidence of why the sun cannot possibly go out is to drag a red herring across the debate, and avoid the actual question.


I understand that it might not be a particularly relevant question, and even uncomfortable to think about. I would not like to consider my actions if my wife cheated on me for example. But it does not invalidate the question.

There would be nothing wrong with me saying, "I would kill her, but I don't believe that will ever happen" to clarify my position on the premise.

But to outright deny the premise and try to logically disprove it is not rational argument, comes across as being a bit closed-minded and know-it-allish.

At the same time I do not dispute a person of faith to question the validity of any conclusions drawn from such a question, and therefore the questions relevance.

Q: What would you do if you got hit by a 1 MegaWatt Krypton-Argon laser from the Crab Nebula and it gave you super powers?

A: Well, that's a silly question and I don't think there's the remotest possibility of it ever happening, but the first thing I would do is get the lid of that damn ketchup bottle.

Get it? Understand the difference between that and ...

A2: That's stupid. The laser would take millions of years to get here, and the Crab Nebula absorbs green light anyway, which is what krypton-argon lasers produce. That would mean that the origional beam would require 4.3 x 10^57 Watts when it origionally left it origin point, and that would be more power than is contained in the Nebula itself.

seebs

I think the question can be safely generalized to "what would you do if you found out that your moral system necessarily led to the conclusion that it was morally obligatory to kill this person, and morally unacceptable to not do so?"

Honestly, I am not sure whether I would punt the moral system or not. I mean, what's my next option over?

IRON MAN

It initially seems that way, and therefore seems to be a nonsense question.

However, if God creates man with a "moral compass" and that creation is seperate and distinct from that God, and then changes his own nature, then the creation has not changed along with him. Hence the conflict of your moral judgement and that of your creator.

Like creating an Asimov robot and then finding your wife in bed with another man, and out of emotion trying to order your creation to kill him.

Sure you can get in there and tinker with the robot so it is not against killing anymore, but at that point in time you have a conflict between the standing orders within the creation, and the current orders of it's creator.

In Asimov's Robotic Laws, there is an order of priority. In this instance there is not.