Bubba

This is probably the best arguement against the existance of God and against Christianity in particular that I can think of. If God basking in his own glory means sending people to hell to burn forever because of the offense of two people (Adam and Eve) than god is not supremely good but totally evil and not worth our love, worship, or respect.

Bubba

tw1tch

Bubba...have you ever sinned?




Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Biff the unclean

I'm not Bubba...but no, I haven't.
I've never comitted a sin worth anybody (let alone anygod)
dying over. Nothing a punch in the nose wouldn't cover.

Fiach

What is good? Christians and Atheists see good differently.

Atheist: Good is any action that is beneficial to self, others, or both. It is an action in which no one or nothing is deliberately harmed. It excludes murder, slavery, rape/abuse, theft, lying, bigotry, intolerance, and the like. Violation of good is evil and is always and everytime wrong.

Christian: Good is whatever God says is good at the time. When God changes his mind good may change. What was once good can become evil. It is all arbitrary and determined by God's edict, not the act on its own merits.

Example: Using the God based on the Bible, there was a time in the past when attacking a city of infidels, and killing men, women, children, and babies was good as far as Christian Fundies are concerned. It was good because God ordered it. It was alright to drown millions of innocent babies in Noah's Flood because God did it. It was OK to rip open the abdomen of Samarian pregnant women with swords because God said so. It was good for God to send plagues to innocent Egyptians and kill Egyptian first borns after hardening Pharoah's heart because God did it. I suppose he hardened Pharoah's heart to provide and excuse to "show off" his power. But it was good because Christians define good as whatever God wants.

Atheists and Agnostics, at least all that I know, think that killing innocent children, babies and their mothers in a few hundred Canaanite cities was horribly evil no matter that God ordered it. I go farther in saying that if such a God exists then that God is evil. It was evil to kill millions of babies in the mythical flood if we pretend that it happened. It was evil to kill Egyptian first born. All of this killing of non-combattants, women, children, and babies was wrong in Exodus times, the times of Deuteronomy, Judges, I-II Samuel, I-II Chronicles, Joshua, Ezekiel, Isiah, and Hosea. The atrocities were wrong and evil then and they still are wrong and will always be wrong. They were wrong in 1939 Poland, Czechoslovakia, and 1940 Netherlands and Belgium, 1995 Bosnia, 1999 Kosovo, 1960-2000 Africa, 2002 Pakistan, and 2002 East Timor. (and many other examples too long to list here.) We non-christian unbelievers think that the evils were wrong in the past, present, and future.

Christians think that morality is situational, depending on what God decrees only. Good is good only if God says it is good, and evil only if God says it is evil. It is completely arbitrary in the christian universe.

Fiach

Wiploc

I've never sinned. Sin is a religious concept, and I'm not religious.
crc

Llyricist

I've been sin()'ing alot lately, but I don't understand why this jehovah guy thinks his bastard son has to die for my need to find the linear component of angles in my programming.

On a serious note, what they said SOMMS, that concept just doesn't apply to atheists, and even many forms of theists.

As for doing bad things, nobody is perfect, and least among all do atheists claim to be anywhere near it. (except when confronted with people defending the OT "god")

btw wiploc, i've just been reading up on the other thread and catching up here. I like what you are doing

Bubba

Yeah, I've done lots of things both athiests and christians would say are immoral-how does this prove the existance of God?:banghead:

Why did Adam sin if God created him perfect?:banghead:

If God is so holy and loves us why doesn't most of the world know him?:banghead:

Why doesn't God (if he exists) give us better evidence of his existance?

Bubba

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Bubba,
...then you can't blame Adam and Eve.


Because perfection is meaningless without Freedom.


They do.


Because He wants those who want and seek Him. When was the last time you 'chose' to follow the law of gravity?



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Magus55

Yes, God is 100% loving, perfect, merciful, just, righteous, holy, good. He is the epitome of perfection and holyness.

luvluv

Well, I was going to start a thread today questioning whether or not Christians have ever held that God was "omnibenevolent" in the way that athiests on this site define the term. You saved me the trouble of starting a thread.

I would agree with Kenny. I have been thinking about this all day and I cannot recall any Christian doctrine, theological system, belief statement, or denominational creed which claims that God's character can be described simply and completely as "omnibenevolent". As I've said before in these discussions, I've never heard or seen a Christian use the term except in response to an atheist or agnostic attempting the argument of evil.

God would probably be more accurately defined as morally perfect. But moral perfection is a more unwieldly term than omnibenevolence when discussing the problem of evil, and my guess is that atheists therefore use the term "omnibenevolent" because it is easier to demonstrate an alleged contradiction using this term. It is more difficult to demonstrate that a morally perfect God would value the absence of suffering above all other considerations, because we do not know precisely what moral perfection entails.

Benevolence, it would seem, simply means kindness. While it is probably true that no being who was not kind could be considered to be morally perfect, it is far from clear that a being who was infinitely kind and nothing else would be morally perfect. Omnibenevolence no more covers all moral possibilities than would "omnichastity" or "omnihonesty". Benevolence, like chastity and honesty, are merely components of moral perfection.

I've come to the conclusion that the argument from evil constructed using the term "omnibenevolent" does not apply to the Christian God. In order to use the character of God to attempt a disproof from evil, it seems to me it is necessary for the atheist to substitute the term "morally perfect" for the term "omnibenevolent" as it seems to me that the belief that God is omnibenevolent has never been held by any significant Christian philosopher, theologian, or denomination.

I think it is likely that the reality of the situation is not as arbitrary as you describe. Firstly, we are proceeding from the notion that God is necessarily morally perfect. He cannot choose to be other than morally perfect or to reconstruct moral perfection by some model other than His own character. As such, I don't think that God "set the price" on sin as one might set the price on an apple in a resteraunt. It is likely that the "price" of sin is a fully necessary consequence of God's own character, His own moral perfection, which He cannot violate and remain God.

Let's recast this analogy in light of actual Christian Orthodoxy. The resteraunt is actually bound by rules which it embodies. That is to say, while it's existence is the source of these rules, it cannot alter these rules by an act of the will of any employee, member of management, or customer. The prices are as they are, and no one can change that. And to not eat there means to not eat at all. There is no other meal going. So no matter how much the resteraunt owners desire that you eat, they only have one way to feed you.

Now let's say you ate a meal, and you cannot pay for it. The rules of the resteraunt mandate that you be killed for this inability to pay. The busboy then, recognizing that there is simply no other way to save your life consistent with the laws of the resteraunt, offers his own life in exchange for yours.

Of course, this is still a rather silly analogy. Of course God would be silly, and extraordinarily so, to require the death of Christ (or any human being) for an extravagantly priced apple. But God did not do this. The debt that Jesus paid has not been incurred by the simple eating of one apple. Jesus is paying for every single incident of murder, child molestation, rape, torture, hate, war, and genocide in the history of the world. Compared with what we have been forgiven, the price which God exacts from us is absurdly low.