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Mikey wrote:You must demand an explanation, because you are an atheist. Of course, you won't get one, because G-d is the ultimate item of faith without proof.

If the question is "does God exist", then I have no problem with anyone who answers "yes" based purely on faith - that's your business, not mine.

My objection is to the attitude of "genocide is good if God did it/ordered it" that stitch is holding to.

Mikey wrote:
In turn I fully respect your right to say, "prove it" before you believe it.

Further, I believe that I must make my own morality; just because G-d killed entire nations of people doesn't mean that I think it's right for mankind to emulate.

True enough.

I'm not going to jump anyone's points. Just add in my own for measure.

Murder is murder. Sometimes it has to be done and its a shame and sin every time. For humans at least, though we have a habit of pointing ourselves above everything else. God doesn't see us that way, we are still less then him. In the beginning, God saw us much like ants and treated us as such. Killed at a whim when his creations were at risk. However, at some point even God decided that just killing off the population and trying again was wrong. He handed down the commandments and declared free will and reign. For me that is enough.

Was he an evil God, a God that made mistakes or just a kid with an ant farm? I don't know for sure any which way.

I personally see God as just a creator who looked down and one day decided "There is a better way".

Mikey wrote:I would say that G-d is rather conscious on a level which we can't fathom, and His morality is as incomprehensible to us as our world would be to a 2-dimensional organism. If my atheist friends here see this as a cop-out or handwave explanation, I can understand - howevr much that it is truly what I believe. But there again - faith in G-d is the ultimate explanation of belief without proof.

To be honest, I do indeed see the "God moves in mysterious ways" style answers as a cop-out. But I do see why those who do have faith in His existence would see it that way.

In the end, it's down to the way we all view God. You and others see Him as somethign beyond human comprehension, and thus beyond our concepts of morality. I and others see Him (were He to exist) as a concious entity who is aware of His actions, and thus is accountable for the acts he committed and the acts he ordered others to commit.

Of course, since I don't believe He exists, to me this is really nothing more than an interesting philosophical debate. And since we're both in agreement that killing people is wrong and God's actions can't be used to justify acts today, I say live and let live. Believe what you wish, as long as you hurt no one else due to those beliefs. And if the benevolent deity that many religious people talk about does indeed exist, I trust He will judge people based not on how well they followed the millenia old writings, or what name they addressed him with, or even whether they liked him at all. But instead by how they lived their lives, and how they treated their fellow humans. A being that can create life, worlds and an entire reality should be far beyond the petty popularity contest mentality that too many extremists claim He acts by. I trust such a creature - whether He be a true god as we'd term him or not - would judge people according to their quality as a person.

Well said, Aleister.

Above all else, a god needs compassion!
-James T. Kirk

I would trust that if god(s) exist that it would have enough compassion to make a responsible judgment on you.

The trouble with the argument that "God is good, therefore I trust that his actions are good even though they don't appear to be" is that it seems to treat "good" as if it's some sort of quality of it's own, with only a vague link to one's actions.

I would suggest that whether you are good or not is largely if not entirely dependent on your actions. Simply put... if I go out and rape and murder children for selfish ends or for fun, then I am a bad man, by definition. I can try to claim that I am good despite my bad actions, and that you simply don't understand why a good person would do apparently bad things, but that just doesn't wash, not because I can't think of any way they can be compatible, but because they are simply contradictory things and doing one negates any possibility of being the other.

To me, claiming that the god who drowned the entire human population is nevertheless good, and I'd see that if only I understood, is absolutely no different from claiming that if only I was smart enough and wise enough, I'd see that a circle can be a square after all. It just doesn't work; it's a bankrupt argument.

Frankly, if you believe that god is good, then you either have to believe that he didn't do many of the things attributed to him in the bible, or you have to believe that those things - slavery, rape, murder on a truly epic scale, including the mass murder of children, to name but a few - are good things. Now I can see why believers would not like to be given that choice, but that IS they choice you have, and saying "well it's just something human minds can't grasp" is a cop out way to try and have your cake and eat it.

Ah, the dogma of the non-dogmatic. I did in fact admit how much it looked like a cop-out; but it can't be by the very fact that I believe it quite independentlyof this debate. For the record, I have never in the course of this debate ascribed labels of "good" or "evil" to G-d.

And for the record, I never said that YOU did.

GrahamKennedy wrote:And for the record, I never said that YOU did.

I know. I want to clarify that in general, in the face of possible hypocrisy. It would be pretty ridiculous to say that I believe G-d to be beyond our descriptions of morality, and then turn around and label Him as such.

It is a rather common hypocrisy that many religious people will claim that god can't be called evil because he is beyond our understanding... but then have no problem turning around and labeling other actions of his as good. If you can't do one, you can't do the other.

GrahamKennedy wrote:It is a rather common hypocrisy that many religious people will claim that god can't be called evil because he is beyond our understanding... but then have no problem turning around and labeling other actions of his as good. If you can't do one, you can't do the other.

I personally have never thought of anything that God has done as good or evil... I always just kind of saw it as what he thought he needed to do... Just what I've thought.

GrahamKennedy wrote:It is a rather common hypocrisy that many religious people will claim that god can't be called evil because he is beyond our understanding... but then have no problem turning around and labeling other actions of his as good. If you can't do one, you can't do the other.

Agreed. That's why I wanted to clarify my point.

Nickswitz wrote:

GrahamKennedy wrote:It is a rather common hypocrisy that many religious people will claim that god can't be called evil because he is beyond our understanding... but then have no problem turning around and labeling other actions of his as good. If you can't do one, you can't do the other.

I personally have never thought of anything that God has done as good or evil... I always just kind of saw it as what he thought he needed to do... Just what I've thought.

If one accepts that god is omnipotent, then I would have thought it follows that he could accomplish a given aim in any number of different ways.

He could. He chose to do as He did. If "ours is not to wonder why" is good enough for the Light Brigade, it's good enough for me. Who am I to judge?