(The Holy Bible, NIV, Genesis 6:17-19)I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you
(The Holy Bible, NIV, 1 Samuel 15:2)This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
5. It is unjust to directly intentionally kill an innocent person (viz., it is wrong to murder);
6. It is unjust to own a person as property; and
7. It is unjust to rape someone. — Bob Ross
What do you guys think? — Bob Ross
What do you guys think? — Bob Ross
it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents. — Bob Ross
What do you guys think? — Bob Ross
However, God is all-just and it is unjust to murder; therefore, this "God" who flooded the earth was not truly God Himself (viz., the purely actual, perfectly good creator of the universe). — Bob Ross
However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. — Bob Ross
Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.
Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. — Hanover
This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. — Hanover
I’m saying this is a theological question, [n]ot a philosophical question. — Fire Ologist
4. He is the creator and purely actual, which entails that He cannot fail to order His creation perfectly (viz., He must be all-just); — Bob Ross
God has revealed that He is all-good, all-just and never evil. I’m saying how that is the case, I don’t think we can just do some math, use our reason, and figure it out.
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We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us
If a man kills another person can you tell if he is an evil murderer without knowing his heart, his reasoning and his intention?
This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.
Are there any deaths of anyone that are not God’s plan? God sent Adam and Eve out to die and all of their offspring, all of us unable since the moment of conception to return to eternal life. Why pick certain stories from the OT to chastise God’s actions? None of us are Adam or Eve, but we have all been punished for original sin? Aren’t we innocent of the crimes that led us to know death?
God is not the direct agent of injustice, because there are no innocents as each of us relates to God (except where God makes us innocent)
The best way to find these answers is to love God, to read of his mercy and goodness and know that the all-powerful creator loves you, Bob, in particular, so much so that he would die for you, and did so on a cross - that is the person we are here asking to explain His deeds. And he will explain them to you because he loves you.
But I don’t think our human calculations will adequately sort out the flood, the killing of the first born in Egypt, etc, etc.
One of my favorite passages is John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
What you have described is one of the primary arguments used by anti-religionists against Christianity. How can you worship a God who does such terrible things?
I will note the difference between your seven moral imperatives and the 10 commandments. The Old Testament God seems to have had a different understanding of morality than you do.
You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.
A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction
(1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.
Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.
The idea of an omni-benevolent, omni-potent god is logically inconsistent
1. Reinflate one of the solutions to the problem of evil.
2. Stop believing that God is moral, but rather the fountain of universal creativity from which both good and evil take shape.
It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible.
Genuinely, they could hardly be further apart. — Tzeentch
I listened to Jimmy's video, and it was good: I could see that as a semi-viable solution to the conquest of Canaan. However, the fact that... — Bob Ross
I would be interested to hear Leontiskos response to this. — Bob Ross
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