I don't endorse human's owning humans, but God owning humans is something totally different. A question, though: by what standard do you measure your own morality, to make such a foolish claim as to claim moral superiority to God?
The fallacy in your argument is that you presuppose your moral views as absolute truth. Though I think you are getting the wrong view of God's ownership. If you draw a picture you have every right to do what ever you wish to do with it.
If God created you then He has every right to do what ever He pleases to do with you. He made you, he owns you, that is where the ownership comes in. Your viewing slavery as taking away someones own personal right to freedom, there is nothing to take away from that which you do not already own.
God does not own me like a picture but thanks at trying to belittle me and the entire human race at the same time. The proper analogy would be that of a parent 'owning' a child for he (the parent) created the child, but just because I 'created' a child doesnt mean I have the authority to kill the innocent infant now do I? No I dont. Just because I own a child doesnt mean I can do whatever I want to the poor guy. Where are your values of life and liberty? I suppose inalienable rights arent of high priority to you...
Also, I realized that both of you skipped over the whole free-will issue. Not a surprise there though.
Assuming that you are an atheist whom believes murder is wrong:
Tell that to the serial killers. If murder is wrong, please provide proof of it and proof is not your opinion or others.
Our sinful nature is due to Adams choice. How does that not make sense? Maybe my wording was poor, please use this analogy to understand.
The fallacy in your argument is that you presuppose your moral views as absolute truth. Though I think you are getting the wrong view of God's ownership. If you draw a picture you have every right to do what ever you wish to do with it.
If God created you then He has every right to do what ever He pleases to do with you. He made you, he owns you, that is where the ownership comes in. Your viewing slavery as taking away someones own personal right to freedom, there is nothing to take away from that which you do not already own.
Assuming that you are an atheist whom believes murder is wrong:
Tell that to the serial killers. If murder is wrong, please provide proof of it and proof is not your opinion or others.
*HINT* Proving that murder dampens societal growth, is not desired by others etc... only proves that which it states. You may choose to define something "wrong" as that which follows the pattern of the above. Though in doing so you create an opinion/standard (whether shared or not) which can only be validated by those whom also hold that opinion/standard. That opinion/standard is easily relational to the Bible as that which defines what is a sin. Your demands are quite odd...
I would like to point out that you rightly say that many follow blindly or as I would put it at least with less guidance then there is available. Sure, I'm no expert in any area of the broad topic of Christianity. Though the areas I have not studied I assume them as truth for now with the intention to study more as I get to it.
Do not forget what was mentioned by the OP at the beginning of this thread: "Assume there is a GOD!"
A parent does not choose what his child is like, he has no control over what that child is like any any way at birth. Childbirth is a process that a parent simply is a part of. God created humans from the ground up completely different, please tell me you see that.
It seems to me that God is effectively beyond good and evil. IIRC in the Jewish tradition God causes suffering (more or less) as a test of our devotion to Him, like in the Book of Job. If this is true, then God has created both good and evil; and if this is true, then how can we say He is omnibeneficent and not at the same time omnimalificent?
On a side note, this reading seems remarkably similar to the ones presented in the Tao Te Ching ('The Tao is beyond good and evil', 'The Tao gives birth to both good and evil', e.g.)
...What would this say about ethical certainty?
God does not like murder, therefore murder is bad.
God does not like stealing, therefore stealing is bad.
God does not like homosexuality
or sexual immorality, therefore those things are bad.
It is often said that God murders in the bible, therefore He is evil. This is utter nonsense. Murder is the unlawful taking of life, not just any taking of life. And so, God is not murdering, He is killing. Why does He have the right to kill? Because He owns all life, and can take it and give it as He wills.
I don't endorse human's owning humans, but God owning humans is something totally different. A question, though: by what standard do you measure your own morality, to make such a foolish claim as to claim moral superiority to God?
Also, I think it's kind of offensive to call my beliefs 'all kinds of crap'.
I would not crucify Jesus. Chances are, you all would.
How do you know that nobody has ever seen God or Jesus? And it only seems like the dumbed down version of humanity that buys into 'the crap' because you presuppose that religious people are stupid while atheists are all intellectuals. This is false.
I think I should say here that I might come across as a little blunt or rude because of my beliefs, but I honestly don't have anything against anyone here and don't mean to be offensive. Still, if it's the beliefs themselves that offend, then I will not apologize for that.
As for your question: Yes, I do think that a non Christian religion would be evil, because it teach a twisted concept of truth. For example, if Islam is true, then Christianity and Judaism are evil. If Judaism is true, same thing goes for Christianity and Islam. Same goes for anything other than the Abrahamic religions. If a religion claims to be the only exclusive religion, and it is true, then all other ones are not true. Untruth is evil.
(Assuming this scenario is possible for simplicity): Let us assume your grandfather had is DNA altered before fathering any children to only produce children with blonde hair and with the DNA to also only produce children with blonde hair for all generations.
Who is responsible for your inability to produce offspring that will have any hair color other then blonde? Your grandfather obviously, as you had no say in the matter though now you live through the consequences of his own choices.
The view that God is Sovereign and can, therefore, do exactly as he likes without asking we puny mortals permission is the usual answer
But do you accept that viewpoint?
The view that God is Sovereign and can, therefore, do exactly as he likes without asking we puny mortals permission is the usual answer
But do you accept that viewpoint?
I refuse to. It would be like asking me if a serial killer makes a good role model for myself. Well perhaps they have good table manners but the whole part about them killing people, just doesn't sit right with me, so I'm sorry I have to decline.
The bible is full of passages where god is condemning what I consider to be completely and utterly victims of gods unbalanced wrath. People write it off all the time saying well god must have good reason, he is just, and wouldn't do anything unjust. No you can't read one thing then spin it the other direction. Just like someone trying to convince me that I should adopt a serial killers behavior to be a good person.
I have said it many times, and it bears worth repeating. If the god of the bible exists, he is not worthy in any sense of the word, of praise, worship or glory. I don't hate religion, I don't hate good people, and I'm not trying to make people mean to each other. Quite simply parsing a being that is willing to punish a being for something it had absolutely no control over is ludicrous.
If we assume that there is a God would he/she/it be held to its own word or promise?
Well see here is the thing, a very annoying situation that very few people seem to care about. Basically god says, "Well it can't be that hard to be an outstanding human being, in fact I will prove it by becoming one." This is senseless if you start to ask your question now, because if he is not held by his own standards then becoming human is a pointless act. Yet he supposedly does it anyways. Therefore I will make the parallel here to show what I mean by annoying.
God saying he could be a better human than you is like a person watching you do your job, and saying, "I can do your job far better than you can." Yeah? Well hell if anyone had god powers, I'm sure they could do your job better than the next person too, so what? It says absolutely nothing and the person making the claim becomes nothing but a conceded prick.
So yes, I never like when any type of authority tells me I am not allowed to do something but those individuals who are the authority are allowed to. I would never respect a person who behaves this way, weather they are a being who has the power to kill me or not, I still won't accept it. I will even go as far as to say, they are a prick to behave in such a way to begin with.
In other words it would be like hearing some serial killer say, "Well it should be alright for me to kill people but you, no you would be a murderer and should be punished for killing."
Are you sure? Are you even sure there were two people called Adam and Eve. It's funny that these stories of Adam and Eve were developed and created thousands of years after the story in the garden would have taken place. So we really cannot base 'Sinful Nature' on yet another story.
So this fictitious God owns us? Created us and owns us and has the right to do whatever he pleases? You have to believe there is a God first don't you? In order to do that, you have to believe in someones interpretation of that God and then you have to have faith that their interpretation or perception of God is the correct flavor.
There are so many killings in this world in the name of their Gods.
And I am not an inanimate object void of life, liberty, emotion, cognition, etc. How can you not question a malicious action performed by your king? What are we in the bronze age again where people dont question any sort of malevolent nature motivated by an unworthy tyrant? Remember skepticism is healthy; blind dogmatic gullibility is embarrassingly senile, to say the least.
And again, no response to the free-will issue. What a shocker!
This is not an accurate parallel to a requested rule and an altered set of genetic code. But if you really want to play your convoluted game, it would be much more accurate to display it in this type of code.
Let's say you write a computer program that only adds numbers. There is absolutely no bug that causes it to do anything other than add, because you are a perfect programmer. Now let's say you want the program to not only add but also subtract, however there is a secret little catch here. You have still managed to write the program perfectly without a single bug, yet you have chosen to delete the program and destroy the computer if the program subtracts at all. So you run the program and it will eventually subtract but unknowingly the software gets deleted because you are angry it subtracted.
That is how god reacts to a person who was designed to act in any fashion even if the something is considered "bad". It's ridiculous and childish to punish for something that is naturally occurring. It's like getting angry that it rains.
What makes you think that God steps in at every step in life to create harm?....
Could it not be partially your fault? (the other parts be those around you) Are you that egoistic?
A question, though: by what standard do you measure your own morality, to make such a foolish claim as to claim moral superiority to God?
