Raf

You have nothing to support that assertion.

How convenient. You get to make up whatever characteristics of God you want in order to win the argument. Would that my opponent were bound to a book. The only assumption i made is that the Bible is the most authoritative Source on the characteristics of Yahweh. When the Bible says he does not change, and someone comes along and says he does change, I have to go with the Bible

If you reject the notion that you are more moral now than Yahweh, then you will open yourself up to accepting all manner of atrocity in the name of religion.

My presentation of Yahweh is coming straight from the Bible. i've cited chapter and verse. Where are your chapters and verses?

The thing is, you are proving my point, but you are not proving my assertions or assumptions are false. Rather, you are demonstrating precisely why I am correct, but phrasing it in a way to make it seem like you're disproving my points. You are not disproving my points. You are proving them. If you are so committed to disagreeing with me that you can't even see that. You think your evolving God undermines my argument. Your evolving God makes my argument.

No assumptions. I have simply presented Yahweh as the Bible does.

$10 to anyone who correctly guesses my response.

Stories that contain propaganda can have tremendous staying power. Ask the average Muslim. Staying power doesn't prove a story true, not does it prove the story is not propaganda at heart.

The moment we say "God changes," we admit that man created God and not vice versa. Or that God is not perfect and can become better over time. Neither premise is supposed to be true of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible.

Yes, but that would not be on Yahweh. Or Superman.

So we are more moral today than Yahweh was in the O.T. Thank you for taking forever to agree with me.

The problem with the "holy just and good" law is not alleviated by the fact that it was only given to a limited number of people. The problem is that it was given to anyone at all! I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer only ate a miniscule fraction of the people he met. Why does he get stuck with the cannibal label? I can't even get you guys to admit genocide is immoral because it was ordered by Yahweh and he must have had his reasons and who am I to judge? And that's sad, because if you cannot call immorality immoral on its face, then you can still be suckered into any cult with a halfway clever story (to answer the previous question about how this topic relates to waybrain and recovery).

The problem with the blind men and the elephant analogy is that each person is wrong. The one who says it's a wall is ignoring all the other evidence. "Without God, there is no objective morality" is one of the blind men. He is ignoring all the evidence of God's immorality. As are you guys. Open your eyes.

Why is it disparaging to refer to changes in the nature of God as evolution? If you sell a false premise, for example, morality comes from and is dependent on God, then you are forced into a position of Defending indefensible and immoral actions because to do otherwise is to admit that the premise was false. For my part, I am still waiting for someone to demonstrate at the premise that I put forth is false. I've seen it denied, but I have not seen it refuted.

I cited scripture to support every single contention I made about Yahweh. You have cited nothing to refute those characterizations. You merely deny them and expect me to accept your denials as having some kind of weight because somebody with a degree gave you a half baked idea.

For those not keeping track, when he says Yahweh, he's talking not about the God actually depicted in the Bible, but his own wishful thinking of what that God should be.

Tell me, how many genocides have you ordered? How many did you personally commit? Not "mankind." YOU.

Personally, I think the rampant disingenuousness of the arguments challenging my thread topic demonstrate that I've touched a nerve. Yahweh is a petty, vindictive, genocidal war-god with a serious jealousy and impulse control problem. If you are not more moral than Yahweh, then you need a padded cell.

Whatever you say.

Yet another disingenuous diversion from the topic. You're amazing.

You distort my thread and accuse me of misleading and deceiving? Funny how a dozen people got the point immediately, but you fail and that's MY fault. Go learn to read.

This is not "The Way International" section of the forum. How does it free anyone? Now THAT's a good question. When you realize that morality is neither objective nor dependent on the existence of a God, you realize that morality, while not objective itself, does have an objective basis. That basis is not some archaic law, but something we can all agree on, regardless of religious beliefs. We may not agree all the time on what acts are moral or not, but we can discuss the basis for morality intelligently, once we get notions like "God" as the source of it out of the picture. Hence the separate thread on where we get our morals. What did it have to do with David and Bathsheba? Exactly what I said it did back on that thread. No need to rehash it here. If you need a basic reading comprehension course, I suggest contacting some of those people with degrees and reputations at your nearest community college.

"Hateful"? No, my insult is a perfectly accurate description of how you have treated this thread. You're not engaging the topic. You're interfering with esoteric nonsense that is not designed to further conversation but rather to find a platform to pontificate on barely related nonsensical stream-of-consciousness thoughtless experiments that are only tangentially related to the topic of this thread. Are you more moral than Yahweh. Not "Are you more moral than Bolshevik's unique concept of what a god might be if a god were to exist and he must even though he doesn't because propaganda doesn't survive centuries which is a rule I just made up." Hateful is what you've done to this topic and the others you polluted with nonsensical diversions that appear to make you feel oh so clever and enlightened. Here's what's become clear: If I posted that the sky is blue and clouds are white, you would find something to argue about. If I said water is wet, you would say "what about ice?" If I said the earth travels around the sun, you would say neither is stationary. It's not that your observations and pontifications are incorrect. It's that they're f-ing irrelevant to the topic, and I've tried saying it politely but apparently it's not getting through. Other people have managed to grasp my point with ease. Some have tried (and in my opinion failed) to engage appropriately, by challenging the notion that Yahweh's actions were truly immoral, by challenging the notion that Biblical slavery was wrong, even by presenting the notion that Yahweh's positive attributes demonstrate that he is more moral than we. Each of those arguments was discussed. You're not presenting an argument. Your "evolving God" is not Yahweh, who does not change. You're having a conversation about religion in general, and I'm discussing the defined God of a defined religion. Honestly, your contempt for the topic of conversation is revealed in your repeated attempts to redefine it. Hateful? Hardly. But I guess the truth hurts.

Last time: your definition of "God" is so vague and ethereal that it is not relevant to this discussion. You are mot talking about Yahweh. You are talking about that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you see a dandelion. Your "evolving" God is not Yahweh, and therefore your approach to this discussion is off topic. If the thread were called "Are you more moral than whatever vague concept of God Bolshevik can concoct while sitting on his thumb," you would be on topic. But it's not. Yahweh is a character with attributes defined in the Bible, not in your evolving imagination. You have offered NO compelling reason to suggest we cannot examine Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible and compare his morality to our own. None. The point of this thread has been examined with a proctoscope. You still don't understand the basics. I can't fathom why, but I suggest you examine your motive in trolling this discussion, because it is rather obviously not to engage in a rational discussion.

Actively attempting to distort the plain meaning of the original post and subsequent discussion = trolling. If I wanted to compare societies I would have. Obviously your difficulty grasping concepts like "You" and "Yahweh" make it tough for you to follow along in this conversation. More obviously, you joined this thread to argue with me and will do so no matter WHAT I say. And that's the essence of trolling behavior. That you're still not embarrassed by your conduct or the vacuousness of your approach is baffling to me.