(April 8, 2009 at 5:25 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: You missed it: Nature is beautiful, good and bad. Nature is good, both good & bad. Nature is always good.

God is good.

That's the most ridiculous way of arguing that god's good in a long time. It's completely non-sensical.

If nature is beautiful, good and bad, then it's simply good and bad. There is no reasonable way to get from "good and bad" to "always good" and then "god is good". It's complete stupidity to think that good and bad equals good equals god is good.

Frodo, use your reason next time.

No I think it holds out thoughtful.

Sometimes it's sunny (good for some), sometimes it rains (bad for some). We understand Sun and Rain both to have positive effect. God isn't bad, he just doesn't do what we want all the time, like the weather.

So you mean that objectively everything is good, but subjectively it can be either bad or good. Now you seem this I can understand but I disagree. I say that objectively there is no "good" or "bad" in nature. Nature doesn't care about people's feelings. We may think rain is bad or good, but rain is a natural process that just happens.

We're not talking about natures opinion, but peoples interpretation.

(April 9, 2009 at 3:12 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: We're not talking about natures opinion, but peoples interpretation.

If the rain can be simultaneously interpretted as bad by one person and good by another, by what means do we make a decision as to whether it is always bad or always good? Because it is always good for someone, yes it does follow that we can say the weather is always good, but on the same token we can say it is always bad for someone and hence the weather is always bad. If God is always good by this logic, God is always bad.

Please clear up any misconception I may have about your argument.

Weather is ultimately just weather, which supersedes the opinion of people who may like it or not.

(April 9, 2009 at 4:36 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Weather is ultimately just weather, which supersedes the opinion of people who may like it or not.

So are you saying weather as an entity is not subject to morality, for it is just "weather", acting without intention or purpose? If so, God would also be neither good nor bad, as in this analogy he would also supersede our opinions and be acting without intention or purpose. I'm fairly sure this isn't your position on God as you've already stated he is always good. I think the weather analogy is perhaps a little weaker than you estimated when you presented it.

Weather aside, if we can subjectively view God as either good or bad, how do we come to the conclusion that he is always good but not always bad? It seems kind of biased to assume that all the bad things he does are good regardless of our interpratation. It's cult-like. This authority figure can do whatever he likes and even if we don't like it, he's still right no matter WHAT we think? How so?

Analogies never seem to be complete. I don't see why we'd need to attribute more than natural forces to natural events. Why should God be behind it? God is above morality, being perfect. Maybe if God created the physical universe and it's laws then natural forces just 'are' is all there is.

Say you take the Christian Bible and use that to understand the nature of God. From there the reasoning is that God is good. In my faith I certainly see God doing no evil. It'd be contrary to his nature as I understand it. My interpretation is that he is all good.

(April 9, 2009 at 5:51 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Analogies never seem to be complete. I don't see why we'd need to attribute more than natural forces to natural events. Why should God be behind it? God is above morality, being perfect. Maybe if God created the physical universe and it's laws then natural forces just 'are' is all there is.

Say you take the Christian Bible and use that to understand the nature of God. From there the reasoning is that God is good. In my faith I certainly see God doing no evil. It'd be contrary to his nature as I understand it. My interpretation is that he is all good.

I find the conclusion that God is all good to be quite a strange one. The bible tells us that God is jealous. If God is all good and is also jealous, this means jealousy comes under the catergory "good". I think it's double standards when God can be jealous but we're not allowed to feel the slightest bit of envy towards our neighbour with the beautiful wife. That would be sinful and we should take out our own eye for that sort of crime.

How come God is allowed to be genocidal and still pass as good, yet we shall not kill? This isn't a case of morality. This is you saying that the authority figure can do as he pleases, but we are bound to a different set of morals which we cannot waver from. It's a rigged game where God can tell us what is evil whilst simultaneously doing that exact thing but still passing as good because of your false premise that the bible was being honest when it told you that God was always good O.o

It just screams "cult" so loudly in my ears. But, as always, I will assume I misinterpretted your position and would be happy for you set me straight.

In what context is God jealous? In the context of a loving carer. Hardly immoral. Unfortunately you can't argue fine points of the Bible without looking at them in context with the whole. Of course it's easy to see contradictions if you ignore the wider picture. I'm sure I could construe your words to say anything out of context, but that would hardly be fair would it?

I accept all of the Bible, not just bits of it as 100% absolute truth (even though it is the interpretation of humans and so potentially in error). The whole message is of a loving God. Like I said, morals don't apply to God. Our own interests are insignificant. Our labels are insufficient. It's egotistical to presume they are. That would be to limit God, which is illogical.