(June 16, 2013 at 9:22 pm)catfish Wrote:

(June 16, 2013 at 3:27 pm)CleanShavenJesus Wrote: ^ So...is God bipolar or does Samuel have horrible listening skills?

Your reading comprehension is lacking, so I'll pick option 3. Your listening skills are horrible.

Alright, let me try this again.

1 Samuel 15:3 Wrote:This is what the Lord Almighty says ... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'

The Lord said it. Right? Okay.

Ezekiel 22:28 Wrote:And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken.

So, the Lord told them to savagely murder every living thing in sight in Samuel, which could depict God as evil. But in Ezekiel, in a different situation, He apparently never actually told the people to do any of the things they did. So they acted on their own, and God was not the one who told them to do such acts.

I'm asking honestly: what am I missing?

(June 17, 2013 at 7:42 am)fr0d0 Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 6:46 am)orogenicman Wrote: Shall I continue?

If you can provide one scrap of evidence that this was unjust killing and rape. So far there is none. Apparently we should take your word for that.

Would Obama be speaking for God? Would we know that retrospectively? Would we know if Moses here was actually speaking for God or if the Israelites, as God's people fighting in his name, were actually doing God's will? Are we sure that our exegesis is comensurate with our claims?

When is it ever just to mass murder women and children? And Frodo, there is no justification for rape, EVER!

(June 16, 2013 at 10:42 pm)Drich Wrote:

(June 14, 2013 at 4:49 pm)Zarith Wrote: Common arguments for the existence of God (such as the ontological argument, the teleological argument, first cause, cosmology, etc), only get you as far as an abstract notion of some sort of god -- the kind that philosophers talk about (if you accept the arguments, that is).

If you believe that the God of the Bible really exists and has the properties ascribed to him by this book, then other means are required to justify belief in this specific God. Typically this comes down to either scriptural authority, or divine revelation, or some combination of the two (for example, belief in the truth of the message of the biblical prophets is belief in both of these things). Am I omitting anything here? Note that I am including 'personal experience with God' under the umbrella of revelation, as God revealing himself to you.

But if you are willing to accept revelation / scripture as vehicles for determining truth from falsehood, then what is the point in attempting to construct a logical argument for the existence of God in the abstract? You already have what you consider proof of his existence, and a logical argument won't prove that your particular God exists. If you are trying to convince someone, they will still have to accept scriptural authority or divine revelation, will they not?

If belief in revelation / scripture is both necessary and sufficient, and logic alone is insufficient -- why bother?

Why bother explain the God of the bible? Because most disbelief is based on a stereotype or a dark age idea that God must remain in the realm of magic. Matter of fact you thread here is based on that idea. When in fact if the God of the bible is the God of creation/The natural universe, then God is the the being who placed all of the process in motion that science is just now able to label. Yes it is true durning the dark ages being able to manipulate these processes was magic to them, but as humanity further learns of these processes, it does not mean God is somehow forbidden to use them.
The integration of God with modern terms in our minds is the first step of seeing the truth before you.

Typical theist circumlocution. You attempt to inject "dark ages" and "magic" into my argument when it was not contingent on those, then go on to argue that a metaphysical sort of god is logically possible, when this does not address the question I posed.

On top of this, I know that you believe in more specific and more numerous claims about God than can be supported with the arguments in question, but you choose not to defend those claims, choosing instead to regurgitate a poorly-formulated version of the first cause argument, when the point of the thread was that these very types of arguments are not necessary and won't prove what you want them to prove.

If you want to talk about the dark ages and the role of the church during these times, that is a conversation I and (I suspect) many atheists will be happy to have with you, but it's probably best suited for a different thread.

(June 17, 2013 at 2:51 pm)orogenicman Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 7:42 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you can provide one scrap of evidence that this was unjust killing and rape. So far there is none. Apparently we should take your word for that.

Would Obama be speaking for God? Would we know that retrospectively? Would we know if Moses here was actually speaking for God or if the Israelites, as God's people fighting in his name, were actually doing God's will? Are we sure that our exegesis is comensurate with our claims?

When is it ever just to mass murder women and children? And Frodo, there is no justification for rape, EVER!

Show me evidence of unlawful killing. I see none.
Show me evidence of rape. I see none.

Where is the justification for your alternate interpretation of the text?

(June 17, 2013 at 3:25 pm)fr0d0 Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 2:51 pm)orogenicman Wrote: When is it ever just to mass murder women and children? And Frodo, there is no justification for rape, EVER!

Show me evidence of unlawful killing. I see none.
Show me evidence of rape. I see none.

Where is the justification for your alternate interpretation of the text?

The evidence is in the words Moses allegedly (according to your bible) himself spoke to his men. Oh, and you didn't answer my question. Why am I not surprised?

(June 17, 2013 at 2:51 pm)orogenicman Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 7:42 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you can provide one scrap of evidence that this was unjust killing and rape. So far there is none. Apparently we should take your word for that.

Would Obama be speaking for God? Would we know that retrospectively? Would we know if Moses here was actually speaking for God or if the Israelites, as God's people fighting in his name, were actually doing God's will? Are we sure that our exegesis is comensurate with our claims?

When is it ever just to mass murder women and children? And Frodo, there is no justification for rape, EVER!

They believe it is just because God supposedly willed it. If God willed for a woman to be raped, beheaded, and then set on fire; it would be just, by definition. There is no reasoning with anybody like this; it is morality by fiat.

(June 16, 2013 at 3:43 pm)CleanShavenJesus Wrote:

(June 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm)Godschild Wrote: All these things came from God's judgement of those people, God found them guilty and pronounced His sentence against them. They were worshipers of false gods that could lead Israel away from God, in other words these people decided to worship things that were not real so they could reject the one true God.

You're not helping your case.

How so, these people would corrupt God's people, remember the tree of Good and Evil in the Garden and the results it brought, God wanted His people to avoid the same disaster, but again not to be.

(June 17, 2013 at 4:41 pm)Godschild Wrote:

(June 16, 2013 at 3:43 pm)CleanShavenJesus Wrote: You're not helping your case.

How so, these people would corrupt God's people, remember the tree of Good and Evil in the Garden and the results it brought, God wanted His people to avoid the same disaster, but again not to be.

If you believed that God was speaking to you today and asking you to kill everybody who would corrupt God's people so as to avoid disaster ... would you follow this order?

You don't get to use the "God wouldn't do that" argument, because God gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.

(June 17, 2013 at 4:48 pm)Zarith Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 4:41 pm)Godschild Wrote: How so, these people would corrupt God's people, remember the tree of Good and Evil in the Garden and the results it brought, God wanted His people to avoid the same disaster, but again not to be.

If you believed that God was speaking to you today and asking you to kill everybody who would corrupt God's people so as to avoid disaster ... would you follow this order?

You don't get to use the "God wouldn't do that" argument, because God gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.

I most definitely get to, who are you to dictate the rules of an argument, besides you have no idea what God limits Himself to. This very question is why I keep asking people here to grow up and us what little maturity you have. You want to drag the OT ways into the NT life, so just quit if you do not know what you're talking about, and for you it seems to be most of the time. The death and resurrection of Christ has change how God works in this world of today and if you would just study the NT you might find this out and save us all a lot of useless arguing.

(June 17, 2013 at 5:06 pm)Godschild Wrote:

(June 17, 2013 at 4:48 pm)Zarith Wrote: If you believed that God was speaking to you today and asking you to kill everybody who would corrupt God's people so as to avoid disaster ... would you follow this order?

You don't get to use the "God wouldn't do that" argument, because God gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.

I most definitely get to, who are you to dictate the rules of an argument, besides you have no idea what God limits Himself to. This very question is why I keep asking people here to grow up and us what little maturity you have. You want to drag the OT ways into the NT life, so just quit if you do not know what you're talking about, and for you it seems to be most of the time. The death and resurrection of Christ has change how God works in this world of today and if you would just study the NT you might find this out and save us all a lot of useless arguing.

I'm not dictating the terms of the argument, you did, in another thread:

EDIT: My bad, I just noticed it was Drich and not GC. Sometimes I can't keep you guys straight. Sorry for confusing you two. Still, I don't think it really changes anything.

(June 17, 2013 at 1:00 pm)Drich Wrote: Besides that God does not make any biblical claims to follow Man's Morality. God makes the Claim that He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the END. Which means He does what He wants when He wants, which includes creation, and the end of all things.

Which, in a nutshell, is "God gets to do whatever the fuck he wants." I don't claim that I know what God limits himself to, I claim that YOU can't know what God limits himself to, and therefore can't plausibly claim that such a command would never be forthcoming.

Seems like I struck a nerve. Your OT/NT hysteria and personal insults have nothing to do with the topic, Christians today still believe that good is defined by God's actions / desires, which is why they love the little argument from morality so much. Your failure to provide a coherent response is noted, as is your flailing about and personal attacks.