(September 18, 2013 at 4:51 pm)Faith No More Wrote: I'm curious to hear your explanation as to how perfection and the other traits mentioned can coexist.

I'm curious to hear max's explanation as to why they can't coexist. I imagine that we'll find that our positions are nothing more than opinion.

As to vengeful: yes, I think that it can be appropriate to desire that wrongs be avenged. How is that a problem? Didja see The Avengers? They were the heroes, not the villains.

(September 18, 2013 at 4:43 pm)John V Wrote:

(September 18, 2013 at 4:11 pm)max-greece Wrote: Perhaps it might be easier then to see if we can find agreement on things that indicate imperfection.

Would you agree with me that vengeful, proud, wrathful, vain, impulsive and malicious are characteristics that would qualify as imperfections and therefore could not belong to a perfect being, by definition?

Malicious is the only one I would agree with, and even then we'd need to agree on its definition.

Really?

Exodus 20:1-26

And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, ...

Which ones would that one cover - I guess Jealous as its how God describes himself, we've already agreed malicious I suppose:

Romans 12:19

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

Looks like we got vengeful and wrath nailed too (from the NT - who would have thought it?)

Exodus 20:3-17

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. ..."

So vain is God we aren't even allowed to say his name casually.....(note - not confusing the use of vain in the sentence - God is showing his vanity).

Genesis 19:

23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. 26 But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

How about giving me wrath and impulsive on this one. Wrath on both Sodom and Lots wife - impulsive on the punishment for her.

2 references to God's wrath - could have had many, many, many more as I am sure you know.

Want to reconsider the ones you are prepared to accept or are you happy to contradict God's own words in the Bible?

(September 18, 2013 at 3:19 pm)John V Wrote: OK, now you're altering point 3 below, as the original leads to complete hypocrisy on your part.

I altered it because the original point 3 doesn't apply to non-psychopaths. As I'm not a psychopath, I have no use for yours.

Quote:You don't seem to know any hunters. Plenty of them enjoy taking another animal's life. They're generally not called murderers for this. So, even if you can show that god enjoys killing (despite his express statement that he doesn't), you have the same problem.

I do know hunters, and I completely disapprove of hunting for purposes other than food, or in extreme cases, controlling populations to avoid all kinds of problems that causes, both to them and to us.

But, you see, I don't really have the same problem. I can show that your god enjoys killing because you have given him attributes which make any other explanation illogical. Furthermore, if you have to equivocate your perfect god to flawed humans, you're the one who loses rather than I, because humans are flawed and do murder and do terrible things for bad reason sometimes. The entire point of this discussion is that your god behaves, at best, no better than we do, when his behavior should be beyond any reproach. Again, I think I may have trouble connecting with you on this issue because you seem to have psychopathic qualities.

Quote:No, I personally believe that god as creator has right to do as he pleases with his creation. You guys justify god based on intelligence when you justify our actions based on our intelligence.

By this logic, the team which constructs a skyscraper has the right to blow it up, regardless of the harm it would cause to people in or around it, because their status as creators gives them the right to destroy it whenever they want.

Quote:Uh, no, logic would say just the opposite.

How's that?

Quote:Those are questions I considered asking you guys. Ants are OK, cattle are OK, dogs aren't - it's somewhat arbitrary and self-serving. Dogs kiss our ass, so they're exempt, unless they turn on us - then they're toast.

Then, it's just as arbitrary that I can kill a cow, but I can't kill a human who is less intelligent and, possessing higher intelligence, I should have the right to end their lives any way I want, for whatever reason I see fit. According to your logic, of course.

Quote:Yes. That's why it's generally OK to kill animals but not people.

It's generally okay to kill animals for specific reasons which produce some tangible benefit, and never simply to see an animal suffer or enjoy watching it die, which as demonstrated, is the only logical reason God has for killing any living being of any size or complexity.

If your God shares so many faults that we have, why is it worth our praise and worship?

It's fine to kill people in certain situations like when we dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Don't even get started on the people who were offed in the Bible. The absolute moral standards appear to be malleable and situation and culture determinate. I think it's possible for people to decide to be nice because they want to without the Holy Spirit having to be shafted up into them.

(September 18, 2013 at 7:05 pm)Zone Wrote: It's fine to kill people in certain situations like when we dropped a bomb on Hiroshima.

Fine in the general sense of people generally accepting it. The standards of morality when it comes to killing humans change relative to the situation.

(September 18, 2013 at 7:11 pm)Captain Colostomy Wrote:

(September 18, 2013 at 7:05 pm)Zone Wrote: It's fine to kill people in certain situations like when we dropped a bomb on Hiroshima.

Indeed. While one could make an argument that other actions may have been more immoral, assigning any positive moral value to nuclear war is a shit sandwich. Not interested in taking a bite personally.

Well there are moral justifications you can use for nuking Japan, say it shortened the war and prevent Soviet occupation, though it still involved the mass killing of humans. Of course we killed many more civilians using conventional bomb raids anyway and no-one faced war crime charges for it. They would had we lost I suppose. Again our rules of morality certainly change they're not fixed for all time.

The only moral justification I know for the bombing of Hiroshima wasn't one anybody made at the time. Once nuclear weapons were a thing, it was only a matter of time until someone used one. The United States used one pretty much right away, when the yields were relatively low, and even that was enough to devastate an entire city in a flash. The Soviets had a bomb of their own four years later and the nuclear arms race began in a sprint. I think it's amazing that the Cold War never got hot considering that both sides had a terror of one another and apocalyptic arsenals pointed at each other for almost half a century, but I also think I know why: the world already had a pair of real and horrifying examples of what these weapons could do. People could already see the magnitude of destruction and the poisonous slow death of the victims. It's about as horrible as you can get.

Imagine what might have happened if America and the Soviets built up their ICBM arsenals into the thousands, with multiple megaton warheads, and neither side had any more than a theory of what the aftermath of a full-scale war might be. There's no way to know for sure, but I think Hiroshima was, in retrospect, an inadvertent sacrifice which may have saved all of humanity from annihilation. Nagasaki is harder to justify, if justification is even possible.

(September 18, 2013 at 5:07 pm)John V Wrote:

(September 18, 2013 at 4:51 pm)Faith No More Wrote: I'm curious to hear your explanation as to how perfection and the other traits mentioned can coexist.

I'm curious to hear max's explanation as to why they can't coexist. I imagine that we'll find that our positions are nothing more than opinion.

As to vengeful: yes, I think that it can be appropriate to desire that wrongs be avenged. How is that a problem? Didja see The Avengers? They were the heroes, not the villains.

Just so as not to lose track lets summarize a bit. Feel free to query the summation if you must:

• We have defined God as the "perfect being."
  
• We have agreed that we cannot agree what defines perfection.
  
• We have therefore shifted our focus to identifying imperfections
  
• We have taken a series of imperfections from a Christian list (the seven deadly sins) to ensure agreement.
  
• We have applied these to God, using the Bible as our source.
  

How can we not, therefore, conclude that God is not the perfect being?