Quote:An all-powerful and perfect being could create a system with free will and not have it all come crashing down because of something that he himself built into the system. Something all-powerful and all-perfect could create beings that can choose not to love him and they would all still love him. All-powerful means able to do anything. By all written accounts, your Gaud is an incompetent designer. If he designed the system to include (or even just knowing it would result in) sin and suffering, then he is malicious and not all-loving. If he couldn't create a system without those things, then he is not all-powerful. If he failed to create a system that could not be disrupted by those things, then he is not all-perfect.
You are mistaken about the definition for all powerful, it means that to have full and complete power. Also when you say that God can make people who both don't love Him and love Him at the same time you are committing a logical contradiction. God can't make logical contradictions like a square circle or a rock to big for Him to lift.
Also when you make deductions with two negative premises you are going to end at a incorrect conclusion. You are committing a formal fallacy because your pattern of reasoning is incorrect.
God is an incompetent designer
the system includes sin and suffering
____________________________
therefore God is malicious and not all-loving
God is an incompetent designer
God can't create a system without sin and suffering
_______________________________
Therefore He is not all powerful
Your conclusions don't make sense.
Quote:Let's see...the fact that virtually all of its stories disagree broadly with mainstream science and history, the fact that virtually all of its tenets and narratives are stolen from other cultures
could you please give at least one example from each of your categories or at the very least one example that you are speaking of.
Quote: the fact that it can easily be used to incite and condone horrendous atrocities against humans,
Just because people can manipulate others by misinformation is not a good enough reason to say the construction of the bible is bad. Many people can take almost anything and twist it to benefit their evil desires.
Quote:the fact that it endorses and regulates slavery
You again are making another mistake because of your definition of slavery. You are trying to use our modern definition of slavery and applying it to the definition of slavery at the time the Bible was written. Slavery in the Bible was for one who could not pay a debt or provide for their families. During the time of Jesus some highly skilled individuals were slaves like doctors, lawyers and politicians. As for the slavery that was in the Western countries from the 17th century up until now is explicitly forbidden in Ex 21:16 16 “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession. (1 Tim 1:8-10) So God does not condone that kind of slavery. Anyone who uses the bible to condone this is playing on the ignorance of their audience.
Quote:(including guidelines for selling one's daughter as a sex slave)...shit, like all of it, basically. It's a horrible book, and it's ALL fictional.
What verses in the Bible are talking about? Or is there a reference you are speaking of?
Quote:How about the fact that he never spoke to begin with? How about the fact that he most likely does not exist? Those are both good reasons.
You are contradicting yourself because you first said that he stopped speaking 2000 years ago. So if he stopped speaking that implies that He started to speak at some time.
Quote:What love-inspired reason could he possibly have had for creating a system where suffering was somehow inherent or necessary?
God comforts us in our affliction and we can comfort others through what we have been through. Also we learn to trust totally in God.
2 Corthians 1:3 Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so through Christ our comfort also overflows. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in your endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will share in the comfort. 8 For we don’t want you to be unaware, • brothers , of our affliction that took place in • Asia : we were completely overwhelmed —beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life. 9 Indeed, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us. We have put our hope in Him that He will deliver us again 11 while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.
I see this verse being lived out in my Grandfather who has cancer and he has a very slim chance of surviving it. I would rather he not have it but because of it this cancer our relationship, which was once strained, is now mended because of this sickness.
James 1:2-4 2 Consider it a great joy, my • brothers , whenever you experience various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
I don't trust in God because He is going to make my life pain free but because He is worth following. He is reliable and trust worth and not matter what I am going through I am sustained by Him. He also changes me and removes, through suffering and disciple, those things that are ungodly.
Quote:but not for any and every little perceived offense someone commits against me, which is how your Gaud purportedly handles it.
God doesn't send people to hell for tripping over Him or sneezing on Him. He sends them for hell for spreading lies about Him. All the false gods, anything we put above him, and even denying His existence are all lies about the character of God.
Quote:Furthermore, there is absolutely no finite crime in this world anyone could do to me or anyone else that would justify eternal torture. That isn't justice by any definition I would accept.
No, I wouldn't expect someone to pay an eternal punishment if they wronged you because you are finite.. So if you sin against a infinite God then you should pay a infinite punishment.
Quote:What part of the Golden Rule is so hard for Gaud people?
Matt 7:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." You follow this rule always? He understands it more than you could even conceived especially since it is based on his character. God stepped into our shoes and lived a human life. He experienced ever hardship and didn't sin and then died so that our sins against His infinite nature would be paid for.
Quote:No, it assumes that people suffer when they are raped, killed, and enslaved.
So experiencing pain determines what should and shouldn't be done?
You still haven't pointed to any biblical account of what you spoke when God condones rape, and genocide (I already discussed slavery)
Quote:Because he is consciousness in the absence of matter.
So are thoughts and ideas
Quote:Because he is said to exist outside the material Universe and yet still be able to affect the material Universe observably.
If he made the box (universe) why couldn't he reach in and affect it?
Quote:By today's standard. What else? I'm right, too. And yes, I've studied the cultures in question. They knew practically nothing of science and the natural world, hence the content of the creation account, the flood story, etc. All you have to do to know this is read the things they wrote.
How long have you studied this culture? Also just because they didn't know what we know doesn't make their knowledge practically non-existent. Science an technology are not the only forms of knowledge and would it be fare for future societies to judge us on the same standard that you are judging them?
What makes today's standard the correct standard to use?
Quote:Today's modern, western, secular morality objectively contains less suffering and more rights/equality than Bible morality, so today's morality is objectively better than Bible morality.
Please elaborate.
Quote:I can say it and empathy objectively exist because we can observe them in objective reality.
So reality is not just what is material.
Quote:Because I have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to tell when I'm looking at good evidence.
So you have never been incorrect?
