The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament

[athrock]

My insistence? 

Perhaps it is simply the insistence of atheists that God is immoral which demands a response. I mean, it's not like believers are sitting around anxiously discussing this amongst themselves.

As I have said repeatedly in this forum, if you're going to be an atheist, be a good one. If you're going to argue with believers, do it well.

Attempting to paint God as a moral monster because He gave guidelines for the treatment of slaves (v. prohibiting slavery outright) is a lame argument that fails to make the case atheists are trying to win. It is entirely possible that God could both permit slavery and be a perfect, loving God at the same time. 

In the absence of a proof of contradiction, the "Immoral God" argument does nothing to advance the atheist's position that God does not exist, and therefore, it should be discarded.

It's a BAD argument.

Where do you get the idea that the "Immoral God" argument has anything to do with atheism? It seems to me that those who invoke the argument do so as a finger jab in the eye of those believers who think they have a corner on morality -- even more, that their god-based morality is objective and eternally unchanging.

I agree that it should be discarded as an argument for atheism [emphasis added], but I don't often see it used in that way. The poor quality of theists' evidence and arguments are really all one needs to argue for atheism. The alleged immorality of God goes more to the point of believers' inconsistency and dishonesty when defending their holy book(s). In that sense, it's a GOOD argument.

Wow. Thanks for that second. All in favor say, "Aye."

It's more than a poke at believers, C1...it's an obstacle to knowing God as He really is. I mean, it's pretty hard to accept that someone loves you when all you've ever heard is all the terrible things he (allegedly) did in the past.

A person can be prejudiced against another race or against all Muslims because of terrorism, etc. Letting go of that prejudice requires replacing negative opinions (which are often based on misrepresentations and bad information) with positive ones.

I'm not sure someone like Cecelia, for example, can ever hear that God loves her until she stops repeating that God is "sexist, homophobic, racist, misogynist..." to herself. You've seen her rants, so you know what I mean.

The evidence just doesn't support her prejudiced views. Calling God immoral on the basis of his precepts on slavery gives no clearer picture of his character than she would have of a man whom she happens to see swatting the backside of a mouthy child in a parking lot. She has no depth, no context, for understanding why the kid needed to be swatted or what had transpired between father and child in the past to bring them to that moment. And, frankly, she's certainly not in a position to impose her views of proper child rearing techniques on another family. So, while the guy might actually be a wonderful family man and a model father, Cecelia drives home fuming over what she calls "child abuse".

See my point? The guy is NOT an abusive father any more than God is a moral monster.

Cecelia is simply ignorant of all the facts and attempting to impose her own values on someone else. God.

She isn't alone; atheists do this all the time, and it's not helping.