thanks, god.

[LukeMC]

Yeah I don't think you quite get it LukeMC.

Damn, I knew it!

Yes you're right here. Those laws that are indisputable carried forward. There's a distinct turnaround though in that Jesus came to be forgiveness. Like the rainbow before, but this was complete forgiveness and a turnaround in God's methods.

So before we would get stoned to death, now we can be forgiven thanks to Jesus. Okay, I honestly do see the reasoning here.

Idealogically we can't put a limit on God. This is the theoretical and purist stance. On top of that I have reasoning presented in the Bible on the Nature of God, that establishes him with actual attributes. From this I can narrow the definition of God.

From a wider philosophical position, God is unknowable. From reasoned observation recorded in the Bible, from a Christian perspective, we can narrow down the definition.

Obviously this must be under the assumption that the bible is correct (despite parts being added, edited, taken away, etc). As far as I'm concerned, your knowledge of God without using the bible would be as reliable as the knowledge you gain from the bible. Both stupendously likely to be inaccurate or wrong. But of course if you accept the bible as being correct this won't be an issue so I can leave this point.

Like I said, descriptions of God have to be put into terms that humans understand. The Christian God obviously isn't above our capacity to encapsulate.

I meant to say God was above our ability to encapsulate fully, which was one of your premises. I should have been clearer. Besides that I dont' dispute this point.

The leap of faith is a singular one of God's existence. The rest involves rational thinking. Everything follows logically. Theists can and do verify it. They can and are sure of the vast majority of it.

The ancient book is just a collection of observations and non factual stories about God gathered over a long period of time. The point being to establish God's nature. From rational observations we can come to conclusions.

I see. Well it appears you've somewhat solidified your views into a form I cannot disagree with. For the most part anyway.
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I still don't think God is all good as you stated before. It would be a shame to end the debate here so lets take a new angle on it.

When God causes a disaster we interpret the disaster as bad. The lesson we learn from it can be seen as good. Therefore, your logic seemed to follow that God is still doing good in the long run. However, you're missing the point that creating a disaster is creating a "bad" thing. Therefore God cannot be all good as he is capable of doing bad things for a debatably good purpose. He is punishing innocents as means to an end. There are only three conclusions that I can think of:

1) God is all good, and the disaster itself is a good thing regardless of what people think
2) God is capable of evil as means to an end
3) God is neutral on the subject and his actions can be perceived either way but just like the weather, they cannot be objectively subject to morality. (saying objectively subject sound ridiculously oxymoronic in my head).

To stand by the first conclusion is to say that the 9/11 attacks were good in their entirety, the holocaust was good in its entirety, hurricane katrina was good in its entirety and the italian earthquakes were good in their entirety. To say this is to annihilate the value of your opinions as you are ultimately wrong about all of your moral convictions if God decides so. If you were choking under a heap of rubble and suffering a slow and painful death, yet somehow considering the experience to be a good thing and an act of grace, you have truly denied your humanity in a most cult-like fashion.


Personally I'd side with option 3. I find a God who doesn't care to be far more rational and it explains the evidence better in my view.

Lets keep it rolling.