Why does God hate babies who have not sinned?

[Reasonable_Jeff]

Am I reading this last bit correctly, are you proposing that god does the whole hell bit so that those whom he chooses to gift with his "justice" and "holiness" and "mercy" feel really good about it?

Romans 9:22–23 (ESV) — 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—

---

But it doesn't make it true, either.

Agreed

The golden rule has nothing to do with religion. It is binding because if you wrong someone else, you can be wronged back, and it is preferable to have peace than to ruin yourself and your enemy/victim.

I'm saying that morality itself (if God does not exist) is an illusion. There is no way that you would be obligated to behave a certain way.


"The position of the modern evolutionist … is that humans have an awareness of morality … because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. …Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. … Nevertheless, … such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, … and any deeper meaning is illusory …"

Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9.

Given atheism, if evolution were to have unfolded a slightly different way...

"If … men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering."

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd edition (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1909), p. 100.

It seems to me that you can't have it both ways. You can't say there is no God but there are objective morals.

If this is subjective, there is no objective morality. God issues commands at different times that contradict each other morally, so they were 'right at the time' and therefore subjective, even if god said them.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here. Are you saying that some of God's commands seem to contradict His other commands....therefore God can't exist?

This seems to me to be the same problem before. You (presumably an atheist) are judging God by your own subjective moral standard.

Evidence? You sure seem to want to give him glory.

I've never proposed that my conversion to Christianity was based on a fact-finding mission. Rather, it was based on an experience of God. Not that there aren't facts to back up Christianity...there are plenty....I'm just saying that that isn't how it went down in my conversion.

My desire to give Him glory is because He has Sovereignly intervened in my life and given me new desires that I might see Him as He is...glorious, merciful, awesome.

Ezekiel 36:26 (ESV) — 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

---

Tell you what I'm going to do this Christmas. I'm going to buy my son a new bicycle. On christmas morning I'm going to wake him up, lead him into the living room, and show him his brand new Radio Flyer trike....and just to make this "more wonderful for him"...I'm going to mercilessly beat both of his sisters, hospitalize them, and permanently injure both of them. Imagine how much of my fatherly glory I'll be able to display in such a manner.

Here is a more accurate analogy. In your analogy the children are innocent. We are not innocent.


Matthew 21:33–41 (ESV) — 33 “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. 34 When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. 35 And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ 39 And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”


Now God is Just and Merciful.....so He executes judgement on unrepentant sinners and saves those who believe in His Son because in Jesus there in no condemnation.

John 3:18 (ESV) — 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

John 3:36 (ESV) — 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

God is merciful to offer any way at all to be saved, let alone one in which is so glorious.

Romans 8:15–17 (NLT) — 15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.