(December 19, 2012 at 3:06 am)clemdog14 Wrote: But that dichotomy is so uninteresting! It makes God look malevolent in that if we do not choose to follow "his game" then we are simply out of luck!
God is malevolent.
Quote:Why wouldn't God respect your choice? If you choose to not follow God, he will validate your decision by granting what you want--separation from him. He could not go against your will by automatically making you spend the rest of eternity with a relationship with him. Instead, he grants your wish in that you choose to not have a relationship. If he did otherwise, that would go against your will and this would be malevolent.
That is a very interesting spin.
We'll just forget all the instances depicted in the Bible which feature God commanding his zombies to slaughter neighboring tribes to the last man, woman and child because they refused to recognize the true head psychopath in charge. Or that time he drowned everybody for the same reason.
Quote:On another note, what do the first four commandments have to do with this argument? God was talking to the Israelites in that he had taken them out of Egypt and that they wished to enter into a covenant with him. God asked them if they wished to enter into the covenant in which they accepted. After they accepted, he proceeded on his end by providing his commandments (a portion of the covenant). God did not go against their will by forcing them to enter into a covenant, rather it was a conditional situation. In the same way, God gives us a conditional in that we can actively accept, refuse, or be indifferent to. He does not point a gun to our head.
I'm sorry, but "accept me without question or suffer for eternity" is not a conditional situation by any sane measure. That is not 'free will'. That's coercion, if not outright terrorism.
The first four commandments are relevant because they demonstrate that Yahweh's followers are commanded to live in slavery to him and that he is definitely not tolerant of dissension.
