Why Secular Morality is Superior

[Esquilax]

That's not an answer. Don't fly off on one until you've succeeded In proving a point. So far we have bare assertion to hang me with.

Well, you would know all about bare assertions, wouldn't you?

But of course if you make a big enough smoke screen you inadequacy might be obscured. Your deliberate misreading of the text might be forgotten.

My stating that ending the life of a being is not justice in any sense is a smoke screen? Or is it just basic moral sense?

Guess what? I still need evidence. Don't be shy.

You know what? So do I: what's your evidence that every Amelekite was going to turn out evil? And don't go saying that god wouldn't have had them killed if they weren't, that's circular reasoning, and a part of my brain might explode if you add more of that on top of what you've already done.

This is the problem with your quality of argumentation here; you won't accept any argument given by anyone else without evidence that aligns with your own narrow minded views, but you yourself seem quite happy to make claims like the one above with no evidence at all.

Innocent babies: I've been through this before this week. God, having the ability to judge future action, can judge you on what you will do.

So when you said that god doesn't tamper in free will earlier today, you were lying? Because killing someone for their future actions, before they are able to commit the crimes for which they are being punished, is definitely tampering in free will.

No one can judge: precisely the point. What we have is a definite statement or two. All of those statements are consistent in reporting a just God exercising justice.

What is just about punishing someone for a crime they haven't committed? Why did god not kill me in my infancy, knowing of my atheism ahead of time? Why has he suddenly stopped killing those who do evil now? Why isn't everyone alive today a good christian, since god apparently has no problems with mass executions of those who will commit acts he finds evil in future?

Did he suddenly decide to start caring about free will?

This is what we have to deal with.
If you want to disprove the statements, you have you show how those statements are incorrect. That burden is yours to shoulder.

Well, they're certainly inconsistent with other claims you've made about god recently, so you're wrong on at least one of them, though the safe bet is that you're wrong on all of them, and just in too deep to pull out now and admit it.

If you make that claim without substantiating it, we can all happily move on and disregard your claim.

Oh cool: I'll do the same with your claims about the Amelekites and about god being just, then, given that you've provided no evidence for either of those.

Likewise, If I we're to make a claim that the statements could be proven, I would expect you to demand that my claim be backed up. Do you see me making any claims? No.

Yes. You claim that god's will is just, and that the Amelekites must all have been hellspawn in potentia, in order to defend your irrational beliefs. Neither of those have been given any supporting justifications from you; where's your evidence for them?

So here we are again, waiting for these inspired claims to be substantiated. Meanwhile, we must assume their falsity.

Still arguing that killing is morally good. How interesting...

Your point here is that the text must be untrue. Yet you cannot prove that statement. So why make it? Would you be happy that I make equally wild claims? I would fully expect you to correct me. Hopefully I would have the humility to retract.

No, the point is that the text depicts the genocidal massacre of an entire class of people, an act that every moral instinct in all of us shows to be immoral. You are claiming that this act- which you yourself would find immoral outside of a biblical context- is a-okay because god ordered it, and to justify this contradiction you went on to claim that the people being killed must have been going to do something wrong in future, with the eventual end of that argument being that if they weren't, god wouldn't be slaughtering them.

In making this argument, you have made two very clear claims: one is that god's rulings are necessarily always just, something you have not demonstrated in the slightest, and I can't fathom a way in which you could. The other claim is that the Amelekites must necessarily have been preparing to do something evil in the eyes of god; another claim you will find quite impossible to prove. Despite this, you had no compunction about making either of them, asserting them by fiat in the same breath you used to demand evidence from us that killing is wrong.

Are you, like, drunk or something?

So Ryan. God knows the future so you, who do not, don't have free will? Please explain to me how to you, your choice is limited. Please explain to me how you are not a free agent to act as your will dictates.

If you're killed in infancy before you've had an opportunity to exercise your free will in order to commit the acts that you're being killed for, can you be said to have had free will at all? You were killed for an act you weren't even conscious enough to consider making... whatever it was that act turned out to be!