"The bible test" Answered.

[Drich]

Well, Drich, you will recall that I challenged you to respond on some divine commands from the Bible outside the quiz, and I pointed out that they read like a manual for the Taliban: stoning people to death for changing their religion, cutting off hands, killing women and children in time of war.

In your usual manner you dodged the challenge, but referred me to another thread on Man's morality. Thank you. Your very first post makes clear that the God of the Bible does not meet the standard of absolute righteousness which you claim characterizes God, so Yahweh is indeed an immoral bastard according to the presentation in the Bible.

Indeed He is because again 'morality' is anything you want it to be it is ever changing standard. God's standard does not change therefore can not meet the ever changing requirement needed to be deemed 'moral' by man.
This requires 'the moral' amongest us to seperate himself from God. Which is the same thing Jesus blasted the pharisees for.. Adhearing to thier own version of morality/Righteousness Rather than God's righteousness. Christ identified this 'morality' you are hiding behind as self righteousness. Are you seriously in a position to judge God with this literal self righteous standard?

But put that aside. We will run with your assertion that "God's righteousness is absolute and never changes." We will even start off with your example that it is always a sin to lie.

Yahweh fails the test:

Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil against thee." (2 Chron 18:22)That of course was directed against Ahab whom God hated, and he sent a lying spirit to 400 prophets to encourage Ahab into a war he would lose.

In this example you have God sending a spirit of deception to the prophets of ahab. Now all you need do is show that the command "you shall not lie" applies to God. This passage clearly says it does not apply to God.

He does something similar to one of his favorites, David, and to Israel.
On another occasion the Lord was angry with Israel, and he made David bring trouble on them. The Lord said to him, “Go and count the people of Israel and Judah.” (2 Sam 24:1)

God himself tells David to conduct a census, and then he punishes David and the whole nation by killing 70,000 people with a plague. It's just a fable, but if it were true as you believe, it would make God out to be on the level of a schoolyard bully, tempting a smaller kid to do something and then smacking him for it.

Maybe you should look at the ERV before assuming too much. I found a simple version of the bible may make it easier to understand what is really going on.

24 The Lord was angry with Israel again.
This is the reason God 'tested' the Jews in the following passages,

He caused David to turn against the Israelites. He told David, “Go count the people of Israel and Judah.”2 King David said to Joab, the captain of the army, “Go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba,[a] and count the people. Then I will know how many people there are.”

God gives David this test to give to the jews. This 'test' will determine who they truly follow, David or God. For God gave a command for them to never be counted, and David gave a command that contradicted what God said. Whatever they do next will determine who the love more.

Because they followed the words of David over God, God had the right and now the reason/proof to have tested them, and punished them.

Now the Bible certainly claims that God forbids lying.

Forbids who from lying? Can you provide book Chapter and verse that say He/God is not able to lie?

According to the Zondervan Topical Bible there are at least 19 prohibitions of falsehood.

All point to the restriction of this act for men. Remeber God never commanded "thou shal not lie." The Commandment God gave is "you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Moses issued the decree in his law 'you shall not lie' which was picked up in the NT by the apstoles... None of which have authority over God.

But it seems that God sometimes winks at it or even approves.

Again because the act of intentional deception in of itself holds no value. It is when one deceives outside of the allowances God himself provides that deception becomes a lie. Therefore it can be said To lie is always wrong.

In Genesis 27 Jacob lies several times to his old blind father, claiming to be the older brother Esau, so Jacob gets the blessing, and God lets him have it.

Never once in any accurate translation is this deception identified as a lie. Why? Divine Provenance, God blessed and allowed for that deception. Which when authorized by God said deception is not a lie, as witnessed here and every other instance you care to bring up when God authorizes a deception.

You have to remember God never commanded 'thou shall not lie.' That was moses several generations after what happens in Gen 27.

In Joshua 2 the prostitute Rahab hides the Israelite spies and lies to the king of Jericho that they are no longer in her house. In return she and her whole family are spared when the Israelites sack the city. She is not criticized at all. On the contrary, she is praised in the New Testament:

It was faith that kept the prostitute Rahab from being killed with those who disobeyed God, for she gave the Israelite spies a friendly welcome. (Hebrews 11:31)
It was the same with the prostitute Rahab. She was put right with God through her actions, by welcoming the Israelite spies and helping them to escape by a different road. (James 2:25)

How is this different from the example you gave of lying to save a friend's life, which you say is an example of human morality and not up to the standard of God's righteousness, but the Bble itself says that her act of lying "put her right with God."

I could go on at great length about other moral issues, but I will limit myself to the one great crime of killing another human being.

..and i could go point by point demonstrating one after another that God is not subject to the law of moses. And that all of your work here shows God does indeed authorize deception. Which means you do not understand the basics of who God is, or you would not have spent so much time putting this whole failed arguement together.

What denomination were you a pastor of again? what seminary did you goto? Stuff like this make it harder and harder for me to believe you were a pastor.

I'll go back to the passages I quoted in the post you never replied to. There are plenty of OT laws where God prescribes the death penalty for seemingly minor infractions like gathering wood on the Sabbath, but I will only mention one death sentence, the punishment attached to the First Commandment:

i like it when you all get belligerent, it means i get to take my gloves off too

When skeptics say they need a sign that gives greater certainty than reading the Bible, Christians like to blather on about how God doesn't want to violate our free will, that he wants us to freely choose to come to him. Well, if a death threat doesn't violate free will, I don't know what else you would call it.

Do 'Christians' say this or did you say this as a failed pastor? Because a 5 min google search and a sunday school understanding of the works of Paul (in the book of Romans) would first say free will is a work of greek philosphy and not a biblical precept. Because Paul (in romans) Tells us the oppsite. That we are not 'free willed' but slaves (mind and body) to sin. as such can not excersize 'freewill' but can only do the will of our master, sin.

God doesnot grant all of us 'freewill.' He simply gives us the ability to choose the option of redemption or to remain under the complete control of sin. It is through redemption that our hearts will find freedom, even though our bodies and our minds are still subject to the will of sin.

If you do not think this to be true then simply 'will yourself' to not sin. Can't? wonder why that is?

Then there are the war crimes.

All of these can be dismissed because our laws state no one can be convicted of an act before the act was made illegal.
Your examples took place thousands and thousands of years before the term 'war crime' was even considered.

According to the Bible this God commanded, "Thou shalt not kill"

even a failed pastor should know better than this. The command is you shall not murder, not you shall not kill. The difference? The same between deception and a lie. God's authorization. Taking human life is not an intrinsically good nor a bad thing. the act is netural. what assigns how it should be viewed is the reason or authority(or the lack of it) given to us to take another life by God.

So I have showed that the God of the Old Testament was an immoral bastard on his own terms, quod erat demonstandum.

you have indeed shown the bible and God to be immoral, but so what? Your standard is like toilet paper, It's only good for a little while. once someone finds fault or stain it is discarded never to be considered again.