A Levite and his concubine

[Lek]

Whoa, I'll stop you right there. You're wrong. According to the bible, god is asserted to be allowed to do what he wants to his creation. But an assertion is not justification of itself, and it does not automatically mean that god is morally justified in doing whatever he wants with his creation, because not every use of a creation is moral. For example, I may own a huge amount of food, but if I take it over to some hungry orphans, pretend to give it to them, and then burn it in front of them, I am acting immorally.

Additionally, you are working from the unjustified assumption that property rights of this nature carry over on every type of creation, and this also is not true; my parents created me, but if they harm me they are doing something immoral and I will be taken away by the state. The right of ownership is not automatically granted every time. A privately owned nuclear power plant cannot be driven intentionally into meltdown, even though it is someone's creation. If you're about to argue that this is because it harms others.... well yes. And god isn't when he commits genocide?

Also, one could argue that self awareness and consciousness, at a given threshold of complexity, represents something that should morally be exempt from ownership, given our need for self determination and how that informs our morality.

You're applying your human standards to God. Where did your moral standards come from. Is there an ultimate moral authority that governs human beings or are your standards something you picked from your parents and society? Is somebody else required to accept your moral standards? Do the civil laws you referenced apply to those under those laws or everybody in the world?

Now let's talk about free will. Does god not interfere with that? If he doesn't, then he clearly had no creative hand in the existence of any living human being ever, beyond Adam and Eve, as the procreative act is something freely chosen by one or more individuals, and if god so much as nudged that then he is necessarily interfering with free will. You might try to argue that god created the raw materials for humanity and so gains the rights there, but that's also not exclusively the case; increasingly we are recognizing the legal rights of ownership of people who remix the works of others. You don't really have any leg to stand on in just asserting that god has property rights over reality.

The bible teaches it and christians believe that we and all creation belong to God. I believe that my wife, kids, house, car, etc, all belong to God. Whatever I have has been given me to be used for serving God. We have the free will to do with our gifts whatever we want. I'm trying to think of a time when God has interfered with someone's free will. Some argue that he did so with Pharaoh in Exodus and I've argued that here before. Of course, he could if he wanted.

No doubt you're just going to argue, at base, that god is special somehow and because he's so magic, he gets all these special rights anyway. But that's not actually an argument, that's just an assertion of authority. In moral systems, authority is granted, not taken by fiat- don't bring up parents or I'll bring up child welfare- and if your only line of defense is "well, that's just the way it is!" then you've effectively given up on any sense of rational argument.

Well, he is special. If God is who the bible says he is, I can'y say that the same rules apply to God as to us.

Blaming all this on man's sins just reeks of rationalization. It's shifting the blame to the victims, but you've yet to actually establish how our sins are harmful to god, nor that lethal capital punishment is a morally justified action, nor that killing babies is morally correct given the sins of their parents. You have a lot of work to do before you can go "oh, but you don't understand! The sins!"

But see, we do believe that death is just punishment for our sins. By what moral authority do you base your opinion that this punishment is not just?

Fiat assertions aren't particularly compelling, to someone not working from the same unjustified presuppositions as you.

Ditto.

So what context is there, beyond the fiat assertions that it's really okay, actually, do you have that excuses these acts? Because "It's okay because god says it's okay!" is not an argument, it's a circular tailspin into tautology.

Okay. What do you have besides flat assertions that these acts are morally wrong--or any other acts as well?

Really? If I want to make sense of the bible, then I've got to just assume that everything is morally correct in the bible, as that's what the writers did?

The writers didn't assume that everything in the bible was morally correct. It's just that after relating a certain story they didn't always make a statement at the end as to whether or not the actions of those involved were morally correct

No can do, Lek. The bible wasn't written as some morality play, if we're taking it as a factual account of events then the gloss the writers put onto it does not change the actual moral status of the events. Not to Godwin, but you can find plenty of Nazi propaganda extolling the virtues of the final solution, and just because I won't go along with the egregious moral lies of the authors does not mean I'm somehow missing the point. It means that the writers have asserted something that I find factually incorrect, and can support with much more than the simple "It's god, so it's fine!" nonsense you can support your view with.

Again, I'll agree with you about immoral actions being in the bible, but tell me where you get to the authority to make moral judgments on these things.

Sure. And if you inserted your opinion that all those evil acts were actually extremely good, would I be missing the point if I didn't agree with you?

Again, the bible writers in the story presented in this thread didn't insert their opinion as to whether the acts were morally correct or not. People committed many immoral acts in the bible.