Christians, Prove Your God Is Good

[robvalue]

If one being gets to decide what is good, and that's it, then that is not morality at all. Especially since that being is not part of the group affected by the actions being judged. His judgements in no way guarantee whether actions are harmful or helpful to humans. So he could be an evil malicious tyrant. Which he is, he spells it out in detail in the bible.

So how can we know whether his judgements are actually good or bad? We use our own standard. All christians do this, they just claim that they don't. It's why most christians say slavery is wrong even though the bible condones it. They wouldn't stone their kids to death for being unruly, even though the bible says to. They wouldn't force a rape victim to marry the rapist, even though the bible says so. Like atheists, they have a conscience. An inner voice that guides them. It's not magic, it's part of everyone (except sociopaths). It's a product of evolution and environment, on a very basic level. Cooperation is a helpful trait.

How come christians are ignoring these, and so much more of the bible? Because they know these things are wrong. Wrong as in harmful, not wrong as in some uninvolved third party handing out random judgements. Of course they then justify this to themselves with ridiculous contorted arguments as to why most of the bible doesn't actually say what it says and why it no longer applies. But these are after-the-fact rationalizations, which is why they are always such terrible arguments.

But if christians were honest for one second, they would see that they are simply using their own idea of what is good to filter out what the bible says (or what any person presuming to speak as an authority for God says. You wouldn't kill your family because your fucking priest tells you to. Why's that?) What christians do though, is to use divine righteousness as a shield for their prejudices when they happen to line up with what the bible says. God hates homosexuals. I don't have to explain why I hate homosexuals, because God hates them. You're getting confirmation for your previously held beliefs from an imaginary, irrelevant third party.

If christians didn't do this filtering, they would be very soon dead or in jail.

Subjective morality is never going to be perfect. Everyone's judgement is going to be slightly different. Or perhaps a lot different. But as a society, we come to agree on many things naturally. Murder, theft, assault, rape... in most civilised societies, we agree these are wrong, without having to learn this from ancient books.

The finer details we deal with ourselves, by looking at each situation and evaluating it carefully. Just because our judgements don't all work out the same, and just because they aren't perfect, doesn't mean they are worthless. That is the false dichotomy that I highly suspect theists want to impose here and is where I suspect you are trying to drive this argument, ignorant. The world is not black and white. Things are not just either perfect or useless.

Subjective morality works, on the whole, and it's really good. God given morality does not work, because as I said above, theists filter it anyway.

You want to know what happens when theists stop almost entirely filtering their book? Take a look at Muslim theocracies and ISIS.

I rest my case.

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@TRS: You are right, technically by imprisonment you're not affecting free will, just restricting what that free will can accomplish. And as I've said a million times, you can have free will and just good options, if an all powerful being wishes it. Hence the other false dichotomy you referred to. And indeed, free will and accountability are different; but intertwined in such a way as to be inseparable.