(March 5, 2015 at 4:43 am)robvalue Wrote: This is a spinoff idea from various questions I've been putting to people. These are a bunch of hypothetical scenarios. Atheists and theists alike can answer. You may, for one reason or another, consider it to be an impossible scenario. If so, just pretend, and give the closest answer. Some of these you'll have seen before I'm sure :p
1) God appears to you. You are 100% sure this is the real, one true God.
A) He instructs you to kill your friends and family. He doesn't say why. Will you do it?
B) Christians: he is Allah. Yahweh is fictional. Allah is just as described in the Quran.
Non-christians: he is Yahweh. He is just as described in the bible.
Will you worship this God?
2) You have just replaced God. You're in full control of everything, and have unlimited power. You can ensure any changes you make have no negative consequences.
A) Would you put an end to the suffering in the world?
B) Would you alter "free will" so that people only have good (non harmful) options and thoughts?
C) Would you request worship and thanks from people? If so, would you reward worship and/or punish non-worship?
D) There is this evil guy satan who keeps messing with your plans. He causes people to be evil, and all sorts of horrible stuff. Would you remove his power to do this?
E) If you wanted to communicate with the people, how would you go about it?
People routinely kill their families for all sorts of reasons so if some deity actually showed up and told them to kill their families they would do it in a second. The Bible has a lot of such stories but what is their real point?
The original idea was that man was basically a dummy until he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and became aware of the difference between them just like God.
So the basic question then becomes: is killing your family a good thing or an evil thing? Does your motive have anything to do with it? Abraham was eager to slice and dice Isaac for his own personal fame and fortune. When Moses came down from the mountain and broke the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 32 he told his henchmen to kill their brothers and companions. In Genesis chapter 38 Judah was eager to roast Tamar for getting knocked up before he found out that he was the one who had knocked her up. When Satan tempted Jesus with the world Jesus told him to take a hike. When Reuben banged his father Jacob's wife Jacob didn't kill him although such behavior became a capital offense under Moses' rules.
A person's answer is dependent upon his commitment to the idea of good and evil. If you think that such an act is basically evil regardless of the circumstances then you would never kill your family even if God told you to do it because you know you would become evil if you did and end up in the lake of fire for being a murderer as it says in Revelation 22:15.
Of course if a person was in such a situation and did kill his family on God's orders God could easily resurrect them and kick the killer into the lake of fire.
So if a person knows the difference between good and evil why would he do evil if God told him to do an evil act when he has never done good as God has previously told him to do? Because he's basically an evil person who has no redeeming qualities.
But since all gods are imaginary collective human experience has proven that it's better to do good than to do evil. Gods can never be more than imaginary beings so it's impossible for them to communicate with humans. Besides, people don't listen anyway.
