What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Catholic_Lady]

Randy Carson, I had never heard of that before. I do think that homosexuality is just as different from pedophilia of little boys as heterosexuality is different from pedophilia of little girls.

I think an attraction towards a child has little to do with heterosexuality or homosexuality. I don't see the connection here.

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Wow, thanks for the recap! You have been paying attention!

When a pretty lady is involved, I always pay attention!

Everything here is correct... the only objection I would make is that God does not change lol.

Oh, darn...

But, but, but... the god of the OT, Yahweh, used to be the Yahu from Midian,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh:

His name may have originated as a title for El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon (el dū yahwī ṣaba’ôt, "El who creates the hosts", meaning the heavenly army accompanying El as he marched beside the earthly armies of Israel), but although El and Yahweh have much in common they also have many differences.[11] The more probable explanation is that he originated as a storm-god from regions south of Israel and Judah,[12] where Egyptian inscriptions mention a "land of the Shasu Yahu", the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom and Yahu a place name.[13]

There is considerable support–though not universal–for the view that the Egyption inscriptions do refer to Yahweh.

Then, he was plucked from the pantheon of that region and taken as the only god that matters or something, by Abraham, or Moses or some other city-state ruler, making its appearance as the antagonist to the Canaanites.
These guys, had El as the head god:

El, not Yahweh, was the original "God of Israel"—the word "Israel" is based on the name El rather than Yahweh.[22] He was the chief of the Canaanite gods, described as "the kind, the compassionate," "the creator of creatures".[23] He lived in a tent on a mountain from whose base originated all the fresh waters of the world, from where he presided over the Assembly of the Gods with the goddess Asherah as his consort.

[...]

Yahweh, the southern warrior-god, joined the pantheon headed by El and in time he and El were identified, with El's name becoming a generic term for "god".[24] Each member of the divine council had a human nation under his care, and a textual variant of Deuteronomy 32:8–9 describes the sons of El, including Yahweh, each receiving his own people

Curious read, isn't it?
Shall we go on?

After the 9th century BCE the tribes and chiefdoms of Iron Age I were replaced by ethnic nation states, Israel, Judah, Moab, Ammon and others, each with its national god.[30] Thus Chemosh was the god of the Moabites, Milcom the god of the Ammonites, Qaus the god of the Edomites, and Yahweh the "God of Israel"

So... that's why he didn't want his people to worship other gods... That would mean that they were the people from another nation state.

In each kingdom the king was also the head of the national religion and God's viceroy on Earth,[33] reflected each year in Jerusalem at a ceremony when the king presided over a ceremony at which Yahweh was enthroned in the Temple.[34]

The centre of Yahweh's worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life: Passover with the birthing of lambs, Shavuot with the cereal harvest, and Sukkot with the fruit harvest.[35] These probably pre-dated the arrival of the Yahweh religion,[35] but they became linked to events in the national mythos of Israel: Passover with the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at Sinai, and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings.

I see... the king wouldn't want people to desert to neighboring states, "either"... so it's best to have god command everyone to worship only him.

Scholars agree that Israelite monotheism was the culmination of a unique set of historical circumstances.[45] Pre-exilic Israel, like its neighbours, was polytheistic.[46] Yahweh and El merged at religious centres such as Shechem, Shiloh and Jerusalem,[47] and the national god appropriated many of the older supreme god's titles such as Shaddai and Elyon (Almighty).[48] Asherah, formerly the wife of El, was probably worshiped as Yahweh's consort, and various biblical passages indicate that her statues were kept in his temples in Jerusalem, Bethel, and Samaria.[49] Yahweh may also have appropriated Anat, the wife of Baal, as his consort, as Anat-Yahu ("Anat of Yahu," i.e., Yahweh) is mentioned in 5th century records from the Jewish colony at Elephantine in Egypt.

[...]

Baal and Yahweh coexisted in the early period of Israel's history, but from the 9th century they were considered irreconcilable, probably as a result of the attempts of King Ahab and Jezebel, his Phoenician queen, to elevate him in the northern kingdom.[49]

The worship of Yahweh alone began at the earliest with Elijah in the 9th century BCE, but more likely with the prophet Hosea in the 8th; even then it remained the concern of a small party before gaining ascendancy in the exilic and early post-exilic period.[46] The process by which this came about might be described as follows: In the early tribal period each tribe would have had its own patron god; when kingship emerged the state promoted Yahweh as the national god of Israel, supreme over the other gods, and gradually Yahweh absorbed all the positive traits of the other gods and goddesses; finally, in the national crisis of the exile, the very existence of other gods was denied.

Still think the guy didn't change?

And I haven't even delved into OT -> NT divergence!!

Thank you.

I think Randy can better explain this, but what I can say is that we still believe that God did not change. God always has been and always will be the same as what Jesus portrayed to us through his time here. Perhaps we didn't understand God quite right before Jesus came and set the record straight and showed us through example what God is really like, since He was God Himself.

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Here is site that offers multiple sources if you click on "read more"

http://www.themediareport.com/fast-facts/

You're missing the point, yet again.

Whether Catholic priests abuse children at a higher or lower rate than the general population or any other group is irrelevant, as are the other points brought up by that apologetic site you quoted.

What's at issue is that Catholic church leadership had for at least decades shielded abusive clergy from civil prosecution (by "handling" the problem internally), and instead of removing their access to children, such clergy were often shuffled between parishes - and they did this all the while claiming to represent a higher moral authority.

*That's* the crime in all of this.

Well, the crime is both. Both the people who abused, and those who covered it up were wrong. Whateverist said he doubted that school staffers ever cover up abuse, but the fact is they do. As you can see from the site, some school staffers also did and do cover up cases and brush stuff under the rug.