What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Let me try to explain it better for you then, Rhythm. I hope I can be more clear this time. 

I appreciate the attempt....perhaps, though, there is no clarity to be had?

Before Jesus came, people followed the Old Testament. Jesus came and taught us new things that we didn't know before. Many of the things he taught contradicted things in the Old Testament. He Himself, as a person, contradicted how God was depicted sometimes in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament God was, at times, depicted like a very harsh judge. He was depicted as an entity who told us to kill others, told us to have slaves, told us to have multiple wives, etc. Jesus came, and was completely different from the entity that was depicted in many parts of Old Testament. He told us to not throw stones at anyone. He told us to turn the other cheeck to those who hurt us. He told us to love our one and only spouses. 

"Jesus" also told us about thought crimes, threatens us with hell, and asks that we accept the blood sacrifice of another in order to remove the curse his father placed upon us.   I'm just not very impressed.  No one needed the advice given in the NT to live a moral life, people lived moral lives wiothout it for a very long time, and people still do lead moral lives without it.   

If we believe that Jesus is God, what this shows us is that what we *thought* God was like wasn't entirely accurate or complete. If we believe that Jesus is God, we believe that He came to set the record straight about Himself (being God) and about the correct distinction between morality and immorality.

and in setting that record straight he upped the ante on immoral things attributed to him.  Again..... thought crimes, hell, vicarious redemption.  

You cannot believe in the literal definition of the Old Testament and the New Testament at the same time. You cannot do this because they contradict each other sooo much. So you have to pick one. If you are Christian, you will pick the words of Jesus in the New Testament.

The trouble is that, as a christian, one -depends- upon the other.  No curses, no need to remove them.  All that nonsense in the garden(just for starters)...that can't be allegory, or your boy aint christ...get it? You've been picking the words of jesus, in the NT....and so have I. Seems as if god continues to do and say terrible things. Wheres the contradiction in that?