Punishing God vs Forbearing/Merciful God

[Mystic]

Deciding which god would be greater requires belief in a god

Why does it require belief in God?

[The Grand Nudger]

Have you ever tried to determine which among a group of three soft drinks that do not exist is "the best"? Certain difficulties arise..lol.

[Norfolk And Chance]

Deciding which god would be greater requires belief in a god

Why does it require belief in God?

You're asking me to decide between two non existent hypothetical scenarios - at best this is a waste of my time.

[Mystic]

Have you ever tried to determine which, among a group of three soft drinks that do not exist, is "the best"?

Nope. I don't see relevance.

I can decide Batman is greater then Joker, even though I don't believe they exist.

This is actually relating to virtue and morality. Although in reality believing in virtue and morality do lead to God, as I've shown before, but most Atheists tend to believe in morality and virtue and have their own view of morall issues, often arguing for issues as well with strong attitude.

So it's not like Atheists can't state what is deemed more morally great or higher...

[The Grand Nudger]

By what metrics? How does believing in morality or virtue lead to god? You haven't shown anything, you believe that you've shown something.

[Norfolk And Chance]

I can decide Batman is greater then Joker, even though I don't believe they exist.

Based on what? They are made up, as you know. None of the virtues that you rate them by are real, so the point is moot.

[The Grand Nudger]

To cut to the chase, whatever you've used to compare batman relative to joker is also relative to your own value judgements, which we do not all share. I do not have to believe in virtue or morality, either can be demonstrated, but only relative to a specific definition of either, which can again be demonstrated to be a product of human social interaction, and relative to whatever group of people we're referring to.

Notice god didn't make an appearance above? Not even a cameo. This is why it is difficult to make a determination of what sort of god would be the greatest. Your terms and assumptions are muddy and not justified. Some of us fail to see "greatness" in any sort of punishment, but similarly fail to see greatness in indifference, or "undeserved mercy". All of this on top of not being able to point to any of these gods here in the real world. Tangled webs.

This sort of reasoning is very often leveraged though, one decides what sort of god would be the greatest (to him/her) and then shops for just such a god. In essence it is akin to deciding which god shares your opinions and then determining that this god is better than the rest because it is more like yourself. Some go further, to suggest that this is the only god that could exist, again, for no other discernible reason than "because he agrees with me, and what I want a god to be". As Norfolk has mentioned, at some point, this becomes a phenomenal waste of time (even that is only a personal value judgement).