What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[The Grand Nudger]

But I don't believe God ever commanded this. This is OT stuff and I have explained how I feel about the OT and how some of these descriptions of God completely contradict Jesus, who I believe is God Himself, made flesh.

That's your "moral filter" in action.  I have one too.  It's why I'm not a catholic.  I applied that filter to the faiths primary fetish.

[Catholic_Lady]

The people "before christ" had as much info about god as those "after christ"....the same amount of info as you and I have, plainly speaking, the specific amount of that information agressively approaches zero.  You don;t have a -better- understanding of the divine will, you have a -different- understanding of the divine will.  Personally, I like your understanding better.

I just meant they didn't have the experience of God actually becoming human and coming down to earth to teach us. That's a huge advantage that they did not get to have.

[Silver]

I just triple face palmed.

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't have that experience either, but I would suggest that you are both equally devout in your beliefs. It's no advantage, clearly - as you are no more able than they were of demonstrating this objective standard, or this god, or that you aren't mentally ill, or that you appeal to god for your -own- morality rather than applying that filter and then concluding what simply must not be true -about god-.

[Catholic_Lady]

I was referring to the people in the Old Testament before Christ came.

Yeah, good way of ignoring logic and reason like a true Christian.  That's not a compliment.

I am sorry, but I don't follow... what logic/reason did I ignore?

[robvalue]

Precisely. You know something in the bible is wrong, so you assume the people writing it were wrong. Everyone does the same thing with the bible, which is why everyone gets different results. God somehow agrees with everybody, while they don't agree with each other.

With so much of the bible so massively wrong, how can you possibly trust any of it?

[The Grand Nudger]

I have to ask, what if the descriptions of god in the OT -and- the NT are both equally accurate?  What if god is the slaughterer of children -as well- as your prince of peace?  People have been known to be this complicated....I presume that it would not be beyond the ability of a god to possess depth of character? Perhaps god approves of both the suffering martyr, and the explosive one? I know that you don't, I know that I don't............

[Catholic_Lady]

Ah...so you have a biblical decoder ring?  Or, and this is a sad but much more believable contention.. might it be that what you wish to be allegory, is, to you, allegory, and what you wish to believe is factual is, to you, factual.  You understand that others put different things on those two lists?

God killing kids, allegory.....eh?  Vicarious redemption.....factual.  When you're done cutting out all the shit that you, with your own moral sense, found to be horrid or non-factual, allegory by convenience - then we can have a talk about that last nagging bit..lol.

I don't have a biblical decoder ring. I know that Catholicism allows me to either take the OT stories literally or allegorically. As long as I believe the fundamental of it, which is basically the fact that God is responsible for all of creation (whether through evolution or not, and I do believe in evolution), that is really all that matters in regards to the OT. The more important stuff is the teachings of Christ, in the New Testament. His words and His teachings supersede any claims that may have been made in the OT. Per Catholic teaching, I can make of that whatever I wish, so long as I believe this.

There are many theologians who devoted their entire lives to studying this, and say the OT is written allegorically. I feel like their assessment is logical, and so I believe the same.

[Aoi Magi]

Sorry that I won't be able to read through the 15 pages of discussion. But replying to OP, good isn't "universal" because the concept of "good" and "evil" is man-made. For example, you mentioned "murder" as universal truth, however murder IS part of nature, and nature doesn't see it as good or bad. Animals have to murder each other in order to survive, even non-living matter will need to murder each other to make progress, like galaxies swallowing up other galaxies. We determine what is good or bad through our own perspective, and yes, it is subjective. Let's say in our society murder is wrong, but what if a psychopath tries to murder your children? Would killing her in self-defence as a last resort still be wrong? When a lion kills a deer, from the lion's perspective it is doing good because it is ensuring the survival of it's pride, but from the deer's perspective it is evil... from our perspective it is neither good nor evil because that is how nature works.

[The Grand Nudger]

Catholicism allows you to cherry pick, you are being called to account for why you have chosen a particular set of stories over another as literal truth relative to allegory.   Some other things in the OT matter...like sin and generational curses.  Don't you think? This "god" fella is from the OT, he matters.

@AOI

Would killing her in self-defence as a last resort still be wrong?

It would certainly be -legal-...lol. Would I do it? Without hesitation. With joy. With pride. I'd need a smoke after a kill that satisfying. I wouldn't spend any time blowing smoke up your ass (or her ass) about how morally upright it was, though.

When a lion kills a deer, from the lion's perspective it is doing good because it is ensuring the survival of it's pride, but from the deer's perspective it is evil... from our perspective it is neither good nor evil because that is how nature works.

That's some high level thinking, for a lion, I think...but what does that matter, are you a lion? Am I? Does morality refer to lions? Personally, I think a dead deer is a good deer. They're -terrible-... :wink: