Atheist VS Christian morality: Good is evil and vice versa

[Munch]

I am not even here to convince you that God exists. Simply that we need to all hate what is evil and love what is good Rom 12:9. Judge ourselves hasrshly on this 1 Cor 11:31 and then it becomes God's oness to reveal Himself to us.

Its like.. you took the concept of contradiction, and imploded with it.

[KingJ]

Its like.. you took the concept of contradiction, and imploded with it.

Well not if you have done the first part and not had an encounter. My point is that the first part is the important thing.

1 Cor 11:31 reads easily: ''But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged''.

This we can all do. This is common ground for atheists, Christians, Muslims and all.

[Termin]

Mike just wondering. You know that I am not here to convince you that Jesus exists? I am not even here to convince you that God exists. Simply that we need to all hate what is evil and love what is good

OK great, then we can all agree that homophobia, and the denial of people's rights based simply on their sexuality is an evil we can all hate ?

 

[Mike Cl]

Mike just wondering. You know that I am not here to convince you that Jesus exists? I am not even here to convince you that God exists. Simply that we need to all hate what is evil and love what is good Rom 12:9. Judge ourselves hasrshly on this 1 Cor 11:31 and then it becomes God's oness to reveal Himself to us.

The only difference between you and I is that I believe God has done that with me with Jesus.

No, KingJ, that is not the only difference between us.  You repeatedly demonstrate that you promote evil.  And you do so willfully blind and ignorant.  I think you would treat your children and pets with care and kindness--but I'm not convinced of that.  The same for your wife and others you profess to love.  I don't see you brand of belief kind, considerate, loving or beneficial to humankind.  The world would be much better off with your brand of belief a relic of the past.  The faster that happens the better off we, as a whole, will be.

[Drummer Guy]

We are not having a discussion. I am stating a fact and you are playing dumb.

Can you make a dead baby come to life. Yes  or No

Can you please outline your actual argument?  How do you know that we are more than just our physical selves?

My own ability to make a dead baby come to life seems irrelevant, given the fact that you have not presented an actual argument that could give it relevance.

The ball's in your court.  You're the one making the claim.

I suppose I could claim that Santa exists, and then when you ask me how I know I could say "well can you deliver gifts to all the kids in the world in one night?"  It would be just as illogical as what you're doing.

[Hakurei Reimu]

1. If you are spending time with your kids you are developing a closer relationship with them. If you are not, you are making their hearts grow cold toward you.

This is catagorically not what is happening in Exodus. Let me repeat the relevant passage, the first fucking passage that I quoted into Exodus:

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. 2 Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land. 3 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. 5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.

Yahuwahu explicitly says that he would harden Pharaoh's heart, not that Pharaoh's heart would already be hard to Moses' words.

We see from subsequent passages that this isn't just Pharaoh's Yahuwahu abandonment issues. Yahuwahu has to repeatedly harden Pharaoh's heart. Explicitly in the final run. The kind of issues you are trying to alude to takes place over years. Are you really saying that this plague drama took place over the course of years? And then there's the fact that Pharaoh was on an emotional rollercoaster, because this was a repeated hardening of his heart, not his heart became hard and it stayed hard for the duration, as would happen in a heart growing cold as you described.

But again, why would Pharaoh have divine abandonment issues? We know a lot about the religion of the Egyptians. They had their own pantheon, creation myths, beliefs and rituals. Pharaoh didn't need Yahuwahu; he had his own gods.

You would only have an argument if there was evidence of Pharoah being a God fearing / good man.

Those two terms are not synonymous.

Though the evidence is against you as cruel slave owners are generally not good people.

There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever held as slaves by Egyptians in the first place. Remember, it's a big freaking bureaucracy. The onslaught of a bunch of plagues in a row of varying types, followed by the up and disappearance of half a million inhabitants and their livestock and the needed supplies would have been fucking noticed. The same way that the Chinese would have noticed a worldwide flood.

2. Huh? He is trying to reach all of us. Re-read the verse I quoted.

Re-read the verses I quoted, where Yahuwahu was explicitly hardening Pharaoh's heart, and stated that he was doing so from the very beginning? How in the world does that equal 'he's trying to reach all of us'? No, I don't think I'm misreading those passages. You are trying to apologize for their clear evidence of the immorality of your god â€" pretty piss poorly, too, but I repeat myself.

So let me ask you this: why was it that, when Pharaoh promised to let the Israelites go, did Yahuwahu not then go, "You did it! You made the right choice!" and then let Pharaoh make good on that promise, and then return to try to "reach" him after his first step on the road of rehabilitation? Why did Yahuwahu instead harden Pharaoh heart so that he would renege on his promise, just so that Yahuwahu could beat him down more? Why was it that when Pharaoh finally got to get to see the backs of the Israelites after going through all that suffering, that Yahuwahu then hardened his heart again to make him go after the Israelites.

This does not sound like a god that wants to reach Pharaoh. This sounds like a god that is playing with Pharaoh to demonstrate his power to his homes, the Israelites.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, the proper conclusion is that it's a fucking duck.

3. Blameless? I have already discussed this. They were not blameless. We also know from many OT examples that those who side with God escape His wrath. But you know this don't you...

It is absolutely ludicrous that the EVERY PERSON OF THE NATION OF EGYPT played a willing part in the enslavement of the Israelites, or benefited from the same. Most people in Egypt would be poor farmers who couldn't afford a single slave. The people who would own slaves would be the upper crust, who are much much less numerous than the pesants below. Also, do you think that small children who don't know any better or the little babies just born only to die in the last plague caused harm to a single Israelite, you psycho? Yet these babies and children died. They are, by any reasonable definition of the word, blameless.

4.Acting immorally? It is immoral to want to punish mortal sinners? It is immoral to warn them over and over before you punish them? What you smoking?

It is immoral to punish innocent people while you are punishing those 'sinners', you psycho. It is immoral to manipulate the wills of even sinners to make it impossible to accept any warning you give them. In that case, you are not "warning" them; you are taunting them.

5. ''Might makes right''' You got that from what I wrote? Did you miss me saying ''the rest of the bible shows us what in fact God decides to do with His power?...John 3:16 for starters''? Just because God can be cruel does not mean He is cruel.  CAN and IS are different words.

I know what I said. When his cruelty is directed towards innocents, knowingly and willfully, then yes, he IS cruel.

6. Agreed. That is why it is impressive to grasp that God has nothing to hide.

"Nothing to hide"?

<Searching for Hell>
<Hell not found>
<Searching for Heaven>
<Heaven not found>
<Searching for Yahuwahu/God>
<Yahuwahu/God not found>

He seems to be hiding rather a lot for someone who has "nothing to hide."

He invites our judgment by making us smarter in heaven. Heck even now with our God given brains. Not sure someone can always be SO biased when using their God given brain. You ''''''really'''''' believe God did not expect you to use your brain to judge Him / could not see your judgment coming / stated that He is good whilst knowing the brain he gave us would judge Him as evil....please think on this more.

The problem, my dear demented psycho, is that I have thought about this, much deeper than you have. There is no evidence for his existence equal to the claim of his existence. A supposedly all-powerful being could manifest in the next minute, perform some amazing act that is verifiable all around the world by the best scientific instruments. He could show us Pharaoh, suffering in hell, contrite and repentant. He could lift that "darkly glass" â€"nowâ€" and reveal to all of us why he's such a good chap, even if he has to lower it again to preserve our tiny little minds. It would not prove that he is everything he says, but it would be a fucking start!

The only thing you have is your worthless apologetic, trying to defend the undefendable acts of the Yahuwahu portrayed in the OT. The OT God was a vile creature, and Christianity would have done well to drop him altogether. Your attempts to try to spin my refusal to fold to your empty reasoning is not my problem. It's yours.

7. We are judging God of the bible with the bible. The bible says we will not see through a glass darkly. The fact that angels are good and Christians / His people are supposed to be the type that lay their life down for you should tell you all you need to know about God...as you were alluding to.

Of course Yahuwahu would pass by his own standard, in a book that he (supposedly) wrote, no matter how evil he is in (hypothetical) fact. Of course a deceptive god would try to convince you that his goodness is beyond your understanding. I am absolutely unconvinced by such self-serving propoganda. Most people here are similarly unconvinced, because we hold the bible to the same skepticism we hold any other book or work.

8. That has nothing to do with it. Think more on these scriptures Rom 12:9, James 1:27.

Cherrypicked and empty platitudes. Do Romans and James restore the innocent Egyptian lives tortured and killed during Exodus? And there were innocent lives; the Egyptians were not a hive mind or the fucking Borg!

9. Real scholars would not make such terrible reading blunders or ignore history and current reality just because a little doubt is cast.

Ha ha ha! Real schollars know that later passages don't negate the former passages. Real schollars note that apparently Yahuwahu did the awful shit to Egypt and took away more people in one stroke than in all their wars... and apparently never noticed and think that the book is telling a fib, even if it was the bible. Real schollars would note that the bible does not square away with archeology, and think that the bible is telling a distorted story.

Of course, the people who are pumping you with bible info are not real schollars.

10. I disagree. If they set up camp there will be no evidence today. Albeit 600 000 + people. They left in 1446bc. 3500 years of history on the same spots can never be traced to them. Unless they built up a town, which we know they didn't.

I don't care if YOU disagree. You are not an archeologist. You don't know what we're capable of finding by way of our modern instruments. You don't know what ancient peoples on the move leave behind. We have found ancient, long abandoned silver mines in Israel. We've found exactly the kind of encampments you deny we find in desert areas. We've found ancient trade routes through tracking ancient camel tracks.

And guess where this thing was found?



That's right, hoss! It was in the middle of a fucking desert! Specifically, in the Valley of the Kings, where New Kingdom pharaohs were entombed in secret.

11.Well it is always interesting how one nation records history differently to another. Must I really explain why they would do such?

Would they really not remind themselves to not fuck with the God of Israel? To organize themselves after major disasters? Where are all the orders to send relief food to the various provinces? Where is all the chatter that livestock had been felled by a mysterious agent? Where were all the reports of the movement of the Israelites through Egyptian territory? Where are all the orders from Pharaoh to the various commanders and provinces to free their Israelite slaves and instruct them to go to Moses? What happened to the millitary orders to congregate to chase after the Israelites after Pharaoh's mind was changed for him?

Furthermore, where are all the foreign dignitaries during this debacle and who also would have bore witness/been hit by the plagues? (Yes, they existed. We have their diplomatic reports. And more innocent victims of Yahuwahu's temper tantrums.)

There have been about seven major bronze age empires in the ancient world in the Mediterainean and middle east regions alone. All ancient bureaucracies operated much like ours: you can't make a move in them without generating mountains of paperwork. If anything like what is described in the bible happened, there would have been vast piles of papyrus scribbled upon all over the Egyptian empire referencing it. Where is even one surviving document out of all this paperwork that surely would have been generated by Yahuwahu's actions if the bible was at all accurate?

I say again: *pfft* NUTHIN'!

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are, it's a duck. Your bible looks like mythology from any angle examined.

[Baruch]

Mythology is mythical ... but history is political.  History has always been state supported propaganda ... it isn't so much a search for facts for their own sake, but the finding, selecting and distorting of facts in support of a political agenda.  Take any historical event, look at it from multiple perspectives, and you see less and less truth.  It is mistaken or lying to call myth ... history.  But it is equally tendentious to call history factual ... best to just call it propaganda.  Not that there aren't facts ... but that all the juicy parts, the meaning of history that is the pattern woven by the historian out of the current facts (which change all the time) ... that is the propaganda.

There were and still are Egyptians (Hamites).  There were and still are Hebrews (Semites).  Some of these Hebrews were later called Judeans (Jews).  It is always fun for me to study history, but I can never actually go back and interview Pharaoh to get the real skinny.  But as the propaganda changes over time ... that is interesting too ... like the relationship between Thera, Atlantis and the "story" of the Exodus.

Playing Devil's Advocate ... I remain unconvinced that people actually love good and hate bad (a more neutral term than "evil").

[Mike Cl]

Playing Devil's Advocate ... I remain unconvinced that people actually love good and hate bad (a more neutral term than "evil").

I really like you take on history.  I was introduced to that concept while in college.  I hated high school history.  And also the 'required' college history.  But then, I had a class that introduced the idea that the victor of an event got to write the history.  And I was hooked.  The old adage--there are two sides to any story--is hogwash.  There are multiple sides to any story and not all are equally factual. 

My take on your quote above is that while all people (well, the vast majority) like 'good', not all can agree on what that is.  It can a does change with each society and to some degree, with each individual.  Good and bad are never written in stone.  For me personally, time matters.  Some of what I termed as 'bad' has become mostly good with the passing of time.  And visa versa.  Same with  good.  So, even for own personal life, those terms are relative.  But 'evil' has remained mostly unchanged.  For as long as I can remember, torturing an animal has been a hallmark of evil.  It has not changed and I doubt it ever will.  So, while evil remains constant for me, good and bad do not.

[Baruch]

History is something that you only get better at over time/effort made.  The young are closed minded, uninformed and naive.  As you get involved, one can become more open minded, better informed and less naive.  If anything, one is studying the history of propaganda.  One starts to ask ... why did the author write this, and what was his agenda in doing so.  This goes back to Pharaoh Rameses creating giant propaganda in stone about his "victory" over the Hittites.  We can only wish we had more Hittite material to compare it to.

[the_antithesis]

give God of the bible a ''fair'' trial.

God is not on trial.

There is no god here.

Just you.

You are completely alone.

And you are found wanting.

Go away.

[Baruch]

Actually "give G-d of the Bible a "fair" trial" is Buddhist not Christian.  The existential approach to religion is Buddhist ... the Buddha says, be diligent in working out your own salvation.  That isn't how Christianity works ... originally the king or emperor decides to adopt a new religion and a new clergy ... and then presto-chango all his subjects are now Christians.  That is what King Clovis of the Franks did.

Evangelical Christianity is mostly American pop psychology, with very little Christianity in it.  But it is a funny notion:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Living-Biblically-Literally/dp/0743291476/ref=cm_cr_pr_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

Of course the point of the exercise was to be Jewish ... not Gentile.  The Christians never get that point!

[1liesalot]

A quick thing about morality and hell .... What would have happened if Hitler had embraced Jeeeeesus just before he shot himself? Would he go to Heaven? And would I be sent in the opposite direction just for rejecting mumbo-jumbo Christianity (as opposed to starting to world wars and killing everyone).  And then there's  eternal hell fire?!!!! What a concept! Eternal burning flesh for ever and ever? I wouldn't even do it to Hitler, because even that monster didn't actually ask to be born.


FUCK

OFF

[1liesalot]

Right.  It's about submission.  Doing what you're told.

Funny you should say this but someone just told me that Islam literally means "submission".

[Baruch]

Don't worry ... I assume spending an eternity with Hitler will be hell indeed ;-(  How many times will I have to hear ... "If only I had shot that fat idiot, Goering ... I could have won the big one!".

On a more personal note ... I find some eidetic dreams to be ... about reincarnation or other worldly.  I met Napoleon at a wine and cheese party once, 200 years ago ... and we made very short chit-chat in French, when I didn't know any French at the time.  I studied French for three years afterward ... so if I meet him again, we can have a more interesting conversation.  If I meet Hitler in a dream ... "gott in himmel" ... I will be in trouble, because I have never gotten a knack for German ... and you know how fast and emotional his orations are!  But in another eidetic dream, I was a German soldier in WW II ... so I might stand a chance from that POV ... but I might be only allowed to salute ;-(

[1liesalot]

Totally figures.,