Raf

"The apparent harshness of the temporary law is not to be taken to hyperbole"? Where do you get this stuff? Yahweh personally ordered the execution of a man for Sabbath breaking. He demanded executions for investigating other religions. This isn't "apparent harshness," and it's an insult to the language to say it is. And that poor guy who got stoned to death would like to thank you for reminding the rock throwers that they weren't supposed to be doing what Yahweh explicitly ordered them to do! Again with the "evolutionary perspective." Yahweh does not change. It seems implausible, to be polite, to suggest that God (who, let's remind you, is "all-powerful") could not conceive of a way to "look out for our eternal well-being" without ordering capricious executions for minor wrongdoing, that He could not have done so without authorizing slavery, that He could not have done so without making marriage to the raped woman a penalty for the commission of rape. There is no scripture that says God represents the process goal from an evolutionary perspective. You are not talking about Yahweh.

I never said anything about knowing God's intentions. His attributes are another story.

I've made no such claim. Be honest.

No. I've laid out a Biblical presentation of Yahweh and claimed we're better than that. And we are. And I've done so without advocating a single genocide. Or even murder. Or the wedding of a woman to her rapist. Or the killing of a man for picking up sticks on the wrong day of the week. Or the killing of a kid for considering another religion. or...

For those wondering what Vince F is up to... http://lhim.org/

No. it's a non sequitur. Believing Yahweh was a vicious vindictive tribal war God prone to excessive violence does not lead to the behaviors you claim. Believing he is morally perfect DOES lead to extremism andc excusing moral atrocities, as we've demonstrated on this very thread with you saying "so what" to killing a man for picking up sticks. Or the guy who spent a few pages defending slavery. To be clear, atheists have committed some horrible atrocities, as have theists, statists (especially statists), abortion rights opponents and self-hating gays. But to claim that there's a causal relationship between recognizing you are more moral than Yahweh and "opening yourself up to all manner of atrocity in the name of reaction to extremism" is logically fallacious. You can cite coincidence, but you cannot cite causation. You ARE more moral than Yahweh. That's not going to cause you, me or anyone else to kill Christians.

You have nothing to support that assertion.

How convenient. You get to make up whatever characteristics of God you want in order to win the argument. Would that my opponent were bound to a book. The only assumption i made is that the Bible is the most authoritative Source on the characteristics of Yahweh. When the Bible says he does not change, and someone comes along and says he does change, I have to go with the Bible

If you reject the notion that you are more moral now than Yahweh, then you will open yourself up to accepting all manner of atrocity in the name of religion.

My presentation of Yahweh is coming straight from the Bible. i've cited chapter and verse. Where are your chapters and verses?

The thing is, you are proving my point, but you are not proving my assertions or assumptions are false. Rather, you are demonstrating precisely why I am correct, but phrasing it in a way to make it seem like you're disproving my points. You are not disproving my points. You are proving them. If you are so committed to disagreeing with me that you can't even see that. You think your evolving God undermines my argument. Your evolving God makes my argument.

No assumptions. I have simply presented Yahweh as the Bible does.

$10 to anyone who correctly guesses my response.

Stories that contain propaganda can have tremendous staying power. Ask the average Muslim. Staying power doesn't prove a story true, not does it prove the story is not propaganda at heart.

The moment we say "God changes," we admit that man created God and not vice versa. Or that God is not perfect and can become better over time. Neither premise is supposed to be true of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible.

Yes, but that would not be on Yahweh. Or Superman.

So we are more moral today than Yahweh was in the O.T. Thank you for taking forever to agree with me.

The problem with the "holy just and good" law is not alleviated by the fact that it was only given to a limited number of people. The problem is that it was given to anyone at all! I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer only ate a miniscule fraction of the people he met. Why does he get stuck with the cannibal label? I can't even get you guys to admit genocide is immoral because it was ordered by Yahweh and he must have had his reasons and who am I to judge? And that's sad, because if you cannot call immorality immoral on its face, then you can still be suckered into any cult with a halfway clever story (to answer the previous question about how this topic relates to waybrain and recovery).

The problem with the blind men and the elephant analogy is that each person is wrong. The one who says it's a wall is ignoring all the other evidence. "Without God, there is no objective morality" is one of the blind men. He is ignoring all the evidence of God's immorality. As are you guys. Open your eyes.

Why is it disparaging to refer to changes in the nature of God as evolution? If you sell a false premise, for example, morality comes from and is dependent on God, then you are forced into a position of Defending indefensible and immoral actions because to do otherwise is to admit that the premise was false. For my part, I am still waiting for someone to demonstrate at the premise that I put forth is false. I've seen it denied, but I have not seen it refuted.

I cited scripture to support every single contention I made about Yahweh. You have cited nothing to refute those characterizations. You merely deny them and expect me to accept your denials as having some kind of weight because somebody with a degree gave you a half baked idea.

For those not keeping track, when he says Yahweh, he's talking not about the God actually depicted in the Bible, but his own wishful thinking of what that God should be.

Tell me, how many genocides have you ordered? How many did you personally commit? Not "mankind." YOU.

Personally, I think the rampant disingenuousness of the arguments challenging my thread topic demonstrate that I've touched a nerve. Yahweh is a petty, vindictive, genocidal war-god with a serious jealousy and impulse control problem. If you are not more moral than Yahweh, then you need a padded cell.

Whatever you say.