LanDroid wrote:
Flann5 wrote:
This line of attack typically involves feigned outrage at biblical events such as the flood which they don't believe happened in the first place!



No, the outrage is real, you just don't understand how it's directed. The outrage is not directed at the story itself, but along the following lines.
- It is claimed that a divine being sanctioned the near total extinction of all life.
- This divine being is merciful, just, benevolent, omniscient, and all powerful.
- This genocide and the resultant rampant incest are celebrated as just acts of a merciful deity.

As Peter Williams states in the video you linked, it is appropriate to judge the morality of a narrative even if it didn't happen. So this real outrage is not directed at the story (which didn't happen), or the deity (which doesn't exist), but it is directed at the current idea of a near life extinction event being upheld and taught to children as a positive example of justice.

O.K. Landroid what does the text say? Briefly from memory. God saw they did evil from their youth up. That every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. That the earth was filled with violence through them.

Also that God's spirit would not always strive with man forever, implying a real divine influence wrestling with man against doing evil.
That God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the Ark was being built which was decades at least if not longer. Whether you believe these timescales is irrelevant to the integrity of the account as you concede.

There is a biblical pattern of God warning men and not bringing judgement if they repent, as with Ninevah.

Futhermore it's a biblical truth that God endowed man with a conscience he must violate in order to commit moral evil and to be only set on evil continually is a pretty bad state of affairs.
To say that the creator can not bring judgement in these circumstances is absurd. Your main gripe is that children also perished in the flood.
But on the eternal scale this could be an act of mercy not allowing them to grow up like their parents and reaping deserved judgement ultimately.
You get indignant about the abuses of black slaves in the U.S. and rightly so. Suppose the 'owner' of that slave who's back was scarred and lacerated by merciless floggings was brought before a human judge. I don't need to detail all the other related abuses.

In any case what should a just judge do to that brutal slave owner? Nothing? Community service for a week? Your own moral outrage implies that evil and injustice should be punished or it's a meaningless delusion. Is it?

But somehow you think that God the creator should not judge and punish evil behaviour because that makes him evil in your estimation if he does.
You characterize it as genocide but if humans persist in evil it's not genocide for God to bring judgement which they really bring on themselves.
Maybe a judge who passes a capital sentence on a callous killer is a murderer in your eyes, but many would disagree and see it as an act of executing justice.

You know very well that Christianity is not solely about judgement but of the Son of God voluntarily accepting an excruciating death to provide atonement for those who have sinned against him.

You don't believe that apparently, but that's an integral part of the biblical account which you say you take at face value for argument sake.

The reasonable conditions are repentance and faith. You reject that,which is your choice, but don't complain about God judging men according to their works, which is what a just God must do, to be just at all.

As for the incest claim,well Noah's sons and their wives entered the Ark and I don't see that their wives were related to them.
Their descendant's would be cousins and if you want to make a big deal about that well fine, but it's really nitpicking in the context of the story.
What makes cousins marrying morally wrong in your universe? Society says so or it's genetically bad? Who says this was the case at that time?
God later introduced laws against incest which is where we actually get them from, here in the Western world.

Sure evil and injustice should be punished, but your attempt to justify a global extinction event disgusts me. Obviously morality cannot emerge from a Beast who would commit such crimes.

LanDroid wrote:Sure evil and injustice should be punished, but your attempt to justify a global extinction event disgusts me. Obviously morality cannot emerge from a Beast who would commit such crimes.

So by your reasoning Landroid, God would have been morally justified in taking out the evil adults but he should have spared the children and babies and left them to fend for themselves?

Atheists seem to always know better than an omniscient God,how to run the universe. From a biblical perspective there will be a general resurrection and final judgement. I don't see how God is morally unjust in taking any life if he is the giver of all life.

If in that resurrection these children have an eternal future which is good and most likely would not have not been had they been allowed to live and follow their parents evil practices, I don't see that as being evil governance of humanity.

Besides that I don't see moral outrage from you, Silverman,Aronra and fellow protesters at the legalized murder of innocent babies in the womb as practiced by Planned Parenthood.

In many cases their bodies literally are thrown in the trash bin. Arguably this has also involved a covert agenda by it's racist eugenicist founders to wipe out black people by systematically targeting black and minority's babies in the womb.

Where is your moral outrage about that? Will you and your protesting freethinker friends be protesting the massive public tax funding for this?

So by your reasoning Landroid, God would have been morally justified in taking out the evil adults but he should have spared the children and babies and left them to fend for themselves?

Wow I never said that. Evil and injustice should be punished, but that punishment certainly does not have to include killing people. Our criminal justice system does no operate that way, requiring death for those who worship the wrong god and other injustices. Evidently you're claiming ALL those people (and other animals & plants!) had due process, were guilty of capital crimes, and deserved to be drowned.

If in that resurrection these children have an eternal future which is good and most likely would not have not been had they been allowed to live and follow their parents evil practices, I don't see that as being evil governance of humanity.

A repulsive justification for massive genocide.

As to Planned Parenthood, they provide many services that reduce the number of abortions and the ones they do perform are not federally funded.

LanDroid wrote:Quote:
So by your reasoning Landroid, God would have been morally justified in taking out the evil adults but he should have spared the children and babies and left them to fend for themselves?



Wow I never said that. Evil and injustice should be punished, but that punishment certainly does not have to include killing people. Our criminal justice system does no operate that way, requiring death for those who worship the wrong god and other injustices. Evidently you're claiming ALL those people (and other animals & plants!) had due process, were guilty of capital crimes, and deserved to be drowned.

Really? So in your opinion the Nazi war criminals do not deserve capital punishment which would be killing people and apparently that is unjust? That is never justified?

The point about due process is that an omniscient God already knows all the fact. I did not say they all deserved to be drowned. I pointed out that if God is the giver of all life he can take it and the fact that death is not the end but there is an eternal scale by which this must be judged. That's taking the biblical teachings at face value.

Here again the account includes their supernatural deliverance from bondage in Egypt and a covenant they agreed to keep.It doesn't bother you if people worship the wrong God.

However if they knew by stupendous miraculous signs that Yahweh was the one true God and made a covenant with him I don't think this God is unjust to stipulate with sanctions that they must not worship false Gods on pain of death.

I know these laws do not apply to contemporary society and the N.T. does not envisage this but it was for a particular people at a certain time with unique circumstances.

LanDroid wrote:
Quote:
If in that resurrection these children have an eternal future which is good and most likely would not have not been had they been allowed to live and follow their parents evil practices, I don't see that as being evil governance of humanity.



A repulsive justification for massive genocide.

That's your opinion Landroid.

LanDroid wrote:As to Planned Parenthood, they provide many services that reduce the number of abortions and the ones they do perform are not federally funded.

So you have no problem with the taking of innocent life in the womb and they are doing wonderful work? Frankly this is an appalling double standard you are exhibiting here.

It's simply statistically false that the provision of legalized abortion reduces the number of these killings. In the U.K. abortion has skyrocketed over time and gone completely off the charts. Are you telling me it's different in the U.S?

Not only that but children in the womb with downs syndrome are aborted in droves. But then they don't really deserve to live says enlightened modern man.
It's really just being merciful to them. P.P. are getting a lot of public funding. Bottom line, do you think it's morally ok to take the lives of innocent babies in the womb? I suppose the history of P.P. and it's racist eugenicist founders is just a conspiracy theory black civil rights activists invented?
Give me a break!
We've all seen that extensive video footage of the cold P.P. managers with their chilling contempt for the lives of these babies who are dispensable and treated as commodities.
And all you do is defend P.P!

Flann 5 wrote:So in your opinion the Nazi war criminals do not deserve capital punishment which would be killing people and apparently that is unjust? That is never justified?

Just to throw my $.02 in here, wouldn't it be nice if God had come down here and smote Hitler down before he could make the genocide machine that killed six million Jews? Surely you can see that cleansing the earth of all life except for two of every kind of animal and Noah and his extended family is quite literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Were all those people that bad? Was there no hope for any of them? Was God incapable of engendering any kind of societal reform to help humans, especially considering the fact that they were all made in his image? Why did He make people who were so flawed?

This is such black-and-white fairy tale nonsense, it boggles the mind.

There's no question that abortion is an awful thing, but it's also a reality of biology and circumstances. If Planned Parenthood was wiped from the face of the earth, something presumably God could make happen, people would turn to back alley butchers with coat hangers. Abortion is an act of desperation. I don't believe most young, unmarried women, who choose to have an abortion, come away from it gleefully singing in the street. It would be nice to turn back the clock and create a society where young, unwed pregnant girls were shunned and sent away in disgrace and where the men who impregnated them get slapped on the back with a "you sly dog, you!" And men, by a fluke of biology, can reclaim their patriarchal glory. Hey, maybe we can make slavery legal again too. Let's bring back the ignorance and squalor and brutality of biblical times. You can use the Bible to justify it all and bring back those glorious days.

geo wrote:Just to throw my $.02 in here, wouldn't it be nice if God had come down here and smote Hitler down before he could make the genocide machine that killed six million Jews? Surely you can see that cleansing the earth of all life except for two of every kind of animal and Noah and his extended family is quite literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Were all those people that bad? Was there no hope for any of them? Was God incapable of engendering any kind of societal reform to help humans, especially considering the fact that they were all made in his image? Why did He make people who were so flawed?

This is such black-and-white fairy tale nonsense, it boggles the mind.

I'm sorry Geo, but this is just a typical atheist response where you now try to blame God for the genocide of the Nazis! Such leaders are nothing new.
In effect you demand that God constantly intervene to prevent men from doing evil. God gives humans the dignity of making real choices for which he will hold them accountable ultimately. He's given commandments against murder and evil and the promise of future real judgement.
Some people may not believe this but that's how God is revealed in the bible. The bible says they were that bad. Evil behaviour can be incremental both for individuals and societies.

Look at the way Nazi ideology swept an entire nation or the atrocities of Stalinism adopted not just by a few but many people. The Nazi's started with sterilisation and ended with mass murders.

We are flawed but still capable of doing good as well as evil. There can be gradual societal desensitization to evil as with the Roman empire where you arrive at a decadent society throwing humans into the arena to be devoured by starving lions,
for public entertainment.
The veneer of civilization is wafer thin and it doesn't take that much to throw continents into horrific world wars as in Europe in the 20th century.
In saying this, it was a morally commendable choice by those who took up arms against the Nazis. Both sides of human behaviour are found there.
There's an arrogance about humans thinking they know better than an omniscient God. If I was God I would have done everything differently!

geo wrote:There's no question that abortion is an awful thing, but it's also a reality of biology and circumstances. If Planned Parenthood was wiped from the face of the earth, something presumably God could make happen, people would turn to back alley butchers with coat hangers. Abortion is an act of desperation. I don't believe most young, unmarried women, who choose to have an abortion, come away from it gleefully singing in the street. It would be nice to turn back the clock and create a society where young, unwed pregnant girls were shunned and sent away in disgrace and where the men who impregnated them get slapped on the back with a "you sly dog, you!" And men, by a fluke of biology, can reclaim their patriarchal glory. Hey, maybe we can make slavery legal again too. Let's bring back the ignorance and squalor and brutality of biblical times. You can use the Bible to justify it all and bring back those glorious days.

I'm not saying that abortion is not a painful choice for many women. We have to be realistic though and notice how it starts with genuinely hard cases and widens to be abortion on demand. That is the pattern. The numbers are shocking and we have to ask how a so called civilized society legalizes what is the killing of the most helpless and vulnerable among us, on an industrial scale.

We should be honest too about the appalling racist roots of the eugenics movement and the reality that it was these same bedfellows of the Nazis who drove this movement which has culminated in Planned Parenthood.
The point is not how women who have abortions feel about it which may be bad but the moral issue of whether the killing of babies in the womb is ethical or unethical.
Do these babies lives have no value and are they just disposable pieces of meat? We genuinely should be shocked that human life can be so grossly devalued.
You talk about the ignorance of biblical times and yet it was the Christians who set a moral pattern of caring for the despised and discarded in the Roman empire which even Emperors noted.
As far I'm concerned you can keep this so called enlightened age's utter contempt for the value of human life if that's the pinnacle and glory of modernity.

So in your opinion the Nazi war criminals do not deserve capital punishment which would be killing people and apparently that is unjust? That is never justified?

I said "Evil and injustice should be punished, but that punishment certainly does not have to include killing people." (Perhaps that's unclear - what I intended was killing is not a mandatory punishment, other options are available depending on the severity.) Capital punishment could be justified in cases like the Nuremberg Trials.

We could turn your questions around and consider since you refuse to decry massive genocide of nearly all life on the planet, how valid is your outrage against abortion - that's an "appalling double standard."

I did not say they all deserved to be drowned.

Uh -oh...maybe we are actually making a little progress here? What do you say about all the humans, animals, and even plants (food stuff) that did not deserve to be killed?

LanDroid wrote:We could turn your questions around and consider since you refuse to decry massive genocide of nearly all life on the planet, how valid is your outrage against abortion - that's an "appalling double standard."

It's not genocide for God to judge humans for persisting in evil. There is a difference which you refuse to recognize in God taking the life even of babies as the giver of life if you factor in that he can resurrect them and give them a good eternal future.
God says all humans will be resurrected and there is a judgement. I have no reason to believe that this would not be good for these babies.
The character of God is revealed in the person of Christ who amazingly endured abuse at the hands of his creatures and went so far as to sacrifice his life to make atonement for human sins. This shows that this is serious and not just glossed over while at the same time God extends grace and forgiveness to all who repent and believe.

That's the gospel, but all you ever see is how terrible it is that God actually punishes evil. Well he does,but you have to be pretty hard hearted not to recognize God's character in taking this punishment himself so that he would not have to punish those who avail of his gracious offer.

Humans who take the life of babies can not give them any future life.. They are simply killing them and that is against the commandment of God and morally wrong.

LanDroid wrote:
Quote:
I did not say they all deserved to be drowned.



Uh -oh...maybe we are actually making a little progress here? What do you say about all the humans, animals, and even plants (food stuff) that did not deserve to be killed?

It's often the case that the evil of some affects others. The alcoholic father can have bad effects on their children. God cursed the ground for man's sake because of his disobedience so that it brought forth thistles and thorns.

And again the question is that if God is the creator of all life can he not take it? The judgement was awful, but it was intended to inculcate the lesson that human evil is not a trivial thing with God.
In the beginning the creation was good and even the predatory nature of animals did not exist. I know you don't believe this but we are taking the account in it's integrity.
As Peter Williams says there are bookends at the beginning and end of God's ideal where the wolf lies down with the lamb etc.
Something went wrong and that was original human disobedience resulting in death.

Why does everything die? If evolution is so incomprehensibly complex and ingenious in it's creations why can it not create living things that don't die?
Maintaining them would seem to be a much simpler task than creating these stunningly complex creatures themselves.

The theory though, perversely, makes competition and death it's driving force. And it didn't escape my notice that the racist eugenicists were utterly immersed in this theory with their social engineering dreams and nightmare practices.
All those unfit, feeble-minded races must go.
And yes the transition to P.P. contains a rogues gallery of these eugenicists.

You were evasive,claiming incredibly that P.P. actually reduces the number of abortions which is a sick joke the ever increasing numbers belie.
Do you believe the killing of unborn babies in the womb is morally wrong or not? You say that God should not do this. How about humans?

Flann 5 wrote:I'm sorry Geo, but this is just a typical atheist response where you now try to blame God for the genocide of the Nazis! Such leaders are nothing new.
In effect you demand that God constantly intervene to prevent men from doing evil. God gives humans the dignity of making real choices for which he will hold them accountable ultimately. He's given commandments against murder and evil and the promise of future real judgement.
Some people may not believe this but that's how God is revealed in the bible. The bible says they were that bad. Evil behaviour can be incremental both for individuals and societies.

I'm just expressing my own genuine bewilderment (whether it's a typical atheist response or not). I don't expect God to intervene in the affairs of men because I don't believe God exists. My bewilderment has to do with those who believe in a God who is so inconsistent. One day he decides to kill 99.999 percent of life on the planet—life that He himself created! I would call this a profound failure on God's part. He made people and they turned out horribly wrong. And, yet he can't be bothered to interfere with the mass genocide of the Jews.

So you say that men were so evil in these pre-Bible days, despite having been fashioned in His image, that they had to be destroyed. In the same breath, you say he wants us to make us accountable for our own sins. Well, which is it?

The obvious conclusion is that people made God in their image, and that image has changed—evolved, if you will—with the times. Thus, a patriarchal culture will have a basic He-man as their god, as Barash has pointed out. An agrarian society will feature a dying and reviving god, etc. There are countless examples throughout history. There are countless permutations of God and thousands and thousands of religions. But the God you believe happens to be the right one and your Biblical interpretation is correct, the others are wrong. Makes perfect sense!