God and Sex

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I don't see the part about adultery.

Let me point out, for your instruction, 2 Timothy 3:16



The response quoted above is both profane and shockingly unChristian.

However, Proverbs 26:2

What are you trying to do?

Do you think bringing this up and continuing to harp on it, when Ragtime obviously would rather not discuss it, is going to help him get over the past?

We are discussing God and Sex.

Firstly let me start off by saying what Pandabear did was wrong by any standard. But given his proclivity for posting images of lynchings et al it can be hardly called surprising. And before you defend yourself mister black and white, just because a boxer's groin is within the ring does not mean its within the rules to punch there.

Reacting with emotion to a proposition is not a particularly good manner of addressing it logically. God issues moral commandments, these are statements that are reflective of his nature; not rules that bind his actions. The position you are putting forward would entails that we consider moral values and duties to be above God; which is strange because that posits a moral law higher than the divine; which is pretty much to asserting a contradiction. Most Christian philosophers would argue that God's moral laws are contingent on their being applied to the human condition relative to the times and places and recipients of those commands. For example, in the God, through Moses, condescends to man in his commands relating to divorce; he permits it, because he knows that circumstances will necessitate it.

“Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been that way ” (Matt. 19.8)

I have seen you put forward euthyphro type arguments before, so it is not surprising that you would prescribe a form of moral ontology that pigeon hole divine command theory into one of the dilemma's horns. Unfortunately the dilemma is escapable, because if one posits that God is good then it follows that the deontological absolutism you are talking about is clearly wrong. God commands we do not kill, but God kills so clearly God is not restrained in that sense. Rather, God kills for a justifiable reason. I think it is important that you do not react emotionally to the last part of that sentence. Because by justifiable it is implied that the ends are understood; for man this is never the case, we are not omniscient. God however has perspective that is not available to us.

The position you put forward, is most like deontological volunteerism, something found in the Islamic conception of God more-so than the Christian. Volunteerism is arbitrary and hence not really objective. Under the view held by most Christian philosophers; God's commands flow from his nature and he acts in accordance within the concept of a morally sufficient reason and not in line with an arbitrary barrier that is either not objective, or is above him. Hence, I think you may have misunderstood the conception that Christians tend to defend and put forward.

goodness. all these words are a waste of time.
if you have goodness in your core i will see it, and i have seen it in a few people here, but i did not work out how to tell them that i liked them, and i am too lazy to do so now even, but i have many more compelling things to pay attention to before i can relax tonight.

paradise is expensive.


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And what is the justification?

This statement misses the point. If one evaluates the need for God to have a reason with his omniscience it follows that he has one. When discussing the internal logical consistency of a proposition, this is entirely justified.

In other words: 'don't try to understand why God does seemingly psychopathic shizz...he is God, after all. We mortals are too dumb to get it'.

Your argument also seems to amount to, 'God is good because it says so in this book, which I've accepted to be true for some reason. Even if it appears that he does evil things, we can explain it away because this book also says God is omniscient, too'. Moreover, humans are supposed to know good from evil, right? Otherwise, what would be the whole point of this test on earth? If God appears evil, then according to our God-given knowledge of right and wrong, God is evil. We're supposedly animal numero uno because God made us smart enough to know morality but due to this, we see how truly immoral is God. Either our divinely-granted moral compass is fit for purpose, or it isn't.

However, moral = God's will, doesn't it? God's will changes, so what's moral changes. Moral is whatever God decides it is at that moment in time. This can result in massacres, like the ones in the Bible, being moral. Your religion scares me.

Also, if you reply to this, please dumb it down for me and write plainly.

@puddingmouse

I am not making an argument for the existence of God. Rather it just proposing a position that harmonizes the complaint that was made relating to God's actions and his nature; which can sometimes seem to be at odds with one another. What this means is that I am not trying to prove God's existence with the statement I made; I just put forward a proposition and explored it from there.

You are correct that humans have a moral sense that allows us to have an insight into right from wrong. That said, it is by no means flawless and it does not follow that because we cannot see a justifiable reason, that no such reason exists; we just don't have the same amount of information to work with. This is why the logical problem of evil (the argument that there is a contradiction in God's nature) fails; because it is always possible that a reason could exist and it is not always possible for us to know it.

When we talk about morality being God's will we are not talking about a situation where God's will could be anything. Rather, God's will must exist in line with his traits. For example, if God is to be taken to be the greatest possible moral being, then there are obviously huge limitations on what his will can be. When we talk about the Old Testament, the truth is we probably do not understand the situation in which the violence is occurring. It is entirely possible that the Israelites were wrong about God sanctioning their actions. It is also possible that God had a morally sufficient reason for issuing a direct command to them. It does not follow that one would be justified today in doing the same thing (William Lane Craig on the problem of evil http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5350 ).

When Catholics (I can only talk for my own Church on this) talk about faith in God we do not make a virtue of blind faith. In fact our teaching is that sacrificium intellectus (the sacrifice of the intellect) is a sign of non-genuine faith and as such it is not condoned ( for a more detailed explanation of Catholic faith check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_4PSgFjtvI ).

Who said God's will changes? The basis for the destruction you complain about in the OT is a theocracy directly ruled by God himself. Corruption of the Law is completely unacceptable, and the conquest of Canaan which was supposed to entail the expulsion or destruction of wicked people is understandable given the context. These laws DO NOT apply to anyone living outside Israel.

You will note that Israel disobeyed the Law and the same thing happened to them at the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. God's will doesn't change.

How wicked were they?


Which law did they disobey?


God knows everything even before it happens. So, why didn't he change things?

THE Law


Because God's will doesn't change.

So, if everything happens as a result of God's will, which doesn't change, then you can't really blame Israel for disobeying God's law, which they were predestined to do anyway.

All have sinned and fallen short. We are all predestined to sin and death. Those who are faithful to God are predestined for eternal life.

Israel is NOT God, however, and being merely human and imperfect, God is merciful to allow them to make up their own minds and their own wills. After all, God wants willing servants, not unwilling. It's the will of the people that is mutable, not God's will. As such people have the ability to act contrary to God's will. That means they can choose good OR evil, and thus they are responsible for their own actions. Thus you CAN blame Israel for disobeying the Law.

Besides that--you have a paradox concerning God's will and human variance from it. Sure, God knows everything and transcends time. Certainly God has the ability to change what happens in the world and could have created a human world without free will. We wouldn't even HAVE this discussion had certain things gone according to plan. But if God knew what would happen and based on that created such a world that none of that ever would have happened, then how could even an omniscient God know that what DID happen even WOULD have happened? If there's nothing to know, then not even omniscience will reveal something where there's nothing. I prefer to believe that God got it right the first time and human beings screwed it up. The part that's left up to God's will is that we're free. Now, sure, that means we're free to do evil. But it also means we are free to do good. Whichever one we give God, God will use it to the outcome He desires without regard to our intentions.