Is it moral for God to punish us?

Isn't this really a question about free will, determinism etc? Your post assumes a particular answer, namely that God specifies the nature of his creation at birth. Actually there are other possibilities.1) God shapes behavior after creation, sometimes during punishment
2) Man has free will, and gets punished for making bad choices

What is it that I call bad choices?

Really? Do you believe this motivation describes your own behavior? Do you do everything that there is a motivation to do? Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

So you cannot help but commit adultery or to steal your neighbors ox? I personally make choices on a daily basis. I don't do everything that I can afford to do, and I am capable of doing things that inconvenience me but help others. I think people are more complex than you give them credit for.In any event, the assumptions you make here are too simple and uninteresting. I leave you to argue with ringo and others.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

That would not be altruism at all. Tell me what the 'scratch a back' reasoning is behind anonymous giving if you want to insist on this kind of tit for tat. People are more complex than you give them credit for here. That includes the fact that they are not stuck in some kind of nature beyond their ability to decide regardless of inherited predisposition. If you want to narrow your model down to discuss humans predestined and unavoidably and therefore unsuitable for punishment, let me suggest that under man's law we do punish people for the bad things they do. Is it moral that your parents disciplined you? Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Right, and I said that reciprocity is not a component of true altruism. I provided an example of altruism in which there was no reciprocity. That's a lie. I provided an example of the complications that your simple thread ignores. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Please don't apologize. I wish that you had the time to post more often.

That is not what was claimed. What was said was that all of the gospels other than the four accepted ones were written later. You've cited a list of gospels. All that is left is to point to ones that meet the time requirement. Why not do that?

That's correct. And we must conclude from that fact, that the reasons for excluding those gospels is unlikely to be strongly based on dates of authorship. There must have been other considerations. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

That's fine. My only complaint would be that the arguments you made were offbase. If you really don't care about any of it, then why even delve into the process of canonization?

No. What people find remarkable is that only 'some' of the people present were expected to be alive at an event that occurred just a few hours later. Or more to the point, that it seems strange that Jesus would expect the people present to be surprised by the fact that some of them would still be alive only a few hours later.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.