No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

Sure you can. The two are unrelated.
If you incur a judge's wrath, you'll get slapped with contempt of court. But a judge need not charge anyone with contempt to show mercy. Sounds like a form of Munchausen by Proxy. Put someone in danger, then 'save' them, and reap the rewards.This message has been edited by DominionSeraph, 08-27-2005 12:29 PM

Sorry, I was unclear.Pissing off the judge will get you slapped with contempt. But a judge doesn't have to be pissed off and charge you with contempt for him to let you off lightly for the original charge. There's no requirement for the judge to ever be mad at anyone. Who made the Law and who made the transgressors? Ain't Game Theory grand? It's an impossible thing.

Technically, no. But if the judge doesn't mind what the defendant's doing, I really don't think he's gonna charge him with contempt. We deduce 'anger' when we see someone going overboard. Thus, regardless of whether or not God was angry, the perception of 'wrath' means that God was acting unjustly. If God created everything, he created that system. If God is perfect, that must be exactly what he wants. If God is imperfect, that could be other than what he wants; but it ain't my fault if God didn't set things up right.

Yes and no. We can decide to allow or disallow certain behaviors, but we have absolutely no say in how well they work.
From an evolutionary standpoint, with a species' given attributes, in a given overall situation, certain behaviors are simply more optimal than others. Some behaviors, if universally practiced, would quickly lead to extinction -- and extinction ain't subjective. Extinction just the realization of 'woefully deficient' -- those behaviors would be, objectively, woefully deficient for that place and time. They would be in error, and in evolution's trial-and-error process, the errors die.Now, it's not surprising that humans, having woefully deficient attributes for living solitarily, do have the instincts to behave in a way that is well-suited to living in a group, and so are social animals. This 'morality' was not made and determined by people -- it was tried and found to work by Nature.
Now, we do seem to have a problem in that humans evolved in small groups, so are suited to that. In small groups, who constitutes 'us' and who constitutes 'them' is clearly defined. We look after the 'us'; but the 'them', as competitors, are fair game. However, in larger groups, such as what we have after the development of agriculture, the line is blurred. We need a personal connection for a strong 'us', but humans can only bond with so many people. So, in a larger group, this means that each person places a good percentage of the others in an inbetween state -- perhaps something akin to a long-term truce. Instinct, however, doesn't seem to cover this, so behaviors are only regulated by how a person is perceiving them at any given time (subjective). If as 'us', everything works fine. If as 'them', as those behaviors are not conducive to societal cohesion, there are problems. So, we need laws to harmonize everyone to 'us', which allows for larger, more efficient societies.Hmmmm... did I have a point in there?

Only if they don't have a problem with using an invalid analogy.
Parents use negative reinforcement so the child associates that behavior with pain; and as humans try to avoid pain, anything that causes pain is likewise avoided. Killing the child, while effective at stopping all future instances of bad behavior, doesn't teach them to avoid those behaviors.
Now, killing one of your children for bad behavior would give you an effective tool for training the rest; but as normal parents don't do this, God doing this wouldn't be analogous to parenting. A mother only has so many tools at her disposal, and once the child turns 18, she no longer has access to some of the more effective ones. And the massive positive reinforcement of heroin use plus the massive negative reinforcement of withdrawal is a hard system to trump. It takes the tools that are available to a rehab clinic to really have any shot; and as a mother doesn't have access to these tools, and if the tools available to her aren't sufficient to get her child to check into rehab, giving up is justified.
Now, if the mother was given all the tools available to an omnipotent being, it seems to me that that would change a few things. Curing the addiction, and thus negating the motivation to steal, would be a snap.

Depends on whether it's right. Without evidence that he's a lab rat, and that there's food at the end of the trial; there's no reason for him to believe he's a lab rat, and for him to believe that there's food at the end of the trial.

My old signature would be appropriate here:"God screwed up. God then punished His creation for His own mistake. God then sacrificed Himself to Himself. God has lost his bloody mind."

I worded it wrong, as I used 'reinforcement' to refer to the behaviors that were avoided, instead of the desired behaviors.
The desired behaviors are negatively reinforced, as they don't have the painful stimuli attached.

So, your God is basically running a cosmic protection racket.