Do Christians Worship Different Gods?

I am more than just a little bit amazed at this kind of thinking. What possible evil could some newborn pagan child have done to deserve being killed?I used to think that both my mother and father worshiped the same god just in different ways. They just had a different name and a different cultural history of how they did it. Now I think it is clear that god is an idea that every individual reinvents for themselves, often from a template given to them by their inherited culture, but personal none the less.God evolves in your mind as you accept or reject certain aspects of the cultural characterization that created him in your mind to begin with. He therefore becomes a window into a person's character and the kinds of things someone will accept. Then those of us who disagree can only watch on in absolute dispair as our neighbors openly brandish such a callous disregard for life.

I think this is a total failure of imagination due to this particular commitment of faith. What about the thought that the genocide didn't need to occur at all? Is god also so unimaginative that he can think of no other way to get what he wants (which also happen to align with the material wants of the people writing the story)? According to whom? God? I think that is what you are saying.
But that doesn't address how WE should value life. What it seems you are essentially saying is that we can have no higher value for life than that of this imaginary despot who treats life as a petty substance that can be tossed away at a whim in order to serve his materialistic fancy. Killing so that a certain ethnic group can have a certain spot of land amongst all potential spots of land on this vast earth he supposidly built for them.If that is not what you are saying, then we can in fact judge these heinous acts as what they plainly are. That is okay as long as your are willing to accept that this god is a tyrant.Thankfully it is likely that none of those stories are true, or at the very least at that scale. Thankfully the blood on the hands of this particular god is not increased by the mytical war stories of the primitive people who invented him. This analogy fails at the very root of the fact that car crashes leave physical evidence. Even if we were to play with this analogy a little bit it is unfortunate that you chose to relate the identification of god to one of the most unreliable methods of investigation available to us.To go back to what I was saying, some people believe that god had a son, others believe that god would NEVER have a son. Those are not simply different slants of the same view. Those are mutually contradictory ideas. Even amongst Christians, some believe that you MUST be baptised in order to go to heaven. Others believe that you do not. Those are not different slants, they are exactly contradictory.There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little attributes of god that people pick and choose to make up their particular god. And my point was, the things that they are okay with accepting as a part of God tend to say a significant amount about their personality.I am not sure how to say this without making it personal. You shock me. Your belief that god can justify genocide is vulgar to me. It pains me to know that people think this way. And this was true even before I renounced my faith. I completely disagree. I think it is hard to argue that these ideas make any sense whatsoever. Even IF you grant the existence of this entity for the sake of the discussion. It seems to be quite easy to argue that such an entity taking life when it pleases him makes him vulgar and evil. Moreover, I also believe that the rationalization of the idea is disturbing because it has much to say about the failure of the human condition. That is something that I can agree should have a sensible amount of diversity.

Lets actually take a bit from the end of your reply first do dismiss of something straight away. You are using my emotive opinion to dismiss my prior argument that didn't depend on the emotion. Your views are contradictory and I ALSO think they are disgusting. You didn't address the issue I raised of the contradictory appraisal of life.
You are unable to extract any rationality and yet: We are supposed to swallow that as rational? But my point is that we are in fact allowed to have value judgments that are different from god. I claim that these values are rational and by them we can come to the conclusion that a god that would act in such a way would accurately be labeled a tyrant. I don't know if there is a logical fallacy called an Appeal to a Promised Authority but perhaps there should be. You also are asserting that we "all will agree" with this barbaric standard when we see it when in fact it could be that we all will simply be condemned while still very much believing we are being persecuted by a tyrant god.As I said above, the value for life that I mentioned is our constructed value. Not one ordained by an unproven authority. It is the basis of our human laws, social structure, community development, and evolutionary history. That value for life is intrinsically greater than that of this god by which these primitive societies reflected their war mythos. The court is the court of public opinion which over time is rejecting the standard for the value of life set in barely historic times for the one that we have today. It is called progress and it is evident even if it is not perfect. Since you are simply repeating from your previous post this assertion of the supremacy of god without addressing my challenge even in the slightest, I cannot see how you can claim that I have delivered a non sequitur. You have not adequately characterized my position to be able to say that it "does not follow" That it should be so complex goes to the truth of it in my opinion but that is perhaps for another topic. I don't think you adequately addressed my characterization of individual gods at all other than just to say you disagree. Descriptions of god differ not quite at the level of a single individual and the places that they converge can best be explained by cultural influences. Simply saying that religion is complex is not a better explanation than saying that it is personal invention. The various religions will agree that their competing faiths are bastardizations born in the minds of their wayward followers. It is a mutually assured destruction of ideas. Yet another poor analogy I am afraid. When pots can make their own value judgments then they may very well be right in opposing the actions of the potter.

My first reply to you was using your acceptance of a violent god as a foil for my argument that people create their own god based on what characteristics they will or will not accept about that god. I have no quarrel with the definition of sovereign, I was simply pointing out that you were making a bare assertion while at the same time claiming that I was being irrational. You are free to imbue your particular version of god with whatever qualities of a despot that you like. But please cease to proclaim that others are irrational for not swallowing that pill. Forgive me. For the purposes of discussion I am also assuming that I would retain my free will. But of course your god is also free to turn me into a pile of unthinking matter and punish me accordingly.Even if that day I am transformed into some pseudo-alive non-thinking entity, I am still free today to judge your characterization of your god. So now we have a situation where he not only is going to be my eternal torturer, but he will be torturing his own manipulated shell of my personality that is disallowed from have rational thoughts. This does not improve his image.Where does it get its validity? It is not required to be valid by anyone else except those that might read this and agree with me. It is perfectly possible that I am here all alone in my despair of this ruthless nature of my fellow man. That is exactly as valid as your supposed authority, ordained by some imaginary being. Those that have constructed a similar god to worship in their own minds may agree with you or not. Those that have not may agree with me or not. I know there are Christians who find your characterization of god abhorrent, and I am willing to bet there exists non-believers who are totally okay with genocide for reasons other than the sovereignty of some divine presence.The take home point for this thread should be that this god of your is in fact YOURS. A variety of people in this very small thread in this small corner of the internet have already expressed a rejection of your imaginary being in favor of their own imaginary being. You says that theirs is wrong, they say yours is wrong.To me, it remains simply the personal choice to accept certain characteristics of these gods into a personal ethos. From the same cultural template, some people do not go so far as to accepting the character of god as a mass murder. Whatever trappings you add in order to make it acceptable to you, you do go that far. But your gods are mutually exclusive. A presumed real god cannot be both a mass murder and not a mass murder. Someone MUST be wrong. I simply choose to believe that they all are wrong. Are you really trying to refute my argument that people have a higher standard for life than your god by showing that sometimes humans can be just as vile as he is? Of course people can be just as immoral as the gods they invent to justify their immorality. These examples do not rebut my claim that people value life more than the savagery contained within your holy book. These actions are popularly considered the scourge of our present and our history!
Civil societies have been born whole cloth from the ashes of atrocities by a people who have collectively decided that they wish to avoid those human caused calamities in the future. People today dedicate their whole lives to causes such as famine, wealth disparity, and the environment. Awareness of these issues are at an all time high for our world. Or have you not noticed the people of the world screaming about justice, sometimes even toppling their torturers when necessary. You really think that the revolutions happening around the world are a product of people concerned LESS for the value of a human life?
Your argument is incredibly disingenuous. I believe I addressed this above so Ill mostly leave it alone. Ill just say that you are welcome to set whatever standards you like for this discussion but just dont expect deference to them by others. If you require an exact logical bootstrapping of a proper non-religious morality then I can simply ask you to prove the existence of your god and we can both walk away very unsatisfied. I am not sure what organized religion has anything to do with the blatant contradiction in the ideas. This god who supposedly speaks to individuals apparently says very different things depending on whom he is talking to. Someone has to be wrong. In our little thread here, either you or GDR are in fact wrong. Or both for that matter. The best you can do is claim a superior revelation which is what you seemed to do above. How am I supposed to distinguish? Perhaps building a house of cards while you wait? Its not my fault that your analogy didnt work. You are free to dismiss me based on whatever standards you like but it makes for a pretty pitiful defense given the fact that I am not asking you to prove the existence of your concrete foundations. I agreed to consider his existence for the sake of the argument, not you let you beat me over the head with it.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

Let me try to cut to some of the main points rather than responding to each line. If you feel like I unfairly missing something in your reply let me know. I just don't want the number of quote boxes to get exponential.First the issue of the existence of god. Yes. And in short, if he exists as defined by you, he is a tyrant. I think all the dancing around the issue of judgement stemmed for what appeared to be a position from you that god's morality is superior BECAUSE he is sovereign. I am challenging that notion. It is perfectly rational the such a god (should he exist) be both sovereign and depraved. We can judge his depravity by adhering to our own standards. Standards which need not be authoritative but merely widely accepted or at least proclaimed. It still seems as though your god is either removing my capability to reason for myself, or injecting me with thoughts that are not my own in order to force me to come to his conclusion. What it seems like you are saying is that in the day of judgement I will not be able to reason that god is evil for the eternity of torture he is about to inflict me with. Is that what you are saying?As to not avoid your question. To perhaps stop beating around the bush, what I mean is that the value judgement is not authoritative. We can in fact have a better value system that god that you are characterising. Yes according to OUR OWN valuation of life. A rational argument can be made and I hope that most people believe that genocide is abhorrent in all circumstances. The details that you differ on say something about you the person. You are my neighbour in a global sense and I am affected by your actions. When enough people believe like you do, and believe it deeply enough, that is when we get cause for the atrocities that you brought up to try to lower the bar of human morals to that of the god you are defending.I am not saying it always is because of religion. But I can certainly despair as others have throughout history about the plight of mankind due to the moral atrophy that religion causes in people's minds. I understand you disagree, but I despair none the less and I know I am not alone. Not if he also demands that we consider him good. Edited by AdminPD, : No reason given.

Sorry that my reply took awhile, I am going back to school and was a bit busy earlier in the week.I engaged you in this discussion to lament about your choice of how to construct your god and what it says about your moral failings and you have remarkably made the issue about my supposed moral failings. Lets examine All of what you are mentioning here revolves around a core assumption that is not accepted by both parties in the debate. The assumption that god is the arbiter of morality. The essence of your questioning is to try to turn the issue onto me in a, well what gives YOU the right? kind of manner.I believe I have already addressed this to the extent that is needed for this particular debate regarding the variety of gods. At the core there exists a sub-debate about absolute versus subjective morals but I dont want to have that debate. Suffice it to say that nothing gives me the right other than my own free will and opinion. I feel that my opinion is justified and validated by my peers, many of which I may also disagree with about the existence of THEIR particular god, who share my despair that you would rationalize the depravity of your god.I have made the choices I have because they reflect the character of who I am and what I am willing to accept about morality. I am unwilling to accept that genocide is okay by deferring to authority derived by magic. You apparently are, and I continue to despair. Thats how humans work, by consensus. We create in this world by our collective thought and action. That is what makes us human. That is why here in reality, we pass laws to try to stop the things that you god proscribes. The people who have attempted to emulate the actions of your god are considered nearly universally the worst scourges of humanity that have ever existed. Ill take vast agreement from my peers that genocide is unacceptable over your premised authority any day.Your response seems to indicate that thinking this way is wrong. That the fact that many people reject this obvious insanity is evidence of their own depravity. I think you have it exactly backwards and that you are FORCED into that position by your particular choice in god. If it was not for upholding this ridiculous justification for gods atrocities, I believe you too would agree that we have the right to seek consensus on the issue of morals.You lament about the method that we create our value judgments by yet you present as an alternative, the resignation of our responsibility to each other to this unseen authority that not even your fellow religious compatriots agree exists in the form you describe.You seem very alone, and I recall that your religion also teaches you that you should delight in this ostracization. You are taught that you will be among the few who will know this horrible disturbing truth; that even though most everyone around you disagrees with you, this as evidence that you are in fact right; and thus is the complexity of the web of deceit that you must maintain to hold up this brazen construction of god. Again you turn it back on me. I am not looking for justification for my sin. I believe that I have a higher standard of morals than your god as you are characterizing him. What was asked is how YOU can justify the sin of the god YOU have chosen.You presented this picture of how god will finally make us see the error of our ways (after its too late of course) as a rationalization to why you cannot prove his authority today. Now an even more elaborate construction is necessary to describe how we are going to reject our earthly derived morality yet maintain our free will as to avoid the logical inconsistency of being rats in gods torture maze.How do you feel this actually helps your core reasoning, going back to why you brought up the issue of judgment day to begin with? Recall, I asked you to provide basis for your authority and you responded: Which is basically claiming that you can defer your responsibility. When subsequently challenged, we have ended up here, where you STILL havent provided a reason for accepting your authority, created more logical inconsistencies that need to be explained, and made the issue about my supposed willful depravity. If your intent was to witness, can you see how the above might be counter to your purpose?

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Lets go back to the original point I was trying to make. The things that people are willing to accept about god say something about themselves. God is simply an expression of their own personality which has been shaped by their culture. Therefore, everyone who claims to have a god has their own god.How has what you have said since then dispelled this notion? Every time another person has replied to you branching off from our particular sub-thread, it has been to reject your conception of a universal god EVEN WHEN they have another conception of what they believe to be a universal god in its stead.All you have seemed to have accomplished is to further isolate your god. By effect, you have provided more and more of an indication that what I claimed is closer to the truth than the alternative.Moreover, you have given me cause to add another justification for my opinion. The extreme measures required to preserve these individual gods in the minds of their creators is in fact further evidence of their uniqueness. While I certainly appreciate GDRs less callous god, he has to go through just as much distortion and special pleading to argue for his existence as you do for your god.And what is remarkable is that YOU seem to see this when it comes to someone elses construction of god! You see GDRs description of god as false because you notice the inconsistencies. You claim that the differences are small post-hoc, but in any objective description of how the discussion has proceeded must be that you both mutually dismiss each others gods based what you both accurately perceive as the contortions necessary to prop up your belief.Ill just simply say that I agree with both of you.

At first this may seem like a nice consolation, but after thinking about it over lunch, I think it undermines my point that I am making to iano.My point is that we don't need a god to tell us what to think about genocide. The consensus that genocide is in fact wrong is plenty good enough, however 'nonauthortative' that might be under some contrived logical system.Claiming that justification for our morality comes from the Bible is exactly the fallacy that iano is making when he shifted the discussion to how I can't create my own morality because I am sinful. I rejected it when iano did it as an argument and I also reject it now even if it is in support.We don't know right from wrong because god says so, we know it because we get to decide how to shape the one and only reality that we have.

Yes!It very much seems as that is the root of your argument! The way you are suggesting that my morality surrounding the value of life is invalid seems to be exactly that under some other reality, my own value judgements are illegitimate. Otherwise how else is genocide by your god acceptable?If I have the wrong impression, then perhaps you should take that into account in your reply to my full post.

Thank you. I really do appreciate it. Let me just say that the reason your particular god is not compelling to me anymore is that he is basically unnecessary. If nothing in the universe can surprise us about the nature of god then the difference of the universe with and without god is exactly the same. Claiming his existence adds nothing to our reality.When I receive a gift from someone, what makes it a gift (by definition) is that I recognize that it is something that I didnt have before. I KNOW that it is received. My life is now changed, if only a very small bit by the existence of the gift.Morality has no such indication. Freedom has the exact opposite indication. Freedom to shape our own reality was earned by the blood and willpower of our human compatriots over the generations of our existence. There is no wrapping paper or ribbons to indicate that such things come from god.

In fact we don't know that. As much as we would love it to be true..... What you are basically saying, which I have a LOT of sympathy for, is that it makes you feel better to believe that there is something more to our lives than this incredibly pitiful and short time that we have. That idea kept me going for quite a long time until I discovered for myself what it means to appreciate my life. Rather than thinking about my life as an extremely tini numerator on top of a denominator the size of the univerise, I need to appreciate the alternative which is a big fat zero. Rather than me being infinitly small, there is actually a nearly infinite amount of difference between the chances of my existence and non-existence. How precious is this moment then where I can even utter the words, "I am." The magnificence of life is the moment, not some unseen and unknowable future meaning. Why should it make us MORE humble? I truly think you have this backwards. You are saying that we should appreciate a morality that was GRATED moreso than a morality that we fought and died to build? I am sorry, I don't think so.You also seem to question how morality could arise? Well, how could sentience arise? How could intelligence arise? These are questions about emergent properties of our universe that are very complicated. Just because we don't know or don't know yet does not automatically point to an emergent entity. This is a god of the gaps argument.It certainly seems that intelligence, sentience, and morality are all related. To hazard a guess that these things are all necessary for each other to exist I believe is more than enough of a tentative answer to your question than the lack of an answer that I think you hoped to achieve by asking it in the first place. But how could you ever know that such a thing was a gift? You completely avoided my point. Gifts are what they are because they are blatantly recognizable as such. Your or my life is no such thing.

Why should it is a good question but you cant just plug in an answer.... and therefore god.Why does a story that has a good ending satisfy me? Why do I like it when smart people get ahead? Why do I feel good when my sports team wins? None of these things matter in the materialistic sense yet our brains are wired to receive these concepts as pleasure. Our brains LIKE when things that seem incongruent or unappealing get resolved. When they are not, we feel uncomfortable as a drive to try to solve them. Unfortunately, some incongruencies are not solvable. If you have ever shivered when discovering a paradox then you probably know. It does not give us philosophical freedom to claims that a higher power must exist that solves the problem.It may just be that the solution is unknowable and as intelligent beings, we either figure out how to compartmentalize the unknowable, or we invent falsehoods to satisfy our needy little brains. Inventing gods is the easy way out IMO.Since you wanted to bring it up again CS Lewis likes to setup false choices just like in his Liar, Lunatic, or Lord argument. It is perfectly reasonable (and highly probable) that the universe has no meaning and we just can never know that it does or not because that is not something we can measure. It is perfectly reasonable for us to live for our entire existence as sentient beings in a state of complete ignorance about the meaning of the universe. Certainly this little weak analogy by Lewis does not clarify the situation.Note, I have never claimed that there is no meaning. You are in fact erecting a straw man. First of all, you ignored my first point about your claim of humility which I think was important. Why should we revere a morality that is granted more than a morality that we fought for? Please go back and read that because I really do think you have this flipped.Second, why are you brining up origins and ID? I am claiming that your argument is a god of the gaps and in this case the gap is philosophical. You are claiming that since we dont know where morality comes from.... therefore god. It is TOTALLY a god of the gaps argument.Recall you said: When I read that I translate that in my head to something like, I am uncomfortable with the uncertainty about the origins of morality, therefore I MUST posit that it comes from a source other than that which we are capable of understanding by conventional means.That is god of the gaps plain and simple. If not, how am I misunderstanding you? Yes but the difference is that you are claiming the lack of certainty implies there exists a god while I am perfectly comfortable with the uncertainty.No more than just comfortable, I think that the uncertainty is actually very beautiful. I hope you dont take this personally but this is just want I feel. Your god is an empty shell used to help dampen the fear of the unknown. Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

Subjectively based on what though? And if nothing, how can you claim that it is not unreasonable? You keep bringing up subjectivity as if it was this great equalizing force for things which arent totally objective.In fact, that you are staking out a claim for which there is much material evidence and understanding AGAINST means precisely that it is unreasonable. There are perfectly good, evidence based explanations for why we are "wired that way". Your choice to disregard those explanations has no basis except to prop up the construction of your deity. It seems that if there are no gaps or they are too small, there apparently is no room for GDRs god. Then it seems to me that the philosophy of opinion is pretty much useless. I dont mean to be so harsh here because I actually very much respect your position. It was mine for many years. I can agree with you that the answer to the simple question of existence of god is ultimately one of personal opinion, but all of the other things you are wanting me to share the burden of subjectivity on will remain in dispute. If the prime mover exists then our curiosity about ourselves is evidence of the prime mover? I dont think so GDR, I am sorry. It just does not follow.
Our curiosity is evidence only of our curiosity. Existence of your god is not at all. The assumption that is the flaw in your denial is that ultimate meaning must be eternally persistent. I had a hard time with this too until I realized how my upbringing had me caught up in notions of forever. Everything that we know exists for awhile and then ceases to exist. Why the universe ought to be any different is simply an injection of your own personal desire for such a meaning to be timeless. I want to be very careful with what we are talking about because you are claiming that these things are non-material when what I said is that they do not, "matter in the materialistic sense."
You are going to have to take a step back and tell me what a non-material emotion or idea is.
Then after you do that, you will have to explain how the existence of non-material emotions or ideas suggest the presence of other non-material "thingies" (you didnt name them) that allow for a prime mover.I think in trying to clarify the situation, you have in fact made it much muddier. Again based on what? Dont you think that we would appreciate it more if we had to earn it? This is especially since we probably would have had to learn a lot of really tough lessons along the way.
Just look at our values. We value public education because we struggled for a long time until we figured out that trying to give everyone an education was good for all of us. Now it is considered child abuse to deny a child an education in this country. There was no moral authority responsible for that.And moreover, how is being humble about our sense of kindness and justice necessarily a good thing? I should have challenged you about that originally but the point remains thus. We VALUE a morality that we create more than the ones that are supposedly ordained! See for example the abject failure of the "divinely inspired" morality of chastity. Who thought up that stupid idea?So its not just that our morality is better because we created it. Gods morality is WORSE because it is contrary to our nature that if he does exist, would be responsible for giving us. Well, again you are just trying to equalize thing by claiming subjectivity. My point was one primarily of plausibility and that even the most outlandish material cause is much more plausible than the, I dont know, therefore god argument. At least in the material case we have something we can investigate with the familiar tools of science. You have nothing but your own opinion on the matter otherwise.Its not a philosophy of the gaps because I dont fill it with something. I leave it as a gap. I can speculate but it is still a gap and I am okay with the existence of the gap. You on the other hand are filling that gap with your own mental creation. Your own god. They do feel that way or else they wouldnt strive to do science. If the unknown wasnt beautiful they wouldnt be working their entire lives to probe its depths. They might not use the same words as I choose. They might not say, "uncertainty is beautiful". But the sentiment is exactly the same and is what I mean by that. Once again I think you missed the mark by 180 degrees. But how much of your god remains after the intellectual fire sale you have to have to make him work?
I despise ianos god but at the very least his god has something very substantial over yours. He claims to have had recent material effect on this world for his own sadistic purposes. His god is understood to be tangibly evident in the blood of children and the destruction of unworthy human civilization. Your god is not tangibly evident in anything and must only be sensed in abstract imaginings of the unknown.How is a sinner to choose which god to revere?Edited by Jazzns, : Some language fixes. For some reason quotations marks are disappearing from my messages.

Couldn't god think of a better way of demonstrating his hatred for sin than one that involves the wanton slaughter of innocent children including babies?Is he really that uncreative a thinker?Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

You keep mentioning subjectivity and I keep challenging you on it. You are using the concept as an equalizer, to try to say that just because the choice of god is subjective, that therefore your choice is just as valid as the alternative. You continue to ignore my request for a basis. Subjective does not mean equi-probable.In response you seem to take the tact of your oft-quoted favorite author Lewis in offering false choices. Case in point, your first and quite dismissive attempt to respond to me. This is so loaded with assumptions and false choices I had to start writing my reply 3 times to try to diagnose the issue. First of all, as I was trying to say before, the origins of intelligence and morality are not outside of the realm which we can find evidence for. Second, there are not just 2 choices here. These concepts can accurately be described as quantitative and emergent. They lie on a continuum for which we have evidence on how that continuum developed.
Its like asking which is more likely, that green evolved from a green or non-green source. Its a tautology and it completely misses the point that green is on a continuum of light for which certain frequencies (perhaps by themselves representing other colors such as yellow and blue) can combine together to create green.In our particular case, our intelligence and morality seem to come from a continuum of intelligence and morality of our evolutionary ancestors. It is evident in other being that have their own continuum of these properties, and looks very much like they are emergent properties of nature.You seem to be trying to dumb down the issue so that you can claim we dont know anything, and therefore your opinion is as good as anyone elses.What is more likely, that morality and intelligence accumulated from prior less moral and intelligent sources or . a miracle happened and therefore god exists to precisely define morality and intelligence?Answer this please. What even IS a non-intelligent, non-moral source? At what point in a rewind of our evolutionary past did the injection of morality and intelligence from the "intelligent and moral source" happen? What was the step just before that and what is non-moral or non-intelligent about it? Were proto-humans moral and intelligent? What about the first mammals? What about the first life? What about the first He atoms that fused to carbon in the center of a star?
Where is the fingerprint of your god? Why not?Its not just that it isnt all conclusive its that it doesnt make sense at all. Again, its a false choice. A simple alternative is that you care about a timeless purpose because it is appealing. There are a lot of things embedded in our hopes and dreams that dont have to exist. And many times they are mutually exclusive both for an individual and between individuals. So these non-material things are, by definition, things that can only exist in our minds.Do you see the problem here? Well we disagree then. As it turns out, we have lots of objective evidence to suggest that chastity is not part of human nature which is not only evident in father you mention but responsible for the strained relationships that we have as a society in general.But whos morality is right then? Did the so-called moral source tell us for sure? Should we have stoned that cheating father to death in the street?
Whos green is greener? Absolutely not. The fact that we CAN conceive of plausible answers is only a bonus. Even if we had no answers, it does not justify inserting a god. I am saying, "I dont know the answer for sure but maybe its X based on what we know about Y". You are saying, "I dont know the answer therefore god". And I suggest that such a god is weak, irrelevant, and unjust if he intends to punish us for the things he didnt make clear. He adds nothing to our lives if he is not at least evident even if he is not clear.Ianos god has the advantage of being quite clear. There is stuff written down by him or his surrogates that anyone can examine. But by being clear he is also shown to be evil. Where should I begin to look for this god of love? In a book? In my head?How would I know it when I found him? If nothing in the reality of my existence changes because of him, then whats the point anyway?