Is God good?

Why are you ad homming the mods?They hold everyone to the same standard.

Here is what I need to know about any gods that I may be made in the image of:Are they good? Yes.How do I know? Because I am good.Basic assumptions:1) I am generally good.2) I am made as an image (reflection) of some supreme existenceConclusion: My existence and general nature is a testimony that one or more supreme beings are good.I will, however, throw your kid in front of a bus to save my own. "Good" and "Evil" are relative.

I think that in the 66 books of the Bible there is a wide scope of actions taken by God. The scale ranges from extremely severe to extremely kind with gradiations of degree inbetween. "Behold the severity and kindness of God" says Paul. Skeptics like to huddle on the extreme end of God's most severe actions to prove that they have a higher ethics than the Creator of man.Some of rather expect that a wide scope of actions would be taken by an all-inclusive and all-incompasing God. Every kind of obstacle to His will is raised against Him in the biblical history. He did not meet every instance as children would expect Barny the Dinosaur to react.In most cases I have seen false charges based on biased and incomplete reading of Scripture is at work with many skeptics. Let me guess that you are vehemently PRO LIFE in your ethics ?
Yes / No ?If not then you must believe that some instances of taking a child's life might justified by you. Are you decidedly anti-abortion in your social ethics?I guess I would have to examine case by case your samples of God taking childens' lives which you are repulsed by. I probably would take a more balanced analysis by considering important contributing factors.One of those is the God is the Giver of all life. God then has the authority to take a life away.Another factor is that the temporal cessation of life of a human being is not necessarily the end that person's story in the eternal scheme of things.It is interesting that Jesus warned that some of the men of some Old Testament judged societies would rise in the judgement and somehow condemn those who incurred greater guiltiness for rejecting the Son of God. "Then He began to reproach the cities in which most of His works of power took place, because they did not repent.

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Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the works of power which took place in you had taken place in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

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But I say to you, It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. ... if the works of power which took place in you had taken place in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

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But I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgement than for you." (See Matt. 11:20-24) This is very interesting. Though the people of Sodom had fire rain down upon them and they perished, this apparently will not be the eternal end for some of them. In the last judgment it may be more tolerable for some of the Sodomites than for more modern day skeptics who amassed intellectual arguments against the Son of God all their lives.In a sense some of the Sodomites may look with puzzlement at some 21rst century skeptics who had access to the Gospel of Jesus and say "What was it with you guys anyway?"I would advize some of the fault finders against God's judging actions to reserve some sympathy for themselves. It is a problem for many skeptics that they have to sit on God's lap in order to slap God on the face. They cannot reach God to criticize Him without first standing for a great part upon Judeo / Christian morality which has so heavily enfluenced world civilization.Of course if our moral sense is just the result of chemicals in motion in the grey matter of our "evolved" brains, then there is really no grounds to believe a ultimate standard of morality really exists.Goodness then is only either molecules bumping into each other.
It merely a matter of your personal taste - like one prefers chocolate icecream to vanilla.If you're an atheist, even a good acting atheist, your "goodness" is probably only an illusion. How much does a good molecule weigh?You have to borrow the Christian world view in order have something to stand upon to launch criticisms against the Bible's God. As I said before, God is the Author of every human life as the Creator. He has the authority to take life away.There are some difficult places in the Bible involving God's "strange work" of judging. Strange because God Himself says that it is strange that He should have to judge man at all - "For Jehovah will rise as in the valley of Gibeon, To do His deed, His STRANGE deed, And to do His work, His most different work." (Isaiah 28:21) In the fall of man and the rebellion of Satan, it has become strange that God should have to do the work of judgment. But He does have to.He reserved one entire book called Jonah in the Old Testament completely dedicated to the teaching that God is reluctant to have to judge a society.I consider some of these things along with the usual cases submitted attempting to prove the accusing one is more good than God.It is interesting that of all the men who have lived on earth, the one most qualified to launch a criticism against the God of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ. I never see Him do so.Rather He refers to His Father as "Righteous Father" - "Righteous Father, though the world has not known You, yet I have known You, and these have known that You have sent Me." (John 17:25) The One most qualified to expose the evils of God never complained thus. Knowing full well the Hebrew Scriptures He refered to God as His "Righteous Father." I believe Him. Of course He provided nine gradually worsening judgments as warnings. And since the Egyptians had murdered the Hebrew boy children many years earlier in order to control them in slavery, this action was a just recompense.Just the same, the instructions on how to experience a PASSOVER of this judgment went out to the whole society. And since they people went out of Egypt "a mixed multitude" we can assume SOME Egyptians heeded the divine warnings and deemed it best to leave that society WITH the Jews.And again, the temporal judment of Egyptian boys does not insist as to their destiny in the eternal scheme of things. I expect that many of these temporally slain boys will be in the New Jerusalem.God can demonstrate His judgment in time and still enact eternal salvation upon those who unfortunately served to testify to His judging in this life. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

First, I am NOT Ad hommin'I am asking what ARE the standards.
Second, they suspended me and not you who had been baiting my every post with ad hommims which seems a different standard to me.Third, I stated that the Flood was equivalent to the extinction of all hominoids except us 40,000 year ago.
So why does the opening post make the reality of this existence mean that God is evil?I also said that the Reality of the matter is that the sons of Single Mothers die untimely deaths which seems to suggest god is good in condeming adultery and divorce and David was bad, not the other way around.If the mods are really reading these posts comprhensively I fail to understand the standards for keep on topic.

"Good" and "Evil" are relative. [/qs]The Original Sin concerned the matter of ingesting the concept of knowledge about what was good and what was evil.It is not relative but dependent, that Good for you is Selfishness, while good mankind, in general, is altruistic, charitable, and Christian.What Eve encouraged Adam to buy into was what was good for her and him, because they saw it was good for them.Throwing yourself in front of buses to save young people would be good, while throwing someone else's kid to save your own would be bad.

Yeah, you had me up until you said this.The human condition influenced Judeo/Christian models of morality as well as pagan and secular models way before Christianity.The specific Christian structure is arbitrary when it comes to a universal understanding of family, and by extension, neighbor.Morality is a byproduct of altruistic behaviors that cultivated the first civilizations and the codification of acceptible behavior in order to succeed as a people.This is the foundation for all morality, including Christianity (which is quite late to the ball, btw). Christianity is not the foundation for morality. Shared goals of harmonious existence were the motivation for morals way before the particular form of Christian expression and would exist even if Christianity never did.

I haven't been suspended because, when they warn me, I stop rather than ignoring warnings, like you do.Here's a hint: extinction of hominids is not related to the subject of the nature of God as expressed in the Christian bible.If you find yourself discussing hominids when the subject is regarding the content of the bible, you are way off topic.Why? Because hominids aren't discussed in the bible.Not that hard to figure out.

Yes, that is thye problem these critics of god have.If we read the OT, where the cruelity referred to can be found, we see that scripture is just stating the truth.God made lions who eat lambs.He also made those Hebrew Patriarchs who, indeed, he made to kill and hate the sexually promiscuous Gentile nations around them.That is justthe Reality we see today with the Muslims patriarchs who god made to think pretty much the same as in 1362BC.God also made the sexually promiscuous, pro-abortion baby killers, the homosexuals prancing on their TV's, and who who flood the internet with the porn those muslims love to hate.Ghe popint ofthe Bible is that God alsomade man able to think like He does, and see that neither of these two kinds of men God made have to stay that way.
They could accept Christian prudence and live in harmony.

Clever that you bait me to answer which the mods will see as defiant but let you stay on.Nevertheless, the mods would be wrong.This is an issue where the opening Post claims the Flood was not just Evolution at work, and that God was merely maintaining the integrity of his Natural Laws, (such as Adaptation to the ever changing environment or become extinct).Since my reading of the story is hardly different that the scientific reality of 40,000 years ago, I argue that this charge does not find God guilty of anything but asking us to face reality.Tough as that is, it isn't evil, but good to face reality.

Do unto others as you would have done to you...What is the motivating fator in this proposal?Self Interest.Altruism is born out of self interest AND it is good.There is only one fundamental difference between altruism and selfishness: the ability to improve oneself through the improvement of others rather than improving oneself to the detriment of others.Altruism is simply a perfected form of selfishness that extends its benefit beyond self.

The opening post doesn't claim anything about evolution. That is why your unscientific claims about 40,000 years are off topic.

Nah.
But you point is relative to understanding why God seems cruel whe we read about the behavior of the patriarchs.There are only two kinds of societies mentioned in the OT.
God made them both.
But he made us capable of synthesizing these two into one that is good for mankind.The battle of the sexes pit the Hebrew Patriarchs against the sexually promiscuous, pro-abortion, homosexual matriarchies.
The Patriarchies keep winning as the invade and destroy the gentile matriarchies.In time, as the Hebrew become rich and settled, they also become matriarchies where the women can divorce, abort, re-marry, and be adultresses and Harlots.
Other rising patrisarches like Babylon and Rome rise up and invade and kill the Jews.But this Dialectic between Patriarchy Vs Matriarchy synthesizes a Christianity which compromises an sexual equality moderated with prudence and the battle stops for a 1000 years of Christian monasticism during the Dark Ages.Rev. 20:4 And I saw thrones (of Universal Christian authority) and they, (the 144,000 monks of Catholic monasticism: [Rev14:4]), sat upon them, (Christianity mandated as the ONLY legal religion in the Empire, in 380AD), and (theocratic) judgment was given unto them (in the days of Catholic Monasticism): and I saw the souls, (the spirit-like psyches or thinking) of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the (one) word of God, (Truth), and which had not worshipped (by participation in the paganistic practices and sexual excesses fueling) the beast (of the revival of that Roman Culture including the economic system which had been based upon selfish self-interest), neither his image (on his coinage), neither had received his mark (of ledgered accounts recorded) upon their foreheads, or in (wages in) their hands; and they, (the monks), lived (in their Monasteries after the appearance of the Gospels in 54AD)...
.... and (they) reigned (in Monasticism) with Christ a thousand years, (from 54 AD upon the appearance of the Holy Comforter, until 1054 AD with the first Schism of Greek Orthodoxy).Rev. 20:4 And I saw thrones (of Universal Christian authority) and they, (the 144,000 monks of Catholic monasticism: [Rev14:4]), sat upon them, (Christianity mandated as the ONLY legal religion in the Empire, in 380AD), and (theocratic) judgment was given unto them (in the days of Catholic Monasticism): and I saw the souls, (the spirit-like psyches or thinking) of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the (one) word of God, (Truth), and which had not worshipped (by participation in the paganistic practices and sexual excesses fueling) the beast (that was Roman Culture, including the economic system which had been based upon selfish self-interest), neither his image (on his coinage), neither had received his mark (of ledgered accounts recorded) upon their foreheads, or in (wages in) their hands (those monks living in moneyless monastic environments); and they, (the saints/apostles), lived (as angels in the minds of the Christians who have followed since the appearance of the Gospels in 54AD, i.e., those beheaded saints, in the memories of the congregations who worshipped in churches built upon the bones of their remains)...
.... and (they) reigned (in Monasticism) with Christ a thousand years, (from 54 AD upon the appearance of the Holy Comforter, until 1054 AD with the first Schism of Greek Orthodoxy).

None of that is in the bible.You are way off topic and also out of your gourd. I wonder how long it will be before you are banned. Not very if you keep it up like this.Edited by Eli, : No reason given.

The OP misinterprets the flood story, but it still is no different that the factual extinction of all other men except Modern hom sapiens and the three racial stocks tat managed to survive.The accusation doesn't hold up..., saying that the God of the Bible is evil when the facts of life are essential responsible for exactly the same thing.Whether you accept that the Bible story is about our evolution or not, both matters of killing all but us are exactly the same thing.To accuse God of cruelity is as foolish as to say Evolution is a bad thing.
Man wouldnot even exist were it not for evolution.Now, if to make that point I get suspended, the mods miss the point.

No, you miss the point, which is that you can start your own damn threads instead of hijacking others, which is very poor forum etiquette.Are you TRYING to get banned?