Is God good?

And you've been around this board for seven years now, jaywill? How is it possible that you have learned so little about evolution, even if only by osmosis from nearby topics?

You seem to imply that all justice is evil if it is not immediate and swift.My reply is:1.) I do not believe all consequences are put off for a long time.
Even the rapist of yesterday may because of that suffer pretty soon, either at the hands of the law of society or in his own damaged being.So, #1, I don't believe ALL consequence is put OFF for some far far away date. Only a final ajudication is.2.) If judgement is ALWAYS immediate and swift then where is the place for possible repentence and ammending of one's ways?Seems that if God were to IMMEDIATELY punish then you would complain that He is not merciful and does not allow anyone a second chance in anything.3.) You have commited sins. (if you're anyting like me or the rest of us). Don't you find it benefitial that you may the next day contemplate your wrong, amend your way, perhaps apologize to the one offended ?You perfer a "less evil" system which would cut you down on the spot ?4.) The Bible says God is slow to anger. You complain that He would be more righteous if He were IMMEDIATELY angry ?5.) The allowing of time is merciful towards you. You prefer that God show LESS mercy ?Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Social Darwinism had such arguments. Wiser heads may now know better. But such excuses did exist in the last century.Oh, I think I stayed off the board for at least a year. Didn't I?
I have had a long gap of inactivity, possibly over a year.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

The 'facts' basically can be summarised by God being (as you clowns wont to stress) being omnipotent and omniscience (which is amusing because He can't be both - they are mutually logically incompatible). Regardless - He is supposed to know in advance exactly how he sets up the Universe and all that is in it - and how it will play out for ever and ever.This means nothing happens without his will or planning - he has figured out the spin of every last electron. And therein lies the true sickness. The Fall was his planning - and hence the suffering and (depending on your brand of Christianity) the sick label of 'Original Sin'.It's not a story of success of a great creator but one of fuck up after fuck up. How could the creator of the Universe who knows in advance EVERYTHING that will ever happen allow a scenario to arrive where He has to wipe out virtually all the world in a mass flood? He must have known - indeed planned - this to happen from the outset. The screams of the drowning, the braying of terrified animals (what did they do wrong in the plan by the way) - all of this He knew he would do BEFORE HE EVEN PUT THE EARTH INTO BEING - because he is omniscient remember!And then to continue his fuck up he has to "Invent" a human form of himself - bring it to Earth incarnated as a Jew and who had to be insanely tortured and sacrificed in order to forgive people the 'sins' that he forced them to inherit from the get go.....It's sheer fucking madness!If Jesus was around now and 'executed' in America - little catholic children would be wearing electric chairs not crucifixes round their necks (quip borrowed from Lenny Bruce).You keep quoting bible scripture to try and wriggle out of this amoral mess - but the problem is far more basic than bible scripture. It goes back to what God did from the very get go - He is either an incredibly incompetent omniscient (can such an oxymoron exist?) to screw everything up so badly - or he is one sick bastard who's planned every last ounce of suffering for every organism that has had cause to suffer at His hands.And then people like you spin round in circles, devoid of any internal morality of your own and desperately trying to rearrange the deckchairs of your beliefs as your ship goes down. When you finally can admit you have no case on 'God is good' you can begin to see why consequential morality is far superior to the absolutist version relying on appeals to authority.

So you feel absolutely COERCED at this moment and cannot BUT think and write what you have just written ?Against your will then you feel a compelling power actually putting words into your mouth ?Well, I feel that I can choose to express this thought and write it this way. And I can choose to express another thought and write it that way. I do sense some ability to choose or reject certain things.You seem to be saying God is right now forcing you beyond your will to carry out His predetermined blasphemies which He has stuffed into your mouth and moves your muscles to spew out here.Unfair! Unfair! Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Me? I don't believe your god exists at all. But people like you do - and are forever telling us that "nothing happens that is not in accordance with God's will."I'm just pointing out that if you truly believe that - then your God's will is sick beyond the pale. And so are you by association. I really worry about being in the vicinity of those with absolutist moral convictions that get their compass from the words of a bronze-age tome.

I did do a long response, but I got to this sentence and changed my mind: You say are unable to explain the drowning of millions of people because you are unable to fully understand god.
Since you are unable to fully understand god, then all your other comments regarding his character are baseless assertions.You do not know if god is good or evil - you simply assume he is good.
Anything he does that supports your assumption is claimed to be evidence of his good nature.
Anything he does that contradicts that assumption is marked as 'unknown'.That is simply cherry-picking. Projection much?
The world population at ~4000BC was ~20 million.
Or are you going to claim that none of them were children? And that is just bizarre. Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.Your position is untenable.
Only by self-delusion can you twist (or ignore) what is written in the bible to support your idea of a perfect god.
Your confirmation bias is showing. I was using your "transcendent scoring system or standard" of evil.
(You can tell that by me saying so and quoting you.)
If you wish to describe it as the view of a child, then so be it.But god is still evil, by your own definition (excluding your special pleading).

Just saw this post, had forgotten this exchange. Calling Him a murderer isn't going to stand in the end, Rahvin, a murderer kills for selfish reasons. The death penalty is a righteous judgment for evils that should not be allowed to go on threatening living people, or even polluting the environment. The "victim" is the victim of the murderer and if truly innocent will be vindicated and protected by the righteous Judge in the end. I'm afraid you'll only find this out the hard way, of course.God is going to judge us all eventually. Well, actually, because I am a believer in Christ who died for me I am already judged through His taking my punishment for me, for which I am really really grateful because NOBODY is going to escape God's judgment in the end and I certainly wouldn't want to be punished for my collection of sins. I will face Him for judgment of my deeds for which I will either be rewarded or deprived of rewards but not my salvation. Which is really foolish of you. I guess you really think Hitler and his ilk should be allowed to go on living although they murdered millions of innocents, or any of the garden-variety murderers, serial killers, child molesters who kill them to cover their tracks and so on. I have a really hard time understanding the mind of the liberal. My my my, you really should have been appointed God yourself, shouldn't you? You are so MUCH more righteous than the God who made you and made this entire creation and is in a position to know things you couldn't possibly know. Liberals are so self-righteous it just takes the breath away. I tremble for you when you finally do meet Him, as you will. I assume you meant "voluntarily"? You have an extremely naive idea of the evils that stalk this world that NEED to be judged, need to be stopped cold so they can't do worse, can't continue to hurt others. You seem to think everybody is just a nice person. I'm certainly glad you AREN'T God. Oh I KNOW you don't care about "eventualities," you've got that all thoroughly rationalized away so you don't have to think about the reality. This IS a human being you are advocating murdering, a human being at its earliest stage of growth that just doesn't happen to move your emotions in that condition just becuase you can't see it or talk to it, what a Neanderthal way of thinking. Actually the Neanderthals no doubt had more humanity in them. you have simply decided not to regard it as human so you can do away with it when it suits you, just by refusing to think about it beyond your liberal categories. This is a case of self-delusion in the service of murder if there ever was one. I'm sure you can argue quite effectively against OTHER ways of dehumanizing some groups in order to rationalize murdering them, you know, like Hitler's calling his victims "vermin." That's what you're doing with the unborn child but you aren't going to let yourself know that, are you? Na, as long as it isn't RIGHT NOW a human being according to YOUR standards it's just a cockroach. Same thinking really. Sophistry worthy of a Jesuit. Sophistry indeed. You've got it down pat. Aren't you just the last word in moral philosophy? Hey, this threat- to-the-mother stuff is just more sophistry for the simple reason that this situation just about never occurs these days, and if and when it does I'm just as much for saving the mother over the baby as you are. There is really NO justification for late-term abortion at all since at that stage it's rare that both can't be saved, but again, IF there IS a threat to her life that can't be prevented if the child lives, of course she is the one to be saved. In most cases she'll be heartbroken to lose her child as a matter of fact but hard decisions sometimes have to be made. Gosh you're good at this. We're not talking "moment of conception" here since just about nobody knows when that has occurred -- except those who want so badly to be pregnant they monitor themselves like fanatics to find out. And I'm happy to leave it to God (or nature) if a particular conception turns out not to be viable. We're talking "point at which woman knows she's pregnant." That's when killing it becomes an issue. That's still pretty early, of course, just a few weeks, but you know what, it even LOOKS like a human being at only twelve weeks, fingers, toes, the works. Thank you for acknowledging my "cogent" argument, can't say the same for yours I'm afraid since it all hangs on timing. It doesn't have a fully formed brain NOW, so let's kill it before it develops one, which is going to happen very very soon if this is a normal pregnancy.Again, I used to fall for the same rationalizationsl. They all look so stupid to me now.In fact I did have an abortion when I was twenty, long before I was a Christian, and I had a dream about that baby being alive but taken off in a hearse, a toddler-aged child waving goodbye to me through the back window of that big black car, very sad dream. But of course I dismissed even that sad dream as just an illusion -- oh I was SUCH a good atheist in those days -- though it proves really that even then I knew my rationalizations were false but I still wouldn't face the fact. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : fix quotes etc.

Okay, I procrastinated long enough. We examine the hard case of the Amalekites.A "destruction" is ordained in 1 Samuel 15 towards the Amalekites. God tells king Saul to [haram] - "utterly destroy" them. He is to "not spare" them. " ... put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (v.3) At the end of the chapter we might initially believe that Saul has killed every single Amalekite except king Agag. Saul has also spared some animals.We are told that God was displeased that Saul has not carried out His instructions thoroughly. The prophet Samuel takes it into his hands to finish off king Agag with a sword, hacking him to pieces.I am glad I started reading the Bible with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and not with Joshua or First Samuel. My opproach eventually became that if Jesus took the Old Testament seriously, then it must be ok.The Amalekites were a nomadic people who were vehemently opposed to Israel from the moment they crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 17). In the rear of the journeying Hebrews languished the weaker travelers. The Amalekites attacked the Hebrews from the rear where the sick, the slow, the most weary travelers lagged. This was cowardly and inhumanly vicious.These were the people most unprepared to fight.I am told that Amalekite was "a hand against the throne". The implication is that thier sin is more serious than against God's holiness. Rather it was against God's authority.They were continual threat to Israel's existence for generations (Judges 3:13; 6:3-5; 7:12; 10:12) Now the account of First Samuel 25 on the surface seems like the utter obliteration of the Amalekites in a genocidal sense. One easily gets the impression of not ONE single Amalekite left - a true genocide.However, in First Samuel 27:8 David is said to have gone up with his men and raided the Geshurites and the Girzites and the Amalekites. But I thought the Amalekites had been TOTALLY WIPED OUT already.No, the Amalekites were NOT genocidally exterminated in First Samuel 15. Neither were they exterminated in First Samuel 27. They appear again in chapter 30!David, long after Sauls supposed obliteration of the Amalekites, recovers from their raid Israelites and booty the Amalekites had stolen (v.18) Here's the genocided people that just don't seem to go away. "And David struck them from twilight until the evening of the next day; and not a man of them escaped except for four hundred young men, who rode upon camels, and fled." (1 Sam. 30:17)So neither Saul, Samual, or David completes the task of obliterating every last Amalekite. The Amalekites appear to be still around during the reign of King Hezekiah some 250 years after this time (1 Chron. 4:43) Still the Amalekites persist to exist during the time of Ester the Jewish Queen in king Ahasuerus / Xerxes reign in the book of Esther. This is between 486 - 465 BC. "Haman the Agagite" (Esther 3:1) must be a descendent of the Amalakite king Agag.And the Amalekite is STILL hell bent on the destruction of the Jews as evidenced by Haman's plots.At the time immediately after the Exodus God knows that the Amalekites will still be carrying out their hostilty a full millennia latter warns them in Deuteronomy 15:15-17 . The perpetual callousness of these enemies of Israel is probably God's reason to warn the Jews not to let up on their opposition to the Amalekites. Otherwise the unrecoverably hardened Amalekites would have had their way in wiping Israel off the face of the earth.I submit that the extermination of Israel in the hearts of the Amalekites was God's reason for His harshest instructions toward their elimination. The question I have as a moderner about this is could a people actually be that hostile and dangerous to God's covenanted community ? Apparently enmities could get that bad - "a hand against the throne" of God, perpetual opposition to divine authority.Other Canaanites DID assimilate into Israel. A point here is that the phrase "utterly destroyed" in reference to the Amalekites cannot be taken liturally.In the argots of the schoolyard we may hear that someone "got their butt kicked". It is an expression. Some scholars believe that Saul went up against COMBATANTS rather than noncombatants. The reason for this is that "the city of Amalek" (1 Sam. 15:5) was probably a fortified military encampment. That would mean that non-combatants would not be expected to fill this fortress.We have to account for the re-appearance of the Amalekites in successive stories.It should be noted that the language of "harem" of this complete destruction is not used in all the cases of Israel's enemies. The language is restricted.If Samuel's killing of Agag was the completion of the unfulfilled will of God left by Saul AND Amalekites reappear, then the charge of genocide I think is not appropriate. When we read about everything that breaths was killed, we have to be guarded.I may recall evidence that an Amalekite person seems assimilated into Israel in the days of David. But I have to double check that. I could be mistaken.

But ringo didn't say anything about immediate punishment. How about immediate intervention? If a man's about to rape and murder a child, then fine, let God be merciful and not strike him dead. But how about stopping the rape and murder?As it is, God's mercy seems to work out like this:* God sits idly by and watches the rape and murder.
* God sends the child off to burn in Hell for ever for not being "saved".
* God waits 'til the man (having committed a dozen other equally horrific atrocities) dies of natural causes, and then sends him to Hell too.

Nobody can understand specific instances as well as you think we should, that's why FAITH is required. We KNOW that the Bible is God's word and we TRUST that He does everything right whether we can understand it or not. But it is human SIN that allows such hideous events as you describe, not God. It's fundamental humility in the face of things beyond our ability to understand this based on His word to us, which apparently doesn't influence you unbelievers of course who feel quite free to judge the omnipotent God, may He have mercy on you. God has given us responsibility and if you use your responsibility to work against Him things aren't going to turn out too well.Me I pray that God would restrain the evil in this world in a general way, and maybe if only a billion of us prayed this way every day we could make a difference in such horrible things as you are describing. But when there are people who think God is evil working against us there's really not a lot of hope anything good on a large scale could result.But here's a stab at a rough explanation. Hideous things happen on this earth because we EARNED them by giving ourselves over to Satan. This world BELONGS to the devil -- scripture calls him the "prince of this world" -- because he earned the right to use and abuse us by deceiving our ancestors but also by seducing every one of us every day even now because we're spiritually blind. But Jesus died to save us from this very power of the devil, as even some of our Christmas carols say, but you can't avail yourself of that power over the devil unless you believe in Christ and put yourself in His hands. That's how things go in the economy of God, you take it or leave it.Specific events don't always have an explanation we can trace, we simply have to understand that's sin operating in the human race because we abandoned God and chose the devil to rule over us. If people PRAY for God to intervene He may do so, that happens all the time among Christians, but otherwise he leaves us to our devilish sinful fallen ways. "Free will" and all that.We'RE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, EVEN YOU UNBELIEVERS. You wield a spiritual power for EVIL in this world because you set yourself against the God who is your maker in whose image you were made. You do it blindly but you nevertheless have great power for evil BECAUSE of your status as a human being which is an enormous honor, to have been made in the image of God, which can't be said even of the holy angels.All this moral denunciation of God you guys exercise here is both a reflection of the fact that you were made in the image of the God who wrote the moral law that governs the universe and that you are sold under the devil who has twisted that moral sense into something that serves him instead.ABE Still haven't said it: Trying to say you don't recognize the great honor you have and the responsibility hyou have, that the human race as a whole has, that is SHOWN IN THE FACT THAT GOD DOES NOT - NOT -- INTERVENE IN OUR AFFAIRS even when we are committed to extreme evil. Again, He WILL intervene when we ASK HIM TO, otherwise He leaves us to the devil's cruel power over us, since we CHOSE it. This is enormous RESPECT of us, don't you see? Human power and responsibility is extremely great, He will NOT intervene unless enough of us ask Him to. He's warned us what we are earning in the way of etyernal punishment and now it's up to us, He lets us go on earning it because we CHOSE it. So we have the RIGHT to run this universe into the ground, which we are doing a really really good job of. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There may be honour for us in such a system.
But there would be no honour for God in sustaining such a system. What is honourable in allowing evil to destroy people?Respecting the choice of people to do evil?
Respecting evil... is only done by those who are evil.If God has the power to run such a system, then God is not good, and certainly not honourable.

God IS good but you'll never see that as long as you insist on your own view of things. You are judging God according to your fallen nature, which is blind to the true situation in this world, so your judgment is wrong and if you go on sticking to it you will ultimately be condemned by it.Try understanding that your mind is flawed, your moral judgment is flawed, in other words try HUMILITY in the face of such unknowns as you are trying to understand with your inadequate mind, develop a little fear of God, fear that you might be wrong, fear that you're stumbling around in the dark, and ASK GOD to show you where you're wrong.IF you're sincere He'll answer. IF. Big IF there. You won't like the answer from your present point of view but if you're capable of tolerating being wrong about everything you think you know (I had to go through that) it could save your soul.

Of course I'm warped.Oh.. maybe you havn't met me But yeah, trust me... I'm pretty warped.But who elses standard could I possibly use to judge anything other than my own?
If I don't actually believe it's good or bad, then how can I "just say" it's good or bad according to some other standard? I suppose I could lie... but that doesn't seem right. I am judging God according to the only possible way I can... by however I am.
That may be fallen, or perfect, or helplessly lost, or somewhere unknown. But how could I judge something using another standard? I can compare something to another standard... but I cannot judge anything unless it is by my own standard.It can be wrong. And I can be condemned for it. But there doesn't seem to be a way around it.
I suppose I could trust you... but that doesn't feel right at all.
Because, you see... you can be wrong too. Your entire post you just wrote to me could be all wrong. It certainly feels wrong. Just feels... icky, like someone trying to tell me they have my best interests in mind when they really want something else. There's no need for me to try that... I already know that. What makes you think I haven't already done all this?
What makes you so sure God isn't guiding me, and you aren't the one who's mistaken? I certainly feel very strongly that you're absolutely wrong, and I'm at least closer to being right. I may not be able to be sincere. Or maybe He has answered already, and I'm just not allowed to tell you. Oh, I really don't think I'd mind. But if your assumptions let you feel better, please keep them. I don't want to make you sad. Why should I care about my soul?
I don't care too much about what happens to me. I just try to do what I can, when I can. If other people (or Gods) feel the need to judge me or condemn me... there's not too much I can do about it.
I don't like politics.

How do I know you aren't being guided by God? Because you haven't said one thing to make me think you are.YOU COULD NOT CALL GOD EVIL IF YOU KNEW HIM AT ALL, SO OBVIOUSLY YOU DON'T.If it's just ME you'd be trusting in, of course, forget it, I'd like to get you look at HIM, not me and yes I know that still sounds like I'm asking you to trust me personally but you know there are lots of others who believe as I do, just take a leap and believe that maybe we're right no matter how stupid you think we are. No, you don't have any reason to unless somehow you've got a glimmer that maybe there might be something to it. If not, oh well. But I did say to ASK GOD. He hears. If you really want to know the truth He'll answerIf you have done this as you seem to be saying you have then He will answer, but when He does you'll know it and you'd say things in such a way that I'd jknow it too,AND AGAIN YOU COULD NOT CALL GOD EVIL IF YOU KNEW HIM AT ALL, AND HE WON'T ANSWER YOU UNTIL YOU GIVE THAT UP.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.