This sounds good, but people would still retain their free will.

1. These peoples could still decide where to live, what to do and what to wear or eat.

2. Many people who have been sterilized still retain their free will.

Your argument does not stand up to high water.

If they left Canaan, it wouldn't have been by their own free will.

If they worshiped God, it wouldn't have been by their own free will.

Thus, either way, their free will would have been violated.

The idea that knowing that God actually exists would somehow negate 'free will' is a bogus idea to begin with. That very idea is a very demented one. A God who plays hide-and-seek and expects people to guess which religion might true is a jerk right there.

Actually if you accept that notion then you'd have to concede that God condemns people to hell for merely having guessed wrong. Such a God would be far from rigtheous.

The only reason that the Biblical god needs to play 'hide and seek' and have mortal men do his judging and executions for him is because he doesn't exist. The authors who wrote the Biblical stories knew that God didn't exist and they were trying to get their readers to play God because they knew there is such thing as a God who intervenes.

No decent God would have his mortal pets carrying out his judgments and punishments for him.

Besides, your argument about God being patient with people over a 400 year period makes absolutely no sense at all unless you're going to consider reincarnation (which doesn't fit into the biblical scheme of things).

There's still no excuse for it at all.

This is probably the very best reason to abandon Christianity. It's such a godforsaken religion that any attempt to defend it results in nothing other than making really lame excuses for an utterly unjustified God.

I would personally think that should be clear to any reasonable person that the very idea of a whole nation of people purposefully choosing to reject God would be enough reason right there to chalk the religion up to nothing more than an absurd work of fiction.

Besides, you claim that if people actually knew that God existed that would take away their free will. Yet this means that they necessarily must guess.

Well, that blows the whole religion away right there.

If people don't even know that God is real or believe that he is real, then it would be impossible for them to reject him. All they are doing is chosing to believe in something else. That could not possible be considered 'rebellion'.

So a God who forces people to guess would be totally unjustified in condemning anyone to damnation for simply not believing. The only people he could rightfully condemn would be the believers who actually believe in him yet spite him on purpose.

The one's that merely guessed wrong could not be held accountable for merely having made an honest mistake. If fact, it couldn't even justly be called a mistake, how can you make a mistake when you have no choice but to guess?

There's no way that a God who plays hide and seek would be justified in doing anything.

The only way he could justify himself is to make himself known. Only then could he hold people accountable who turned against him knowingly.

So you're whole defense for the biblical God here doesn't even hold water. The very reasons that you give to justify him are actually the very reasons why he would not be justified.

A God who plays games can't be trusted. Your picture of a God who plays hide-and-seek is a picture of an untrustworthy God. Such a God would be totally unjustified in holding anyone accountable for anything.

Sexual immorality: A couple is wed by a priest with the power of God invested in him.

The wife is sterile.

There are no other men in the world, but lots of other women.

This is due to a global catastrophe.

Mankind's only chance to survive is for the only man to reproduce with a great number of available women who are willing and eager and capable.

But every one of them is a Jew/Christian who believes that sexual immorality is an act that God forbade.

What should they do then?

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Right. We should not save a life by worshippign another god. But what makes another god? If there are other gods, why not worship them? Why is our God so exact about that? What's the point? The Jewish/Christian God does not explain this commandment, at least not in the commandment. Does He explain it in other parts of the Bible?

In a way, He is consistent, at least with "do as I say, not as I do". He commands us to love each other like brothers, but he forbids us to love His colleagues. Maybe He does not love them. Ergo the quote is proven, "do as I say, ..."

And we can save lives except by murdering... well. The obvious problem is a single invader of a housefull of family of very religious devout followers of the Word of God. The invader has a repeating automatic firearm with loads of ammunition, and the house dwellers are each armed with firearms, as they came to the place for a family tradition of hunting game. The invader comes in, and he's randomly shooting members of the family. Men, women, children. What should people do? Let the madman continue with this?

I'm not going to read this, but I am impressed. I think you could probably have just boiled it all down to one or two lines...maybe a paragraph at most.



If everyone knew that God existed and that they would go to hell if they didn't worship him, then every sane person would worship God. Explain how that is a "bogus" idea.

Except that God gave everyone a conscience, which tells them how to behave. Everyone has a spirit, which reacts to the gospel. Christianity has been spread throughout the world by missionaries since the death of Jesus nearly 2,000 years ago.

And we get further and further off topic...

Right. But their free will would not have been violated at all if they had decided to leave Canaan and then they left. Or their free will would not have been violated if they believed in and worshipped God.

So what are you saying? I am saying that if God in one gesture made them infertile, all people who did not believe in Him, then He would not have made the people act against their free will, and He would not have violated peoples' free will. He would have left the free will intact; He would have taken away from people something quite different from their free will.

So... why did God choose not to do that? It would have not caused his dignity or anyone's dignity any damage.

So?

Since when does the Biblical God give a damn about anyone's free will?

This is the same God who commands people to murder heathens. This is the same God who commanded his favored people to murder all the Canaanites. So he's raping them of their free will eventaully anyway.

So it doesn't matter. The idea that this God is somehow restricted by respecting the free will of mortals simply doesn't wash.

There are no excuses for this mythology. It's a horrible sick mythology no matter how it's sliced.

So?

Since when does the Biblical God give a damn about anyone's free will?

This is the same God who commands people to murder heathens. This is the same God who commanded his favored people to murder all the Canaanites. So he's raping them of their free will eventaully anyway.

So it doesn't matter. The idea that this God is somehow restricted by respecting the free will of mortals simply doesn't wash.

There are no excuses for this mythology. It's a horrible sick mythology no matter how it's sliced.


Please, no cutting in. My argument is my argument.

We should give the guy some breathing space.

Don't crowd him, or each other.

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The idea is not to throw bricks of uncaked brick (mud), but to take the arguments of the righteous and use parts of the anatomy of his arguments in a way that reduces the same into an absurdum.

If you come up with concepts that had been created since, then it's not a fair game, or it may be fair, but it's way less elegant.

We want to keep our dignity and pose.

Marry the guy? Christians are forbidden from having more than one wife if they plan to be a priest. Society has frowned upon polygamy because there are plenty of men and women, there is no need for the practice. And the practice itself tilts the power of marriage strongly to the man. But if there was only one man and many women, then the lucky guy could marry as many of them women as would have him. Otherwise they wouldn't have a husband or children.



"god" is an object of worship. Money can be your god. Sex can be your god. This is a part of the English language and is frequently used, I'm surprised that you felt this question necessary.



That's a completely different situation and most certainly not murder. Self defense is never murder. Murder in the Bible is defined as an "unjustified killing of a human". Killing someone to protect your family is justified.

Are you insane? This would fly in the face of God and the Absolute Morality!!! He (God) does NOT allow sexual immorality!!

Whose side are you on? Obviously not God's.

Are you arguing that dying strips one of your free will? I would like to know how you know that. If there is life after death, how do you know there isn't free will after death? And you have already admitted that God exists for the sake of the argument, therefore an afterlife must also exist for the sake of argument.

I would also like to point out that the Israelites had their free will, they could have refused God's command. The Canaanites had their free will, they could have heeded God's warning. The Canaanites could have surrendered. The Canaanites could have made a deal with the Israelites (one tribe did). There was no violation of free will.

The simple fact that I do question the morality of your god, belies that statement.

I have no objection to you not questioning the morals of your god. I fully understand that doing so is explicitly against the tenets of your religion. And I fully understand that from the viewpoint of your religion, those morals and tenets are absolute.

I just don't happen to subscribe to that religion, and thus its tenets, morals and viewpoints are not absolute in my view.

No... no. God that you believe in FORBADE to worship other gods. Now you say that to give another English name to a another God, all of a sudden it's okay to disregard our own God's commandment.

Are you insane? Have you lost your mind?

God is NOT going to be amused or pleasant with you when He judges you on how well you kept to His most important commandments.

Because if worshipping "money" would be allowed by God, then the Golden Calf would have been okay with Him. But it was not!!!

Well, if that's true then God gave me a conscience that tells me to reject Christianity because it's horrible and disgusting religion.

So I can only being doing the will of God according to you. If you now try to claim that some evil demon has turned me against God, then once again your very own arguments blow up in your own face.

I've been all through Christianity. It's not possible to justify it. It's a totally unrighteous picture of an egotistical jealous demonic hateful god that was written by men to fool the masses, and fool the masses they did!

All the religion does is spread hatred, predjudice, and bigotry. It's a totally ungodly religion.

It would be sexual immorality for the man to have relations with women to whom he wasn't married. In your hypothetical situation, the women had only one man they could marry and assuming all parties were willing, I see nothing immoral about the arrangement.

I didn't condone the worship of other gods, I was simply answering your question. There are no spiritual gods or any being that is the equivalent to God. But there are other objects of worship which men have worshiped.

I seriously require you to name your source. You are already condoning the breaking of two of the most major commandments. Is it okay by a Christian or by a Jew to misquote the Bible? I don't know. If it is okay, fine, but if it is not okay, then I demand you give the location of the quote, or else withdraw this argument.

That is a logically inconsistent position. If you are okay with that, then I'll step out of it. But to say in one breath "God did this." and then in another say "But the rest of the stuff in the Bible about God couldn't be true"...that's really thin ice you are walking on, intellectually speaking, of course.

You must have misread my question. He's the only man in the world. He's married to an infertile woman. To marry any other women he has to divorce the first woman and marry the next. This cannot be done without at priest or rabbi. Priests cannot marry, and rabbis cannot marry their own selves. Ministers in protestant churches, neither.

So how is he going to marry the next woman?

So personal dignity takes precedence over everything? No one should have tried to kill Hitler because his personal dignity was more important than 6 million murdered Jews?