Morality without god

You said that the that " the husband rains down his "angel of death" (5 time black belt) on all three of them" and you said it in the context of God killing everything on earth. If you meant that not to mean killing tham, then fine.My serious point - which you are avoiding - is one of proportionality. In law, people are allowed to use reasonable force to defend themselves, they are not allowed to go further than that.They are also not allowed to use violence if they are not threatened with violence themselves. Your god kills over and over in floods, famines and plagues simply because he's pissed off with people. That's murder and genocide.

Illustration, analagy, call it what you will, there is still no correlation between them and what you're attempting to say.Fyi correlation: A mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.You want to say that the relationship between good and evil is like that of heat and cold. I'm saying that there is no connection between the two ideas. The illustration fails.Heat is an objective, measurable thing; you can add or remove heat from an object - cold and hot are simply human descriptions of two extremes on the range.Good and evil don't objectively exist - they're man made description of human only behaviour. Removing good or evil is not a concept that means anything in the real world because it's an idea, not a thing.Your phrase "good is the source and the absence of good is evil" can equally be used in reverse and you haven't provided a reason why it can't be - all you've done is give us a fallacious analogy.

U know I really think the idea that Evil is the absence of Good fails hugely, having met people who have committed genuinely evil deeds I have to say Evil is an additive process not the absence of Good.You hardly consider;
- Raping someone to be the null setting and not Rape as the additive one
- Stealing to be the null setting as opposed to purchasing something
- Murder to be the default interaction and not murdering as a direct wilful act (Id worry heavily about u if you did)Having said that there are things which are intrinsic to a persons life due to their brain chemistry/experiences/etc that they would have to make an effort to repress, their moral stance, skepticism and sexual orientation - although I would see repressing these things as dishonest in a way. If I am a skeptic that claims to believe am I not being deceitful in my core being, is deceit not a "sinful" or evil act?

Yes but again we find ourselves tying to convey a concept that stretches beyond normal daily situations. Any allegory I use, to try and convey the concept, will not hold up under the kind of facetious scrutiny you're willing to employ with great alacrity. What we are talking about here is an entity with which you and I sprang. Every breath you or I draw is thanks to the One who both created the lungs and the air. Not only this He is the highest court in the land with full "legal" power to execute judgment where and when and however He chooses. He has already written within each of our consciences the rules with which we should live and treat one another. Therefore He is not obligated to give even a single warning and yet time after time He does with loving grace. According to the supreme law, we all should have been judged and condemned for our very first sin which likely occurred 10 seconds after we knew right from wrong. However He didn't judge us. Rather He sent His only Son to die in our place and we have been given multiple opportunities to repent.The worst thing in the world is not for a child to die at an early age and be instantly ushered into the arms of a loving God. The worst thing is to live a long and healthy life on this earth and to die and go to hell having rejected such grace. That is the grossest atrocity. Yes. All illustrations will fail to shine in the hearts and minds of the deliberately obtuse.

You're certainly more than welcome to think whatever you want. The real question is do those thoughts hold up to logical evaluation? Not raping someone is just the baseline which is a non action. It is the expected mode of human behavior. However a non action can become evil when it is observed that a positive action is required. For example soldiers happening upon a village of starving widows, left that way by enemy forces, may not rape the women but if they fail to try and aid them then they have still committed an evil act. Therefore evil is not an "act," but the failure to act appropriately in the particular situation.

I would suggest that both good and evil are courses one takes for the most part - although it would be my personal stand point that largely good and evil are subjective, neither one could be considered the default setting, ergo I reject your claim that evil is the baseline.
I have no doubt that you can find examples that show that inaction is evil and I'm ok with that because for every big example you give of those situations I am sure I can give ten day to day examples where the baseline is largely neutral and evil is an additive property.Of course if morality is subjective and human derived we would expect it to be quite fluid, if it is objective and god given we wouldnt - so for now I am more concerned with demolishing the notion that evil is the default than demonstrating an alternative morality because biblical notions of morality is what is relevant to the topic.Edit :Just to make my position clear within the context of this discussion;Topic - morality without god
The inference I am trying to dispel - morality comes from a biblical god
Desired Resolution - if biblical devine morality can be dispelled and we are still sure morality exists then the logical inference isnt that morality can exist without godEdited by GrimSqueaker, : No reason given.

If you remove the unnecessary and provocative word 'facetious' from that, we have exposed your problem - your argument simply failed under examination. So all you are left with is this pure assertion: You can't support a word of that with any factual evidence.And then you come out with this nonsense: This is pure pulpit tosh, a despicable cop out and a straight lie.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Right. So there goes the Free Will Defense. Don't use it again if you don't really believe it.

Which "of course" God does whenever he chooses in your very next post.You seem to be giving us a masterclass in doublethink.Besides that, if you recall, your flood stuff is an analogy for the God sending the Angel of Death to smite the firstborn of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. (Why not just talk about the thing itself?) So what you've come round to is saying that God can kill the firstborn, never mind their free will, but he can't spare them because that would abrogate Pharaoh's free will.

Right - we read about it, and we hear about it almost daily from people who say things like "God saved me from dying in that accident / attack / disaster / ..." (where the event in question killed other people, who may well have been equally faithful and deserving of "providential protection"). It smacks of narcissism: "God has some special plan in mind for me, because He didn't kill me!"You'll say one of two things about the people not kept alive by His "intervention" in such cases: either they were actually free-will sinners ("worthy of death" as Faith would put it), despite all outward appearances that they were no different from the ones He chose to keep alive, or their death was an unavoidable cost incurred by the "greater good of His divine plan."Either way, the end result, if attributed to divine will, is indistinguishable from capriciousness.(AbE: The various polytheistic religions of old at least had the honesty to describe their various gods as capricious, thereby providing an account of supernatural causation that reconciles real-world observation with our "common sense" about intelligent agents. I think it's enlightening to consider why this option is not available to monotheists: it seems that a predisposition toward optimism is predominant in human nature. Could it be that pessimists are less likely to survive and propagate?) That was about tall tales meant to entertain the children, just like the whole global flood story, and the whole Tower of Babel story, and the Samson story and the Jonah/fish story and the Adam & Eve story, and ...Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.

It's even worse than that.According to the Exodus story, God is perfectly happy to directly interfere with the Pharaoh's free will when He wants a pretext to send a disaster. How, then can we say that doing more to prevent disasters or protect people in disasters is an unacceptable restriction on free will?

I'd like to know can God see the future or not - I'd imagine by most doctrines he'd have to in order to be "all knowing"But if he can see the future free will of lesser beings is bullshit when they directly or indirectly interact with God, as an all knowing God would know the out come of the interactions and be able to tailor his response to suit his own ends.This is a little tangental but Genisis is stupid(er) if Adam and Eve don't eat from the tree, the story would just stagnate - it's all most like god wanted them to sin.P.s. Punishing Adam and Eve who had no concept of right and wrong for a crime he could have easily avoided is immoral of God too - God is in fact the original Sinner. Boom

Paul writes For your conclusion to make any sense at all, you would have to demonstrate beyond any doubt that God interfered with P's free will at all. This I am confident you or no one could possibly do.Influencing a decision in one direction or the other, is not the same as interfering with free will. Since free will by its simple nature and make up is, making a choice in one direction or the other.Aside from the influence you are still free to choose between the alternatives.Free will, like any other fixed law of rationality and reality, is just that, fixed, it cant change or be altered, even by God himself. Youve inadvertentley combined influence and alternatives with free will. They are two different thingsFor God to actually interfer with free will in humans, he would quite literally have to remove the thinking process he gave us in the first place. He did not do this to Pharoah, nor does he do it to usAs usual the secular fundamental humanist, hasen't learned what reality is and what it will allow him.Remember most things are simple propositions carried to thier logical conclusion. Once they are carried to thier logical conclusion, no amount of information will change its outcomeDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Again, "restriction on free will" is a non-sensical statement. There are however, restrictions on the choices to exercise free will.Setting limiatations on children for thier own good does not interfer with thier free will to choose or not to choose to do one thing or the other.Do you consider the laws prohibitions, to not let a 12 year old drink Vodka an infrindgment on his free will?Setting limitations or consequences, is not the same as a restriction on free will.Dawn Bertot

Please explain that to Jbr. PaulK and I are just using his jargon to discuss the point.