There is no difference between "god's morality" and "our morality" if morality has an objective basis. It would exist independently of a god or us, and the standard would be the same.
You came into a conversation I was having with someone else about Gods morality and you asked for scientific support for God which was irrelevant for proving morality.
As far as Gods morality is concerned objective moral values are rooted in God's nature and not in His will so by nature he cannot be evil and is morally good. Gods goodness is expressed to us with his moral laws for which become a Christians moral duties. So objective morality doesn't exist independent of God, they are God and he cannot be or do anything else.
Likewise, there's no difference between "human logic" and "god's logic", logic also has an objective foundation.
But God is not a finite being and is not restricted by our understanding of time and space.
Furthermore, if evil didn't exist, then what we call good would be ALL that exists. We may not be able to identify the concept as there's nothing to contrast it with, however that doesn't change the fact that all of the actions that would be taken in such a world would be things we'd consider to be good.
Do you have any support for this as even if you could support this you would not know what to look for. Good would mean nothing without evil like love would mean nothing without hate. These are essential values that need to be recognized as they are the basis for human endeavor and existence. I think your drawing a long bow that cannot be verified so it is easier said than done.
Serial killers have free will, they chose to become serial killers. Some may do it due to mental disorders, but there is no one universal cause to becoming a serial killer.
There are certain common factors and the fact is serial killers are either born or made they don't just pop up out of thin air from a so called normal person who has no history or neurological disorders. Humans have a survival instinct where anyone could kill but most people are able to rationalize things to know that it is wrong in most situations. Serial killers don't have that ability. There are certain common factors such as childhood abuse and trauma that certainly causes them to not be able to think and act like most people.
Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind – physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers.
What makes a serial killer?
Besides, you're now contradicting yourself. On one hand you're claiming god places great importance on free will, however now you're saying he allows free will to be taken from certain people whenever it happens to be inconvenient for your argument?
No I said Gods creation was perfect and then it was corrupted by sin. This has allowed things to deteriorate and become imperfect. If God makes creates with free will then by nature there has to be the possibility of consequences of choice if there is good and evil. Wrong choices can lead to bad consequences which may mean things become corrupted and put in chaos. That leads to the loss of God given free will.
On the contrary, you're telling me exactly what god's justifications are for doing certain things that I'm bringing up. I'm questioning the claimed actions of his, and you're telling me what his thoughts and justifications are.
If I am defending Gods actions morally I am doing it from a biblical position of what the bible says. That is different to you injecting your views onto God restricting him to our time, space and understanding. God thinks infinitely and we think finitely for one. The bible tells us why God did things. Jesus clearly tells us how we should act morally.
If anyone is arguing from a position of knowing the mind of god, it's you. I'm just critiquing his supposed actions.
But your critiquing God from a atheistic and worldly perspective when God also occupies a divine and spiritual realm beyond our reality of time and space. I qualify when I try to explain things in human terms to try and explain things. I don't say that is is how things are but that these may be possibilities to consider to try and show how the context may be beyond what we understand.
Point proven, you're explaining to me god's thoughts and reasons in this rebuttal. You have nothing to go on but rampant speculation, however none of it really discredits my original argument.
This explanation of how God relates to us is common knowledge and derived from an understanding of what the bible says. It is not just plain speculation. You make criticize God without reading or understanding the bible. It would be like a layperson criticizing a mechanics work when they have never read a car manual.
If you think sadism and hedonism is what would result from his idea of what is morally good, then you don't understand his views.
That is the common view of most critics. Sam Harris's moral landscape is certain no verified idea and has many inconsistencies and problems so I don't thin we can place too much faith in it as a foundation for objective morally. The very fact that people are debating the interpretation of it points to its subjectivity. What one person views human well-being is based on happiness and pleasure another person will disagree so we are back to subjectivity.
So, if god's original plan was to create a perfect universe free of sin....
That means one of two things:
1) He failed in his plan, which seems unlikely for an all knowing and all powerful god. This would make him incompetent at universe design.
2) He succeeded in his plan, and his idea of a perfect universe is the exact one we are living in right now
Which one is it?
Once again you are restricting things to human logic and God is beyond this. What if his plan is still ongoing and is not completed yet. What if as the bible says that in the end a perfect situation is achieved. It just means that it has to take a certain path for that perfection to be established.
So you reject the idea that all happens according to god's plan?
I don't think every single little step happens according to Gods plan. If we have free will I cannot see how that would be the case. Just because God knows what happens and speaks like he knows what happened doesn't mean he controls everything that happens. When a storm or earthquake occurs it is the result of certain laws and conditions that come together (Chaos theory). God is not going to control all these events. He has only created the laws that govern these things.
So he has only created the ability to have free will and it is up to us to choose which way to go. God sees us outside time like the event has already happened because God is not subject to time as we know it. The bible says God was there before time. There is a video I watch on this that explained things well which ends with God is responsible for the fact of freedom but humans are responsible for the act of freedom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN53uHzOoXs
[/quote] This is not an apt analogy as my boss is not the all powerful creator by which all things are said to happen according to their plan.
If all things did happen according to my boss's plan, then by definition I would have to do everything in the plan exactly as specified.[/quote] But like your boss God does not make robots to carry out the plan. Humans are free agents otherwise we would be slaves or robots. So people can choose to follow the plan and just because God knows the end result as to who follow that plan or not does not mean he had any influence or control of the steps taken in implementing that plan by people. A good example is
if you were watching a replay of a footy game and someone told you the score so you knew the end result. Does that mean that the players don;t have free will anymore during the game.
Huh, so the bible has contradictions.... who'd have thought?
Or that you are misinterpreting the bible.
Romans 8:29 and Ephesians 1:4-5 disagree with you.
But yet when I show verses that contradict your claims, all you do is pick and choose other verses or make unsupported claims to dismiss my argument.[/quote] No I don't pick and choose verses. I choose to investigate and understand bible verses in context and with a better understanding from others who have studied the bible more comprehensively. Something it seems you don't do and if anything you are the one pulling isolated verses out of the bible and using them to suit your preconceived view that God and the bible are wrong. Here is a commentary that explains things better than I could about Romans 8:29. The author Greg Boyd is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author.
The text does not imply that God loves certain individuals ahead of time but not others. And the text certainly doesn’t imply that God foreknows who will and will not choose to be in Christ ahead of time. In fact, any attempt to use this text to prove that God foreknows future free acts actually backfires, for the “foreknowledge” Paul speaks about is limited. Paul says “those who God foreknew he predestined…” This implies there are others God did not foreknow.
Nor can this passage be used to support that idea that God predestines who will and will not be in Christ. Read the text carefully. What is predestined is not who will be in or out, but what will happen to all who are in. They will eventually be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and glorified. God predestines the consequence of the choice to be in Christ or not, but he doesn’t predestine the choice itself. Scripture is clear that God wants every person to put their trust in his Son, and through his Spirit God empowers us toward this end (2 Pet. 3:9).
How do you respond to Romans 8:29-30? - Greg Boyd - ReKnew
By all accounts Jeffrey Dahmer had a completely normal upbringing. I have no doubt something was wrong with his brain, however if god created him, then he created him in that way.
God no more created Dahmer that way than he did for the Aussie bush fires. The bush fires are said to be a combination of climate change, droughts and poor land management. As mentioned research shows that most serial killers have been conditioned to end up that way. But even if they were born that way this is often the result of genetic disorders or other influences that effected the brain sometimes through prenatal events or even hereditary such as epigenetics. But certainly not God reaching down and making it that way.
Again, if morality is objective, then god and us have the same moral standard.
As mentioned God by nature is all good. He cannot be morally bad. So whatever you perceive as him being bad is your subjective view of morality.
Likewise, if god is all powerful, he could snap his fingers and make evil disappear instantly, he could "win the war on evil" without any effort whatsoever. So what's taking him so long?
Gods acts in his time and that time is perfect time so that in the end sin and evil will be defeated. Any other time will not achieve the outcome. The same as when Jesus came. It was at the right time for Christ in our history and happened according to the prophesies. Any other time it would not have brought the right outcome as people were not ready.
I didn't ask for a scientific citation, I just had enough of replying to paragraphs of unjustified claims, and didn't want to do one more. If you want to make claims like these, back them with some reason to actually accept your claims as credible.
That,s what I am trying to do. Sorry if I am not explaining things well. The thing is originally someone was criticizing God morally for killing people. I said we cannot judge God on how we perceive things as God is beyond our realm of time and space. They were trying to tie him down to how we see things. I said that for one we see death differently.
For atheists killing is final as this world is all there is so it has more gravity. For God the taking of a life is not final and is moving people from one dimension to another so it doesn't have the same implications as it does for human understanding. That needs to be taken into consideration what applying our view or morality onto God.