But it’s biblical, right…Kicking A&E out of Eden and denying them the fruit of the tree of life basically condemned humanity to eternal genocide…but then gave us a way to Him through faith.
I’m not saying they all would have died anyway, I’m saying God is exempt from any crime as creator of all. But if you ever find yourself in a courtroom against God…run.
What’s your argument for that?
Do you actually believe that all that is true? It’s impossible for me to take that story seriously enough to condemn God for it, even if I thought God existed. The Flood, on the other hand, is simpler.
Sure. But if it happened 2000 years ago, I would not expect much success.
And don’t miss the same point: One explanation that would be off the table would be that the guy really could fly by flapping his arms. You disagree?
You are again misrepresenting me. I’m pretty sure I listed a number of improbable things I believe occurred earlier in this discussion. Like the 9/11 attacks, or Usain Bolt running 100m in 9.58 seconds. I have no doubt those things happened, though I likely would never have believed such things could happen until they did.
Sure. More likely than there really being a Bigfoot.
Also, as we have already discussed, that scenario has been replicated 100% by people who believed Muhammed received messages from God. So why don’t you believe them?
And, with the next breath, you would say that God has to serve as our standard for morality, even though he is not a human.
Religious apologists don’t seem to have any concept of consistency.
Wow. Is there a single Christian in this discussion who knows what sort of god they are supposed to believe in? This is the third time I have had to point a Christian to this article in the past few hours:
I can also display a sense of exasperation just like because you are making me explain the obvious? Here is point 1. again - just for you this time:
And you think that means the same thing as “God is not an individual”? Really?
You’re still avoiding the main problem…
I don’t think so, but I know you think so. So now we know God is not human, duh. What exactly was your argument anyway?
If God cannot be judged by our standards because he is not human, then we we humans cannot be held to his standards, for the same reason.
Unless of course he owns us.
So, by that logic, if someone wants to torture the dog he owns, that’s fine.
Christian morality, FTW!
That logic doesn’t transfer at all to the divine-human interaction. You have once again lowered the standard to a human perpetrating a crime and so your logic is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Please spell out the logical argument for that. No question-begging allowed, of course,
Maybe I should preface with “thinking out loud”…I don’t hold to Genesis as tightly as others, I do think the story has merit in a more figurative sense regarding mans sin nature, but I don’t know the true meaning.
I’d say that the Adam story is more obviously ridiculous than the Genesis 1 creation story. The two versions of God are very different, too, the Genesis 1 God being much less anthropomorphic and more sophisticated than Adam’s God. I don’t know the origins of each story, but one might suspect that the Adam story is older and/or more local in origin.
You might need to read up on this some more.
For example, the term “catholic” in the creed does not mean the Catholic Church. Rather it means the universal church, in the same way for example that the New Testament addressed “the Church.”
Yes I disagree. If twelve people you knew and trusted said it happened, and you have no better explanation and you can’t figure out why they would lie, a miracle could have happened.
If you did, it wasn’t a reply to me or I missed it. I haven’t been reading everything.
Heck, I didn’t think Trump would ever be elected. But the point is that you didn’t believe those things could happen, and only did because you trusted people around you. That doesn’t mean you’re open-minded. I’m referring to being open to something supernatural happening. If you’re this close-minded, why do you think the apostles could have all believed Jesus was alive, and then made those stories up about him appearing to them lots of times, and then thought it was a good idea to spread this penniless or under threat? (Oh yeah, they made that part up too!) They must have gotten money! Quick! Undig their palaces! 
But yet lots of open-minded intelligent people decided the miracle was their only option when they studied the material as atheists. You’re intelligent; you’re just not open-minded. 
Since Jesus is the most influential person who ever lived, I’m sure we can’t know much, and it’s not like we have anything documenting his life or his followers’ lives or any of the places they went or any of the churches they established. Or anything that uses those sources… 
Shall we compare Jesus and Muhammed?
Should I come up with more? It’s really hard to decide here…I just can’t tell if one of them may even be legitmate…man.
Did you follow my argument on Euthyphro at all. God CANNOT serve as our standard for morality unless He is eternally good! 
Sigh.
Really? Even though you told me God lied.
God loves sinners, but the Bible does not says God loves everyone. The Bible says God loves the world, Israel and its children, and His bride, the church.
John 3
“For God so loved the world,[i] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
Psalm 98
The Lord has made known his salvation;
he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
3 He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Romans 9
For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion,[b] but on God, who has mercy.
John 3
And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” 27 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”[j]
… 35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Actually I’m very careful in my answers to you. Your questions are similar to those of the sneaky snake. Someone who knows the Scriptures, does not believe in them, and yet believes God is evil isn’t someone to take lightly. Your theological questions are written in a deceptive way and I recognize him in them. They are sophisticated spiritual attacks and I answer them with carefulness. You may not know my meaning, but he does.
How did you get your knowledge of the Bible? Did you grow up in a Christian home or read it on your own?
Everyone dies because of the consequences of sin.
God has justified His church which still exists on the earth today; once she is completely gathered, then Christ will come back in judgment.
He lied in the story. It’s just a story.
Who doesn’t he love?
So I’m a tool of Satan? Or am I Satan himself? Now that’s paranoid.
Yes, and yes.
Not really an answer.
That’s not an answer either.
I think it says a lot when the only defense people can muster is to disallow even the act of judging God’s actions. If God’s actions were moral then this wouldn’t be needed.
This is a perfect illustration of the double-standard and intellectual inconsistency that underlies your position, though I doubt you are aware of it.
The better explanation is that my friends are lying or mistaken.
Why is it a better explanation? Because people lie or make mistakes very frequently. At this very moment, there are thousands and thousands of people on earth lying and/or making mistakes. There is not a single person flying by flapping his arms, I am pretty certain and I suspect so are you.
The explanation that is more likely based on our observations is the better one.
Now, you go and add an additional stipulation. It is not enough that I have an explanation that is consistent with things that we know can happen. You insist that I need to explain why my friends would be lying or mistaken. But there is no similar stipulation for your preferred explanation of a miracle. You don’t seem to feel the need to explain why this person was able to fly just by flapping his arms. You just handwave that problem away by saying “It’s a miracle.” That is not an answer to the “why” question.
Back to an example I have mentioned earlier: When the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide, they mistakenly believed that a spaceship was going to take their souls to another world. Why did they make this mistake? I honestly do not know, and I doubt anyone else knows for sure.
But that does not mean we therefore conclude that there really was a spaceship that took their souls to another world.
Do you follow now?
No, I believe it happened because there is incontrovertible evidence that I can see with my own eyes.
If Usain Bolt just had a dozen friends who insisted he had run 100m in 9.58 seconds but no officials had actually witnessed the feat, it would not be accepted as a world record. Do you think that is wrong?
I don’t know how many times I have to explain this. Are you really this dense? Do I need to spell it out in bold letters? Let’s see if that helps:
I DO NOT THINK THE DISCIPLES MADE UP STORIES ABOUT JESUS COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD.
Can you read that? Do you understand all the words in that sentence? If not, either see an optometrist or get a remedial English teacher.
And, of course, a lot of Christians became atheists when they did the same thing. So what do you make of that? Do you only consider people to be “open-minded” if they agree with you? Say, isn’t that a bit, er, close-minded of you?
I don’t see how this pertains. How did an illiterate merchant become a powerful military and political leader? Because people were convinced he was a messenger of god.
Again, what argument are you trying to make here? If we had a book written by Jesus himself, that would make Christianity less believable? How so?
Anyway, Muslims do not believe Muhammad wrote the Quran. God did. Muhammed just recited the words of God to people who transcribed them.
Untrue. There are plenty of miracles also attributed to Muhammad:
Umm, maybe you need to read up a bit on the history of your own religion. In any event, like all of your arguments so far, this is irrelevant to the belief that Muhammad received messages from God.
Now this is just weird. If Muhammad recited a book that refers to Scriptures without knowing them, wouldn’t that mean he could only have learned of this thru God?
Now you’re just babbling. I have no idea what you are even trying to say here. That there are a bunch of things written by Christians about what they think happened during Jesus’s life is of no bearing on whether Jesus rose from the dead. And there are plenty of things recorded by and about the early followers of Muhammad, collected as the Hadith.
So why shouldn’t God give instructions pertaining to what his chosen messenger should be allowed to do and how he should be treated?
In any event, I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. You haven’t provided any refutation of the fact that Muhammad’s followers believed he was the messenger of God, and they tried to spread this belief at risk of being jailed or killed. All of the often incoherent stuff you wrote above has no bearing on this.
Another non-sequitur. This bears no relevance to the point I was making.
@thoughtful pointed that out…funny how it means something totally different today.