Please present a compelling explanation why naturalism is true

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

Why did God create them in the first place if he wasn't going to like them?

[Xeno]

Originally Posted by jireh

The bible teaches us, you shall not murder. Most understand that command. Some do not. Because of the few, that do not understand it, you cannot conclude the bible teaches it.

Jireh said specifically that he would kill if his god asked him to do so. Therefore, the above claim is arrant bullshit.

Jireh has persistently avoided questions related to his willingness to kill for his god, how he would know he was commanded to do so.

Jireh continues not to address these and related questions about his facade of morality behind which he preaches, adding corroborative evidence to my hypothesis about intellectual cowardice on his part.

[dilbadoon]

Originally Posted by jireh

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/200...ther-documents

Well, this guy just did not read the bible.....
its clearly explained there what God wants from us....and its not slaughtering others....

Originally Posted by jireh

please explain, how you think the bible transforms a specific command, at a specific time, at a specific context, with a specific reason, in a general one, where it recommends all of us to slaughter our neighbour, or other volks. Your argument has no validity at all. Jesus said, the most important command is to love each other. You should understand the bible in context.....not isolated.

Jesus wept . For the third time jireh, I have once again posted your original comment above. Stop trying to evade it. You stated that God clearly states he does not want us slaughtering others. I have provided several examples in the bible where he states the opposite, with a promise to provide more if you so desire. These examples can be found in the old and new testaments.
The fact that Jesus (allegedly) said that is just another example of the incredible hypocrisy in your flawed and laughable holy book. Back up your original statement, or at least have the decency to admit you were wrong, because at the moment your desperate evasion of it is more telling than anything.

[jireh]

Originally Posted by Inedifix

Quite possibly so.

Please see my question above regarding god's "objective binding, prescriptive moral standard" namely "Thou Shalt not Kill" in contrast to his orders to annihilate the Canaanites.

I look forward to your reply...

God is not binded to the command : you shall not kill. He is the creator of all life, and he can choose to let someone live, or not.

Craig answers your questions nicely :

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...rticle&id=5767

our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.

What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.

So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong.

On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.

isn’t such a command contrary to God’s nature?

Well, let’s look at the case more closely. It is perhaps significant that the story of Yahweh’s destruction of Sodom--along with his solemn assurances to Abraham that were there as many as ten righteous persons in Sodom, the city would not have been destroyed--forms part of the background to the conquest of Canaan and Yahweh’s command to destroy the cities there. The implication is that the Canaanites are not righteous people but have come under God’s judgement.

In fact, prior to Israel’s bondage in Egypt, God tells Abraham,

“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. . . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15. 13, 16).

Think of it! God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is the long-suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures. He even allows his own chosen people to languish in slavery for four centuries before determining that the Canaanite peoples are ripe for judgement and calling His people forth from Egypt.

By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.

But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut 7.3-4). This command is part and parcel of the whole fabric of complex Jewish ritual law distinguishing clean and unclean practices. To the contemporary Western mind many of the regulations in Old Testament law seem absolutely bizarre and pointless: not to mix linen with wool, not to use the same vessels for meat and for milk products, etc. The overriding thrust of these regulations is to prohibit various kinds of mixing. Clear lines of distinction are being drawn: this and not that. These serve as daily, tangible reminders that Israel is a special people set apart for God Himself.

I spoke once with an Indian missionary who told me that the Eastern mind has an inveterate tendency toward amalgamation. He said Hindus upon hearing the Gospel would smile and say, “Sub ehki eh, sahib, sub ehki eh!” (“All is One, sahib, All is One!” [Hindustani speakers forgive my transliteration!]). It made it almost impossible to reach them because even logical contradictions were subsumed in the whole. He said that he thought the reason God gave Israel so many arbitrary commands about clean and unclean was to teach them the Law of Contradiction!

By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel’s being set exclusively apart for God.

[jireh]

Originally Posted by Xeno

Jireh said specifically that he would kill if his god asked him to do so. Therefore, the above claim is arrant bullshit.

You should distinguish between Gods revelation in the bible, where he clearly says, we shall not kill each other. If however, God would ask to kill someone based on a specific task, as it happened with the jews, to kill the canaanites, that would be a completely other story.

[Iseeyouthere]

Furthermore, if you were 'told' by your god to kill someone... and only you would know... would that make you right? I mean... those who killed others and said 'goddidit' aren't true followers and all the shit you dribble before hand doesn't make their way true...

But they were following the bible and 'god' told them to do it... so why are you saying they aren't true followers?

Shouldn't they be the true followers because they were told by this 'god'?
You have stated you would kill in god's name... but you claim those who were 'told' by this god asshole were not following his orders....

Or you can admit that you are tripping over your own ideas and words now. That would be a start.

[Xeno]

Originally Posted by jireh

You should distinguish between Gods revelation in the bible, where he clearly says, we shall not kill each other. If however, God would ask to kill someone based on a specific task, as it happened with the jews, to kill the canaanites, that would be a completely other story.

You can not even write two short sentences without contradicting yourself.

God's revelation is "do not kill except anytime, anybody, whenever god feels like it", and
Jireh would kill but he will not tell us how he would know to do it.

[jireh]

Originally Posted by Atrax Robustus

Reference article for all future readers of this thread.

Gold jireh. Absolute gold!

Did you have trouble locating William Lane Craig's analogy or - as you have willingly admitted throughout this thread - didn't you read the content of the page before you linked it?

jireh, in demonstrating what he considers to be a canard, has linked us to a Secular Web (Infidels.org) page. He has cited in his quote above, an argument from analogy that WLC uses to counter the problems that the Weak Anthropic Principle present to ID and creationism. jireh's problem is that his linked page is devoted to blowing the WLC quote and the argument from big numbers out of the water!

Do you hear the laughter jireh? Get used to it - I suspect that people are going to be laughing at you for very a long time.

you can laugh, but instead of this, how about you make a rebuttal of the argument ? that would be more interesting.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Originally Posted by jireh

You should distinguish between Gods revelation in the bible, where he clearly says, we shall not kill each other. If however, God would ask to kill someone based on a specific task, as it happened with the jews, to kill the canaanites, that would be a completely other story.

And why would your fucking god, king and creator of the whole universe, need a puny human to murder for him??

[jireh]

Originally Posted by Atrax Robustus

Or, consider what would occur if a member of his/her family actually won the lottery . . . if jireh was to maintain his/her position, even while the winning relative is pushing a wheelbarrow full of cash through the living room, jireh would have to say "Nope. It can't have happened. The odds that you could have won the lottery are just too high".

winning at the lottery is one thing. To win out of the chance of one to 10^50 is another.....it seems you don't imagine how big that number is. Its a 5 with 50 zeros......its said that a chance of such dimension is never to happen , its like zero chance... but you still want to believe it ? well, go ahead, but you cannot say, your faith is rational - its blind faith in chance.