conformingtotheson:

Good evening, Rey. 

You said you dislike having conversations in private because it is beneficial to no one, but… does that mean you and I can’t benefit in any way from this? Am I not a person? Or you yourself a person? I still don’t see how it couldn’t have been beneficial if you had simply e-mailed me and we talked, but nevertheless, this will have to do. Moving onward. I’m sure that you were being quite kind in referring to me as the “obdurate” one and a lunatic while you are so open minded that you aren’t dogmatic in your position or stuck in your own sense of normalcy, either, of course… Also, it’s strange to me that you would post my responses to your questions, but you didn’t post the actual questions you proposed to which I was answering… It seems strange to take them out of their context to answer in your own misconstrued ways, but I digress, let’s get to your actual responses. 

You yourself said:  “It’s nothing against you but no one actually benefits from these discussions via internet. It’s a notion that educates no one but rather affirms both sides to their own sides even more than before.”  According to that, you cannot benefit from this discussion since this discussion will only further ascertain what you’re already certain of.  I honestly cannot benefit from this discussion because I already know you’re wrong and I can prove you’re wrong within this discussion and in other manners that I will not bring into this discussion because they’re off topic.  I provided a link to the questions that prompted your questions and they weren’t out of context.  My answers were directed at your questions.  Also, I was thinking about length and thus, I left my original questions and comments out of it.  Nevertheless, I provided a link for people to see them.

Reply Obj 1. Yes. God doesn’t do things without purpose (Eph. 1:11), as all He does pleases Him and does things in accordance to His perfect and good will. He charged a people with their crimes, yes. We are sinners from birth through Adam (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12-19). 

In order for you to prove anything via the Bible, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the Bible is true.  If you cannot prove that it is true, you can’t conveniently quote it as fact.  We are sinners from birth through Adam?  Adam did not exist; he’s a character depicted in a creation myth.

You don’t hold this Christian worldview that mankind has actual value and worth, so I’m curious as to what standard or basis you have for why human life is precious and of value? Why does it bother you that someone else perishes? If God, who is the author of all life, takes it away, and with purpose, then what response will you give to Him, Rey? What will the creation respond to the Creator? What will the pot reply to the Potter? 

In my view, human life isn’t the only life that is precious and valuable.  All life is precious and valuable.  In my view, this is all we know; we don’t know if there is a hereafter, and I’m not implying that heaven and hell are options, but that is entirely another matter.  We don’t know if there’s another chance.  This is it!  Therefore, I feel empathy when I see another life in pain; sometimes I can even feel their pain.  Life is valuable because for all we know, this could be the one time we have life.  Therefore, it pains me to see someone lose a loved one knowing that they’ll likely never see them again and knowing that that individual will only survive in the memories of the people he/she affected.  Yes, this is daunting and this is exactly why most religions have a concept of an afterlife; however, wanting to believe that something is true doesn’t make it true.  Thus, we must value all life.

You and all other Christians claim to talk to god and claim to hear his voice.  If he had a good reason, the reason would already be known; yet we’re still having this discussion.  The “creation” and the “pot” has no “Creator” and no “potter” to answer to; your Bronze Age concept of a war god doesn’t exist and attempting to prove that he exists via a book that says he exists is viciously circular.  I can use the Bible, logic, history, anthropology and when necessary science to prove that your god doesn’t exist.  Click the evidence tab and see for yourself.

God isn’t good by a standard. That may be news to you so let me explain. God isn’t good in that He follows or adheres to some law or principle above Him that He must follow in order to be seen as a good god. Rather, we know what good is by what He reveals of His own character. God is good, but good is not God. He is good, and we know what is good and evil by what is seen in His character and attributes. There are some things God does that would be sinful for us. God demands things of His people that He does not demand of Himself. The Lawgiver here is above the law, not that He is unlawful, but rather that He determines the law by His own character and isn’t a recipient of such precepts.  

This is divine command theory — what I consider a pseudo-sophisticated ignoracio elenchi.  It pretends to answer the Problem of Evil, but it fails to do so.  A lawgiver who doesn’t follow his own laws cannot expect people to follow his laws; moreover, he should embody his laws.  “Thou shalt not murder…well, unless I command you to murder entire tribes, sacrifice your own daughter, etc.”  This section is a sorry excuse and nothing more.

I have read these accounts of historical stories. God is the Judge of all the earth (Gen. 18:25), and as a righteous Judge, He does not let the guilty go free. He is not a corrupt judge. He punishes the wicked. Is justice still to be upheld or is that a notion we should abandon too, Rey?

Justice should be upheld, but the writers of the Bible had a simple view of justice.  They didn’t know what we now know.  Let us return to the murderer for instance.  It is the case that someone could kill due to a cyst growth in the brain; so, if someone kills due to an uncontrollable variable that they were oblivious to, how are they to be punished?  The question is so difficult that even I will fail to give you a good answer.  Obviously, the person isn’t guilty for being a victim of his/her own biology, but what about the family of the person he/she murdered?  How will they feel if a brain scan reveals that a cyst caused him/her to murder their loved one?  How will they feel if the judge let’s him/her walk?  The solution isn’t as simple as it seems.  Corruption and wickedness are complex and the Bible doesn’t come close to revealing that.  In short, justice should be upheld, but how it is to be upheld is a difficult question and it’s something that we need to consider collectively.  Thus, the writers of the Bible portrayed god as a simple-minded judge who wasn’t aware of the underlying factors that make people commit wicked and corrupt acts.

In regards to the Flood in Genesis 7, God is destroying the “corrupt” whom have broken His law (Gen. 6:11-13). The same thing in regards to the killing of the firstborns in Egypt, and rest of the warnings and killings the Lord has done. Death is the due wages of sin. Sin is the breaking of God’s commands by commission or by omission. The question is usually asked: why such grievous punishment for such crimes then? The punishment for a crime varies depending on several factors, some of those being: whom the crime is against, how vicious of a crime it is, and how enduring the effects of such a crime are. God is eternal and infinitely worthy of praise. When we sin, we are sinning against a perfect God who is entirely great and altogether worthy. The punishment of the crime is proportionate to the severity of it: when we sin against God, we are sinning against the infinitely worthy and excellent One. The crime is most severe, therefore, such deeds are punished accordingly. 

The killing of the firstborns in Egypt is mythological, but assuming it happened, it doesn’t serve as an example of “punishment of the crime…proportionate to the severity of it.”  Again, he charged the innocent for the crimes of the guilty — a notion that horrifies people with more complex concepts of morality.  It horrifies me and I find it appalling.  Sin is a concept in the Bible.  Again, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the Bible is true in order to state it as fact; it’s something that I know you cannot do and thus, you should not and cannot state it as fact.  Your blind devotion to this ancient war god is absolutely egregious.

So to turn this back around full circle, on what standard are you attempting to put on God? What basis do you have to denounce His dealings? On what standing do you place human value and the denouncing of the killing of anyone? Your argument collapses under itself because you have no basis for good and evil. You say that these children are innocent, but innocent of what? Innocent of offending you? Maybe so! Innocent before a perfectly holy God? No (Rom. 3:23). 

Your third question was answered in an earlier section.  Likewise, the first two questions were already answered.  However, since you keep alluding to the Moral Argument for God, I’ll respond with my Argument for Moral Ontology without God:

P1 The qualities that make us normal human beings begin to exist in the brain.

P2 Morality is a quality that makes us normal human beings.

C Therefore, morality begins to exist in the brain.

Since morality begins to exist in the brain, that is the standard any normal person can employ to denounce your god and any being like him for that matter.  Infants aren’t guilty of anything and your redundant mantra doesn’t change that.  You are vile and you are disgusting and if I had my way, I would have you in a padded cell.  Your inability to see that infants are innocent and unworthy of death is outright lunacy.

You say, correctly, that original sin (the doctrine that all mankind is inherently wicked after the Fall in the Garden in Genesis 3), is how I respond to that. God is good, but that doesn’t mean His creation is. The Author of life is still good when the characters run astray. Your only refutation against it is that you say Adam didn’t exist. Well, since you’ve stated it, it must be true. Let us all fall down before your invincible logic and infallible authority and knowledge of history! Nay, rather, let us move past your stubborn attitude onto substance. I will not refer to free will, as the only One who holds such is God Himself. He is the only One with a perfectly free will to do whatsoever He pleases as He desires. Nothing restrains His hand or bars His path. I don’t hold to the faulty notion of man’s “free will.” If your response to why people do wickedness is by their biology, then how can you hold anyone accountable? They had no other choice but to obey what their brain (whether normal or abnormal) tells them. How can you hold a genetic trait under trial when it was given and produced by chance and generational characteristics? 

And that’s exactly where the problem lies.  The last two questions allude to what I said up top.  How do we hold someone accountable if the only reason they murdered someone was a cyst growth in the brain?; how do we hold a serial murderer responsible for killing x number of people if he/she is a victim of abnormalities in the brain?  These are tough questions, but the findings in neuroscience aren’t less true because they’re a temporary stumbling block in our views of justice.  Again, this is something we must discuss and consider collectively.  What is the proper punishment? What does one do after discovering that pedo-rapist John Smith was repeatedly raped as a child?  The questions can go on and on, but the fact remains:  they need to be answered and our justice systems aren’t equipped to do so at the moment, and your justice system is far too simple and inadequate.  It is tainted by the justifiable ignorance of our ancestors; there are things they didn’t know by virtue of the time they lived in, and thus, they cannot be blamed for offering simplistic solutions.  However, we are not in their time and we are not as ignorant as they were; therefore, we must cope with these questions and devise working solutions keeping in mind that solutions are usually imperfect.

I’m not asking you to “fall down before [my] invincible logic and infallible authority and knowledge of history”; I’m asking you to consider what I said.  He didn’t exist and that isn’t a bear assertion.

Souls are not damaged, Rey. He creates all mankind, but we are evil and don’t seek good (Rom. 3:10-19). He is active in the world, but not actively evil, instead He rather works for good what mankind does for evil (Gen. 50:20; Rom. 8:28). He does provide redemption for sin-stained souls through Jesus Christ.

Before you make the statement, “souls are not damaged,” you must provide evidence for a soul.  What attribute(s) do beings with souls have?  Consciousness?  Animals are also conscious, but according to the Christian worldview, they haven’t souls.  Is it linguistics?  Well, some humans are mute and have been their entire lives, and unfortunately, some of them will die that way; do they not have souls?  What distinguishes a human being from the rest of the animal kingdom?  A bigger brain and the ability to speak?  Arguably.  However, evolution explains both.  Keep in mind, h.neanderthalensis resembled h.sapien in many ways — perhaps even in language!  Did they have souls?  The concept of a soul is unsubstantiated and in my view, it cannot be substantiated; it remains a question of faith.  There isn’t much that separates us from our ancestors and there isn’t much that separates us from our close cousins (i.e. chimps, gorillas, orangutans); moreover, there isn’t much to separate us from our distant cousins and even our very distant cousins.  All of your theological hogwash is failing miserably and it’s rather frustrating that you do not realize that.

Reply Obj 2. Social convention and public opinion may be defined differently, yes, I’ll concede that, but you are missing the point. You have no right based on social convention to judge other cultural norms unless you are placing your own custom and culture above another. You have no justifiable reason to do so when you base it all on how your culture develops through the minds of many. How many minds does it take to make it justifiable? If social norms change, as you had admitted before that they do, then are you not advocating for what is wrong depending on when you adopt that particular view? If societal norms change, then how can you determine which societal norms are acceptable and which aren’t? 

Christianity is a religion; it isn’t a culture.  Moreover, the ancient Israelites may be similar to some modern day cultures, but those cultures are also religiously and politically motivated.  I haven’t such motivations and anyone that lacks such motivations can see the wrong in murdering someone because they believe in a different god or because they adhere to a different political ideology.  There is a dissonance in the modern day; when I look at the state of humanity, I see a people trapped in a time limbo.  There are peoples that are quite similar to Bronze Age men — right down to their superstitions and questionable morals.  Then there are peoples who have accessed today’s technology and yet choose to act like a lesser generation.  The Israelis are a perfect example.  They have firearms and explosives; they have been exposed to modern thought, technology, ideologies, etc. and yet they’re murdering Palestinians like the ancient Israelites claimed to murder other tribes.  Then there are Westernized people like myself who are adamant in their opposition of war and crimes against humanity.  People like me can’t help but realize that we’re morally superior in many ways to other people; thus, we feel it necessary to impose our culture and our way because we aren’t the ones taking lives due to political, religious and other motivations.  We value humanity and we want the best for the future of our specie.  Carl Sagan was one of these people; if you were to read his books, your mind will be exposed to an enlightened individual who didn’t succumb to ill motivations.

Social convention cannot be reduced to a calculable number.  Conventions are re-produced independently.  Again, you’re conflating majority rule with convention when asking me:  “If social norms change, as you had admitted before that they do, then are you not advocating for what is wrong depending on when you adopt that particular view? If societal norms change, then how can you determine which societal norms are acceptable and which aren’t?”.  A majority rule can appear to come up with a social convention (i.e. the Nazis); however, actual social conventions will counteract majority rule.  Therefore, I wouldn’t advocate what is wrong.  Simply put, just because x tribe cannibalizes doesn’t make cannibalism acceptable.  The Korowai in Papau, New Guinea feel that that is normal; what about everyone on the outside looking in?  These tribesman aren’t operating under a social convention; they are operating under tradition.  The Sambians (ironically, also in New Guinea) inseminate boys via fellatio (oral sex); this is tradition.  They practice semen exchange with one another in order to maintain or obtain adequate amounts of semen.  Anthropologists have studied them extensively.  Nonetheless, these people are operating under traditions and not social convention.

You refer to Hitler, which is interesting because the rest of the world didn’t include everyone. There were many who agreed with Hitler and who backed his regime. Yes, many countries did find fault with him, but they could give an account of why. Your accounting for why it was wrong is because others agree that it is wrong. You have no actual reasoning there. Infants are guilty or innocent depending on what standard you hold them to. Children are innocent before men, yes, but not before God. Whoever sins, is guilty before God irrespective of age, culture, ethnicity, etc. I am not shutting “the eye of reason,” but rather establishing it. God is eternal and does not have a variation of change or a shadow of a doubt in Him (Ja. 1:17). He is my standard for why I can believe that we can uphold reason and expect others to hold to logic and correct them when they are in fault. He upholds the law and reason and logic as all are founded in Him- instead of trusting in your own brain because all other brains agree and adhere to your notion. 

Let us not pretend to be ignorant of history.  Why did those countries back Germany?  How can you conclude that the Nazis backed his regime.  Adherence to a command doesn’t mean that the individual agrees with the command.  I’m not saying that the Nazis were wrong based on what other countries thought; I’m saying that social convention eventually counteracted Hitler’s dictatorship and the surviving Nazis were punished for their war crimes.  In any case, there were politics in World War II that you are clearly ignoring.

What follows from there has already been addressed in previous sections.  Your god isn’t the standard and I proved that in my initial response.  I still see no rebuttal to my modal argument for The Problem of Child Murder and Infanticide.  All I see are fallacies:  appeal to emotion and a faulty appeal to authority, namely the Bible.

Reply Obj 3. It’s not a straw man argument when you are indeed still guilty of falling prey to previous generations. Just because you add more people to a consensus, it doesn’t hold that it is more reliable and trustworthy. Sex slavery is still actually a huge part of the world, Rey. Also, what affected civilizations and cultures to now deem it inappropriate and unethical? What changed? Public consensus and cultural customs, yes, but why did those change? Think about it, the answer is revealing. 

And you’re still going on and on about numbers and consensus.  You are still conflating majority rule with social convention.  Whatever affected civilization and culture has nothing to do with your religion if that’s where you’re trying to lead me with your last question.  The improvement of laws affected our cultures and civilizations; critical thinking did the same.  It was a straw man and it’s still a straw man.

Reply Obj 4. Social convention shows how and why things have changed, but not a basis for actual improvement. You stating ‘morals have improved and we are a purer ethical people,’ doesn’t mean we actually are. If they have improved over time, there must be an absolute standard on which to judge the ethics of previous, current, and future generations which you don’t hold to. How can they improve? Change, yes, but not improve on your worldview. 

Yet they have improved on my worldview.  Contrary to popular belief, the US isn’t a Christian nation; yet this nation has a complex body of law.  There’s first and second degree murder, voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and euthanasia in terms of murder.  The Bible isn’t that complex and justifiably so given the ignorance of our ancestors.  Thus, if America isn’t a Christian nation, how did our ability to treat murder improve?  It still needs improvement given what I’ve said in previous sections, but your god will have no hand in that.  By the way, what improves on the Christian worldview?  Nothing!  Most of you still have this “us vs. them” and “we are not of this world” mentality.  Therefore, most of you admittedly have no incentive to improve anything on our planet and whenever one of you engages in an activity to assist others, you do so to promote the Gospel and if you’re not promoting the Gospel during such activities, you’re ashamed of the Gospel according to the Bible.  Nothing improves on your worldview and as a matter of fact, the Christian worldview did nothing but worsen matters for centuries.

Reply Obj 5. Yet if corruption becomes the norm, it will be acceptable morally… What was evil before will then be good and what was good will later be evil. Person B may “correct” person A, but that doesn’t show that Person B was actually correct. It just shows that they altered the other person’s view. Things changing doesn’t mean they change correctly. 

Straw man.  You’re still conflating majority rule with social conventions.  Your blatant blindness is frustrating to say the least.  Please read what I’m writing and do not create your own message from what is written.  Yes, not all things change correctly, but if improvement is palpable, that implies that the change was correct or at least closer to correct than to wrong.

Reply Obj 6. You never answered my question. What is this supposed pinnacle of society? How can you know what it is? I asked the question to press it into your head that you can’t give an adequate answer for it with your viewpoint. If it is a working definition, then why are the most common and basic ethics (do not murder, do not steal, etc) in place from the beginning of known civilizations until now? Why hasn’t that progressed or changed? Are some ideas consistently correct and others only correct in certain time spans depending on customs and culture? I never said I would reject science. Science doesn’t change, Rey. That’s where you’re wrong. Science itself doesn’t change, but rather what the study of the natural world reveals to us changes depending on the evidence seen at a particular time. It’s not that gravity is a new creation at one point in time, but rather a newly formed concept to the human mind at one point in history. I never said to disregard science, but you are presupposing I am against it just because I am a Christian. Thanks for your lovely generalities along the way. 

I did answer your first question; go back and read.  I clearly said that I don’t know when the pinnacle will be reached and I clearly said that we certainly have not reached it yet.  The fact that we haven’t reached a worldwide golden age per se is evident; one need only take a look around!

Yet your god gave Moses the commandments years after these laws were put in place by earlier civilizations (see graphic).  Thus, using your logic, it is safer to conclude that one of the Egyptian gods or one of the Mesopotamian gods are the absolute lawgiver.  You wouldn’t concede that though.  Our laws have progressed and changed.  According to you, we had intellectual property laws in the Bronze Age.  Definitely not, especially upon noticing blatant cultural borrowing (i.e. The Epic of Gilgamesh vs. The Flood)

It is obvious that some ideas are consistently correct, but humans decided that.  That is made obvious in the graphic.  Your god was centuries late with his laws; a few known civilizations had already developed them and expounded on them prior to Moses (a non-historical man by the way).  Never mind that all of these civilizations had longer law records.  Never mind that marriage was already instituted by them.  Your god had absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

I never assumed that you reject science; I stated that you must reject it because it changes.  According to you, something that has changed and that which isn’t static should be questioned.  What is normal has changed.  Therefore, you choose not to trust what I consider normal (and what others consider normal) on the basis that normality has changed.  When employing that logic, it follows that you should reject science.  Science does change; natural laws do not.  Science is a word applied to the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical world through observation and experimentation.  The structure and the behavior is unchanging, but the enterprise of science is not.

Reply Obj 7. I’m not poisoning any well, but rather trying to show you that your well has already been poisoned by your own faulty conclusions and premises. It’s not that I do the poisoning, but rather I am coming alongside to show you what it already is. Your worldview has everything to do with this debate, Rey. Your worldview is how you see and understand everything, including morality, ethics, the killing of infants, absolutes, and God Himself. 

My worldview has nothing to do with this conversation.  You poisoned the well by appealing to the fact that I’m an atheist; yet that matters not. I would talk about these matters with someone who isn’t religious at all.  The fact that your god is included has more to do with my humanity than it does with my worldview.  You strategically mentioned it because you know it proves effective in discrediting your opponent — at least in the eyes of your brethren.  Then you say that my premises and conclusions are faulty; yet you fail to show me why that is and you continue to demonstrate fallacious thinking.  Unlike you, I point out such fallacies.  Don’t talk the logical talk if you can’t walk the logical walk.

Reply Obj 8. How do you come up with social conventions? Who sets them in place? People? Alright, cool. 

Yes a collective group of people that blurs the lines of time, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, occupation and economic status.  That should be enough.

Reply Obj 9. Well, then, I am sorry for your experience, but experiences don’t always resemble truth. You, sir, hold to certain beliefs that you cannot prove but hold in faith that they are good and true to hold to without empirical evidence. Everyone does. Holding to reason is faith-based in and of itself. Any reason you give to hold to reason is circular because you are giving a reason for reason’s supremacy. Any person that kills a child is accountable for that sin as it is unlawful and breaks God’s command not to murder. Obeying God as the Lawgiver is the difference in morality. He punished nations by the hand of another nation as an act of His judgment against them. Should we not uphold justice and respond in due consequence to lawbreakers?

I already answered your last question.  Your redundancy gives a bad impression.  My worldview isn’t based on faith; it is based on fact and when necessary, it is also based on empirical evidence.  I don’t argue that reason is reasonable because it is reasonable.  That is viciously circular.  Reason is self-evident and repeatedly effective.  I can prove my worldview and I’ve done so effectively — so much so that some of your own denounced Christianity.  An atheist becoming a Christian is astronomically rare and most apologists who say they are former atheists are lying cons.

Reply Obj 10. You have provided no standard that holds up though. That’s the issue we’re dealing with. You say it’s a baseless accusation and yet my ending comments there were in direct correlation to what you had told me. If your standard is social convention, and social convention changes or can change, then your standard can change. If your standard can change, then your justice can change. It’s not baseless when it’s what you yourself hold to, Rey!

And it is the case that justice has changed and is changing for the better.  The fact that something changes isn’t grounds to reject it.  You have this unsubstantiated cop out as some fixated absolute that has always been there, namely god.  Unfortunately, social convention, morality and law predate your god.  That’s your dilemma and you could ignore it if you’d like, but I don’t think I’ll be so enthusiastic about adding another bullet to my resume of blatant ignorance.  I would advise you to shed your ignorance, critically question, go with the most plausible answers when they are available and make the most plausible conclusions based on those answers.  It is obvious:  you have believed until now and you seek to refute nothing about your religion.  A belief that isn’t scrutinized isn’t substantiated and a belief that doesn’t withstand the fires of scrutiny isn’t one worth having; yet after countless debates with religious people, I still have a block of gold in my hand.  Unfortunately, these people fail to see the ashes of their beliefs and fail to see that there are more plausible beliefs.  Atheism isn’t the default position after denouncing Christianity.

Reply Obj 11. Do human morals pertain to animals? Do they pertain to trees? Do they pertain to the stars and planets? Your basis of morality is founded in humanity and yet you are extending that to God. If God isn’t the same as man, which He isn’t, you are holding Him to something that doesn’t pertain to Him. As I said earlier, He is all together different and all together lovely. Does God pay taxes to the nations? Is He required to pay property taxes to the entire world as He owns the whole of creation? No. To ask the question is to reveal the answer. Our generation today says murder is reprehensible, and yet we cheer on killing in wartime. Why? Different parameters. Killing in wartime is justifiable (ie responding to Hitler’s regime and other acts), where killing the store clerk is not. God isn’t bound by your logic or reason, and yet He is both logical and reasonable. It is us who are clouded in mind and are so inoculated by our own reasoning that we are blinded by our own self. 

Are the stars sentient?  Are the planets sentient?  No.  Thus, I can apply no moral standard to them.  Are the trees and the animals as complex as us?  Some animals are, but not complex enough to form civilizations, which would require governing rules amongst societies.  Your god is complex enough to speak, to command, to issue laws, etc.  Furthermore, his characteristics are in every way similar to a human being — only that he doesn’t exist.  All of your false analogies fail to make a point.  If he thinks, speaks and acts, a standard of morality can be applied to him.  Unfortunately, I see a god made in the image of ignorant human beings; I am not his image.

Then you go on with sweeping generalizations about nationalists who cheer on killing during wartime.  Why are they cheering?  Because they’re nationalists, patriots.  Murder is murder whether it’s at a bank or in another country.  Your god is subordinate to logic and since you brought it up, I’ll prove it simply.  There is the omnipotence paradox:  can god create a stone he cannot lift?  If he cannot create the stone, he is not omnipotent; if he can create it, he is not omnipotent.  The usual apologetic response is that god wouldn’t do what is illogical.  Then he’s still not omnipotent because he’s inferior to logic.  If he cannot violate the laws of thought, he is not omnipotent and according to the admissions of a few apologists and wannabe apologists, your god isn’t omnipotent.  A god that orders the murder of infants is illogical and unreasonable and too simple to understand what we understand today.  The god of the Bible is simpler than our brightest humans; yet it shouldn’t be that way if he exists.

Transcendent, He is. The animal sacrifices were but a shadow of what was to come: namely the sacrifice of Jesus once for all. It was a symbol of what was needed for the redemption of the world. Transcendent, He is. Removing the foreskin of the male members’ tip was but a covenant sign that the Israelite people were to be different from the surrounding nations and a symbol of the necessity of Christ to be cut off from the land of the living (to die). He is most definitely transcendent, Rey. Theopedia defines transcendence with this: “It means that God is above, other than, and distinct from all he has made- He transcends it all.” We do not seek God and wouldn’t be able to anyways if we wanted to, but we can still know Him. How could that be? Because He has deemed it wise and necessary and good to reveal Himself to us. He does so in creation, His Scriptures, and in His Son, Jesus Christ. Is He transcendent? Yes, absolutely. But He also is interactive in the universe we live in. He has come down and is active in the dealings of man. 

Transcendent he is not because he showed more concern for supposed prophecies and covenants than he did for the details of nature.  Transcendent he is not because he made a covenant with people that resemble supposed covenants other gods supposedly made with surrounding peoples of the time.  Transcendent he is not because he is a human abstraction.  All of that theological hogwash is the byproduct of indoctrination.  You can’t see your religion in any way other than what you’ve been taught for years it seems.

Your last paragraph is simply rhetoric and needs no intellectual response other than with more rhetoric tinged with truth: Idolatry isn’t good enough before the God of the universe. Repent from such. Turn away from your sinful behaviour and turn to God in faith. 

Oh look, he’s preaching the Gospel — a Gospel that I can preach better than him and I’m not even Christian.  Repent thou of such foolishness and lunacy; turn away from your obdurate behavior and turn to yourself in trust.  I have no idol; you do, namely a Bronze Age war god who is a celestial child murderer and ethnic cleanser.

This will be my first and last response to you, Rey. I don’t deem it conductive by any means, and you use this rather for your own perverse enjoyment to be seen on the worldwide web. Good day and I will be praying you come to Christ to be forgiven of your trespasses against this perfect God I serve. Come to Jesus and be saved, man. He will never turn away those who come to Him. God bless!

Your dialogue with a nonexistent god will lead no where.  It is conductive; other people will see this.  I could care less if you already made your decision; I could care less if you continue to believe such lunacy, but I do care that I can affect what others will believe and I will not allow them to join your ranks.  I will continue to show others that your type of mentality is challenged and that there are better answers than the ones provided by agenda driven zealots who teach the same, tired theology.  What a pity; this will be your last response.  In other words, “let me put this in my conclusion to keep him from replying.”  Sorry, that doesn’t work here.