Your argumentation has shifted from claiming that you are not a moral relativist to giving excuses as to why you are one which is an implicit admission that you are indeed a moral relativist as you refuse to apply the same moral standard to god as you do to other beings. You could not possibly say what is underlined if you were not a moral relativist.

As for it being eaiser for me to understand if I accepted god as creator, not it wouldn't as I rejected that kind of moral relativism when I still believed in the existence of god. I understand that point of view perfectly as it is the one I was raised in but I rejected it as it means that acts that are immoral can be seen as moral and thus means that morality in such a world is meaningless.

I am not claiming that it is a certainty, only that it is a possibility, and that that possibility means that you cannot with certainty say that a given person's actions (like the 9/11 terrorists) are immoral as, like you said "only He or by His command can certain things be done". That possibility (not certainty) combined with your belief that anything done on god's order is moral means that it is impossible for you to honestly claim any act to be immoral as you cannot know if any act was done on god's order or not.

You don't get that your claiming that god is on a different moral playing field is what makes you a moral relativist.

I don't need to be god to judge him. I just need to look at his actions. In the case of the Hebrews escaping the Egyptians he was helping them against slavers so there was a good cause for his actions (though there were immoral excesses like killing the first borns as it is not moral to hold those kids responsible for the actions of their parents). In the case of Jericho it was a clear case of mass murder as the first act of a war of conquest. If Joshua was alive and did the same thing today he would be condemned for crime against humanity. In your worldview thought it must be moral as it was ordered by god.

I am not claiming that we always know enough to judge but in many cases, like the conquest of Canaan (starting with Jericho) or the whole book of Job, it is clear that no morality was behind those actions and the only reason some people claim them to be moral was because of who did them (or ordered them to be done, or expressly allowed them to be done).

I am not switching roles as unlike him I do not deliberately* judge my own actions by a different moral standard than the moral standard I use to judge others (whereas he uses a moral standard to judge us and a different moral standard for his actions "do what I say, not what I do").

* I say deliberately as I can fall into that trap, but I do not do it systemically like god and you do.

You don't understand. I was talking of an hypothetical situation in which Lucifer created the universe and is thus god and Yahwe rebelled and is this god's (Lucifer) adversary (Satan). In such a world you would follow Lucifer because he is god and thus whatever he decide to claim as being moral is moral. If he decide that killing your neighbor (instead of loving him) is moral then that would be what you would believe to be moral as god (in that universe Lucifer) made it so. That is the kind of moral quagmire that results from saying that morality is defined by whoever created the universe.

Let's recapitulate:

You claim that both differ morally because:

So far all your attempts to deny responsibility for your actions could easily have been made by somebody pushing somebody else in front of a car with barely changing a few words to adapt to the slightly different circumstances. Of course none of those arguments would be seen as valid to say that somebody pushing somebody else on the road is not responsible for whatever happens to them (hell, even if nothing happens to them they are still guilty of attempted murder).

Yes. Any action that puts somebody in a situation where they suffer more than if you had not taken that action, barring another action on their part to negate your action, should be taken with their consent.

Of course there are, as always, exceptions. For example if your action is to defend yourself from their action, like if somebody tries to push you in front of a car and in the ensuing struggle you are the one pushing them in front of it, then it is self defense. However those do not apply here as you are the one taking the original action (teaching).

At birth, no as then they would be like the person not knowing god. But if you later tell them about god then it is exactly the same situation as telling about god to somebody who doesn't know about god.

Not just their decision. Before you told them, if they had not believed they would have gone to heaven (in your belief) but since you told them if they do not believe they go to hell. You don't choose to believe or not, either you do or you don't but it is not a rational decision. You didn't choose to believe in Pai Natal as a kid (assuming you believed in Santa Claus), you believed because you were told about him as if he existed and took those word to be true. You also didn't choose to stop to believe in Pai natal because you didn't want to believe in him, you just came to the conclusion that he didn't exist and thus did not believe anymore.

It's a bit like your favorite colour. Whatver it is, you did not go around saying "I decide that my favourite colour is green". No, you saw different colours and whichever was most pleasant to you became your favourite through no choice of yours.

So no, once you tell them about god their decisions are not enough to give them heaven or hell as there is now an element (belief) that they don't decide.

But even if they could decide you still put them in a spot where they have to make an extra decision (believing) to avoid going to hell on top of the other decisions (being good or bad) that they had to make before. Just like if I push somebody in front of a car they have to make the extra decision of getting of the street but the fact that they can make that decision does not absolve me of attempted murder.

Going to school, friends... does not put them in a situation where they die barring an action on the kid's part (i.e. by default). It is a possibility but it is not what is gonna happen unless the kid does something specific. If you teach your kid about god then unless he does something specific over which he does not even have much if any control (believing) then he is gonna be tortured for eternity. Is that good parenting?

So now your excuse is "sombeody else might have put them in danger so it might as well be me"? Sorry, that doesn't fly either. Other people are responsible for their action and the possibility that other may undertake immoral actions does not absolve you of blame for undertaking immoral actions yourself . it is the same as saying "It's ok that I pushed him in front of a car because eventually somebodyelse would have pushed him in front of a car. That's what happens in a world where people live together".

Except that you do not decide to believe. Either you are convinced and thus believe or you are not and thus don't believe but you don't say "I decide to be convinced"; you don't say "I decide to believe". And even if they could decide to believe you still put them in a situation where they have to make such a decision to avoid being tortured when before you told them they did not need to make such a decision to avoid being tortured.

No. By telling them you are putting them in a situation where if they don't do something they go to hell/get run over. The only place where that is the case it the street so telling them is like pushing them on the street.

Also, the sidewalk is not heaven. The sidwalk life without knowing about god where, in your belief, good people go to heaven on the basis of their actions and bad people go to hell on the basis of their actions. Heaven would be like the park on the other side of the sidewalk where you not only need good actions (if on the sidewalk) but also for somebody to pay the entry fee (Jesus with his sacrifice) and if you have been pushed on the street (told about god) you also need to get off the street (believe in god).

And if I pushed somebody on the street he or she would decide where to walk. Does that mean that I did not attempt to murder them?

No, because the equivalent of trhowing them to the sidewalk would be to make them not know about god as then it would only be their actions that would send them to heaven or hell. You start life on the sidewalk and you are thrown on the streent when told about god. Once on the street you have to believe to get back on the sidewalk, which you would not have needed before being thrown on the street, at which point you once again need your actions to be good. You also need somebody to pay the entry fee to the park full of milk and honey (heaven) to enter it (Jesus's sacrifice).

Does this more elaborate explanation above help you understand?

And if they were on the sidewalk doesn't mean they were bound to be on the sidewalk for the rest of their lives. But while it is true it still doesn't excuse me from pushing them on the street in front of a car.

And if you pushed somebody in front of a car they could avoid the car by getting off the road but even if they manage to avoid that fate does not mean it was ok for you to do so.

I am not assuming that they are saved, I am claiming that whether they are saved or not is their responsibility unless you interfer by telling them about god. After that it is not just their responsibility but also yours because it is now harder for them to go to heaven as their actions are not enough but they also need an extra element that they did not need before, belief in god.

Saying you shouldn't push people in front of cars is not the same as assuming that the same people will never step in front of a car on their own, it is simply saying that if they do so it is their responsibility but if you push them then it is your responsibility.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on that, unless you have an argument that could not as easily be applied to the right column from the table earlier, as we are going in circle and it is an academic matter as it concerns things after death if you are right both in the veracity of the bible and in your specific belief in good people not knowing about god going to heaven. 

May I ask you why you believe that good people that do not know about god go to heaven? I ask because even though I have encountered that belief before I do not know of any biblical foundation for it.

I don't ask them because unlike you most of them do not claim "i was trying to say that people all around know what can lead them to heaven or hell, even before knowing of God". If they did know as you claim then the requirements would not be so different and no religion would lack the belief in heaven or hell (as you can't know what can lead to it if you don't believe it exists). You made that claim so you have to explain why those differences exist when they shouldn't if your claim was true.

How can you not see that it is the very definition of cronyism:

You accept him (= are his friend) and you are rewarded.

You do not accept him (= are not his friend) and you are punished.

If it was not cronyism but morality based it would be:

You are a good person and you are rewarded regardless of whether you accept or believe in him.

You are a bad person and you are punished regardless of whether you accept or believe in him.

This question is only relevant if it is cronyism.

Fair enough, I took it you meant a direct role (repairing the sin) as opposed to an indirect role (praying for god to convert the person). 

Whether you think it is arbitrary or not, the main point is that he is willing to have good people tortured and that is enough to say that he is not absolutely good.

Not necessarily heaven, but not hell. It is not so much the lack of heaven I have a problem with as the eternal torture of hell even if they are good. It is why I said that the view of salvation of those christians that do not believe in hell is amoral (lack of morality but not the opposite of it, the moral equivalent of zero) because it is not (in my view) about morality but cronyism but there isn't eternal torture, an immoral act. Whereas the view of those christians that believe in hell is immoral (opposite of moral, the equivalent of a negative number) because not only is the heaven part amoral but they also have the immoral part of torturing people (even for bad people, everlasting torture is a punishment that does not fit the crime).

You also keep saying that they "rejected" him as if it is a deliberate decision but unlike me who reject him because if his immorality most people do not reject him as much as don't believe in him (or don't believe in Jesus as the messiah but only as a prophet like the muslims) and as I pointed out earlier, belief is not something you decide, it is something that you either have or don't have and you don't control whether you have the belief or not. So you are punishing people for something that they do not have control over.

I would say unless somebody told them about god, in which case that person is the one who put them in a position to be damned but that is the discussion from above and we (well, at least I) agreed to disagree.

However, even without that, given that in that case we are talking about good people who do not believe in god (and thus cannot accept him as saviour) then they are not putting themselves in a position to be damned as they would need to believe first and believing is not something that you choose anymore than you choose your favourite color, your favourite food or to love a particular person . These are all things that you have no power over so it would be immoral to torture you because of them?

Torturing people because they do not believe in god is no more moral than torturing them because blue is their favourite color.

That it would be the reason not to give life in heaven after death I have no problem with, but to torture them because of it goes beyond that and is immoral. God had the choice of simply giving them life on earth and if they did not qualify for heaven not to give them any life beyond death, instead he chose to give them a life of torture after death. That is the immoral part.

If he punishes me for not believing in him how does he do it? If he punishes me in a way that I do not know that I am being punished and/or do not know for what I am being punished*, how does that help me change?

* which must be the case as I totally fail to see any punishment in my life.

It is still a system designed to stroke his vanity, not to establish justice. If he has the power of changing people's nature and the willingness as those prayers imply but does not do it then he is guilty for those people's nature. You might raise the "free will" card but it is trumped by his willingness to disregard free will in the case of those prayers.

Either he should stick to free will and not interfere in people's belief/thoughts/heart/... and thus prayers do not play a role in people's salvation as you think or, if he is willing to break his own rules about free will then he is guilty of not opening the heart/mind/... of those who don't believe in him (or in my case, in his morality as well) and thus is all the more culpable for torturing them for it.

In either case it still is an exercise in ego stroking, which any self-respecting god should be above such crass vanity.

First of all, i hope everything is good on your side. Hope you and your love ones didn`t get affected by the riots.

So, in your view, God and man should be judged alike to avoid moral relativism, even if they aren`t the same?
God, nor me, has two standards for man and Himself in the way that you are trying to pass. It`s an impossibility to see them as one, when they are different.
if God created life and therefore decides who lives and who dies, who am i to say that me or someone else should have the same power as to avoid moral relativism?
Moral relativism between man can be avoided because we are all the same, the same doesn`t apply to us and God. That`s why i don`t call it moral relativism. Because, even though we share the same "morality" we can`t, given our natures, live it or apply it the same way.

About your "possibility", the problem with reason is that, in the realm of possibilities everything looks and feels the same. But to know what`s real or at least in what they differ, you have to look at reality itself.
Is Satan actually God? No. And i can honestly say that given the Bible and apparitions.
Can i say that something actually is immoral? Well, until someone tells that God told them to do this or that, i can say it`s contrary to God. Those terrorists never claimed that God appeared to them to to what they did. They just told they were themselves that in the name of God, as in, for He`s sake.

If you judge based solely on someone`s actions you are bound to overlook why such thing was done. Can you comprehend God in absolute way to call it yourself immoral?
What i said was that what comes from God is good. Which reflects more than morality. Which has been your only concern.

"You start life on the sidewalk"
This shows two ways in which we don`t agree.
You start life not on the safe side, but amidst a possibility, or risk as you call it: heaven or hell will be yours, there`s no escaping that. So that is where you start.
In that sense, everyday of your life, you do choose your path: either you go on the sidewalk or you go to the road. Of what`s given to you to choose/decide/accept - i spoke of decisions but not in a rational way - where you want to walk.
Another day comes, more choices you have to make, you keep deciding where to walk. No one, ever, throws you to the road or the sidewalk. What you accept, etc., is what makes you go one way or the other.
I speak about God: he/she decides/accepts/chooses to embrace it or not.

Giving someone a possibility, is just that. In the face of it you choose.
Your risk is nothing but a possibility. You aren`t putting no one in the road or the sidewalk, you are giving them something to act upon, without leaving your place.
That`s why i always said no one is saved or damned. Your either saved or damned when your life is over, until then, there are a lot of things that will still happen.

About salvation for the good of heart, it actually is referred to in the Bible: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+2%3A14-16&version=NIV

You say it`s cronyism for two reasons: first you downplay faith as a factor; second, you still base salvation on the fact it should rely just on morality.
Faith and morality are important. Both of them. In God rewards you based on that. God favours no one. To me that`s justice and being fair because it`s open to everybody, which isn`t the case with cronyism.

Faith is not the same as having a favourite colour, and yes, you are in control of it. Faith is a gift for those who open their hearts. If you want God and heaven, you do need to open up your heart first.
That`s how you are entitled to salvation.
Hell and heaven are a result of God`s justice. You had your life to choose and follow Him or not. What comes as a result, is the consequences of your actions.

I said this: "who says that God doesnt`t punish you or that He doesn`t try to help you change?"
That being, who says that this conversation isn`t God trying to show you the way? I might be doing a bad job though! :D
Taking what is said above, so now God is responsible for your lack of faith and possible damnation? That`s the first time i heard this.
God lets us have a say in the salvation of people and you still criticize Him? Blamed if He does something, blamed if He doesn`t.

It`s not stroking an ego, that`s what you would say if it applied to humans, and even then you might be wrong. That`s just your interpretation.

Thanks for the concern. Luckily I had no problem as I am not near London and my family is in France.

Yes. Women and men are different but we apply the same morality to both because there are no reason to apply different moral standard. If we applied a different moral standard to god because he is more powerful then the same logic could be applied to use a different moral standard for men as they are (on average) more powerful (as in muscular strength) than women and the logical consequence would be that men can morally beat the crap out of women. I reject that line of thinking. If we applied a different moral standard to god because he gave us life then the same logic could be applied to use a different moral standard for women as they give life to their children and the logical consequence would be that women can morally kill their children (she giveth and she taketh away to paraphrase Job). I also reject that line of thinking.

Does that mean that there are no situations where god (if he exists) can know things that influence his judgement? Of course not as if he exists with the powers described in the bible he can read minds (hearts). But I claim that any such judgement, to be moral, should also be considered moral if taken by a human who had the same information available to him. For example a judge might be able to morally take a man's liberty away from him (by sentencing him to jail) when I might not because I would not have the same information that the judge does to be able to make such a judgement.

But in such a case it would be the situation that would make the action moral (or at least morally defensible as not every thing is black and white in morality) but in no case can it be the identity of the person that makes the action moral.

That's why I say that things like the mass murder of Jericho's population, the whole of Job's story and the flood are immoral; because the same acts undertaken by a man would be deemed immoral and it is only people that accept to give god a blank check to commit any immorality he wishes that claim that it is moral.

The only question is "do you apply the same moral standard to god as you do to humans?". If the answer is no then no matter the reason ("they are different") you still are a moral relativist and are jsut arguing why you are one. If neither god nor you have two standard for man and himself then you should not be able to say that "god defines morality" only at most that he is so perfect that he follows morality perfectly (though I would disagree with that assessment too).

Your mother created your life. Does she gets to decide whether you live or die? Of course not, if she did it would be seen as being immoral. If god created us then thanks for the gift, and our bodies eventually degrade and die naturally; but if he decides to take that life before its natural end then it is no more moral than your mother deciding to take your life before its natural end.

I am not saying that you should have the same power. Actually, I am not talking about power at all but about the morality of an action, which has nothing to do with the power to do said action. You have the power to decide who live or die; you could use guns, knives, clubs or your bare hands but unless you have a physical handicap then you definitely have such a power, but no amount of you having such a power would make it moral for you to decide who lives and who dies. Similarly, if god exists then he also has such a power (magnified of course) but simply having such power does not mean that him exercising it is necessarily moral as you still need to examine the situation to see if the action is morally defensible.

Even if it couldn't be avoided (though I have no problem avoiding it myself) it still would be moral relativism. You are just changing the name to avoid the reality of it but as they say "a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet" and moral relativism by any other name would stink just as much.

It goes back to the "judge" example from above. But if we do have the same morality then a man giving the order to kill every man, woman and child in Jericho (with the exception of the family of the woman who betrayed her city) under the exact same circumstance that god did (to steal the land from its inhabitants and give it to the Hebrews) would be acting morally. So the logical consequence is that Julius Caesar (one of many examples possible) was acting morally when he invaded Gaul to give it to Rome.

I obviously disagree with that and think that all wars of conquest are immoral. If god had acted morally but still wanted to keep the Hebrews separated from other nations he could have made them settle in the Sinai desert, after all he is powerful enough to transform it from a desert to a land flowing with milk and honey. Instead he chose the genocidal route of exterminating the Canaanites; a clearly immoral act.

In that case you cannot look at the reality of whether god ordered something or not as it would entail knowing god's mind. 

If you want to say "god wouldn't do that because he is good" then you are not defining morality in term of god but doing the opposite: defining god in terms of morality (which as you seem a good person is what I suspect you do despite your belief in the opposite).

But if god defines morality then there is no reason for him not to do that as him doing it would automatically make it moral.

So no matter how evil an act appears to be there is the possibility, however remote, that it was done with god's approval which means in your belief that there is a remote possibility that such an apparently evil act might be moral. If you declare any act as strictly immoral (as opposed to apparently/probably immoral) then you are saying that it is not possible that god could make that act moral, which contradict your belief in morality deriving from god.

First, note that I used their name rather than their functions as god is generally defined as "creator of the universe" and satan is defined a "god's adversary" (satan means adversary/opposer).

Second, I am not claiming that Lucifer is god, I am posing a hypothetical world in which he is and exploring the logical ramifications of your belief that "god defines morality". In such hypothetical world, Lucifer being the creator of that world and thus being called god (still in that hypothetical world) could make murder moral in that hypothetical world. That is the logical consequence of your belief.

If you still don't get it, think in terms of video games (this is a video game site isn't it). Somebody write a game and in the world of that game the creator of the world is a being that we would more readily identify as Lucifer than as Yahwe. The consequence of your belief that the creator of the universe defines morality is that in that video game's world the creator of that video game's universe (who is a lot like Lucifer) could define murder as being moral. If his saying that murder is moral does not make it moral in that video game world even though he is the created the world in the video game then it means that merely creating the universe is not enough to be able to claim that you define morality.

In this world I am perfectly aware that your religion claims that Yahwe created it and Lucifer rebelled but it does not prevent us to imagine other worlds that are sligthly different and see if our beliefs still make logical sense.  

No, you can say you think it's contrary to god. You can say that unless you can prove that god approved of it we have to assume that on the face of it it is immoral but you cannot say that it is contrary to god as if you do you are claiming to know god's mind, including that that particular act is not one of the exceptions that he chose to make moral.

It doesn't matter what they claim or not as even if they had claimed an apparition (as opposed to an interpretation of their holy texts) you still wouldn't have accepted it as proof of god ordering them. 

The important part is that even though it is highly unlikely that god told them to do it it is still a possibility and that possibility is enough, combined with your belief, to mean that their actions might have been moral.

If it makes it easier for you to understand you can replace those muslim terrorists with the inquisition as they were Catholics and the church sanctioned their use of torture.

Today, you probably believe that their actions were immoral but there is the possibility that they were right and that god wanted them to torture people as not only did they believe that they were doing god's work but they were confirmed in that belief by the approval of god's church. This would mean that their actions, according to yoru belief, could have been moral. (sarcasm on) After all why would there be a moral problem with torturing people before death that are going to be tortured after death anyway, especially as you might save them (sarcasm off).

Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still doing the wrong thing.

I do not need to understand him in an absolute way any more than a judge needs to understand a suspect in an absolute way to determine if he did an immoral thing.

There might be cases were we do not have enough information to make such a call but to declare that god is not perfectly moral (and thus cannot define morality) we only need to find one case where he did something obviously immoral, like order the mass murder of men, women and children of a city or condoning the killing of a man's children and servants in order to win a bet (which he lost incidentally). The bible claims that he did such obviously immoral things (thought it claims them to be moral of coruse) and that is enough to shatter any semblance of moral perfection that god claims without needing to understand him in an absolute way.

You might want to look up the definition of morality: A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct

If it is good then it is moral and if it is bad then it is immoral. Of course, as the world is complex it is not always easy to discern what results in good things and what result in bad things but you cannot say "this is good and is more than morality". For it to be more than morality then it needs to be outside of morality and for it to be outside of morality it needs to be neither good nor bad as if it is good it is part of morality and if it is bad it is outside of it.

The sidewalk is not the safe side, the park is the safe side. The sidewalk is the neutral place you are at birth where only your actions are necessary to gain you heaven/hell (in your belief). The street is the dangerous place you can either go to if you commit bad actions and thus must believe in Jesus to be redeemed from them or are "pushed" by being told of god and thus must now also believe in Jesus.

But the requirement for attaining heaven is different on the sidewalk (good behaviour) than on the street (belief to go back to the sidewalk and good behaviour once back on the sidewalk). It is because you action of talking about god add the requirement of belief that it is akin to pushing on the street.

But your belief is that a person that does not know god needs only do good actions to be saved (they are on the sidewalk) whereas a person who does know of god also needs to believe-in/accept Jesus (they are on the street and believing gets them back on the sidewalk). That is the difference that matters.

If they put you in a position where you have to do an extra action (get off the road/believe) that you did not have to do before then they "pushed" you in that position.

But on the sidewalk they had no need to accept god, now that you pushed them on the road they need to accept him on top of all the other stuff so the situation is different.

If somebody is pushed on the street they also have a possibility and they still can choose to get off it but it doesn't mean it was moral to push them in the first place.

Thanks, I had forgotten about that passage (it has been a long time since crystallised my theological position and I haven't had much need to extensively study the bible since so I forget some passages).

However it contradicts the combination of Romans 1:18-20 and Mark 16:16 as according to Roman 1:20 god's existence is plain to everybody since creation and according to Mark 16:16 you need to believe to be saved so it would leave nobody not knowing about god to be saved by their own actions alone like Roman 2 claims.

Faith is a factor in making you god's buddy but once you are god's buddy it matters not how you came to be.

As for salvation if it relied exclusively only on morality then it would not be cronyism but since it doesn't then it is cronyism.

If he only rewarded on the latter then it would not be cronyism. Requiring the former (which means that you are his buddy) makes it cronyism.

Faith is not actually open to everybody as you do not choose to have faith or not, you either have it or you don't. You can reread my previous post where I talked about that in more detail.

Could you, if you wanted, choose not to believe in god? Of course not, because you believe in him and choosing not to believe in him when you do is impossible.

Could you, if you wanted, choose to believe in Brahma? Of course not, because you don't believe in him and choosing to believe in him when you do is impossible.

Faith is belief. Even if you open your heart and try to believe does not mean that you will believe. If you open your heart to Santa Claus does that mean that you are definitely going to believe in him? I mean the guy seems like a nice dude, giving gifts to good children and all. But the reality is that no matter how much you might wish that Santa Claus exists (i.e. open your heart to him) if you do not believe then you won't. If you end up believing it is not because you wished he existed but because something caused you to believe.

If it was about justice then it would be about who is good and who is bad, not about who is good and believes (possibly with some exceptions) and who is either bad or good but does not believe.

That is not justice.

That doesn't mean that the way to judge the consequence of one's action is just. If he chose to reward heaven to those that chose to hop on their left foot on wednesdays and to send to hell those that did not you would still be going to heaven or hell as the consequence of your actions but the way to judge what the consequence is would be totally unjust.

You are doing a very bad job, but then so am I in the other direction. Luckily for me though I am not so much trying to convince you (no chance here) as trying to get you think about the morality of your belief instead of taking their morality for granted (unlikely to happen but a much more reasonable goal).

There is also the possibility that this conversation is god trying to show YOU the way. How you might ask as I do not believe in god? Well, while I do not believe in god because I have no reason to as it is very improbable that he exists, I believe that the existence of a god is possible (emphasis on "a" as opposed to "the") and one of the possibilities is the following hypothesis:

"There is a god and he inspired not only the bible but also the koran, the vedas and every other religious texts. However, unlike what their followers believed he did not inspire them as guides to morality and transcendental truths but as tests of people's morality and credulity.

For this he filled them both with moral precepts (Though shall not kill, the golden rule...) and immoral precepts (most of leviticus, the various mass murders god is said to have done, destroying job's life for a bet...).

Those that believe in the morality of such texts uncritically do not have a good enough moral compass to deserve life after death and thus are left to oblivion at death.

Those that have the moral fortitude to reject the immoral parts despite the dreadful threats of everlasting torture after death (and sometimes torture and/or persecution before death) have passed the test and are intrinsically moral enough to deserve of life after death."

I obviously have no evidence for it but when the mystical part of me gets going this is what I lean toward as it is the kind of divinity that I can respect, whether it exists or not.

If god exists in such a form then I would be the one god sent to show you the way of developing a critic of morality that could save you instead of your current way of uncritically accepting your religion's morality that dooms you to not be saved at death and you would be sent to tempt me away from critical morality.

You might try to quote from the bible or from some apparition or other miracle to justify your belief but all those things are part of the test... which you failed.

To go back to what I just quoted, you forgot the punishment part, which, if you go back to the post that started it, is what I was complaining about. The lack of obvious punishment for transgressions is the problem. When you raise a child you punish them for bad behaviour and tell them why they are punished to make them understand that it is a bad behaviour. You do not admonish them and do nothing then come back years later and punish them with a vengeance. That's lousy parenting yet it is what god does. 

One problem I had with my father growing up was that sometime he would punish me and say "you know why you are punished" when I asked why. If I asked it was because I did not know that I had done anything wrong. But how was I to improve and avoid further punishment if I did not know what I needed to avoid doing? At best, this is what god does as even if he punishes then you are left to guess as to why you are punished.

Katrina destroyed New Orleans? Oh, it must be god's punishment. Punishment for what? Don't know, probably because of the gays or not supporting Israel or America not being Muslim... All these have been advanced as causes for it (see here).

Even if any of them were true how could the New Orleanians or the Americans know which one it was that was true? And not knowing which was the cause how could they then improve?

How about an example closer to your home (but farther in time): the Lisbon earthquakeand tsunami of 1755.

I will quote Barbara Ehrenreich as she put it much better than I could:

"A tsunami hit Lisbon in 1755, on All Saint's Day, when the good Christians were all in church. The faithful perished, while denizens of the red light district, which was built on strong stone, simply carried on sinning. Similarly, last fall's hurricanes flattened the God-fearing, Republican parts of Florida while sparing the sin-soaked Key West and South Beach."

Is that an example of god punishing us before our death? If so what is his message about what we should avoid? It sounds like he is telling us to avoid churches and go to whorehouses instead.

I doubt it. Have you never heard of Epicurus' famous saying:

"Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?"

The traditional theistic argument is that he is able but not willing because he gave us free will and preventing evil would be interfering with it. But that argument does not hold any more in the light of yourclaim that your prayers can sway god in making people believe as he now is interfering with free will and is thus not only responsible for the disbelief that he is not willing to change but also for all the evil in men's heart that he is not willing to change.

This modifies Epicurus' saying thus: Is he is able, but not willing even though he is willing to interfere with free will? Then he is malevolent.

It is his lack of consistency that creates the additional moral problem.

If he was never interfering with free will then he would still be responsible for torturing people for things that not only they don't control but do not deserve anything like one day of torture, let alone an eternity of it.

If he always interfered with free will to make people believe then there would be no problem with the belief requirement of heaven as everybody would then fulfill it.

But that he is willing to interfere with some people's free will to make them believe while leaving most people not believing and thus condemned to torture is even worse as he is now picking and choosing those he will torture for disbelief (and as I pointed out earlier it is also worse because now he does not have the excuse of "not interfering with free will" to prevent him from stopping evil).

It applies to gods too. Most if not all human religions (including yours) are full of ego-stroking, vanity flattering worship. Any decent god should be beyond wallowing in such displays.

big bang ffs.

I mean come on, who believs in god.

It`s not that i don`t understand what you are trying to say with moral relativism, my problem is that you think that putting men and God in the same God is ok even though they are in two realities apart - and man vs woman is not the same as men vs God, when the first one is stil men vs men.
More, you think that people deciding who lives and dies is the human equivalent to God deciding who lives and dies. Which is not the same even if both sides can do the same.
Your view is that because in appearence we work the same way, we are to be read in the same way. And here is where we disagree.
I can either bring God to my level, but that wouldn`t be fair; i could put myself in God`s level and it stil woudn`t be a fair attitude; or i could look at both sides see and understand/respect what makes us different.
As i said, it`s not that i reject moral relativism, it`s that i reject your interpretation of things.
So whatever you seem to find in God as immoral, is to me an incomplete view of God because God has the right to decides who lives and dies and this you do not accept if it`s applied only to God because, i presume, you feel like God was either bad or just didn`t care. You don`t know God`s heart or God Himself to see how different it is from a human doing the same - not that i do better.
Therefore you say this "I do not need to understand him in an absolute way any more than a judge needs to understand a suspect in an absolute way to determine if he did an immoral thing." Here you put God and men in the same level.

I understand your inversion. The problem with it, is that you just invert one thing: killing being moral. But to be fair you would have to change everything in regard to that.
That`s like some people reading about Mary, not believing it or her attributes and still "trying" to read for what it is.

The only thing that i can`t say about people`s actions is that i know in an absolute way what motivated them. But i can read their "reality" in light of God. And by doing that i assume that either something is good or bad giving the source for the above reading.

"Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still doing the wrong thing."
But by neglecting the reasons you neglect/reject the beggining of that action. But that would be taking us to the morality issue.

Good actions is not what saves you. Your good heart and your actions is what saves you - in the case you don`t believe in God.
That`s why i said that life is more than morality and therefore you always are judged for more than morality.
You confused me a little: you say the sidewalk is a neutral point but you also clame that it is the same as good behaviour, but this is not neutral.
But that`s not the point as it seems you and i are using it in different ways. This is what matters to me:

You are in point A and to reach point B you need to do something, right? To get an reaction you must first have an action.
So, and this is where i don`t agree with you, is that you claim that because i, in this case, told you about God you consider yourself in danger, which would mean that you jumped to the reaction point.
What you don`t see is the importance of something: you were the one who went from A to B. The reason why you are in a safe or dangerous position, given what was told to you, is that you chose, for whatever reason, that way.
It was not me who bumped you to either side, it was you who went this or that way.

That`s why i keep saying that it doesn`t matter the starting point, it doesn`t matter where you stand, you are not saved or doomed, it doesn`t matter the what is the risk or possibilities, what matters is your actions. Those actions are what makes you go from point A to B, to go heaven or hell`s way.
With all due respect, you cared too much for hell or the situation of risk - which is inherent to human life.

I don`t see a contradiction there, honestly. Men can see right from wrong, can feel it - since we were made good in nature - but that doesn´t mean we have it all to be saved. It seems to make a merger between that knowledge and Jesus' coming.
For example, people still rejected Jesus in His time (when their nature combined with Jesus would be the culmination point).

"Could you, if you wanted, choose not to believe in god? Of course not, because you believe in him and choosing not to believe in him when you do is impossible."
You are still seeing this in the eyes of reason.
It`s not like you sit down and say: "i choose to believe". It`s not how it works. You don`t choose to have faith because it is a gift given to you. What you choose is to open your heart or not. In the other end, you lose faith because you closed your heart. God is only there if you want them there.
So yes, faith is opened to anyone because that is something anyone can do.

Your starting point for salvation still remains in morality, but it isn`t because it can`t be. When you are more than morality, you are judge by more than morality and that is only fair.
That`s why at first i used the girl in love to explain why you get heaven or not. She will only give herself to you in the - implicit - condition of you loving her aswell. And with God it`s the same.
"Faith is belief."
No, faith is belief, love and trust. So, the question is what does it mean to open your heart or why some do and others don`t?

Not always does God punishes you but He also guides you.
What you are bound to do is read in light of God what happens in your life. Sometimes you get it right away sometimes you get it later. But that would be something that would take forever to talk about in detail. Sometimes, for our mistakes we are guided and not punished.
The important part is understanding what God is and wants for and from us, and with that we guide our lives (by acting accordingly and knowing what was good and bad).
During the marian apparitions, Mary said that if people didn`t repent God would punish the world with another war. What this meant was that, although HE gave peace to the world if the world didn`t change we would be punished, or in other words, He wouldn`t saves us now.
Our prayers helped because, even though we didn`t deserve, those prayers acted as water in a fire - not literally - and God, through Mary interviened. There`s more to the apparition (dangers of the soviet union, etc.).
""Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?"
Thing is we get what we deserve. If we "love" Him we get love from Him, if we don`t we don`t get that "love" from Him. Although this is true, He stills wants us to help save those who don`t deserve (one of the parts of the apparition was to pray for sinners so they wouldn`t go to hell).
This is our world. We decide the outcome. What God does is, one way or another, helps us/guide us so we can be with Him, but it`s still our call to do so or not. We can save ourselves and we can help save others. That`s the power that God gaves us from the start.
Yet, you call it ego. God loves us to the point where, in no way, we are not alone, even in our walk to salvation (the intended result), becasue God doesn`t want to lose us.
Actually, there`s a part in the Bible that says: "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. " "... there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" and continues " "You know a lot about God, but if you don't know this, you don't really know the heart of my Father."

Well everybody on VGChartz knows I am a Christian. Now I stayed out of this thread long enough but won't really get involved since I know I'll be a target. I'll just say logically and scientifically the existance of a higher power is undeniable. Scientists and the brightest minds on earth still can't explain how everything was created. Now honestly I wish I could explain how God was created, the Bible says he always has been and always will be.

In the end thier are just things we will never be able to explain until we go to heaven and ask the big man himself. Scientists always try to explain everything but in doing so they create just as many knew questions. Nobody will ever be able to understand how God created the earth or Universe.

Some believe in the word of God, others in scientific theories and yet others such as myself a man of science and religion. But nobody no matter how smart will ever be able to fully grasp it.

...except us Muslims DO believe he is the Messiah.

That you have a problem men and god together does not mean that you are not a moral relativist. You obviously believe that there are good reasons to be a moral relativist but the questions "is that person a moral relativist" and "does that person have valid reasons to be a moral relativist" can be answered separately (though the latter makes no sense unless the former is answerable by yes).

Hell, I will go as far as saying that I am a moral relativist when it comes to animals as I do not hold them up to the same moral standard as humans but I do believe that I have excellent reasons to be (their lack of enough intelligence to make moral judgements).

Just because men and women are different is not enough to justify using a different moral standard; you also have to demonstrate that the differences warrant using a different moral standard. You have given as much reasons to apply a different moral to god (he is different, we cannot understand him...) as you have to apply a different moral standard to women (they are different, we cannot understand women...).

Morally it is. God as no right to take a person's life because he is god. If he take a person's life without cause it is as much murder as if any human took another person's life without cause. If you want to argue that it is not so then you need to have a better argument than "because he is god" as that is just special pleading.

My view is because both humans and god are beings capable of reason we both are able to make moral judgements (that is judgements about what is good and what is bad) and thus we both can be held to the same moral standard.

Even if there are things in which we are not equal to god it would not follow that there are no things in which we are equal to him. Simply saying we cannot use the same moral standard because he is different is no different to saying that we cannot use the same moral standard to other cultures because they are different; you also have to explain why those differences justify a different moral standard. Like I said earlier superior power and creating life do not justify the different standard any more than a man's superior power (in the form of strenght) over (most) women or a woman's giving life justify giving them a different moral standard. 

Glad you finally admit to it, now we can concentrate on whether your reasons for being so are valid.

No he doesn't. Murder is murder, no matter who commits it. If there are circumstances that mean a death is not murder (self-defence, possibly execution of a death-row prisoner...) then they apply equally to men as to god and if there are not such circumstances then the lack of circumstances to make it not murder apply to god as much as it applies to men. You want to say it is different? Fine, Justify it.

Not quite. I am arguing that if god kills someone (or commits other immoral acts) because he had no reason (was bad?) or didn't care then merely being god is not a reason to not view those acts as moral. Your view is that merely being god is justification enough (which is what "god defines morality" means).

If you are arguing that those are not immoral not because god did them but because we do not know everything and thus there might be extenuating circumstances then you are not arguing that "god defines morality" as if "god defines morality" then he doesn't need such excuses.

And a judge doesn't know an accused man's heart but he still can judge on the evidence provided. In cases like Jericho and Job we have enough evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt (the standard of evidence for murder).

And I will continue until you properly justify why he should not be on questions of morality.

Then it is not a problem as I do not invert just one thing but everything. I just use murder for emphasis as it is an act we are both likely to think of as not only immoral but als one of the most immoral acts possible. If god can make even murder moral then there is no problem with him making other things moral too.

This was actually the point of the Lucifer as god thought experiment as in that case all the immorality you associate with lucifer would be moral.

I do not understand what you are trying to say with this sentence.

Good, we are making progress. You can indeed assume it is immoral, but you can't know that it is or isn't as you would need to know god's mind for that (in your system of belief).

A person doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still liable for their actions.

You can use the reason of the action to try to improve the person as if they thought they were doing the right thing then you have a better chance to reform them than if they did the wrong thing for the wrong reason (their personal gain for example, or god's glory); but when it comes to sentencing what matters most is what they did, not why they did it.

Combined with Jesus's sacrifice of course, although we can ignore itin the context of our discussion as we have no control over it.  

It goes back to the thing right above. It is doing good things for good reasons that saves you and doing the wrong thing for the right reason damns you too (unless you repent).

Where we disagree is that you seem to think that lack of belief is a bad action that deserves everlasting torture whereas I totally disagree.

I don't see the reasons for an action as being separated from morality but as part of it. It is just that you need both the right action and the right reason to be moral so even without knowing the reason you can still judge on the action alone.

The sidewalk and the street are not good behaviour and bad behaviour they are the paths that lead to heaven or hell (life or death). You believe that when people are born they are on the path to heaven (sidewalk) and by their good or bad actions they stay on the path of heaven (sidewalk) or hell (street).

If they go on the path of hell through their actions then they need to be redeemed to go back to the path of heaven by believing in Jesus.

If you tell them about god then they also need to be redeemed by believing in Jesus even if their own actions did not put them on the path to hell. That is, simply by knowing of god they now are on the path to hell (the street) and need to be redeemed to go back to the path of heaven.

it is the telling them about god that puts them from the path to heaven to the path to hell which is the equivalent of pushing them from the sidewalk to the street. Of course, as you do not know all their actions , you do not know if you are pushing them from the sidewalk to the street or from the street to the street but that is no excuse to put them in a place that you know is the path to hell.

It is not too surprising that you would be confused though as I saw the analogy as self-evident and thus didn't elaborate on it but since you do not see it as self-evident then I have to refine it to try to make you understand why I see them as similar. It is the problem of translating what is in your brain in words (especially in a foreign language) 

Right. The action is the telling of god, the reaction is the change from being on the path to heaven (the sidewalk) to being on the path to hell (the street).

In my case it is actually because my parents told me about god, so I was already put on the path to hell by them if your belief is right (though they don't believe in hell).

But if your belief is right then simply telling me does put me in a place where I am definitely in danger until I take a specific action (believe in and accept Jesus as my saviour) and given that this is not due to an action of mine then it is not jumping to that point but being pushed there.

And the person pushed onto the street is also the one that went from A to B. In neither case was that person the actor that cause their going from A to B but they were the person acted upon by the one doing the pushing/telling.

No I didn't. I wasn't asked if I wanted to know about god and the person pushed on the street wasn't asked if it was ok to push them. Unless you tell the person of the risk before proceeding further then they can't give you their informed consent. If you proceed further without their informed consent then they are pushed on the path to hell by virtue of being told of god.

How can you say that when the person who did not know about god did not do any action? If they had gone in a bookstore, bought a bible and read it then it would be their action that would teach them about god and put them in danger but since it is you who told them then it is your action that caused them to go a certain way.

Only when you are born. Once you tell them it changes from 'their actions only' to 'their actions plus belief' and that change is due to your action of telling them, just like a person living on the sidewalk or dying on the street changes from 'their actions only' to 'their actions plus getting back to the sidewalk' when someone pushes them.

Saying that them believing is their action is no more an excuse than saying them getting of the street is their action is an excuse for the act of deliberately pushing them on the street.

But the action that put the person's hell's way (the street) is not their action but yours when you told them as simply telling them puts them on the path to hell (from which they can get off by believing but it doesn't excuse putting them on that path in the first place).

You are reversing cause and effect. The sequence is like that:

Be born.

Cause: Your actions

Effect: path to Heaven or path to Hell

Cause: Telling about god

Effect: path to Hell

Cause: Believing or not

Effect: path to Heaven if belief, still path to hell if not.

You are saying that if they are on the path to hell then it is due to a cause (lack of belief) that occurs after the effect (path to hell) whereas I am saying that the effect (path to hell) is due to an action prior to it (telling them about god).

Note that while they did not believe before you told them about god it was then neutral but after you told them about god that same lack of belief is fatal, due entirely to your action.

What I care about is the consequence of one's actions, not hell as I also care for the person physically pushed onto the street which doesn't change their salvation status.

Also I don't believe in hell so it is not so much the action of telling that I have a problem with but the action of telling while believing that the telling sends them to hell if they fail to believe afterwards. This is also why while I think that morally a christian believing in hell should refrain from telling people about their god unless they are informed of the danger and agree to it I would not advocate for it to be illegal as people are not really going to be tortured because of your actions. I am just trying to explain what is the logical conclusion of your belief combined with those actions and advocating that in the context of your belief the moral thing to do is to warn people of the danger before giving them knowledge that puts them in additional danger.

The contradiction is that one one side the bible says that you can be saved even without believing by being a law unto themselves but on the other side you need to believe to be saved and that god is self-evident in nature, which means that no man can claim not to know god (as it is self-evident) and thus all men need to believe in him to be saved. To come back to the above analogy the bible says that nature itself tells us about god so it is nature itself that does the pushing in the above analogy.

To be able to reject them they needed to know of him first.  Romans 1:18-20 argues that everybody knows god through nature and if it true then nobody is in the situation where they can be saved while not believing by being a law unto themselves because they know god through nature and if they don't believe it is because they reject him.

Of course. To see it through the eye of belief i would need to believe first, wouldn't I.

And that's the problem. You don't choose to have it given to you so if somebody doesn't believe because god chose not to give faith to him he gets tortured because of god's decision not to give him faith. How is that fair? How is that moral?

I didn't lose faith because I closed my heart. I rejected (but still believed in) god because I opened my eyes to the immoralities commited by him.

I do agree that "opening your heart" is part of belief in as much as while you do not control whether you believe something or not you can choose not to consider something at all and ignore it instead (the equivalent of closing your heart which is really closing your mind).

Except that you said that it also had to be given to you by god. This means that while anyone has the potential for faith, not everyone will be given the opportunity to fulfill that potential by god and if they are not then they will be punished for not being given that opportunity.

Sorry, but torturing good people is not in any way fair or moral.

The girl in love giving herself is not a moral decision so if you analogy is correct then neither is god's decision for salvation. Given that it entails torture, it means that you are torturing because of something not based on morality and that is immoral.

Even if you want to add things to faith beside belief you still need belief fro faith, and belief is not something you choose, so my point stand.

But that is the problem. When my dad would punish me only saying "you know why you were punished" I could also try to read in light of the rules I knew he laid but given that I did not know which rule led to the punishment I could not know how I broke it and thus I could not know how to improve.

Same with god's so-called punishments. You read them as a catholic and huaxiong90 reads them as a muslim and I read them as "shit happens" but if either of you is right then it doesn't help me and the one of you who is wrong in their belief as we do not know that the punishment is due to a wrong belief.

Worse, in the case of the Florida tornadoes/Lisbon earthquake the logical conclusion goes against what most religions teach so you get the wrong message.

So we are back to square one. God does not give punishments with clear explanations why you are punished. That is really lousy parenting.

The guidance, not being explicit either, has the same problems as what you interpret as punishments.

The explicit part is still lacking and thus he still is a lousy parent.

So why was Lucia only allowed to reveal the second secret in 1938? If the goal was to prevent another war through prayer it should have been revealed soon after Mary told it to her instead of wasting time and revealing it so close to the war, after Hitler had remilitarised Germany and tested his weapons and tactics in the Spanish war.

Also note that while it was predictable that a war was very likely to happen it would be harder to predict when it would happen and with that harder prediction the second secret falls flat on its face as it says the war would break out during the pontificate of Pius XI... who died months before WWII broke out. He died in february 1939 and the war broke out in september 1939, during the pontificate of Pius XII. Not a big mistake for a mere human but a huge one if coming from Mary who presumably got it from god.

It is not the 'not getting that love from him' that I have the biggest moral problem with but the 'getting that torture from him' if you don't love him that is odiously immoral.

Should a human judge release a criminal because some people supply him to do so or should said criminal be released on the merit of having paid for his crime and/or for good conduct (his actions). Why should it be different on the supernatural level?

Like I said earlier, he does a lousy job guiding us.

God loves us so much that if he decides not to give us faith he wil torture it for us.

Yeah, I know that the bible claims that god's love for us is unbounded but you have to look not just at its bare claims but also how it goes about expressing that "love" and when you do it is obvious that said unbdounded love is disfunctional and abusive.

Why wouldn't he rejoice about that? The problem is not that he rejoices about that, the problem is that he is willing to torture good people for frivolous reasons like lack of belief.

You can't argue why god is good by cherrypicking the good part of the bible, if you want to argue that god is good you must do so by explaining why the obviously horrible parts of god's personality and actions are not actually horrible but are indeed good.

I should have used another word. It was based on soem muslim friends telling me that they did not believe that he was the son of god through whose sacrifice you are saved (your sin atoned) but as a prophet.

Given that this is what christians mean by messiah I took it to mean that Muslims did not believe in Jesus as the messiah. Following your message I searched and saw that you believe in him as the messiah... but with a different definition for messiah. That definition being the original meaning of messiah: 'one that is annointed'.

Thanks for the correction as it will allow me to try to be more precise in the future. Would using the word saviour have the same potential for confusion?

Note that using a different word does not change my point though as even though you see him as the messiah you do not accept him as the son of god and your personal savior through which your sins are atoned (or am I wrong in that too?) and that lack of belief, which you do not control condemns you to eternal torture as much as me (if DelioPT's religious beliefs are right of course).