re: Over Half of Democrats Don't Believe in Hell or the Devil

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Have you seen it?

Of course not.

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Why bother asking if you don't care about the answer?

It makes you come off as a sky screamer.

Eventually God does indeed delete these evil souls that have done bad.

Jesus said fear God for he can destroy body and soul.

God takes no pleasure in torture and his justice is righteous.

Who says the devil destroyed the creation? It looks like to me that mankind made poor decisions that ruined perfection.

We live in sickness and death because humanity refuses to do what is right. Human nature to the core is rebellious to EVERYONE because it is about ME and only ME.

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If you are truly curious I recommend a book by C.S. Lewis called The Great Divorce.

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Yes I am truly curious. That is why I took the time to ask.

I also asked that you explain it to me like I’m Kamala Harris - which I did not think left any room for “go read a book”

Makes judgement day even sweeter

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That makes morality arbitrary and subjective based on whatever God thinks at the time.

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Wrong.

And maybe you missed my questions earlier, so I'll ask them again.

By what standard or authority can you tell anybody else what they "should" or should not do?

A slightly different way to ask the question, why is your definition of morality better or more accurate than John Wayne Gacy's? Remembering that throughout history the majority opinion on certain actions considered acceptable at the time, are, in many cases, seen as morally reprehensible now.

Morality is defined at a given place and time by a given society. That which we 21st century Westerners find reprehensible was laudable to 18th century Trobriand Islanders

Both are/were correct for the milieu in question.

“Better” is ENTIRELY subjective.

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Squirrelmeister

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I'm going to avoid the "proofs for God" discussion for now, as there are many proofs for God's existence (you just don't want to accept them for what they are). One of the biggest proofs is the transcendental argument that states that if God did not exist, all existence would be unintelligible, including morality. I'll focus on morality for now, since that was the main point I was discussing in the post that you responded to.

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You have argued that an action is moral not because it is willed to be moral by God. That makes morality arbitrary and subjective based on whatever God thinks at the time.

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I haven't made that argument at all. I don't believe that what is moral is based only on what God has said is moral. What is moral is based on God's perfectly holy and unchanging character, as expressed by the moral law. I hope you see the difference. Since morality is based on God's character, and what God says and commands is always in alignment with His character, there is no way for God to command someone to sin. I'll explain why next.

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God says not to murder. Then David joins the philistines and murders innocent Jews and breaks some more commandments coveting and stealing from his dead countrymen.

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You don't even understand what "murder" means within God's law. Murder is the unlawful taking of human life. There are a few different ways lives can be taken that do not constitute "murder" (you're familiar with self defense, war, and the death penalty, I'm sure). Murder is not a law that God can violate, because there is no unlawful taking of life when God is involved precisely because He is God and has the authority to take the life of any person because He created all life and can do with His creation precisely whatever He wants to do; God was under no obligation to create life and He's under no obligation to preserve life. Because God has this authority, He can delegate it to others as He sees fit. Human beings don't have the authority to murder, which is why it's a sin when it happens, but if God grants someone the temporary and situational authority to kill as an instrument of His justice, then that is not murder.

I feel like I need to explain this to you because you don't seem to understand the terms being used here and it is leading you to false conclusions.

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God gives Moses a bunch of laws to follow, and then God sends his son to redeem us from those laws of morality.

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The law was given for a few different reasons, but one of them was to show how sinners like us are actually incapable of obeying it and "saving ourselves" through it, which is what every other religion and moral ideology has at their core. Jesus didn't do away with the law, but He did away with the requirement of the law. When anyone trusts in Jesus' death on the cross, they are acknowledging that they have sinned against God by breaking His law, and deserve eternal death for that transgression, but lean on the mercy of God by trusting in Christ's fulfillment of the law for righteousness that we don't deserve. That isn't a contradiction or inconsistency; you just don't have a basic grasp of covenant theology and what the Gospel truly is.

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God creates evil. God defiled his own people causing them to sacrifice their firstborn children. God commands the killing of any witch or sorcerer you find. Kill any Amelekite you come across. Stone adulterers and homosexuals. If someone slaps you on the cheek, give them the other cheek. Kill the inhabitants of other nations at will, and make slaves of their children and rape the women. Someone picks some barley on Saturday because they are starving? Kill ‘em for it. The point is that God’s morality is very subjective and ever-changing, and in most causes God’s morality Is objectively immoral by any modern standard.

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Again, this isn't subjective at all. Every single thing you listed has a reason for why they happened or were tolerated, and I could explain each one for you, but that would be pointless, as you don't actually care why. Suffice it say that God's law is not arbitrary but flows from His character and purpose for mankind. There are differences between the types of law (civil, ceremonial, and moral) and what they were meant for.

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There is no evidence of any God, and there is no universal objective moral standard. The moral standards contained within the Bible are ever-changing, are very subjective, and are mostly immoral.

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Again, there are many evidences for God, just none that you'll accept in your rebellion against Him. And yes, there is a universal, objective moral standard that flows from God's character. It applies to all people in all ages.

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For those that claim the “objective morality” and fear of eternal hellfire is the only thing stopping them from thievery, rape, and murder, then keep believing. We don’t need psychopaths with no fear of consequences running amok.

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Objective morality is the only rational way to approach morality, otherwise morality is nothing but a completely arbitrary and ever-changing standard, which is ironic, since you falsely claim this about God while being fine with it in practice.

When you throw out God, you throw out objective moral reasoning. When you get rid of objective moral reasoning, you lose all ability to rationally condemn or praise anything beyond your own mere opinion of "I like this" or "I don't like that". In other words, when you get rid of God, you don't make sense when you say something is "evil".

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It’s the Christians who don’t even need to worry about morality at all. All you have to do is believe in a non-existent magical spirit, and all your immoral deeds will be forgiven.

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Not true at all. While no one is saved by their good works, good works are still required as an evidence for the true faith that does receive salvation through Christ's work on the cross. It's why the Bible speaks so much about ethics and morality on top of faith. Someone who claims to be trusting in Christ yet lives just like the rest of the world does has no reason to believe they are truly saved.

On the other hand, Christians are supposed to obey God's moral law for a few different reasons, including that we're commanded to, it pleases God to do so, and it is a way of showing thanks to God for what He's done for us.

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The only crime that will not be forgiven is the thought-crime of unbelief, which is outside of the control any any sane human. No one can will themselves to belief something for which there is no evidence.

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I agree with you to an extent, but your poor theology betrays you with an inconsistency here. You first said that there is no evidence for God, and then you say that no one can will themselves to believe something that has no evidence for it. Considering there are billions of Christians who believe in God whom you say has not provided any evidence for, you are contradicting yourself.

With that said, I actually do agree that no one can "will themselves" into belief. It's precisely why the work of the Holy Spirit is necessary to change a person's will to believe the truth, because no one will truly believe and trust it otherwise. Sure, many can and do believe in God generically precisely because there is plenty of evidence for Him out there (you just fail to acknowledge it), but sin causes them to rebel against Him and His Son, rejecting Him and worshipping a god of their own imaginations.

Too much to respond to that it takes two posts.

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If there was a God, and he was moral and just, he would simply reveal himself to all, and there would no longer be any reason for faith or belief - but rather acknowledgment.

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He has revealed Himself in history and people rejected Him anyway. It's not an intellectual issue but a moral one. I've heard time and time again from atheists that say "even if I believed that God exists, I still wouldn't worship him, because he's an evil tyrant". You don't want to believe He exists because you would be accountable for your sins. The solution to that would be to put your trust in Jesus Christ so that your sins would be paid for and you wouldn't have to suffer for them.

And even if what I just said was wrong, God would have to show Himself adequately to every person on the planet at all times, because doing so one time wouldn't be enough. People wouldn't believe it and would think they were hallucinating or dreaming or something, and then as soon as the next generation came around, they wouldn't believe their parents. And even if most of the children believed their parents, the grandchildren wouldn't, and so on. God did this very thing and it didn't take long for the people to rebel against Him anyway.

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The truth is all we have is subjective morality, but it is a morality that most people would agree is moral.

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Subjective morality is meaningless. It's nothing but opinions that are supported by the sword of society until those opinions change. There is no rational basis for condemning anything as "evil" or "immoral" in a real sense, and whatever a given society thinks is "immoral" at any given time may change in a moment, or may not be agreed upon in another society.

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Acts are moral if they maximize human happiness and well-being, while minimizing human suffering. That there is nearly universally objective. The subjective part comes in when we argue about what it is that actually does maximize happiness and what it is that minimizes suffering. There is no way to avoid subjectivity.

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I don't think you understand what "objective" and "subjective" mean in this conversation. Having a lot of people's subjective opinions align doesn't make that alignment "objective". An "objective" standard is true regardless of whether or not the majority agree on it because it comes from outside of the human experience. Anything that intrinsically originates in the human mind is not "objective".

On top of that, why should "maximiz[ing] happiness and well-being, while minimizing human suffering" be the right moral standard anyway? There are differences in what "happiness" and "well-being" actually looks like, as well as what "suffering" looks like. My kids think they're suffering when they go to the dentist. They see "suffering" while I see "well-being" and potentially some long-term "happiness". Who is right in that example? What is "moral" in that example?

Your standard (maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering) is, in itself, an arbitrary standard. How do we know that should be the standard we should follow? Because the majority agree with it? What if we have a majority of people conditioned to see suffering of black people or Jews or Christians as a good thing? How do we know such a standard is good or bad if society agrees with it?

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We enact laws and create consequences as a society but it is based on the prevailing subjective morality of our culture and social norms.

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Unfortunately, this is true, but only because we have turned our backs on God and His moral law. We have rejected objective moral goodness and have embraced moral relativism. It's an irrational position, but because people haven't yet seen the connection between arbitrary subjectivity and true suffering, it seems good in the eyes of many these days.

OK, tell me something, oh, great sage of all things faith-based.

God made Adam and Eve, the first people, right?

They had two sons, Cain and Abel, right? One killed the other, leaving three people on the planet.

Then, how did other people come about?

Or, let's try this one on for size ...

Noah. Ark. Two of every animal on the planet.

And only Noah's family.

So, the rest of us came about from incest, is that what you're saying?

Why not one more?

Those Ten Commandments.

Adultery gets mentioned a couple times. Stealing. Honoring Sabbath and Mom and Dad. Nary a mention about the most evil thing of all time -- being gay. Why didn't that make the cut?