every single history channel show on the bible has been awful, I've seen a bunch and they are all worthless, definitely the worst stuff teh channel puts out(often quite interesting material)

I've seen several and they run the gamut from poor to highly informative. It all depends on the subject and the quality of the information available. Their Exodus plagues episode was amazing explaining how THE LORD could have used volcanos in several of the plagues.

I have never known of a young child, baby or infant that wasn't innocent.

I wonder what the "age of accountability" was back then... apparently it was 1 second old.

Well, it explained how volcanoes could have caused the plagues. It never explained how the lord could have used volcanoes because obviously it would be impossible to actually support either side of that with any facts. Was a very cool show though.

This goes back to by Hitler/baby Hitler scenario. When asked if you had the ability to kill Hitler before he killed everyone would you do it, everyone said of course.

When asked if the scenario was the same as before but this time you had to kill Hitler as an infant, everyone still said yes.

I also ask that if a person had that choice to kill Hitler and did not take it, would that person have made a moral or immoral choice, everyone said immoral.

So if I choose not to kill baby Hitler, that is considered an immoral choice.

And yet when God does the exact same thing, he is considered a brute.

Well I guess that is just the famous atheist double standard for you.

In order for it to be the "exact same thing", every resident of every genocide-receiving town would have had to be a Hitler-esque type sinner as opposed to the normal/mild sinners who were committing genocide, and the other normal/mild sinners whose towns were left alone.

Talk about grasping for excuses.

I thought you would go with they were Gods creation and their in a better place.

Can you show me the passage in the bible that shows the baby's of Sodom were little Hitlers. If they are evil are they in hell.

If God is going to go around killing Hitlers he should of taken out the real .

God then proceeds to send two angels to pull out the last four righteous people in the city.

Your argument is ridiculous as you trying to state that you know that there were some children that have been good people, but that God destroyed them anyway. This is absurd.

"Everyone" did no such thing. Some of us didn't respond.

I would only even consider killing baby Hitler based on my knowledge that he will definitely end up killing millions if I don't do so. In reality, I'd probably try to befriend Hitler and save him if I had the chance.

But this is all based on the assumption that baby Hitler has no free will to do good. Because I don't believe in free will, that is an assumption I'm comfortable making. Your belief is based on the assumption that we do have free will, that everyone has the free will to do good. Thus, you can't claim that those babies had no chance of doing good - they had the free will to do good, and so God cannot have known they would become baby Hitlers.

Furthermore, my treatment of Hitler would be based on my limited powers. Violence is a crude way to solve a problem, but humans are neither smart nor powerful enough to find alternatives in some cases. An omnipotent being has an infinite number of tools at his disposal, and the idea that killing happens to be the only tool for the job, time after time, is the definition of implausible. Given only material resources (no magical powers or anything) I can find a way to solve almost any problem without needing to kill anyone, but you suggest that in these dozens of problems that occurred in the past, there was no possible solution other than violence, even for God. Like hell am I going to buy that, and even then ignoring that it violates the principles of inductive reasoning.

The argument the there are evil children is far more ridiculous. Was Hitler an evil baby or just an evil man, why not off them when they actually turn evil.

Right, the last four righteous people, including the man who offered his daughters up to a mob of rapists for the sake of hospitality, the daughters themselves who raped their own father, and the woman who God destroyed anyhow because she was "evil" enough to look behind her.

You don't seem to understand how induction works. Every horse we have ever seen has certain attributes. These attributes do not include purple polka-dots. So if you make a historical claim about herds of horses with purple polka dots, your claim is already on thin ice. We know through inductive reasoning that horses don't have purple polka dots. We know this because no horse that we have ever seen has such polka dots. Because the claim of herds of purple polka-horses contradicts our inductive knowledge, it is an extreme claim, a basically implausible claim. As an extreme claim, it requires equally extreme evidence in order for it to be reasonable.

The same applies to your claim (which I think is bad in general because of what it implies about free will). We have observed many, many different cities. And none of them have had anything like the level of evil that you are suggesting existed in Sodom and Gomorrah, and certainly none have had legions of sinister infants. Just as horses do not have purple polka dots, so cities do not have wholly corrupt populations. You are claiming that in the past, some cities did have wholly corrupt populations, and as this claim contradicts our inductively reasoned knowledge, it is a purple polka-horse claim. That means in order for it to be reasonable, it must be supported by extreme evidence.

To suggest something that nobody has ever seen before, and to suggest it as a universality, is to make an extreme implausible claim. This isn't valid, and in fact I'd bet that you regularly criticize views you disagree with based on the same inductive reasoning that you're throwing out the window right now. If I want to claim that there were herds of purple polka-horses, I need strong evidence to back up my claim. And if you want to claim that there were cities of

This isn't our double standard; what you want is for us to abandon the normal standards of reasoned weighing of evidence and to use a different (more favorable) standard in approaching the Bible. We are not going to engage in your double standard here, and I'm sorry if that frustrates you. The inclusion of purple polka-horses in a worldview makes that worldview much less plausible (in other words, it represents evidence against that worldview). Much of this can even be proved with Bayesian reasoning, which can be used to evaluate specific claims within a wider framework, and the relation of the independent plausibility of those claims to the plausibility of the framework itself (hint: claims that are independently unlikely reduce the likelihood of the overall claim, thus the claim of evil cities, if independently implausible, factually reduces the likelihood of the Bible being accurate).

Your responses seem to amount to "this doesn't prove the Bible wrong." But guess what - they aren't meant to. Evidence isn't proof, it's a very different beast. The argument isn't meant to say "this couldn't have happened," but to say "this is independently an unlikely event, and by the principles of reasoning that means it reduces the credibility of the Bible." And again, I'd bet you apply the same standards of reasoning to other religions and stories. There's a reason NR and Aaron admit that they apply different standards of reasoning to the Bible than to other works - if you make the same admission, then you are the one inserting a double standard, not us (we can get into a discussion of why we, who don't believe in the Bible, should be expected to apply to different standard to it than to other works) - and if you don't make that admission, you are in serious trouble with these kinds of claims.

Sorry for the tldr, but this is really an important part of how "scientific-minded" people evaluate claims and evidence, and if you don't take it into account then we will be talking past each other.

So this should show you how terrible the other people were. And for the woman, she destroyed herself, think back to my fire analogy.

I will get to the rest later.

I understand what you are saying, and based on this you should be more than happy to accept my answer. We see children grow up into evil people every day. We know that when a child grows up in a violent and ruthless environment that they themselves are very likely to grow up to be violent and ruthless. Given what we know about the environment in Sodom and Gomorrah, it is not a stretch to believe that the children would grow up to be evil people. In fact it is more of a stretch to believe that they would not. So once again, based our current knowledge of all of this you should be right there defending my statements, not disagreeing with them.

Maybe if we are comparing it to todays cities. But we are not. We are talking about a city in the ANE. There are plenty of cities throughout history in which we know the society practiced human sacrifice and all other sorts of evil things. So I find your statements here to be off base.

Furthermore, you are dividing up what you chose to believe and what you do not. Either the bible is taken as a whole or it is not taken at all. What you are doing is saying that this story characterizes God to be a bad God. But you only know of the story because of the bible. So you trust that the bible is correct in the story(as you are using this as a reason to say God is bad) but when the bible characterizes these cities as purely evil, you go on to say that this could not be true. So which is it, is the story true or false? You have to take it as a whole. If you want to say the story is not trustworthy, then you cannot take any characterization of the Christian God from it either. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

It is not that the infants were currently sinister, but that they would become sinister. You can refer back to my baby Hitler scenario.

Answered in previous statements above in this post.

I believe that I have shown how you do not apply the same standard at all. In fact you completely change the standard when approaching the bible.

Not once have I tried to imply this. It seems that you, and many others on this forum, consistently believe this is what all theists do. When in fact all I am trying to do is get you to look at the bible with the same standards that you do everything else. But I am fairly convinced that this will never happen with you and some of the others.

I don't know about Aaron, but I highly doubt that NR would agree with you here. Unless you are just talking about the bible being the word of God. In which case NR and I would agree. But that is not what we are talking about, and this is not a double standard at all.

Nice link of Abraham's encounter with God, Jib.

If you notice in that passage God's mercy was given each time. God never denied mercy when it was truly requested.

Few believers would never raise this literal question of "what about the other 10 people".

Personally I feel the passage implies that God will spare Sodom and Gomorrah if even one person is found. But God in his text lets us make that intellectual connection ourselves. Because by doing so we recognize 3 things: God's power, God's mercy and God's righteousness and rightful use of his power. (If you don't think this is the case then why didn't Abraham ask down to the number 1. Abraham drew the same conclusion. That God was both just and merciful and he could absolutely rely on God's judgment and God was patient with him because Abraham asked with the right attitude. Abraham said though I am nothing but dust and ashes.

It also allows us to give our personal spritual/intellectual homage to God when we recognize all 3 of these things constantly coexist when God exercises judgment.

Oh btw the NT relates that the Spirit is always higher than the letter (the literal).

First you say I can't know if the children of Sodom are innocent and the bible says all were sinful so I have to accept that. Then you say that the children are innocent (something you wont allow me) and that they will grow up to be evil.

Then you accuse of us of dividing up the bible the way we want when you do the same thing. What standard do you want me to except, are the children innocent or evil.

If they are innocent then. "Lucky there weren't 10 innocent young children or baby's in Sodom or it might of screwed up Gods plan."

If the aren't. "The argument the there are evil children is far more ridiculous. Was Hitler an evil baby or just an evil man, why not off them when they actually turn evil."

Uh, no. On four points and even more, but I'll leave it at the four to keep it reasonable in length.

First, the claim you're making is that all of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah (save Lot's family) were irredeemably evil. That is not the same as saying that some of them are. It's the difference between saying "Joe flipped a coin 3,000 times in a row, and it came up heads every time" and saying "Joe flipped a coin 3,000 times, and it came up heads sometimes." The first is extreme and implausible, and necessitates a high standard of evidence. The latter is ordinary, and easy to accept.

Second, nobody is talking about "very likely." Your claim is that everyone in the two cities (other than Lot's family) was evil. Not that "all of them were likely to become evil." Huge difference. And it doesn't change the question of whether those children were innocent.

Third, God is omnipotent. This should be the first and the last consideration you make in every single claim you make. If God is omnipotent, than how could he have solved the problem? Well, we know God has 100% control over a person's environment, so the claim that God couldn't help but kill a person because their environment would have made it "likely" that they would be evil. God has the power to change their environment, so their environment doesn't present an obstacle to God. (God's omnipotence could also make points 4, 5, and 6 for that matter. We are talking about a being so powerful he can create a whole new dimension just by thinking about it. Yet you keep claiming that he couldn't find any way to avoid killing and torturing people. It doesn't make sense.)

Finally, no, we don't see children grow up to be evil people every day. We see very few of them grow up to be anything but mentally ill, misunderstood, brainwashed, diseased, and even desperate. But very rarely simply cruel. Those that are represent a small group of people who seem to often have physiological problems with their frontal lobes.

Yeah, there are plenty of cultures that practiced human sacrifice. In times of drought, when people were starving to death and they believed (due to religion, lest I need remind you) that the only way to bring rain was to kill someone. Furthermore, in many of these cultures people held competitions to see who got the honor of being sacrificed. They were all willing to sacrifice their own selves in order to save their societies. Certainly many of these cultures were far more benevolent than that of the Israelites. Every society we have ever observed has demonstrated high levels of compassion toward their in-group under stable circumstances. None have ever been devoid of love and kindness, or even close.

So here you're deliberately asking me to apply a double standard to the Bible? No thanks. In general, a work of literature or a historical document is not "taken as a whole, or not taken at all." You seem to feel that the Bible deserves a different standard of analysis than other documents, and I am not going to let you apply a different standard.

No, I don't assume the Bible is correct in the story. When I read about Zeus raping a woman, I think "Zeus is kind of a bully." I don't have to believe that the event is recorded correctly (or that it ever actually happened) in order to evaluate the character of Zeus. The same applies for your God, I don't need to believe he exists in order to evaluate his character.

So I'm not allowed to discuss any characterization of Zeus?

Which makes no sense. Some of my refutation is above. And you don't get to take away free will arbitrarily. Did those babies have the free will to do good, or didn't they?

Really? I guarantee you, there is no example you've given for my evaluation of the Christian God that I don't also apply to Zeus. You are welcome to try to find one. But you won't - I evaluate your God by the same standards that I evaluate Zeus, I evaluate the Bible by the same standards that I evaluate the Iliad or any other ancient text. There is no double standard on my part. I think it's likely the double standard is on your part - for example, do you really believe that "either the Iliad is taken as a whole or it is not taken at all?" Come on now, let's level here. You would never have said that about the Iliad. You use a different standard when evaluating the Bible.

Again, show me a case in which I evaluate Zeus differently from your God, or in which I evaluate the Iliad differently from the Bible, and I'll grant you some credibility. I mean, you are the one who wants me to come to a different conclusion about the Bible (it's divine, inerrant, and 100% true) than for all other ancient texts (which, without exception, include some bias and, in the case of those that include narratives, some fiction). You assume that the standard according to which I class all other ancient works as fiction should cause me to class the Bible as perfect and valid. That is awfully strange. Of the thousands of ancient texts we have access to, you want me to claim that this particular one is absolute flawless, but that every single one of the others is full of ****, and yet you accuse me of applying double standards because I put all texts from before the Middle Ages in the same category?

I got NR to admit that he uses different standards to evaluate the Iliad and the Bible. Using much the same line of argument I'm using here.

Think back to my omnipotence example. God could have created a giant wall blocking her view of the city. He could have teleported her directly to safety. He could have simply blocked whatever effect was at play. He could have turned her into a mole for the duration of the journey, preventing her from looking at anything. We are talking about an omnipotent being, a being more powerful than all the wizards of all the fictional universes we have ever imagined. He could have saved Lot's wife with no expended effort on his part, and yet he didn't. That is equivalent to directly destroying her.

They're never going to understand God using philosophy Jib because philosophy with its contradictions, premises etc allows them to hide. They keep perceiving God as this presto-chango being even more "extremely magical" than any theist ever will and they totally miss that God works with us in particular with our weaknesses because it pleases him to use the foolishness of the world to display his power. I think the foolishness gives God an edge in building relationships with us. I always know what a loser I am but that the Good Lord loves me anyway and that IS the miracle of God's love: he's loves the tiny as much as the big, the imperfect as much as the nearly perfect and so on.

The atheists are always applying perfectionism to God and when he fails their mental construct of perfection they think they can dismiss him. Its crazy because the evidence all around us is that God likes diversity and complexity and ragged uniqueness. That's why rivers wind and mountains come in all shapes and sizes and countries don't come in perfect little squares. The world is REAL. Instead of taking God on his own terms they construct their own then say he doesn't meet them. It's silly.

Pascal and Newton spent the end of their lives immersed in the bible because they knew better than to apply a man made construct to God.

in any case, i think we can all agree they deserved to DIE!

I take it all back. Some atheists work the God problem harder than most theists do. Maybe you'll back into him or do an Alice an fall down the rabbit hole and discover another world.

At least consider tool usage. Pascal and Newton preferred the bible. Also wield skepticism more lightly because you need to be open enough to understand it unless you're predetermined to deny him and skepticism tends to make you dismiss very fine and delicate interrelationships.

If the going really gets rough pick up Oswald Chambers "My Utmost for His Highest".

What happens a lot on here is that everyone is concerned with faith and the doctrine of Justification. They get hung up on it and fail to perceive there are other steps in the faith process. Wesley is one of the better ones at explaining it.

http://wesley.nnu.edu/wesleyan_theol...6-20/18-14.htm

In the article I just posted notice the little dialectic between Luther and Wesley. It seems to go on all the time between great theologians or religious groups. The matter of emphasis which determines which fork in the road a theist will take. (Very subtle and always present. Like the vibration of a guitar string. Strange. I'm still trying to figure it out. Have been for the past few months. Aha I think I just got it. It must be the divine breath of inspiration and God's breath takes on a little bit of difference depending on which jar of clay (human being) it is passing through. God must be a musician after all.

just wow

Sure, and God could stop us every single time that we are about to do something wrong. You continue to fall into this same misunderstanding of Christian free will. She freely chose to look back even though she was explicitly told not to. Same as in my fire analogy.

You seem to want people to not have to take responsibility for themselves. People make bad choices, and those choices have consequences.

I am going to have to get to the other stuff later, way too much to read and respond to now.