Right. And if Jibninjas believes something, it is above reproach. I forgot.

ORLY?

The thread is titled "When does evil become evil?"
You asked *atheists* about their thoughts on what constitutes "evil".
You state later on in the thread that you believe that without god, something cannot be said to be "evil".
You state that if you were an atheist, you would not be able to judge something to be evil.

"Evil" is a word with definitions that both atheists and theists acknowledge. The definitions have nothing to do with god. It is only when you twist the definitions to paint atheists as amoral that god enters the picture.

LOL...irony, thy name is Jibninjas.

Hmm. Okay, fair enough I suppose. The idea that death was simply the natural consequence of looking back seems like a stretch to me, but maybe it doesn't seem like a stretch to you. I won't bother getting into the contextual elements here.

Ugh. really. I think that I am done. I am a little hung over so I think that if I respond I am just going to get mad at this point.

Yes then you better get a nap in before the tournament. A glass of orange juice will help too.

I am going to have to reread it. But this is what I always thought. I do not know if other people agree with me or not about this. I always thought that it had to do with the angelic methods that were being used to destroy the city. But I will look at it again, I could be way off.

I take alka-seltzer morning relief. That makes a big difference. I rarely drink now, so when I do even though I do not drink that much I get a bad hangover.

I should be plenty good for the tourney though. I hope we get a lot of people.

Lol are you serious? You honestly have no reason to believe there were innocent people there? How about the fact that there were surely children below the age of five? You think those children who aren't even old enough to think for themselves are evil?

It's not even the children that matters. I can't believe I have to say this but it's just common sense that societies contain some good people. The farmers, bakers and tailors, you think they were all evil and deserving of death? You're right I can't prove that some of them are innocent, but it's just downright silly to think that every one of them in all seven civilizations mentioned in Deuteronomy 7 were evil and deserving of death.

What I find most amazing about you and Aaron is that you see this and of the conclusions you can come to about it, you decide that God is just and that all of them must be evil. Despite the fact that the overwhelmingly most obvious explanation is that the Hebrews just did whatever the **** they wanted and claimed to have a deity on their side. You realize the Hebrews wrote the book right? Do you at least see that the Hebrews had a motive to write such things if they're false?

Something is evil if someone perceives it as evil.

Something is subjectively evil if the subject perceives it as evil.

The observer defines what is evil not the act itself. The judgement of evilness is the result of an emotional assessment.

A lot would depend on my perception of the details of the act, in particular my perception of the thought processes of the individual taking the action. But in general I would not expect to consider any of these actions evil.

I think the issues involved are too unclear to automatically condemn someone. Kill one person now to save many people later. Maybe you are wrong in your judgement? If an individual takes either action with good intentions I would not judge the act as evil.

they didn't kill them all. women and children were spared. the hebrews killed the pagans out of obedience to God. they had many reasons to believe in God. the pagans weren't the nicest people either, they were barbarians. they sacrificed their own children to fire. they raped and murdered without punishment. they had no governing laws that would maintain order like the Hebrews. it is explained that what the pagans had done disgusted God. we are not talking about a tower full of people that showed up to work one day and then died blamelessly.

no sometimes they killed them all.

Evil: when the relationship between happiness and suffering of an action is skewed heavily to the side of immorality.

You are right. So what does that tell you? Sometimes they were told to kill everyone and sometimes not.

And this doesn't bother you in the slightest? Your "merciful and loving" god is killing women and children and you just shrug your shoulders?

Again, this goes back to the OP. I do not have all of the information and what sort of ramifications that might unfold. So I am in no position to judge.

You do not like it because you assume, with no just cause of course, that the people that were killed were just like you and your family.

The point of the OP was that when you know for a fact that someone is going to a terrible person and do terrible things, people do no feel bad killing that person. But since you know nothing about the people in the bible, which there is information out there on how horrendous they were, you assume that God was in the wrong by killing them.

Your default setting is that God is a jerk.

I am asking you specifically if the idea of god killing children troubles you.

No, I assume that the story in the Bible is at best a complete fabrication, and at worst was a justification for genocide perpetrated by ancient people 3000 years ago. Since I don't believe in God, I don't believe that God killed these people.

I'm more interested in your cavalier attitude about your god committing genocide.

It does not whether or not it troubles me. That does not mean that it was the wrong thing to do. Look at the infamous Sofie's choice. Which I believe goes something like, she could either kill one of her children and her and the other child lives or do nothing and the all die, and if she killed herself both children would die.

So if she chooses to kill one of her children in order to save one, does that sit well with you?

Would you then say that she is a terrible person who did the immoral thing?

The difference between Sophie's Choice and the Bible is that we both know that Sophie's Choice is a work of fiction. However, only one of us thinks the same thing of the Bible.

Though I do agree that the God of the Bible shares many similarities with that of the SS officer in Sophie's Choice. I'll give you that.

Convenient that you forget about your whole problem of evil argument when it comes to genocide in the Bible. Apparently free will doesn't matter in this case, only when you have to explain why God allows suffering.

I do not understand where you feel the contradiction is. Please elaborate.

You say God allows evil and suffering in order to preserve the free will of humanity. But I think killing off a civilization before they can do any harm constitutes a major violation of the free will of those people.

What you are failing to look at is that God did not actually carry out any of these things. He instructed others to. And the people that he instructed could have gone against God's will. In fact, that does happen and there are examples all over the Old Testament of that.

So God himself did not infringe. That is part of were our moral responsibility comes into play.

I also think that for this reason God created angels. This way God can use the angels to help out mankind without having an issue with free will / love combo.

Deuteronomy 7:

17 You may say to yourselves, "These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?" 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. 20 Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. 21 Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them.

God didn't destroy Sodom and Gemorrah? God didn't drown all of humanity in the Great Flood?

So you see here that although the Lord destroyed the city, the actual destroying was done by angels.

Nah. We judge God relatively objectively. If someone commits genocide, then it's rational to class them as bad, or at least not perfectly good. That's not a knee-jerk bias thing. Genocide is such an atrocious act that the default position of pretty much everyone is "jerk."

If I tell you someone is a mass murderer, and tell you nothing more about them, you will probably consider them a jerk. You won't generally stop to think, "oh, maybe the guy is actually an extremely good person, just because he's a mass murderer doesn't imply anything." If, in a hypothetical unrelated to God, I told you that you meet a mass murderer, you would instantly assume "evil guy." You wouldn't stop and say "I don't know what to make of a mass murderer unless I know what kinds of people he murdered." Maybe you're a fan of Dexter, but no way when you hear about a mass murderer is your first instinct to admire the person. You'll be more likely to view them with disgust.

Because mass murder is that kind of thing. The simple act of committing it is enough to bias all reasonable people against the person in question. Heavily - if someone has committed mass murder, it's going to be very hard for them to convince you they aren't nasty (much less that they're good and holy).

We aren't the ones using double standards - I apply the same standard to your God that I do to all other gods and all other people. You are the one using a double standard here and assuming a default position other than the one that is reasonable given the circumstances. Having a negative view of mass murder is not an unreasonable prejudice.