Is the Golden Rule a Foundational Moral Principle or A Rule of Thumb?

[PRmerger]

He damned them as evil and unredeemable and deserving of death. Their lives were worthless and needed to be ended. They were unrepentant so eternal bliss I’m pretty sure was out of the question.

Firstly, God doesn’t damn anyone as evil. If anyone is evil it is through his own free will.

Secondly, God never said they were unredeemable. Unless you know that these folks are in hell? If so, could you please share with us how you know that?

Thirdly, all of us deserve death. And what you say above would be applied to all of us whose life God takes. Are you of the opinion that all anyone whose life ends (which means, all of us of course) is “damned” as evil and unredeemable?

I think what you are proposing is what happens when one reads the Bible outside of the lens of the faith which gave you this Bible.

You get all sorts of weird and erroneous ideas about God.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Firstly, God doesn’t damn anyone as evil. If anyone is evil it is through his own free will.

Secondly, God never said they were unredeemable. Unless you know that these folks are in hell? If so, could you please share with us how you know that?

Thirdly, all of us deserve death. And what you say above would be applied to all of us whose life God takes. Are you of the opinion that all anyone whose life ends (which means, all of us of course) is “damned” as evil and unredeemable?

I think what you are proposing is what happens when one reads the Bible outside of the lens of the faith which gave you this Bible.

You get all sorts of weird and erroneous ideas about God.

Is everyone killed by other people by order of God? No.

God ordered the killing of these people by the Israelites. He could have swept them away or any number of things to keep them from corrupting the Israelites, yet He had them killed. He didn’t do it. He had other people do it. Their deaths were different. It was a mass God ordered “hit”

If the charges against them were true, like child sacrifice, they committed mortal sin and did not repent. That is what constitutes damnation according to the church. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go to hell.

I’m coloring within the lines.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Is everyone killed by other people by order of God? No.

God ordered the killing of these people by the Israelites. He could have swept them away or any number of things to keep them from corrupting the Israelites, yet He had them killed. He didn’t do it. He had other people do it. Their deaths were different. It was a mass God ordered “hit”

If the charges against them were true, like child sacrifice, they committed mortal sin and did not repent. That is what constitutes damnation according to the church. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go to hell.

I’m coloring within the lines.

Then what difference does the “instrument” God chooses make? Whether death is by the hands of some other human, or by flood, or by cancer or by (fill in a million other instrumental causes), why does that matter?

If you kill someone for self-defense, that could be taken as part of the “command” of God to protect the innocent. Why should the “directness” of the command make a necessary difference to the legal or spiritual implications?

That is like saying someone sentenced to die by the electric chair is more evil than someone sentenced to death by lethal injection. Death is death. The sentence is concomitant with the “evil.” The means by which a person has died is largely insignificant. And a death sentence is not ever taken as a sign that the person has been irredeemably sentenced to hell. You are making things up, here.

Whatever happened to the “circumstances matter” position you were endorsing back a ways?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Wow. Now that’s a euphemism I can appreciate.

‘No madam. It’s not a massacre at all and I strongly resent the fact that you are implying as such. We are just going* to remove your children from the historical narrative so that they not inordinately affect subsequential events’*.

More Python than Python…

No more a euphemism than calling the killing of a yet to be born child “terminating a pregnancy” or “a woman’s choice.” I take it you do appreciate those, too

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Then what difference does the “instrument” God chooses make? Whether death is by the hands of some other human, or by flood, or by cancer or by (fill in a million other instrumental causes), why does that matter?

If you kill someone for self-defense, that could be taken as part of the “command” of God to protect the innocent. Why should the “directness” of the command make a necessary difference to the legal or spiritual implications?

That is like saying someone sentenced to die by the electric chair is more evil than someone sentenced to death by lethal injection. Death is death. The sentence is concomitant with the “evil.” The means by which a person has died is largely insignificant. And a death sentence is not ever taken as a sign that the person has been irredeemably sentenced to hell. You are making things up, here.

Whatever happened to the “circumstances matter” position you were endorsing back a ways?

The circumstances do matter. That is the point I am making. We all owe a death, these were gathered collectively and with purpose. There is a difference between someone that dies free and of old age and someone incarcerated that dies by capital punishment. Yes the level if evil is different. Your grandma vs Ted Bundy, I can see a difference. You can’t?

Also, The standard Christian Model is we are judged after death, these people are judged before death. There is difference.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You are dismissive of the fact they were senticed to die. They could have been struck steril or been wiped out in a natural disaster, forced to find a new home, any number of things. You yourself said that they were so corrupting that it justified their killing.

If their killing was justified because of their idolatry and child sacrifice, it would stand that if it condemned them in this role it would condemn them in the next. We have no indication that they were repentant or even believed they were doing anything wrong in oder to repent.

This, by the way, is still a side track of my argument.

My original point was that “in principle” God could be justified in commanding the “removal” of a malevolent culture in order to stop its influence from spreading to all humanity.

Perhaps there was something particularly pernicious about this culture, but that needn’t have been the case. Maybe it had more to do with its position in history. That it’s influence was upon a nascent humanity or that it threatened a very necessary and crucial subsequent event within its proximity either temporally or spatially. There is no need to assume that it was necessarily exponentially more evil, because it could be that the threat was more a matter of timing or location.

In any case, I need not show particular details to demonstrate that God’s command could “in principle” justify such a command. You don’t seem to get the idea of “in principle.”

To show “in principle” that a surgeon might be right to remove a leg from a cancerous patient does not mean I have to show that every surgeon is right to do so, nor even that this particular surgeon was right, only that it is possible for a surgeon to rightly do so under certain conditions.

That is all my argument comes to. It could “in principle” be right for the 3omni God to command the decimation of a culture if the continued existence of that culture ON EARTH could have completely devastating effects on the future of humanity. Just as it is “in principle” right for a surgeon to remove a cancerous patient’s leg if not doing so could end the life of the patient.

Rebut or accept that argument before we move to the specifics of the OT case. You haven’t shown how that argument is wrong except by harping back to specifics of the OT narrative. However, even showing that the Israelites were wrong about God’s command to them does not refute the “in principle” argument.

In the meantime, what you are doing is ambiguating the two arguments to your advantage by picking on the “unknown” aspects of the OT narratives.

Time to come clean. If you think it is in principle always wrong for the 3omni God to intervene in history by removing a bad culture to save humanity as an entire species from extinction, then you must accept that it is also in principle always wrong for a surgeon to remove a cancer patient’s leg even to save that patient’s life.

Is that what you are claiming? Never right, in principle? Why?

No more ambiguation - a moral possibility or not?

 

[Peter_Plato]

The circumstances do matter. That is the point I am making. We all owe a death, these were gathered collectively and with purpose. There is a difference between someone that dies free and of old age and someone incarcerated that dies by capital punishment. Yes the level if evil is different. Your grandma vs Ted Bundy, I can see a difference. You can’t?

Also, The standard Christian Model is we are judged after death, these people are judged before death. There is difference.

What does this have to do with anything?

We are not in the position to judge why. Grandma might have as evil - or even more evil - a will as Ted Bundy but just not the wherewithal to execute it. You wouldn’t know, but presumably God would. Again your argument depends upon our ignorance of the facts. The point is that a 3omni God could act on those facts that we are oblivious to, which is exactly why we are in no position to make definitive statements about God’s commands, where and when they occur.

We can doubt the claimant and whether a particular act was, indeed, commanded by God. But if a command is indeed a God command, we are in no position to evaluate it.

I thought this was covered, but you keep going back to it as if you didn’t really comprehend it.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Also, The standard Christian Model is we are judged after death, these people are judged before death. There is difference.

The standard Christian model is there is a “final judgement” at the end of the world, but there is a particular judgement after each of us dies. However, Paul points out that there is a continual judgement under which we are disciplined and sanctified that occurs as we live, which is the function of a well-formed conscience.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. (1 Cor 11: 27-32)

So the weakened and ill state, according to Paul, is a judgement by God on those who eat and drink unworthily in order to “discipline” them. That judgement was not a judgement saved for after death but does go on temporally.

God, according to the OT accounts, gave the Canaanites 300 years of “discipline” but they did not change their ways, which brought on their demise. They were given the opportunity and the incentive to change their ways but didn’t. So the death sentence was not without warning to them.

This is another example of our ignorance of the facts misleading our judgements concerning the act. We ought to recuse ourselves from judgement precisely because we are in no position to adequately render an impartial judgement.

You seem to keep insisting that you are competent to render judgement, but continue to demonstrate that that is not the case.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

What does this have to do with anything?

We are not in the position to judge why. Grandma might have as evil - or even more evil - a will as Ted Bundy but just not the wherewithal to execute it. You wouldn’t know, but presumably God would. Again your argument depends upon our ignorance of the facts. The point is that a 3omni God could act on those facts that we are oblivious to, which is exactly why we are in no position to make definitive statements about God’s commands, where and when they occur.

We can doubt the claimant and whether a particular act was, indeed, commanded by God. But if a command is indeed a God command, we are in no position to evaluate it.

I thought this was covered, but you keep going back to it as if you didn’t really comprehend it.

You keep dismissing that one of the omni is omnipotence. God ordered the killing, he didn’t do it himself. Saul is punished for not carrying the order out completely.

As you mentioned earlier it’s not in His play book anymore. Why? Isn’t that a divinities statement. Aren’t you saying god is mutable where Christian teaching is he is immutable.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

The standard Christian model is there is a “final judgement” at the end of the world, but there is a particular judgement after each of us dies. However, Paul points out that there is a continual judgement under which we are disciplined and sanctified that occurs as we live, which is the function of a well-formed conscience.

So the weakened and ill state, according to Paul, is a judgement by God on those who eat and drink unworthily in order to “discipline” them. That judgement was not a judgement saved for after death but does go on temporally.

God, according to the OT accounts, gave the Canaanites 300 years of “discipline” but they did not change their ways, which brought on their demise. They were given the opportunity and the incentive to change their ways but didn’t. So the death sentence was not without warning to them.

This is another example of our ignorance of the facts misleading our judgements concerning the act. We ought to recuse ourselves from judgement precisely because we are in no position to adequately render an impartial judgement.

You seem to keep insisting that you are competent to render judgement, but continue to demonstrate that that is not the case.

We are given to the moment of our death to repent. God doesn’t say repent now or I will strike you down where you stand. Nor are we held responsible for the “sins of the fathers” yet the Canaanites were. You seem ok with the judgement, how do you know one or many weren’t thinking about asking up YHWH worship and never given the chance to, cut down. Infants who may have grown into it. Nope, guilty…kill 'em all!

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

This, by the way, is still a side track of my argument.

My original point was that “in principle” God could be justified in commanding the “removal” of a malevolent culture in order to stop its influence from spreading to all humanity.

Perhaps there was something particularly pernicious about this culture, but that needn’t have been the case. Maybe it had more to do with its position in history. That it’s influence was upon a nascent humanity or that it threatened a very necessary and crucial subsequent event within its proximity either temporally or spatially. There is no need to assume that it was necessarily exponentially more evil, because it could be that the threat was more a matter of timing or location.

In any case, I need not show particular details to demonstrate that God’s command could “in principle” justify such a command. You don’t seem to get the idea of “in principle.”

To show “in principle” that a surgeon might be right to remove a leg from a cancerous patient does not mean I have to show that every surgeon is right to do so, nor even that this particular surgeon was right, only that it is possible for a surgeon to rightly do so under certain conditions.

That is all my argument comes to. It could “in principle” be right for the 3omni God to command the decimation of a culture if the continued existence of that culture ON EARTH could have completely devastating effects on the future of humanity. Just as it is “in principle” right for a surgeon to remove a cancerous patient’s leg if not doing so could end the life of the patient.

Rebut or accept that argument before we move to the specifics of the OT case. You haven’t shown how that argument is wrong except by harping back to specifics of the OT narrative. However, even showing that the Israelites were wrong about God’s command to them does not refute the “in principle” argument.

In the meantime, what you are doing is ambiguating the two arguments to your advantage by picking on the “unknown” aspects of the OT narratives.

Time to come clean. If you think it is in principle always wrong for the 3omni God to intervene in history by removing a bad culture to save humanity as an entire species from extinction, then you must accept that it is also in principle always wrong for a surgeon to remove a cancer patient’s leg even to save that patient’s life.

Is that what you are claiming? Never right, in principle? Why?

No more ambiguation - a moral possibility or not?

If he is omnipotent creator of the universe and the only option was to kill a group of people by proxy. What was limiting god? Who or what is more powerful than god to limit his options to one?

 

[Peter_Plato]

We are given to the moment of our death to repent. God doesn’t say repent now or I will strike you down where you stand. Nor are we held responsible for the “sins of the fathers” yet the Canaanites were. You seem ok with the judgement, how do you know one or many weren’t thinking about asking up YHWH worship and never given the chance to, cut down. Infants who may have grown into it. Nope, guilty…kill 'em all!

Again, what I think or know about the subject and who I think was or was not guilty is totally irrelevant. If the judgement was made by the 3omni God, then all of those ”objections” of yours or mine would have presumably been taken into consideration by God. Are you claiming that even if it were the 3 omni God who made the judgement then the 3 omni God must have been incapable of seeing things that you are capable of seeing some 3000 years after the fact with only speculative imaginings of what transpired?

You keep insisting that your judgement is necessarily and “in principle” the judgement that should override God’s judgement despite the fact that the considerations that you have accessible to you are factually limited and incomplete, whereas the 3omni God’s would be complete and his judgement the absolute best one given consideration of all the facts - which you cannot possibly access.

It is as if you are claiming that your judgement even absent most of the facts will “in principle” override any possible judgement that would be determined by the 3 omni God with all the facts in hand. Do you really believe that your determination is in principle THE correct one?

You don’t get the idea of “in principle” do you?

What I am claiming is that IF the 3omni God did give the command, every possible objection that we could possibly make would have been included in his judgement. WE are the ones who do not have accessible to US (you and me) what God has (given omniscience and omnibenevolence - omnipotence is unnecessary in rendering a judgement, only in executing it, which is the reason I keep leaving it out - it is irrelevant in terms of making a judgement), which is the reason our determinations are necessarily going to be the qualified ones. You seem to keep missing or sidestepping that point.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If he is omnipotent creator of the universe and the only option was to kill a group of people by proxy. What was limiting god? Who or what is more powerful than god to limit his options to one?

Those questions are God’s to answer. My having an answer to them means nothing. It is like asking a random third grader whether Einstein was correct regarding relativity.

Again, if omniscience and omnibenevolence actually made a determination only omniscience and omnibenevolence would be competent to provide the complete justification for the reason. I am not saying that justification does not exist or couldn’t be explicated, but rather that only the 3 omni God could do so.

So take it up with him, but don’t render a hasty judgement until you get an answer from him or, at least, a complete detailing of ALL the facts, whichever comes first.

That is the standard for rendering a judgement in any court of law - a sufficiently complete collection of the evidence to render judgement. If it actually was God’s judgement, then we would require access to all of his considerations in order to agree or disagree that his judgement was adequate. Do you have THAT level of access?

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Again, what I think or know about the subject and who I think was or was not guilty is totally irrelevant. If the judgement was made by the 3omni God, then all of those ”objections” of yours or mine would have presumably been taken into consideration by God. Are you claiming that even if it were the 3 omni God who made the judgement then the 3 omni God must have been incapable of seeing things that you are capable of seeing some 3000 years after the fact with only speculative imaginings of what transpired?

You keep insisting that your judgement is necessarily and “in principle” the judgement that should override God’s judgement despite the fact that the considerations that you have accessible to you are factually limited and incomplete, whereas the 3omni God’s would be complete and his judgement the absolute best one given consideration of all the facts - which you cannot possibly access.

It is as if you are claiming that your judgement even absent most of the facts will “in principle” override any possible judgement that would be determined by the 3 omni God with all the facts in hand. Do you really believe that your determination is in principle THE correct one?

You don’t get the idea of “in principle” do you?

What I am claiming is that IF the 3omni God did give the command, every possible objection that we could possibly make would have been included in his judgement. WE are the ones who do not have accessible to US (you and me) what God has (given omniscience and omnibenevolence - omnipotence is unnecessary in rendering a judgement, only in executing it, which is the reason I keep leaving it out - it is irrelevant in terms of making a judgement), which is the reason our determinations are necessarily going to be the qualified ones. You seem to keep missing or sidestepping that point.

I understand what you are driving at, “How can someone who can’t be wrong, be wrong?”

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Those questions are God’s to answer. My having an answer to them means nothing. It is like asking a random third grader whether Einstein was correct regarding relativity.

Again, if omniscience and omnibenevolence actually made a determination only omniscience and omnibenevolence would be competent to provide the complete justification for the reason. I am not saying that justification does not exist or couldn’t be explicated, but rather that only the 3 omni God could do so.

So take it up with him, but don’t render a hasty judgement until you get an answer from him or, at least, a complete detailing of ALL the facts, whichever comes first.

That is the standard for rendering a judgement in any court of law - a sufficiently complete collection of the evidence to render judgement. If it actually was God’s judgement, then we would require access to all of his considerations in order to agree or disagree that his judgement was adequate. Do you have THAT level of access?

I think the omnipotence is the first thing to consider. To me it a based on logic. If a being is unlimited in it’s power how can you say only one option is available? It makes no logical sense, unless you say omnipotence isn’t a quality, that this being is in fact limited.

If you only taking omniscience and omnibenevolence as qualities, the answer is this was the best option available to this being. IF it the only option that is available to this being, then there is a power greater than “god” because it is able to limit his options to one.

I can live with that option, YHWH is not the most powerful being in the universe, can you?

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think the omnipotence is the first thing to consider. To me it a based on logic. If a being is unlimited in it’s power how can you say only one option is available? It makes no logical sense, unless you say omnipotence isn’t a quality, that this being is in fact limited.

If you only taking omniscience and omnibenevolence as qualities, the answer is this was the best option available to this being. IF it the only option that is available to this being, then there is a power greater than “god” because it is able to limit his options to one.

I can live with that option, YHWH is not the most powerful being in the universe, can you?

This is nonsensical. It’s like the “Can God make something heavier than he can lift?” paradox.

The fact that omniscience and omnibenevolence have determined one choice is not a limitation on God because choosing any other option would negate his omnibenevolence by choosing a less good option and his omniscience by choosing - to put it crassly - a “dumber” option. Either way, omnipotence that betrays his nature would not be omnipotence. It would be logically incoherent.

Omnipotence means not limited or constrained by any “non-God” power or entity. It’s like insisting that if God could not defeat himself in an arm wrestle then he hasn’t proven his omnipotence since God is not more powerful than God.

Omnipotence is not the power to make coherent what is logically incoherent. You’re just babbling now.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I can live with that option, YHWH is not the most powerful being in the universe, can you?

Not for long.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

This is nonsensical. It’s like the “Can God make something heavier than he can lift?” paradox.

The fact that omniscience and omnibenevolence have determined one choice is not a limitation on God because choosing any other option would negate his omnibenevolence by choosing a less good option and his omniscience by choosing - to put it crassly - a “dumber” option. Either way, omnipotence that betrays his nature would not be omnipotence. It would be logically incoherent.

Omnipotence means not limited or constrained by any “non-God” power or entity. It’s like insisting that if God could not defeat himself in an arm wrestle then he hasn’t proven his omnipotence since God is not more powerful than God.

Omnipotence is not the power to make coherent what is logically incoherent. You’re just babbling now.

Knowing the best option and being able to do it are two different things. I can know that plane, train or automobile are better options than walking across Canada in the middle of winter but if I lack the resources I can’t do it. I can only walk. It is the only resource available. So it is my “best” option because it is my only one.

If YHWH is limited by his goodness then someone that is able to sin would be able to do something that god can not. Perhaps that’s why he ordered the Israelites. Sin by proxy. Still he is limited by his goodness. Who limits him?

If it logic, then logic is more powerful,than YHWH. I think you’ve made atheists ( not one myself) happy with that notion or at the least giggle.

Any limitation means god isn’t omnipotent. Very powerful perhaps but not the top dog.

 

[meltzerboy]

Knowing the best option and being able to do it are two different things. I can know that plane, train or automobile are better options than walking across Canada in the middle of winter but if I lack the resources I can’t do it. I can only walk. It is the only resource available. So it is my “best” option because it is my only one.

If YHWH is limited by his goodness then someone that is able to sin would be able to do something that god can not. Perhaps that’s why he ordered the Israelites. Sin by proxy. Still he is limited by his goodness. Who limits him?

If it logic, then logic is more powerful,than YHWH. I think you’ve made atheists ( not one myself) happy with that notion or at the least giggle.

Any limitation means god isn’t omnipotent. Very powerful perhaps but not the top dog.

Do you regard the inability to sin as a limitation? How about the inability to commit an error in knowledge, judgment, or wisdom? If so, do you also regard not having limitations as a limitation in itself? Perhaps it is G-d Who limits Himself. Judaism does believe that G-d created EVERYTHING, including evil, just by means of His thinking about it. Apparently then, G-d is familiar with evil without actually committing it. Does this seem possible to you?

 

[PRmerger]

Is everyone killed by other people by order of God? No.

Again, perhaps this was not what God ordered, but a metaphor.

God ordered the killing of these people by the Israelites. He could have swept them away or any number of things to keep them from corrupting the Israelites, yet He had them killed. He didn’t do it. He had other people do it. Their deaths were different. It was a mass God ordered “hit”

If God had done this through sweeping them away, say, in a flood, that would change your argument…how?

If the charges against them were true, like child sacrifice, they committed mortal sin and did not repent. That is what constitutes damnation according to the church. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go to hell.

I’m coloring within the lines.

You know they did not repent…how?