Hopefully this doesn’t get too confusing carrying on two conversations at once!

Before pressing on, I think I need to try to clear up some misunderstandings and define some terms.

First, nothing I’ve said is dualist, in fact it’s the exact opposite of dualism. Dualism is the belief that reality is fundamentally two opposing forces (yin and yang, good and bad, etc). In dualism good and evil are both actual things that exist, neither is a privation (or lack) of the other. What I am saying is that evil is not something real that exists, only good is. Evil technically only exists as a hypothetical, because “pure evil” would be non-existence (which is nothing). As you know, even space is not actually nothing (even if it is a vacuum), it’s something, because scientists can talk about “space-time” as something that actually exists and is therefore useful in theorizing and scientific investigation. If space were literally nothing, they could not do this.

Second, I think you’re getting caught up on good not being a “substance” because you’re simply assuming a naturalistic (or materialistic) worldview in which all that truly exists is physical stuff. Obviously “goodness” is not something like that, so that you could go out and pick up a piece of goodness off the ground. But it doesn’t follow that because something is non-physical that it is therefore not real. I believe that goodness (like justice) is what is called in philosophy jargon a “universal”. A universal is a non-spatial property or relation that is instantiated in particular, physical things.

Third, you still seem to be missing the point about light and heat. Heat is motion, yes, and cold is the absence of motion, right? But it doesn’t really make sense to describe heat as the absence of “stillness.” Heat is created by adding motion, and cold is created by removing motion. And stillness is simply defined as NOT moving. At every point motion is the thing and stillness is the absence of it. Same with light and dark. You don’t ADD darkness to a room, for example, you REMOVE light. If there could be perfect darkness, it would only be achieved by removing every photon of light. The more photons you have bouncing around, the more light you have, the fewer photons, less light. This would be true across the spectrum.

Finally, I would probably define justice along the same lines as you did. But what I want to know is, do you think that equity, balance, etc., are good things to have? And by extension, is justice a good thing to have? I think it is (which is why I think it would be unjust to shoot someone for stealing your xbox, since that doesn’t seem to be the equitable response, nor does it create a proper balance, etc.). In any case, the point is that I don’t see any distinction between what is “just” and what is “right.” Incidentally, I wouldn’t define justice ONLY in terms of “whatever the Abrahamic God does” because (a) I would need a reason to think that the Abrahamic God is just to begin with, and (b) I would need to be able to come up with at least a PLAUSIBLE defense for problematic issues like genocide in the Old Testament. I think I can meet both of those conditions, but it would take a long time and some patience to work through all the issues with you.

But honestly, while this will probably disappoint you, I’m really not all that concerned with arguing about the “god did bad stuff in the Old Testament” stuff. First of all, Jesus didn’t order anyone to fight any holy wars, in fact he may have advocated strong pacifism, and Jesus is supposed to be the final and most complete revelation of God. Second, lots of Christians have taken allegorical or non-literal reads of a lot of the Old Testament, and while I don’t personally hold that view, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so if the Old Testament stuff is the ONLY thing keeping you from accepting Christianity (which I’m sure is not the case, so I’d rather focus on more fundamental issues).

Willingly enslaved, perhaps, but yes. If upon death we’re rounded up and captured by him or his agents against our will and either forced to submit to his will or locked away and punished forever, wholly under his domination whether we ever agreed to be or not, then it’s totally analogous to slavery. The main difference being that at least slaves can die. Not so with the immortal souls God enslaves. Of course, as with any enslaved population, some people will identify with their captors and do everything in their power to please them to avoid whippings (and perhaps secure for themselves a place in their house rather than out in the field, or heaven rather than hell) but just because they’re more comfortable with it and may even feel genuine affection for their master doesn’t make them any less a slave. Nor does knowing ahead of time that any slave who disobeys will receive a whipping make that whipping just.

But here, you’re doing the same thing that David does and using Good and God as synonymous. My whole premise is that God is obviously, from any unbiased perspective, not the standard of goodness. You can’t keep just saying Yes He Is and saying that invalidates all my points. Er, I mean, you can, obviously, but we won’t get anywhere with it.

Well no, because if the judge were to go out the next day and rob a bank, he too would be punished. If God were to go out the next day and rob a bank (or turn an innocent woman into a pillar of salt, wipe out a city or two, drown an entire race of people, burn some folks who disagreed with his genocidal policies, etc.) it would suddenly be all hunky-dorey because he’s God. He doesn’t punish “evil” as human beings understand it so much as disloyalty; nor is there any reason to believe that his character is perfectly good, except that he himself says so. I could make a similar claim about myself, were I so self-aggrandizing.

“yeah, that was all pretty good, but your parents had sex to make you and you didn’t choose the right guess about the afterlife, you’re condemned”

You think Christians think that the fact that your parents had sex in order to conceive you makes you guilty? No.

I don’t understand why you think he’s entitled to enslave us.

You keep using that word, but I honestly don’t know what you’re referring to. Can you explain what you mean? You think that my following God means I’m in slavery?

if I’m to accept the premise that God exists, then I also have to accept the premise that everything he does is good because the bible says that too.

No, I’m just saying that if I’m to explain the coherence of Christianity, I need to be able to include all of Christianity in my answer in order to do so.

just as it would strike me as unjust to do harm to the whole of creation just because it is dissimilar from myself.

This is such an odd way to put it–that God punishes people because they’re “dissimilar from Himself.” Though technically correct that we are dissimilar, this doesn’t at all capture the situation. Here’s what I mean: If God’s character is perfectly good and therefore the standard of all goodness, then of course dissimilarity will be punished because where people deviate from the standard of goodness, there they are doing something wrong. It’s not wrong because it’s dissimilar, it’s dissimilar because it’s wrong and God’s character is only good.

You might as well say that a judge punishes a bank robber because the bank robber is dissimilar from himself and the law. Technically, they are dissimilar, but the bank robber is punished because what he did was wrong, opposed to the standard, not because he was different. Using the word “different” or “dissimilar” is just an unfair way to put an emotional spin on the word, but it doesn’t accurately reflect the situation.

But you’re flatly wrong about evil not being anything unless you’re also saying that good isn’t anything. We’re not talking about substances, here. Also, I don’t really think that evil is classically understood as simply the absence of good. That would make a vacuum “evil” in your understanding, simply because there’s nothing good about it. Obviously, something that isn’t doing anything whatsoever (or ISN’T anything whatsoever) can’t be evil, at least not if the term evil actually means anything.

Although it might explain the Christian worldview that everything and it’s mother is evil. But your “evil” means nothing. Literally.

Also, you’re falling into a dualist fallacy again. Light, dark, heat, and cold are subjective terms used to describe the secondary effects of the movements of sub-atomic particles. We measure the movement of particles as “temperature”, and terms like heat and cold are subjective terms that we use to denote our relative experience of temperature. Likewise light and dark are subjective terms we use to describe a measure of photons and our relative perception of them. I say again, if you insist on viewing the world through such a simplistic, dualistic lens, you could also say that heat is the absence of cold or light is the absence of dark, since all of these terms are subjective measurements anyway.

True, it would strike me as unjust to kill a person for stealing my Xbox, just as it would strike me as unjust to do harm to the whole of creation just because it is dissimilar from myself. But then, if I was God, I have a feeling that you would suddenly think it was good and proper for me to have shot the poor kid in the head for stealing my Xbox, no?

Me, I would define Justice as equity or balance. A balance struck in accordance with standards, requirements, or principles agreed upon or at least known by all parties involved ahead of time, ideally.

Well how do you define Justice, then, David? If you simply define Good as “of or pertaining to the Abrahamic God” and Evil as “the incremental absence of anything of or pertaining to the Abrahamic God” I’m not really sure your Justice is going to be anything I would value, but I’m curious as to what it means to you.

Right, which was partially my point. God is absolutely unique. That would mean that IF the God that I’m trying to defend actually exists, his actions and relations would also be unique and not fully comparable to any other creature’s actions or relations. So I don’t see it as a problem that we would hold everyone else to a slightly different standard than God, in some sense. That’s the whole point, in fact. God IS the standard.

As for the good and evil thing, that’s probably not a discussion we can have here, but suffice it to say that evil as classically understood is simply the absence of good. In other words, evil is not a thing that exists. Good exists, and as a Christian I would say that the good is God. The point is that you CAN’T go both ways (saying that good is just the absence of evil), because evil ISN’T anything. There can be no such thing as “perfect evil” because that would simply be non-existence. Think of light and heat. It is perfectly acceptable to define darkness as the absence of light and cold as the absence of heat, right? Because light and heat are both THINGS, but cold and dark are both relative. The same would be true of good and evil. An action can only be evil if it fails to meet some standard of what would have been the good or right thing to do in that particular situation (and there could be multiple and equally good acts, by the way).

As to the last part, I would say that that’s not a good example for several reasons. For one thing, it strikes me as unjust to kill a person for stealing your XBox. So I would say that if the state law says that such a punishment is legal, then the law is unjust (and since all human laws are fallible, that’s certainly possible). I fundamentally reject the notion that something can be “just” but not “good.” How would you define justice in a way that doesn’t include some concept of what is good or proper or right? I don’t see how you can.

(As an aside, you mention that parents aren’t responsible for their own existence as another difference. Do Christians believe that God created himself? How does THAT work?)

Two problems though. One, evil is not by definition the absence of goodness. That’s just neutrality. You could just as easily say that good is just the absence of evil, and that God is only special because he completely lacks evil. Which, given the actions he’s taken in the past, he doesn’t. You’re also treating it as a substance, rather than a secondary effect that derives from one’s actions. Evil is, by definition, “1.morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life. 2.harmful; injurious: evil laws. 3.characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering; unfortunate; disastrous: to be fallen on evil days. 4.due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character: an evil reputation. 5.marked by anger, irritability, irascibility, etc.: He is known for his evil disposition.”

I think your main problem is that you don’t really understand Good as what it is, which is a subjective quality used to measure the likely effects of one’s actions, words, or thoughts. Rather, you use “Good” and “Godly” or “Holy” interchangeably. You say yourself that God is just to punish evil, but say in the same paragraph that in your mind “evil” is just anything and everything but God. So while you say “God is just to punish evil”, what you mean is “God is just to do harm against everything that is not like God” which is a very human position to take, and bullshit. Not to mention xenophobic on the part of the supposedly almighty.

And, for the record, really just adds validity to my original designation of God as Tyrant.

Also, in regards to your “it is just to punish evil” assertion, just because God can do something and can justify it (by the rules HE made up, even) doesn’t mean that it’s good. If an unarmed teenager breaks into my house in the dark to steal my xbox and then leave me in peace, I CAN shoot him in the head, and it’s justified under law in most cases. What would be right would be to warn him that I’m there and make him flee. These are two different concepts, and just because God can call himself perfectly just in punishing each and every person who has ever lived and sending them straight to hell doesn’t make it right or good. In fact, since it is both harmful and injurious to all parties involved except God, it makes it Evil. Even if it is still a Holy Evil.

Given all of these malevolent things that are supposedly done to us by this entity… is it not Just to rebel?

Second, because of the fact that we are in no way equal to God, we are not entitled to do some of the things he does. So, for example, because we are all sinners who have willfully disobeyed God, it would be just of him to simply scrap the whole lot of us and start over, if he wanted. But does that mean we have the right to kill anybody who isn’t a Christian, or who does something that disobeys God’s law? Of course not, if for no other reason than because we are not omniscient, and so we can’t ever know for sure whether someone is truly a Christian, whether they are truly disobeying God, etc. Plus, God knows all things, including future events, so he would know if and when any person will become a Christian and accept forgiveness for sins. Since I don’t have such knowledge, who am I to kill someone who might become a Christian in the future? (obviously there are cases like self-defense, which are harder).

That doesn’t answer your question, though, that only shows you why I shouldn’t commit genocide even if God does. In defense of God I would only point out that, again, he is the one who is perfectly holy and good and we are the offenders who have fallen short of perfect holiness and goodness. If it is just to punish evil (which by definition is the absence of goodness), then God is perfectly just in punishing each and every person who has ever lived and sending them straight to hell. What is amazing is the mercy he chose to show by sending his son to earth as a human person to pay the penalty that is due to all of us so that we could have a means of being redeemed from that punishment. And of course, Jesus not only preached “turning the other cheek” and praised meekness, but he also claimed to be sent by the same God of the Old Testament. So if we can be charitable and try to take Jesus seriously, we might find a way of reconciling those two things (which I have attempted to do somewhat here, but only very briefly).

If we are merely creations of his, though, I don’t think that entitles him to do whatever he wants with us. While most people don’t hate their parents, we’re certainly not obligated to pretend they’re right all the time or let them do whatever they want to us just because they created us. Hell, you’re the one who thinks a potential mother shouldn’t even be able to decide what she wants to do with the biological process that may one day be a kid. Why would our having been created by God oblige us to willingly submit to slavery under him?

But again, if his actions and his rules are reflections of THE good, then shouldn’t they be, you know, good? Or is our human sense of morality just naturally flawed, and you believe that people wanting to be truly good should try to overcome our innate human tendencies towards compassion and mercy, and try to get more into genocide and endless torture, as these are innately good acts that we simply miscategorize?

Obviously this isn’t what you believe, but if you’re equating the biblical character God with the ultimate good in accordance with the nature of reality, this could logically follow.

First, regarding Hell. There’s definitely a sense in which Hell is a punishment for wrongdoing. But that’s not ALL it is. One of my teachers at Biola liked to say that the gates of Hell were locked from the inside. His point was that no one is forced to go to Hell who, in one sense, doesn’t want to go there. There’s no one being “tortured” (I suppose I should also point out that Hell is not literally a place where people are burned by fire, or poked with pitch forks, or whatever else you might think it is) who really wishes they could get out and go to Heaven. In fact, Ben, it’s not unlike the sentiment you expressed in an earlier comment. You said that if you ever met the God of the Bible you would hate him and do everything in your power to resist him. That’s exactly how people in Hell would feel. They wouldn’t *want* to love God and dwell in his presence, and so in that sense they’re the ones keeping themselves in Hell. It’s not like they’re kids who God just won’t let come into his playground (even though they really want to play there) because he doesn’t like them. In one sense he simply can’t let them into the playground because all you can do on the playground is play WITH God, and that’s the LAST thing those kids want to do.

Second, you said: “I don’t understand why you think he’s entitled to enslave us. Particularly since I’ve never met the guy, and so certainly never agreed to follow his directives in the first place.”

Most Christian thinkers have postulated the idea (borrowing a bit from Greek philosophy) that God is the “greatest possible being.” The idea is that God is simply the ultimate reality, the ultimate good, etc. He IS. The physical universe we live in is merely a creation of his, dependent on him in every possible way. Not only would that fact alone seem to create at least SOME obligation on out part (him being responsible for our very existence, and all), but if he is the ultimate good, and humans should always seek after goodness, it seems like he is the very thing that would give ultimate meaning to our existence and the thing after which we should seek. And since Christians believe this being has revealed himself in the Bible and in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ, we believe that he has shown how best to seek after him (even though we tend to interpret his revelation incorrectly a lot).

In other words, not only would you (if Christianity is true) have no right whatsoever to claim some kind of innocence or independence from God because you “didn’t agree” to follow his rules, but his rules wouldn’t be arbitrary either. They would be a reflection of THE good, the very fabric of the universe, and so it would literally be impossible to disobey his rules and somehow still be OK such that he wouldn’t need to put you in hell, because you’re literally going against the grain of reality, so to speak.

I don’t expect you to simply accept all of this without objection, of course, but what I’m trying to get you to see (and what Amy has been hinting at) is that Christianity is a coherent system of thought and beliefs that has been refined and expanded on for over 2,000 years and you need to take the system as a whole, not just parts of it that you can easily criticize in isolation. Right now I’m not at all concerned with trying to show you that Christianity is TRUE (I have no expectations of that happening any time soon), but merely showing you that Christianity is a COHERENT system that is not as absurd and evil as you seem to think it is.

As much as a problem with the Abrahamic god, though, I think I question your general worldview that being human makes us inherently evil, so much so that burning us forever as soon as we die is a justified punishment. I’ve given to charities, traveled hundreds of miles to get people out of jams with no reward asked or expected, helped friends and strangers at my own expense, and several times that I can remember sustained real physical injuries to prevent harm from befalling somebody else, potentially even saving a life or two in there, although that’s a big “what if”. As an atheist (or agnostic, I suppose) I don’t really keep track in hopes of being rewarded for it later on, but if I were surprised with a trial after my death and the judge were to say “yeah, that was all pretty good, but your parents had sex to make you and you didn’t choose the right guess about the afterlife, you’re condemned” I wouldn’t really accept it as justice.

You say you don’t understand why I think he owes me mercy; I don’t understand why you think he’s entitled to enslave us. Particularly since I’ve never met the guy, and so certainly never agreed to follow his directives in the first place.

I think we’re kind of stuck here, though. You’re saying that, if I’m to accept the premise that God exists, then I also have to accept the premise that everything he does is good because the bible says that too. Since my original question was “how can Christians simply overlook or excuse the fact that their paragon of good is so frequently evil,” and your answer seems to be “if you were Christian you wouldn’t wonder about that” I’m thinking we’re not really going to get anywhere with this.