@EB_631 That God said He was good is not evidence. Jeffrey Dahmer thought he was good, too. And the Bible does not portray God as good. It presents certain actions as being His, and it shows Him and other people calling them good. From the perspective of many, however, God’s actions are clearly wrong. Just because God declares His actions to be good, and just because there are people too foolish or too afraid to call them bad, doesn’t mean that His actions are actually good.
As for Satanists, they come in many kinds. LaVeyan Satanism most certainly does not call God good and Satan bad. They refer to things that you would call wrong as “so-called sins” to demonstrate their disagreement. Indeed, it is a rare person who truly embraces “evil, be thou my good.” Socrates went so far as to argue that it was impossible for someone to have such a psychology. Even if one accepts the word evil for his actions, says Socrates, one must still actually see those actions as actually being the best options (and thus good in at least some sense). Thus a lot more evidence would be needed before we should accept that Satanists of any kind believe that Satan is evil in any but the loosest sense (e.g., “evil” as a team name and not a normative description).
Regarding an incomprehensible God, you didn’t actually give me an answer. You just gave more question-begging evangelism. If God is truly incomprehensible, then even the Bible cannot reveal things about Him. For all we know, the Bible is a fake-out that the incomprehensible God put on earth to see how we’d react. You want to say that it is a genuine source of knowledge about God. I understand that it is part of your dogma to say so, but it just doesn’t follow once we see the full consequences of accepting the view that God is completely incomprehensible.
Saying “but the Bible says so” does not prove anything. You are arguing with a person who does not accept your dogma. That means that appealing to the authority of the Bible—besides being a logical fallacy in itself—is question-begging. That is, you assume what you need to prove. There are rules of engagement when it comes to having a rational discussion, and none of your arguments adhere to them. As such, there is no reason to think what you have written should be at all compelling.
This relates to the problem with your source, as well. I’m sure it makes you feel better, but it adds nothing to our discussion. There are no new arguments in it, just the same old assertions. Finding someone to say “me too” to your claims or saying “me too” to someone else’s claims doesn’t make the position any stronger. You might have to believe certain things in order to maintain the status of “Christian,” but that is irrelevant when in a discussion where the truth of Christianity cannot be taken for granted. If you were arguing a point of dogma with a fellow Christian, picking up the Bible would be an appropriate tactic. Here, however, it is not one.
I’d also like to point out that you offer a false dilemma—another logical fallacy—when you imply (in essence) that we either have certainty in Bible or we’re left with a “whatever floats your boat” view. I don’t need God to give my life a point, and I certainly don’t need Him to tell me not to murder others. Indeed, it’s a sad commentary on some people that they do need a mythological figure to give them such basic instructions. Just because I am not a Christian does not mean I a relativist or some other kind of morally adrift person.
Now we return to the discussion on abortion that you brought up. I will first note that I said a fetus is not a person before a certain point. I did not say that it is not biologically human (the same way that an epithelial cell scraped from the inside of my cheek is biologically human). Merely having human DNA does not make something a moral person, however. No one objects to me plucking a hair from my head or scraping tissue from my cheek, yet these contain cells that are biologically human. A corpse also has human DNA, but we can still do all sorts of things to it that we couldn’t do to a living human (e.g., bury it, cremate it, drain all of its blood). Moreover, it would still be wrong to murder a benevolent extraterrestrial despite its complete lack of human DNA. Thus humanity is not the issue, but rather personhood. (This is a position agreed to in principle by every religious philosopher I know, by the way.)
Thus your assertion (again without argument) that abortion is murdering a human is really a red herring. Leaving aside the fact that the Bible states that miscarriages do not involve the loss of life in Exodus 21 and commands abortion under certain circumstances in Numbers 5, murder is an intentional act. Thus you would have to prove that all abortions were purposeful and malicious attempts to end a life if you wanted to justify calling it murder (rather than by some other normative term). Regardless, we can leave this question alone since we agree that getting too far into this issue would be unproductive.
Finally, the site you linked to in your most recent post is notoriously untrustworthy. To again make reference to some of my colleagues, the religious philosophers with whom I work all take it to be a ridiculous source for anyone interested in a serious defense of Christianity. I strongly suggest you find better apologetics if you’re just going to leave links for people to read and not argue yourself. That aside, the excuse that God makes people kill babies because it would be too difficult to re-educate them (pre-linguistic infants being so easy to indoctrinate, after all) just seems like special pleading (another logical fallacy). And a few examples of God not being evil do not amount to a demonstration that He is never evil (still a problem for anyone who claims that God is omnibenevolent and/or completely good).
And no, I do not think we need to cut our discussion off. Fluther encourages in-depth discussions.
