I assume you are mainly talking about Israel’s conquest of Canaan. If you are then that is great! I love this conversation!

The first thing that must be pointed out is that when God told Abraham that He would give him the Canaanites land, Abraham would have to wait 400 years until “the time of their iniquity has come to an end.” So here you see God’s mercy. He waited 400 years for the Canaanites to repent before He used Israel as a form of judgment against them. Now, we must put this into perspective…

According to the Bible (which is what you must judge Christianity by, not what Christians do because we all know people aren’t perfect, myself especially included, and we have a tendency to mess things up, even good things) the Canaanites were murderers, rapists, drunks, and child-killers. They were offering their own children as sacrifices to their gods by making them walk into fire, which of course killed them. They were also a danger to the societies around them. They were a savage and barbaric people. Look at it this way, when America and Europe allied together against Hitler’s Germany, were they being moral monsters? Should we have allowed Hitler to continue what he was doing in the name of tolerance and morality? I think not! The same is true with the Canaanites, they were a violent and destructive culture that needed to be dealt with and God used the Jews to carry out His judgment on them. And because God gave them 400 years there is no way you can call God immoral. It’s not immoral to stand up against violent, child-killing nations, is it?

I would also like for you to give us actual examples of God being immoral in the Bible. Of course, for God to be immoral there would have to be an objectively true standard for morality.

So, let’s look at morality.

1.) If objective moral values exist, then it follows that God exists.
2.) Objective moral values do exist.
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3.) Therefore, God exists.

This is a basic principle of logic called modus ponens. Let’s look at premises (1) and (2).

If objective moral values do, in fact, exist, then it inexplicably follows that God also exists. For without God, there would be no standard for objective moral values (i.e., an objective standard for right and wrong acttions, an objective standard for “oughts” and “ought nots.” Now, you may say that objective moral values DO NOT, in fact, exist. And if you believe that they do not exist then you must believe that beating a defenseless child is not objectively wrong. It may be wrong for you, but for a drunk father it’s okay, right? Or we can look at Nazi Germany. If the Nazi’s carried out their plans and succeeded in either killing or brainwashing every person on earth to believe that what they did was the right thing to do, would it, in fact, have been the right thing to do? So, if you will agree that you shouldn’t rape a child under any circumstances then you agree that objective moral values do exist. And if you agree that objective moral values exist, then logically and inescapably, you must concede that God exists.

The reason God must exist in the event that objective moral values exist is that outside of a Moral Lawgiver, there would be no objective morality. If you look at morality from a naturalistic perspective then it is completely subjective (in fact, morality would be equivalent to your taste in music). There would be no overriding factor, given naturalism, which would cause things to be objectively right or objectively wrong.

Another thing to keep in mind is that naturalism can’t account for rationality. How on earth would evolutionary processes produce rational beings? As Darwin said, he had no more reason to believe that he was justified in his beliefs as would he believe that an ape was justified in it’s beliefs!

Anyway, i appreciate the moral judgments you passed on the God of the Bible because it cuts down your own view, atheism. If naturalism is correct, then you saying murder is wrong is exactly the same as me saying speghetti is disgusting.

Since this post is about Christianity and morality I will do my best to ignore the irrelevant jibes about “gaps” and even the outrageous claims that “it is difficult to see where one might look for moral inspiration” in Christianity or the even more outrageous notion that the New Testament is piled with “victims” (presumably the scores of people who were healed or forgiven by Jesus, I don’t know).

Actually, no. I was thinking more of these people. But of course, those are only the people killed by Jahweh, or in Jahweh’s name. Killing is only one immoral act, there are many more sprinkled throughout the Bible. The Bible does more to instil fear than it does to promote morals.

The real point of the post (I assume) comes half way through:

“If you’re religious, and you perform what is perceived as a “good act”, are you only doing it because your God will reward you with eternity in heaven, or because you are afraid that your God will punish you by torturing you for eternity?”

In case we are too stupid to understand this ridiculous statement, it is then repeated twice with the delicate addition that, well, of course, it is naughty to do things just for the reward, and so of course you should be punished for eternity for doing that too.

In fine, no point in living a moral life if you are Christian, you (like me for not believing) will go to hell, regardless.

I am tempted to leave it at that, certain that noone could find this argument anything but a clever joke for the sake of amusement. However, I suspect that the Atheist, for one, actually thinks he is making a real point. He promises another post on where morality comes from, and I’m hoping he says something rather more enlightening.

Still, our attitude as believers is very much like (please note the simile) a child to a loving parent. Thus we might see that the question is rather like this:

“If you’re a child, and you perform what is perceived as a “good act”, are you only doing it because mummy will reward you with icecream, or because you are afraid that she will punish you by an (illegal) spanking?”

Well? I hope you think about that for some time, because it is an important question.

I am not sure what the motivations for your actions were as a child, but I hope your parents managed to instill something deeper in you than these two pathetic options. The demands of morality are certainly relational, but also deeply imbedded in our very bodies. I hope that your parents taught you to make good decisions both because it made you a better person, and because it made you someone who relates to others with love and generosity, and not because of any reward or punishment (even if such a reward was sometimes given). This is certainly the way Jesus approaches morality in the New Testament (I will happily give examples if asked).

For Jesus, heaven is not so much a future reward (indeed ‘reward’ is quite the wrong word) as a way of living that can begin here and now.