Hypocrisy starts at the top?

[blü 2]

That God is offended as if struck on the cheek and as if damnation is a cessation of love and that it is Him torturing anyone, that there is a general Law forbidding killing at all, that He can be violently enraged as if He had passions, that He forced Himself on anyone, that God lacks attributes of love. The whole thing really.

How can damnation be done in a loving manner?

A loving manner would involve healing and embracing the offender immediately, not submitting the offender to suffering eternally or for great duration, surely?

 

[PureX]

I'm saying that I wouldn't have any good reason to conclude that this god is either good or evil. That's the problem. I'm not concluding one way or the other, but pointing out the dilemma as an internal critique. And as I said before, "power" and "intelligent" have no relation to being good per se.

Imagining and hoping that your god isn't evil and is in fact good, seems like a very shaky foundation upon which to base a worldview of a perfect creator or a model for objective morality. Too shaky for me, at least. If I were a mushroom and had to endure a drought, and I could clearly conceive of better weather, then why would I conclude the current drought is perfectly good or benevolent? Wouldn't malicious weather also cause a drought? Again, there would be no justification for such a belief.

Anyway, thanks for the replies!

It's in our not knowing that we get to speculate about what God could be. That we can choose to imagine the best, and then choose to trust in that ideal, and act on it. It's what makes "God" positively effective in our own hearts and minds, and then in the world, through us. God is or isn't whatever God is or isn't. We can't change that, or be changed by it. It's what God could be that matters to us, and that can change us for the better. That's the great blessing of our not knowing God. And we humans have been using that blessing to our advantage since our beginning.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

What makes you think that "theists" all subscribe to the beliefs in your list? It reads like an unsympathetic selection of supposed beliefs taken from Christianity. If you want to challenge the beliefs of Christianity by all means do so, but please don't tar all "theists" with the same brush.

Well... to be fair though, the situation isn't much better if we have to pull out a hundred thousand (or more) "brushes" in order for anyone to agree that our work is being "tarred" correctly. To claim that such is the case is, to my mind, tacit admittance that the beliefs themselves don't matter a lick. May as well be people's favorite colors at that point. I don't care about your favorite color. I mean... good for you for choosing it and all... but it is simply unimportant information in the grand scheme - or as relates to reality and figuring out "what is true."

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well... to be fair though, the situation isn't much better if we have to pull out a hundred thousand (or more) "brushes" in order for anyone to agree that our work is being "tarred" correctly. To claim that such is the case is, to my mind, tacit admittance that the beliefs themselves don't matter a lick. May as well be people's favorite colors at that point. I don't care about your favorite color. I mean... good for you for choosing it and all... but it is simply unimportant information in the grand scheme - or as relates to reality and figuring out "what is true."

Well, yes. Beliefs matter, but that they matter, is a belief. And in circles we go. So what do beliefs matter have to do with reality? What reality are you talking about and what is your evidence or what not?
Remember never to make positive claims about reality, because someone might ask for evidence.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Well, yes. Beliefs matter, but that they matter, is a belief. And in circles we go. So what do beliefs matter have to do with reality? What reality are you talking about and what is your evidence or what not?
Remember never to make positive claims about reality, because someone might ask for evidence.

Don't give me this utter crap Mikkel. I've been around this course with you about 7 or 8 times now. As you, yourself, have stated (perhaps not in so many words, but I know you understand the point) everything we hold in any sort of seriousness can be boiled down to nothing more than a belief. A belief that axioms hold, or a belief that I am a being existing in some form of reality that exists independent of myself, etc. So, in essence, beliefs are the most important things there can possibly be. There basically is nothing else but belief.

Now... my specific comment about the "hundred thousand brushes" and the beliefs that are being "tarred" by those brushes, was SPECIFICALLY about those types of beliefs. That is... the beliefs that require those hundred thousand brushes in order for someone to claim you are doing the thing "justice." Those are the beliefs that do not need to matter to the rest of us as a whole (and, indeed, do not matter to many of the rest of us - for example, maybe you love mushrooms - good for you - I abhor them and your love of mushrooms does absolutely nothing to affect/ameliorate my abhorrence of them). However, an easy example of a belief that we might hold that should very much matter to the ALL of us is something like the theory of gravity. in fact - it can't not matter to you. You can't decide that you don't care about gravity and so suddenly it doesn't apply to you. You either adhere to the principles of movement and ability to exist that encompasses knowledge of interaction with and work done under the effects of gravity, or you likely die because you just walk off a cliff, or you don't care how careful you are at the top of a ladder, or you can't tell which way is up once you are underwater, etc. etc. etc. Let's see you not care about a belief in gravity Mikkel - it would be interesting to watch.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Don't give me this utter crap Mikkel. I've been around this course with you about 7 or 8 times now. As you, yourself, have stated (perhaps not in so many words, but I know you understand the point) everything we hold in any sort of seriousness can be boiled down to nothing more than a belief. A belief that axioms hold, or a belief that I am a being existing in some form of reality that exists independent of myself, etc. So, in essence, beliefs are the most important things there can possibly be. There basically is nothing else but belief.

Now... my specific comment about the "hundred thousand brushes" and the beliefs that are being "tarred" by those brushes, was SPECIFICALLY about those types of beliefs. That is... the beliefs that require those hundred thousand brushes in order for someone to claim you are doing the thing "justice." Those are the beliefs that do not need to matter to the rest of us as a whole (and, indeed, do not matter to many of the rest of us - for example, maybe you love mushrooms - good for you - I abhor them and your love of mushrooms does absolutely nothing to affect/ameliorate my abhorrence of them). However, an easy example of a belief that we might hold that should very much matter to the ALL of us is something like the theory of gravity. in fact - it can't not matter to you. You can't decide that you don't care about gravity and so suddenly it doesn't apply to you. You either adhere to the principles of movement and ability to exist that encompasses knowledge of interaction with and work done under the effects of gravity, or you likely die because you just walk off a cliff, or you don't care how careful you are at the top of a ladder, or you can't tell which way is up once you are underwater, etc. etc. etc. Let's see you not care about a belief in gravity Mikkel - it would be interesting to watch.

Yeah, but that kind of belief that some people claim, is not unique to religion. It is as far as I can tell, simply the claim that "my subjective morality is objective". That is not unique to religion.
As for the everyday objective parts of reality. yes I believe in them. But that doesn't mean that it settles what objective reality is in itself.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Yeah, but that kind of belief that some people claim, is not unique to religion. It is as far as I can tell, simply the claim that "my subjective morality is objective". That is not unique to religion.

And? Again, what useful information are you imparting here? I, personally, have never claimed that my sense of morality is "objective." That some other doofuses might isn't my fault. Go talk to them. You don't have to come at me in a combative manner, trying to weaken the foundations of everything I post because "morality is subjective." I mean come on man... even when you agree with someone you have to disagree with them. Which makes nearly everything you say appear pointless.

As for the everyday objective parts of reality. yes I believe in them. But that doesn't mean that it settles what objective reality is in itself.

And? You STILL have to live as if the reality you experience is "it." Sure... go investigate all you like, looking for that one thread that will allow you to unravel "the simulation." Or don't... I don't care. I will also continue to react to the one reality I am presented with, and ignore claims of ALL others until they can be demonstrated - because THEY DON'T MATTER... until they do.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And? Again, what useful information are you imparting here? I, personally, have never claimed that my sense of morality is "objective." That some other doofuses might isn't my fault. Go talk to them. You don't have to come at me in a combative manner, trying to weaken the foundations of everything I post because "morality is subjective." I mean come on man... even when you agree with someone you have to disagree with them. Which makes nearly everything you say appear pointless.

And? You STILL have to live as if the reality you experience is "it." Sure... go investigate all you like, looking for that one thread that will allow you to unravel "the simulation." Or don't... I don't care. I will also continue to react to the one reality I am presented with, and ignore claims of ALL others until they can be demonstrated - because THEY DON'T MATTER... until they do.

Your ideas are ridiculous, right? The problem is, that useful is what? You only get one go at it.
As long as you can't separate is as a fact and what matters, I will continue.

What is useful to you, might me useless to me, when we deal with what matters. I am a Western limited cognitive, moral and cultural relativist.

 

[Lain]

How can damnation be done in a loving manner?

A loving manner would involve healing and embracing the offender immediately, not submitting the offender to suffering eternally or for great duration, surely?

Define love. For we most certainly do not define it in the same way.

 

[Lain]

God breaking his own rules.

And where would this be shown?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Exactly. My point is that the "grand overview" that we can't see, or the "reason behind it" that we don't understand, could just be that your god is evil. Or he could be inexplicably good. Or be a gaslighting moral hypocrite. And you have absolutely no method to tell the difference or show the difference, to know which one it is. Maybe you think your personal hopes and intuitions count as a method, but I don't.

And neither do you. Yet for some reason, you insist on passing judgment in ignorance, anyway, and then assuming the worst.

It's you passing judgment in ignorance here. You clearly did not understand the words you read. He didn't assume the worst. He said that if a deity exists that is beyond comprehension, you have no way to know that it is not evil, which is correct, and is not a judgment. It's a consequence of it being logically possible that a malicious deity exists, and no evidence being available to rule that possibility in or out. It's a purely logical conclusion, one you don't like, one you bristle at and for which you falsely accuse its source of being judgmental.

He didn't assume the worst, but you seem to be assuming the best while criticizing others for making assumptions that they didn't make.

This is an example of the kind of hypocrisy we see so often in religious apologetics, basically of the form "I get to make any arbitrary pronouncement I like to support my faith-based belief, but you need to keep silent in your ignorance. Your opinion is disqualified. And reveals a hostility to God. Your purpose is malicious and mean-spirited. God is good. How dare you even consider any other possibility. Just take my word for it, or you are ignorant and judgmental."

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between faith-based thought and critical thought. Whereas faith-based arguments are tendentious, pushing toward a faith-based belief such as God is good, the experienced critical thinker steadfastly avoids such thinking. He will apply reason to evidence dispassionately, going wherever that takes him. So, he sees evidence of a cruel or hypocritical entity in the scriptures of those who believe that god is real, and declares, "The scriptures define a cruel and hypocritical God." That's what reason concludes.

But as I indicated before, two thing the theist is forbidden to think - the deity is flawed, and the scriptures are incoherent or incorrect. So, he pushes back to make that go away as you are doing here using a now familiar array of tools from his apologist's toolbox. But unfortunately, all he has is more tendentious thought that he cannot support, and so as I described earlier, he can have no impact on a mind trained to recognize fallacious reasoning, and so he can have no impact. He'll beg the critical thinker to relax his standards using a variety of tools like "you're close-minded" or "you need to think with the spirit" or "this transcends reason."

In addition to your objections, we've seen this on this thread: "If you present things from Satanic view and phrase things against God, you won't see God as good. But if you let him present himself from holy books and listen properly, you will know he is good." What is that if not a request to do what you have requested worded differently: stop applying reason? You say that others are judging in ignorance and to stop, however valid their arguments, and he says that this thinking you're doing is Satanic, so stop. He exhorts skeptics to just think properly, by which he means relax the standards of critical analysis. He implies that it's necessary to see what he and you see.

Well, yeah, but the goal is not to find ways to see what he sees, but to decide what is correct, what is true. Faith lets you see what you want, and cannot be a path to truth. By faith I can agree with both of you that God is good. By faith, I can also believe the opposite. How can that be a means of deciding what is true?

Reason lets you see what is reasonable. It takes one to a sound conclusion not of his own choosing, but one consistent with what the evidence supports.

Whatever is responsible for existence, existing, it is clearly more powerful and intelligent than we are. And that's pretty much all we can surmise.

Nope. Another non sequitur. You have no evidence at all that any intelligence or consciousness existed before it evolved on planets like this one. That is merely a logical possibility, the other being that no intelligence was required. Once again, we have two logically possible options (I don't see the possibility of a third), with no way to rule either in or out. A proper analysis ends there. One can go no further, except possibly to comment on the likelihood of each, such as the one requiring a conscious intelligence is less parsimonious that one that doesn't, or that the progress of science seems to suggest that science will eventually fill in the last gaps that deities currently hide in. What jobs are left for a deity? Create the singularity or the first life?

So, although we cannot logically exclude the possibility of an intelligent designer, neither can you logically rule one in as you have. Reason only gets one as far as I went: either an intelligent designer or naturalistic processes. You went a step further and dropped one of the options without cause. That was your non sequitur, a conclusion that doesn't follow from what came before it.

So you just don't like the traditional answer: that God is God and you are not.

I guess that you still don't understand critical thought. It's not about what one wants to believe. That's faith. The theist wants there to be a god, so for him, there is one, whether that is correct or not, and everybody thinking otherwise must have some character flaw. They just don't like what theists tell them, so they reject it without cause due to their poor character. You're projecting. You've been told otherwise, but it has made no impact on your thinking or writing. Still, you frame this as if you have facts that others don't have the courage or discipline to admit to.

The critical thinker is not like that at all, and I am coming to believe that almost nobody knows what critical thought is, how it differs from faith, what it can do, or why those that prize it over faith do so. If they did, they wouldn't continue making fallacious arguments or asking critical thinkers to relax their standards. They don't understand the commitment to reason. Asking the experienced critical thinker to relax his standards is like asking a vegan or a kosher Jew to relax their standards. "Go ahead and try some bacon. It tastes good."

The answer is not only no, but why are you even asking for that? Are you unaware of what you are asking the critical thinker to give up, and why you have no chance of success persuading him if you don't meet him on his field and play by his rules? He is simply not interested in ideas that can only be believed by faith (unjustified belief), or the "conclusions" of fallacious arguments, such as those that assume a deity exists. Ever. Not once. Just like he never wants to have a stroke or be held up at gunpoint. Never. Not once. And it is as if the theist is unaware of this commitment to reason, and the unwillingness to abandon it for faith ever, not even once.

I can only conclude from the slew of bad arguments brought to critical thinkers by faith-based thinkers that they really don't know what critical thinking is, or why anything else is unacceptable. Why else would you make a comment like the one above to somebody that you ought to know will reject it as a faith-based utterance except that you don't know why it is rejected, what standards are being applied, and how that comment does not rise to them?

So here's the logical version of your faith-based pronouncement, with the two faith-based excisions restored: If a god exists, then it might not be me. That is unassailably correct, and that is the goal of sound thinking - arrive at truths. If you go any further, you're in non sequiturville.

 

[AlexanderG]

It's in our not knowing that we get to speculate about what God could be. That we can choose to imagine the best, and then choose to trust in that ideal, and act on it. It's what makes "God" positively effective in our own hearts and minds, and then in the world, through us. God is or isn't whatever God is or isn't. We can't change that, or be changed by it. It's what God could be that matters to us, and that can change us for the better. That's the great blessing of our not knowing God. And we humans have been using that blessing to our advantage since our beginning.

Interesting. There's a lot of tension in your response and your "blessing of not knowing god," compared to many other Christians who talk about the close personal relationship they have with god, who is more real to them their own wife, etc. I'm not clear on how you can talk to someone daily, know them and love them, and also simultaneously be unsure about their character, motivations, and true nature. Maybe I'm mischaracterizing you personally, though, for which I apologize. Every Christian has different beliefs. It sounds like you're reinforcing that, by saying that god is a conceptual amalgamation of one's personal hopes and aspirations, even if they contradict each other from person to person.

 

[AlexanderG]

Define love. For we most certainly do not define it in the same way.

Yes, this gets right to the topic at hand. My definition of love is a pattern of behavior: showing up, being there for someone, nurturing and comforting them, and putting their needs and wishes ahead of yours.

Many Christians presuppose that god's actions reflect a mysterious understanding of what we all need better that our own understanding of what we need and wish for. The net effect of this definition seems to be incoherent and/or meaningless. God's reward of an eternal blissful afterlife is by definition loving. When god tormented Job to win a bet, that was by definition loving. When he drowned all the children in the flood, or killed all of the first born of Egypt, or ordered babies to be cut from their mothers bellies, that was by definition perfectly loving. When god eternally tortures people, with no opportunity for growth, conversion, or redemption, that is perfectly loving by definition because god does it. When god sacrificed his son so that blood could spill everywhere and create a loophole to allow him to only eternally torture most people instead of all people, that was love(?).

I hope I don't offend, but from an outsider perspective this seems like abusive, malicious gaslighting. It seems like it could more easily be evil than good, appeals to my "fallible human mind" notwithstanding.

For many Christians, love seems to be a reference point rather than any coherent pattern of behavior toward other people. This is largely because in the Abrahamic traditions, god seems to define the characteristics of the love humans show to each other very different from his own "loving" actions. There is a marked double standard. Nowhere in Christianity is human wellbeing, joy, or fulfillment seen as a value, but rather whatever glorifies god is of paramount moral importance. To me, that's just nothing I would ever recognize as love.

 

[Lain]

Yes, this gets right to the topic at hand. My definition of love is a pattern of behavior: showing up, being there for someone, nurturing and comforting them, and putting their needs and wishes ahead of yours.

For many Christians, love seems to be a reference point rather than any coherent pattern of behavior toward other people. Nowhere in Christianity is human wellbeing, joy, or fulfillment seen as a value, but rather whatever glorifies god is of paramount moral importance. To me, that's just nothing I would ever recognize as love.

All of those behaviors I you listed I would agree are loving acts and all should strive when able to perform them. I would define love for all (including God, who is the source of this) as willing and acting for the good of another. God by default does this to me at all times for all things that exist because their existence is good in itself and He perpetually wills that they exist, so the definition is full. Then there are degrees of gifts and goods He gives, and that's where the distinctions between things come in and why some have more of certain things than others, but He is not obligated to give anything at all, so it is not unjust.

I am not sure why you say human joy, wellbeing, and fulfillment is not a value in Christianity, when that very thing is exhorted and sought out, "blessed is the man" and so on. Such things in themselves glorify God and they are commanded to be sought.

All my opinion of course.

 

[AlexanderG]

It's you passing judgment in ignorance here. You clearly did not understand the words you read. He didn't assume the worst. He said that if a deity exists that is beyond comprehension, you have no way to know that it is not evil, which is correct, and is not a judgment. It's a consequence of it being logically possible that a malicious deity exists, and no evidence being available to rule that possibility in or out. It's a purely logical conclusion, one you don't like, one you bristle at and for which you falsely accuse its source of being judgmental.

He didn't assume the worst, but you seem to be assuming the best while criticizing others for making assumptions that they didn't make.

This is an example of the kind of hypocrisy we see so often in religious apologetics, basically of the form "I get to make any arbitrary pronouncement I like to support my faith-based belief, but you need to keep silent in your ignorance. Your opinion is disqualified. And reveals a hostility to God. Your purpose is malicious and mean-spirited. God is good. How dare you even consider any other possibility. Just take my word for it, or you are ignorant and judgmental."

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between faith-based thought and critical thought. Whereas faith-based arguments are tendentious, pushing toward a faith-based belief such as God is good, the experienced critical thinker steadfastly avoids such thinking. He will apply reason to evidence dispassionately, going wherever that takes him. So, he sees evidence of a cruel or hypocritical entity in the scriptures of those who believe that god is real, and declares, "The scriptures define a cruel and hypocritical God." That's what reason concludes.

But as I indicated before, two thing the theist is forbidden to think - the deity is flawed, and the scriptures are incoherent or incorrect. So, he pushes back to make that go away as you are doing here using a now familiar array of tools from his apologist's toolbox. But unfortunately, all he has is more tendentious thought that he cannot support, and so as I described earlier, he can have no impact on a mind trained to recognize fallacious reasoning, and so he can have no impact. He'll beg the critical thinker to relax his standards using a variety of tools like "you're close-minded" or "you need to think with the spirit" or "this transcends reason."

In addition to your objections, we've seen this on this thread: "If you present things from Satanic view and phrase things against God, you won't see God as good. But if you let him present himself from holy books and listen properly, you will know he is good." What is that if not a request to do what you have requested worded differently: stop applying reason? You say that others are judging in ignorance and to stop, however valid their arguments, and he says that this thinking you're doing is Satanic, so stop. He exhorts skeptics to just think properly, by which he means relax the standards of critical analysis. He implies that it's necessary to see what he and you see.

Well, yeah, but the goal is not to find ways to see what he sees, but to decide what is correct, what is true. Faith lets you see what you want, and cannot be a path to truth. By faith I can agree with both of you that God is good. By faith, I can also believe the opposite. How can that be a means of deciding what is true?

Reason lets you see what is reasonable. It takes one to a sound conclusion not of his own choosing, but one consistent with what the evidence supports.



Nope. Another non sequitur. You have no evidence at all that any intelligence or consciousness existed before it evolved on planets like this one. That is merely a logical possibility, the other being that no intelligence was required. Once again, we have two logically possible options (I don't see the possibility of a third), with no way to rule either in or out. A proper analysis ends there. One can go no further, except possibly to comment on the likelihood of each, such as the one requiring a conscious intelligence is less parsimonious that one that doesn't, or that the progress of science seems to suggest that science will eventually fill in the last gaps that deities currently hide in. What jobs are left for a deity? Create the singularity or the first life?

So, although we cannot logically exclude the possibility of an intelligent designer, neither can you logically rule one in as you have. Reason only gets one as far as I went: either an intelligent designer or naturalistic processes. You went a step further and dropped one of the options without cause. That was your non sequitur, a conclusion that doesn't follow from what came before it.



I guess that you still don't understand critical thought. It's not about what one wants to believe. That's faith. The theist wants there to be a god, so for him, there is one, whether that is correct or not, and everybody thinking otherwise must have some character flaw. They just don't like what theists tell them, so they reject it without cause due to their poor character. You're projecting. You've been told otherwise, but it has made no impact on your thinking or writing. Still, you frame this as if you have facts that others don't have the courage or discipline to admit to.

The critical thinker is not like that at all, and I am coming to believe that almost nobody knows what critical thought is, how it differs from faith, what it can do, or why those that prize it over faith do so. If they did, they wouldn't continue making fallacious arguments or asking critical thinkers to relax their standards. They don't understand the commitment to reason. Asking the experienced critical thinker to relax his standards is like asking a vegan or a kosher Jew to relax their standards. "Go ahead and try some bacon. It tastes good."

The answer is not only no, but why are you even asking for that? Are you unaware of what you are asking the critical thinker to give up, and why you have no chance of success persuading him if you don't meet him on his field and play by his rules? He is simply not interested in ideas that can only be believed by faith (unjustified belief), or the "conclusions" of fallacious arguments, such as those that assume a deity exists. Ever. Not once. Just like he never wants to have a stroke or be held up at gunpoint. Never. Not once. And it is as if the theist is unaware of this commitment to reason, and the unwillingness to abandon it for faith ever, not even once.

I can only conclude from the slew of bad arguments brought to critical thinkers by faith-based thinkers that they really don't know what critical thinking is, or why anything else is unacceptable. Why else would you make a comment like the one above to somebody that you ought to know will reject it as a faith-based utterance except that you don't know why it is rejected, what standards are being applied, and how that comment does not rise to them?

So here's the logical version of your faith-based pronouncement, with the two faith-based excisions restored: If a god exists, then it might not be me. That is unassailably correct, and that is the goal of sound thinking - arrive at truths. If you go any further, you're in non sequiturville.

Thanks for this. You've described the chasm between theistic and non-theistic epistemology better than I ever could. And maybe both sides are projecting; we keep trying to reason with them, and they keep assuming that we're secretly driven by our emotions and desires when we are determining what is justifiably true.

 

[PureX]

It's you passing judgment in ignorance here. You clearly did not understand the words you read. He didn't assume the worst. He said that if a deity exists that is beyond comprehension, you have no way to know that it is not evil, which is correct, and is not a judgment.

He didn't assume the worst, but you seem to be assuming the best while criticizing others for making assumptions that they didn't make.

If I misunderstood, then I stand corrected.

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between faith-based thought and critical thought. Whereas faith-based arguments are tendentious, pushing toward a faith-based belief such as God is good, the experienced critical thinker steadfastly avoids such thinking. He will apply reason to evidence dispassionately, going wherever that takes him. So, he sees evidence of a cruel or hypocritical entity in the scriptures of those who believe that god is real, and declares, "The scriptures define a cruel and hypocritical God." That's what reason concludes.

Not knowing what God is allows us to decide for ourselves, according to how our decisions effect us. For most people, trusting in the idea of a benevolent God provides them with far more positive life value than doing otherwise, even in the face of life's suffering. In fact, because of life's suffering.

Many humans of every stripe and type tend to presume that what they have chosen to trust as being true, is true, because their choice to trust in it works for them in some positive way. And people declare all kind of crazy stuff, because they "believe in" it. Just because their claims appear paradoxical to you doesn't make them hypocrites.

But as I indicated before, two thing the theist is forbidden to think - the deity is flawed, and the scriptures are incoherent or incorrect.

Well, that's patently false.

So, he pushes back to make that go away as you are doing here using a now familiar array of tools from his apologist's toolbox. But unfortunately, all he has is more tendentious thought that he cannot support, and so as I described earlier, he can have no impact on a mind trained to recognize fallacious reasoning, and so he can have no impact. He'll beg the critical thinker to relax his standards using a variety of tools like "you're close-minded" or "you need to think with the spirit" or "this transcends reason."

I hate to break it to you, but you're no more a "critical thinker" than anyone else here, is. You're an ironclad philosophical materialist. And as such it is not possible for you to examine the God ideal in a way that would enable you to experience what most theists experience. It's why you keep getting comments like that.

In addition to your objections, we've seen this on this thread: "If you present things from Satanic view and phrase things against God, you won't see God as good. But if you let him present himself from holy books and listen properly, you will know he is good." What is that if not a request to do what you have requested worded differently: stop applying reason? You say that others are judging in ignorance and to stop, however valid their arguments, and he says that this thinking you're doing is Satanic, so stop. He exhorts skeptics to just think properly, by which he means relax the standards of critical analysis. He implies that it's necessary to see what he and you see.

He's just talking about a form of reasoning that is not materialist based. To you, this sound absurd because you are so thoroughly convinced of the truth and righteousness of your own materialist views. And as such you are unable to grasp how someone else might view existence from a non-materialist perspective.

Well, yeah, but the goal is not to find ways to see what he sees, but to decide what is correct, what is true.

"Correct and true" according what criteria? For YOU that criteria is objective physicality. But for most theists, that criteria is based more on personal metaphysical results.

Faith lets you see what you want, and cannot be a path to truth.

Again ... you are trapped by your own materialist criteria. Faith is a very powerful and positive tool for those who are not trapped in that materialist paradigm.

By faith I can agree with both of you that God is good. By faith, I can also believe the opposite. How can that be a means of deciding what is true?

What is true is whatever works according to our chosen criteria for truth. You have chosen objective materialism, exclusively, and that has caused you to dismiss all other truth criteria as invalid. Including the criteria of personal metaphysical results.

I guess that you still don't understand critical thought. It's not about what one wants to believe. That's faith. The theist wants there to be a god, so for him, there is one, whether that is correct or not, and everybody thinking otherwise must have some character flaw. They just don't like what theists tell them, so they reject it without cause due to their poor character. You're projecting.

Except that within it's proper context, it's quite true. But you have rendered yourself incapable of seeing it's proper context. That which does not fit within your objective materialist paradigm doesn't exist to you. There can be no rationale apart from your own. That's not "critical thinking", that just a self-blinding bias.

 

[Twilight Hue]

And where would this be shown?

Pretty much the entire Old Testament.

 

[PureX]

Interesting. There's a lot of tension in your response and your "blessing of not knowing god," compared to many other Christians who talk about the close personal relationship they have with god, who is more real to them their own wife, etc. I'm not clear on how you can talk to someone daily, know them and love them, and also simultaneously be unsure about their character, motivations, and true nature. Maybe I'm mischaracterizing you personally, though, for which I apologize. Every Christian has different beliefs. It sounds like you're reinforcing that, by saying that god is a conceptual amalgamation of one's personal hopes and aspirations, even if they contradict each other from person to person.

That is what I'm saying; "god is a conceptual amalgamation of one's personal hopes and aspirations". And I am puzzled by those who seem to insist that such a conceptual amalgamation must be logically cohesive, and even mutually agreed upon by multiple theists. This makes no sense to me at all.

Whatever the, 'source, sustenance, and purpose of all that it', is, it is clearly far beyond the comprehension of any human. And yet we humans survive and thrive by understanding the circumstances of our existence well enough to manipulate them, or ourselves in relation to them, to our favor. So we don't like mysteries. They expose us as being vulnerable. So most humans choose to pretend to have resolved the mystery, at least to a degree. Or at least to characterize it in such a way that they don't have to fear it quite so much. And that's what "God" is all about for most people. God is our conceptualization of the great existential unknown ... that we both fear, and want very badly to resolve.

The 'reality of God' is the mystery of being. Whatever is the source, sustenance, and purpose of all that is, that IS "God". And how we respond to this profound mystery is defining who we are, and who we are becoming, our whole lives.

 

[Lain]

Pretty much the entire Old Testament.

Apparently we read differently, as I can not recall a single account of that in the OT.

 

[1213]

...
1. God says to love your enemies and turn the other cheek if you are struck, but god eternally tortures those who offend him.

Bible doesn’t teach God tortures anyone.

...2. God says not to kill, but kills people for a multitude of reasons when they displease, inadvertently offend him, or even sometimes when they do obey him. Plus multiple ethnic genocides.

Actually, God says:
You shall not murder.
Ex. 20:13
Murder is unlawful killing. Killing is not always bad, by what the Bible tells.

...3. God says not to envy or be jealous, but is violently enraged by people worshipping other gods.

Jealous can mean two things:
1. feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages.
2. possessive, person wants to keep what belongs to him.

God doesn’t want to lose anyone He has given life (2). But He is not jealous in that he would desire something that doesn’t belong to Him or is not His (1). I think this is the same as, if you would have kids, you would not probably anything bad to happen to them. I think it is not wrong.

...4. God forces himself on an unmarried girl, with no personal or legal consequences.

What makes you think He forced himself? And certainly, He took care of the consequences, even raised His son from death.