God is GOOD and I will defend Him. A Challenge for Atheists

As a Christian, I often hear the Atheist accuse God of not being Good. Despite the fact that He is not considered to be real, they vigorously defend their position that He is also not good. I simply say, prove it against my logic below. Please do not participate unless you are planning on reading the entire OP. Keep answers short. One more thing, please do not resort to saying that I make assumptions. All of what will be said will require an assumption of one form or another. Rather than blast me, build your own logical answer.

Consider the following verses. Answer the challenge below with a short answer and not a novel. If you do not plan on reading this entire conjecture, do not participate. You must answer the challenge below and consider my answer at the end of this conjecture. I assume my answer is correct. I will consider each of your answers with equal care. We will all assume God is real in this exercise for the sake of the argument. If you are looking to defend your disbelief in God, save it for another thread. The question here is God's goodness, not his existence. Please keep on topic and assume that we are discussing the Christian God and Bible only.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

LUKE 10
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

Later in these verses, Jesus defines the neighbor you must love as even your enemy. Turn the other cheek as Jesus says.

I will come to my challenge shortly. Consider the four possibilities below when it comes to loving ourselves, God and others. Since God can be considered others in relation to us, then also assume that God considers us others as well. In other words, He must follow His own righteousness for Him to love us as others.

Most people will agree that love is positive and not loving is negative. I will assume this in my equations.

1. Loving God and loving others assumes that you also love yourself. The Equation would be as follows.
1 + 1 = +2 Flip the premise and assume that God loves Himself and others.

2. Hate God and Love Others. -1 + 1 =0 This equation assumes no value for self. It also assumes that you cannot love others apart from loving God. It also assumes that God (if you assume He exists) is not loving unless He loves us by His actions. We assume the same for ourselves since God is others to us.

3. Love God and Hate Others. 1 + -1 =0 This equation assumes no value for self. It also assumes you cannot love God unless you love others. From God’s perspective, it will assume that if He does not love others, He does not love Himself.

4. Hate God and Hate Others. -1 + -1 = - 2 This is the lowest value a person can experience. We would say that if God hates us, He also hates Himself. For God’s point of view, 3 and 4 are the same.

PROBLEM FOR GOD

Psalm 11:5
The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion.

This is the only verse in the Bible where you find it saying directly that God hates others. It is apparent from these verses that God despises those who do not love others but instead resort to violence. This raises a few questions:

Can God claim to be good but hate others and still find value from Himself? Can we claim that God is truly good, or is He not good at times? For instance, take this argument that Atheists often use. He is unloving in the OT and loving in the NT.

CHALLENGE

My challenge for the Atheist is simple. Give me your logic and reasoning for God’s ability to hate anyone enough to send them to hell. Assuming for just one minute that God exists, reason out how a loving God can destroy nations and then order His believers to do the same. I will present you with my answer and you can agree or dispute my argument. Give examples from the Bible, but please keep each reply restricted to one example so that others can reply to one challenge at a time.

MY ANSWER

God demands that we love Him and others. Since we are others to God and God is others to us, we must love both God and others, including ourselves. God must love Himself as well as others with the ultimate love possible.

For God, we assume, if He is good, He will love Himself and others. How then can we allow Him room to hate a group of others when we are required to love everyone? Is this a paradox? My answer is this:

God must love others. He cannot love all others beside Himself without defending the weaker group against the greater evil. Not defending those who love Him would not demonstrate His love toward them. Destroying and/or hindering those who do not love Him would be the only logical answer.

Why?

Since God never stopped loving others, He has not separated Himself from them. Since some men do not love God, they made the choice to separate themselves from the others who do love. This gives God the high ground as a loving God.

God is a loving God who demands the same from us. Despite the fact that none of us are truly capable of loving Him or others, He still offers us salvation from our state of imperfection. Not only does He love us enough to help us when we are friends with Him, He also extends a hand to those who are not friends with him. The choice to be good and loving is truly up to each individual. God demands no less.

But wait, is there more?

Didn’t Jesus say that we must define our neighbor as even our enemy? Yes. My answer is this: God provides a way for His unloving enemy to return to loving others. He is long-suffering. He made the choice to define a neighbor as an enemy. What would the best of us do with a neighbor, despite all our attempts, who remained an enemy? That’s right. After all attempts are exhausted, we take action to defend ourselves as we would our friends.

This is How God loves us. Even those of us who do not merit this favor and grace can make the choice to love all others as ourselves--God's golden rule.

God’s grace is defined as unmerited favor. Does God merit your favor? If you do not love God, you are one favor less than Him in the relationship.

LASTLY

Do not assume that all wars and wrongs committed by people are motivated by God. We can only assume the instances that we have direct evidence for in the Bible. Otherwise, God is not the One making the choice. Restrict your answers to those you can rightly attach to God and assume the Christian religion only. Islam should not be considered since they do not adhere to the Bible directly. We will assume the God of the Bible only.

What about a compromise?

God is like humans in that God has both a good side and a bad side, but God chooses not to be evil and fights this tendency every single second of every single day just like humans do? And, just like human parents do with their children, sometimes he loses his temper.

Revelation 22:13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

God is everything, not just just love. Besides love being a human emotion, used for the purpose of defending mates and family, you can't have love without hate. Just as sound is also the silence in between sound waves, you can't have a wave without a trough. No love without hate. God is love AND hate, if you believe that sort of thing

Obviously your talking about YOUR god from the bible.

Aside from that bible portraying a god that is vengeful, violent and evil one story basically covers all.

The one where he asks this guy to kill his own kid and gets in his head to basically brainwash him to do so.
At the moment the poor chap wants to kill his son god pops up saying "It was all a joke dude just kill a lamb and chill out"

Well nowadays that "god" would go to jail for this type of behavior Not my kind of loving god thank you.

Assuming for a moment that an omnipotent being were to exist, it takes very little effort to prove he is either useless or disgusting.

Explain to me how a "good" god can sentence innocent young children to a most certainly painful death. Certainly any omnipotent creature capable of allowing such suffering should never be worshipped, existing or not.

God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?

- EPICURUS

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

-EPICURUS

I suggest you don't study epicurean philosophy or you will certainly lose the faith you seem to cherish. The reality is, if there were a "god" as you believe, he is pure evil in our sense of the word.

IF GOD IS OMNIPOTENT THEN HE KNOWS EVERYTHING..AS IN THE ALPHA AND OMEGA SCRIPTURE. HE THEREFORE KNEW WHAT SATAN WOULD BE BEFORE HE CREATED HIM, THUS GOD IS AN ADVOCATE OF CHAOS OR HE IS EVIL.

My assumptions will always be with the Bible.

Psalms 92

13 Those that be planted in the house of the LORD

shall flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age;

they shall be fat and flourishing;
15 to show that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Originally posted by gnosticquasar
What about a compromise?

God is like humans in that God has both a good side and a bad side, but God chooses not to be evil and fights this tendency every single second of every single day just like humans do? And, just like human parents do with their children, sometimes he loses his temper.

reply to post by SuperiorEd


You seem to be confusing not good with not real. That's the problem Atheists have with your definition of God.

Thread Closed :/

I think it is clear from the Bible that the point of life is loving others as you love yourself. God follows this as well. I might rewrite your statement and say that it is not possible to see love without hate. It is not possible to see hate without love.

I might go one further and say that it is not possible to learn or gain sentience apart from experiencing opposites. In this regard, all opposites are necessary in order to manage change. My view is that our entire existence is training for what comes next. The earth is a womb where we develop or we destroy our chances at birth. The body is merely a placenta.

Originally posted by ZeroReady
Revelation 22:13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

God is everything, not just just love. Besides love being a human emotion, used for the purpose of defending mates and family, you can't have love without hate. Just as sound is also the silence in between sound waves, you can't have a wave without a trough. No love without hate. God is love AND hate, if you believe that sort of thing

Originally posted by SuperiorEd
As a Christian, I often hear the Atheist accuse God of not being Good.

If an atheist is making character judgments on a person they don't believe in, I have a hard time believing they're atheists. How can you say something you don't believe in is good or bad?

And I'm not interested in the challenge of proving that something I don't believe in is good or bad.

You didn't read the OP. God can only choose what is best for the many against the few who do violence. God can only defend, protect and honor love. Stealing, hating and destroying is the work of an enemy to the others that God asks us to love. When viewed correctly, God can only act in our good, not matter who we are or what side of good and evil we choose.

The only choice we have for free will is to choose between good and evil. God always chooses good for the many. The few choose for themselves by taking sides. Good or evil. Those are the two sides. If you don't love God, you do not love others. You can't say you love others without saying God is others. If God is evil, then His actions will demonstrate. I say He is only good.

Originally posted by FriendlyGopher
Obviously your talking about YOUR god from the bible.

Aside from that bible portraying a god that is vengeful, violent and evil one story basically covers all.

The one where he asks this guy to kill his own kid and gets in his head to basically brainwash him to do so.
At the moment the poor chap wants to kill his son god pops up saying "It was all a joke dude just kill a lamb and chill out"

Well nowadays that "god" would go to jail for this type of behavior

Not my kind of loving god thank you.

False prophets will be in abundance


it is the sign of times


i am the presence of abundance.

reply to post by Tephra
It is an awful thing to kill a god, even if it is evident that he is evil.
All mythology is wars between the gods.
Earlier Canaan had those who said god lived on a mountain in Sinai and those who said god lived on a mountain in Lebanon.
Later Canaan had Zion and Gerizim as the rival mountains.
Jesus said, "Forget it" in so many words.
Time to kill the gods, I say.

reply to post by SuperiorEd

Of what use are human emotions like love and hate to an infinite being? Love, hate, fear, these are chemical reactions taking place inside your brain. They serve a biological purpose specific to our way of life. Does a god really need to love? Or hate? In trying to understand an infinite being with our finite, human way of looking at the outside world, and constructs such as language and emotion, we'll never understand something infinite.

reply to post by SuperiorEd


Good luck with your thread buddy. You've been here long enough to where you should know better. That you cannot convert people here. I just skimmed over your post and my assumption was right. You have nothing new to say and no new light to shed on the subject. Let me remind you that you are on ATS.

We deny ignorance here (at least the smart ones do), and the majority here regard modern Christianity to be folly.

Back in Jesus' day it probably meant something. It wasn't the watered-down and edited-for-the-sake-of-bias version that it is now now. Let me remind you that in the past 2,000 years the human race has not evolved emotionally or spiritually. You want proof? Open your eyes and look at this world for what it really is. How anyone can take stock in the version of the bible that is written now is beyond me.

I don't worship "God" I worship the golden rule and it does me and mine just fine.

Originally posted by CaDreamer
IF GOD IS OMNIPOTENT THEN HE KNOWS EVERYTHING..AS IN THE ALPHA AND OMEGA SCRIPTURE. HE THEREFORE KNEW WHAT SATAN WOULD BE BEFORE HE CREATED HIM, THUS GOD IS AN ADVOCATE OF CHAOS OR HE IS EVIL.

AMEN brother.....Say it again......AMEN!!!!!

I like you post, star for your short...sharp...shock

Explain to me how a "good" god can sentence innocent young children to a most certainly painful death. Certainly any omnipotent creature capable of allowing such suffering should never be worshipped, existing or not.

There are many good answers to this question online. I will include a short answer myself. I must call this only as I see it by my own theology.

I am a firm believer in reincarnation. This is better defined as transmigration. In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that "You must be born again." I take this literally. He is saying that a person must experience this life many times to understand love completely. If you make this connection, you can now see divine justice as it is.

Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Do we see some people die by natural causes who lived by the sword? Yes. I personally believe that you reap from one life what you sow in another. This answers the question of why some have everything in this life and some have nothing; why some live short lives and others live long; why some die at the hands of the sword when they lived by it in another life.

Jesus goes further with Nicodemus by saying that a person must be born, not just by water (baptism in the material world), but by the spirit. In other words:

The sun and the moon come together to form life on earth. The earth is our womb after we are birthed from the mother. The sperm and the egg come together to form you from this womb. You are born into the womb of the earth. You must be born again, either from the water or from the spirit. What is the spirit and how do you get born from it?

The spirit is the Holy Spirit. God offers this to you if you love Him and love your fellow man. In the Garden of Eden, the flaming sword was placed at the tree of life. If you want to live forever, you must take away the flaming sword. The sword is bias and hatred toward others. If you remove the sword, you have access to the tree of life. Love is the key. Once you gain union with the Spirit of God (like the sperm and egg), you give birth to the tree of life above in the Heavenly realm. This is the true reality where God resides in love.

All of life is birth, development and rebirth. You can never die, you can only choose to regress in life. Progression can only come by overcoming the world (water). You overcome through faith, hope and love.

God is good.


reply to post by Tephra

What do you have to say for all those who pray to a different god..? Isn't your god going to send them to hell for that?

All atheists believe there is no god by definition. Therefore all atheists believe that he is neither good nor evil, they believe he is nonexistent period.. only religious folks bring the supposed traits of a make believe being into an argument of reason. about its existence.
the god is not good argument is more anti religious than atheistic.
Atheists are not anti god they are anti delusion.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


of course this is possible, how is it different to someone asking; say, somebody's opinion of darth vader's character in the star wars movies, or harry potter etc? there's enough in the bible to get an idea of god's character, if anything NOT believing allows for a more impartial view on the subject.

i do not believe in the god from the bible, but i would not want to be on his side even if he was real; i'm really not cool with the stuff already mentioned in this thread and most of the old testament, too much sadistic power tripping for my liking; i'm doing just fine by myself and especially don't need the ambiguous threat of hell hanging over me to be a good person.