Quote:
On the subject of the Law being given to make guilty mankind:
"you cannot pretend that what goes for "god" now is what they thought way back then. in fact, the further back we go in any religion, the more anthropomorphic the gods are. Yahweh (actually, El) was more like a super-human in their imaginations than the 21st-century Christian flavour of god. look: there are two options. either He MADE the law up or He is merely a sounding board to tell us what these ultimate unchanging laws are. there can be no third option. the first means that God is arbitrarily deciding right and wrong -- SELF-righteous. the second means that God is not the highest authority and that this "ultimate unchanging morality" transcends even Him.
this is what puts theism and morality between the rock and the hard place."
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That isn't a sound argument at all. He's looking at it all backward. He, as a
created being, is looking at the
Creator. God says "This is the way things are" and he's going to turn to God and say "No, that isn't the way things are"? Nothing God does is arbitrary, because he's God. Everything we know is relative to God.
We are temporary; God is eternal.
We are wicked; God is good.
We are limited; God is infinite.
We are arrogant; God is humble.
Morality is
defined by God, not decided by him. It cannot be arbitrary, because it is based directly off of the only thing that existed before creation.
What he said about sin doesn't make any sense, either. For one thing, he's vastly overestimated our knowledge of the brain and our ability to identify its parts and functions. But he also doesn't seem to know what sin is. It's not like a tumor. It's behavioral. It starts in our most inward parts, the hidden parts that we can't even recognize. It starts in our motivations and in our desires. It is then manifested in our actions. Sin is missing the mark set by a holy God. The mark that is defined by his very being.
This guy sounds really arrogant and obnoxious. God resists the proud. Go find a humbler man and tell him the good news.