Quote:Then I certainly want to trot out this response and see what you think: if there is no such thing as good or evil, then all God's policies and actions the New Atheist posse are so fond of demonizing cannot truly be wrong.
I agree!
Those policies and actions are not objectively wrong, they just contradict the qualities that your God is supposed to have.Quote:I find that either objective morals must exist or objective condemnations of God are entirely baseless. I can also argue along the following lines: the conclusion "there is no God" following from "evil exists" suggests that evil does not exist, which is an irreconcilable self-contradiction unless there is a means by which objective evil can exist without God.
Even if I don't think an objective morality is possible, I can still assume that it does for sake of argument. An implied piece of the argument you outlined is missing. It should be (italics mine): the conclusion "there is no God" follows from "what is called evil exists when it should not if God exists" (note that I do not necessarily agree with this atheistic argument, but I do disagree with what you have said)
Quote:God would force humans to choose Him and live in His presence for eternity. James, Markus, tensorpudding, et al, is that something you would want God to do?
Whether that's what I want him to do or not, that's what he IS doing. God gives the dichotomy of "come with me or suffer". If I hold a knife to your throat and demand you give me $200 or I'll kill you, is it your choice to give me the $200? Is that a "choice" that a benevolent God would offer to others? (also, the "good" choice in the God dichotomy is loving him...what kind of twisted being forces someone to love him by having the alternative be an infinite torture?)
(I don't really understand what you said before the section I quoted, so you might have your response in there somewhere, but I feel obligated to say that God created the rules of the universe, as well as the rules by which people get judged by, etc., so any response involving, say, sin is rebutted by how God could have just not created sin, God could have created sin differently, etc.)