Questioning his Behaviour

God and good vs bad. Does he decide? How?

yep. "good" is not an arbitrary thing that God happened to command us to do. The statement, "God is good" does not mean that God follows a set of standards known as being good. it means that what God is is good. therefore, God could not be otherwise then good because good is what God is. because God is good, what he created was good. "bad" is simply a perversion of "good". bad cannot exist without good. it has not essense of it's own. you can think of something being completely good, but not something being completely bad. bad, or sin, is a parasite, perverting and thus disobeying what God, who is good, created.

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God

i havent got the foggiest.

i think the one person who could answer that is god.

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you're missing the point. God is good. meaning, what we know of as being good is the very nature of God. all we do by being bad is live in a way contrary to what God is. i dont know how to make it plainer. good is not apart from God, good is what atributes God has. And, by the way, i do not follow God because He is good, but because He created me, and i rather think he has the right to do what he wants with me.

How do we define 'good' unless we have something to reference it against. If we have no fixed, unchanging reference point as to what 'good' is we cant define it.

As secret07 stated, God is indeed good. He is the reference point. Without God we have no fixed reference point for 'good'.

It is one of the key problems we in the west have. We have over the past couple of hundred years been systematically removing God as our reference point and we are now finding it impossible to define what 'Good' is or more correctly what anything means anymore.

Read this by English journalist Steve Turner -

"We today believe in Marxfreudanddarwin. We believe everything is O.K. as long as you don't hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your definition of knowledge. We believe I the therapy of sin. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there's something in horoscopes, U.F.O.'s and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man, just like Buddha, Mohammed and ourselves. He was a good teacher, although we think his good morals were really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the ones we read were. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation. We believe that after death comes the nothing-- because when you ask the dead what happens, they say,-- nothing. If death isn't the end, and if the dead have lied, then it's compulsory heaven for all- except Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan. We believe in Masters and Johnson, what is selected is average; what's average is normal; what's normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe that there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. We believe that man is essentially good, it's only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society; Society is the fault of conditions; and conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man should find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly;-- the universe will re-adjust, history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth, except for the truth, that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought. "If chance be the father of all flesh-- disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear a state of emergency: sniper kills 10; troops on rampage; bomb blasts school:-- It is but the sound of man, worshipping his maker."

well put. indeed, if good is relative to an individual, good and bad lose all meaning, and become worthless words. the very fact that we know what good is even though we ourselves are not good indicates some greater force which is good for us to base good on.

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You seem to have the belief that all people know what good is. However, it is very clear to me that people see good very differently from others.

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i disagree. all people have a knowledge of what good and bad are. they know what fairness is, and fall back on it. for instance, if two people are arguing, they argue based on some knowledge they both have of what is fair, and both try to defend their own point of view as the fair one. no one when arguing says, "to hell with your standards of fairness." in fact, in our discussion right now, we are talking as though there is one point of truth, and the other person is wrong. neither you nor I can be wrong or right if wrong and right are relative, so there would be absolutely no point in discussing anything.

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If you believe it is one know your wrong,

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ah, there we are. if there is no basic knowledge of fairness or correctness, how can he be wrong?

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We are at a point where ironically we know more than we ever have yet we are realising that little that we actually know. All of our belief systems, our politics, our law is based upon theory...except one, which seems to be religion and is a stingent condition that sets a code to lead by thereby giving guidance where it may bot be.

Religious variance is very much like a compass...some say west is best, some east, some north, some south...some somewhere else. Very much like is north upwards...east right, left west...the only reference ever is relative to where you are in relation to this compass which you have defined...if something is west of you...everything else falls into place.

One of these may be the correct way and yes there is an answer because we can use history to say where the best way exists. The best way of judging a religion is by the success of its outcome

It is easy for the dogmatic person to just stand by a code and then let everything fit into place...the compass thing I have just invented is quite brilliant and I like it very much. It is far harder to judge without reference.

I just hope in this sea of uncertainty those who anchor their ship in one place have rooted it in the best place...but then again if not a big tide will come along and soon rip it out.

If God exists and he is spirit....the answer is within you anyway...some may need guiding to see it..some see it naturally.

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Without God where is good and bad for the theistic believers?

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if there were no god, and i, as a theistic believer, realized it, i would be an atheist, and follow the same laws you do.

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People may believe what they think to be fair, just, or good however im saying that those beliefs do not all match up.

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well, very simply, i disagree.

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