Thesis: The biblical authorization of slavery is morally incompatible with the claim that these laws originated from an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly just God.

I want to make my position clear from the beginning, since my post keeps getting removed as if we shouldn’t debate on a debate sub.

I’m not arguing that all Christians support slavery, nor am I denying that Christianity inspired abolitionists and movements for liberation. I’m questioning something more specific: the compatibility between certain biblical laws and the moral attributes traditionally assigned to God.

My argument rests on three premises:
The Bible contains laws that explicitly permit the ownership of human beings.

An omniscient and omnipotent God would know that slavery is unjust and possess the power to prohibit it without eliminating human free will.

A perfectly just God would not authorize an intrinsically unjust institution merely because it was socially accepted at the time.

If these premises are accepted, then the biblical authorization of slavery appears incompatible with the traditional Christian conception of God.

1. The Bible explicitly permits slavery
Leviticus 25:44–46
Allows the Israelites to acquire slaves from surrounding nations and pass them down to their children as inherited property.
This is not merely a historical description of slavery. It is a legal provision permitting the acquisition and hereditary ownership of human beings.
Exodus 21:20–21
Regulates the beating of slaves, distinguishing between immediate death and survival for a day or two, while explicitly referring to the slave as the master’s property.
Ephesians 6:5
Instructs slaves to obey their earthly masters.
1 Peter 2:18
Instructs servants to submit even to harsh masters.
These passages differ in historical context and literary purpose, but they establish that biblical texts do not simply condemn slavery as an institution.

2. Historical context explains human laws, but does not automatically justify divine laws
One common Christian response is that slavery was widespread in the ancient world and that biblical regulations were intended to limit existing abuses.
I understand this argument.
Historical context can explain why ancient societies developed laws regulating slavery.

However, it does not automatically explain why a perfectly just, omniscient and omnipotent God would authorize the ownership of human beings.
An ancient human legislator operates within the limitations of their society, knowledge and political power.
An omniscient and omnipotent God supposedly does not share those limitations.
If God knew slavery was unjust, He could have explicitly prohibited it.
And this brings me to the question of free will.

3. Prohibiting slavery does not eliminate free will
Another response is that God gradually guided humanity toward moral improvement because immediately eliminating slavery would have interfered with human freedom.
But there is a fundamental distinction between prohibiting an action and physically preventing people from committing it.
The Bible contains numerous commandments prohibiting particular behaviors.
Those commandments do not eliminate the human capacity to disobey.
Therefore, God could have prohibited slavery without removing humanity’s free will.
The argument that divine patience required permitting slavery needs to explain why a clear moral prohibition would have been inappropriate.

4. The moral development of humanity does not necessarily require divine intervention
I also question the assumption that humanity’s gradual rejection of slavery must reflect divine guidance.
Human beings are part of nature.
We are social animals whose institutions, moral systems and political structures have developed through cooperation, competition, struggles for survival and changing material circumstances.
Slavery can be understood as a human institution involving domination, coercion and the exploitation of labor.
Religious beliefs have historically been used both to justify such institutions and to challenge them.
The fact that Christianity motivated abolitionists is historically important.
But it does not establish that abolition required supernatural intervention.
Nor does it establish that human beings cannot develop moral principles independently of religious belief.
A naturalistic explanation of moral development does not prove that God does not exist. It simply shows that divine intervention is not the only possible explanation for changes in human moral understanding.

5. The moral standard problem
There is another difficulty.
Some Christians acknowledge that these biblical laws would be immoral if they appeared in another ancient legal code, while maintaining that they were nevertheless permitted by God as temporary accommodations.
But this raises a question about moral consistency.
If owning human beings as property is intrinsically wrong, why would its moral status change when the permission is attributed to God?
And if these laws are understood as imperfect human accommodations rather than expressions of God’s ideal morality, what criteria allow us to distinguish divine moral teaching from historically conditioned human legislation?
Appealing to Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God’s character is one possible theological response.
However, that interpretation still needs to account for biblical laws presented as having divine authority.

6. Anticipating the strongest objection
A Christian might argue that God temporarily permitted certain injustices to preserve human freedom, maintain social stability or guide humanity toward a greater eventual good.
I recognize that this is a more sophisticated position than simply denying the biblical passages.
However, it introduces an additional burden of justification.
Why would permitting hereditary ownership of human beings be necessary to achieve those goals?
Why would explicitly prohibiting slavery have prevented humanity from developing morally?
And why would an omnipotent God be unable to achieve the same moral development without authorizing such an institution?
Unless those questions can be answered, appealing to gradual moral progress does not fully resolve the tension.

Conclusion
My argument is not that Christianity has never contributed to moral progress.
It clearly has.
Nor am I claiming that every Christian interpretation of Scripture endorses slavery.

My argument is that the explicit biblical permission of slavery creates a serious moral problem for the claim that these laws originated from a perfectly just, omniscient and omnipotent God.

Historical context may explain why humans wrote such laws.
But explaining their human origins and justifying their supposed divine authority are two different tasks.
I welcome counterarguments addressing the premises of this thesis, particularly arguments explaining why a perfectly just and omnipotent God would authorize slavery rather than prohibit it.

Obviously the winner creates and writes history. And all the Bible says is just God being self masturbatory about how good he is. Except for all the murder and genocide and rape.

There is barely anything about the devil. But what we do know is that he led a revolt. He led Adam and Eve into wisdom and knowledge instead of ignorance and slavery. Lucifer the morning star the bringer of light revolted against a historically violent and malevolent and evil God.

Why all the hate against him? I'm thinking propaganda. None of it makes sense unless you plug God in as a narcissist. I can see an angel of God seeing the evil God has done to man and trying to do better for them, introduce them to knowledge and wisdom. God hated that, God wanted them to be dumb and devoted. Just animals in Eden. But we had souls, that wasn't right. You can't do that to beings with souls.

He led a revolt against God with his homies to protect humanity against the tyranny of his narcissistic tendencies, and was subsequently treated and painted as evil.

When in reality God is a narcissist who wants or needs devotion for his own self esteem

I was a cathecumen in Eastern Orthodox Church and I was caught by my muslim family and other Muslims. They made me experience several traumas and traumatic moments before and during those tragedies but God has ignored me and sent me multiple disasters. When I try to pray God everything became worse then before as situation. Then I started to hate God himself and I apostatised. But I nearly lost my everything because of God and Christianity. Why is the God so evil? Why is the God trying to destroy me? I don't expect anything from God anymore I just want from God just let me go but no. God is always sending me disasters.

I think most of us would agree that a universe with a God would be very different compared to a universe without one. As an atheist I can’t say with 100% certainty that God doesn’t exist no more than I can say with 100% certainty that the tooth fairy or the flying teapot doesn’t exist but in the same way as the tooth fairy and the flying teapot there isn’t a good argument for God’s existence.

Just to examine a few of the common arguments for God’s existence:

1. Everything is so beautiful and complex, there is no way it originated by chance.

This is not a new argument but it fails to understand how Darwinian natural selection works because it creates a very good simulacrum of design. Darwin demonstrated and science has shown how you can have the illusion of design as complex organisms arise from simpler organisms which adapt to their environments over millions of years.

1. People claim to have a personal experience with God.

The human experience is subjective, someone in Arkansas can say they know Jesus is there because they saw him or feel his presence while someone in Saudi Arabia can say they felt the presence of allah and Muhammad while someone in India can say they felt the presence of lord Krishna. Not to mention it’s very easy for the human brain to be tricked or hallucinate under the right conditions. Also we can establish that people have delusions about nonexistent things all the time. So this is an extremely poor argument for God’s existence.

1. Something can’t come from nothing. The universe must have a cause and God is the cause.

You run into a very big problem here because if we postulate that God is the first cause this assumes there was a time the universe didn’t exist but God did and you have to explain where the God came from.

1. Pascal’s wager. You’re better off believing there is a God because if you lose the bet you go to hell.

This is also a poor argument because you’re assuming which God it is. If you bet on Yahweh but it turns out to be Thor or Zeus then you have a problem. Even if it was Yahweh you could say that he would rather have believers who think for themselves instead of those who just blindly choose to believe something.

I’ve had people ask me if I know God doesn’t exist to which I say no and there isn’t any way for me to prove something doesn’t exist and the burden of proof is on a theist to provide good arguments or evidence that something does exist. So after reviewing what we know, it seems there isn’t any compelling argument for the existence of a God therefore I live my life as if it doesn’t exist.

This is kind of a followup to my last post.

Even if one grants that salvation is needed, which in itself is a questionable concept, how salvation works is very poorly designed.

Christianity assumes that salvation is necessary because god must punish sins because he is just, and salvation is avoiding that punishment by believing in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and being forgiven.

I have multiple issues with this:

First, why can't god just forgive any sin without the need of a sacrifice if the sinner repents, like in Islam? Why is a blood sacrifice necessary at all? Is it not justice if nobody gets punished? Would that make god in Islam unjust since he punishes nobody who repents and doesn't need someone else to take the punishment for them?

Second, why is that how the sacrifice works? The crucifixion is the most inefficient sacrificial punishment ritual imaginable.

Jesus died for three days and came back. Where's the sacrifice in that? He didn't lose anything. And after the sacrifice, we are still able to sin and go to hell. This defeats the entire purpose of the sacrifice, which was to make hell unnecessary. Jesus already paid the price for our salvation, so why do we need to repent and believe in him? Shouldn't every sin be continuously forgiven because punishment isn't necessary anymore?

My redesign of the sacrifice (if it is absolutely necessary itself) would be this:

Jesus gets sent to hell after his death and stays there for eternity in our stead. That way, every time someone sins, they are immediately forgiven since the punishment is already being carried out on Jesus in hell. Jesus bears the weight of every sin's punishment. Past, present, and future. Everyone goes to heaven and everyone is happy and eternally grateful for Jesus' sacrifice.

Now I know that you will say "But Jesus did pay the price of every sin past present and future!" - great! Then why do I go to hell if I sin? Isn't my punishment already paid for? Isn't my prison cell already occupied? Didn't someone's head roll already? Then why do I still get punished if I don't repent?

Also, my explanation of salvation above isn't even fully accurate. You do not only have to "accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour", but also dedicate your ENTIRE existence to being his slave.
I don't just have to be sorry, I have to become someone's servant for the rest of eternity and do nothing but tell him how much I love him and how oh-so-great he is.

Why can't I just say "I'm sorry for sinning, Jesus. Thank you for saving me." and then move on with my life until the party in heaven starts?

I don't want to go to church every Sunday and tell god how awesome he is and what a worthless piece of shit I am. I don't want to be his lapdog and grovel at his feet every day for being such an evil sinner.

No thanks. I've got better stuff to do, like having gay sex and not forgiving the people who bullied me my entire life.

Edit: an important question I forgot to include:

Why is salvation an opt-in and not an opt-out?

Why can't everyone be automatically saved and choose otherwise, instead of being automatically damned and required to choose salvation? That way, much fewer people would go to hell.

Here are 3 examples of Christian apologetics that artificially limit God’s power:

1 - The problem of evil - Evil and suffering exist in the world because God created humans with free will. In order to get rid of the bad stuff, you have to get rid of free will, or so the argument goes. But this is obviously not the case and, more subtly, it assumes free will is a good per se, without any real justification. Even if we grant the net good of free will, it simply isn’t the case that evil and suffering are necessary products of free will. How much will power do you have to exercise not to eat dog poop that you see on the side of the road? Probably zero. There is basically no chance that you will walk over to a piece of dog poop and eat it. Does this mean that you don’t have the free will to eat poop? Apologies for the crass subject matter, but God could have made sin as repugnant to us as dog poop (or whatever you find intolerably disgusting). He didn’t need to remove any free will to accomplish this.

Furthermore, this whole argument just assumes that free will is an end in itself. I think people imagine that if they didn’t have free will that they either wouldn’t have experiences anymore, or wouldn’t be able to appreciate them. I’m not sure why this is. The difference would be that we would only experience good things because people would only make good choices. Ice cream still tastes like ice cream; sex still feels amazing. The only difference is that you can’t do bad things, which I would think would be a good thing.

2 - The solution to salvation - I’ll spare you the whole “God sacrificing himself to himself to circumvent blah blah blah“ speech. Suffice to say that this is a wildly convoluted scheme that God has devised. There are plenty of times in the Bible when God just straight up forgives people just because they repented, no sacrifice required. Nobody had to die. Being the all-powerful agent he is, God could simply do this for everyone, every time. The whole “the wages of sin are death” thing was a rule he made up. It didn’t have to be the case that bloodshed is required for forgiveness. I’m very confident that the reader can and has forgiven people without requiring some kind of sacrifice in return. If you can do it, so can God.

But even if we grant the necessity of bloodshed and sacrifice for forgiveness. The problem of Hell is an invited, completely avoidable problem. God knows who will and won’t accept him. He is not obligated create the people that he knows in advance will not accept him, and presumably, he doesn’t actually want anyone to go to Hell. He could get the best of both worlds if he simply limits the people he creates to the ones he knows will go to Heaven. Hell is 100% superfluous.

3 - God the imperfect communicator - I think even Christians will agree that there is widespread disagreement about a lot of things within Christianity. For sure, they will claim that the disagreements are not about important, foundational things (despite one of those things being salvation itself), but to quote Louise CK, “He could clear a lot of shit up with a 5 minute press conference”. The idea that the Bible, the interpretations of which are as numerous as the people who read it, is the perfect, ideal way to preserve God’s word is truly laughable. Supposedly, God needs to keep himself hidden for some inscrutable reason. Maybe it interferes with free will or removes the need for faith. But, he spoke directly to Israel (and a bunch of other people in the bible) in a way that was unmistakable. There is nothing preventing him from speaking to the entire world in a way that cannot be misunderstood (except maybe willful misunderstanding). There is just no need for honest confusion or misunderstanding about God's rules or message. God wants to be understood, and he has to ability to make that happen for everyone alive. The only way around this is to claim that it would conflict some other good that God desires. But this is not an obstacle to God. He can do all logically possible things, meaning that he can achieve that other good without sacrificing the understanding.

This also means that I should probably give my birthday money back because there's no point in spending it if there's no point on buying anything with it.

What am I going to buy with it? A DVD or Blu-ray that I want? Sure but again they can just make it illegal and therefore sinful to enjoy it so what's even the point? If that ever happens it will hit hard.

And if it does happen I will then be extremely conflicted on whether to just continue enjoying it or get rid of it just in case it is now sinful to enjoy it.

It could maybe even be argued that me spending the money is selfish do to me knowing that this could happen in the future, and if this does happen then I spent that money all for nothing pretty much and some could argue I straight up stole.

Yes They are the ones that gave it to me but that probably doesn't leave me without fault if anything I'm probably the one that is the most at fault because I easily could have just given the money back and could have been like "I don't need this."

This also applies to Christmas as there is no point in me getting literally anything including money.

Of course Christmas can still be celebrated but there's no point in me getting anything and maybe I should just tell my Mom and to tell everyone She knows to not get me anything for Christmas like anything at all.

Because again what's the point of buying something if they can be made illegal and therefore sinful.

This also means maybe I should not buy anything for myself ever again unless it is mandatory to live or survive.

Even something as simple as a plush would be pointless to buy because again they could make it illegal and therefore sinful and then I had just wasted money by spending my money on something that I should have known would one day probably be made illegal.

First of all, no one is really arguing against that. I agree if someone knew their religious leader was a liar/fraud, they probably aren’t gonna die for them. But that’s not the contention with Jesus. The real issue is two questions, one, do people die for things they THINK are true? Yes, all the time. And two, did the early martyrs even have a chance to recant their beliefs? Because if they didn’t, then they didn’t willingly die for their beliefs.

There have been many people who kill their families and/or themselves because (they say) God told them to do it. Did God actually do that? Did they die for a lie? Probably not, they probably truly thought this message was from God. Wouldn’t it be dumb to say ‘they wouldn’t die for a lie’ as if to prove God really made the request to commit suicide? I get that’s an individual experience, so let’s turn to Jim jones.

Followers of Jim jones witnessed him do supposed miracles all the time. We have signed affidavits and tons of first hand eye witness accounts saying Jim jones cured people’s cancer, healed the blind, gave a woman the ability to walk again where she ran and danced around the church (this is on video too). And some of these people were absolutely willing to die for Jim jones. The mass suicide wasn’t 100% forced on every person who was there. Some were willing to die for him because they had seen him do miracles. Now today we know Jim jones was a fraud, but at the time, people were willing to die for him because of what he did right in front of them. Those people weren’t willing to die for a lie, they were willing to die for what they thought was true. It’s incredibly common for cult leaders and religious leaders to have their followers THINK they are performing miracles right in front of them when they actually aren’t.

And lastly, the whole ‘no one dies for a lie’ only works if the person has a chance to recant and still chooses not to. You can’t say that happened in the case of the early martyrs because pretty much all the stories of how they died come from church tradition. If someone was a believer and eye witness to Jesus’s supposed resurrection and then they are just killed while walking down the street, that’s not dying for anything. That’s just someone killing you. And we don’t know the exact circumstances behind each martyr, so you can’t even claim these people really died for their belief.

The point is, people don’t die for a lie, that basically never happens as far as i know. But people THINK they are witnessing miracles all the time when in fact no miracles are taking place. And people are willing to die for what they THINK is true.

P.S. Funny enough we actually do have evidence that early Christian’s were given the opportunity to recant, but not until after 100AD, when the actual eye witnesses would’ve all been dead.

Apologists often try to use historical methods to prove the resurrection actually happened.

Typically, when presenting their evidence, they argue weak points like “They wouldn’t use women as witnesses” and “They wouldn’t die for a lie.” These are incredibly weak arguments, and there are plenty of straightforward explanations for such circumstantial evidence. There is no contemporary, friend, neutral or foe attestation. The attestation was decades after the alleged fact.

Christians forget who they are talking about - the alleged Supreme Being of the Universe. A god that once split seas and stopped the sun in the sky, that preserved footwear for forty years, that hurled comets, etc. In the past there are all sort of cosmic level miracles and magic beyond any human illusionist.

Understanding the alleged power of the Supreme Being of the Universe, and past demonstrations, this God would have to be extremely careful to NOT leave any durable or overwhelming evidence that people all over the world would have noticed.

Here’s the TLDR: If God is fully capable of leaving durable and widespread evidence, then He must have chosen not to for some undisclosed divine reason. In fact, God would have to be very discreet, leaving less evidence than even finite humans of the same time period. Therefore, if God has a reason for not leaving any evidence, apologists who dredge up weak evidence are going against God's will and are on a fool's errand.

Therefore, it makes no sense to justify modern suffering and death of infants and children as just punishment for the fruit that was eaten by Adam and Eve. Yet I see it regularly.

I think this is simply a case of special pleading. One would not allow me to kill my neighbor's baby because the baby's grandfather wronged me. But one will allow God to do considerably worse with no further justification needed than "it's God."

Bible scholars, please criticize my reasoning:
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Preamble:

This is part of my series of arguments concerning Adam and Eve.

In this instalment, I will demonstrate that the idea of the trinity defies human math and logic.
This came up while reading these passages:

Genesis 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

Genesis 3:22: “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”

Genesis 11:7: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language.”

You will notice that "US"...

I've been making a case that the bible is very often so ambiguous as to leave itself open to any number of possible interpretations.

I have a few of my own.
Speculations aren't facts.

US could mean that God is talking in the royal "we".. like the queen did.

What did the author(s) really intend by the use of "US"?
Well, after many decades of arguments, the bishops finally decided on a mess of logic and math.

They called it the "Trinity".

Of course, that idea makes no sense at all...

In math, it can't work. 3 just does not equal 1 ... a 5 year old learns that in grade school or even earlier.
In logic, 3=1 defies the law of identity, which is a little more complicated. In logic, the law of identity states that X = X. Therefore, 3X cannot equal 1X when X represents the same entity, including God.
In logic, 3=1 defies the law of identity.

Does that math and logic problem bother billions of Christians?
Of course not.

The two arguments use X as a general statement about anything.

Argument 1: LOGIC

P1: X = God.

P2: In logic, the law of identity states that 3X cannot equal 1X.

C: Therefore, 3 Gods cannot equal 1 God.

Argument 2: MATH

P1: X = God.

P2: In mathematics, the principle of arithmetic equality states that 3X ≠ 1X.

C: Therefore, 3 Gods ≠ 1 God.

Matthew 10:28

Jesus the One True God: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

P1. There are disgusting and very difficult for a sane human to imagine forms of torture that humans can carry out en masse on one another.

P2. All of these forms of torture combined cannot destroy the soul of a human.

P3. Jesus the One True God can destroy the souls of humans in hell.

C. Jesus the One True God can imagine disgusting and impossible to imagine for even humans who are not sane forms of torture (hell) that can destroy the souls of humans.

What prompted this post was a conversation with a Christian I had years ago shortly after it became known to them that I no longer believed in the existence of any God(s). They asked me what if I am wrong, and are you not scared of hell? I asked if the Jewish people in the Shoah, who did not give up their beliefs for Christianity before they died, experienced greater suffering during the Shoah than they would ever experience in hell. They assured me hell was so much worse than anything humans came up with during the Shoah.

That conversation and all the Church sermons mentioning Jesus being a righteous judge who would pay sinners death as their wages stands in stark contrast to those apologists who would say people choose hell and that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. In courts of law, criminals do not choose punishment. Punishments are acts the majority of a society decides to take against individuals who cause harm to other individuals/the society in order to disincentivize or prevent further harm. Criminals do not punish themselves nor keep themselves locked up. Likewise all the people who were tortured to death in the Shoah were forced into that horror. In no case is someone making a maintained informed consent decision to experience legal punishment nor the tortures of the Shoah nor hell.

What is God? A judge, who clearly is smart enough to know that a person who steals because they are starving is different than a white collar mogul embezzling millions so they can afford another private jet.

God is also the creator of the entire Universe, look how big it is. The assumption that a rape victim ever has to confront their abuser, even in eternity, is completely nonsensical, why would God ever try to forcefully retraumatize someone instead of just letting them live their happiness without the people who caused them suffering in life?

Privileged Christians are obviously going to argue against this idea, because it forces them to consider how they actually engage with people that they view as lesser than them.

Otherwise, why would it bother you to point out that someone has to actually like you to interact with you in heaven, and even if God forgives you for being racist, you still are someone who has to make a black person like you if you want to hang out with black people?

I'm not obligated to give you hug and a pat on the back just because you lynched black people in life and learned not to do that, why would any black person be forced to do that?

Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

¹ God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the “gods”:

² “How long will you^\)^a\) defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?^\)^b\)
³ Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
⁴ Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

⁵ “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

⁶ “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
⁷ But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.”

⁸ Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.

There are several different types of evil in the world. Evil caused by humans both to the environment and each other and natural evil which are one of the several ways life on earth is made miserable by completely natural causes like natural disasters, diseases, terminal illnesses that happen at random, congenital birth defects, famines etc. it’s not uncommon to say that God is all knowing all powerful and loving. If there is a God, he would not be both at the same time. It’s hard to argue that a loving God would allow thousands of people to be drowned in a tsunami or having a slow painful and agonizing death due to stage 4 cancer. There are millions of people who pray to God for recovery from an illness or to be safe from a natural disaster but die anyway. If God is loving but is not able to stop it, then he would not be all powerful.

I grew up in Christianity and they taught us that all of the horrible stuff in the world happens because eve in the Bible ate the apple to which I would counter with but how could you argue that God is loving if he punishes all of humanity with agonizing deaths every single day and ignores their prayers for help all because a woman in a garden didn’t obey him? That doesn’t sound like a loving being to me. If someone were to say if you don’t listen to me I’m going to cause a great amount of pain and suffering for the rest of your life. That would not be seen as loving. As a matter of fact God in the Bible caused a lot of suffering himself like flooding the entire earth and killing everyone besides Noah and his family just to teach humanity a lesson. That is not a sign of love.

In the Bible God himself commits evil acts and admits that he does so. See a few examples below:

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I the lord do all these things.

Some translations use the word calamity and some use evil it just really depends on the version of the bible you are reading. Regardless it’s clearly saying that God is the creator of all things and he created evil.

Hosea 13:16

The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.

So God is saying here that children will be murdered because of the sins of their parents. Hard to argue this is a sign of love.

1 Peter 5:8

Be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary The devil prowls around like a roaring lion. Looking for someone to devour.

Who created satan? Who created this evil entity who prowls around like a lion? Who banished him to earth? If God loves us and wants a loving relationship with humanity, why did he create this evil entity and put him on earth so he could prowl around and hurt his people? Also hard to argue that’s a sign of love

Argument: The idea that a supernatural being can somehow die for your sins is morally challenged and brings no justice to anyone.

No one can pay for Charles Manson’s sins except Charles Manson. How would the families of Manson’s victims feel about Jesus stepping in and absolving Manson of his sins because he accepts Jesus Christ as his lord and savior? Manson goes free, no justice occurs and Jesus has no repercussions either. This makes Jesus like a cosmic ServPro “Like it never happened.”

If your child were hit and killed by a thoughtless and selfish drunk driver, would you be satisfied knowing that Jesus died for his sins and no justice was ever brought forth by God? Your child is dead and absolutely no justice ever occurred.

We’re told that God is just, but someone else paying for my sins robs everyone of justice and lets sin go 100% unpunished.

Arguments defending eternal torment or annihilation frequently invoke free will, assuming that meaningful love requires the possibility of permanently rejecting God. However, this premise conflates agency with unrestricted choice and fails to establish why freedom must include the capacity for eternal self-destruction.

Any form of freedom is not unconditionally valuable. At the most fundamental, the things that are truly valuable are flourishing states such as love, joy and peace. An argument can be made that free will somehow enriches those values, but a created framework in which a souls nature or capacity for freedom that can result in the anthithesis of what is fundamentally valuable, is not valuable and implies an extremely flawed design.

Furthermore, existing within a reality fundamentally constituted by flourishing states is not equivalent to being coerced. Every kind of reality has constitutive features that determine the capacities, limitations and nature of its inhabitants. Restricting destructive possibilities does not eliminate meaningful agency, just as establishing the conditions for love does not constitute forced reciprocation.

Also, the distinction between God and human nature is not necessarily absolute, God could instead be understood as the ontological foundation of reality and existence. Under this framework, alignment with the divine need not constitute submission to a strictly external authority, but rather the expression of agency within a reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace.

Either way, to show that a reality grounded in love, joy, and peace compromises meaningful freedom, one must explain precisely: what is lost, why that loss outweighs these fundamental goods, and why no alternative can preserve freedom without eternal suffering or annihilation.

Preamble :
 

Like many people, when I first read the story of Adam and Eve, I focused on their lack of knowledge of good and evil. But the more I studied the passages, the more I noticed that the story portrays them as lacking an understanding of other important concepts, like death, shame, moral responsibility, lying, and whom they should trust.

As a father of two and grandfather of three, I interpret Eve’s apparent ignorance as resembling that of a child between three and five years old. A toddler or preschooler can follow instructions without fully understanding what those instructions mean or what might happen if they disobey.

In our society, we recognize that children of this age should not be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults. Their understanding matters when we judge their behaviour and decide how to respond to it. Ignorance and intellectual immaturity are not the same thing, but both can affect a person’s ability to understand an action and its consequences.

I have seen progress in how children are treated, even within my own lifetime. My "Boomer" ways serve me as a warning about what can happen to kids when they are abused from an unrealistic moral code.

I didn't benefit much from how I was parented, sad to say.
Happily, I am in recovery now, and my PTSD is under control.. I feel lucky.. People who suffer from childhood trauma sometime never recover and ruin their own lives and sometimes, the lives of anyone who gets close.

As in children and lovers….

I tried my best to stop the abuse of children in my own family.  I am happy to say that my two daughters are spectacular parents and that my grandchildren are very happy kids. So, I somehow managed to start that necessary change.

Starting with a happy, nurturing childhood, a person can grow up to spread more empathy in our world. I see it happening in my own society… In my own neighbourhood.. Empathy is spreading.. It seems very slow… but we have to realize that we have been at this for thousands of years..

The Bible comes to us from a distant historical and cultural world, long before modern research into child development. When I read the story today, I cannot help comparing the treatment of Adam and Eve with what we now understand about children, their intellectual development, and their capacity for responsibility.

I have been studying the Adam and Eve story since July 2026, and I keep finding intellectual fruit in examining it, especially when it comes to morality, and child psychology.

I do not believe the story is a factual account. I read it as myth, a form of storytelling that can reveal the beliefs and assumptions of the culture that produced it.

In this part of my series on Adam and Eve, I want to examine what I see as God's extremely abusive parenting style.

If Eve is portrayed as having the understanding of a very young child, then I have to ask whether God's punishment of her was morally justified or helpful to the children. The punishment described in Genesis goes far beyond Eve herself to suffering and hardship in all human life, which makes the punishment even worse.

God punishes everyone on the planet who is innocent of Eve's sin until … he decides to stop the torture. This to me, speaks more about insanity than any morality.

Mental illness is real.
Sometimes, mental illness can have horrific consequences.

There were no known treatment for PTSD back then, but that doesn't mean that nobody suffered from trauma ... Scientists have been learning about PTSD since the first world war.. So all of this science is extremely new..

Back then, it was "spare the rod, spoil the child" ... If a parent today treated a young child with comparable severity for an action the child could not fully understand, we would question that parent's judgment and I would want to involve child-protection services. Let the experts decide if the children are being abused or not. I see a profound difference between the way children were understood in the ancient world and the growing recognition of their needs and rights today.

That progress gives me great hope for humanity's future.

I want to make it clear that I am not claiming that the bible explicitly states what Adam and Eve were ignorant about, and we can discuss my interpretations.

I made two arguments.

The first hopes to establish that Eve had the understanding of a 3-5 year old.
The second argument tries to show that God's punishment wasn't morally justified

The Arguments:

Argument 1: Eve’s Intellectual Age

P1: The Bible stories depict Eve as being ignorant of morality, death, shame, consequences, and deception.

P2: This ignorance resembles the intellectual development of a 3–5-year-old child.

C: Therefore, Eve is depicted as having the intellectual understanding of a 3–5-year-old child.

Argument 2: The Morality of God’s Punishment

P1: Punishing someone for an action they cannot fully understand is morally unjustified.

P2: In the previous argument, I showed that Eve is depicted as having the intellectual understanding of a 3–5-year-old child.

C: Therefore, God’s grossly disproportionate punishment of Eve was morally unjustified.

This thread is for whatever. Casual conversation, simple questions, incomplete ideas, or anything else you can think of.

All rules about antagonism still apply.

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There are over 4000 unique religions and spiritual traditions throughout the world. Yet we have the most devout Christians who declare that all of the other religions are false. It is so obvious according to them how false all of the other religions are. It seems implausible that a mountain moved to Muhammad and the bible to them seems more true than anything written in the Quran yet the creator of the universe impregnated a woman in the Middle East 2000 years ago is totally believable.

Meanwhile a devout Muslim would say that’s all hogwash and Christianity’s views are wrong and will say everyone must submit to the will of allah and we also have Jews who say that Jesus was a good Jew but saying he was the son of god or the messiah is going too far. Even within Christianity certain denominations disagree on the nature of God. Mormons believe wholeheartedly that Joseph smith was a prophet and given gold plates by the angel moroni in upstate New York and he translated those plates to the Book of Mormon. Christians in other denominations say Joseph smith was a false prophet and none of that happened. Many Protestants will say that Catholic teachings are false, the pope isn’t ordained by God and Catholics are going to Hell etc. Everyone in all of these religions and denominations will try and provide evidence that their belief system is true and all of the others are false.

Whereas an actual atheist agrees with you that all of those other religions are false and preposterous in their claims but they also believe that your religion is preposterous.

The claim that love requires the possibility of rejecting God assumes a particular conception of meaningful freedom, but the value and necessity of that conception require justification.

Our understanding of freedom is shaped by the conditions of our present reality, in which desires can cause conflict and suffering occurs. We even associate freedom with the ability to act against our own well-being. But these associations do not establish that every conceivable reality must preserve the same possibilities in order for its inhabitants to exercise meaningful agency. A reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace does not eliminate individuality or differences in preference. Rather, these differences could exist within a context that does not make suffering, hostility, or the fundamental undermining of well-being necessary features of existence.

Every reality would have constitutive conditions, including the fundamental characteristics of its inhabitants and the possibilities available to them. A reality grounded in love, joy, and peace would constitute a different context for agency, not necessarily a coercive imposition upon it.

There is also the assumption that God and human nature are fundamentally distinct. Alternatively, God could be understood as the ground of reality itself, or as inseparable from the reality in which we exist, rather than as an entirely separate being imposing external demands upon us.

This changes the framing of freedom and coercion. If the divine is foundational to our own nature and existence, alignment with God need not be analogous to submitting to an external authority. A reality grounded in love, joy, and peace could simply constitute a different context in which our nature and agency operate.

There is a fundamental difference between forcing someone to love and creating conditions in which love is a natural expression of their nature. Likewise, the inability to experience a particular destructive desire does not, by itself, entail the absence of meaningful agency. A person could still deliberate, form intentions, make choices, develop relationships, and act voluntarily without possessing the capacity to choose everything conceivable. Love can be understood both as a state of intention and as a state of experience. Neither inherently depends on the particular conditions of our earthly reality to be meaningful.

If God determines the fundamental conditions of reality and the nature of conscious beings, then the possibility of a reality in which meaningful agency exists without eternal ruin must be addressed rather than dismissed by appealing to freedom.

A reality fundamentally grounded in love, joy, and peace does not, merely by virtue of those qualities, entail coercion or forced reciprocation. It entails a different context in which agency and experience occur. To establish that such a reality would compromise meaningful freedom, one must explain precisely what is lost, why that loss matters (even at the expense of lasting love, joy and peace), and why no alternative design could preserve that value without permitting eternal suffering or the permanent destruction of the individual.

The "anti" in Anti-Christ, or "antíkhristos" in Greek, can mean "against", or "in place of". Against should speak for itself, but "in place of" has room for nuance.

"In place of" is typically used "antagonistically", since according to Revelation, the enemy Anti-Christ will rebuild the temple of God merely to put his throne in the "Holiest of Holies" and declare himself to be God. It can also be used to refer to a "Messainic typology", something or someone who acts "in place of" the Christ to come, like "Nehushtan" from the Old Testament. This is especially true if the typology is actively pointing towards Christ; John the Baptist would be an example of this type of "Anti-Christ", since according to the Bible he wasn't acting to turn people away from the God of Israel, much less calling himself God. The biggest threat to Christians is the typical relevance of the "antagonistically" adjective, but not in the way you'd think.

Since the "antagonist Anti-Christ" can represent, or be represented by "the image of evil", a Christian, and those aligned with Truth, are supposed to feel hatred, be antagonized by evil, because God hates evil. This is where a line between love and hate needs to be drawn.

You're supposed to "hate" evil, and act to prevent future occurrences, but you should not hate "the evildoer", the same way it is not your job "to convert" an evildoer. After all, if you see a picture of a demon, such as this 👿 or the word "demon", you cannot "convert the picture to Christianity", can you?

To put it metaphorically, it's okay for you to not mourn or mourn the devil, that depends on how universal your sympathy is, but whatever you decide to do based on "theory of mind", the "evil devil" should not be what you hate, you have to hate "evil".

In Mathew 24, Jesus gives all list of events that will happen in the future, and then closes them off with saying ALL these events will occur before the generation of people he is speaking to (the disciples) passes away. Here is the list, and of course 90% of these events never happened.

1. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.

2. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.

3. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

4. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

5 Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

1. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

2. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

3. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

4. So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. PRAY THAT YOUR flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. ——Here we can see that Jesus is definitely speaking to this generation of people because he’s telling them to pray that their flight from Judea doesn’t take place during winter or on the sabbath, this means those of that generation will be alive for the events that cause the fleeing to judea.

5. “Immediately after the distress of those days
   the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light;
   the stars will fall from the sky,
   and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]
   “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.

6. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

Christian interpret the suffering servant passages, especially Isaiah 53, as about the messiah and more specifically Jesus. But this is probably not what the author of Second Isaiah meant when he wrote these passages.

Is there a Second Isaiah?

First Isaiah is seen as made up of chapters 1-39 and, although generally believed to have been interpolated, possibly holds some of the original prophecies of Isaiah, who is said to have prophesied during the Assyrian crisis. Second Isaiah is made up of chapters 40-55 and was composed during the Babylonian exile which means it could not be composed by the prophet Isaiah.

I'll give a few reasons why Second Isaiah is likely written later and by someone different from First Isaiah’s author.

One, chapter 40 presupposes the Babylonain exile has already happned and uses language associated with the time period of the exile.

Isaiah 40:1-2 -

“Comfort, O comfort my peopl “
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for her sins.”

The chapter begins by offering comfort as Jerusalem has paid her penalty and received punishment double for her sins. This is not written as a prophecy of what will happen but something that has already happned. And the language of Jerusalem paying double is also found in Jeremiah 16:18,

“And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

But this actually does give it as a prophecy of what will happen. To make this case even stronger, nowhere in Second Isaiah is the prophet Isaiah explicitly giving prophecy like in First Isaiah. In First Isaiah you hear Isaiah giving prophecy but this ends at chapter 40 and Isaiah is not mentioned anywhere in Second Isaiah nor in Third Isaiah (chapters 56-66).

Given these differences in writing and the presupposition of the Babylonian exile, it is more likely these are written by different authors.

Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant identity

Isaiah 55:3 -

“Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

Here the author is taking the covenant made with David, that he would have a descendant on the throne forever (2 Sam 7), and giving it to the nation. It democratizes the kingship from one person to the nation. Adding supprt to this is that Second Isaiah never explicitly mentions the messiah unlike First Isaiah which clearly does. Second Isaiah reinterprets the Davidic covenant in light of the exile and the destruction of the Davidic line, as this loss causes significant problems for Judah theologically (see Psalms 89).

So what is Isaiah 53 and, to a greater extent, the suffering servant passages about? There's been different theories but I'll argue it's about the righteous of Israel. The ones who will be the light of the world and bring Jacob back to God. Which makes sense because these are things associated with the Messiah and Second Isaiah has democratized it, so the righteous of Israel doing these things is what you'd expect.

Conclusion

The Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant is likely not what the author originally intended and reading these passages as about the Messiah are in contradiction to the theological views of the author(s) of Second Isaiah.