The God of the Bible is mostly evil.

My opponent has responded to my argument concerning the fact that God did not set up the Ten Commandments as rules for his own conduct, and simply asserts that it is a strawman. He specifically writes: //"Strawman. The law specifically says you got to be 18 to smoke. There is a difference, because, according to the law, the 31 year old man is elegable to smoke. "// I completely agree here with my opponent that in order to determine who the law was directed at we should look at the specific wording of it. Let's look at the specific wording of God's rule against killing. --Thou shalt not kill. -- Now if we follow the story then God gave this rule to Moses on a tablet with nine other rules. The main subject in most of them being "thou" or some variation of it. In all of the commandments, and in this instance we will refer to the simpler Anglican Reformed version of the Ten Commandments, God commands the Israelites to either do something(Remember the Sabbath, honor one's parents) or refrain from doing something(Do not kill, do not steal). In all cases they are in the form of commandments for the subject to follow. If I say "You should not kill. " I am necessarily commanding you not to kill. It is a very different situation then if I were to say "It is wrong to kill. " Nowhere is this phrase or any like it to be found in OT law. God is not telling the Israelites that killing is wrong but that it i not their place to decide when to end a life. //""What is the difference between God ordering rape, murder and slavery and a human doing those things? " This argument FAILS MISERABLLY! "// The difference is not in the specific act, it is in who is doing it. We must take this under consideration in the wording of the specific rule. God commanded human beings not to kill. He did not say that killing was wrong. There is a difference and my opponent seems not to understand. Again, I will let voters decide. My opponent still tries to argue that we should only accept the incredibly vague definition which my opponent put forth even though it completely contradicts the resolution which my opponent provided. The resolution states that the God "of the Bible" is evil. This necessarily means the Christian and Jewish god. Here is the definition that my opponent provides. //"God: The name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions(and other belief systems) who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism. "// However, if we are to agree on this definition alone, as my opponent wishes, then he cannot argue that God is evil based on any actions or attributes not specifically in the definition which he provided. This means that he cannot use any actions described in the Bible because the God described in the Bible is necessarily omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Either my opponent uses his definition and his definition alone and he cannot use any actions described in the Bible (which completely destroys his own case) or we may follow the obvious conclusion that one would come to based on the resolution itself and God can necessarily never be morally wrong or "mostly evil". My opponent then attempts to further his case by answering my question as to why these things(rape, murder, slavery) are evil when my opponent never took a stand on a meta-ethical position. He writes: //"Slavery, rape and murder can be proven evil. I'm sorry. Are you saying that rape, murder and slavery is not evil? "// My opponent claims that these actions can be proven evil, yet he neglects to show why. And I am not saying that they are not evil, I am saying that my opponent has not shown why they are. Also, my opponent responds to my moral agnosticism in the face of insufficient evidence with an argument from ignorance fallacy. He writes: //"I think everyone is going to agree rape is wrong. Period. No ifs ands or bust. "// Here my opponent asserts that these actions are wrong only because most people agree with that idea. I wish that he would have known that appealing to the majority is neither a logical nor a rational reason for one to believe that these actions are wrong. Now before we end this debate I will analyze my own opponent's final appeal and then write my own. My opponent writes: //"It is clear my opponent was not arguing. He was throwing everything except the kitchen sink against the idea that anyone can establish an objective morality. "// I believe that my opponent should lose conduct points for this. It is an incredible insult to my methods of debating. But now on to the other part of his sentence. He claims that I am trying tirelessly to persuade voters that a person can't simply create objective morality based on their own subjective , personal, and probably flawed opinions. I will not deny that I am against this idea. //"But that isn't the topic of the debate. The topic is whether the God of the Bible is evil. If he can't agree on what "evil" is, then he has no platform from which to argue"// I somewhat agree with my opponent here. I agree that we need to agree on what constitutes being evil. This is why I have been so questioning of my opponent's sources of morality. So far in this debate he has to resorted to three sources for what constitutes being evil. I will list them below and show why they have problems in their conclusions or premises. Society, Majority Here my opponent argued that most people would agree that things like rape, murder and slavery are wrong and he is right in this aspect. But this is of course a subjectivist position to hold, all it means is that most people agree so it's right. By my opponent's logic, Hitler was right to do what he did simply because a lot of people supported him. God My opponent also argued that God is evil because he broke his own rules. I however showed this to be fallacious reasoning in that it did not take into account who the rules were meant for. God's laws in the OT are in the form of commands. He is commanding the Israelites not to do certain things. He never says that they are wrong in themselves only that it is not a human being's place to commit those actions. My opponent's opinion My opponent also tried to argue that because he personally felt that the actions commited by God were wrong, that this makes it objectively wrong. However if the criteria for something being right or wrong is simply someone's opinion then the very fact that I hold a differing opinion cancels out whatever objectivity came out of my opponent's opinion. I have clearly shown all of my opponent's reasons for anything being evil are either insufficient and subjective or helpful to my own case. My opponent provides two ways that I can proceed. I will show why I have done both of these. //"argue that there are no suchs thing as good or evil actions"// Voters may assume either this, because my opponent has not brought much of an argument for objective morality, or diving command theory. If voters accept this, as I have provided rigid argumentation for it, then my opponent loses this debate by default. //"hat he thinks a God that condones slavery, mass murder, genocide, and killing unobservant Jews is "good. " If the latter, he has to justify how anyone could defend these as "good" actions. "// I have also argued this in the event that we accept objective morality. This however goes further to my opponent's definition of God and whether or not we should accept God as being necessarily omni-benevolent. I repeatedly argued that if we are to agree to debate the "God of the Bible" then we must accept all of the qualities that this entails, including omni-benevolence. My opponent also claims that I did not touch on the Bible verses he presented. I admit to this. But only because if we accept my opponent's vague definition of God he cannot use the Bible verses seeing as it does not describe the god of the Bible, but only the name given to the deities of monotheistic religions.