Given the Bible, God is Morally Repugnant and Undeserving of Praise.

My opponent has done a very good job of rehashing his argument again. Out of the whole Bible, he was able to find 10 versus, only two of which were actually God talking, and try to use them to explain his argument. As my opponent has asked me to address the "Jesus issue" I will do so. This was not an open endorsement to promote civil unrest, though I will agree about familial destruction to a point. As far as civil unrest, I assume my opponent says this because of the reference to the sword. What does a sword do? A sword cuts. What is this passage really about? This passage is about cutting ties to family that will not believe in the name of Jesus. This passage is a reference to Micah 7. In this particular passage, Micah is in despair for there are no longer any godly people in the land. Because of the lack of God, no one has any morality. So, Micah says to not even trust your family (mine is the short, condensed version here is the actual passage . http://www.biblegateway.com...;) So, Jesus is saying that if your family will not trust in me as well, it is better to cut ties with them, because they will lead you back to destruction. So, is this familial destruction? Maybe, but the road away from Jesus is familial destruction too, this way at least you (the believer) are safe. Getting on with it In my first rebuttal, I simply explained why he was wrong using his own examples, now, I will explain why God is deserving of praise. Then, in my next argument, I will explain why it is actually impossible for God to be morally repugnant. As my opponent has pointed out, God can control nature. Not control in the way you and I can control our pet dog, or shift around dirt to build something, but actual complete domination. Using the bears as an example, God put took animals that were probably not going to eat children that day, and honored Elijah's request to eat the kids. We're not talking moral repugnance, but deserving of praise, which showing control in that way is praiseworthy. Also praiseworthy, with domination of nature and natural order, God stopped the sun (Joshua 10:15). Now, we know that God did not stop the sun, as the sun doesn't rotate, but stopped the Earth. Had God stopped the moon, we could just say eclipse, or had God blotted out the sun, again eclipse. But, given the Bible, God stopped the sun, ie the earths rotation, long enough for Joshua to win a battle over the host of nations against little Israel. So, using natural law, if the earth were to stop spinning, then we'd have a problem. If nothing else, we'd all go flying off the Earth. So, if God stopped the sun, then he continued to let gravity take effect even though the reason for gravity would have ended. That is extreme control over not only nature but natural law. Then, again assuming the Bible is true, there's the whole created the universe and everything in it thing. That is fairly important and deserving of praise. Then, I would also assume that Jesus, part of the Trinity, coming down to Earth to be the sacrifice for our sins that we can spend eternity in paradise with God instead of in Hell for all eternity. These all are assuming the Bible is true. I don't believe you can believe the Bible is true without understanding that God is at least deserving of praise. Now, I don't believe my opponent believes the Bible is true. So, my opponent sees the Bible as a collection of fairy tales concocted during the early parts of the common era using bits and pieces of several religions to deify a fake person (although this fake person's thousands of followers actually didn't make him a deity until the 500s). And that although most of the scientific pioneers, including Galileo, Newton, and Einstein have all believed in this fairy-tale, most intelligent people in the modern time can see through this fantastical web of lies and clearly see and accept a not at all confusing mixture of luck, happenstance, and unconfirmed theory to see how the universe was made. As I said in the comments section. People believe things. Either my opponent or another reader asserted they only believe that which can be measured, but all they can believe in is the measurement itself. We can measure gravity, see it's effects, even understand things than generate it, but what made gravity? What wrote the law (though a true scientist will tell you gravity is actually a theory) of gravity? We know now that the sun is not pulled across the sky by a chariot. But what made the sun? Where did the one infinitely small point of matter suddenly expand? What keeps the protons from shooting away from each other in a nucleus? Every "answer" is not actually the answer, but a measurement of the question. So, my answer is as simple as it is complex, God. God does all these things. God keeps the universe from exploding apart. Keeps giving man ideas to continue in their quest of knowledge of him (originally, most scientists were in religious orders, not just Christian, but Hindu, Muslim, etc). That is why God is certainly, if nothing else, deserving of our praise. I regret that it has taken this long to get back to the debate, but it was Thanksgiving holiday, by the way, you can thank God for that as well. People running from England to find religious tolerance for either their Deist, protestant other than Church of England, or Catholic beliefs.