Not at all. Your only frame of reference for goodness is God's Will. Unfortnately, none of you can agree on what is God's Will. For instance: in the Old Testament, God committed acts that we would generally consider Not Good. Wiping out whole communities, man, woman, and child, to give Canaan to the Israelites? Mass murder, even of children, in order to take their land, becomes "Good" if it was God's Will. Tsunamis and earthquakes and floods (oh, especially floods.) GOOD if it's God's will.
But then you get the theists arguing. Is cancer God's will? Some say yes. Some say no. Some say the Devil causes it, therefore it is bad. Others say "God takes us home" when he wants to, so it's wrong to even seek medical intervention. And of course, a whole range of thought in between. This is far shakier ground to stand on than anything I use to judge.
Really, if theism were so clear and comforting, you wouldn't have religious wars at all, especially between members of the same religion. I mean, people have been beheaded over transubstantiation. So theists may "know" what is right, but if one theist "knows" one thing and another theist "knows" another, you better hope neither of them has a weapon.
Does God (as God) ever have the right to kill people?
If not, by what rule do YOU pronounce this, since on the atheist paradigm, all morality is subjective; and further, the universe as a whole (via Thermodynamics) is trending toward the ultimate eternal extinction of all life whatsoever...
Cheers!
of
Canaanites."
****
Sodom and Gomorra were also populated by Canaanite peoples. The residents of the land had warning 600 years before the "ban" was executed that God would judge such depravity. But instead of heeding this warning, they went on into depravity.
We can be sure that if the Canaanite peoples had repented, God would have spared them.
The same God who waited through ten devastating plagues, who waited centuries for the Canaanites to repent, and who time and time again waited and warned the Israelites over a period of 1,000 years is still the same, loving, merciful God today.
As an atheist you can’t even speak to any acts that a God you don’t beleive in as being “Good or Not Good”! You have no frame of reference to argue that point other than your own belief system. You can’t even argue that hypocrisy is “good or evil” for in your own view there is no Deus Ex Machina that will judge the “good or evil” of it!
So try again... and consider the Psalmist who said..”The fool hath said in his heart there is no God!” What made him so high and mighty special that he could state such a belief about fools...was it something he ate? Perhaps a little ergot poisoning got into his “milk, bread, and honey”? An evil Flying Spaghetti monster tickled the “God spot” in his right temple? I mean the gall of such a person, calling people fools who didn’t believe in God...why he was just an ignorant 10th century tribal king who just happened to write some of the most foundational poetry, psalms and prophecy forming much of the basis of western judeo thought and political government; and whose genetic and monarchical influence changed the course of history to the point that even the future Romans were in awe of the culture. Yell all you want to about “slaughters and pestilences” of the OT God but be intellectually honest and admit that your concepts that these things might be evil or good come from this same Judeo Christian mindset!
There was something at work in these ancient cruel and crude “Hapiru” that eventually colored the very governmental constitution that grants us our FREEDOMS(even to be atheist if you must be so)!
“where there is smoke...a fire is burning somewhere...but try to find the fire that burns without smoke or consumption”. Moses encounter with God via the Burning Bush, a fire without consumption of the object that was burning, was the most sophisticated concept ever to be found in all existing stories of Gods and legends. The only other time we see such an image again was during Pentecost 50 days after passover and some days after the ascension of Christ...when we find the apostles with flames around their heads but not being consumed by them. This was the work God had begun with Abraham and thru the Hebrews...being finished thru Mary and the only Holy Spirit conceived Son of God, Jesus Christ. The very Logos of God made flesh...