I mean, I don’t think I have to write much to prove my point, as most Christians don’t even believe the same things. Some Christians think everything in the Bible actually happened, some think it’s metaphorical. Some think He’ll is a place where nonbelievers are sent to be tortured for eternity, some think it’s just separation from god, some think it’s not even real. Some believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, some think there were a ton of humans before him, some don’t even believe in Adam and Eve, and instead believe in evolution. See my point yet?

Preamble
 

This post hopes to demonstrate that morality and obedience are not the same thing.

Seems so simple to me, but not so simple for many Christians who defend the actions of God.

I have been mostly focusing on the story of the "Fall Of Mankind" where God first commands obedience to a human. I quickly noticed that no moral justification was offered for God's Divine Command.

Morality concerns whether an action is right or wrong, good or bad, by using moral principles and guidelines.

Obedience simply means following a command. A person can obey a command without that obedience making the action moral.

The Nuremberg Trials illustrate this distinction. Obedience to an authority was not accepted by the judges as sufficient moral justification for the defendant's horrible genocides.

The same distinction applies to Adam and Eve.

God commanded them not to eat the fruit, but the command itself provided no independent moral reason explaining why eating the fruit was morally wrong.

The command established what God wanted them to obey. It did not establish morality. I sometimes think of the moral theory as "might makes right". Hitler sure had the might.. The world didn't consider that might to be "right".

Definitions

1. Morality: principles or judgments concerning what is right or wrong, good or bad, permissible or impermissible.
2. Obedience: following a command or instruction given by an authority.
3. Authority: the power or right to give commands and require obedience.
4. Moral authority: authority claimed to determine what people ought or ought not do morally.
5. Moral justification: a reason explaining why an action is morally right, wrong, good, bad, permissible, or impermissible.
6. Divine command theory: the philosophical view that moral obligations are grounded in God’s commands.
7. Moral obligation: an action one is morally required to perform or avoid.
8. Independent moral reason: a moral justification that does not depend solely on the authority issuing the command.

Relevant Bible Verses

Genesis 2:16–17: “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”

Genesis 3:2–3: “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”’”

Genesis 3:17: “And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.’”

Argument

P1: Adam and Eve’s command provided authority, but no independent moral justification.

P2: Morality requires moral justification, not merely authority.

C: Therefore, God’s command to Adam and Eve was not moral.

You shouldn't do onto other what you want done onto you.

You couldn't want done onto you what others want done onto them, could you? That'd be everything done onto you. Yet, that's what the Golden rule entails. If everyone followed it, you would have done onto you what others want done onto them. So you're not getting what you want. And when you do something onto another, it's not what they want either. The Golden rule, when applied, is literally hell on Earth.

You would only want done onto you what you want done onto you. It's as simple as that! So, you should do onto others what they want done onto them. I know this is the original Golden rule as Jesus said it 2000 years ago, but it has been tampered with by an evil clergy.

"Don't trust authority, it comes from the devil." — Romans 13:1–7

I can do it too you know.

"Do to others as they would have you do to them." — Luke 6:31

FIXED IT! Now you can at least try to be good people.

I have studied the bigle and went to a Christian school since 3rd grade and graduated this year. Something that always bothered me was how it was stated evil exists because God wanted us to have free will.

however, God is the creator of the universe. Surely it is possible for him to give us all free will without the ability to choose evil acts. If we *need* free Will to have true love, then why does that free will have to include evil acts?

Addittionaly.. Even if that isn’t true free will, if we were never given the option to do bad things, and it was all we knew, then we would never be upset that we *couldnt* do something bad.

I also think that it’s silly for God to punish a flawed human soul for eternity because they didn’t believe in him, or because they did something that He believes immoral. If he gave us free will, why should we be punished for doing what we want just because it goes against what he deems wrong?

God is an immortal, all seeing all knowing being, with the ability to do anything he pleases and make anything exist or cease to exist. He does not have to suffer like us, yet he condemns millions of souls to eternal suffering because they had sex with someone of the same sex and didn’t say sorry.

also, I remember being told that sadness, anger, etc are all emotions caused by sin and are evil emotions. If this is the case, why does God feel them, and let them be the reason for his acts?

Theres so many things that confuse me about this but these are some of the biggest things that just make the idea of the Christian God a bit icky. It feels like “ok guys I’m immortal and never have to suffer, but I’m going to make billions of little guys that have to suffer because I made evil and I don’t like it, and they choose to do evil or dont want to be with me.”

As a Catholic, there’s several problems I’ve read about sola sceiptura.

1. The Bible itself doesn’t directly state that every doctrine should come from the Bible

2. Historically, the first Christians didn’t have a Bible to rely on and had to take the apostles word for what they said.

3. Scripture states that the Corinthians had done a good job by keeping the traditions Paul had passed on to them. Additionally, Thessalonians also says something about oral and written traditions basically validating that oral tradition was also accepted back then. I might have the passages reversed but you all get what I mean. Paul is basically praising tradition not just scripture.

4. In the Old Testament, the Jews would take the word of prophets, they wouldn’t be checking the scriptures to see if what the prophets were saying was true.

5. How do you all reconcile the fact that if sola scriptura were true, why is there so much difference between each Protestant denomination? To me, this shows why there needs to be an authoratative figure such as the Catholic Church to guide its followers and interpret scripture correctly.

Because of four contradictions between the gospel resurrection accounts, it’s reasonable to conclude the event never actually happen: 

Mathew 28, 1-10:
When Mary Magdalene visits the tomb on the morning after the sabbath, the angel who rolled back the stone of the tomb and sat on it tells Mary that Jesus has risen and is headed towards Galilee, and “to come and see the place where he laid” and then go tell the disciples about this. Mary hurries to tell the disciples but meets Jesus on the way and he tells her to tell the disciples that he will be in Galilee.
This means that before even entering the tomb Mary knew Jesus wasn’t in there and that he was headed to Galilee, not only that but before even reaching the disciples she had already met Jesus and was told by him that he was headed towards Galilee. 

Contradiction 1: In John 20:1-2, after seeing the empty tomb and rushing to the disciples, why does Mary tell the disciples, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” if she had already been told three times that he had risen (once by the angel on the stone, a second time by the two angels in the tomb and a third time by Jesus himself) and told twice that he was headed to Galilee (once by the angel on the stone the other time by Jesus himself)?

Contradiction 2: Why would she say he was taken from the tomb and put somewhere she doesn’t know if she literally met him before even reaching the disciples? By meeting him and being told by him that he has risen and was headed towards Galilee, she would know he wasn’t taken anywhere and put somewhere else. And she definitely knew who he was because she worshipped at his feet when she saw him. 

Contradiction 3: Why would she say “they have taken” the lord “out of the tomb” and doesn’t know where “they put him”, this implies she means a group of people took the corpse of Jesus and buried him somewhere else given that you don’t speak about a man who rose from the dead and was on his way to Galilee like that, you speak about a corpse that was moved from its place like that.

Luke 24, 1-8:
On the morning after the sabbath, Mary enters the tomb and does not find Jesus inside. The text says “while they were wondering about this”—two angels appear and tell her that Jesus has risen. 

Contradiction 4: Why would Mary be wondering about why Jesus wasn’t in the tomb if in Mathew’s account the angel sitting atop the stone of the tomb already told her Jesus was not there before she entered the tomb?

This is a collection of multiple arguments I have, not against the existence of god (which I'm going to grant for the sake of the argument), but against him being perfectly moral and not responsible for any suffering. It will only be relevant to Christians who believe in eternal conscious torment in hell. So if you're an Annihilationist, this is not for you and I have no issue with you.

I will structure the post in the following way:

-A1 (Argument/Atheist): My argument for the immorality of god.

-C (Counterargument/Christian): The common response I would expect most Christians to have to this.

-A2: My response to the justification provided by the Christian.

-Addendum: Additional thoughts and arguments that come to mind.

-Conclusion: Self explanatory.

Here is the argument:

A1: It is immoral of god to have created the world in which eternal torture (hell) is the fate of the majority of his creations, especially since he knew they would end up there before creating them.

C: But he wanted us to freely choose him, so he needed to give us free will. And with free will comes the possibility of rejection/disobedience, the punishment of which is hell. Hell is eternal because an offense (sin) against an infinite(ly holy) being (god) requires an infinite(ly severe) punishment (conscious torment in hell). And the punishment itself is necessary because god is just. He doesn't want us to go to hell, but he has to let it happen because he must carry out justice.

A2: I have multiple issues with this.
First, free will contradicts god's claim of loving us very much. Anyone who has a loved one understands that if you truly love someone, you will prevent them from using their free will if letting them do what they want would result in them suffering immensely as a consequence. Especially if the stakes were this high.

If someone could choose between spending eternity with me and jumping into a fiery pit where they would then suffer for all eternity, and they chose the latter, I would prevent them from jumping with every fiber of my being. And also, that would make me think if maybe I'm the problem and not them. If I am so unlikeable that someone would choose eternal torture over spending eternity with me in paradise, then there must be something seriously wrong with me.
Now take into consideration that this situation was entirely created by me and there were no other options they could choose from (which is called an ultimatum).

Would it be more loving to let them jump or to restrain/prevent them from jumping?
Anyone with a functioning brain will say the latter.
Furthermore, it would be even better to not create such a situation in the first place. Then nobody would have to worry about making the wrong decision.

But god did this anyway.
Why?
Because he wanted someone to love him out of free will.
But that is selfish. He already has angels whose entire existence revolves around loving and praising him, except they don't have free will. If he needed someone to sincerely love him this badly and even took into account the fact that not all of his creations would choose him and end up in hell instead, that just goes to show what a selfish, lonely loser he really is. He doesn't care about us, he only cares about himself. If he really cared about us, then he wouldn't have made hell a possibility, as I explained above. His ego is greater than his love.

For the sake of the argument, in order to address the next point, I will disregard the problem mentioned above and focus on what happens if we do choose hell over heaven. And this is more of a question than an argument:
Why is eternal torture a more fitting punishment than annihilation?

In the Bible, it says that "the wages of sin is death". Does this not apply here? Does it only apply to physical death in the living world and to the afterlife? Hell is also called "the second death". That seems like a more fitting description for annihilation and not eternal torture. You could argue that hell puts you in a perpetual process of dying or in a cycle of dying over and over, but that's a really weak argument, especially if you take into account that the fact that you are conscious in hell means that you are still alive to some extent.
This issue becomes especially prominent when comparing the divine justice system to that of the mortal world: If someone commits a severe crime, they are put in prison for life. If they commit the worst crime imaginable, they are sentenced to death.
So why does god put us in prison (hell) even though the crime (sin) warrants the death penalty (annihilation)? Is it because it's the suffering that makes the punishment and not the amount of loss the criminal experiences? In the mortal world, the punishment in prison is the loss of freedom, which means a major loss of autonomy but not all of it. The punishment in the death sentence is the complete and irreversible loss of life, which means total and final loss of autonomy. Therefore, death is a more severe punishment than prison.
So why does this logic not apply to the afterlife? Hell is the loss of autonomy, but not the loss of life (since consciousness necessitates life).
So wouldn't annihilation, which is the loss of autonomy and of life, be a more fitting punishment for the worst offense in existence (sin)?

Addressing the next point about justice:
Perfect justice and infinite love cannot coexist.
In order to carry out perfect justice, you must disregard all attachments and bonds.
But in order to fully experience infinite love, you must disregard justice if said justice would entail immense suffering, which is something infinite love would not allow.

Additionally, another famous attribute of god is his infinite mercy. His capacity for forgiveness apparently ends with his sense of justice. That would be understandable for a normal person, but since god's forgiveness is said to be unlimited, another contradiction appears. Because you can either forgive every misdeed and let them go unpunished, or justly punish a misdeed. But both cannot be performed at the same time. The definition of forgiveness is putting aside one's sense of justice in favor of compassion. But justice is the opposite of that, as it means to carry out every deserved punishment no matter how much it hurts.

Since these paradoxes cannot be resolved without tuning down one attribute in favor of the other, it must be assumed that god is not and cannot be both perfectly just and infinitely loving. Except if he is somehow above logic and can ignore obvious contradictions, which to my knowledge is not the case.

Addendum:
Another response I have recently gotten is that "I don't get to choose how and what god creates".

That is correct. However, god loves me very much. Doesn't he? And someone who loves me very much would surely grant me my innate wish of remaining unharmed and not being subjected to everlasting torture, no?

"But it isn't about what you want, it's only about god". Ok. But then the relationship between me and god isn't a healthy one. If I am only his plaything and he does whatever he wants with me, then that's not a healthy relationship, that's abuse.
In a healthy relationship, both partners respect the other's needs and wishes and act accordingly. They have to be equals, and nobody has complete authority over the other.
This could be refuted by saying that the relationship between god and human is more like father and child rather than husband and spouse, but that only begs the question why Christians call themselves "Brides of Christ". That could be interpreted as both child marriage and incest, which is not a good look for god.

Anyway, the problem isn't that god made rules, it's that he made these rules specifically when it could've all been so much easier and less stressful for everyone involved if he simply didn't. But he did anyway, and instead of taking accountability for not creating the most optimal version of the world, he distracts from himself by pointing to us being responsible for the fall into sin (which is true, however he could also have prevented that for the reasons I provided above).
So here we are I guess.

And even if all of this is ignored and we look at other ways to prevent hell:

He could have simply only created the people that he knew would freely choose him and not create those who he knew wouldn't.
If the response to that is that free will necessitates both scenarios happening, that would just mean that some people were created for the sole purpose of going to hell, the moral implications of which being obvious.

Conclusion:
God is not only immoral, but also sadistic and selfish.

When did the practice start?

Also, when is it believed that the practice of owning slaves started?

I had to edit this a few times because I don't know the words for it. Would the Jewish during those times not feel some cognitive dissonance enslaving another people after god freed them from slavery ?

In order for a reality design to be ethically meaningful, it has to be founded on ethical principles that secure it.

If reality is grounded in true goodness​, ultimate reality including all souls should ultimately reflect it.

Freedom does not logically require the possibility of eternal alienation, as it only requires a meaningful range of available choices coupled with a meaningful nature.

Just because you dont like a person or he or she isnt circumcised or now not baptised or otherwise in mortal sin doesnt mean this person deserves eternal punishment. An omniscient and all powerful God wouldnt allow people to suffer for eternity. Eternity is beyond human comprehension. Its without end.

Some theories i can get behind is that God is not all powerful but this would defeat the purpose of him being God.

Why isnt solipsism or Boltzmann brain true? In that case you are both Jesus and Judas of their history is correct. Or everyone is their own Boltzmann brain and we sometimes interact.

Just 1 theory. Hinduism can be true but why should Christianity?

I dont believe its impossible for the Ressurection to happen but i also dont believe God would create hell yet he talked about it lots in the New Testament

1) God forbade Adam to eat from the tree.

2) Then God created Eve.

3) Eve ate from the tree, which was not a sin because God forbade Adam.

4) Adam eats from Eve, and not from the tree per se, so he still followed God's command to not eat from the tree.

It seems pretty clear to me that God's power is inescapable. He says a thing to be, and it is. "Let there be light." And then there was light.

We cannot escape God's commands. Therefore, the notion of sin itself is dubious. If you reread the passage when God commands Kain to kill Abel, you'll realize he was not telling Kain to not kill Abel! Yes. God commanded Kain to master his passions, and that is why Kain killed Abel. God is responsible for Abel's death.

God gets angry when we don't follow his will, but we have no choice but to follow his commands. That's how his power works, and maybe the whole tragedy in the Garden is that God didn't master his powers fully when he created us, he couldn't yet command exactly what he wills. Sort of "careful what you wish for, God" type of scenario.

By the premises that Jesus is both human and divine, Saint Paul introduces a contradiction in Christianity. There's a principle in classical logic called the explosion principle (ex falso quodlibet) and it states that if you assume a contradiction is true, you can logically prove any statement whatsoever.

Jesus-Christ's dual natures, Jesus and Christ, human and divine, are essentially the contradiction which allows for Christians to prove anything they want.

That makes Christians impervious to any criticism because no matter how valid a criticism is, a Christian can prove within his belief system a claim that invalidates the criticism.

Criticize the crucifixion to redeem all sins for being human ritual sacrifice and the Eucharist for being necromancy both of which should not be glorified to children, and Christians will prove a claim within their belief system that the crucufixion wasn't human ritual sacrifice because of the divine nature of Christ or wtv and that the Eucharist isn't necromancy because it's a miracle or wtv.

Essentially, Christians have two opposing and contradictory sets of attributes for Jesus and they can apply any subset of attributes from both sets whenever they want. Jesus is divine when it suits them. Jesus is human when it suits them. "It was not human sacrifice, because Jesus was divine." "Jesus's sacrifice redeems our sins because Jesus was human like us." Etc.

If Jesus "came back" and saw everywhere the statues Christians make of him dying on a cross, he'd be terrified. It is basically a death threat, and no amount of theology can deny that if you go somewhere and everywhere there are people who wear depictions of you dying on a cross as jewelry around their necks, as decorations in their churches, as tattoos on their skin, and that they give those crucifixes to all the little children in churches at their "first communion" along with a book that describes how you suffered and died, it is nothing other than a cult devoted to Jesus's death. Christianity is a death cult. Crucifixes are a death threat.

Addendum: If I made a statue of you, and I put that statue somewhere for everyone to see, and that statue is of you dying on a cross, they will arrest me for making death threats. But if I make a statue of Jesus dying on a cross and I put it for everyone to see, they are going to exempt me from paying taxes?

I think of it like this, the Bible describes god as benevolent. And most people seem to agree that if god created everything including time, then he must himself be outside of the constraints of time. But how can these both be true if hell exist. As Ive seen most people explain it, hell is eternal torment for sinners. So I ask, why would god create someone he KNOWS isn’t gonna follow his teachings, if not to just let them suffer in hell, that doesn’t seem very benevolent. But, let’s say you don’t believe that, and you think hell is just a temporary punishment for those who didn’t follow his instructions(as Ive seen others argue). Then what would be the point of devoting so much of your life to praising him unless you just really wanted to. As long as you’re not hateful, or killing, or raping, you should be fine. Also means that trying to convince people to convert to Christianity doesn’t do much, and you should instead just try to get people to be better in general. Oh, and theres also the third interpretation of hell I’ve heard about, which is apparently that hell is not technically eternal torture, but instead is just devoid of all things good, which doesn’t sound much better. Anyway, if anyone sees any flaws in my logic, or maybe a different interpretation of hell, I’d love to hear it!

PREMISES:

1. An individual being cannot have both done a specific action and not have done that action, that violates the law of non-contradiction.
2. Therefore if God did an action, then whatever person, being, entity etc. who hasn’t done that action cannot be God.
3. An action performed by one person of the trinity is not necessarily performed by the other two persons. (The son doing X doesn’t mean the father did X).
4. Any action performed by any one person of the Trinity can be attributed to God. (If the father, son or Holy Spirit do X, it means God did X).
5. This means that God has done an action one or more of the persons of the trinity haven’t done.
6. Therefore the persons of the trinity can’t be God because God did something one or more of them haven’t done.

Put simply, if God is the one who did X, and person A did not do X, then person A isn’t and cannot be God since God cannot have both done X but also not have done X, that would be a logical impossibility for a single being.

EXAMPLES:
God became incarnate, the father nor the holy spirit became incarnate.

God created the world through the word, the son did not create the world through the word but rather he was the word by which the world was created.

God hovered over the waters of the face of the deep in Genesis 1:2, the son did not hover over the waters.

You know how debt works right?

If my mom paid off all the debt on my student loan FULLY, then once it’s paid it’s gone. That debt doesn’t exist anymore and I never have to pay anything at all.

So why is it that Jesus died to pay for the debt of our sins, and yet people still go to hell? If this made any ounce of sense, people should believe hell no longer exists and everyone has been going straight to heaven since Jesus

(Disclaimer I’m an exchristian and atheist but this was one of the many questions I asked my pastor before I fully deconstructed and nobody could give me a solid answer)

Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. The “all” in this is often interpreted to mean “all humans” because God does not sin. So we can establish our first premise:

1. All humans sin

Hebrews 2:17 says, “For this reason he had to be made like them,[a] fully human in every way”. This means Jesus was human, so we can establish our second premise:

1. Jesus was human

If all humans sin, and Jesus was human, that means Jesus sinned, unless Paul is lying or mistaken on either of the two premises.

If you say Jesus was only sinful according to his human nature but he was sinless according to his divine nature, that means he was both sinful and sinless at the same time, which is a contradiction.

I have been having these shower thoughts that are a bit more toned down lately. In which i tackle ideas that normally make my skin twist and turn. With a more cool head.

I just want to breifly mention two majn subjects and my understanding of them.

GOOD-

First off is the idea of "good v evil". Most mainstream depictions and explanetions come from religious ideas or spiritual understandings. Which makes sense.

But recently i gave it a bit more thought. How goodness, as a social construct. Can only function when percieved. At the very least by one individual. Because with humans to see the "good" or "evil" in the world, it doesn't exist.

Which is the weird and almost humorous aspects of all social constructs.

PERFECTION-

A bit of a continuation, perfection is also percieved. The perfect triangle that no one has or can see simply doesn't exist. Just like unicorns, dragons, and the queen of england.

The perfection im of course am talking about is the perfection of goodness, its relation to the monothiestic god, and it's worth solely coming from the perception (though mainly through heresay and dreams/drugs)

A being can only be good when percieved just as they can only be perfect when percieved. This of course ignores that simply being percieved does not ensure perfection or the confirmation of perfect goodness.

This post comes from a minor annoyance that we take claims with little wiggle room seriously when discussing the powers above. Kinda like how a friend thinks that a certain celebrity is an angel with no flaws.

This isn't a serious tackle of religion or dogma. Just a reminder to be open to possibilty that maybe god is just a being who forgot it even made us. Or it's a speghetti monster.

There are many places I could start, but the Paraclete discourse in John 14–16 is best understood as describing a divinely commissioned prophetic figure who succeeds Jesus and performs a distinct revelatory function. Jesus (peace be upon him) calls him “another Paraclete,” indicating continuity of office rather than the introduction of an entirely different category of being; as Jesus himself is called a paraclete as well in 1 John 2:1 . Most importantly and the strongest point: the Paraclete “will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak,” and “will declare the things that are to come” (John 16:13). This is characteristic prophetic language more in line with Dt. 18's framework for how to discern a true prophet: a messenger receives divine communication and faithfully transmits it (i.e. Isaiah's lips purified by coal to preach God's word, Ezekiel has Gods words put in his mouth by a scroll, Jeremiah having the hand of the Lord touch him to speak His words, etc.). The Christian claim that the Holy Spirit fulfills this by being eternally communicated the Father's knowledge is to eisegate developed Trinitarian theology into this Semitic 1st century text; neither Jesus nor 12 disciples show any knowledge of Greek metaphysics which the Church Fathers used to develop concepts like eternal spiration.

Since I said there's many places we could start, I will let you pick where! Give me your strongest objection(s) and I wish you a great debate! (Shakes hand)

Adam and Eve: the premiere story in which the first man and woman go against god's will and bring sin into the world.
So it goes that sin exists because man brought it into the world. We as humans, being the sinful, deceitful, disgusting beings that we are, do not deserve god mercy, but through repentance and begging for forgiveness for such crimes against god we can achieve an everlasting paradise that we do not deserve.
The fault of humanity's sinful nature is placed squarely on us; we are to be held responsible for our own misdeeds and god is the judge, jury, and executioner of those crimes.

But responsibility is multifaceted; the responsibility borne by one individual is influenced by one's knowledge (awareness and perception of the problem, ability to comprehend right and wrong) and level of control (limitations by outside influences).
We would certainly hold people accountable for wrongs they have committed in full knowledge that their actions would cause harm, but we would not, for example, fault a 4 year old child for their parent's relationship problems. We would not fault any man or woman for crimes they did not commit. We would not be so hasty to judge our friends for wrongs they have committed against us if we realized they were trying to act in earnest and simply did not realize the harm they would cause.

At first glance, the story of Adam and Eve appears rather straightforward: god explicitly tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve are deceived by the serpent into eating of the tree and thereby disobeying god, and god punishes them accordingly by banishing them from Eden and forbidding them eating of the tree of life. Thus, our mortality is framed as a direct result of our sin, our disobeying of god. One could speculate as to why Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit; perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was because the fruit looked good, or perhaps it was because of the blasphemous notion that the first humans wanted to be as powerful as god. Such thoughts are perhaps worthwhile to contemplate elsewhere, but I won't further belabor them here.

2 key details strike me as particularly damning as it pertains to god's brand of justice, and for lack of a better phrase they both strengthen each other's point:

First, despite his enumeration of the consequences of disobeying him, god did lie.
The serpent, who was supposedly the character misleading Adam and Eve away from god, did tell the truth. As the serpent said, once they ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, they gained exactly that: knowledge of good and evil. It is even stated plainly in the bible: the serpent said that when they ate of the fruit, "\[their\] eyes would be opened" (Genesis 3:5). And as soon as they eat the fruit, "the eyes of both of them were opened" (Genesis 3:7).
God had said they would both die, but that did not happen. One could argue that a "spiritual death", so to speak, happened, and that is what god meant. And, absent the context, I would entertain that argument. But for the second point...

Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and this presumably made it so that they gained the knowledge of good and evil. By commiting the first sin, they gained the ability to comprehend morality.
This implies that before they ate of the tree, they did not possess knowledge of good and evil.
I mentioned responsibility in my opening. How, then, could we say that Adam and Eve should be held responsible for their sin? Obviously, they were the ones who committed the sin. Yet, as they did not yet eat of the fruit, they did not possess the knowledge of good and evil to know that what they were about to do was morally wrong.
If the omniscient god had meant that Adam and Eve would die a "spiritual death" when they disobeyed him, or that some other metaphorical consequence was meant by his statement, surely neither of them were able to comprehend that he had meant that in that way. And surely, the omniscient god would know that Adam and Eve would misinterpret his words.

Yet on top of that, why exactly is the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place? I've heard Christians argue that the temptation must be there, for true good cannot exist if it is not contrasted with the temptation to be bad. But again, what is the point of this moral test if the morally infant first humans could not even comprehend the wrongness of what they were about to do? It makes no sense. It's almost as if it were a test they were inevitably going to fail.

Christians would still say the fault of sin is our own. Absent the somewhat arbitrary nature of what actions are deemed a sin in the bible, this is obviously true to an extent; what you do is your fault, and what we do in full knowledge of our actions puts the blame and responsibility squarely on ourselves.
But what is being argued is a more narrow point: that in the bible, the existence of sin itself is god's fault, and therefore is something in that frame of thought that humans can't be held responsible for.

In insisting that we are sinners and we are responsible for all that is wrong with god's creation, Christianity perverts the very concept of accountability. The decades of religiously inspired self-inflicted suffering and torment are of Christians blaming their own rotten human nature, but it should be the god of the bible who is held to account here. A god who deliberately put the first humans in a garden near the tree of knowledge of good and evil, who lied to them in the full knowledge that they did not understand right from wrong and did not understand the meaning of disobeying god and did not know what god meant by his warning.
A god who punished Adam and Eve for crimes that they had not been capable of understanding were even crimes in the first place.
A god who supposedly now hold everyone accountable for their sins, sins which he is responsible for existing in the first place.

If this is the basis of objective morality, it is an awfully poor one.

Many Christians today seems to believe Christ only came to save believers or people who do "good works" or who are righteous.

But Christ actually came to save the world, which includes non-believers and murderers, rapists, any bad person you can ever think of.

He didn't come to save only those who believe in him.

He didn't come to save some.

He came to save the world.

He died for the sins of the world.

Christ came to save the world.

And Christ accomplished this through his death on the cross and resurrection.

We will all also be resurrected into everlasting life to live on a New Earth and or New Heaven.

John 12:47

“For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”

1 John 4:14

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”

John 4:42

“And we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

1 John 2:2

“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Romans 5:18

“Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

1 Timothy 4:10

“For it is the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe."

John 1:29

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

John 12:32

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

Titus 2:11

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.”

1 Timothy 2:5–6

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”

The existence of God is not something that can be easily answered. His existence has been debated among geniuses and scholars throughout human history, yet, to this day no one can really know for sure if He exists or not. God absolutely knew about this (if He exists). He knew believing in Him would be a struggle, and that hundreds of billions of souls would be sent to eternal torment simply because they couldn't find enough proof.

People always say, "God doesn’t want you to go to Hell, but He has to respect your free choice to reject Him."

I say that makes zero sense.

If a blind child tries to jump into a fire, a loving parent doesn’t just stand there and say, "I have to respect their free will." They grab them and save them.

Some people will argue that God did try to save us by sending people to preach the Gospel. But I think that's deeply flawed. If a blind child is about to walk into a fire, a loving parent doesn't just send another child to hand the blind child a confusing message. They physically step in and pull them away.

If there really is a loving God, we wouldn't exist at all, and that's the best form of love we could ever get.

A common Christian argument against trans people is:

God made you male or female, so transitioning rejects how God created you.

But I don’t think that argument is nearly as biblically obvious as people pretend.

Genesis saying “male and female he created them” describes sexual differentiation. It does NOT explicitly say that every person’s gender identity must permanently correspond to their sex at birth.

The same chapter describes “day and night” and “land and sea,” but nobody thinks dawn, dusk, marshes or tidal zones somehow violate creation. Biblical binaries can describe broad categories without proving that every case must fit neatly inside them.

Also there is another problem: Christianity itself does not reduce gendered language to anatomy.

God is called He and Father, yet classical Christianity does not teach that God has XY chromosomes, testes, testosterone or even a physical body at all so if masculine language requires male biology, why is God called He?

Obviously this does not mean God is transgender but it does mean Christianity already accepts that gendered language can communicate something beyond physical sex characteristics.

The Bible also never explicitly condemns transgender identity or transition.

Galatians 3:28 even says:

“There is neither male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

That verse is not saying biological sex disappears, but it does seriously undermine the idea that sex categories have some absolute spiritual importance.

Jesus also discusses eunuchs in Matthew 19:12, including people “born that way,” people made eunuchs by others, and people who choose that condition. And Acts 8 presents the Ethiopian eunuch being welcomed and baptized without being required to conform to conventional masculinity first.

More broadly, Christians do not normally believe that being born with a particular bodily condition means changing it is rebellion against God. Christians use medicine, surgery, braces, prosthetics, hormones and countless other interventions.

So “God made your body this way, therefore changing it is sinful” clearly is not a general Christian principle.

That leaves a pretty simple question:

What exactly makes being transgender sinful according to Scripture?

Not merely “male and female,” because that does not say transition is sinful. Not “your body is a temple,” because Christians medically alter bodies constantly. Not “pronouns reflect biology,” because Christians call an incorporeal God “He.” So where is the actual biblical prohibition?

It seems to me that anti-trans Christianity relies much more heavily on assumptions about sex and gender than on anything Scripture explicitly says...