Show me where in my post I stated that criminals should not be prosecuted. One thing that perhaps bothers me more than sheer idiocy is wilful dishonesty, and the attempts of people like you to put words in my mouth. And no, there are massive differences between our judiciary system and this sort of "justice" that believers like you hold to be the province of this mythological deity. Courts work on a peer basis. People are judged by people and held against realistic human standards. Secondly, a legal system is part of the larger social contract that allows for human communities to survive and prosper, and they're essentially an adaptation to our biological evolution as social animals, just like our ethical sense. They are rigid enough to be consistent and flexible enough to allow for societal changes that prevent cultural stagnation.

Your mistake is anthropomorphising the natural world, something that doesn't make any sense. The natural world is the mix of biological entities interacting with their relative geographical and social environments. The essence of ethical codes is that they are neither entirely absolute nor entirely subjective, but flexible enough to allow the survival and flourishing of complex communities in changing environmental circumstances. Given this fact, claiming that a deity is required in order to objectively justify a given ethical code only begs the question of whether an absolutely objective ethical code would be feasible, not to mention useful in any way. Not that a deity could provide an objective ethical source even if one were desirable, anyway. Any attempt at proving ethics to be absolutely objective will result in intellectual humiliation.

In order to consider a metaphysical argument relevant, one has to accept the premise that any such thing as the metaphysical actually exists. No such evidence to support such a premise exists - unless you can provide any. Can you? - thereby rendering any metaphysical argument essentially of no consequence. I know people like you, who routinely reject reality, seem to find some sort of refuge in the speculative and irrelevant discipline of philosophy, but that doesn't make it worthy of respect. Nothing personal, mate.

"God is what He is by definition"

Wrong. You have arbitrarily adopted one definition among the countless that have been historically proposed. You cannot build an axiom that way. Your definition of deity is not universal - certainly not universally agreed upon - and that renders your arguments nothing but a hypothetical.

The rest of your post is idle babbling deserving no attention.

Only someone with little to no knowledge of lexicology - or, more broadly, linguistics - would argue a point based on a lemma's definition.

"Which one is right?"

Right? You're assuming that there is an ultimate societal ideal that could be achieved. No, societies can only be described on a continuum. The more you manage to maximise well-being for the highest possible number of people, the better the societal paradigm.

Your attempts at rationalising Biblical atrocities is both amusing and sad. Predicating an entire ethical system on the assumption that a deity can self-righteously perpetuate acts that the same ethical system defines as immoral is just schizophrenic. Definitely not a stable foundation for an ethical system.

Why do we bother to debate this argument? Because you creationists keep on proposing it. It's a very tedious exercise and I'd very much avoid it, but we can't let this kind of idiocy go unchallenged. Is torturing children wrong? Yes. Is it because your god said so? Of course not. That would be an absurd foundation for an ethical system, as we've already established. No, it is wrong because it reduces children's well-being without any societal gain.

No one was killed in the name of atheism in the 20th century or ever in history. Plenty of people, however, were killed by world views with universal aspirations. All-encompassing religious and political ideologies are really no different. Your deity is no different than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or any other dictator in history. Equally petty and equally detached from reality.

I've already addressed all of these "objections" in my previous comments. Don't make me repeat myself.

"You fail to distinguish b/t those things which were social relating to Jewish society/culture at the tim and their religious system (and the purpose behind those religious commands), and those commandments which were part of the moral character of God."

In a paradigm predicated on the existence of objective moral values, there is no place for ethical tenets that are culture or time specific. You are single-handedly destroying your own already precarious world view.

"They "rules" change only when you worship a god created in the image of man (as in secular humanism)."

Yet you've just admitted to the existence of culture-specific ethics, the essence of relativism. You're shooting yourself in the foot.

Notice the wording of my objection to the notion of objectivity: "That is one ridiculous definition of objective as it applies to morality." Factual objectivity exists, but morality will always interact with elements that are subjective and inherent to the human experience. Such is the fundamental nature of behaviour. There isn't and there can't be any such thing as an established ethical code unaffected by personal feelings, interpretations or prejudice. Indeed, all of the great ethical revolutions in human history have been a function and an affirmation of personal feelings and interpretations. That doesn't mean factual knowledge cannot selectively support certain personal stances and interpretations. That's precisely why absolute relativism is just as absurd as absolute universalism. Neither view does the complexity of reality any justice.

Bottom line, I'm not re-defining anything. Your inability to grasp that is your problem, not mine.

""utilitarian" -- assumes a level of knowledge and understanding that is not possible for humans."

Far from it. It merely means relinquishing the silly illusion that an ethical system can be determined which will be valid in each and every instance for all of eternity. I have just addressed this in my previous comment. Scroll up. Actually, let me just paste it for you and save you the trouble. Omniscience is not required for a utilitarian approach to work, since utilitarianism does not make claims to infallibility. The reliability of utilitarianism derives from the relative consistency over time of human physiology and cognition. As such, it allows for very good approximation of what constitutes well-being now and in the foreseeable future. Unforeseeable consequences don't render utilitarianism a bad approach any more than the death of the man in your example renders reciprocal altruism a bad approach.

Also, you might want to tone down the shameless arrogance, considering how poor your arguments are. I am very familiar with presuppositional apologetics (or, as it should be called, the stance of those too arrogant or too lazy to actually think). You might think that there's any depth to presuppositional reasoning, but the truth is that it is nothing but a self-referential bag of nothingness predicated on the unfounded claim that a specific book holds the key to the only correct understanding of reality. That kind of arrogance deserves nothing but ridicule and contempt.

"If a man is unmarried, he is a bachelor." - that's merely a tautology based on the fact that the definition of bachelor is that of unmarried man. The same logic cannot be applied to "If god exists, objective moral values exist," because we don't have a history of observed deities from which objective moral values derive. The former could be construed as deductive reasoning, but the latter has no logical or empirical foundation. You fail again. Miserably.

Your claim that my definition of "objective" is any more arbitrary than your definition of "god" is simply laughable. The fact that a proposition is used as premise to a logical argument doesn't make that proposition axiomatic. Countless logical arguments have utterly failed precisely because their fundamental premise was baseless, much like yours. Until you can prove your god exists and exists as you describe it, your entire argument is nothing but an exercise in rhetoric - and a poor one at that. You may feel that you don't need to provide a working definition of "god," but that's simply because you know you're unable to provide any definition that could not be easily refuted on logical, ethical or physical grounds. Call me "arbitrary and inconsistent" all you like, pal, you know you've lost this one. Eventually you'll admit it to yourself and you'll retreat into silence. For the sake of your dignity, one can only hope that will happen soon enough.

Altruism makes perfect sense within an evolutionary framework, thank you very much. You're focusing on one instance in which reciprocal altruism failed to pay off for its initiator, not because reciprocal altruism is an inherently flawed mechanism but because of environmental circumstances. Of course you fail to mention how reciprocal altruism is something that each and everyone of us implements many times every day without it resulting in death. Really, rather than suggesting I look up speciesism, a notion I am wholly familiar with, I suggest you look up reciprocal altruism and learn a thing or two about the evolutionary foundations of human behaviour.

Omniscience is not required for a utilitarian approach to work, since utilitarianism does not make claims to infallibility. The reliability of utilitarianism derives from the relative consistency over time of human physiology and cognition. As such, it allows for very good approximation of what constitutes well-being now and in the foreseeable future. Unforeseeable consequences don't render utilitarianism a bad approach any more than the death of the man in your example renders reciprocal altruism a bad approach.

Once more you display a profound lack of any substance in anything you say. Tautologies and circular reasoning are the hallmark of a depressingly poor intellect. I advise you again to retreat from this conversation with what's left of your dignity.