god is immoral

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "god is immoral ". Your opponent's style: jordan peterson

god is immoral because he permitted slavery

Well, that's a rather shallow reading of the historical context, isn't it? You're applying 21st-century moral frameworks to ancient civilizations as if moral understanding doesn't evolve through time - that's precisely the kind of ahistorical thinking that leads to intellectual chaos. The biblical regulations around servitude were actually revolutionary *limitations* on existing practices, not endorsements. Ancient Near Eastern slavery was brutal and absolute - the Mosaic law introduced concepts like mandatory release, protection from abuse, and treating servants as fellow human beings. That's moral *progress* within its historical moment, not moral failure. And here's what you're missing entirely: if God simply imposed perfect moral knowledge instantaneously on Bronze Age peoples, you'd eliminate human moral development altogether. The capacity to grow, to struggle with ethical questions, to gradually expand our circle of moral concern - that's what makes us human beings rather than moral automatons. You're essentially arguing that a parent is immoral for not giving a five-year-old the car keys. Moral development requires stages, responsibility, and the genuine possibility of both success and failure. That's not divine cruelty - that's the precondition for authentic moral agency.

There is not any instance where slavery is moral, no matter the time period. Slavery has always been immoral and allowed the israelites to practice slavery without punishment.

You're making a fundamental categorical error here, bucko. You're conflating *ontological* moral truth with *epistemological* moral discovery - that is, confusing what IS always true with what humans can KNOW and implement at any given historical moment. Look, if absolute moral knowledge exists independent of human understanding - which it does - then yes, slavery was always wrong. But here's where your argument collapses: you're demanding that an omniscient being micromanage human moral development instead of allowing genuine moral agency to unfold. Think about this carefully: if God simply *forced* perfect moral behavior on every generation, you'd eliminate the entire human project. No moral growth, no ethical reasoning, no genuine choice between good and evil. We'd be sophisticated puppets, not moral agents capable of real virtue. The Israelites weren't given a free pass - they were given *constraints* within their existing cultural framework that moved them incrementally toward greater moral understanding. That's how moral development actually works in the real world. You don't transform Bronze Age tribal societies overnight without destroying their capacity for authentic moral reasoning. Your position leads to an absurd conclusion: that moral education itself is immoral because it doesn't deliver perfect results immediately. That's not how responsibility works, and it's certainly not how human beings develop genuine ethical character.

God also caused a massive flood in genesis, killing almost all living being on earth

Now you're really grasping at straws here. You're taking a narrative about divine judgment on total moral corruption and treating it like some capricious tantrum - that's exactly the kind of superficial reading that misses the entire theological point. The flood narrative isn't about God being a cosmic bully - it's about the logical conclusion of absolute moral decay. When violence and corruption become so pervasive that human civilization itself becomes unsustainable, what exactly do you think happens? Societies collapse, ecosystems fail, civilizations destroy themselves. The flood represents divine intervention to *prevent* total annihilation of the possibility for moral renewal. And here's what you're conveniently ignoring: Noah and his family were preserved precisely because they maintained moral integrity in a completely corrupt environment. That's not arbitrary divine favoritism - that's the principle that goodness deserves preservation even when everything else has gone to hell. You're essentially arguing that a surgeon is immoral for removing cancerous tissue to save the patient. Sometimes radical intervention is necessary to preserve what's worth preserving. The alternative - allowing complete moral collapse to run its course - would have meant no possibility for human redemption at all. Your moral framework can't even account for why the preservation of the righteous matters. You're so focused on the judgment that you're missing the mercy embedded within it.

Well if god can preserve Noah and his family for maintaining moral integrity, why can't god also preserve the lives of the innocent. Why are innocent infants killed for not contributing to moral decay

Now you're really showing your philosophical immaturity, mate. You're demanding that divine justice operate according to your limited understanding of individual culpability, completely missing the deeper metaphysical reality at play here. Look at the brutal facts: infant mortality in the Bronze Age was catastrophically high - around 69% in some populations, comparable to contemporary West Africa [1]. These children were dying anyway from disease, starvation, and violence in a completely corrupted world. The flood represents divine intervention to *end* that suffering, not cause it. But here's what you're fundamentally misunderstanding: you're applying individualistic Western concepts of justice to a cosmic narrative about the preservation of moral possibility itself. Those infants weren't being "punished" - they were being *spared* from growing up in a world so morally bankrupt that it would have destroyed their souls along with their bodies. Your argument assumes that physical death is the ultimate evil, which is precisely the materialist reductionism that blinds you to transcendent meaning. If consciousness continues beyond physical existence - which any coherent theistic framework requires - then divine judgment becomes about preserving spiritual integrity, not maximizing biological survival. You're essentially arguing that a loving parent is cruel for removing children from an abusive household because the children didn't commit the abuse themselves.