I'll grant you this though. Let's say everything you have said is correct, INCLUDING that these 42 people are grown men and not children.
Now to the crux of my argument. No matter what God does, it HAS to be viewed as a just and good act. Because you have axiomatically, a priori, as your starting line, declared God omnibenevolent, utterly just, utterly good, INCAPABLE or UNWILLING to do evil. Therefore any act, ANY act is a just one, a good one. For how can it not be? To say otherwise is to say that God is NOT omnibenevolent, that he is NOT just, or good, or incapable of evil.
But where is the evidence for this premise of omnibenevolence? Why is this assumption held? For an atheist, this is looked at from completely the opposite way.
- We look at God's actions, and then reason backward as to what God must be (a tyrant, a dictator, a slave-master).
- When we see God killing 42 people with bears because they insulted/threatened a prophet, we contrast this to our own moral standards today. Such a thing is abhorrent to us. Why?? are our moral standards higher than a supposedly omnibenevolent God?
Yet for the theist, these hideous actions, and the omnibenevolence of God, NEED to be reconciled. That is why it is a 'problem' of evil.
- You reason FROM God is omnibenevolent TO how can these actions be justified/reconciled. As I have hopefully elucidated, this is a complete 180 from how an atheist does it.
So as you see, in order to convince any atheist using your current reasoning, you have to FIRST explain why God's omnibenevolence is already an established fact. I am not just accepting it prima facie like you are. And it is my sincerest belief, that as we examine this, we will find that circular logic has been employed.
Prima facie omnibenevolence quotes.
Quote from Vrael
Not a God, THEE God. God can make anything he wants justified by nature of his Godliness.
Quote from name:Jack[RCDF
The reason tyrannical dictators are bad is because they're human. (Unless they're a good tyrannical dictator, which doesn't really happen). God, on the other hand, is so much better at being a tyrannical dictator because He's perfectly good, perfectly just, etc.
Quote from MillenniumArmy
What is appalling to me however is how you seem to think I'm so desperate as to defend every last one of these heinous acts no matter how terrible they may be. The problem is, they're not. Unless of course you think justice is an terrible thing altogether then I'm not gonna argue with you.
I will make a thread in Lite Discussion called "Problem of Evil" with a copy/paste of this post, so we can sate the people whining about derailing.