Josephus wrote: "The nature / character of the divine is right attitudes, behaviours and words. It is wisdom and righteousness expressed and lived. Christians should express the Spirit of God through their attitudes, actions and speech. This is the divine human character, Jesus as human expressed that character."

Kim and Trump also express that character. Their brandishing of nuclear weapons and threats to wipe out many lives has been possibly inspired by the example of the Flood where God wiped out almost all life on earth. I really can't see how a benevolent God could do that.

Of course if God is omniscient, benevolent and omnipotent he doesn't need Jesus. Jesus is a pagan God figure with such pagan attributes as virgin birth, resurrection and a ceremonial meal.

The whole business is silly, but silly appeals to many.

AJ,
Your constant semantic ’discussions’ can be exhausting. As usual, when you’ve talked yourself into a corner, your ‘solution’ is to keep talking.

Re Omnibenevolence,

I visited Wikipedia to see if they might have a better way of explaining why the concept is subjective and why a deity that isn’t benevolent in your terms can still be benevolent in its own terms.
See if this helps your understanding (although I suspect you already understand but ain’t gunna admit it)…
“The word "omnibenevolence" may be interpreted to mean perfectly just, all-loving, fully merciful, or any number of other qualities, depending on precisely how "good" is understood. As such, there is little agreement over how an "omnibenevolent" being would behave.” Does that help?

“Is that how it works? Things are which clearly unethical become ethical if examples of more unethical things can be found?”

No Toni, that’s not how it works and that’s not at all what I was saying or arguing. Had you not walked in in the middle of the conversation, you might have seen things like “Its very true that the history of Christianity isn’t perfect. “. See, it pays to go back and pick up the threads of the discussion before pontificating lest you misconstrue things, unless of course you WANT to misconstrue the issues in which case waking in in the middle of a conversation is definitely the way to go.

The point is that all religions have done things and had things done in its name that are abhorrent. But compared to the others Christianity has a good record and when considered along with the creditable things done by it and in its name, a fine record. Those who choose to exhibit a-historic hatred of Christianity won’t agree but then they also don’t understand the history.

For example: “Islam has a tradition of separation of mosque and state. “ Unbelievable..that’s about as incorrect an assertion as it is possible to make. In Islam the law of the state is sharia which is the law of the religion – they aren’t separated, they are the same.

Meanwhile:

Why was it that the only civilisation in the whole history of man to actively work to eliminate slavery was Christian?...crickets
Why was it that the only civilisation in the whole history of man to even conceive of human rights was Christian?...crickets
Why was it that the Industrial Revolution occurred in the Christian West?...crickets

Why did democracy arise in the Christian west?...crickets

Why, if Christianity caused the Dark Ages, was there no Dark Ages in the Christian East?...crickets

Tony, You said, "Perhaps you could now explain for me why the demi-God Heracles from the Greek pantheon is considered divine, even though he has naught to do with Christianity?" If you are ancient Greek and admire the character and actions attributed to Heracles you would consider him god. That is how gods are determined, so if you have a character of a person you seek to emulate then you consider something of his / her character and actions as valuable. For example Muslims see the character and behaviour of Mohamed as living the laws of Allah, so they see the divine nature of a demi-god in him. He being the model of Islam the second largest following in human history.

Dear mhaze, Apparently you didn't look up anything about Sharia before you sounded off. Most Muslim countries have laws 'inspired by European models', and Sharia is aplied mostly to family law. There is not one sharia but many. What I gather is that you have the opinion that your Christian superstition is somehow better than the Muslim superstition. I have the view that all religions are not equal but possibly monotheistic religions are more advanced than polytheistic religions. With its humanoid god and Trinity Christianity is not monotheistic, but Islam is. Actually both are superstitions with bad records, but I think Christianity is a bit worse than Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia "In the modern era, sharia-based criminal laws have been widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models. Judicial procedures and legal education in the Muslim world were likewise brought in line with European practice. While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to sharia, its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws." Personally I think it would be better to have neither superstition.

I know how you 'feel', mhaze.

<<Your constant semantic ’discussions’ can be exhausting.>>

(Quotes: because they're not REALLY discussions, are they?)

Correcting your dishonest versions of events in debates gone by can be exhausting too.

What do you have against semantics, anyway? Semantics are fundamental to productive discussion. For if we cannot agree on definitions, then communication is pointless.

<<As usual, when you’ve talked yourself into a corner ...>>

Really? And just how exactly have I done that, pray tell? As usual, you’re conveniently lacking in the details department.

It seems to me that you’re the only one here who has cornered themselves: you tried to make it look like I was attempting to re-frame the debate, and that it was something I regularly do; then, when that flopped, you had another crack at the ‘fallacy’ line.

As for your quote from Wikipedia:

“The word "omnibenevolence" may be interpreted to mean perfectly just, all-loving, fully merciful, or any number of other qualities, depending on precisely how "good" is understood.”

The three examples there sound fine to me. I don’t see how the end result of any of them should not look at least far better than what we’ve had and what we currently have. Perhaps you have another understanding of ‘good’ in mind in which the end result allows for the level of suffering and evil we've seen throughout history?

“As such, there is little agreement over how an "omnibenevolent" being would behave.”

Sure. How exactly it behaves is ultimately irrelevant, though, because unlimited of anything that could qualify as 'good' should have the same result.

It could be argued that a world with no suffering or evil at all may be absurd or undesirable, but with natural disasters having consumed entire civilisations, mass starvation, diseases that affect infants, worms that need to burrow into our eyes just to survive, genocide, etc., the level suffering in the world is clearly excessive and not what we should expect to see from an omnibenevolent god (however one reasonably defines ‘good’) who is also omnipotent and omniscient.