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I'm working right now, sorta. Code's compiling. 

Nice summary, but you left out some steps. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

God doesn't give man the ability of rational thought ("no sense of right or wrong" = inability to tell whether you should or shouldn't do something) -
God makes up totally arbitrary rule about what man mustn't do -
God allows man to be talked into breaking said totally arbitrary rule -
God scolds man for not performing the physically impossible act of resisting -
God condemns man to a life of toil and struggle, followed by an eternity of torture -
God takes a little pity and tells man that maybe they can avoid the eternity of tortue if they follow a more complicated set of rules, some of which aren't less arbitrary than the original one -
God goes "alright, fine" and, in a convulted and misunderstandable way, lets people know that they can drop the less arbitrary rules, and that as long as they keep up the deific noncompetition clause, they may avoid the eternal torture part -
Judgment day (yet to happen): Those who were good at doublethink get to live in mindless bliss, those with rational thought are tortured for eternity. The Daily Deity gives YHWH two out of five stars, saying that "while the constant raking over burning coals isn't much fun, at least we got rid of the religious wingnuts".

If you're talking about the emotion commonly known as "love", you're flat-out wrong. It can be observed both in field and in experiment. It might even be measurable, but I don't know enough about neuroscience to give an accurate answer to that question.

And scientific proof is important, because proof (or sufficient evidence) as defined by the scientific method is true beyond a reasonable doubt ("so that it would be perverse not to adopt the position")  and regardless of observer bias.

Just a heads-up: A little over a week left now, no entries so far. I hope you're just taking time to make them truly refined or somesuch. 

What Nacho said. You aren't going to get a society that doesn't condemn murder, theft (and, to a lesser extent, perjury), as such a society would collapse into anarchy almost immediatly. Do you really think everybody was running around rapin' and pillagin' left and right 'til Moses came running down that mountain, waving his arms and screaming "Quick! Guys! Stop murdering, turns out it's BAD!"?

Five through ten are lawful standard fare, apart maybe from the adultery, and one through five are basically just YHWH's non-competition clause. I don't smell much original thought in there.

Did we learn anything from that?

"Giving all authority to one person who says it's for your own good is a bad, bad idea"?

As for the drawing of conclusions, you'd expect your god to be nice to believers. Which, according to statistics, he isn't. Of course, none of this can beat the awesome power of anecdotal "evidence" of god helping things along that could/might/would have happened anyway!

And how come that people even ask "How can a good god do evil things?" Because that implies that they have a different view of what's evil and what isn't. Why would an omnipotent God create beings that have a different moral standard...?

You really need to work on your doublethink, KhrisMUC. There is evil in the world and there's an omnipotent entity which doesn't allow evil to happen. It's all very easy - just don't think about it. Reason is thoughtcrime! Crimestop is doubleplusgood!

If your god tells me to never, ever question and just mindlessly obey him, I'll stick with some alternative, thank you very much. I'm not into TPE. Could you ask Mr. Magical Sky Dictator if the tree of knowledge needs, like, a gardener or something? No need for payment, as long as I get some of those sweet insta-smartening apples, and the heavenly trio keeps the heck away from me with their "love".

Seriously though, you are right in that there is no law saying "this is right" and "this is wrong". There is only what humanity has decided to condemn and what humanity has decided to exalt, and the conclusions drawn from that morale matrix. If you look at what we have achieved, I think we all deserve a pat on the back. (Sure, there have been some... less-than-pleasant occurences, but we more or less fixed them. We've come a long way from the grunting cave people who worshipped sky-grandpas because they had no explanation for thunder.)

No new innuedos in months? WELL WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT.

Was it a night to remember?
Did your Downfall hit her Heed?
Did you go through her Back Door, man?

Heh, seems like the team one stories are catching up to those of team two. Nice to see this is moving along quickly.

Preemptive question, though - "Untitled" makes for a horrible story title, so would it be ok for a person (a bit later on) to change it to something more appropiate?

Furry spriting contest, huh? I don't think we've had one of those yet.

So... does "any" include Max? 

Gentlemen don't wear brown, but it's ok for space whales.

NEXT: Space Whale casual friday

That's like blaming the Wright brothers for the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, NYC. Science is a tool, nothing else. The problem lies within those who wish to kill the infidels.

Science doesn't kill people. People kill people, sometimes abusing science in the process.

Alright, glad to hear we might actually get some entries. 

As for writing about a world you've already written stories about, it's ok as long as it isn't too well known. So unless you're secretly Tolkien or Rowling, it's alright. 

Urgh, last time we did this (first chain stroy, IIRC) we ended up with the detective talking to stuffed animals, who were also persons, and eating human flesh. Better not..

I love your anti-abstract-rational-thought rants, miguel.

And haven't you questioned your absolute certainties until now?

Apply some rational thought to yours. For example, how come prayer healing isn't any more effective than placebos, at best? Makes you wonder, doesn't it...

/EDIT: Also, this:



and

Well, I have a strong dislike for all things Google, but that's probably just the tinfoil hat talking - if there's a majority vote for Satan Google docs, that'll be ok.

As for the rules, I think they're awesome. About the topics, however - how generic are they going to be? Is it going to be something like "one fantasy, one sci-fi, one contemporary", or are there going to be more in-depth restrictions?

GODDIDIT is the shortest answer by a long shot, but also the most inaccurate and least useful one.

The thing is, we can explain a very decent amount of natural phenomenons without assuming the existence of an all-powerful being, and we're making progress in the other areas. So far, there is no evidence that such a being has to exist - so why slap on that unneccesary addition?

\o//

My E-Mail's still dyson.sphere at web dot de.

Also, here's a nice trap for the spambots. (No interesting content there if you're a human, though).

I'm going to pay you twenty US-$ (or rather, their equivalent in €) if you put the latter sentence on a T-Shirt, stand next to a Holocaust memorial, grinning and putting up your thumb, have a picture of the scenery taken and post it on the internet. Go ahead, I dare you.