Forums → WEPR → The Religion Debate Thread

Lord have mercy. I just wanted to clear this up real fast. Haha that was just a very unfortunate typo.

This is the first time I hear Eden called 'the garden of evil'. Where does this come from?

God does love us and protect us.

How so?

Plus, He has already given us the greatest gift without asking for anything but your acceptance in return; He gave His life.

Yes Jesus died to save us. His human side at least. He was 100% human and 100% god though. Only the part of him that could die, did. Not exactly the greatest gift if you are, well, an omnipotent and omniscient being that created everything. Besides it is stated clearly that during the final judgment, God will separate people, cast out the sinners and keep the good people at his side, based on what they did for their fellow men during their Earthly lives, their beliefs, their love for Him, etc.

Well the book was written by several authors from many walks of life. Kings, prophets, and even witnesses of Jesus's resurrection!

Science can no longer consider the Bible an adequate historical source. At best, they agree that Jesus was a real person, but probably just a charismatic teacher, definitely not God. So historical evidence of most things in the Bible does not exist, since the Bible itself that details it is not adequate

The fruit of the tree did not grant immortality.

The fruit of the Tree of Life did. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge did not. God cast Adam and Eve out of Heaven AFTER they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in order NOT to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life.

He did not need to inform them of the consequences because God wanted them to trust Him. He wanted them to obey Him no matter what. He did not expect them to.

Why didn't he need to? he wanted them to obey him but ALSO wanted them to make their own choice. He could make them obey if He didn't want them to have a choice. Otherwise, if He wanted them to have a choice, He could inform them of the consequences of their choice. Wanting them to obey Him does not nullify their right to make a well-informed decision. The basic problem with that story is that they were asked to prove themselves against something they had no knowledge of. And they were naive curious, in other words "human" enough to fail. God made them that human. Angels have a choice too but they are perfect beings, devoid of human weaknesses and sins. Lucifer chose to deny God but he was not tricked. He was arrogant supposedly, but he knew the consequences of his own actions. Humans did not and could not.

Shoot I got time. It's important for me to clear this up.
In response to HahiHa:

Also, I would disagree with lozerfac3's statement. Assuming God has created the universe and everything within it, and we knew about it, we would have to acknowledge his power; however, he made us not as robots but as individuals with free will, as you say later on. Because of that, he has absolutely no right to "demand absolute and perfect obedience", as you say he does. Naturally, he still does, and that is good, because he is God. Frightening I say.

Now Doombreed:

"God does love us and protect us."
How so?

Yes Jesus died to save us. His human side at least. He was 100% human and 100% god though. Only the part of him that could die, did. Not exactly the greatest gift if you are, well, an omnipotent and omniscient being that created everything. Besides it is stated clearly that during the final judgment, God will separate people, cast out the sinners and keep the good people at his side, based on what they did for their fellow men during their Earthly lives, their beliefs, their love for Him, etc.

Science can no longer consider the Bible an adequate historical source. At best, they agree that Jesus was a real person, but probably just a charismatic teacher, definitely not God. So historical evidence of most things in the Bible does not exist, since the Bible itself that details it is not adequate

The fruit of the Tree of Life did. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge did not. God cast Adam and Eve out of Heaven AFTER they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in order NOT to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life.

Why didn't he need to? he wanted them to obey him but ALSO wanted them to make their own choice. He could make them obey if He didn't want them to have a choice. Otherwise, if He wanted them to have a choice, He could inform them of the consequences of their choice. Wanting them to obey Him does not nullify their right to make a well-informed decision. The basic problem with that story is that they were asked to prove themselves against something they had no knowledge of. And they were naive curious, in other words "human" enough to fail. God made them that human. Angels have a choice too but they are perfect beings, devoid of human weaknesses and sins. Lucifer chose to deny God but he was not tricked. He was arrogant supposedly, but he knew the consequences of his own actions. Humans did not and could not.

So I want to shift gears a bit, since we seem to have a dialectic wall.

First, I want to thank @KatPryde for her eloquent and well thought-out response to my earlier post. Conferences and teaching got the best of me and I didn't have time to give a response that your post deserves. Since the conversation has long since moved on, I wanted to switch gears a bit. But if you'd like to continue the conversation further, I'm happy to do so on my profile!

So my previous response ended up with the conclusion that I'm glad God doesn't exist. An all-powerful entity that demands worship in spite of being short-sighted and fairly capricious isn't the sort of thing I want to exist. But I want to do a complete 180 here and argue that the Garden of Eden (and, in fact, suffering in general) makes for a world that is better than an Eden-like utopia. This response also ties into the problem of evil, as should be clear in a bit.

Let's compare two possible worlds, world Easy and world Hard. Here are the salient features.
World Easy: This is an Eden-like world. Food is plentiful. There's no disease. In fact, we don't have to really work for anything - everything comes pretty easily.
Word Hard: This is our current world. We must labour for the goods we have. We have to deal with death and disease and there's a fair amount of suffering.

Now, the argument here is that the punishment for eating the fruit was a shift from Easy to Hard. There are a lot of other metaphysical changes (as noted by Kat) that also took place, but let's put that aside. The worry, as it's presented here, is that putting all of humans in Hard was an overreaction for a fairly minor transgression. There's also a worry that the whole Eden thing was just a trap. I want to argue that being in Hard is actually a better state of affairs than a life lived out in Easy.

Prima facie, this is a stupid view. Why would we prefer World Hard to World Easy? The one-word answer here is: value. In particular, the value of achievements. To see what I mean, let's think about a world-class runner winning two very different races. Would she rather win (1) a race against a bunch of 9-year-olds, or win (2) a race against other world-class runners? In both cases, our runner has succeeded because of her abilities, but it's only the latter than is intuitively an achievement with value. And what explains this difference is the tremendous amount of skill needed to win in (2).

In short, the presence of difficulty or of the real possibility of failure adds value to a state of affairs. This sort of value wouldn't be present in World Easy because everything would come easily. The upshot is that our current world is a lot more valuable (read: better or more good) than World Easy. We could also assume that this would be something God was aware of, but have to give mankind a choice about what world we wanted to live in. So rather than viewing Eden as a trap, we could view it as an opportunity to live in a world where achievements abound in our everyday lives.

We could also naively expand on this and consider whether our current technological advances would have even taken place in World Easy. When you have everything you need to survive, you don't need to develop agriculture or animal husbandry. If there's no risk of being attacked for your resourced, you don't need stronger and better weapons. The progression that has led to our current technological state (and what ultimately leads me to being able to type this post) is predicated on the struggle that we find ourselves in.

A few things to note. This is not a best of all possible worlds (BOAPW) argument. I don't like the BOAPW line anyway, though worries about that might be relevant. Also, the fact that you could have a footrace in the garden of Eden misses my general point about the value of achievements and the role that suffering plays in that. We also have the framework for an answer to the problem of evil. There's suffering (read: evil) because this world has more value (is actually better) than a world without suffering.

@lozerfac3

No crime goes unpunished.

Allows me to doubt , Just look at the people in top of the world how they are so Corrupted .. they like to see other suffering and ? Did you saw one of them being punished ? Nop ..
They abuse of people , Making war for earning profit on people who deceased .. with weapons ..

They create the problem and give a "solution" .. ? If it was right they were in jail or something like this , but actually they just enjoy all theirs Vices ? Tell me where is the Judgment ? When you can see nice people starving , living in a miserable way and some bad men Dancing around ?

A thing I dislike with religion it's that they tend to make you just wait for a better world ..
In my opinion , People just need to move on and unite against all bad things , and make the world what they want to Live on ! What's the plan to this life if we just need to die for a better world ?

I believe in God , but for me he's not like what clerical stuff pretends it to be , In my opinion they are just man who want to controls others by using God as a almighty pretext, just see in the past the horrors of thing like inquisition and things like that ? Honestly Did you want to kill someone because he's different ? In my opinion Diversity is our Strenght, If we were all the same world would be boring ! And by the way as a god did you let people who abuse of children and other thing like this be your agent ?

As for God , In my opinion he's just like a Source of Energy , Certainly not a judge who can punish people, assuming we are energy too , Prayers are a way to canalize Energy of a group of people into a goal, sometimes it's used for good things , but as all things it can be diverted in a wrong way ..

In my opinion you don't need to be a religious for being a good person and religions tends to literraly shot down people who are not like them , you can see a lot of example around the world , Inquisition , Crusade , Maybe Terrorism for now ?

The only thing who really matters, as humans we need to cooperate , unite around "good" values and acting for the world we want to live into and finally give the better for ours futurs progeny.

@Moegreche

There's suffering (read: evil) because this world has more value (is actually better) than a world without suffering.

I'm not Sure about suffering as a value .. It can be a way to progress but not the only way,
Progressing too much in Technological way leads to atrocity.. Humans have a predator mind,
they always want to be the best , the richer , they run after power and things like that ...

Take a Look at the advanced technology, We spend most of our time on destructive thing , or protecting stuff , They were useless if we just don't fighting each other for stupids reasons..

So in that case , we suffers and we progress about suffer more and suffer less .. Not really the better thing to do in my opinion .

Another thing who is weird in my opinion is Concurrency .. It's just a way to make money .

If all Ingeneers , and people like that were working together , Actually we will be far better in any possible ways. Why did we need to pay for researching about save life it's like they said us you're only worthy to live if we can make money by treatening you ..

Really I understand less and less people, Just see that world, We see horrible thing happend each day , And it's like we want more the next day because nobody seem to see the reality.

@Last4Skull

Just look at the people in top of the world how they are so Corrupted .. they like to see other suffering and ? Did you saw one of them being punished ? Nop ..
They abuse of people , Making war for earning profit on people who deceased .. with weapons ..

Certainly they will get their due punishment in Hell, unless of course they believe in Christ and accept the gift of eternal life.

As for God , In my opinion he's just like a Source of Energy , Certainly not a judge who can punish people, assuming we are energy too , Prayers are a way to canalize Energy of a group of people into a goal, sometimes it's used for good things , but as all things it can be diverted in a wrong way ..

So I respect your beliefs, but I have to tell you that you are wrong. It clearly states in the Bible who God is. And to those who were wondering how I can't accept any other religion as a means to heaven I would say that Jesus said it Himself that He is way, the truth, and life. No one comes to heaven except through Him.

I also have more responsibilities for now, but I really do wish to respond to @Moegreche. Also I have one more thing to say before I potentially leave this thread for a long time. Which I will do next time. Peace ✌😁

@lozerfac3

And to those who were wondering how I can't accept any other religion as a means to heaven I would say that Jesus said it Himself that He is way, the truth, and life. No one comes to heaven except through Him.

He also said to be wary of impostors and from my point of view the teachings of various churches are far of "love your neighbors as you love yourself".

And in the Bible God designed himself as I am the one who is isn't it ?

So I respect your beliefs, but I have to tell you that you are wrong

Honestly for me no matters what I think about that is the truth or not , it's just my supposition and in reality nobody can really know that , We talk about a book which was written years ago and who can says that it cannot be altered by somes mens during the ages ?

Just beware being under control it's just my advice, Sometimes it's better to make our own point of view instead of simply seeing an "absolu" truth. Besides of that you seem to be a good person , and thanks for replying me.

@lozerfac3

So yes, God is very judgmental, but He is also very loving.

You should trust in Him because:
He is God and He wants you to,
Because God wants you to, He will bless you in ways you wouldn't even imagine
But really, to answer your question, you begin to know God more by reading His Word and meditating on it through prayer.

God does not expect obedience.

If He had made them perfectly obedient, they would be reduced to robots being commanded to say I love you. Like if you made say Siri say she loves you. There is no real love.

That's why God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Evil. To give them a choice to obey or not to obey. Their only command at the time was not to eat of its fruit. They could have done whatever else they wanted.

This time, God gave Lucifer a choice. Lucifer chose not to obey and his own arrogance got him punished. It was Lucifer's fault and it was not a direct result from God.

Plus, He has already given us the greatest gift without asking for anything but your acceptance in return; He gave His life.

Well the book was written by several authors from many walks of life. Kings, prophets, and even witnesses of Jesus's resurrection! I think.

Ahah! Like I said. God does not expect obedience. And He does do all the things He loves. He loves to love us!

If we are talking about rights here, God has every right to do anything because He made everything. Obviously a man has no right to demand perfect obedience from his children if he himself can't even follow his own rules. God can and He has as Jesus. It might be scary, but look on the bright side. He sent Jesus therefore He is merciful.

What would be the greatest gift? That He give you everything that had ever wanted? First thing to know is that God is a just God.

This bodily death serves enough for a replacement for the punishment that was meant for us.

Also, if Jesus was a real person and He was not God, we should be able to find His body.

I hope you understand my Siri analogy. If you make her say she loves you, it's not the same as if a real person actually love you. By making us perfectly obedient, we would be reduced to robots. There would be no love.

Going back to rights, who gives us our rights? God and God alone.

They don't need an informed decision. They just need to obey. This is only a problem because you think they had an obligation to know their consequences.

All this being said, God is merciful [...]

So I respect your beliefs, but I have to tell you that you are wrong. It clearly states in the Bible who God is.

And to those who were wondering how I can't accept any other religion as a means to heaven I would say that Jesus said it Himself that He is way, the truth, and life. No one comes to heaven except through Him.

The one-word answer here is: value. In particular, the value of achievements. To see what I mean, let's think about a world-class runner winning two very different races. Would she rather win (1) a race against a bunch of 9-year-olds, or win (2) a race against other world-class runners? In both cases, our runner has succeeded because of her abilities, but it's only the latter than is intuitively an achievement with value. And what explains this difference is the tremendous amount of skill needed to win in (2).

We could also naively expand on this and consider whether our current technological advances would have even taken place in World Easy. When you have everything you need to survive, you don't need to develop agriculture or animal husbandry. If there's no risk of being attacked for your resourced, you don't need stronger and better weapons. The progression that has led to our current technological state (and what ultimately leads me to being able to type this post) is predicated on the struggle that we find ourselves in.

how about this proposition?
"Religion: Created by the Ancient people to explain the currently unexplainable?"

Back when the first religions were founded, Science was basically nonexistent.
the people knew very little of how the world worked.
so when things such as
Weather
natural disasters
disease
day/night/year cycles
happened in nature, they had no clue as to why it happened.
so they created god to explain everything.
if there was a god who could "control" all of these things, then everything will make sense. if something happens that you dont understand, "God did it".

but now we have science. a lot of things can be explained now.
Weather = moisture + temperature differences. Humans can now predict weather. it is no longer "god's fault if there is a flood, or if someone gets killed by lightning"
natural disasters such as earthquakes/volcanoes = disturbances under the earth's crust. not "god when he is angry with us"
disease = bacteria, viruses ect. not a "curse" from god. Humans can heal all manner of bodily issues now. back then, all the people could do was &quotray to god for healing"
Day/night/year cycles = the way the solar system is arranged and works using physics and gravity. we can explain this using more reliable terms than "a god drags the sun across the sky" "it gets cold in winter because the summer goddess died."

back in ancient times, a lot of things were attributed to gods, but now as science discovers more, less and less seems to be attributed to gods. which is most likely the reason why we went from "everyone being religious" in the dark ages to "a lot of people are atheist" in the modern world.

also, there is the entertainment feature of having gods.
the greeks and romans (as well as other civilizations) used myths about their gods to tell fantastic stories. these stories entertained them when they had nothing else to do.
back then they wrote stories about gods, today we write stories about sci-fi space stuff and utopias, ect.

@FishPreferred

Again, are you kidding? This is the same deity who ...
Drowns all terrestrial life, except for whatever can be fit into one medium-sized cargo ship, because He didn't like what a bunch of other people were doing and/or who was marrying whom.
Slaughters helpless children in their sleep just to make a point.
Orchestrates the extermination of all Canaanites to make room for the Israelites.
Burns His chosen people alive or inflicts deadly diseases upon them, multiple times, for speaking out against Him.

Because He is just in His dealings. Please let us examine this.

Let's look at this critically:
Some mysterious person approaches you in a dark alleyway and claims he can "help you out", but won't explain how. Any time you ask for clarification, he only grins and says "Just trust me.". He says he can make it "worth your while" if you do as he says and "don't ask too many questions". He then gives you some vague and bizarre instructions that seem to be aimed at his own aggrandisement at the expense of yourself and others, insisting that it's "within your interests" to comply, and that he and his "associates" will be "keeping an eye out" to see how well you do. Before you can answer, he slinks away into the shadows. The only sign he was ever there is a manilla folder leaning against the dumpster. In the folder, you find some cryptic documents relating to the task he gave you. Would you trust this person?

No. I would probably not trust that person. I would probably make up an excuse not to talk to him because that's just really creepy and I would run away. So at church today, I learned a very important lesson from the preacher's message. It's basically what I've been saying all this time except there is something that I failed to mention. We all must obey God's commands. If we don't, we die and experience eternal suffering in a place where God is not present. We cannot keep His laws because of our sinful nature. Therefore, we are all doomed. Okay so this is the part that I missed and it's probably not gonna do well with you guys. I'm praying for you though. The preacher made it clear that we are not only incapable of keeping the laws of God, but also incapable of seeking God and coming to Him to salvation. So we are pretty much hopeless, right? Except God does choose His people. Not based on race, merit, or lack of sin. If it were for merit, we would not be able to do anything to satisfy God because no amount of good works can outweigh our bad deeds. Why? Because sin is absolutely unacceptable to Him. So the question is not "Why does God allow suffering on Earth?" but rather "Why doesn't God just wipe us all out?" Well because He wants to show His mercifulness and graciousness. He chooses people by seeking them rather than people seeking Him because we can't seek Him. He does this for His glory. The purpose of our Christian lives is to glorify God and praise God, that means our salvation.

Oversimplification, but okay. So? If that's what He wants He should do that. If He wants fallible creations, He shouldn't punish them horribly for being fallible.

Okay, I should care to explain this. God does not want robots to "worship" Him because there would be no gratitude and there would be no real love. Siri does not really love you when you tell her to say that. You would certainly not feel love just as God would not be truly glorified if He made us His slaves.

Well, no, they really couldn't. That isn't how freedom of choice works.

I meant they could live however they liked as long as they didn't eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Of, of, of, of lol)

Right, so God intentionally made him imperfect too. He gave him free reign in full knowledge of what he was capable of and probably every action he would ever take. He took no action to prevent him from tampering with the humans' judgement. Then He blamed the victims for the inevitable result that could only be brought about by His own will. Nope; not His fault at all.

I believe that God made Him and that Lucifer was imperfect because he is not God. Now, it is not God's fault because Adam and Eve were completely responsible for their actions. They had the choice.

This bodily death serves enough for a replacement for the punishment that was meant for us.

Why? How? In what sense?

I'll get to it.

Of course we should. By the same reasoning that we should be able to find the body of Isaiah. Also the body of Muhammed. And let's not forget Achilles, Cleopatra, Zoroaster, Caratacus, Homer, Ghengis Khan, and all 300 of Leonidas I's Spartiates.

Good. But nobody claims they were resurrected. I also understand that this is not sufficient evidence.

So? I find it rather hard to believe that an almighty perfect creator of everything would have any need at all to be truly loved and praised and worshipped.

Well with all that power and seemingly endless grace considering our hopeless situation, He should be glorified somehow. But I don't know God enough to give you a satisfactory answer. This answer is good enough for me though.

So they need to be mindless servant automata in direct contrast to their free will and design?

It turns out that I was wrong about this one because Adam did know the consequences of eating the fruit. I don't know much about it though. Allow me to refer you.

Well, it doesn't say what God is, so I don't see what your objection is about.

Would it be wrong for me to say that God is His own thing entirely? In the Bible, especially in Psalms, it describes Him.

Essentially the same thing every monotheistic deity says about itself right up to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so that really isn't a valid answer.

I wanted to make that point because some people, even those with monotheistic beliefs, believe that there can be multiple ways to heaven.

But the main point to take away is that this is indeed all faith based. I understand if and why you choose not to believe in my beliefs, but I take all Scriptures as truth and would encourage you to open your heart. Either way, if God chooses you, you inevitably will open your heart to the gospel. Now, to quote Paul:
"3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
I agree that this is of first importance. Just to drive home the idea that God is merciful, we all fall short of God's law. In His infinite wisdom and love, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live and die on our behalf. And then to resurrect Himself to conquer death for us.

@popington

"Religion: Created by the Ancient people to explain the currently unexplainable?"

Nahhhh

there is the entertainment feature of having gods

My God certainly wasn't used for entertainment purposes.

back in ancient times, a lot of things were attributed to gods, but now as science discovers more, less and less seems to be attributed to gods. which is most likely the reason why we went from "everyone being religious" in the dark ages to "a lot of people are atheist" in the modern world.

True, but things should be attributed to God. Solely cuz He created these things I think.

@FishPreferred

Not really, no.

I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of biblical scholars who would disagree. Just because it was an earlier text, doesn't mean it should be accepted. The Scriptures should agree with each other.

@lozerfac3

Okay, I should care to explain this. God does not want robots to "worship" Him because there would be no gratitude and there would be no real love.

Except God does choose His people. Not based on race, merit, or lack of sin. If it were for merit, we would not be able to do anything to satisfy God because no amount of good works can outweigh our bad deeds.

Certainly they will get their due punishment in Hell, unless of course they believe in Christ and accept the gift of eternal life.

In conclusion, God does not care what anyone thinks or whether they are "robots" or not. He only wants people to recognize and worship Him so He can feel good about Himself.

HahiHa:

Also, I would disagree with lozerfac3's statement. Assuming God has created the universe and everything within it, and we knew about it, we would have to acknowledge his power; however, he made us not as robots but as individuals with free will, as you say later on. Because of that, he has absolutely no right to "demand absolute and perfect obedience", as you say he does. Naturally, he still does, and that is good, because he is God. Frightening I say.

If we are talking about rights here, God has every right to do anything because He made everything. Obviously a man has no right to demand perfect obedience from his children if he himself can't even follow his own rules. God can and He has as Jesus. It might be scary, but look on the bright side. He sent Jesus therefore He is merciful.

One thing's for sure. He hasn't wiped us out yet. But the biggest part of His Love is His sacrifice and the example He as Jesus.

So the question is not "Why does God allow suffering on Earth?" but rather "Why doesn't God just wipe us all out?" Well because He wants to show His mercifulness and graciousness. He chooses people by seeking them rather than people seeking Him because we can't seek Him. He does this for His glory. The purpose of our Christian lives is to glorify God and praise God, that means our salvation.

@lozerfac3

When 'not wiping us out' is taken as a sign of benevolence/love, that speaks volumes about the character of that deity

^ Ditto. Thanks Ha, you may have ninja'd me but thanks anyway xD

But like I said, a sin is a sin because it is a violation of God's commands. The consequences of this is death.

How Just and Fair.

Death means for your body to be removed from your spirit.

You probably mean the opposite, if you can define spirit that is. Death can be roughly described as the shutdown of vital body functions but that's about how it goes...

If you make her say she loves you, it's not the same as if a real person actually love you. By making us perfectly obedient, we would be reduced to robots. There would be no love. Going back to rights, who gives us our rights? God and God alone. They don't need an informed decision. They just need to obey. This is only a problem because you think they had an obligation to know their consequences.

You missed my point. They did not need to just obey. God wanted them to just obey. If God had any respect for them, if God really did want to give them a choice, he would inform them of the consequences of both available options. He didn't. It is that simple really.(see my reply again here, last paragraph)

They did not have an obligation to know the consequences, God had the obligation to inform them of those consequences ONLY IF He really did want them to have a choice. You cannot make a choice without knowing the full extent of your actions. Like the analogy I've used before, it's like a parent asking their 5 year old kid whether it wants to leave the house and fend for itself. That's literally it. No other info got passed down. And that it is a choice a 5 year old cannot possibly do by itself

@HahiHa

My initial response to the quotes you provided is that it's weird to talk about what rights God has. It just strikes me as really strange to say that God has a right to X, but I'm not sure why it seems so weird to me. Here are my musings on the thought.

First, we should be clear that we're talking about moral rights. Now, what a moral right is, is still up for debate. But let's look at other moral rights that we have to see if there are any necessary features we can extract.

A right to life. This is undoubtedly a moral right that persons have. (Let's set aside the question of whether a foetus is a person with a right to life.) At a bare minimum, when I think about this right, the following statement seems true: If someone (or something) challenges my right to life, I'm allowed to defend that right by any means necessary. In other words, if my right to life is threatened, I can kill (if it's necessary) in order to preserve that right.

Of course, other rights don't seem to be this strong. My right to property, for example (assuming that's a right) isn't something that I can kill over. At least, that conclusion isn't intuitively true like the one above. So let's weaken the claim a little bit to accommodate this intuition.

To have a right to X is to be morally permitted to defend X.
I'm wondering if this would work to help get the cases right and make it clear what 'defend' means:
To have a right to X is to be morally permitted to do what is necessary to maintain access to X, so long as that action doesn't infringe on a more fundamental right of an agent.

I feel like something like this is in the ballpark. A right to life is more fundamental that a right to property, since one would need to be alive in order to enjoy said property. And this works to explain why I can't kill in order to protect my stuff. In a case like this, I'm infringing on the other person's more fundamental right (i.e. their right to life) in order to maintain access to my stuff. And if someone is trying to steal things that I need to live, then they're not just attacking my right to property - they're attacking my right to life. So killing them in order to protect this right is back in the picture.

This also (to me, at least) explains why it feels weird to say that God has rights. Since God would never be in a position to have His rights threatened, it's just sort of hand-waving to say that He has these rights. We might also find some overlap between things to which we have a right and things that we need. But again, God doesn't fit here because He doesn't really have needs - at least, in any sense that we would understand needs. It might make sense to say He has desires, but not so much needs.

But if that line of thought doesn't seem right, we can just look at the nature of God as the fount of goodness. Everything that God does is good, or morally correct. Now, maybe that's just because everything he does (including condoning slavery and genocide) is good because he does it; or maybe he's just not capable of doing immoral things. In either case, we have a right to do morally good acts. In fact, it seems that we often have an obligation to perform morally good acts. So, again, the question of rights just doesn't fit into the dialectic.

So let's broaden the question a bit and ask something like this:
Would a morally just God demand perfection from His creations?

There's a circular response here that says 'Of course!' God is morally just by definition and, since He demands perfection, then a morally just God would demand perfection. But that answer is deeply unsatisfying.

But something that lozer said has me thinking about this question.

Obviously a man has no right to demand perfect obedience from his children if he himself can't even follow his own rules. God can and He has as Jesus.

So, again, we're left with a God who doesn't seem all that great. If he demands perfection, as the above quote suggests, then He is being completely ridiculous. My intuition is that He doesn't demand perfection, however. After all, what's the point of forgiveness if perfection is what's expected? However, this still doesn't account for disagreements over fundamental values. God did, in fact, condone slavery and order the mass execution of entire villages. God single-handedly wiped out nearly all the life on the planet because people were exercising the free will which He instilled in them. I happen to think that these actions are morally reprehensible.

And on that note:

It might be scary, but look on the bright side. He sent Jesus therefore He is merciful.

So once again we're left with a sicko who calls himself God and people thank Him and praise Him for orchestrating a human sacrifice when He could have easily just forgiven our wicked ways.