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"Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. (Matt 7:16-18)
 

"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. " (Matt 12:33- 35)

Does Jesus tell us these stories in order that we may learn more about plant life? Was He here to teach us about botany? If not, what is Jesus saying here in these stories? Jesus is not teaching us about botany, but is speaking rather plainly about us, about the human condition after the fall.

Thorn bushes, he says, do not produce grapes and thistles do not produce figs. Due to a plant's DNA such an outcome is an impossible supposition. He is communicating for our benefit, via parable, that persons ONLY produce fruit in accord with their nature. He was not teaching us botany lessons here. What you are, he explains, determines what you think and what you do. It cannot be otherwise. By nature we are all like thorn bushes. Apart from the supernatural work of the Spirit to change us, our heart is like fallow ground. Only as God plows up the fallow ground do we have hearts which can receive the seed of the gospel. The church casts the seed but only God causes the growth.

Comment: As an atheist, it is true that it wouldn't be reasonable to believe that there's such a thing as an absolute, universal morality. Society plays a large part in deciding what's right and wrong. Well, what's so bad about that? Society is made up of people, and I trust our collective opinions to advise me in ethics more than I trust a two-thousand-year-old book written by several different authors ... Plus, it's not like society has it so bad compared to God's opinion that we shouldn't use it. Society in general thinks that killing and slavery is wrong, and God supposedly thinks that murder isn't such a good thing (despite all the 'accounts' in the Bible in which he blatantly murders people), so I guess we're not so different after all.
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Response: Thanks for your comment ... So then according to your logic, it seems to me you would have to believe slavery wasn’t wrong until there was a consensus that it was wrong. In other words, slavery wasn’t wrong in the 1700s, because at that time the collective opinion declared that such things were acceptable? So in response to this if you were to tell me that slavery WAS still wrong in 1700s even though most people didn't feel that way, then I think you probably believe in moral absolutes. But if you tell me that it WASN'T wrong in the 1700s then it simply demonstrates the reality that slavery is not inconsistent with atheism.

Furthermore, morality has been very cyclical through human history and does not always progressively get better as time goes on. what if you saw the consensus about slavery eroding? On what basis, then, could you argue that the emerging new consensus is wrong, since, in your view, something is only wrong if there is a consensus that it is wrong?

Visitor: Monergism said, "How many people are being killed by Christians right now? If none then why bring it up? It seems his concerns are wildly misplaced." (a line from essay Are Evangelicals Upset with Obama for Accurately Recounting History?)

Proof you are too busy keeping tabs on Muslims and pretending Christians are progressive and infallible in 2015. If you took a closer look, you'd see the damage Christian philosophy (as a religion, not the teachings of Christ) are doing. Keep up with Uganda? How about Russia? The treatment of LGBT doesn't really count, because they're wrong right? You know you can get away with killing somebody for being gay in Uganda because it's justified by the Bible? Don't be hypocritical and don't rationalize. There are Christians who are peaceful, and there are Muslims who are peaceful- and there are others from both who are dangerous. It's not just beheadings and bombings that do damage to society. And also, Christians weren't completely central to the change in civil rights and revolution- there were a lot of progressive non-believers as well, but take all the credit for that too.

It is illogical for atheists to question the moral commands of God for two primary reasons:

1) The Bible is clear that God is the one Who defines morality to start with. He says what is right, wrong, good and evil. And He, as the Creator of the world and of all life, also has complete ownership of all that He has created. If He chooses to end the life of some of His creation (which by the way is corrupt and evil by nature and is guilty of breaking His holy law) by His sovereign command, then He not only has the right to do so but is also entirely just in doing so. So it is illogical for a limited, fallible human creation of the unlimited, infallible God to question the moral law and judgments of the omniscient definer of morality.

2) If you are an atheist then you cannot believe in any kind of absolute, universal morality. Morality itself is nothing more than a social construct and is defined by society. Therefore there is no moral code that can be said to "right" or "wrong" and no moral code can be said to be better than any other moral code. How is it that you, as an atheist, can say that the actions of the Israelites were absolutely evil? If you are an atheist, there is no such thing as evil. So for you then to express moral outrage at the actions of God as described in the Bible is entirely illogical.

If you are an atheist, then you can neither define what moral "good" and "evil" are supposed to be with any kind of certainty, nor can you condemn the moral actions of anyone in the Bible, especially God, without both contradicting your own beliefs as an atheist and stealing from the Christian worldview of absolute, universal morality.