@ Cavemonster:
Well you can't think of every thing a kid might do wrong in order to have a rule against it of course. But I should hope you can think of entire classes of action that could cover most of the things the kid might do. Jelly in pillowcases, "don't make a mess, especially not with food." Ball through window, "don't break things."
I can't buy the argument that it's impossible to use reason on a child. Sure they are likely to ignore it sometimes or try to twist logic in their favor after they do something bad which they found irresistible, as kids do, but it's still fully possible to reasonably explain broad rules to them and let them know they'll be on the hook for ignoring them.
And by extension with the metaphor I can't buy that it's impossible for a god to use reason on a human. And I quite like Lonewulf's barn metaphor.
No, it isn't theoretically impossible to tell your child all the basic categories of wrong, but neither is it the mark of a terrible parent for punishing a child who does something wrong but was not warned not to.
The key is in how you view punishment. From the view of a good parent, punishment isn't an emotional reaction, and fairness or whether the child "deserves" it doesn't enter into the equation. Punishment is an action that is short-term unpleasant for the child, but hopefully helps to prevent long-term, much more unpleasant consequences.
Here's an example from my life. I loved my cat Murray (no longer with us). One day, he got terrible diarea, and had poop all over his very furry butt.
So, I set to work with scissors and a sponge to cut and wash away the poopy fur. It was an incredibly unpleasant experience for us both. In fact, he later peed on my hat to get back at me.
Now, was the poop on the butt his fault? It could have been something he ate somewhere that he was not supposed to, it could've just been a bug he caught, it might even have been my fault, maybe I overfed him or something. The issue of whether he deserved it or not is nonsensical. If I had spared him the terrible experience, he would have walked around with feces on him, getting himself and everyone in the house sick.
That's the nature of punishment to a good parent, it isn't a matter of whether the punishment is fair or deserved or forewarned. If you have the knowledge that putting your child through a minor unpleasantness now will spare them far worse later, that is the expression of love. Talking about fairness in punishment, or assuming that any punishment is equivalent to taking out your anger with a belt is missing the point entirely.
Is it impossible for a god to explain the afterlife ahead of time? Is it impossible for me to explain to my cat why he has to sit still while I'm cleaning his butt? It isn't mutually exclusive for an entity to create the universe, have the final say in our afterlife, and still be unable to communicate it's will directly to humans. Omnipotence, to the full logical extent of the word, is not definitional for a god. In fact, up until the Abrahamic tradition, all gods were described as clearly non-omnipotent, with unfullfilled wants, petty squabbles, confusion and the lot. It's only in a few of the most popular interpretations of Abrahamic tradition that a God is viewed as omnipotent and omniscient.
