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Goodbye Jesus

Adam Gets My Eve


JamesG

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LivingLife: Thanks for the clarification. That puts a different light on it.

 

Heavenese: I made the mistake of assuming too quickly that you were not making honest points, but

you were taking an intransigent position like I have encountered so much from Christians.

 

One suggestion for you to get a different perspective on the Adam and Eve story is to research where

the story came from originally. A lot of Geneses came from other religions from places like

Mesopotamia, Egypt and Babylon. Geneses was but was adapted and modified from earlier

written materials. You can go to a good library and locate an annotated Old Testament and

New Testament.

Of course, this is not something Christian Apologists like to advertise. And they attempt to

rationalize it away. I hope this is helpful. bill

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Heavenese, I'll admit I haven't read all of your responses in this thread. To be honest I have a hard time reading long posts by believers. Just skimming through your posts I can see that you are trying to make sense of the Genesis story. I challenge you to do this: Read Genesis with an open and unbiased mind. Just read the words as they are written. Read it as you would a novel. You can even read it with the idea that it is an inspired work from god but keep your mind open and do not suspend disbelief when you read something that sounds absurd and defies physics or the universe as we know it today.

 

I'll give you a little of my history. I was born and raised as a Christian. I was indoctrinated at an early age by my Mother. There was nobody with more faith than me. I had always picked certain parts of the bible to read throughout my life. At one point I decided to read it from cover to cover so that I could know what it really says without any theology attached. I was simply seeking the truth of the bible as it stands from its own words. You may find this hard to believe, but reading the bible word for word led me on the path to atheism. Ten years ago, if anyone would have told me I would type those words I would have said they were crazy.

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Just to put a finer point on the absurdity of the Genesis story I would like to submit this image:

 

300px-HubbleDeepField.800px.jpg

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_deep_field

 

This is the Hubble Deep Field Observation. There are over 3000 objects in this image and most of them are entire GALAXIES. The image represents a very small portion of the sky around the constellation Ursa Major otherwise knows as the Big Dipper. There is nothing remarkable about this location other than the absence of stars in the foreground and it met the criteria for a reliable observation buy the HST. Every part of the sky contains as many objects.

 

The universe is vast and contains countless galaxies which in turn contain countless stars. To believe Genesis one must believe all of this was created to facilitate god's test of mankind right here on Mutter Erde with a tree and a snake.

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Just to put a finer point on the absurdity of the Genesis story I would like to submit this image:

 

300px-HubbleDeepField.800px.jpg

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_deep_field

 

This is the Hubble Deep Field Observation. There are over 3000 objects in this image and most of them are entire GALAXIES. The image represents a very small portion of the sky around the constellation Ursa Major otherwise knows as the Big Dipper. There is nothing remarkable about this location other than the absence of stars in the foreground and it met the criteria for a reliable observation buy the HST. Every part of the sky contains as many objects.

 

The universe is vast and contains countless galaxies which in turn contain countless stars. To believe Genesis one must believe all of this was created to facilitate god's test of mankind right here on Mutter Erde with a tree and a snake.

Maybe god has other little projects in other galaxies fun_84.gif

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Or maybe god is not perfect and that's just how many times he had to start over before finally creating earth to bad he still managed to mess that up lol.

 

The bible left me with 3 conclusions

 

God is perfectly sadistic but still all powerful and all knowing

God is generally good but is not a perfect being and often fails when he tries to wield his power

Its all a mythology created from mans fearful view of life death and the world we live in

 

I lean to the myth =D

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The way I got to hard atheism was looking at all the cultures where people created gods.  Somebody tried to count the number of gods created by humans and it was around 4,000.  Clearly it is human nature to create gods.  This is something we do as a species.  All these gods and goddesses have trends and common themes.  There is no religion that has anything really unique.  There is no reason to think any of them are right.  So I dismiss them all.

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It's been a few days since I been on.  So I'll get started in responding to posts I missed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

{snip}

Unless the new convenant fulfills the area of the first one.  Jesus fulfilled the first covenant, so in Him, we fulfill it to.  In the first covenant, man had a part and God had a part.  Man couldn't hold up their end.  So God became a man, and did the man part.  So now, it's all God, and man reaps all the benefits.  Of course God gains a people.  So just like Jesus said, He didn't come to destroy that first covenant, but fulfilled it.  So ultimately what the new covenant represents, is God giving us the power to do what the first covenant demanded.

 

Besides, that first covenant applied to the people who were still alive.  It was applied to the generations Israelite people who would live after it was given.  Yet once those generations died, the Law no longer applied to those who died.  When we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus death, and raised a new creature.  The Law no longer applies to a person who is in Jesus.

 

 

God wasn't blood thirsty.  In fact, there are OT verses that says the blood of animals doesn't satisfy Him.  If you want a picture of God's heart and what He intended, you have to look at life before the fall of man.  All that other stuff such as slavery, death, and so on happened afterward.

 

{snip}

I don't think you can write off what's written concerning Job.  The only thing that was not doubled, were the children.  So it's not as simple as God doubling somethings and not others.  In fact, it was the children that Job most feared for.  So the highlight of the story was something around Job's children. (They were Job's most prized possession)  If God didn't double them at the end, there's good reason to say Job still had his children, and they weren't lost.  Of course we know about the Jewish Sheol.  It have to mean something more than just a fancy word for grave.  Look at the story concerning Saul trying to bring Samuel back from the dead.  So Saul had an idea that Samuel still exist in some form.  The Greeks may have brought their version of the afterlife over (By the way, I believe all religions have truth in them, but only one is the complete truth), but that didn't change much concerning what the Hebrew people thought of the dead.  As far as the dead still having an existence.

 

 

 

 

 

What does it mean to fulfill the area of the first covenant?  That humans were not able to obey the Law shows that the Law was flawed and poorly thought out.  Why would a perfect God make flawed laws knowing that humans couldn't live up to them?  It's even worse when you consider these flawed laws demand for people to execute their children and include other barbarism. The Law of God was simply the aspects of Egyptian religion that had been commandeered and reworked.  The Egyptian law gave too many rights, respect and privileges to women for Jewish priesthood and monarchy.  So they made some changes.

 

If the law doesn't apply to Christians then why are Christians so upset about gays, fornication and so many other "sins"?

 

For every Old Testament verse you cite that says God isn't satisfied with the blood of animals I can find two that say God calls for sacrifice.  The Bible contradicts itself a lot because the men who wrote it didn't agree with each other.  There is no "life before the fall of man" for me to look at.  It's just a paragraph in a story.  "God" was a strong supporter of slavery and left specific instructions on who could be taken as a slave and how it was to be done.  Or rather, God was a puppet that said whatever the men who wrote the Bible wanted God to say.  The Bible authors loved slavery.

 

If God didn't double Job's children then that merely means God didn't double Job's children.  If you add meaning to it then you are adding meaning.  When you decide what God meant by something you are doing the same thing the Bible authors did when they made God say something.  God makes for a good puppet for an audience who believe God is real.  For people who recognize the illusion the trick doesn't work.

 

 

 

The Law wasn't flawed.  It's only weakness if any, is that it condemned us.  Yet that was always the purpose of the commandments anyway, so it did it's job in that respect.  If God never gave the Law, we would never come to Him for salvation, we wouldn't see any need for it.  As for the excecution of children and other capital punishments, even if we both agreed the Law was perfect, proved beyond a shout of a doubt that it was the utlimate standard of morality, people would still have problems with the capital punishments.  The Law is like fire.  A fire consumes anything that is not in it's purest form.  Like fire, the commandments show we are nothing but ash.  Sorry I got a little poetical on you therelaugh.png , but hypothetically speaking if the Law is perfect, ultimately it will show we are not.  No human can keep a perfect law.  So those things like capital punishment were to be expected (if we didn't kill ourselves first for trying to keep something perfectly).  However, not everyone died who broke the Law.  I would say most didn't die.  This shows us God's mercy.  That even though the people broke their end of the covenant, God didn't give them punishment.  This mercy and grace was a picture of the new covenant after the first.  Also, no child died as a result of breaking the commandments.  Those who died for cursing their parents or being downright disobedient (this is way more than just talking back or having an attitude), were teenagers or older.

 

 

Christians are upset at certain sins, because they detest those things within themselves.  They just find opportunity within the Law, to say God is angry at those same things.  However what they don't realize is, for one, God calls some of the things they do as abominable, but you never hear a peep out of them concerning those sins.  Secondly, even though the Law doesn't apply to Christians, they mix in the Law with the new covenant.  So there's a lot of wrong teaching going on, and might be the main reason why we don't see miracles if God exists.

 

 

God wasn't satisfied with the blood of animals, but that doesn't disagree for the call of sacrifice.  The reason why God wasn't satisfied with it, is because it was a constant thing.  The sin of the people were never covered but for so long.  The blood of animals didn't completely cover sin.  Also, it didn't make the people obedient to Him.  So there was a need for sacrifice, but it never fully got the job done.  When it comes to slavery, I think you would find the Bible does more to ensure the safety of the slaves than anything else.  In fact, when you read all of the things the Bible has to say concerning it, you would do better not to have slaves at all.  Firstly, the laws state that anyone found with a person who was kidnapped for the purpose of slavery, they would be put to death and the slave was set free.  With that in mind, the Bible utterly condemns the kind of slavery that went on in the US.  If the US truly held up OT laws to approve of slavery, the whole US should have been put to death, and the slaves set free.  Next, even though someone would point out an owner could beat his slave to an inch within the slave's life, there were laws that state a slave could be set free for the sake of injury.  (Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arm for arm, etc.  If a slave injured his arm,eye, and so on, they were to be set free on account of that injury)  So severly beating, or any harsh treatment to slaves was not recommended if you take in all the information concerning slavery in the Bible.  Ultimately though, God didn't command the people to have slaves.  He left that up to them whether or not to have them.  If they did have them, He gave laws that ensured they were treated as men and women.

 

 

Finally, again you can't just write off God not doubling Job's children as simply not doubling them.  Job's children were his most prized possession.  They were very important concerning Job, and to the story as a whole concerning Job's suffering and loss.  Add in what I said concerning Saul and Samuel, the Jewish people definitely knew of an existence after death.  Things like the spirit and such.  These weren't new ideas brought on by the greeks. (And again I believe many religions have truth in them)

 

 

 

 

ASIMO the robot was created in mans image does this make him a man or like a man? no not even remotely so.

 

now that we agreed man's purpose as a servant lets open up the discussion onto god and specifically define him.

 

what attributes do you place upon god?

What is your version of god?

 

 

I don't think we can compare the two.  We created robots from what we had to work with.  God created man from His own power.  Plus, He gave us choice, showing we have free will.  A robot doesn't have free will choice.  Now, I know about the arguments showing we don't really have free will.  That our choices are due to circumstances and other factors.  Yet ultimately free will is about our choice to be with God, or go our own way.  Everything flows around that choice in the end.

 

 

What attributes I place on God?

 

 

Mostly the same as many Christians have concerning Him, yet mine are a little more defined.  I believe God knows everything.  However where there is nothing to know, He doesn't know.  I believe God is all powerful.  Meaning He has absolute authority.  God may not be able to create a rock He can't lift, but that says nothing on His authority over everything.  I also equate all powerful as being the most powerful.  That no one can defeat God or overcome Him.  I don't necessarily believe God is everywhere at once.  I believe He could do that if He wanted to, but I specifically believe He sees everything, no matter where He is.  So those are a few attributes I see God as having.  Also, that He has set an ultimate standard of good, and that doesn't change on account of Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To your first response:

 

 

We can't assume Eve was gullible.  All we can say is she knew she wasn't supposed to eat from this tree.  God didn't punish them for their curiousity.  Eve could have went to God and asked about the snake, she didn't have to eat from the tree.  And again concerning the dying part, it could have been God's mercy on them, not that God was lying.  This might be reading into it, but the animal that God killed to clothe Adam and Eve, could have taken their punishemt, hints the set up of the sacrificial system.  Another explanation could be that they would surely die, not that they would die in that instance.  The wording is interesting concerning that "surely".  Why not just write "you will die in the day you eat"?  Why have the surely, unless there's something more here to understand?  They did die eventually, so I wouldn't write off that explanation about the surely.

 

That's interesting concerning why the fruit didn't kick in until Adam ate.  God did specifically give the command to Adam, so there's probably something to consider there.  Of course we could all just be reading things into a completely made up story, that's another explanation for the whole thing as well.  However, I don't think the fruit gave them the sense of right and wrong, but a new sense of consciousness.  Once they felt the change, they knew they messed up.  Not that the change itself allowed them this sense.  The only thing they gained was their own sense of right and wrong.  There was nothing wrong with this sense in and of itself, but they knew they disobeyed God's command to get it.

 

What more could there possibly be to understand just because it says "Surely". It means they will surely die. Which means they can be certain they will die. "Surely" has nothing to do with when or how they will die, just that they will. So, if Eve was not gullible and did not go ask "God" about the snake, then should we assume that she was working with the snake as part of a plot to "Deceive Adam and curse all of humanity for my actions... MUHAHAHA!"?

 

I think that it is probably pointless to talk about a myth as if it actually happened. The story of Adam and Eve was written for the same purpose as the story of Pandora's Box. Suffering and death has always been a part of the world and there never was a time when it was not, so primitive people made up a story to explain where suffering came from. That doesn't change the fact that all of humanity and all of the animals were forced to suffer because of Adam's and Eve's actions, according to the story. If it had been true, maybe the snake had scaly arms and was holding up a camera (that El later incinerated) and Adam looked at the camera and said, "THIS IS JACKASS!" and then he and Eve started eating fruit from the forbidden tree.

 

 

 

 

As you say, it could all just be a myth for people to explain why we die, and other things they didn't have an explanation for.  However, even if that is the case, the people writing the story still had to use common understandable language.  For instance someone might ask why does the snake not have legs.  Genesis explains the snake was cursed, and lost the use of it's legs.  The thing is we understand it lost the use of it's legs right then.  If the people understood that the day Adam ate the fruit, he would fall over dead right there, then that would be a major problem for those early authors if their trying to convince the people of something with their stories.  So perhaps the original understanding, the Hebrew understanding, is they wouldn't fall over dead that day.  The english then translates "surely" as they would definitely die, but not necessarily that day.  So that is true even if the story is just a myth, or a made up tale.

 

 

Of course, there is also another plausible explanation.  Since this command not to eat from the tree is in similar fashion to the commandments that were given to the Israelite people (as some of the commands to the people ended with "they shall surely be put to death" for those who broke them), the animal that died to clothe Adam and Eve, received the punishment for Adam that day.  So death occured that day, but it was taken on by an innocent animal.  Both of these I believe are adequate explanations, arguing from the text itself.

 

 

When you say Eve was gullible, I always take that word as saying Eve wasn't the brightest bulb, or says something about her intelligence.  I disagree she was gullible if that is what is meant.  Eve was Adam's equal.  So I suppose even if she was gullible, Adam was also gullible.  Yet she was deceived by a creature that was known as the most cunning creature in the field.  Of course all of this could just be a myth, a simple story attempting to explain what the world around the people.  Yet if it is God inspired, then perhaps it requires reasonable reading into the text.  By that, I mean looking at all of what Genesis says and so on.  If we ever find archaeological stuff that confirms the existence of Moses and the Exodus, it would give Genesis more credence.

 

 

 

 

To your second response:

 

 

God doesn't force people to suffer, it's just in the genetics.  Of course us being born, is the result of God's mercy on Adam and Eve.  Yet because He was merciful to them, He is also merciful to us.  We all have the same free will choice they had.  I know this life is unbearable at times, for some even worse than that, stuff we can't imagine.  People are going through many things right now that we can't imagine.  As hard as it is, it will end one day.  And eternity with God will begin, better than before the fall. 

 

 

When you think about the things people are going through right now, to say these things seems heartless.  I mean, people are going through some things, stuff that even horror movie directors couldn't dream up.  But this day and age is finite.  Mathematically speaking, the things I say here makes sense, and would bring joy if true.  Yet in the meantime, God has provided power on earth, to bring a bit of His kingdom here on earth right now.  Most Christians don't fully believe on the true Gospel, 2000 years of man's traditions have been brought in.  Not enough examination of what the Gospels are saying.  Miracles are God's confirmation of the word, and He's not going to confirm something that is not His.  With that said, if we were doing miracles today like Jesus and the apostles have reportedly done in the Gospels, people would be getting that taste of of Kingdom that will last forever.  Making this life all the more bearable.

 

 

So all in all, even though we suffer in this corrupt world, we are in fact closer to God than Adam was in his perfect days.  Again, things will be even better in the end, then they were in the beginning.  It all works out, and nobody is wronged.

 

I also agree that no god forces anyone to suffer because I see no reason to believe in one, but if the story of Adam and Eve had been true, then I still see no reason to think that El was merciful. He planted a tree with fruit hanging from it that would cause all life to suffer just because one species ate from it. If suffering was going to be the end result, a merciful god would have destroyed the tree and created Adam and Eve version 1.5 or something, not allow all life to suffer because of the original Adam and Eve and wait for thousands of years of punishing innocent creatures for the sins of the guilty just to send his son to Earth so that he could kill him and bring him to life, which does not result in the salvation of all, instead it causes something far more sinister. Instead of death, if the New Testament is accurate, now billions are going to be tortured in the after life in flames, possibly forever.

 

If the creator of everything is the God of the Bible, then why should I trust him? Honestly? He sounds about as trustworthy as the leader of some gang who protects you, as long as you are a good little slave, but if you don't keep him happy, he kills your entire family and burns you to death.

 

Your claims about an end of the world and paradise coming one day, I see no reason to believe those things. There is no evidence at all that the god described in the Bible is real, there is no evidence that the creation story in the Bible is the only one that is correct, out of all the other creation myths there are from other religions, and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of miracles. "Miracles" are just a bunch of wishful thinking and confirmation bias.

 

 

 

 

I think mercy is something one has to receive.  Have you ever heard in a movie, where a character pities another character, and the one pitied shrugs it off in pride saying they don't need the person's pity?  Better yet, have you ever seen the main antagonist of the film or story hanging on the edge of a cliff or something, and the protagonist stretches out his hand to help him/her up out of mercy?  Then instead of receiving the helping hand, they let go of the cliff and fall to their death out of pride, or just felt like they didn't deserve to live?  That's how it is for some who don't receive God's mercy. (Not all.  I bleieve not everyone have enough evidence of my God right now to make the decision about whether to be with Him or not.  I believe I could make a decent argument that perhaps it's necessary for a higher power to exist, but it's harder to make the case my God exists for now)

 

Why didn't God just make Adam 1.5, is because He loved Adam and Eve too much to just throw them away in the trash.  This goes back to discussing the greek views of the afterlife, and the possible influences.  I don't believe the greeks had great influence on the Hebrew version of the afterlife, in the sense that the Hebrews didn't already believe in life after death.  So Adam and Eve would have an existence after death, and God was merciful to them, providing them a chance to be redeemed.  As a result of having mercy on them, it couldn't be helped that we would be born in the meantime.  And the suffering we have while on this earth, is all in the genetics.  It's just the way it is.  Of course in theory, a Christian doesn't have to suffer all of what life so happens to bring our way.  In theory, a Christian can heal others, by God's power.  This being one of the ways a Christian proves God's existence.  All of that is in theory.

 

 

 

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You also really cant fault adam and eve as they did not know right from wrong. I'll put it into another context for you. They had no idea what lying was as the world in which they existed had no lies that they could perceive. When the serpent told them something contrary to what god told them they were faced with a dilemma what was the truth? Both statements cannot simultaneously co-exist with each other either the serpent was telling the truth or god was  eve decided to try well turns out god was lying and the serpant told them the truth. How can you trust anything god says when at the very beginning of the whole book he is caught lying?

 

 

I agree Adam and Eve didn't have the concept of good and evil, but they did violate the conscience they did have.  Today, kicking animals would be seen as wrong.  Our conscience would tell us this is wrong.  However, if Adam for instance kicked a cat, his consciousness wouldn't have condemned him.  Yet Adam did know about the command God gave him.  So to him and Eve, disobeying this command was evil to them.  This is the consciousness they did have, and was held accountable to it.  We have to remember this tree was the knowledge of good and evil, and not the knowledge of being able to keep a command from God.

 

And again, I believe we can derive from the text that God was not lying.  For one, Adam didn't confront God and say, "I haven't died, so the snake was telling the truth."  There's something to be had from the language of God's words concerning death.  Another view is death did happen that day, in the death of an animal who's skin was used to cover Adam and Eve.  They did eventually die, so perhaps that is what God meant. (They would surely die, but it didn't have to necessarily be that day)

 

 

 

 

Heavenese: Either the Bible is the inerrant word of God or it isn't. Either it is to

be read by using a straight-forward, plain, simple and direct interpretation of the

words or it is not. Accordingly, once you start interpreting the bible in such a way

that it says things that add to or detract from the "four corners", it is you , not god, writing scripture. In other words, you are presuming to speak for god, and your

extraneous fluff is not god's word. Bottom line: You can't contend the bible is god's

word and also claim that your interpretation saying additional things not within the

Bible is also god's word. Your stuck with what the Bible actually says, not what you

want it to have said, although,I can certainly understand why you would want to escape from the plain meaning of a lot of scripture.

 

The Bible does Not say Adam and Eve were "God conscience or conscience of their

relationship with God." (Whatever that means.) DID YOU MEAN "CONSCIOUS"?

The Bible does not say: "Anything going against God would be considered evil by them." You had just said that they did not know of good and evil. BUT THEY KNEW GOING AGAINST GOD WAS "EVIL"? Eh? You said, "What it really means is you having your own

"sense judgment" about things. Determining your own self what is good and bad." Really? Xtian Apologists are always claiming that atheists are not capable of having a moral

code: knowing good from bad. Here you are saying just the opposite. When you guys

think it serves your purpose, arguments we use which are claimed by apologists to be

wrong suddenly are valid if it is to your advantage. Moreover, here again you are

interpreting the bible to say what is beyond its plain language. Your interpretation is pure fluff.

 

That's all I have time for now. Let's follow this up tomorrow. bill

 

 

I can actually argue my points from what's written in the text.  It's true Adam and Eve didn't know good and evil, however going against God's command was considered evil to them.  They knew if they ate of the tree, they would die.  It seems they didn't want that (judging from Eve's words to the serpent).  So this tells us they did have a conscious of some sort.  They had the desire to keep God's word.  That's why I said they were God conscious.  Perhaps you can find some answers to your other questions in my other posts.  Genesis actually requires us to fill in the blanks, but we do so from the text itself and what we know about life in general.

 

 

 

 

 

{snip}

We can't assume Eve was gullible.  All we can say is she knew she wasn't supposed to eat from this tree.  God didn't punish them for their curiousity.  Eve could have went to God and asked about the snake, she didn't have to eat from the tree.  And again concerning the dying part, it could have been God's mercy on them, not that God was lying.  This might be reading into it, but the animal that God killed to clothe Adam and Eve, could have taken their punishemt, hints the set up of the sacrificial system.  Another explanation could be that they would surely die, not that they would die in that instance.  The wording is interesting concerning that "surely".  Why not just write "you will die in the day you eat"?  Why have the surely, unless there's something more here to understand?  They did die eventually, so I wouldn't write off that explanation about the surely.

 

That's interesting concerning why the fruit didn't kick in until Adam ate.  God did specifically give the command to Adam, so there's probably something to consider there.  Of course we could all just be reading things into a completely made up story, that's another explanation for the whole thing as well.  However, I don't think the fruit gave them the sense of right and wrong, but a new sense of consciousness.  Once they felt the change, they knew they messed up.  Not that the change itself allowed them this sense.  The only thing they gained was their own sense of right and wrong.  There was nothing wrong with this sense in and of itself, but they knew they disobeyed God's command to get it.

 

 

 

 

{snip}

God doesn't force people to suffer, it's just in the genetics.  Of course us being born, is the result of God's mercy on Adam and Eve.  Yet because He was merciful to them, He is also merciful to us.  We all have the same free will choice they had.  I know this life is unbearable at times, for some even worse than that, stuff we can't imagine.  People are going through many things right now that we can't imagine.  As hard as it is, it will end one day.  And eternity with God will begin, better than before the fall. 

 

 

When you think about the things people are going through right now, to say these things seems heartless.  I mean, people are going through some things, stuff that even horror movie directors couldn't dream up.  But this day and age is finite.  Mathematically speaking, the things I say here makes sense, and would bring joy if true.  Yet in the meantime, God has provided power on earth, to bring a bit of His kingdom here on earth right now.  Most Christians don't fully believe on the true Gospel, 2000 years of man's traditions have been brought in.  Not enough examination of what the Gospels are saying.  Miracles are God's confirmation of the word, and He's not going to confirm something that is not His.  With that said, if we were doing miracles today like Jesus and the apostles have reportedly done in the Gospels, people would be getting that taste of of Kingdom that will last forever.  Making this life all the more bearable.

 

 

So all in all, even though we suffer in this corrupt world, we are in fact closer to God than Adam was in his perfect days.  Again, things will be even better in the end, then they were in the beginning.  It all works out, and nobody is wronged.

 

 

{snip}

Once this age is over, and everything is said and done, God will make other things and do other things.  However, He loves us so much, He didn't want to lose us and still doesn't.  Remember, He created us in His own image.  We are His masterpiece.  Death ultimately means being seperated from God.  It's by His power we live.  Take His power away, we die.  Yet He created us to exist forever.  This quality isn't something that can be taken back it seems. (In other words, it would be going against God's own word in some area)  So Hell was created for anyone who didn't want to be with God.

 

 

 

 

This is standard Christian misinformation.

 

1) Eve was gullible in the story.  It clearly demonstrates that she was tricked by the talking snake.  It's part of the story even if you wish the Bible said something different.

 

2) The story implies that God punished the humans for disobedience.

 

3) God has caused thousands of cute little innocent animals to suffer.  Even if God isn't real the suffering was because burnt offerings were part of the barbaric Jewish religion.

 

4) God punishing six billion people when God could have just punished two can never be mercy.  Look at the numbers.  2  vs.  6,000,000,000   

 

5) In the story the punishment didn't kick in until Adam ate it because to the Bronze Age tribes women were property.  Only a man can think like a person.  Only a man can take responsibility for his actions.  A woman has to be owned by a man.  A woman must ask a man what to do.  The Old Testament is very sexist.

 

6) Don't read too much into the Forbidden Fruit giving humans special consciousness.  It never happened.  It's a fairy tail.

 

7) If God is all knowing and all powerful then God is responsible for all suffering.  This is the classic Problem of Evil.  And God didn't show mercy to Adam and Eve - see point 4.

 

8) You have no reason to believe an "eternity with God" will ever begin.  You have no objective evidence for this that isn't explained better by something simpler.  If there is no Heaven then Christianity is evil - tricking people into wasting their precious lives chasing after things that are not important.

 

9) There is no empirical evidence that miracles happen or that Christians are any better off than any other population.  Having faith in miracles does occasionally cause some people to ignore or refuse real help so faith leads to real suffering.

 

10) If God loves us and doesn't want us to lose then salvation would not depend on being born to a Christian family or a Christian land.  The religion a person has as an adult mostly depends on being indoctrinated as a child.  The Bible makes it clear that more people will be lost than saved - narrow road and all that.  So God is a failure.  A talking snake could have one conversation and then for thousands of years God is playing damage control and even dying on a cross can't undo what the snake did with a few words.

 

11) Humans were not created or designed.  Our primary light source causes cancer.  We could never last forever.  The atoms in your body were born when you were part of a supernova explosion.  You are the universe briefly looking at itself.  There is no clear design or purpose.  It's just random stuff that happens over time in a chaotic place.

 

12) Christians say Hell is for those who don't want to be with God but this is just a cop out to pardon God for being evil.  Nobody chooses to not be with God.  This is just silly.  You can't reject somebody who doesn't exist or somebody you think does not exist.

 

 

 

 

1)  I think it's me when I see the word gullible.  I agree Eve was tricked, and that's mostly what the word might mean.  Adam was also gullible in that sense.  Ultimately the transgression here was listening to another's voice over God's voice.

 

 

2)  I agree they were punished for disobedience.  Earlier in the thread we talked about those punishments being added on, because the original punishment for eating of that tree was death.  I believe the punishments that were given was mercy, instead of justice.

 

 

3)  I think there's more to understand with this.

 

 

4)  Suffering is just in the genetics.  In theory however, we don't have to continue to suffer as we do.  Just like it's in the genetics that we suffer in Adam, we can be healed by the genetics of Jesus.  This is in theory.

 

 

5)  I won't deny that could be one reason why it seemed like no real change took place until Adam ate, but for one we don't really know the timetable concerning the eating of the fruit.  Was Adam with Eve when Eve first ate?  The text seems to imply Adam was with her when she ultimately decided to eat from the tree.  I do think however, this shouldn't be seen as sexist because a change didn't take place until Adam ate.  This might have more to deal with genetics.  Yet it's clear, Eve was equal with Adam.  If it weren't the case, why was her punishment now that Adam would rule over her?  What was life like before? (Also concerning that, when God said Eve's desire would be for her husband, or woman's desire would be for her husband, that doesn't mean she would desire to wait on him hand and foot.  What that means is she would seek to control her husband, but the husband would rule over her)

 

 

6)  Could be

 

 

7)  Adam and Eve could freely choose for themselves whether or not to follow God.  God didn't know their choice before they ever existed, there was nothing to know.  Even afterward, it was still their choice to make, one they could have change before they actually committed any action.

 

 

8)  I have reason to believe in a concept like eternity.  I've said in one of my posts, I could make a decent argument for the existence of a higher power.  Yet for reason why that higher power is my God, I have reasons that could be argued.  The main thing to prove God's existence, and that He's my God, would be the miracles.  I could tell you miracles that happened with me, but I don't expect you to believe me. (And those miracles weren't limb restoration or storm stopping miracles, but interesting stuff nonetheless)  Other than that, I couldn't give any literal evidence for the existence of my God, yet I'm confident they will come.

 

 

9)  I believe empirical evidence will come.  I'm of the belief that miracles are God's confirmation of His word.  There's no question over the many years, Christianity has been muddled with man's traditions.  God is not going to confirm something that is not His word.  So I'm going to find out if miracles don't happen (in the same light as what Jesus did) because God doesn't exist, or because of man's traditions.

 

 

10)  All of that is taken into account by God, where a person grew up.  I tell you the truth that even if you grew up in a Christian home, it's not likely you heard the Gospel in it's full form.  Being saved from Hell is just one point of the message.  If a person didn't know or hear about the Gospel, God takes that into account.  Have this person been merciful to others?  God will likely be merciful to that person.  It's all about receiving God's hand.  I'm still reviewing whether or not the NT teaches most people will be in Hell. (As I mention, salvation isn't just about being saved from Hell.  Salvation is about being saved in every possible aspect in life.)

 

 

11)  That's one thing I always found unbelievable.  That the universe could become aware of itself.  You could make the argument for random stuff going on, and that random things could become organized, but awareness is something else altogether.  As big as the universe is, life on this earth is infinitely more special than anything in the universe. (Even if there are aliens out there, which by the way would disprove the Bible, you still have that same astounishing feature with them)

 

 

12)  Which is why God takes those things into account.  If you were looking for evidence, then that's a good thing.  Are you still open if empirical evidence should pop up?  If so, then you're receptive.  God doesn't want anyone to say their Christian just because they were taught to say so.  In other words He doesn't want blind faith.  If that were the only requirement for proof of His existence, then all gods have the same amount of evidence.

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Guys, if you missed my thread, Heavenese is here by my invitation, he has serious questions and the xians don't have any answers or intelligent dialogue. He is not here to prove anything and I did warn him not to come in guns blazing to save us heathen. From what I could gather he wanted theological discussions of depth and was not getting them on where I met him.

 

Seeing many of us have been through the mill of apologetics, I think he will find better answers here or points to ponder.

 

He is not an ass like OC or Thumby or JayL

 

I am reading but not engaging as you guys seem to have it in hand.wink.png

 

 

Hey how you're doing LivingLifecool.png  

 

 

 

LivingLife: Thanks for the clarification. That puts a different light on it.

 

Heavenese: I made the mistake of assuming too quickly that you were not making honest points, but

you were taking an intransigent position like I have encountered so much from Christians.

 

One suggestion for you to get a different perspective on the Adam and Eve story is to research where

the story came from originally. A lot of Geneses came from other religions from places like

Mesopotamia, Egypt and Babylon. Geneses was but was adapted and modified from earlier

written materials. You can go to a good library and locate an annotated Old Testament and

New Testament.

Of course, this is not something Christian Apologists like to advertise. And they attempt to

rationalize it away. I hope this is helpful. bill

 

I didn't take any offense to anything you or anyone else have stated.  I'm kind of feeling my way through these discussions, seeing how everyone sees certain issues within Christian theology.  Some of the things I state sound the same as most conservative Chrsitains speak on, but I promise my thoughts are a little deeper concerning what is written in the text.

 

 

Of course I know about how Genesis and some of the things mentioned in it could have derived from other cultures.  Yet my view concerning it is in depth, in fact I believe many ancient religions have truth in them.  Many say the Genesis flood is a rip off from the Gilgamesh story for instance.  Well, there's truth in Gilgamesh, but the whole truth is found in Genesis.  So there are other creation stories that are similar to the Genesis creation story.  I see those things as having truth, but Genesis being the complete account.  Besides that, I also know about the Documentary Hypothesis.  That the first five books in the Bible are made up of at least for different documents.  There again, my views get deeper concerning that.  Could it just be I'm adjusting my beliefs again and again to make it seem true?  Could be.  I'll see.

 

 

 

Heavenese, I'll admit I haven't read all of your responses in this thread. To be honest I have a hard time reading long posts by believers. Just skimming through your posts I can see that you are trying to make sense of the Genesis story. I challenge you to do this: Read Genesis with an open and unbiased mind. Just read the words as they are written. Read it as you would a novel. You can even read it with the idea that it is an inspired work from god but keep your mind open and do not suspend disbelief when you read something that sounds absurd and defies physics or the universe as we know it today.

 

I'll give you a little of my history. I was born and raised as a Christian. I was indoctrinated at an early age by my Mother. There was nobody with more faith than me. I had always picked certain parts of the bible to read throughout my life. At one point I decided to read it from cover to cover so that I could know what it really says without any theology attached. I was simply seeking the truth of the bible as it stands from its own words. You may find this hard to believe, but reading the bible word for word led me on the path to atheism. Ten years ago, if anyone would have told me I would type those words I would have said they were crazy.

 

 

Yes, I can completely understand what you're saying.  I don't know if I could read the Bible with an unbiased mind, but there are things that would falsify the Bible for me. (Of course, most here would say there are a ton of things that falsified the Bible already.laugh.png )  I don't know if anyone would see me as approaching this thing from an unbiased view, because I'm probably am biased.  I'll let everyone decide whether or not my opinions are biased, yet as I talked with LivingLife, I do want empirical evidence.  I've said on another forum, I'm a Christain, but I'm not a dishonest Christian.  I think I have shown here, that even atheists have misrepresented what the Bible have said at times.  I've mentioned with slavery, that the Bible utterly condemned the kind that went on in the US.  That slaves could be set free on account of injury.  Those are possibly views people don't realize the Bible state.  Also, I want to show why God can be all knowing, and not know what Adam and Eve were going to do.  I have a bunch of views, that I can state from what the Bible tells us and what is written in it.

 

Just to put a finer point on the absurdity of the Genesis story I would like to submit this image:

 

300px-HubbleDeepField.800px.jpg

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_deep_field

 

This is the Hubble Deep Field Observation. There are over 3000 objects in this image and most of them are entire GALAXIES. The image represents a very small portion of the sky around the constellation Ursa Major otherwise knows as the Big Dipper. There is nothing remarkable about this location other than the absence of stars in the foreground and it met the criteria for a reliable observation buy the HST. Every part of the sky contains as many objects.

 

The universe is vast and contains countless galaxies which in turn contain countless stars. To believe Genesis one must believe all of this was created to facilitate god's test of mankind right here on Mutter Erde with a tree and a snake.

 

 

I talked earlier concerning awareness.  How I personally find it hard to believe that the universe could become aware of itself.  Even if Genesis is not real, and God is not real, I still find us more amazing that all the galaxies combined.  If you personally asked me my opinion concerning God if He created the universe and all those galaxies, what was His purpose of doing so, for one I would tell you because He is a creator.  He's an artist.  He enjoys creating things.  Secondly, we always dreamed of seeing these things up close.  I believe we will, once this age is over with.  So He created those things for us to enjoy, perhaps even giving us our own planet or star to enjoy.  The possibilites are endless concerning the purpose of all those galaxies.  Though these are just my personal thoughts.

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@Heavenese: I don't know ancient Hebrew and don't know if I would have the patience necessary to learn it or not, so "surely" could just be a translation of the ancient Hebrew equivalent of "eventually". I honestly don't know. But regardless of when Adam and Eve were supposed to die, the story presents an unjust god.

 

1. If their god is real and the story is true then they were created so that they were easy enough to be deceived for the snake to successfully deceive them. The snake would have been created so that it could be extremely deceptive. If Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree because the snake deceived them, "God" is at fault because he purposefully made the snake deceptive and Adam and Eve susceptible to its trickery and put them together, knowing the most likely result of this situation.

 

2. If we were to assume that Adam and Eve were not deceived and they just ate the fruit because they wanted to, maybe thinking that the snake was an idiot for trying to deceive them, that still does not justify all of nature being forced to suffer because of the actions of Adam and Eve. A god that is just would have punished only Adam, Eve, and the snake. Suffering and death wouldn't just all at once become genetic in all living things. A god that causes or allows all living things to suffer because of the actions of 3 creatures, must be sadistic. What other possible reason could there be?

 

3. The Biblical example of God's mercy is not at all like feeling pity for someone hanging over a cliff and trying to help them. I've got a scenario for you: Imagine a hiker fell over the edge of a cliff and managed to grab the edge before falling to their death. They are hanging there but are unable to pull themselves up the rest of the way. They call out for help and suddenly, a man appears above them. The hiker says, "Help me." The guy above him says, "I will help you, but you need to do some things first. You must agree to be my slave no matter what, once you have been saved. You must tell everyone else to become my slaves too. If at any time you ever doubt me and decide to stop being my slave, I will throw you over the cliff and not save you a second time. If you do not agree to my terms I will stamp on your fingers and watch you fall." The "mercy" of the Bible god is exactly like that of the man standing above the hiker. If you don't agree to do everything he says, he crushes your fingers and you fall into a lake of fire. If you agree but later on stop being a good slave, he throws you over the edge into a lake of fire.

 

Christians are able to heal with their god's power, only in theory, it appears. There are a lot of Christians in this world, some of them good people. If they can heal anyone with magical god power then why don't they go into children's hospitals that are filled with sick and dying children, heal them all, and walk out with a massive crowd of perfectly healthy children? If this does not happen, then either all Christians that have this god power must not give a crap about healing anyone and are in hiding, the god of the Bible must want these children to suffer and die horrible deaths, thus not giving any Christians the ability to heal, or the miracle healing by faith stuff is just total nonsense made up by members of a cult that started 2000 years ago.

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I talked earlier concerning awareness.  How I personally find it hard to believe that the universe could become aware of itself.  Even if Genesis is not real, and God is not real, I still find us more amazing that all the galaxies combined.  If you personally asked me my opinion concerning God if He created the universe and all those galaxies, what was His purpose of doing so, for one I would tell you because He is a creator.  He's an artist.  He enjoys creating things.  Secondly, we always dreamed of seeing these things up close.  I believe we will, once this age is over with.  So He created those things for us to enjoy, perhaps even giving us our own planet or star to enjoy.  The possibilites are endless concerning the purpose of all those galaxies.  Though these are just my personal thoughts.

 

 

Are you a Mormon?

 

 

This creator and artist you speak of is not found anywhere in the bible. I used to think just like you. It was how I reconciled observable and irrefutable evidence in the real world with my faith. For example: I used to live in the Pacific Northwest in an area that was shaped by the Vashon glacier which receded some 14,000 years ago. It existed and shaped the landscape for many eons before it receded and left such beautiful scenery. The current geology of the area is far older than the given age of the Earth in the bible. Now I live in the great plains where an ancient and vast inland sea once existed. Fossils of marine life can be found here where the elevation is around 2000 feet above sea level. How did those get here? These are observable facts that do not align with any theology from the bible. To say Goddidit is to say that god created an illusion along with the uncountable galaxies who's light took millions of light years to reach Earth. Is god a liar? Is he trying to trick us? The Dispensationalist will try to stretch the timeline of the bible to fit the Earth as we observe it, but this becomes an exercise in word manipulation and numbers games. It's all nonsense. The creator and artist you speak of is called SPAG. It's Self Projection as God. It's a fanciful idea but found nowhere in the bible. I looked there myself and found nothing of the sort. Instead I found absurd stories and yarns spun by a barbaric and misogynistic culture in the iron age with iron age understanding of the universe.

 

Think critically for a moment. Is it really possible for a man to kill 1000 other men with a donkey jawbone?

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The Law wasn't flawed.  It's only weakness if any, is that it condemned us.  Yet that was always the purpose of the commandments anyway, so it did it's job in that respect.  If God never gave the Law, we would never come to Him for salvation, we wouldn't see any need for it.  As for the excecution of children and other capital punishments, even if we both agreed the Law was perfect, proved beyond a shout of a doubt that it was the utlimate standard of morality, people would still have problems with the capital punishments.  The Law is like fire.  A fire consumes anything that is not in it's purest form.  Like fire, the commandments show we are nothing but ash.  Sorry I got a little poetical on you therelaugh.png , but hypothetically speaking if the Law is perfect, ultimately it will show we are not.  No human can keep a perfect law.  So those things like capital punishment were to be expected (if we didn't kill ourselves first for trying to keep something perfectly).  However, not everyone died who broke the Law.  I would say most didn't die.  This shows us God's mercy.  That even though the people broke their end of the covenant, God didn't give them punishment.  This mercy and grace was a picture of the new covenant after the first.  Also, no child died as a result of breaking the commandments.  Those who died for cursing their parents or being downright disobedient (this is way more than just talking back or having an attitude), were teenagers or older.

 

 

Christians are upset at certain sins, because they detest those things within themselves.  They just find opportunity within the Law, to say God is angry at those same things.  However what they don't realize is, for one, God calls some of the things they do as abominable, but you never hear a peep out of them concerning those sins.  Secondly, even though the Law doesn't apply to Christians, they mix in the Law with the new covenant.  So there's a lot of wrong teaching going on, and might be the main reason why we don't see miracles if God exists.

 

 

God wasn't satisfied with the blood of animals, but that doesn't disagree for the call of sacrifice.  The reason why God wasn't satisfied with it, is because it was a constant thing.  The sin of the people were never covered but for so long.  The blood of animals didn't completely cover sin.  Also, it didn't make the people obedient to Him.  So there was a need for sacrifice, but it never fully got the job done.  When it comes to slavery, I think you would find the Bible does more to ensure the safety of the slaves than anything else.  In fact, when you read all of the things the Bible has to say concerning it, you would do better not to have slaves at all.  Firstly, the laws state that anyone found with a person who was kidnapped for the purpose of slavery, they would be put to death and the slave was set free.  With that in mind, the Bible utterly condemns the kind of slavery that went on in the US.  If the US truly held up OT laws to approve of slavery, the whole US should have been put to death, and the slaves set free.  Next, even though someone would point out an owner could beat his slave to an inch within the slave's life, there were laws that state a slave could be set free for the sake of injury.  (Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arm for arm, etc.  If a slave injured his arm,eye, and so on, they were to be set free on account of that injury)  So severly beating, or any harsh treatment to slaves was not recommended if you take in all the information concerning slavery in the Bible.  Ultimately though, God didn't command the people to have slaves.  He left that up to them whether or not to have them.  If they did have them, He gave laws that ensured they were treated as men and women.

 

 

Finally, again you can't just write off God not doubling Job's children as simply not doubling them.  Job's children were his most prized possession.  They were very important concerning Job, and to the story as a whole concerning Job's suffering and loss.  Add in what I said concerning Saul and Samuel, the Jewish people definitely knew of an existence after death.  Things like the spirit and such.  These weren't new ideas brought on by the greeks. (And again I believe many religions have truth in them)

 

 

 

 

Wow, I had not expected you to come back.  Alright, I will go easy on you on account of LL.

 

The Law required a rape victim to marry her rapist and a wife to drink mud if her husband felt jealous.  Parents were to execute rebellious sons.  There are dozens of other Old Testament laws that are sick, barbaric, ignorant and so on.  If you were not aware of them I can provide verses.  If you were aware then why would you say these are not flaws?

 

Humans have worshiped gods that didn't give laws so it seems to me that giving laws is not a requirement for humans to worship gods.

 

If the law is such a consuming fire then why wasn't rape against the law?  Note taking a woman who belongs to another man was against God's law as an offense against that man.  Taking a woman that belongs to you wasn't against God's law even if she didn't consent.  In fact the very concept of consent is missing in God's law.  God spent four of the ten commandments talking about how to worship God but rape wasn't even an after thought.

 

Isn't is strange how certain sins still bother Christians but most of those Christians are not offended by eating shellfish or wearing blended fabric?  God use to be offended by such things and is no longer bothered by them?

 

This thing about blood covering sin is silly.  It's all window dressing.  People can forgive without doing anything.  You just forgive.  Why are humans so much better at forgiving than God?  Can't you see how you have created a God who is deeply flawed in order for God to fit in the tiny logical gap left by cracks in the Bible?  Your God's view about animal blood is no better off than that of Posiden, Zeus, Apollo, Oden or thousand of other gods.

 

The Bible does not ensure the safety of the slaves.  It allows Israel to attack other countries and enslave people who were minding their own business.  Then they get to rape and beat those slaves.  I think the slaves would have been better off if they had not been attacked in the first place.  Again I can provide verses if you were unaware.

 

No slaves were not treated as men.  Slaves were treated as women because in the Bible women were a type of slave.

 

Show me a Bible verse that says that Job's children were not gone when they were dead.  

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{snip}

4)  Suffering is just in the genetics.  In theory however, we don't have to continue to suffer as we do.  Just like it's in the genetics that we suffer in Adam, we can be healed by the genetics of Jesus.  This is in theory.

 

 

5)  I won't deny that could be one reason why it seemed like no real change took place until Adam ate, but for one we don't really know the timetable concerning the eating of the fruit.  Was Adam with Eve when Eve first ate?  The text seems to imply Adam was with her when she ultimately decided to eat from the tree.  I do think however, this shouldn't be seen as sexist because a change didn't take place until Adam ate.  This might have more to deal with genetics.  Yet it's clear, Eve was equal with Adam.  If it weren't the case, why was her punishment now that Adam would rule over her?  What was life like before? (Also concerning that, when God said Eve's desire would be for her husband, or woman's desire would be for her husband, that doesn't mean she would desire to wait on him hand and foot.  What that means is she would seek to control her husband, but the husband would rule over her)

{emphasis added}

 

 

 

 

That isn't how genetics works.  It's a pattern that tells cells what to do and how to replicate an organism.  It's just a code telling things what to do, like a computer program.  There is no sin code or healing code or suffering code.  The codes that work better created organisms that ate or out competed organisms made by inferior codes.  When an error is made in copying the code it makes a new code that is either better or worse and gets sorted accordingly. 

 

 

 

 

 

11)  That's one thing I always found unbelievable.  That the universe could become aware of itself.  You could make the argument for random stuff going on, and that random things could become organized, but awareness is something else altogether.  As big as the universe is, life on this earth is infinitely more special than anything in the universe. (Even if there are aliens out there, which by the way would disprove the Bible, you still have that same astounishing feature with them)

 

 

Yet here we are aware of ourselves.  It doesn't seem to be all that extraordinary after all because many animals are intelligent enough to distinguish between the self and others.  We have been able to test and prove that some primates can predict what others can see.  And we are all stuck on this ball orbiting a star in a galaxy flying through space.  There doesn't seem to be any reason or purpose to any of it.

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Heavenese: Reference to your reply #58, above: You said you can argue your points from the text about

A&E. Of course you can argue from the text, but that is not at all the same thing as a straight forward reading of the text. You agree that A & E didn't know good and evil, but then you say (as you did

before) that they knew evil. They can't both know and not know evil. Either they did or they didn't.

 

God told them they would die if the ate the fruit. What did "die" mean to A & E? It had never occurred on earth. Further, before they ate the fruit, they could not have known what evil meant if god didn't

tell them. The text does not say He told them that it would be evil to eat the fruit; He only told them that they would die without telling them what that meant.

 

So, WHEN they decided to eat the fruit, they had only been told they would die if they ate it,

without being told what that meant, and were not told that it was evil to do so or even what "evil"

meant. Not only that, they were not told that if they they ate from the tree all of their progeny would be inflicted with A & E's "sin" forever. Indeed, they did not know they were going have a progeny;

instead they were told they would die ON THE DAY THAT THEY ATE THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. So they did not

know they would or could have heirs. Indeed even if they knew they could otherwise have had offspring, because of eating the fruit, there would be no offspring. Therefore, the only consequences A & E could have known of if they ate the fruit was that they would die, whatever that meant. Don't you think it

exceedingly unfair of god to not tell A & E that they would have children who would be inflicted

forever with sin, which would contaminate every one of their heirs for eternity, unless of course A & E could somehow, before written language, manage to communicate their heirs to believe in Jesus who

would not be born and killed for forgiveness of sins until thousands of years had passed? Can't you see how absurd this is?

 

Again, I have run out of time. I truly wish you would read the bible at least once without any

presumptions as to the truth of Xtianity or the truth of your previous understanding of the bible, so

that your interpretation can be intellectually honest. Would God want you to be intellectually honest? Of course he would, but you can't do that without suspending your current understanding. Believe me,

any good psychologist will tell that your first hearing or reading of an account of any event will

strongly influence your future view of that event, unless you make strong effort to neutralize you

view.

Give it a try. Otherwise, you will have accepted an ancient document as proof in the most important

decision of your life without truly and objectively examining its authenticity. bill

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Good to see you came back heavenese

 

I think the ASIMO comparison is fair first as you had said God created man out of his own power. Well technically he created us out of what he had. First Adam the materials was supplied by the earth and then eve the materials supplied by Adam. Same with ASIMO we created it out of materials we had on hand. Your argument that robots and computers do not possess free will falls flat on its face. For the past 20 years we have been developing autonomous computers and robots Deep Blue for example was designed to play chess without human input. It could make its own decisions and it even beat a chess grand master in Gary Kasparov. Deep Blue has free will. This is not the only example either if you want me to create a separate topic on the matter of free will and robotics this could provide for some interesting concepts to discuss

 

Back to A&E

 

You say god is all knowing, all powerful, and all morality stems from him.

 

interesting then I ask you this simple question

 

If the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life HAD to be in the garden why put the serpent there?

God knew the serpent had the cunning to overcome eve and he had the will to do it. Your god cannot exist if this story is true

 

Either:

 

he did not know the serpent was going to tempt A&E leaving him still powerful and good

 

He cant both be all knowing and good though because if he knew all that is and will be he knew the mere act of creation would cast billions upon billions of people into an everlasting torture chamber just so a few people could join him in his kingdom this makes all knowing and all good mutually exclusive in your god.

 

He knew that the serpent was going to tempt them and he had the power to stop the serpent however he is not good and is actually evil and did not intervene to protect Adam and Eve because he wanted to watch them suffer.

 

Or he is not all knowing and is not all powerful but still is all good. he did not know the serpent would corrupt his creating and he did not have the power to stop it.

 

You see it is impossible with the world that we exist in for a god with your attributes to exist. you have to start removing attributes to justify his existence. For example it would make perfect sense if god was not all powerful not all knowing and not all good. The bible makes a hell of a lot more sense if you look at it through this lens you don't have to pull mental gymnastics when god sends bears to shred kids and eat them alive for making fun of a bald guy. If the bible makes a mistake in regards to science well gods not perfect he makes mistakes. The moment you assign these qualities is the moment your god becomes an impossibility.

 

As far as Adam and Eve god lying well the truth is he did.

 

You cannot tell me that God was going to allow them to eat from the tree of life it does not say this anywhere in scripture nor does it say anywhere in scripture that they were not going to die. The mere fact that god tells A&E that if they eat from the fruit they will surely die means they had a concept of their own mortality . Until you can find scripture proving that they were not going to die then your whole concept of indirect death from the fruit fails. If they were going to die at some point regardless of eating the fruit or not then god lied. In fact you cant blame Adam at all whatsoever because after the serpent told eve she would not die but become like god. She tested out his truth she became like god Adam observes that she does not die and that she has the knowledge of the gods he is not stupid and realized that god lied to him. so he took the fruit as well. The serpent never lied in fact the bible confirms this. They were kicked out because they were becoming like the gods not because they broke the one commandment. this is the key point you miss in the genesis account.

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@Heavenese: I don't know ancient Hebrew and don't know if I would have the patience necessary to learn it or not, so "surely" could just be a translation of the ancient Hebrew equivalent of "eventually". I honestly don't know. But regardless of when Adam and Eve were supposed to die, the story presents an unjust god.

 

1. If their god is real and the story is true then they were created so that they were easy enough to be deceived for the snake to successfully deceive them. The snake would have been created so that it could be extremely deceptive. If Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree because the snake deceived them, "God" is at fault because he purposefully made the snake deceptive and Adam and Eve susceptible to its trickery and put them together, knowing the most likely result of this situation.

 

2. If we were to assume that Adam and Eve were not deceived and they just ate the fruit because they wanted to, maybe thinking that the snake was an idiot for trying to deceive them, that still does not justify all of nature being forced to suffer because of the actions of Adam and Eve. A god that is just would have punished only Adam, Eve, and the snake. Suffering and death wouldn't just all at once become genetic in all living things. A god that causes or allows all living things to suffer because of the actions of 3 creatures, must be sadistic. What other possible reason could there be?

 

3. The Biblical example of God's mercy is not at all like feeling pity for someone hanging over a cliff and trying to help them. I've got a scenario for you: Imagine a hiker fell over the edge of a cliff and managed to grab the edge before falling to their death. They are hanging there but are unable to pull themselves up the rest of the way. They call out for help and suddenly, a man appears above them. The hiker says, "Help me." The guy above him says, "I will help you, but you need to do some things first. You must agree to be my slave no matter what, once you have been saved. You must tell everyone else to become my slaves too. If at any time you ever doubt me and decide to stop being my slave, I will throw you over the cliff and not save you a second time. If you do not agree to my terms I will stamp on your fingers and watch you fall." The "mercy" of the Bible god is exactly like that of the man standing above the hiker. If you don't agree to do everything he says, he crushes your fingers and you fall into a lake of fire. If you agree but later on stop being a good slave, he throws you over the edge into a lake of fire.

 

Christians are able to heal with their god's power, only in theory, it appears. There are a lot of Christians in this world, some of them good people. If they can heal anyone with magical god power then why don't they go into children's hospitals that are filled with sick and dying children, heal them all, and walk out with a massive crowd of perfectly healthy children? If this does not happen, then either all Christians that have this god power must not give a crap about healing anyone and are in hiding, the god of the Bible must want these children to suffer and die horrible deaths, thus not giving any Christians the ability to heal, or the miracle healing by faith stuff is just total nonsense made up by members of a cult that started 2000 years ago.

 

 

Now when it fully comes to the story of Adam and Eve, just for arguments sake that it really happened, we don't have all the information.  Genesis actually requires you to fill in the blanks, but to do it from what is written and from what we know about life in general.  We don't have enough information from the story to say God purposely made the snake to deceive Adam and Eve, or God purposely made Eve gullible.  Yet I can tell you from what is written in Genesis 6, God never intended for that to happen.  In fact from Genesis 6, we see that the animals corrupted their way on earth just like men, and that would tell us that animals to had some sense of free will and moral responsibility.  Again in Genesis 6, here God says He regrets creating man.  So with that, we can definitely say God never intended for man to fall in the Garden of Eden, and He didn't intend for man to suffer at all. (He didn't even intend for us to sweat, both literally and figuratively, when we worked.)

 

 

To your second point, as to why does God make everyone suffer for the actions of three creatures, again I have to say it's in the genetics.  To define it better, we get our genes from our parents.  Once Adam and Eve fell (that change which took place within them, that they could now see they were naked), their DNA became corrupt.  Their DNA reflected God in the beginning, or they had God-like DNA.  However there was a disconnect once they went their own way from God.  Apart from Him, that God-like DNA couldn't maintain itself.  So the immortal became mortal. (Interesting to note, is Genesis the only creation story in the world that has humans like god figures in the beginning?)  So once the fall took place, we simply inherited their genes, hince why we suffer because of their actions.  That's how I see it at least.  It may seem unfair, but that is simply how God made things to be.  We still have free will choice, and we are ultimately not held accountable for Adam and Eve's choices.

 

 

I have a lot to say concerning Genesis, and I feel I stay true to the text.  I look and think about this subject a little more deeply than most.  Yet even if my views are the correct way to see Genesis, it means nothing because it doesn't literally prove the story.  What I'm really after is evidence.  That's something else altogether.

 

 

 

That scenario you gave is a harsh one.  I would disagree.  All God offers us is amazing things, life.  It's not God offering us this or else, that is making us choose Him against our will.  He's offering us salvation from this world filled with pain.  God doesn't have to do anything, and we still suffer in this world.  Here's the way I see it, if God exists and He is good, everything dealing with good is with Him.  By that I mean it's a good thing to have health.  Health comes from God.  It's a good thing to be able to relax.  Relaxation comes from God.  Every good thing comes from Him.  That without Him, you will be without every good thing.  While we are here on this earth, we experience a little bit of what life is like with and without God.  So if we have the evidence and everything else, we make our choice whether to be with God or to go our own way.

 

 

As for why Christians don't clear out hospitals with God's power, again it's either one or two things here.  One, the Christian God doesn't exist.  Or two, Christians are not speaking the Gospel like it's supposed to be taught.  There's no question throughout the past almost 2000 years, people put their own spin on Christianity.  So much so, that when I actually began studing the Gospels and NT myself, I almost considered I was reading a completely different book than what my ancestors were reading.  We are taught that God went with the disciples everywhere, confirming their word concerning the Gospel.  God confirmed the word by the working of miracles.  So I said to myself, God is not going to confirm something that is not His word.  So I researching if it might be reason 2 whether than reason 1 here.  Though I'm sure you could probably find discussion around the world of miracles like children being healed, but we probably couldn't confirm it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I talked earlier concerning awareness.  How I personally find it hard to believe that the universe could become aware of itself.  Even if Genesis is not real, and God is not real, I still find us more amazing that all the galaxies combined.  If you personally asked me my opinion concerning God if He created the universe and all those galaxies, what was His purpose of doing so, for one I would tell you because He is a creator.  He's an artist.  He enjoys creating things.  Secondly, we always dreamed of seeing these things up close.  I believe we will, once this age is over with.  So He created those things for us to enjoy, perhaps even giving us our own planet or star to enjoy.  The possibilites are endless concerning the purpose of all those galaxies.  Though these are just my personal thoughts.

 

 

Are you a Mormon?

 

 

This creator and artist you speak of is not found anywhere in the bible. I used to think just like you. It was how I reconciled observable and irrefutable evidence in the real world with my faith. For example: I used to live in the Pacific Northwest in an area that was shaped by the Vashon glacier which receded some 14,000 years ago. It existed and shaped the landscape for many eons before it receded and left such beautiful scenery. The current geology of the area is far older than the given age of the Earth in the bible. Now I live in the great plains where an ancient and vast inland sea once existed. Fossils of marine life can be found here where the elevation is around 2000 feet above sea level. How did those get here? These are observable facts that do not align with any theology from the bible. To say Goddidit is to say that god created an illusion along with the uncountable galaxies who's light took millions of light years to reach Earth. Is god a liar? Is he trying to trick us? The Dispensationalist will try to stretch the timeline of the bible to fit the Earth as we observe it, but this becomes an exercise in word manipulation and numbers games. It's all nonsense. The creator and artist you speak of is called SPAG. It's Self Projection as God. It's a fanciful idea but found nowhere in the bible. I looked there myself and found nothing of the sort. Instead I found absurd stories and yarns spun by a barbaric and misogynistic culture in the iron age with iron age understanding of the universe.

 

Think critically for a moment. Is it really possible for a man to kill 1000 other men with a donkey jawbone?

 

 

 

 

No, I'm not mormon.  Of course I don't have a denomination.  I don't necessarily deny the things you mentioned, but I see enough things in the world that makes me think there's more to it then what we currently observe.  Unlike most creationists, I do have some primitive hypothesis and ideas for experimentation.  My thought is when it comes to origins, I question do we have enough observation today, to make any ultimate statements about our past.  What if something very key is missing, that without it, we get a different answer to our origin, but it's not true.  For instance, scientists believe the universe will continue to expand.  One day, we won't be able to see the light of distant galaxies, but only the light coming from the stars within a galaxy.  Any species doing science in that day would say the universe is only 100,000 thousand years old. (Or however big that galaxy is in star light distance) 

 

Right now we only know 4% of what the universe is made up of. (Matter)  The other 96% is made up of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  Those are big questions marks.  Who's to say there isn't a rule working in deep space, that allows us to see for off distances, without that light actually traveling those distances for us to see them?  So these are the things I'm thinking on.  I don't deny people who wrote the Bible didn't know how the world worked and so on.  Yet I still argue, if God exists, they gave a true account of history.

 

 

 

 

To the posts I haven't respond to yet, I'll be back to respond to them.

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To define it better, we get our genes from our parents.  Once Adam and Eve fell (that change which took place within them, that they could now see they were naked), their DNA became corrupt.  Their DNA reflected God in the beginning, or they had God-like DNA.  However there was a disconnect once they went their own way from God.  Apart from Him, that God-like DNA couldn't maintain itself.  So the immortal became mortal. (Interesting to note, is Genesis the only creation story in the world that has humans like god figures in the beginning?)  So once the fall took place, we simply inherited their genes, hince why we suffer because of their actions.  That's how I see it at least.  It may seem unfair, but that is simply how God made things to be.  We still have free will choice, and we are ultimately not held accountable for Adam and Eve's choices.

 

 

This is terrible pseudo-science.  You are trying to combine natural causes with mythical spirituality and this is just a mess.  The DNA available today is more advanced than DNA available in the past.  It doesn't become corrupt - it adapts to survive.  Terrible pseudo-science.  Time to go back the the drawing board.

 

Notice you comment near the end?  You are actively creating a god.  Humans didn't know about DNA until just recently.  So you are taking the new knowledge acquired through science and incorporating your understanding of it into your personal god.  How you see it is how God made things to be.  This is how humans created all their other gods.

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Yeah, the Bible is a true account. Right. A body of water on earth was divided by god. The water below is the earth's oceans. Then there is the water above. In between are the heavens a/k/a the

firmament. The firmament of course includes heaven and the stars. So above the stars and heaven is this

huge body of water from earth. And that's where rain comes from. From light years away.

Geneses,Ch.1. But wait minute! Science says the earth is a sphere? And if so, then the

heavens, stars and the water beyond the stars must also be arranged in a spherical shape in order for

Geneses to be true. And how could there be enough water from earth to be a canopy over all of the

stars? And how could gravity from the earth cause water beyond the stars to fall as rain on earth?

So rain cannot come from beyond the stars. Then what is that water beyond the stars for?

 

I got it: Revelations says that in the end the stars will fall to the earth. So science has it wrong.

The stars are not light years away, but well within the gravitational pull of the earth. And stars are

very small. Small enough so they can all fall to earth.

 

Oh well. You just can't trust science. We must look to the Bible for reality. bill

 

Bible history is accurate even though no one wrote a word about Jesus in his lifetime and Jesus never

wrote a word. No historians covered Jesus' life until decades after his death. So the only historical

record of his life is in the Gospels which are inconsistent with each other and very sketchy. I guess

god wanted there to be no clear and indisputable proof of his son's life. Otherwise, Jesus would have

appeared after his resurrection for all people to see as he will upon his second coming. So god had to want people to have viscous and violent disputes and wars about who his son was and what his purpose

was for thousands of years. That way there will be a lot of people who will go to hell and make it more interesting for god. bill

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 I don't deny people who wrote the Bible didn't know how the world worked and so on.  Yet I still argue, if God exists, they gave a true account of history.

 

This outlines much of the problem here and possibly a way out of it. You can see that the people who wrote the Bible didn't know how the world worked. In other words, they were errant and at the same time responsible for writing the Bible. The idea of the Bible as the inerrant word of God is pretty much out as a valid claim and you in some way realize that. 

 

But you think that if God exists then the otherwise errant Bible writers gave a true account of history. 

 

Well we already realize that they were errant and didn't know how the world worked. Why would their historical method be any different than their cosmology or any other science, why would would it be inerrant while the others were errant? 

 

You must be banking on God himself inspiring these otherwise errant writers to document true history. 

 

But why would God inspire a true historical method and yet not inspire a true cosmology, for instance? 

 

You're trying to partially apply logic and reason but then take a step back real quick when you do so in order that you don't over shoot Christianity in your own mind. Simply put, you want to try and reason and yet remain Christian. There's no other way to do that except for holding self contradicting views. 

 

So here's the kicker. 

 

Their history of the world is just as far off as their cosmology and everything else when all of the evidence is weighed.

 

So here's how your reasoning will unfold in the bitter end with respect to the evidence.

 

 

 

Yet I still argue, if God exists, they gave a true account of history.

 

Well they did not give a true account of history so God does not exist.

 

I should add that God does not exist in the sense of the Biblical concepts of God(s)... 

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The Law wasn't flawed.  It's only weakness if any, is that it condemned us.  Yet that was always the purpose of the commandments anyway, so it did it's job in that respect.  If God never gave the Law, we would never come to Him for salvation, we wouldn't see any need for it.  As for the excecution of children and other capital punishments, even if we both agreed the Law was perfect, proved beyond a shout of a doubt that it was the utlimate standard of morality, people would still have problems with the capital punishments.  The Law is like fire.  A fire consumes anything that is not in it's purest form.  Like fire, the commandments show we are nothing but ash.  Sorry I got a little poetical on you therelaugh.png , but hypothetically speaking if the Law is perfect, ultimately it will show we are not.  No human can keep a perfect law.  So those things like capital punishment were to be expected (if we didn't kill ourselves first for trying to keep something perfectly).  However, not everyone died who broke the Law.  I would say most didn't die.  This shows us God's mercy.  That even though the people broke their end of the covenant, God didn't give them punishment.  This mercy and grace was a picture of the new covenant after the first.  Also, no child died as a result of breaking the commandments.  Those who died for cursing their parents or being downright disobedient (this is way more than just talking back or having an attitude), were teenagers or older.

 

 

Christians are upset at certain sins, because they detest those things within themselves.  They just find opportunity within the Law, to say God is angry at those same things.  However what they don't realize is, for one, God calls some of the things they do as abominable, but you never hear a peep out of them concerning those sins.  Secondly, even though the Law doesn't apply to Christians, they mix in the Law with the new covenant.  So there's a lot of wrong teaching going on, and might be the main reason why we don't see miracles if God exists.

 

 

God wasn't satisfied with the blood of animals, but that doesn't disagree for the call of sacrifice.  The reason why God wasn't satisfied with it, is because it was a constant thing.  The sin of the people were never covered but for so long.  The blood of animals didn't completely cover sin.  Also, it didn't make the people obedient to Him.  So there was a need for sacrifice, but it never fully got the job done.  When it comes to slavery, I think you would find the Bible does more to ensure the safety of the slaves than anything else.  In fact, when you read all of the things the Bible has to say concerning it, you would do better not to have slaves at all.  Firstly, the laws state that anyone found with a person who was kidnapped for the purpose of slavery, they would be put to death and the slave was set free.  With that in mind, the Bible utterly condemns the kind of slavery that went on in the US.  If the US truly held up OT laws to approve of slavery, the whole US should have been put to death, and the slaves set free.  Next, even though someone would point out an owner could beat his slave to an inch within the slave's life, there were laws that state a slave could be set free for the sake of injury.  (Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arm for arm, etc.  If a slave injured his arm,eye, and so on, they were to be set free on account of that injury)  So severly beating, or any harsh treatment to slaves was not recommended if you take in all the information concerning slavery in the Bible.  Ultimately though, God didn't command the people to have slaves.  He left that up to them whether or not to have them.  If they did have them, He gave laws that ensured they were treated as men and women.

 

 

Finally, again you can't just write off God not doubling Job's children as simply not doubling them.  Job's children were his most prized possession.  They were very important concerning Job, and to the story as a whole concerning Job's suffering and loss.  Add in what I said concerning Saul and Samuel, the Jewish people definitely knew of an existence after death.  Things like the spirit and such.  These weren't new ideas brought on by the greeks. (And again I believe many religions have truth in them)

 

 

 

 

Wow, I had not expected you to come back.  Alright, I will go easy on you on account of LL.

 

The Law required a rape victim to marry her rapist and a wife to drink mud if her husband felt jealous.  Parents were to execute rebellious sons.  There are dozens of other Old Testament laws that are sick, barbaric, ignorant and so on.  If you were not aware of them I can provide verses.  If you were aware then why would you say these are not flaws?

 

Humans have worshiped gods that didn't give laws so it seems to me that giving laws is not a requirement for humans to worship gods.

 

If the law is such a consuming fire then why wasn't rape against the law?  Note taking a woman who belongs to another man was against God's law as an offense against that man.  Taking a woman that belongs to you wasn't against God's law even if she didn't consent.  In fact the very concept of consent is missing in God's law.  God spent four of the ten commandments talking about how to worship God but rape wasn't even an after thought.

 

Isn't is strange how certain sins still bother Christians but most of those Christians are not offended by eating shellfish or wearing blended fabric?  God use to be offended by such things and is no longer bothered by them?

 

This thing about blood covering sin is silly.  It's all window dressing.  People can forgive without doing anything.  You just forgive.  Why are humans so much better at forgiving than God?  Can't you see how you have created a God who is deeply flawed in order for God to fit in the tiny logical gap left by cracks in the Bible?  Your God's view about animal blood is no better off than that of Posiden, Zeus, Apollo, Oden or thousand of other gods.

 

The Bible does not ensure the safety of the slaves.  It allows Israel to attack other countries and enslave people who were minding their own business.  Then they get to rape and beat those slaves.  I think the slaves would have been better off if they had not been attacked in the first place.  Again I can provide verses if you were unaware.

 

No slaves were not treated as men.  Slaves were treated as women because in the Bible women were a type of slave.

 

Show me a Bible verse that says that Job's children were not gone when they were dead.  

 

 

 

 

First thing I want to say is, yes, those things are harsh and hard to understand.  However it's critical to understand God's true intentions for man.  You have to first look at the beginning to see what God truly desired for our lives.  Was there slavery in the beginning?  Was there sexism or man being seen as the dominant figure in the beginning?  Was there rape in the beginning?  Was there even death in the beginning?  No.  Also if the Ten Commandments and all the other laws were the tip top things God wanted humans to have, why didn't He give those things to Adam and Eve?  So this is the main thing that should be seen.  All those things you mentioned, is not how God desired for man to live.

 

 

So now getting into those things you mentioned concerning those laws.  Let me start with the jealous husband, and the wife having to drink contaminated water.  Yes, I agree with you this definitely sounds barbaric, harsh, nonsensical.  However again you have to look at a couple of things.  First, the people had proof of God's existence, or should have had proof.  God delivered them out of Egypt by a great showing of power.  He split a large body of water so the people could walk through it.  He provided them with bread that fell from the sky and so on.  If the people had this large amount of evidence to God's existence and so forth, they have reason to trust His judgments.  Normally, drinking something like describe here, could possibly kill the person who drunk it.  However, again if you see all that evidence concerning God prior, then He is certainly able to protect the woman from becoming sick when drinking this water.  This whole ceremony as it were, happened before the Lord, so He was supervising it if you will and it's one of those things where you say, "Don't try this at home."laugh.png   Yeah, but seriously, if the people have seen God do all those things in the past, He was able to protect the woman.  And if a woman were to go through this once, I doubt they would go through it again.

 

 

Now the law concerning rape victims having to marry their rapist.  This one being if the woman wasn't betrothed.  Again this one definitely seems harsh.  One thing we have to realize partly with this is that marriage was seen as a way to provide for the woman.  The punishment for the rapist was to provide for the woman for the rest of his life.  Yet this law doesn't take into account the woman's feelings about marrying him.  I think the question could be asked, if the woman objected, would it still be required she marry her rapist?  If the father objected, would that have mattered?  Yet spirit of this law is for the rapist to take care of the woman whom he harmed, for the rest of his life. (and no, he couldn't abuse her)

 

 

Concerning stoning rebellious children, of course these children were old enough to understand the Law.  They were probably young adults here.  So the choice to be rebellious was a conscious decision.  Also, we aren't talking about the occasional talking back or something of that nature.  It was more closer to cursing their parents, almost wishing they would die.  Now we have in this day, 16/17/18 year olds who probably say stuff like that, at the time hating their parents.  The Law demanded that they be put to death, because the Law states children to honor their parents. (It doesn't necessarily say to like what their parents do, but to honor them.  Now of course if the parents are abusing their children, then that's another ball game entirely)  Is this barbaric?  I think it's more a matter of opinion.  This is what I'm talking on concerning the Law, that it demanded perfection.  However, the people weren't perfect, and that's why you had the sacrificial system.  Plus, God was merciful.  Not every child who broke the commandment for honoring their parents, were stoned.  I would say most weren't.  David broke a couple of laws that were deserving of death, but he wasn't put to death. (Yet was punished, tempered with mercy)  Just like it could be that Adam didn't fall down dead the day he ate from that tree.

 

 

 

Last thing I want to say about the Law, Jesus put it into proper perspective.  God spoke concerning man back in Genesis, that the imagination of our hearts is evil from our youth.  Jesus confirms it's our thoughts that we yield to, pretty much condemns us.  Jesus said if you look with lust, you break the commandment not to commit adultery.  If you hate someone, you break the commandment not to murder.  So the rapist mentioned in that law, murdered that woman in his heart, broke the command not to commit adultery, all while violating her.  All those things are worthy of his death.

 

 

Other quick mentions, the mixing of fabric was a symbolic thing.  The ultimate result for doing so, was probably just the clothes wearing out quicker than those which are made with the same material.  The priests wore mostly linen, so they wouldn't sweat as much or at all while they were working.  So that was mostly symbolic stuff with the clothes.  Yes, Christians do oppose certain sins and ignore others.  That's more hypocrisy than anything else.  I don't think it has much to do with the culture of the people of Israel back then, and the cultures we have now.  Logically thinking, even if perfect laws came to us in this day, and it was put into how we understand things right now, if it demands we keep it perfectly or else, we would still have problems with it.  We would all die, unless the one who gave the laws was merciful.  The issue with slavery, you have to look at everything the Bible says concerning it.  Yes, there are verses that say you could treat your slave as you wish, but if you injured them, they were to be set free.  If you killed them, you would be punished, most likely with your own death. (Eye for eye)  You couldn't kidnap a person, something that went on concerning American slavery.  Anyone found with a kidnapped slave would be put to death.  So there were multiple things in place to protect the slave, if the people followed what the Law demanded.  The genocide episodes in Scripture, was God's judgment.  The driving out of the Canaanite tribes was because of the wickedness of the people therein.  This kind of judgment isn't something God takes lightly.  It's not something He just thought up one day.  Just like is seen in Genesis 6 before the flood, God was patient with all these people.  However, the time came where a judgment must be dealt.

 

 

So that's how I see the commandments.  Yet ultimately, God didn't desire for humans to go through this period of having the Law and so forth.  Finally with Job, it's implied they still had an existence after their death, because God didn't double Job's children.  There's no other explanation for why He doesn't give Job 14 children.  Either God can't count (or you would say the person writing the story can't count), or Job's children that died still existed in some form.  That form of course, is their spirit in Sheol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{snip}

4)  Suffering is just in the genetics.  In theory however, we don't have to continue to suffer as we do.  Just like it's in the genetics that we suffer in Adam, we can be healed by the genetics of Jesus.  This is in theory.

 

 

5)  I won't deny that could be one reason why it seemed like no real change took place until Adam ate, but for one we don't really know the timetable concerning the eating of the fruit.  Was Adam with Eve when Eve first ate?  The text seems to imply Adam was with her when she ultimately decided to eat from the tree.  I do think however, this shouldn't be seen as sexist because a change didn't take place until Adam ate.  This might have more to deal with genetics.  Yet it's clear, Eve was equal with Adam.  If it weren't the case, why was her punishment now that Adam would rule over her?  What was life like before? (Also concerning that, when God said Eve's desire would be for her husband, or woman's desire would be for her husband, that doesn't mean she would desire to wait on him hand and foot.  What that means is she would seek to control her husband, but the husband would rule over her)

{emphasis added}

 

 

 

 

That isn't how genetics works.  It's a pattern that tells cells what to do and how to replicate an organism.  It's just a code telling things what to do, like a computer program.  There is no sin code or healing code or suffering code.  The codes that work better created organisms that ate or out competed organisms made by inferior codes.  When an error is made in copying the code it makes a new code that is either better or worse and gets sorted accordingly. 

 

 

 

 

Mostly what I mean concerning genetics is heredity.

 

 

 

11)  That's one thing I always found unbelievable.  That the universe could become aware of itself.  You could make the argument for random stuff going on, and that random things could become organized, but awareness is something else altogether.  As big as the universe is, life on this earth is infinitely more special than anything in the universe. (Even if there are aliens out there, which by the way would disprove the Bible, you still have that same astounishing feature with them)

 

 

Yet here we are aware of ourselves.  It doesn't seem to be all that extraordinary after all because many animals are intelligent enough to distinguish between the self and others.  We have been able to test and prove that some primates can predict what others can see.  And we are all stuck on this ball orbiting a star in a galaxy flying through space.  There doesn't seem to be any reason or purpose to any of it.

 

 

 

I include the animals with us.

 

 

 

Heavenese: Reference to your reply #58, above: You said you can argue your points from the text about

A&E. Of course you can argue from the text, but that is not at all the same thing as a straight forward reading of the text. You agree that A & E didn't know good and evil, but then you say (as you did

before) that they knew evil. They can't both know and not know evil. Either they did or they didn't.

 

God told them they would die if the ate the fruit. What did "die" mean to A & E? It had never occurred on earth. Further, before they ate the fruit, they could not have known what evil meant if god didn't

tell them. The text does not say He told them that it would be evil to eat the fruit; He only told them that they would die without telling them what that meant.

 

So, WHEN they decided to eat the fruit, they had only been told they would die if they ate it,

without being told what that meant, and were not told that it was evil to do so or even what "evil"

meant. Not only that, they were not told that if they they ate from the tree all of their progeny would be inflicted with A & E's "sin" forever. Indeed, they did not know they were going have a progeny;

instead they were told they would die ON THE DAY THAT THEY ATE THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. So they did not

know they would or could have heirs. Indeed even if they knew they could otherwise have had offspring, because of eating the fruit, there would be no offspring. Therefore, the only consequences A & E could have known of if they ate the fruit was that they would die, whatever that meant. Don't you think it

exceedingly unfair of god to not tell A & E that they would have children who would be inflicted

forever with sin, which would contaminate every one of their heirs for eternity, unless of course A & E could somehow, before written language, manage to communicate their heirs to believe in Jesus who

would not be born and killed for forgiveness of sins until thousands of years had passed? Can't you see how absurd this is?

 

Again, I have run out of time. I truly wish you would read the bible at least once without any

presumptions as to the truth of Xtianity or the truth of your previous understanding of the bible, so

that your interpretation can be intellectually honest. Would God want you to be intellectually honest? Of course he would, but you can't do that without suspending your current understanding. Believe me,

any good psychologist will tell that your first hearing or reading of an account of any event will

strongly influence your future view of that event, unless you make strong effort to neutralize you

view.

Give it a try. Otherwise, you will have accepted an ancient document as proof in the most important

decision of your life without truly and objectively examining its authenticity. bill

 

 

What I mean when I say "Adam and Eve didn't know good and evil, but disobeying God was considered evil to them" is that they obviously wanted to keep God's command not to eat from the tree.  So to go against that command, isn't something they wanted to do.  We have to understand, and yes this is from the literal reading, God gave them knowledge.  It wasn't like Adam and Eve were just plain clueless, or couldn't pronounce their own names.  I mean, Adam named all the creatures God created, the boy had to know something right?  I also don't think it would make sense for God to give Adam a command, if he wasn't capable or even wanted to keep it.  Even if this story is completely made up stuff, and it can be if you're asking me, what I'm saying still remains true.  We can also assume Adam and Eve knew what death meant.  We should just assume it from what is written.  The fact the snake had to trick them in saying they wouldn't die, its safe to assume they knew what it meant.  And ultimately, as I said before, Genesis does require you to fill in the blanks a little bit.  If the story did literally happen, all the details are not given concerning what we have.  I mean this would be true of stories we know for a fact happen.  In historical accounts, every little detail is not given concerning the event being told.  We have to guess at things, assume other things, and so on.  It's no different here with this story.  So I assume from a straightforward reading, even though Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of good and evil, they did have the knowledge of keeping God's word.  That they did not want to go against it, and thus was ultimately considered evil to them. (To us, evil might have a clear definition.  To Adam and Eve, what they didn't want to do, was their definition for evil.  They didn't want to go against God's word)

 

 

I wouldn't deny I may be bias.  I don't think I'm as bias as to let it cloud studying the Bible for what is written in it.  I'm aware of a good bit of scholarly study of the Bible. (Of course not all, but a good bit)  I had great discussions on other forums, and my view have changed as a result.  However, I want to go even deeper.  I've heard discussions from the atheist side on the Bible, and I found that some of them aren't correct.  Also I've found Christian understanding of the Bible also to be not correct.  So I'm still researching this thing for myself, as it should be.

 

 

Some other quick mentions, Adam and Eve knew they would have children.  We know God blessed them to multiply on the face of the earth. (Of course I'm aware that scholars see Genesis chapters 1 and 2 as different accounts, but I can argue from 2 that Adam and Eve knew they could have children)  They probably didn't know their children would suffer from their actions, but I would consider that as moot, or it doesn't bare any real significance concerning God's character.  Even if the children didn't physically from the traits Adam passed down, because Adam and Eve were suffering, the children would be filled with sorrow for the sake of their parents.  No, Adam and Eve didn't discuss with their children about Jesus, but we can assume they taught them about the goodness of God.  Cain and Abel knew about God from what is written, and they brought Him offerings.  After Cain killed his brother, God showed him mercy.  So Cain experienced God's mercy, and could have told his children.  That becomes pretty much a main theme.  All of that would have pointed the people to lean on God's mercy, and the story with Noah would have taught the people to lean on God's favor.  Those things being a precursor for a Jesus.  Yet I argue what I stated concerning Adam and Eve, what they knew and so on, comes from a straightfoward reading of the story.  That it wouldn't make sense (even if the story was made up) for Adam and Eve to have no kind of knowledge whatsoever.

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Good to see you came back heavenese

 

I think the ASIMO comparison is fair first as you had said God created man out of his own power. Well technically he created us out of what he had. First Adam the materials was supplied by the earth and then eve the materials supplied by Adam. Same with ASIMO we created it out of materials we had on hand. Your argument that robots and computers do not possess free will falls flat on its face. For the past 20 years we have been developing autonomous computers and robots Deep Blue for example was designed to play chess without human input. It could make its own decisions and it even beat a chess grand master in Gary Kasparov. Deep Blue has free will. This is not the only example either if you want me to create a separate topic on the matter of free will and robotics this could provide for some interesting concepts to discuss

 

Back to A&E

 

You say god is all knowing, all powerful, and all morality stems from him.

 

interesting then I ask you this simple question

 

If the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life HAD to be in the garden why put the serpent there?

God knew the serpent had the cunning to overcome eve and he had the will to do it. Your god cannot exist if this story is true

 

Either:

 

he did not know the serpent was going to tempt A&E leaving him still powerful and good

 

He cant both be all knowing and good though because if he knew all that is and will be he knew the mere act of creation would cast billions upon billions of people into an everlasting torture chamber just so a few people could join him in his kingdom this makes all knowing and all good mutually exclusive in your god.

 

He knew that the serpent was going to tempt them and he had the power to stop the serpent however he is not good and is actually evil and did not intervene to protect Adam and Eve because he wanted to watch them suffer.

 

Or he is not all knowing and is not all powerful but still is all good. he did not know the serpent would corrupt his creating and he did not have the power to stop it.

 

You see it is impossible with the world that we exist in for a god with your attributes to exist. you have to start removing attributes to justify his existence. For example it would make perfect sense if god was not all powerful not all knowing and not all good. The bible makes a hell of a lot more sense if you look at it through this lens you don't have to pull mental gymnastics when god sends bears to shred kids and eat them alive for making fun of a bald guy. If the bible makes a mistake in regards to science well gods not perfect he makes mistakes. The moment you assign these qualities is the moment your god becomes an impossibility.

 

As far as Adam and Eve god lying well the truth is he did.

 

You cannot tell me that God was going to allow them to eat from the tree of life it does not say this anywhere in scripture nor does it say anywhere in scripture that they were not going to die. The mere fact that god tells A&E that if they eat from the fruit they will surely die means they had a concept of their own mortality . Until you can find scripture proving that they were not going to die then your whole concept of indirect death from the fruit fails. If they were going to die at some point regardless of eating the fruit or not then god lied. In fact you cant blame Adam at all whatsoever because after the serpent told eve she would not die but become like god. She tested out his truth she became like god Adam observes that she does not die and that she has the knowledge of the gods he is not stupid and realized that god lied to him. so he took the fruit as well. The serpent never lied in fact the bible confirms this. They were kicked out because they were becoming like the gods not because they broke the one commandment. this is the key point you miss in the genesis account.

 

 

Yes, God formed Adam out of the dirt/dust of the ground, but God created the ground from His own power.  We didn't make the material of the robot from our own words or mind.  Yet even with that, all the dust formed was Adam's body.  Adam didn't become alive until God breathed into him his true essence.  We could say this is Adam's spirit, from the way the Hebrew language describes things.  So the true essence concerning Adam was his spirit, and that was completely from God's own power.  Now it's interesting concerning what you said with the robot/computer Deep Blue.  However, I think this computer was designed to figure out a way to win chess.  Could it by it's own choice, decide to lose on purpose?  True free will is being able to chose whatever you want, in spite of the consequences.  It seems even though Deep Blue was free from human input, it's still designed to win at the game of chess.  Now maybe this is just splitting hairs here, but there's stil a clear difference from creating ex-nihilo, and making from what is around you.  This does sound like an interesting topic, but I'll save it for another day.

 

 

To your question why the serpent had to be there.....

 

 

I would say God didn't know the serpent would go that route, yet I maintain God knows everything.  How do I reconcile those two things?  The thing is, I can say this logically.  Free will is really just that.  It means for those who have it, the choice really does emanate from them and from nowhere else.  If that is true, before Adam/Eve/and the serpent existed, God didn't know what they would do because there was nothing to know.  They didn't exist, and neither their choices.  To say God knew what they would do, means they had some sort of existence prior to their existence.  That's not logical to say, and the Bible doesn't even teach such a thing by the way. (didn't mean to rhyme there. biggrin.png )  So until they existed, there was nothing to know concerning what they would do.

 

 

With that, it was the snake's choice to ultimately deceive Eve. (Of course Eve was capable of not believing the snake, no matter how cunning it was)  God made everything without flaw, so at some point the snake made the choice to go awry.  With my own outlook concerning Scripture, I believe the snake was influenced to do what it did.

 

 

All that aside, God wasn't lying.  Anything dealing with death, was only if they ate from that tree.  We can assume if they never ate, they wouldn't have died.  Anything other than that understanding would defeat the purpose of not eating of that tree, as you said God would be lying.  This is the one creation story that I know of so far, that has the interesting dynamic of humans living forever. (Can someone bring up another)  I agree they had a concept of what death was.  It could be death means more than just falling down dead.  So I offered a couple of explanations why God didn't lie when they did eat of the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  One, death did occur that day, in the animal that died whose skin was used to clothed Adam and Eve.  Essentially the very first sacrifice in human history.  Two, God meant they would die eventually.  Both are adequate explanations  Now if for instance, God saw Adam and Eve being a threat to Him (as you said God lied and they were becoming like gods), why not just destroy the competition?  Why continue to provide for them, they are now a threat?  So that explanation wouldn't agree with the text.  Especially if you believe society back then was barbaric in it's views.  God would have been seen to eliminate all competition, as a king would have excecuted someone who betrayed him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To define it better, we get our genes from our parents.  Once Adam and Eve fell (that change which took place within them, that they could now see they were naked), their DNA became corrupt.  Their DNA reflected God in the beginning, or they had God-like DNA.  However there was a disconnect once they went their own way from God.  Apart from Him, that God-like DNA couldn't maintain itself.  So the immortal became mortal. (Interesting to note, is Genesis the only creation story in the world that has humans like god figures in the beginning?)  So once the fall took place, we simply inherited their genes, hince why we suffer because of their actions.  That's how I see it at least.  It may seem unfair, but that is simply how God made things to be.  We still have free will choice, and we are ultimately not held accountable for Adam and Eve's choices.

 

 

This is terrible pseudo-science.  You are trying to combine natural causes with mythical spirituality and this is just a mess.  The DNA available today is more advanced than DNA available in the past.  It doesn't become corrupt - it adapts to survive.  Terrible pseudo-science.  Time to go back the the drawing board.

 

Notice you comment near the end?  You are actively creating a god.  Humans didn't know about DNA until just recently.  So you are taking the new knowledge acquired through science and incorporating your understanding of it into your personal god.  How you see it is how God made things to be.  This is how humans created all their other gods.

 

 

 

DNA adapts to survive, or better adaptions continue on to produce more offspring.  I don't argue against this.  It would fit in with the story of Adam and Eve.  Yet I yet to accept the idea of common descent with this.  Yes, I'm definitely incorporating what we know now into the Genesis account, but I'm not chaning what the account says.  I'm just using science to fill in the blanks.  I argue from what is written in Daniel concerning knowledge in general would increase. (On another forum I had a discussion concerning this)  So our knowledge is definitely increasing, and I'm of the belief that Genesis couldn't be fully understood until this day and age.  At the same time, I don't deny the evidence that seemingly goes against what Genesis states, but I believe there is more evidence yet to be unraveled concerning origin.  I'm not going to try to convince you anything with this, because my research is still young.

 

 

 

 

 I don't deny people who wrote the Bible didn't know how the world worked and so on.  Yet I still argue, if God exists, they gave a true account of history.

 

This outlines much of the problem here and possibly a way out of it. You can see that the people who wrote the Bible didn't know how the world worked. In other words, they were errant and at the same time responsible for writing the Bible. The idea of the Bible as the inerrant word of God is pretty much out as a valid claim and you in some way realize that. 

 

But you think that if God exists then the otherwise errant Bible writers gave a true account of history. 

 

Well we already realize that they were errant and didn't know how the world worked. Why would their historical method be any different than their cosmology or any other science, why would would it be inerrant while the others were errant? 

 

You must be banking on God himself inspiring these otherwise errant writers to document true history. 

 

But why would God inspire a true historical method and yet not inspire a true cosmology, for instance? 

 

You're trying to partially apply logic and reason but then take a step back real quick when you do so in order that you don't over shoot Christianity in your own mind. Simply put, you want to try and reason and yet remain Christian. There's no other way to do that except for holding self contradicting views. 

 

So here's the kicker. 

 

Their history of the world is just as far off as their cosmology and everything else when all of the evidence is weighed.

 

So here's how your reasoning will unfold in the bitter end with respect to the evidence.

 

 

 

Yet I still argue, if God exists, they gave a true account of history.

 

Well they did not give a true account of history so God does not exist.

 

I should add that God does not exist in the sense of the Biblical concepts of God(s)... 

 

 

 

The reason why I believe God inspired a true account of history, while not inspiring a true scientific account of how the world works, is because God put gave the word to the people in terms they could understand.  The people could understand our history concerning origins.  Yet they couldn't understand how stars work or thoughts of bacteria and so forth.  A lot of scientific discovery happened with the invention of certain tools.  (Telescopes being one)  So how were the people going to understand all that science?  Most people today don't half understand science, and most would put me in that category as well.laugh.png   Yet origins is different.  Now I would be told that science tells us our origins is different from what is presented in Genesis.  Yet our science is derived from the observations we make.  Who's to say we are seeing everything we need to make a statement concerning our origins?  I think there's something missing, and that's what I'm looking for, to see if there is something missing.  I like to say there's a missing science concerning Genesis.  Ultimately, I'm looking for evidence, and I don't expect anyone to just believe or listen to anything I'm saying without concrete evidence.  So this is probably more of a personal pursuit.  I do believe even if I'm completely wrong, again most will say I am given the scientific evidence we have and so forth, I like to think I will stumble across a big scientific discovery by chance.

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OMG! Here we go again with the historical thing and the Bible... NO, no, no

 

The Bible fails so bad when it comes to history it isn't even funny... I've been over this in DETAIL in the Lion's Den. GENESIS is a rewriting of an older Mesopotamian mythology (especially the second account) written long before the Hebrews even existed as a people (OH MY!  there were people before the Hebrews?  Yes.. quite a few and more advanced/civilized). Abram (Abraham) was from Ur.. Babylonia/Akkadia.. probably brought the mythology with him (or whoever it was.. maybe a group) and melded it with the Canaanite pantheon. (El Elyon, etc...) Any honest historian will tell you that most of the 'historical' accounts in the Bible have little evidence, if any at all - and there is a whole lot of political propaganda and rewriting. So why believe it about events that supposedly occurred long before writing? Events that are scientifically ridiculous? (2 people are the progenitors of the entire human race? bwahahaha.. not possible genetically.. and then another bottleneck at Noah of 8 people, 4 of whom were related? I won't even go into the whole flood thing... )

 

Scientifically the Egyptians and the Greeks knew more about science than the Hebrews ever did... WAY more. So saying they couldn't understand it is ridiculous.. some of our modern science is based on scientific principles and discoveries by the Greeks long before Jesus was ever born. I call baloney on this. Our ancestors didn't have the same kind of technology we have but they weren't STUPID.. if anything they may have been more intelligent (they sure as heck worked harder.. maybe because they didn't have tv) - and if you read any classical works you may understand why I say this.

 

Philisophically, theologically and morally.. it doesn't work either, because unless there are texts to confirm.. no one KNOWS what state the alleged Adam and Eve were in, how much knowledge and understanding they had.. and the texts we do have are pretty clear that they did NOT know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil... because that is what the alleged fruit bestowed on them.. so it would be a punishment for a lack of blind obedience. (sounds familiar) Nice. Doesn't sound much like a companion status at all - more a slave/master relationship.. as is pointed out in several above posts. (At least the Annunaki were honest about creating man as a slave race) Pure apologetics of the worst kind... this making excuses for Yahweh, and making up rationalizations for texts has got to stop!  :P

 

So bad history, bad philosophy, bad morality, incredibly bad science.. and Yahweh is most definitely bloodthirsty - THAT is apparent throughout the OT. Japhtheth anyone? Genocide after genocide... misogyny, racism, sacrifice.. the streets must have run with blood with all the ritual sacrifice that's required in the Law.... not unlike the Aztecs really. Yahweh likes his blood.

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I have to say heavanese your are filling in a lot of holes in the scripture to suit your needs. Please point to a verse that spells out what you are saying. Show me a verse that states adam and eve would not die. What verse states that you can assume what you want? You cant assume anything. Also the problem with the serpant is the moment he conceived to create the serpant he knew what it was capable of and what was in its heart. He did nothing to protect eve.

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DNA adapts to survive, or better adaptions continue on to produce more offspring.  I don't argue against this.  It would fit in with the story of Adam and Eve.  Yet I yet to accept the idea of common descent with this.  Yes, I'm definitely incorporating what we know now into the Genesis account, but I'm not chaning what the account says.  I'm just using science to fill in the blanks.  I argue from what is written in Daniel concerning knowledge in general would increase. (On another forum I had a discussion concerning this)  So our knowledge is definitely increasing, and I'm of the belief that Genesis couldn't be fully understood until this day and age.  At the same time, I don't deny the evidence that seemingly goes against what Genesis states, but I believe there is more evidence yet to be unraveled concerning origin.  I'm not going to try to convince you anything with this, because my research is still young.

 

 

Of course DNA does not fit in with Adam and Eve.  We can look at the DNA of people who are alive right now and see the DNA that was passed down from their rodent ancestors.  We can examine the DNA from nearly any other mammal and find DNA from the same ancestors.  You don't understand the science.  Science doesn't fill in the blanks.  Science renders the whole story false.  You want science to provide fancy words for your personal use but you deny the knowledge science uncovers.

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Heavenese: If one claims that the bible is inerrant, then it certainly must be perfectly clear.

Otherwise, it has to be interpreted. If interpretation is required, one is dealing with an opinion of a human, not god's word. Under these circumstances we, of necessity, are left with an imperfect

interpretation which cannot be god's word. There have been too many different interpretations of the

bible to count. This means the following:

FIRST: The bible cannot be the word of god if He does not delver His word in a fashion that can

be interpreted clearly. God would not require his people to follow His word if it is not perfectly

clear. Not when he expects His believers to follow his word, and their eternal life or eternal

suffering in hell depends on it. Uncertainty itself is wholly inconsistent with the bible being god's word.

 

SECOND: History proves that the bible is uncertain because there have been multiple interpretations

since the bible was written, over which thousands of Xtians, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant engaged in in brutal wars between each other. It is unbelievably arrogant for any one sect or denomination to

claim that its interpretation is the only correct one. A good god would never have let that happen,

although a cruel god might. Take your choice.

 

THIRD: All languages are man made. They are all imperfect for that very reason. They cannot be

perfectly clear. God, knowing this, would not have used human invented languages to convey his word to mankind: He would have used a perfect way which would have left absolutely no doubt as to what he meant or who it came from. Any vagueness at all eliminates all possibility that it is from god. Otherwise,

god is being just as unfair as men. Hey, is it possible that men wrote the bible? Hmmm.

 

As to A & E knowing they would have children, most biblical scholars contend that the eating of the

forbidden fruit was a metaphor for sex. So, A & E weren't supposed to have sex. Then what was sex for? And why was the tree in the garden? But regardless of that, nowhere in the bible does the text say

anything about having children, much less having a progeny that constitutes many billions of souls. So did god contaminates all of the progeny with a deadly condition (sin)for which many billions will go to hell? And thereby makes it impossible for any human to comply with god's laws. All of this through no fault of the billions of people who had the unfortunate luck to be born. God: What a guy. As to hell,

why did He even allow those He's going to send to hell to be born in the first place since He knew in advance what would happen to them?

 

I could go on and on. I hope you get the picture. But if you are happy believing as you do, that is

your right and I wish you the best, truly. bill

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