Did the Devil decide to drown everyone in a great flood, or did God do that? The bible is full of horrible atrocities either committed or ordered by God.
Creationism Banned In U.K. Schools
- Thread starter Relayer1
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I thought the issue was about assuming responsibility for one's own actions? Let's assume for a moment God would stop the massacres in Nigeria and Iraq. Would people in later centuries think of this as an atrocity committed by God?
Bob
Bob
Only if he chose to stop those atrocities by murdering all the first-born children of Kurdistan.
It's not about responsibility for one's actions, it's about the phiolosophical problem of evil: a benevolent god would be compelled to protect life and an omnipotent god would able to. It therefore stands to logic that God cannot be all-loving and all-powerful at the same time; either his power has certain inherent limits (Christians like to claim this, although they're quick to point out that his power is SELF-limiting, which is a copout) or he is not ENTIRELY benevolent (Muslims are fond of this excuse).
If you were to take God's supposed representatives at face value -- something I almost never -- one would have to conclude that God is a manipulative asshole who creates suffering for its own sake.
How about the great flood? God drowned a planet full of innocent human babies who didn't have a clue yet to what was going on. Yeah, that's someone worth worshiping all right.
As much as I love a good theological debate, this isn't really the forum for that is it?
I'm not trying to mini-mod. I almost chimed in on this one, but what would that lead to? Dogs and cats living together, no doubt.
I'm not trying to mini-mod. I almost chimed in on this one, but what would that lead to? Dogs and cats living together, no doubt.
I'm sure it will eventually lead to creationism being banned in TrekBBS schools.
Exactly. More than once is God portrayed as malevolent in the Bible.
How about the great flood? God drowned a planet full of innocent human babies who didn't have a clue yet to what was going on. Yeah, that's someone worth worshiping all right.
It's already beginning in Genesis. He LIES to his creations about the tree. He said they'd die if they eat from it. That absolutely wasn't the case. Then he punishes them for being a) curious* and for being b) talked into doing it. That's a pretty bad character.
I personally disagree with the character of God, his moral compass, and his decisions. How can that be?
* curiosity is a non-intelligent design in this case, isn't it? Humans didn't work out as he expected. They are the prime example of what God considered a design flaw. They malfunctioned so badly (from his point of view) that he exiled them from his paradise.
I agree that there sections worthy of debate. But to arrive at any kind of judgement I simply don't have all the background information of events featured, there are plenty of metaphors and the New Testament constitutes a paradigm shift or a correction of events not accurately depicted in the Old Testament.
They became mortal, didn't they? And mortals eventually die.
From the overall context it looks clear to me that it was a character test and they failed (why else would the All-Kowing ask Adam why he did it?). Not to assume responsibility for your own actions, but, worse, try to blame somebody else for your own inadequacy and, still worse, to accept that the other person is being punished in your place is something which could qualify as "original sin", IMHO.
If anybody wants to see somebody passing this kind of character test I recommend "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Captain Nemo is really tempting Professor Arronax to stay at the expense of his comrades. Professor Arronax declines.
I think some will agree with me that Nemo's character test is quite understandable.
Bob
But why would he need to do a character test at all?
Yeah, that'S just it, isn't it? When an all-knowing, all-powerful infallible being creates a flawed human it can't be anything but intentional.
I'm sorry, but Adam was set up!
I'm not sure I understand what you are aiming at. Did God create a situation where it had to be expected that Adam and Eve couldn't resist temptation? I'd say yes. But the issue revolves around how they reacted to the "why" question, not the act of disobedience, IMHO.
Creationists may take the story literally, I regard it as a metaphor where despite several translations (as HIjol originally posted) the core issue ("free will and how to abuse it") remained remarkably intact.
Interestingly, there is a tribe in Africa that never met missionaries and they have a remarkably similar story to tell, "The Legend of Umbotte".
Bob
I meant blame shifting as the solution.
Ok Jesus did not take on the blame for Original Sin, but he sure took the punishement.
And it is considered to be the ONE virtue to be happy about that.
Ok Jesus did not take on the blame for Original Sin, but he sure took the punishement.
And it is considered to be the ONE virtue to be happy about that.
Sin is a human construct, like religion and politics. It does not exist in the natural world. Something is only a sin, or is good or evil, if we deem it so. It could have it's roots in natural selection but humans don't live in a natural life style now. There are so many of us we invent artificial means to manipulate the natural world for survival. Even monkeys do that by tool use, but they can't live outside natural laws like humans can. There is no frickin' way a hunter gatherer life style for humans would work with as many as there are on the planet now.
So agriculture, technology, laws and morality were invented so we could get past the natural laws of survival. God is nothing different than a car. It's simply something we've came up with to live outside the natural evolutionary boundaries of natural law.
And if God had told him he would EVENTUALLY die, that would be a valid point.
But he didn't. He told him "In the day that you do it, you will surely die." And yet, Adam lived another 930 years after the fact.
The Jehovah Witnesses like to say that since a day to God is 1000 years, technically Adam didn't survive to the end of one God-length day. Which is to take a metaphor and extrapolate it literally to explain why another metaphor could be taken literally.
No it wasn't. The "All knowing" would have no need for a character test, seeing how he is a) all-knowing and b) having created Adam in the first place, is in fact the ARCHITECT of his character and should have seen that coming. Neither Adam nor Eve had no knowledge of good and evil at the time, and no reason to question if what the serpent told them was true.
It WAS true, by the way. They did not die, but they became like God, having knowledge of good and evil. They were then banished from Eden in order to prevent them from gaining immortality from the Tree of Life. It's clear in those early chapters that God is neither all knowing nor all-powerful; he's just really really smart and really really powerful.
And yet, Christians still expect Jesus to be punished for the sins of all mankind
And yet, Christians still expect Jesus to be punished for the sins of all mankind
I'm not sure you've grasped the whole Resurrection thang.