Recently, we have been able to establish, reluctantly by some and without an official admission, that God could not have spared Adam and Eve from the consequences of their disobedience that led to sin, which resulted in aging, diseases, suffering, natural disasters outside of paradise and then eventually death…
The main premise of this issue is that if God had shielded Adam and Eve from the consequences of their sin, it would have made him a liar, as He had stated clearly, that if they were to eat the forbidden fruit, they would definitely die…
Genesis 2:16-17
“16 God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
So, if God had forgiven Adam and Eve, as some have suggested He should have, and let them stay in the paradise to have access to the tree of life, Adam and Eve would not have died, but God would have been clearly proven a liar…
Not only that, by forgiving Adam and Eve, God would have proven Satan’s slander true, when he (Satan) said in:
Genesis 3:1-5
“1 Now, the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the God had made. And he (Satan) said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden? 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. 4 The serpent said to the woman, You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Satan is identified by many Christian and other religions as the one “hiding” behind the serpent or snake…or using it as a deception…
Some claim that ever since Adam and Eve were ousted from the paradise, God causes all the bad things that happen in the world today, including tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, diseases etc.
Is it true?
It doesn’t seem to be true at least in case of Job and his family, as the verses from Job 2: 16-19 show that Satan was the one who caused all the natural disasters and diseases that directly affected Job and his family…
Job 2:16, 18, 19
“16 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.” …
“…18 While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19 and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
So from these Biblical accounts, we can clearly see that Satan, and NOT God, was causing all the natural disasters and diseases that affected Job and his family…
There are several issues needing consideration:
1. Why Satan had the power to cause all the bad things to Job and his family?
2. If Satan had the power in times of Job to cause natural disasters and diseases, is he responsible for them today? If God is, what proof is there?
3. Any suggestions?
Regarding Christian views of God’s omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence please see the OP by vjtorley.
Please try to focus on the main theme of the OP. If there is something that is not directly related to this OP but it is important to you, create your own OP, so that we can try to stay on the same theme as much as possible…
Mung,
I have not looked at it closely enough to form an opinion. What are your thoughts here on why it is fraudulent?
“Written by God”, “dictated [by God]”, “revelation” and “inspired” are not interchangeable, not freely anyway.
Quran is said to be eternal, written by Allah and dictated to Muhammad. Torah is said to be dictated to Moses. The Bible (in Christianity) is said to be inspired revelation. The doctrine of inspiration has its interpretations from very liberal (inspired and inspiring roughly the same way as works of art) to literal-verbal dictation. Somewhere in between there’s the view that scripture, even though written by men, is inspired by God so that it’s spiritually binding, more authoritative than church fathers whose writings are merely commentaries on the scripture.
These are all occasionally important distinctions to keep in mind. From the analytic or critical point of view, there’s the additional aspect of whether the meaning embedded in the selected term makes sense. For example, did God dictate Moses’ death to Moses and Moses wrote it down?
John, to colewd:
It’s the Jebus Effect in action.
Mung:
No, that isn’t clear at all. It’s just something Christians made up to rationalize away God’s obvious lie.
I love watching Christians fight the Bible out of one corner of their mouths, while praising it as the word of God out of the other.
And how bizarre that Christians are OK with God commanding the Israelites to commit genocide, and perpetrating a mass slaughter himself in the form of the Flood; but when you suggest that God lied, well, them’s fightin’ words.
Well I also disagree with anyone who entertains such a literal interpretation.
I believe that the Bible is a compendium of various writings. Many of the stories are later writings taken from oral traditions. And they originated from the experiences of initiates who had access to higher realms of existence ..Different ancient cultures have similar myths, not because of copying or any form of plagiarism, but because they are taken from the same source. The initiates relayed to the masses their individual interpretations of what they had witnessed.
The written words of the many versions of the Biblical texts such as in the Book of Genesis are only a faint, weak echo of the words spoken by the elders to the ancient Hebrews. “Bereshit bara Elohim; et haShamayim ve’et ha’aretz” (In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth), the sound of these words would have had a powerful effect on the feelings of the listeners, far greater than they have on us as we read these words today. Dry, abstract, analytical thinking is only a later development in the evolution of consciousness. It was not something that people possessed in those ancient times.
So we have to understand the words of the Bible in their context, who were they primarily meant for and how we should understand them today. Written words tend to kill language. The Word of God is not anything as static as a series of words written in a book, no matter what book we are talking about. The Word of God is the Living Christ.
CharlieM,
The question is whether you think God is responsible for the Bible’s contents. If he is, then why did he include all those horrible stories? Does he want to be seen as an unloving monster?
No. Humans are responsible for the Bible’s contents.
Those contents aren’t the word of God?
You must be a heretic. Get the hell out of my church.
Charlie,
I’m glad to hear you say that.
But if humans are responsible for the Bible’s contents, and not God, then how do you decide what to believe about Jesus?
Pedant, to CharlieM:
I think he’d get that reaction from a lot of his fellow Christians.
God’s bad PR in the Bible isn’t limited to moral atrocities. The Good Book also portrays him as incompetent and stupid.
Consider the Flood story. The saga begins with God regretting his big screwup:
After the Flood itself, in which this psychopathic deity slaughters almost everyone on earth (including innocent children and animals) to “fix” his screwup, he realizes that the Flood was itself a screwup, and vows never to do it again.
So what happens? Noah’s family and their descendants repopulate the earth, and humanity is evil, just like before. What did the mass slaughter accomplish? Nothing.
It’s just one fuckup after another with this God.
To top it off, God knows he can’t trust himself to remember his own promise. He puts the rainbow in the sky not merely as a sign of his promise to humanity, but also as a mnemonic device to remind himself not to wipe out the planet the next time he gets pissed off:
So we have a doofus God who screws up right and left, and needs to tie a rainbow around his finger so he won’t forget his promise and wipe out humanity again.
If we believe with St Paul that the resurrection of Christ is factual, then the details of what I believe about Jesus are not that important. I know that my knowledge is imperfect and limited and all I can do is to try to refine my views into a consistent unified whole and to eliminate contradictions.
I grew up in a family that were never Church goers but for as long as I can remember I have always believed in the reality of Christ.
keiths,
You have brought up valid criticisms of some contents of the Bible if it is read from certain points of view. But there is another point of view which I believe invalidates your criticism. Much of it has to do with the evolution of consciousness and in understanding that the originators of these ancient stories had a different consciousness from that possessed by our modern Western minds. And the Bible must be understood in that light.
Here are some of Steiner’s remarks on viewing the Bible:
One wonders what all those religous wars were about then.
What are any wars about? Human selfish greed and people trying to impose their own will on others. As in this
And yet, despite the bible, that all happens and continues to happen. It’s almost as if despite being able to understand the bible properly, as you say, they went to war anyway.
So if even the people who by your definition can understand the bible correctly don’t care about it’s message, why should anyone care now?
Who in particular went to war despite being able to understand the Bible? Do you think that Hitler, or that the various popes over the centuries, of the founder of the Church of England, had a significant understanding of the Bible? It is quite often the case that those with understanding are not in a position to influence events and those with the power to make things happen do not understand the possible consequences of their action. Trump?!!
How do you know that someone who has a good understanding of the Bible does not care about any message they take from it? And why should it follow that someone who does have this understanding is also a person of high morals? It is one thing knowing the correct course of action and yet another following that course. It is often much easier to follow our own selfish desires than to do what is right.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Why should we believe that the resurrection of Christ is factual?
The accounts were written well after Jesus’s death, by people who were not eyewitnesses. They also contradict each other, and one of them — the gospel of Mark — was doctored after the fact by someone who was unsatisfied with the ending and tacked on some verses — Mark 16:9-20 — in which Jesus appears to his disciples.
And if it was important enough for Jesus to appear to the disciples, and to Paul, in order for them to believe, then why doesn’t he appear to each of us? Why should the good news be limited to those who are gullible enough to buy the cockamamie accounts in the Bible?
No one is forced to believe it. We have been given the freedom to believe it or disbelieve it as we so wish. It is our choice.
Steiner: from his lectures on the Gospel of Mark
(In that second paragraph Steiner is giving a typical modern view of Christ and, obviously, this is not his own view)
Mark was a pupil of Peter and he compiled the Gospel in oral form. It was put into writing at a later time.
The disciples and Paul had to undergo long preparations in order for Christ to appear to them. It was not just a passive receiving on their part.
How long?
I don’t know. No later than 70 A.D. would be my guess as to when it was first written down.
So is believing that Santa manages to visit every home in the world in 24 hours, but…um…well…
Not according to Paul’s account of his “encounter” on the road to Damascus. In fact, I can’t find any statement from anything in the bible that even gives this impression. Where are you getting this?
CharlieM,
That we can choose between belief or disbelief is obvious.
My question was about the rational basis for taking the resurrection to be factual, when the accounts are so untrustworthy.
So that’s a gap of what, a generation at least?
Unless you know otherwise there is a major difference between belief in Santa and belief in Christ. In the case of Santa I do not know of any adult who has gone from a position of non-belief to belief. Where Christ is concerned it happens all the time. Why do you think this is?
It is true that Paul’s conversion was a complete surprise to him, but because of his background and previous experience he believed that a Messiah would come. I believe that he was an initiate of esoteric Judaism just as Plato was an initiate of the Greek mysteries.
The disciples had been prepared directly by Christ’s teachings.
If the accounts are treated as a history physical events then they would obviously be seen as untrustworthy. But the Gospels were not composed in order to be taken as historic records, they were composed and included in the New Testament for the deeper messages they contain. There are reasons why they begin so differently and why they lay stress on different aspects of the life and death of Jesus Christ.
There would have been no gap between the oral recitals and the time they were first written down. Although I would say that there are many differences between what we read in modern translations of the New Testament and what was conveyed orally at the beginning.
That’s simply a variation of an appeal to widespread belief (bandwagoning). That some adults come to believe in Jesus as some lord and god isn’t actually any kind of evidence for such or that he is more valid a belief than Santa.
In any event, from my perspective, there is no difference between a belief in Santa or elves or Sauron or Christ. They are all equally myths based on my research.
But of course, that’s neither here nor there. My whole point, really, is that people are free to believe pretty much anything, but freedom to believe adds nothing to determining whether said belief has any validity.
Where are getting this? Paul’s background was as a tent maker. He did not believe anything about the Messiah before his alleged conversion. And he turned in many of his fellow Jews to the authorities for believing in the Messiah. He states pretty unequivocally that he did NOT believe that Jesus was the Messiah before his conversion.
Methinks you are just making things up…
keiths:
CharlieM:
You’ve acknowledged that the Bible accounts were produced by humans and not by God, and you’ve acknowledged that the accounts are not historically trustworthy.
Why then do you regard the resurrection as “factual”?
Hilarious. keiths finally figures out that the biblical texts were actually written by humans.
Think, keiths!
If it’s written down by humans, it cannot possible be true!
Mung,
Instead of just making shit up, why not get on over to this thread and answer the questions in terms of your sophisticated, non-sky-daddy God?
Because I’m still trying to digest your stated desire for Creationism to be true. Why don’t you start an OP on why you wanted Creationism to be true?
Was it because you wanted to please your mommy?
Mung,
Because it was a part of my faith, and I wanted the whole package to be true.
I dropped the fundagelical stuff first, and pretty soon the whole thing unraveled.
Now stop stalling and get on over there.
But that makes no sense!
It was part of your faith in what your mommy told you? She told you about Santa. And she told you about the tooth fairy. And she told you that she loved you.
And they all turned out to be lies?
Stop stalling, Mung.
By some miracle or other I managed to navigate my way past the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus, and not conclude that everything my parents told me was lies. I believe they loved me, in spite of the spankings I got.
You have contradicted yourself here. You cannot claim that Paul (Saul) had no beliefs about the Messiah and then rightly claim that because of his understanding of what the Messiah should be he judged that Jesus could not have been it.
Paul (Saul) was well versed in Jewish culture and beliefs and from his understanding of what was expected of the Messiah he could not see how someone who claimed to be the Messiah would have allowed himself to suffer such humiliating treatment and death. He had very firm beliefs about the Messiah and it was because of those beliefs that he persecuted Christians.
If only God would come down from heaven, take on human form, and allow himself to suffer, be crucified and die, THEN I would believe in God.
No, I’m being generalistic and using colloquialisms. I was not saying that he had no beliefs about the messiah, but rather that he did not believe any of Jesus’ claims about being the messiah and did not belief any of the claims of any of the supposed “Christians” about being the messiah. And he makes that pretty darn clear.
If that’s all it took for Paul to be “prepared” for Christ’s coming, then 99.9999999999% of the world is prepared as well. Your theology seems rather ad hoc to me and not well thought out.
CharlieM,
You’ve acknowledged that the Bible accounts were produced by humans and not by God, and you’ve acknowledged that the accounts are not historically trustworthy.
Why then do you regard the resurrection as “factual”?
Mung,
What do you mean, “allow himself”? He demanded it and made it happen:
“…Mainstream scientists say fossil fuels contribute to heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas…”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-divestment/shunning-fossil-fuels-40-catholic-groups-seek-climate-action-idUSKCN1C72XN
How could we possibly blame God for this???
Damb it! We can’t. Such a good idea…