Cowboy wrote:

But you do not state that you "feel" they are. You just flat out state that they are absolutely without a doubt no way they could be true.

Cowboy wrote:

No, I'm not insulted by YOUR spiritual beliefs. I'm insulted when you repeatedly state that my beliefs are merely folklore, fables, potentially lies, ect. Your spiritual beliefs are yours, they in no way effect me so why would YOUR beliefs insult me? They don't, again it's you always trying to downgrade my beliefs that is insulting.

I say this because the premise of these stories is that this God is supposed to be all-wise. The stories are clearly not all-wise. Therefore there can be no doubt that something is afoul.

That's my feelings on that.

Well if you want to talk about mature civilized discussions on a General Religion forum, then you shouldn't be insulted by people who object to various things associated to a religion that you might believe in.

A mature adult should be able to hear reasons that other people give for not believing in their religion and not be insulted by that.

In fact, if you're going to be insulted by people who feel that the scriptures you believe in have no merit, then perhaps you shouldn't enter into those kind of discussions in the first place.

Spend time in the Christian forums and you'll hear people supporting your views. Why bother talking with people who don't believe like you if you are going to be insulted by their views?

That makes no sense to me.

Cowboy wrote:

Wise is all a matter of opinion. What one person sees as wise another may see as foolish. And what is just a couple things you see as unwise? Just give a couple brief statements on the things unwise about God if you don't mind please.

Just give a couple brief statements on the things unwise about God if you don't mind please.

Cowboy wrote:

You truly don't listen do you? I stated that it's not the fact that you disagree that is insultive. It is how you word these things, they are intended to be insultive or they wouldn't be worded as such. You call the Christian God "foolish". This could only be insultive. You state them as being fables. Again this is ment to be insultive, or else you could/would just say they are not true. And much more things said as such.

See, now you're asking for my opinions and views. You can't seem to get enough of them.

To begin with your very request is a bit misleading allow me to address that first:

You say:


Let's make it clear here that you are speaking about the "God" described in the biblical stories. Because what always happens in these kinds of discussions is that the religious fanatic assumes these stories to genuinely be of God. And thus they take this to mean that I feel that "God" itself is unwise. Which of course is totally incorrect.

It's the stories that are unwise, and therefore they are not likely to be from any supposedly all-wise God.

There are so many things I'm not sure where to start. I'll limit myself to three basic ideas. But trust me I could easily come up with dozens of even more.

The first obvious flaw in these stories is that mankind did not fall from grace on his own merit. He had to be coerced by an evil serpent. That right there is a major flaw in these stories as far as I'm concerned.

If God did not want Adam and Eve to fall from grace, why expose them to an evil instigator? Moreover, if it was required to expose them to an evil instigator then why pass judgment on them for having fallen from grace when clearly that very act required instigation by an already evil party?

I'm sure you'll just wave this off with some superficial hand-waving because you want the stories to be true, but for me it's a major problem that indicates to me that this story is just the made up fables of men. I doubt very much that I will accept your hand-waving explanations.

Secondly, I have major problems with blood sacrifices being required to atone sins. I see absolutely no value in that whatsoever. Especially having people sacrifice animals. From my point of view a truly wise God would have created as system of atonement where the only way to atone for "sin" (which is nothing more than disobedience of God in this religion) would be to have the person obey God concerning the same infraction, only ten-fold, or maybe even a hundred-fold.

In other words, let's say that the infraction was that a person stole something that didn't belong to them. Then to atone that sin they would need to give way something of the same value to at least ten people, or potentially a hundred people. Whatever.

But his would be a very constructive way of atoning sins, that actually teaches positive behavior. What going to be learned by having to slaughter an animal? Not much. In fact, it's almost too easy. That would just teach people that if they have a large heard they can get away with a lot of sins because they have plenty of animals to sacrifice.

There's just no way that I see any wisdom in the concept of blood sacrifices atoning sins. Moreover, this idea of appeasing the Gods via the blood sacrificing of animals was rampant in all Mediterranean folklore and mythologies including the Greek Mythology of Zeus. Why would any "real God" just happen to be like Zeus?

That's a dead give-a-way right there that the religion is just another man-made fable. Blood sacrifices are neither wise, nor original, IMHO.

And of course, that whole blood sacrifice concept is paramount for Christianity because Jesus becomes the ultimate blood sacrifice to pay for the sins of any man who's willing to accept it on his behalf.

I personally don't fell that this is wise either.

Well that's really only two things. I was going to offer a third but this post is already too long.

But keep in mind, I'm not saying that "God" is unwise. I'm saying that these man-made stories are unwise, and this is why they cannot be from any God.

The first obvious flaw in these stories is that mankind did not fall from grace on his own merit. He had to be coerced by an evil serpent. That right there is a major flaw in these stories as far as I'm concerned.

Secondly, I have major problems with blood sacrifices being required to atone sins. I see absolutely no value in that whatsoever. Especially having people sacrifice animals. From my point of view a truly wise God would have created as system of atonement where the only way to atone for "sin" (which is nothing more than disobedience of God in this religion) would be to have the person obey God concerning the same infraction, only ten-fold, or maybe even a hundred-fold.

In other words, let's say that the infraction was that a person stole something that didn't belong to them. Then to atone that sin they would need to give way something of the same value to at least ten people, or potentially a hundred people. Whatever.

But his would be a very constructive way of atoning sins, that actually teaches positive behavior. What going to be learned by having to slaughter an animal? Not much. In fact, it's almost too easy. That would just teach people that if they have a large heard they can get away with a lot of sins because they have plenty of animals to sacrifice.

Cowboy wrote:

Yes they/we did do it on our own merit. If there are three people, we'll call them A B C. A entices B to kill C and he does. Would A or B go to prison for killing C? Who did the action of killing? Who made the decision to do as such? Was it not B?

Because blood is the most important substance, especially in that day and age. We needed physical strength. Where does that come from? Our muscles. Where nutrient is needed to build our muscles? Protein. Where does protein come from? Blood.

And on your way of receiving forgiveness wouldn't work. You are saying that the person that did the sinful action should just not do it ten-fold to show his/her remorse for disobedience. This would not work cause we aren't suppose to do sinful things in the first place. So therefore the person if he/she was to do the ten-fold thing, they were already suppose to do that in the first place, so how would this be something special to show remorse?

Again we are already suppose to do what you suggest. So again, how would it be something special to show sincerity of our remorse in our disobedience?

I disagree. Once again, you're reducing the situation to a normal mortal situation. You're not thinking spiritually in terms of an all-powerful creator who would then be judging an entire species for thousands of years based on whether or not they "fell from grace".

In fact, your answer here clearly does not even remotely apply because in your situation would the entire generation and family of B then be held guilty for the decisions and actions of B?

No, clearly not. So your scenario with human affairs here doesn't even remotely apply to the situation of a creator starting with a brand new creation.

So I don't accept your hand-waving in this instance. I still feel that if an entire species is going to be judged for having fallen from grace, that very idea should be their own and not be planted in their mind by a third party.

That's my feelings on that, and I still feel that way.

Besides, I have deeper issues associated with this original story of the Fall from Grace.




But it wasn't even human blood that is being sacrificed here.

Besides, blood isn't any more important than air. Try living without breathing.

Clearly the whole blood sacrifice thing is nothing more than a superstition created by men.

So again, I don't accept your trivial answer. It's just a man-made superstition that permeates a lot of man-made mythologies. And you haven't convinced me otherwise.



Oh it would absolutely be something special to show remorse.

Besides how would killing an animal show remorse? It's no skin of the nose of a human to kill an animal. They were probably doing it all the time. They just didn't get to eat this one perhaps.

Big deal. I'm not the slightest bit impressed that this would "Show" remorse.

Besides, the whole idea that people would need to "Show" remorse is a bogus idea anyway. God is supposed to know what's in the hearts of men. So if the person feels true remorse God should know it without any need for any sacrifice to "prove it".

So that whole idea that it is a way of demonstrating the sincerity of remorse is a totally bogus idea. God is supposed to know what's in the hearts of men. So God would know whether the person is remorseful or not. No blood sacrifice would be required.

So clearly, it must just be a man-made superstition because it doesn't fit in with the idea of an all-knowing God.




No that's not true. You're thinking of Jesus. This is way back in the Old Testament. There were no commandments back then about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, or helping people or anything like that.

So back in those days if you ran around making things of value for other people and giving them away freely, that would indeed be well over an above anything that God had requested that you should do.

So an all-wise God could have easily set it up as a way to atone your sins.

Besides, according to you, you continue to fall from grace and sin on a continual basis. You refer to this as "Stumbling and Falling". In other words, you're suggesting that it's not premeditated or willful disobedience, it just stems from a lack of discipline on your part. Well, to correct that, if you then had to focus on helping others that FOCUS would help you to build strong discipline and then you wouldn't have so much time to be stumbling and falling from grace all the time.


So my way of atoning sins would serve two purposes. It would atone the previous sin, and it would serve to keep the person occupied with good deeds thus helping them from just turning right back around and sinning again.

With the sacrificial lamb thing. That doesn't take by one night and it's over. Then the person is back to being idle again where they might very well sin again.

My method keeps the person busy with atonement chores for quite some time. Especially if we make it a hundred-fold.

No, sorry, I'm not convinced that the idea of blood sacrifices as atonement for sins came from any all-wise being. That's just ancient superstitions is all.

NO SALE.

I disagree. Once again, you're reducing the situation to a normal mortal situation. You're not thinking spiritually in terms of an all-powerful creator who would then be judging an entire species for thousands of years based on whether or not they "fell from grace".

In fact, your answer here clearly does not even remotely apply because in your situation would the entire generation and family of B then be held guilty for the decisions and actions of B?

No, clearly not. So your scenario with human affairs here doesn't even remotely apply to the situation of a creator starting with a brand new creation.

So I don't accept your hand-waving in this instance. I still feel that if an entire species is going to be judged for having fallen from grace, that very idea should be their own and not be planted in their mind by a third party.

That's my feelings on that, and I still feel that way.

Besides, I have deeper issues associated with this original story of the Fall from Grace.

But it wasn't even human blood that is being sacrificed here.

Besides, blood isn't any more important than air. Try living without breathing.

Clearly the whole blood sacrifice thing is nothing more than a superstition created by men.

So again, I don't accept your trivial answer. It's just a man-made superstition that permeates a lot of man-made mythologies. And you haven't convinced me otherwise.

Besides how would killing an animal show remorse? It's no skin of the nose of a human to kill an animal. They were probably doing it all the time. They just didn't get to eat this one perhaps

If you accept the story of the crucification as a true one-(which I don't)- But let's say I did accept it as true for this example.

This is the way I would look at it.

The God or Gods (or creators) of man wanted a certain bloodline for the human race. (The ademic bloodline - from Adam)

I say Gods (plural) because it was stated in the Bible "Let US make man in OUR image."

Even if I believe that these Gods were an advanced civilization of beings from another dimension, (not really all powerful gods) the same thing applies.

Thee ademic race was started and Adam and Eve were supposed to have many children. Their children were supposed to upgrade the gene pool of the primitive humans living on the earth. (Yes there were other humans, as their sons took wives elsewhere.)

Where the forbidden fruit came in was some kind of corruption of the flesh or gene pool. Perhaps Eve mated with the Naga or the serpent being in the garden. Some people believe that one bloodline that arose from Adam and Eve was from the naga or serpent bloodline and one was from Adam.

Not only that, because of Lucifer's rebellion earth was a free-for-all of these alien "Gods" and they were creating their own species of humans all around the world like the Native Americans. Some of these human races were successful, others were not.

These creator Gods participated in mass genocide when they decided the races they created were inferior. (Genocide is still practiced today to reduce populations.)

Back to the sacrifice:

The Gods at one point realized that the humans they had created were too mixed with the wrong bloodlines, and that the seeding of the planet had gone all wrong and they should just eliminate all of them. A mass extinction was planned, just as they did to the dinosaurs.

The reason for the punishment of death for all humans, or at least all of the offspring of Eve is because of the slave law, "The wages of sin is death."

The Human status was like the status of slaves and they were owned by their creators. They were expected to obey their masters. To disobey was often deemed a sin punishable by death.

Eve's sin was allowing the Naga (serpent being) to seduce her. The forbidden fruit was to procreate with a different race or species, it was not fruit from any tree. Adam also participated in the sexual activities with the naga. (Adam was bi-sexual having originally been created with both male and female organs, then altered later.)

That is why we are considered to have been "born in sin." Not because of the sins of our parents, but because of the bloodlines of the naga being passed down to the generations.

That is what is meant by the corrupted flesh.

So it was decided to kill all the inhabitants on the earth and start over. But it was argued that these mixed races were actually progressing at an advanced rate compared to the pure and perfect experiments that had been done elsewhere in the universe.

So the council decided they would spare the humans if someone would volunteer to be their spokesman. That is where the savior came in.
He had to go to the earth and live and die with his subjects.

I don't think it mattered how he died. It was understood that taking human form meant that you would live and then die. The crucification itself could still be a total fiction or drama that represents the saviors sacrifice of becoming human and living as a human and then dieing. He may have lived to a ripe old age, but he still died. The manner of his death is not important.

Anyway that's the sacrifice. For a God to incarnate into human flesh and live and die with his subjects.

I say Gods (plural) because it was stated in the Bible "Let US make man in OUR image."

Where the forbidden fruit came in was some kind of corruption of the flesh or gene pool. Perhaps Eve mated with the Naga or the serpent being in the garden. Some people believe that one bloodline that arose from Adam and Eve was from the naga or serpent bloodline and one was from Adam

The reason for the punishment of death for all humans, or at least all of the offspring of Eve is because of the slave law, "The wages of sin is death."

The Human status was like the status of slaves and they were owned by their creators. They were expected to obey their masters. To disobey was often deemed a sin punishable by death.

I don't think it mattered how he died. It was understood that taking human form meant that you would live and then die. The crucification itself could still be a total fiction or drama that represents the saviors sacrifice of becoming human and living as a human and then dieing. He may have lived to a ripe old age, but he still died. The manner of his death is not important.

Cowboy wrote:

We aren't punished daily my friend. We are no longer punished for what Adam and Eve did. We don't get punished for what our parents or any other person does/did.

How in the world could you sacrifice air? That doesn't even make sense. There is nothing greater that YOU could sacrifice besides blood. Again, especially in that time where physical strength was needed for daily survival. Yes we have vegetarians, but they could never achieve the muscle mass and or strength as one that does eat meat/protein. So please, try again to come up with something someone could sacrifice that is highly important, something that is possible to sacrifice.

It shows remorse because again those animals were needed. When something was sacrificed to God, it was put on the alter, then taken down to eat. It was given to God. And it wasn't just some animal they sacrificed. It was something worth something. Their strongest bull, their fastest horse, ect. It was something of need. Think of the word “sacrifice”. If you're giving someone something you don't need, did you sacrifice something for this person? But if you give someone something that even puts a strain on you to do it, but you do it anyways to help, isn't that what a “sacrifice” is? It's not for cerimonial purposes my friend, it was done in all sincerity and from the heart.

Your being inconsistent here with your interpretations and claims.

You have previously required that we live in a dog-eat-dog world that is contaminated with disease, death, and natural disasters as punishment for the original sin (or disobedience) of Adam and Eve.

So according to you we are being punished daily. Now you're trying to change that stance. Yet that was an important stance for you to take when the question of why the world is dog-eat-dog and why things like disease and natural disasters exist.

So you've got some serious contradictions in your own theories as far as I'm concerned.

These biblical fables cannot be made to work, no matter how hard we try to make them work. This is why I refer to them as fables, they are clearly inconsistent and incompatible with any rational explanations.

Moreover, as I had previously pointed out, the biblical fables aren't all that different from any other man-made fables. They contain the very same superstitious concepts such as blood sacrifices appeasing the gods.




I'm not asking anyone to sacrifice air. Nor have I ever suggested any such thing. On the contrary I offered a very practical and positive way for people "atone" their sins that has nothing at all to do with any superstitious sacrifices.

So I renounce the whole sacrificial lamb thing, whether it's associated with blood or air. It doesn't matter. The people weren't sacrificing their own blood anyway. So the whole thing makes no sense as far as I'm concerned. And it makes even less sense if I accept your theory that these blood sacrifices amount to a display of sincere remorse which I speak to after your next quote.




Again, in the big picture this fails dramatically, IMHO.

If the purpose of these sacrifices was to simply show sincerity of remorse, that would imply that God couldn't tell whether the people were sincere in their remorse or not unless they actually display their sincerity to him via this kind of act. I don't buy that idea at all. It doesn't support the concept of a God who knows what's in the hearts of men. Such a God would not require any outward display or action to prove the sincerity of remorse. God would simply know who is remorseful and who is not.

So I don't buy your explanation for these blood sacrifices.

Moreover, and this is of HUGE importance, you seem to be totally ignoring the ultimate blood sacrifice of Jesus!

The Ultimate Blood Sacrifice

According to Christianity Jesus was the ultimate sacrificial lamb of God to end all blood sacrifices. This is one reason why it's so extremely important that Jesus was totally free of any sin. He had to be a perfect unblemished "lamb" in order to serve as this ultimately blood sacrifice to pay for the sins of all mankind.

However, if we now go back to your claims that the purpose of a blood sacrifice was to show the sincerity of the person who is seeking atonement for their sins then this makes no sense.

In other words, if Jesus was considered to be the ultimate blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifices, then by your theory, Jesus would have been displaying a show of sincerity for all of mankind and relieving us from ever having to prove or display our sincerity again.

With all due respect this makes absolutely no sense at all to me.

Why would God have sent his son to be sacrificed so that we would no longer need to show or demonstrate the sincerity of our remorse?

This is why your interpretations of these blood sacrifices cannot work. The blood sacrifices would have need to actually "pay" for the sins in question. That brings up the very serious and hard question of how such a thing could "pay" for sin (or disobedience)

Why would a God be "appeased" by such an act? What's in it for God to see something butchered? It's bad enough to think that God would be appeased by seeing a perfect animal slaughtered but to think that he would somehow be appeased by having his only begotten human son butchered makes absolutely no sense at all to me.

In what way would God be appeased by that?

That, my friend is just a totally sick notion right there.

As you often say, "So please, try again to come up with something reasonable"

Your theories do not explain these claims, nor do they even work in the big picture, IMHO.

I've been through this stuff for decades. I can assure you that these stories cannot be made to make any rational sense.

The only way to possibly have these stories make any sense is to assume that God is totally irrational, not all-wise, and potentially even quite sadistic and cruel.

That's the only way these stories can be made to work.

If you try to justify all of these stories in the Big Picture taking the entire cannon of fables as a whole, you'll never succeed in coming away from this with a story that can actually be made to work AND simultaneously be a picture of a genuinely all-wise, all-powerful sane and loving God.

These stories just aren't compatible with a rational God.

That's my bottom line.

They only make sense in terms of man-made superstitious fables. Perhaps many of these stories were indeed written with good intentions with the idea of instilling good moral values and positive concepts in people, I won't deny that. But this is also true of stories like The Three Little Pigs too. That doesn't mean that the story came from any God.

I'm sure that many of these stories were written with the original idea of teaching people good moral values. I think the same could be said of most of the stories of Greek mythology as well. The people who made the stories up were trying to convey some moral concept. That's human nature.

I've solved all of these problems by simply recognizing the follow:

A Perfect Solution

The entire Old Testament is nothing more than a collection of stories written by men. Many of these stories were indeed an attempt to convey high moral values. However, many of them were also clearly an attempt to have their readers kill non-believers, and/or judge people to be "sinners" and deal with them as well. Or even stories that helped to incite the entire population to make war on other cultures in the name of God.

By dismissing all of these as nothing more than the writings of men, all of these contradictions associated with a supposedly all-wise, all-knowing, all-righteous God instantly disappear. There's no longer any need to even attempt to justify the stories as being "divine" because we've just recognized that they aren't divine, they are merely fables just like Greek Mythology. There's nothing to "defend". No need to justify them.

That brings us to the Christian question of who Jesus might have been. Well assuming that he existed at all and wasn't also a totally made up fictional story, we can consider all the possible explanations of who he might have been. When I do that it makes the best sense to conclude that Jesus was most likely trying to teach the ways of Buddhism within the framework of his Jewish culture. Unfortunately his efforts ultimately failed and he was brutally crucified for having done nothing more than preach the loving ways of Buddha.

Rumors began. People started asking, "Who was that guy, and what did he really stand for?". We know how humans love to run with rumors. Well it wasn't long before people started gossiping about the possibility that maybe Jesus was the messiah that they were expecting from various prophesies from the ancient tales of the Torah. This idea caught some momentum, and soon the scribes and pharisees realized that a lot of people were buying into the idea, so they took the idea and wrote it up into what we now call the "New Testament".

Then to quench all other rumors they proclaimed that either you accept their rumors as the "Word of God", or face social rejection or possible physical harm or even death by the sword.

And thus Christianity was born.

Now that makes perfect sense to me and totally eliminates all of the absurdities and contradictions associated with efforts to try to justify these stories in terms of a supposedly rational all-wise, all-powerful, and all-righteous jealous male-chauvinistic Godhead.

In fact, the very description of that God is a contradiction in terms.

It's a jealous God by its own confession, and it's clearly a male-chauvinistic God according to many of these stories where the Bible condones the selling of daughters as wives, and even states the female slaves are only worth half as many sheckles as a male slave. It clearly has male-chauvinistic themes. If we are to believe that these stories are genuinely the word of some God, then we truly have no choice but to accept that this God is a male-chauvinist. That's just one of the myriad of absurdities that exist in this cannon of fables.

And yes, I can't help but call them fables because to give them any merit at all would be an insult to any real creator of humanity that might actually exist, IMHO.

That's how certain I am that they are not the "word" of any God.

Your being inconsistent here with your interpretations and claims.

You have previously required that we live in a dog-eat-dog world that is contaminated with disease, death, and natural disasters as punishment for the original sin (or disobedience) of Adam and Eve.

So according to you we are being punished daily. Now you're trying to change that stance. Yet that was an important stance for you to take when the question of why the world is dog-eat-dog and why things like disease and natural disasters exist.

So you've got some serious contradictions in your own theories as far as I'm concerned.

These biblical fables cannot be made to work, no matter how hard we try to make them work. This is why I refer to them as fables, they are clearly inconsistent and incompatible with any rational explanations.

Moreover, as I had previously pointed out, the biblical fables aren't all that different from any other man-made fables. They contain the very same superstitious concepts such as blood sacrifices appeasing the gods.

If the purpose of these sacrifices was to simply show sincerity of remorse, that would imply that God couldn't tell whether the people were sincere in their remorse or not unless they actually display their sincerity to him via this kind of act. I don't buy that idea at all. It doesn't support the concept of a God who knows what's in the hearts of men. Such a God would not require any outward display or action to prove the sincerity of remorse. God would simply know who is remorseful and who is not.

According to Christianity Jesus was the ultimate sacrificial lamb of God to end all blood sacrifices. This is one reason why it's so extremely important that Jesus was totally free of any sin. He had to be a perfect unblemished "lamb" in order to serve as this ultimately blood sacrifice to pay for the sins of all mankind.

Why would God have sent his son to be sacrificed so that we would no longer need to show or demonstrate the sincerity of our remorse?

Know ye not that ye are Gods and children of the most high? There isn't just one god, there is one father.

It's not exactly the “forbidden fruit”. It was that they ate of the tree of knowledge. They learned right from wrong, they learned how to be disobedient. Has nothing to do with any mating or anything of such.

Not exactly. We still suffer from death. If we would never had been kicked out of the garden of Eden we would never have known death. We never would have felt it nor seen it. We would have lived for eternity. That is why God still offers that gift through Jesus. It's not about being a slave or obeying any master. It is about obeying God out of love. Does a child obey their parent just because they are the parent (master) or do they obey out of love to do as they are to do? Because if they did it just to save their hied, would that not be greed? Insincerity?

Jesus' sacrifice wasn't the same form of sacrifice as one would do on an altar. Jesus' sacrifice was done through out his life, he lived to spread the gospel, he lived for God, he didn't live for himself. He sacrificed every minute of his life for God and for us. And in the end he continued to spread the gospel even knowing the outcome in the end. He sacrificed himself and felt the pain of death for you so you could have ever lasting life.

Cowboy wrote:

Simple response to this. Actions speak louder then words. You can know your spouse loves you, but it really shows when he/she does something special for you.

ou can know your spouse loves you, but it really shows when he/she does something special for you.

Well that contradicts the biblical statement, "Let US make man in OUR image."

So you've just got more contradictions to deal with.






Well there's a huge contradiction with that too.

If they didn't know right from wrong before they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they could not have previously known that it was wrong to do so.

They would have had to have done so in a state of pure innocence and therefore they could not be said to have been "guilty" of choosing to do any evil thing when at the time they made the choice they supposedly didn't even have the knowledge of right or wrong.

So that's a huge flaw in the story right there. It was just a poorly written fable. Whoever wrote it should have give Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil freely, and then had them choose to do something evil with full knowledge that what they were doing was wrong.

So if the writer of this story were in my class, I'd return his paper and tell him to try to write a story that's more logically consistent. I wouldn't accept his story as is as being rational.






It's a really bad analogy to speak of children blindly obeying their parents for no other reason than because that's what they are supposed to do.

You also don't "obey" someone out of love. That's nonsense.

A parent's responsibility to a child is to teach the child how to make their own decisions wisely. Mentoring is the key concept here, not dictating.

If we go by your picture of God we'd need to assume that God isn't very intelligent. According to you all he knows how to do is give orders and expect obedience. Any fascist dictator could do that.

You expect us to believe in a God who has no loving mentoring qualities or genuine wisdom at all. The picture of God that you paint could be filled by people like Moammar Gadhafi.

No wisdom, love, or understanding required. Just dictate and expect obedience and kill everyone who doesn't live up to your expectations.

That wouldn't be a God worthy of worship and praise. That would be a monstrous dictator no better than the fascist mortal dictators on Earth.

If I had a parent like that you're damn right I'd rebel!

I wouldn't blame Satan in these fables at all. On the contrary I think he was perfectly right to stand up against such an inhumane fascist dictating God.

You don't make God out to be intelligent or wise at all. On the contrary you make him out to be a totally insensitive jerk.




Cowboy, your basically refuting the significance of the crucifixion in this religion and refusing to accept Jesus as the "sacrificial lamb of God", as per this religion.

You're trying to make this story into something entirely different from what the story actually has to say.

And you're still faced with the jealous dictating male-chauvinistic godhead of the Old Testament.

You're trying to "save" that God by using Jesus to replace him.

I keep trying to tell you that the things you love about Christianity truly reside in the moral teachings that have been attributed to Jesus. Even you don't seem to care for the behavior and laws of the God of the Old Testament.

So from my point of view what you are actually in love with is Buddhism. Because that's basically the moral values that Jesus taught.

It's a shame you weren't brought up as a Buddhist from birth, then you'd have a religion that actually supports the moral values that you like without all the contradictions that are inherent with the Hebrew stories.

You need to truly have an cold uncaring God with Christianity. A God who condemns the vast majority of his children to spiritual death. A truly heartless God who is fixated solely on being obeyed and truly doesn't seem to have one iota of compassion beyond that theme.

Obey or DIE!

Moammar Gadhafi can do that. There's nothing divine in that mentality.

Well that contradicts the biblical statement, "Let US make man in OUR image."

So you've just got more contradictions to deal with.

They would have had to have done so in a state of pure innocence and therefore they could not be said to have been "guilty" of choosing to do any evil thing when at the time they made the choice they supposedly didn't even have the knowledge of right or wrong.

So that's a huge flaw in the story right there. It was just a poorly written fable. Whoever wrote it should have give Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil freely, and then had them choose to do something evil with full knowledge that what they were doing was wrong.

So from my point of view what you are actually in love with is Buddhism. Because that's basically the moral values that Jesus taught.

It's a shame you weren't brought up as a Buddhist from birth, then you'd have a religion that actually supports the moral values that you like without all the contradictions that are inherent with the Hebrew stories.

You need to truly have an cold uncaring God with Christianity. A God who condemns the vast majority of his children to spiritual death. A truly heartless God who is fixated solely on being obeyed and truly doesn't seem to have one iota of compassion beyond that theme.

Doesn't matter. They were told not to eat of the tree. Doesn't matter if they knew it was wrong to eat of it or not, they were told not to. If you tell your child not to do something and they do it, will you punish that child in some way or other? Not specifically a physical punishment, but some form of punishment? And if so why? And if not how will that child then learn not to do certain things?

There you go again, trying to excuse these things using human analogies.

To begin with I would expect that my children should already have the knowledge of what's right or wrong before I would expect them to act on that. If they don't have that knowledge then they are too young to expect them to understand.

According to the biblical story Adam and Eve did not yet have the knowledge of good and evil (or an understanding of right and wrong) and therefore they could not have known that to disobey God was wrong until after they had actually eaten the fruit that bestowed them with this knowledge.

So they could have only acted in a state of pure innocence.

If you want to take that into a human analogy this would be like a parent expecting a very young baby to obey them when the baby has no clue what obedience even means!

The story is flawed. It was just poorly written.

For it to make any sense, Adam and Eve would have had to have been bestowed with the knowledge of good and evil first, and then asked not to do anything evil. Then if they when and did something evil they'd clearly be guilty of knowing that they did wrong.

Thus the story is grossly flawed. So we come to the natural questions:

Could this story have been told by an all-knowing, all-wise God.

Well, clearly no. The story is not all-wise, it contains a major logical flaw.

So we ask the next question.

Could this story have been made up by a mortal human.

Well sure, we'd expect humans to make these kinds of logical errors in their fables.

Cowboy wrote:

Doesn't have an iota of compassion? Must we forget that God sent his only begotten child so that you could rejoice in heaven? So you could come to the paradise? Must we forget that God provides for everyone that asks for it? God condemns no one. The only one whom condemns anyone is ourselves. It is the unbelievers choice for not believing, it is their decision, it is them that is condemning themselves

Well there you go!

There's your train-wrecked religion!

It started out being a story about a need for obedience and remorse and morality and now Christianity has somehow twisted the whole thing into being about what a person believes!

You say, "It is the unbelievers choice for not believing, it is their decision, it is them that is condemning themselves"

So now we're condemned for merely not believing in a specific collection of fables?

As far as I'm concerned this just shows how utterly absurd the whole religion has become. It's become thing more than a cult that tries to proclaim that anyone who doesn't believe in it will be "condemning themselves". They refuse to even allow their God to be credited with the condemnation.

To be perfectly honest with you Cowboy when it comes down to the wire this religion truly does make me extremely angry with the jerks who created it. Because they created a truly hateful cult that condemns everyone who doesn't suck up to its religiously bigoted views.

To me this is the most hateful religion ever devised by mankind.

It's a religion that basically teaches that if you refuse to accept it God will condemn you and it won't even be God's fault because they twist it around to even make it like as if you're condemning yourself if you reject this CULT.

It's a CULT. And a truly nasty one at that, IMHO.

It's downright NASTY!

It condemns everyone who refuses to suck up to it.

It's basically a religion that preaches hatred in the name of a jealous God toward all that refuse to support it.

It's the epitome of the "Jealous God Religions". It's takes the jealousy factor of God and uses it to condemn everyone and anyone who refuses to suck up to this religion.

It's a hate organization if you ask me. It basically preaches hatred in the name of God to all "non-believers" of the CULT.

What does any of that have to do with sin, salvation and sincere remorse?

Absolutely NOTHING!

It's clearly just a man-made brainwashing cult that condemns everyone who refuses to join and support it.

It's about as far from being "divine" as a religion can possibly be.

To be perfectly honest with you Cowboy when it comes down to the wire this religion truly does make me extremely angry with the jerks who created it. Because they created a truly hateful cult that condemns everyone who doesn't suck up to its religiously bigoted views.